This Bigfoot Attacked a Tree Logger, What Happened Next Is Shocking – Sasquatch Encounter
THE DENTS IN THE F-250
A Hood River account
Chapter 1 — Timber Light
It’s been years, but I can still feel the tremble in my hands when I think about that day—mid‑September 2016, outside Hood River, Oregon. I was thirty‑four, working timber contracts on Forest Service land, ten miles out where the Cascades start turning and the light goes soft and amber like it’s being filtered through honey. The job was simple: buck downed Douglas fir into lengths I could haul, stack it clean, repeat. Honest work has a rhythm that steadies the mind. You don’t expect the woods to interrupt it.
.
.
.
I had my F‑250 parked in a patch of packed dirt off a gravel spur road, the bed already half full of rounds. The understory was thick with salal and Oregon grape, wet enough to shine even in sunlight. By ten a.m. I’d been cutting for hours, the saw’s motor a constant companion, the air smelling like fresh sap and earth. I took a break on the tailgate and drank water from a thermos, listening to the forest do what it always does: a jay scolding somewhere above, a distant woodpecker tapping, wind moving through the canopy with that slow, steady hush.
That’s when something hit my truck hard enough to make the whole frame shudder. A sharp, sudden thud—like a sledgehammer to the side panel. The vehicle rocked on its suspension. My heart jumped into my throat before my mind caught up. I hopped off the tailgate and walked around to the driver’s side, scanning for the obvious explanation—fallen branch, rolling rock, anything. There was nothing on the ground. No fresh debris. No scrape marks. Just a new dent above the wheel well, fist-sized and creased inward like the metal had been punched by something that didn’t care about steel.
I stood there with my hand on the dent, trying to force logic into place. No cliffs nearby. No overhang. Just trees. I told myself it was nothing—some weird accident, some fluke. But when I picked up the saw again, my hands weren’t steady anymore. They were shaking in a way that felt like my body knew something my brain refused to name.
Chapter 2 — The Second Blow
By early afternoon the day had warmed enough that I’d stripped down to a T‑shirt, sweat on my back, sawdust clinging to my forearms. I was stacking rounds in the truck bed, focused on the work and trying not to replay that first impact, when the second hit came—deeper, louder, resonant. The truck shook hard enough that a round I’d just loaded rolled off the stack and thumped into the dirt.
For a second I couldn’t move. The forest went silent in that strange, unnatural way that makes your skin crawl—no birds, no wind, no insect chorus. Silence with pressure behind it, like the woods were holding their breath. I turned slowly, scanning trunks and shadows, expecting to see an angry bear or an elk spooked by the saw. Nothing. Just filtered sunlight and the green wall of understory.
I walked toward the truck like every step might trigger another blow. Two new dents had appeared, deeper than the first, clustered close together as if whatever hit the panel had struck twice in quick succession. When I ran my fingers over the edges, the metal felt warm. Fresh. Recent enough that my mind did a cold little calculation: something had been close. Close enough to touch my truck while I was standing within a few yards of it.
Then the smell hit me. Not the normal funk of forest rot or wet bark. This was musky and wild, like wet fur mixed with something sharp—almost ammonia—strong enough to make my eyes water. It rolled through the clearing and sat in my lungs like a warning. My hand went instinctively toward the cab, toward the rifle I kept behind the seat for the kind of trouble you can name: cougar, bear, two‑legged trespasser. But the trouble in that air didn’t feel like any of those.
I stood there, listening and watching, heart hammering, until the smell faded as if the wind had decided to erase it. The forest slowly “woke up” again—jay call, woodpecker, normal noise returning like someone turning a volume knob back up. I didn’t stick around to prove anything. I loaded what I could, tossed my gear in the bed, and drove out with my eyes flicking to the rearview every few seconds, expecting the gravel road to deliver me a shadow. It didn’t. Just trees, fog pockets, and the steady crunch of tires on rock.
That evening in Hood River, at the hardware store, a guy named Rick mentioned he’d been hearing strange “wood knocks” at night—three deep thumps echoing down the valley. He laughed as he said it, but his eyes didn’t. I laughed too, because people laugh when they need to keep the world from tilting. I didn’t sleep much.
Chapter 3 — Tracks Where There Shouldn’t Be Tracks
The next morning I nearly talked myself out of going back. I sat in my truck outside the motel with the keys in the ignition and the same thought looping through my head: You don’t go looking for trouble you can’t explain. But I needed the timber. I’d paid for the permit. The cabin I was building wasn’t going to frame itself. So I drove out anyway, telling myself I’d grab what I’d already cut and leave.
