Forest Worker Mauled by Unknown Creature—His Description Sounds Exactly Like Bigfoot

The first time it hit his truck, he thought a tree had fallen.

The second time, he realized whatever was out there was aiming for him.

By the third encounter, he knew it wasn’t a bear, wasn’t a prank, and wasn’t anything he could explain away with coffee and a good night’s sleep.

It was Bigfoot.

And it didn’t just hit his truck.

It marked him.

1. Just Another Job in the Woods

By mid‑September 2016, the Cascades around Hood River, Oregon, were starting to turn. The light went soft and amber in the afternoons, the understory thick with salal and Oregon grape, the air crisp and clean.

For most people, that’s hiking‑weather.

For him, it was logging season.

He was 34, running timber contracts on Forest Service land about ten miles outside Hood River. No big crews, no heavy machinery—just his F‑250, a chainsaw, and a permit to take storm‑fallen timber for the cabin he was building on his brother’s property.

He’d been at that particular site for about two weeks.

Old‑growth Douglas fir loomed overhead, some trunks over a hundred feet tall. The ground smelled of rotting needles and wet bark. Fallen logs lay scattered like bones from last winter’s storms—exactly the kind of wood he needed.

He knew the rhythm of the work:

Drive out before sunrise on gravel that popped under his tires
Park in the same turnout
Unload the saw
Cut, buck, stack, haul

No surprises. No weirdness.

Just honest, back‑breaking work in good timber.

Until that first thud.

2. The First Hit

Around 10 a.m. that first day, he was sitting on the tailgate drinking water. The chainsaw had left his arms buzzing; his shirt clung with sweat despite the cool mountain air.

The forest was calm. Birdsong. A breeze sighing through the canopy.

Then something slammed into his truck.

Hard.

The entire frame shuddered. The tailgate bounced under him. The sound was like someone swinging a sledgehammer into the metal—sharp, deep, wrong.

He jumped to his feet, heart jackhammering, and went around to the driver’s side.

No fallen limbs. No rockslide. No fresh debris.

Just a new dent, about the size of his fist, just above the front wheel well. The paint had spidered slightly. The metal was creased inward as if something with serious force had struck it dead‑on.

He scanned the trees.

Nothing.

Just green and shadow and shafts of light.

He told himself it had to be something stupid—a rolling rock, a hidden branch that snapped free, maybe even his imagination pumped up by the noise of the saw.

But when he picked up the chainsaw again, his hands were shaking.

3. The Second Hit and the Smell

He forced himself to keep working.

The saw roared, the bar cut, the logs dropped. It was almost enough to convince him everything was normal.

Almost.

By mid‑afternoon, the sun had warmed the clearing. He had stripped down to a T‑shirt, skin prickled with sweat and sawdust.

He bent to lift a fresh round into the truck bed.

THUD.

This time the impact was bigger, deeper. The truck rocked hard enough that one of the rounds he’d already loaded rolled out and thudded onto the ground.

He spun, adrenaline spiking, eyes raking the treeline.

Nothing.

The forest had gone wrong‑quiet. No birds. No wind. Just thick silence pressing in, making if feel like the trees themselves were listening.

He walked to the truck slowly, muscles coiled.

Two new dents.

Side by side near the first one, each deeper, cleaner, almost like knuckle‑prints. Fresh. The metal was slightly warm around the edges, as if whatever had done it had just pulled back.

Then the smell hit him.

Not skunk. Not bear.

Something musky and heavy, like wet fur mixed with a sharp, acrid tang—almost like ammonia. It burned the back of his throat and watered his eyes.

His hand went instinctively to the rifle behind the seat.

He stood there for long minutes, listening.

Slowly, the smell thinned, carried away on a faint breeze.

Birdsong returned, scattered and tentative. A woodpecker tapped somewhere far off.

He loaded his gear as fast as he could and got out.

The whole drive back down the forest road, he checked the rearview mirror, half expecting to see something huge pacing the gravel behind him.

There was nothing there.

But the three dents in his truck said something had been.

4. Footprints Where They Shouldn’t Be

He barely slept that night.

Every time he closed his eyes, he felt the truck rock. Saw the metal cave in. Smelled that wild, alien musk.

He told himself not to go back.

The next morning, he went back.

He needed the timber. He’d already paid for the permit for that section. If there was a bear or some territorial elk, he’d grab what was cut and move on.

He parked in the exact same spot.

Sat there with the engine idling for five full minutes, hands on the steering wheel, scanning the treeline.

Everything looked… normal.

He cut the engine, stepped out, and that’s when he saw them.

Footprints.

At first his brain tried to make them into boot marks—his or some ranger’s. But as he walked closer, the truth snapped into focus.

