Hello, I’m writing to your website because of some strange goings on about the place I own out here in Prescott, Yavapai County, Arizona. We have the remnants of what used to be a working ranch from years ago, some livestock left from those days; a few horses, a few Brahma, a couple of goats out there and a longhorn I won in a bar fight in Mexia, down in Limestone County, Texas and recently we think we have a bigfoot around.

We used to winter horses for people around these parts who were snowbirds, but no more because of the mystery disappearances that happen here, in fact lots of mysterious things like that happen around the place, especially as fall nears and the weather cools, like September, October, November. Nothing happens in summer out here.

One notable incident was the disappearance of one of my best dogs, part pitbull/shepherd mix, he weren’t a feared of anything and was a great watchdog for the lower pasture, he guarded the grazing stock and two sheep we used to have and the goats from local mountain lions and bobcats.

Now you may say the dog wandered off, but he was ten years old and never left sight of the main house, he was a devoted dog. Some have said a bear came in from the forest at night and took him but my middle son found him exactly 14 feet up in the crotch of a pinion pine tree with his neck snapped, no teeth marks found, no bear claw marks, no mountain lion tears. Just a broken neck and tossed up into that tree, or if not tossed someone must have put the dog’s body up that pinion, which my son had trouble reaching. We all tried to explain that one!

Now on to the sheep, I bartered with a half-breed for a ram and ewe and had them down in the grazing pasture along with the stock, horses goats and such. We only had them a short while and they disappeared. For awhile we thought the previous owner snuck back here loading up the two and carried them off but my wife ran into the fellow in the hardware store in town and talked to him about the disappearance. He came home that day with my wife and together we went out looking for sign. We found nothing that day and I don’t believe he had anything to do with the sheep disappearance.

He told me a far out story that got me to thinking though, which is why I looked up “bigfoot” on the Internet. Anyway, he told me of a place up in the Sierra Prieta ponderosa forest where this Yavapai Indian woman ran her small flock of sheep in the company of young cousin; a blue merle koolie and a border collie that kept her flock together at night fending off attacks by mountain lions and bobcats, sometimes wolverines. This one season the woman and her cousin were bringing the flock down off of mountain grazing; it was late October and snows were expected. She said she was not feeling well and laid down in a grassy meadow to rest but woke up when she heard the sheep bleating, her cousin yelling and the dogs loudly onto something. The woman sheepherder said she got to her feet in time to see her two dogs biting at the heels of a big “hairy man, “So’yoko ” as he ambled off, escaping with a big ewe under his arm. The hairy man tried to fend off the biting dogs, kicked the one koolie dog all to hell. (this might be what befell my dog) She called off the dogs and watched the hairy man disappear into the pine trees with his prize. He explained the hairy man to her was what we call Bigfoot or Sasquatch. She only told the story once to an elder and she won’t speak of it anymore but he mentioned they come down from the north in winter.

Hearing the sheepherder story, putting two and two together, my sons, the half-breed and I pretty much decided that we must have a rogue Bigfoot living somewheres near the property. I don’t mind that so much and we don’t mind sharing some of the fruit off our trees with him but stealing a man’s stock is another thing! I don’t expect to put up with that.

After reading up on your website, my boys and I along with the other dogs packed a rifle in the scabbard and rode out recently of a morning during Thanksgiving week and covered the whole western stretch of the property line looking for sign; you would laugh, we looked like a posse in a B-western!! We worked the edge of the tree line for about two hours looking for a trail, we found one that led into deep forest, a section none of us had ridden before.

We worked the horses through there into and around thick brush. Soon we came to a stream and stopped to gather our bearings and water the horses. Dismounting I thought I heard someone cough, I asked and nobody heard it but me. My horse jerked up, snorted and became uneasy, sensing something none of us could see; the other mounts followed; all of us were focusing on keeping the horses under control as they danced about bucking, kicking and snorting. My sons thought mountain lion; I wasn’t sure. We stood together there by the stream listening, calming the horses when the dogs started looking towards this thicket of tangled brush, then the barking started in earnest and they took off. Still we couldn’t see anything but by now we all expected the dogs to tree a mountain lion. We couldn’t follow, the brush was too thick but the dog noise seem to end about 20 yards into this thick brush and brambles. We kept calling and calling, finally the dogs returned, and then took off again.

Pretty soon the dogs returned with tongues hanging out, breathing heavy. We leashed the dogs up and took them and led the horses back down to the stream. The dogs settled down some but the horses didn’t and as we were making an effort to saddle up again, that is when it happened.

There came this howl that lengthened into a scream that at first sounded like a Brahma fart, low guttural and drug out ending up into a high pitched drone like a woman screaming bloody murder. My body reacted with a chill and goose bumps mainly because the scream was coming from very close, somewheres in that thicket of brambles where the dogs had been. The scream was long and kind of dragged out, the kind of noise that gets your attention real fast!! The half-breed yelled, “So’yo ko,” (bigfoot) as he pulled the rifle out of the scabbard. By now the horses were almost impossible to control. Then it got quiet, not a sound, no birds, no crickets, no nothing. Everything was very still except for the horses; the dogs were by now cowering between my legs their ears pricked towards the thicket. Then in the distance we heard another scream, it must have come from across the next valley. Now we’re figuring there is fixing to be two of these Bigfoot and I felt fear for the first time; the dogs started whining.

My grown boys hurriedly saddled up, we followed and took off down the trail heading at a full gallop all the way home a good hour later. Ain’t never heard nothing like that vocalization before and I’ve heard plenty coyote, plenty wolves and elk’s bugle but never nothing like that before and it weren’t no mountain lion scream, it was four times as powerful. If that was a warning from bigfoot, we got the message.

Thanks for your help, we will contact you next time they come callin’.

Eldridge R.
Mountain Country, Arizona

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