When I reached my spot, I stayed in the cab for five minutes, engine idling, just watching the trees like they might offer a confession. Everything looked the same: sawdust on the ground, equipment where I’d left it, logs waiting. I got out slowly—left the truck running—and walked toward the work area.
That’s when I saw the footprints.
They were in soft dirt near where the truck had been parked, broad impressions with five toes clear enough to count. Sixteen inches long, maybe more. A heel and ball impression like a human foot, but far too large to belong to any human I’d ever met. The stride between them was long, purposeful. They came from the treeline, passed close to my truck—right where those dents were—and then angled upslope into denser timber as if whatever made them had no interest in lingering.
My mouth went dry. My legs felt weak in a way that made me angry at myself. I followed the line of prints with my eyes until the ground turned rocky and the trail vanished. The forest was quiet again, that pressing silence like a hand on the back of your neck. I didn’t load timber. I took photos with my phone, shaky close‑ups and wide shots for scale, then got in the truck and drove straight to the ranger station because I needed somebody official to look at it and tell me I was wrong.
The ranger on duty—Linda, mid‑fifties, calm in the way people are when they’ve seen enough to stop being impressed—studied the photos for a long time. She zoomed in on toe shapes, on depth, on the way the dirt had pushed up at the edges. Finally she asked where I’d found them. I gave her coordinates. She wrote them down, nodded, and said, “Could be bear,” but her voice carried none of the confidence people use when they believe their own answer.
“I didn’t have food,” I said. “And bear tracks don’t look like that.”
She stared at the photos again. Then, quietly, “No. They don’t.” She handed my phone back and told me she’d send someone to check the area. Maybe set up a trail camera. “In the meantime,” she said, “work somewhere else for a while.”
She didn’t say the word I was thinking. Neither did I. But it hung between us like smoke.
Chapter 4 — The Sound That Wasn’t an Animal
For the next few days I worked other spots, but my mind stayed anchored to those dents and those footprints. I started asking around town in the careful way you ask about something you’re afraid to confirm. People mentioned hearing knocks, strange calls, a sense of being watched. A hunting guide told me he’d found a structure—branches stacked into an arch in a way the wind doesn’t do.
One night I searched Hood River Bigfoot reports like a man looking up symptoms he hopes he doesn’t have. There were dozens. Encounters with vehicles. Vocalizations. Musky smells. The more I read, the more my experience stopped feeling unique and started feeling… patterned. Like I’d stepped into a story the woods had been telling for a long time.
Two weeks later I went back to the original site, partly for the timber, mostly because I needed to know. I parked in the same spot and moved like someone walking into a room where an argument had been paused. Everything seemed undisturbed. I started loading the cut rounds, working fast, trying to keep my breathing normal. The usual forest noises were there, but underneath them I felt a weight in the air, a presence that wasn’t sound or sight yet still registered as real.
Halfway through loading, a long low vocalization rolled through the trees. It started deep and rose in pitch, echoing through the timber in a way that made my blood go cold. It wasn’t human. It wasn’t elk. It wasn’t anything I recognized. It sounded almost like language stripped of words—meaning carried in tone. I froze with a log in my hands. The sound came again, closer, and my body moved on instinct: I dropped the log and reached for the rifle.
“I don’t want trouble,” I said out loud, because silence felt like surrender. “I’m just working. I’ll be gone soon.”
The woods went quiet, and then the underbrush rustled about fifty yards out—salal and ferns parting under something heavy. It wasn’t trying to be quiet. That’s what scared me most. Then I saw it—a glimpse between trunks, a shadow moving upright. Too tall, too broad. Dark fur absorbing what little light reached the understory. It paused like it was looking back, and then it vanished into the dense timber with a smoothness that didn’t fit its size.
I stood there for a full minute with the rifle raised, breath coming in short gasps, then lowered it and did the only sane thing left: I got in my truck and drove out without taking the timber I’d already loaded. Alone in the cab on that gravel road, I whispered the word for the first time: “Bigfoot.” Saying it didn’t make it easier. It made it permanent.
Chapter 5 — Apples on the Fallen Cedar
Three days later I went back again, which is the part people always call stupid. Maybe it was. But fear isn’t the only force that pulls you. Curiosity has its own gravity, especially when you’ve seen something that breaks the world’s rules. I packed a bag of apples like a man preparing an offering for a god he doesn’t believe in. I told myself it was ridiculous, but my hands didn’t hesitate.
I walked thirty yards into the forest to a small clearing where a massive cedar had fallen years ago, its trunk moss‑slick and wide as a table. I placed the apples on the log, arranged neatly, then stepped back and waited. Nothing happened for an hour. Forest sounds continued like I was alone. Eventually I went back to the truck and sat in the cab watching the treeline until the sun started to sink, turning the sky orange and purple through the branches.
That’s when I heard the knocks. Three of them—slow, deliberate, like someone striking wood with a heavy stick. Knock… pause… knock… pause… knock. They came from the direction of the clearing.
I grabbed my phone and walked toward the sound, camera already recording. The light was fading fast. When I reached the cedar log, the apples were gone. All of them. Not scattered, not bitten, not half‑eaten. Gone as if lifted clean away.
Movement behind me. I spun, phone raised, and there it was at the edge of the clearing, partially obscured by a Douglas fir but unmistakable: tall, broad‑shouldered, covered in dark brown fur that drank the last light. Its face was shadowed, but the eyes weren’t—large, dark, intelligent, fixed on me with something that felt like assessment more than threat.
We stared at each other for five seconds. Then it turned and walked away, unhurried, not aggressive, moving back into the forest like it owned every tree. I kept recording until full dark, tears running down my face, not sure if I was crying from fear or awe or the strange grief of realizing the world is bigger than you were raised to believe. Later, at home, I watched the clip a hundred times. Shaky. Grainy. But there—three seconds of dark fur sliding between trunks, taller than any bear, moving upright. Proof enough for me, and too dangerous to be proof for anyone else.
I showed it to my brother once. He watched three times and handed the phone back. “That’s something,” he said quietly. “I don’t know what, but that’s something.”
Chapter 6 — The Rules of a Territory
By mid‑October the leaves had turned, the forest floor carpeted in gold and red. I returned with more offerings—apples, trail mix, a small mirror from a garage sale—because I didn’t know what else to do with the feeling of being invited and warned at the same time. I sat on the fallen cedar with coffee and waited.
This time I heard footsteps—heavy, deliberate—behind me. They stopped about twenty feet back. Breathing followed, deep and steady, and then the smell hit: musk and wet fur, the same sharp edge that stung the eyes. I set the coffee down slowly and spoke without turning. “I’m not here to hurt you. I just want to understand.”
Three knocks answered—so close I felt the vibration in the air.
When I turned, it was there in the trees, closer than before. I could see the texture of the fur, the breadth of the shoulders, and the face that was somehow both apelike and uncomfortably human. It reached toward the offerings, picked up an apple, examined it, then looked back at me. The eyes were the most human part—curious, cautious, intelligent. Then it vanished as if the forest folded around it.
After that, encounters became regular in a quiet, unpredictable way. Offerings sometimes disappeared. Knocks sometimes answered. Once I found a stack of stones balanced on the cedar log so carefully it had to have been placed by hands. I documented what I could—photos, short videos, audio clips—then locked it all away because I didn’t want the attention. I’d read enough to know what “proof” does to a place like that: it turns wilderness into a stage.
Then in late November I made one last mistake. I went back to retrieve equipment I’d left under a tarp near the original site. The moment I arrived I felt that heavy presence again. I got out, door open, moved toward the tarp—and the truck took a massive blow that rocked it on its suspension. Then another. Then another. Not random impacts. Directed, angry, close.
I spun and saw it emerging from the treeline with clear intent, not hiding now, not curious. This was a boundary being enforced.
“Stop!” I shouted, stepping between it and my vehicle like that would matter. “I’m leaving. Okay—I’m leaving.” It stopped ten feet away. Up close I saw details that made it real in a way video never could: scars on its arms, gray starting around its face, the hard intelligence in its eyes. It made a deep rumbling sound that felt like words I couldn’t catch, then reached out and pressed its hand to the hood, leaving four clear finger marks in the dust like a signature and a warning.
Then it turned and walked away. Silent. Gone.
I gathered my equipment and left for good. I never returned to that patch of Forest Service land. I found work elsewhere. I moved east where the high desert spreads out and you can see for miles, thinking distance would make it smaller. It didn’t.
Sometimes, late at night, I still pull up the videos—labeled in a folder called work files 2016—and watch the shape move between trees. Proof that something intelligent lives in the Cascades and chooses to remain unseen. And every once in a while, in the early hours before dawn, I swear I hear it again—three slow knocks, soft and distant, like a memory made solid for a moment. Maybe it’s the wind. Maybe it’s my mind. Or maybe somewhere near Hood River, the forest is still keeping its rules, and something out there remembers the man who learned to leave.