They were huge.

At least sixteen inches long. Maybe more.

Each print had:

A clear heel
A wide ball
Five toes impressed into the soft earth

They weren’t bear prints. Bears have a different shape—a curved toe arc, claw marks, a broad, flat pad.

These were longer. More human. But far too big, and sunk too deep for any normal man.

The stride between them was impossible—long, smooth, as if whatever made them had been walking with casual, effortless power.

The tracks came from the treeline.

Passed right beside the truck—right where the dents were.

Then angled back up into dense forest and vanished in a patch of ground too hard to hold prints.

He stood there in the quiet, heart hammering, every nerve screaming that he was being watched.

That was the moment the word he’d been avoiding rolled through his mind:

Bigfoot.

He didn’t say it out loud.

Not yet.

5. The Ranger Who Didn’t Laugh

He took photos—dozens of them—with his phone. Pulled out a pocketknife and used it as a reference for scale. Documented the stride.

Then he drove straight back to town, straight to the ranger station.

He needed someone with authority to look at the pictures and tell him he was wrong.

Linda was on duty—a Forest Service ranger in her 50s, hair cropped short, face lined by years of weather and worry. She’d spent two decades in these mountains.

He laid his phone on the counter and handed it across.

She zoomed in. Zoomed again. Studied the toes, the step length, the depth of each impression.

“Where exactly?” she asked.

He gave her the road number, the rough coordinates, landmarks. She wrote it all down.

“Could be bear,” she said, finally.

But the words didn’t have conviction behind them.

“We don’t really get big ones like that there, do we?” he asked.

She looked at the photos. Her jaw clenched.

“No,” she admitted. “We don’t.”

He told her about the dents. The smell. The silence.

She listened without interrupting.

“I’ll send someone to take a look,” she said. “Maybe put up a trail cam. In the meantime, I’d work another area if I were you. If there’s a bear getting territorial up there, you don’t want to be in the middle of it.”

Her eyes said something else.

They said: I’ve heard parts of this before, and I can’t say what I think out loud.

He left with no answers and too many questions.

6. A Shadow Between the Trees

He tried other sites.

The timber was poorer. The pay worse. And his thoughts kept circling back to that patch of forest where something had hit his truck, left prints that didn’t make sense, and vanished.

Two weeks later, he gave in.

He told himself he just wanted to finish the job—pull out the logs he’d already cut and be done. But underneath, something deeper tugged at him. Curiosity. Obsession. The need to know if what he’d felt that day had been real.

The road felt narrower, the trees taller. Every bend felt like a point of no return.

He parked.

Got out.

The clearing looked untouched. Sawdust still clung around the downed logs. His old equipment lay where he’d left it, furred with a faint layer of moss and needles.

He started loading. Working fast, head on a swivel, eyes constantly flicking between the trees.

The forest sounded… normal.

Birds called. Squirrels chattered. The wind whispered.

Then, slicing through all of it, came a sound he’d never forget.

A long, low vocalization that started deep and rose in pitch, echoing between the trunks. It was too big to be a human voice, too complex to be a simple animal call.

It sounded almost like words in a language his bones recognized but his brain didn’t.

His hands went numb. The log he held slipped from his grip and hit the ground.

The call came again. Closer.

He grabbed his rifle and chambered a round with shaking hands.

“I don’t want trouble!” he shouted, his voice absurdly small against all that forest. “I’m just working. I’ll be gone soon.”

Silence.

Then, rustling in the underbrush.

Heavy. Deliberate. Coming from about fifty yards out.

He raised the rifle, sighted between two firs.

A shape moved.

Not a deer. Not a bear.

A tall, upright figure strode between the trees—dark, massive, covered in fur. It moved on two legs with a long, fluid gait that was almost human, but not quite, each step absorbing terrain like it cost no effort at all.

It paused for a heartbeat.

He had a two‑second glimpse:

Eight feet tall, maybe more
Broad shoulders
Long arms swinging naturally at its sides

Then it slipped into denser timber and was gone.

No crashing, no snapping branches. It moved like it grew there, part of the forest itself.

He stood frozen, rifle raised, eyes stinging.

When he could finally move, he lowered the gun, climbed into the truck, and drove out so fast the gravel nearly tore his tires.

He left the timber behind.

For the first time, he said the word out loud, alone in the cab:

“Bigfoot.”

7. The Apples on the Cedar Log

For most people, that would’ve been the end.

Tell a few bar‑stool versions of the story. Laugh it off. Pretend you hadn’t seen what you’d seen.

He went the other way.

He dove into reports.

Online forums. Old newspaper clippings. Bigfoot databases, witness interviews, grainy videos. He found dozens of encounters in the Hood River and Mt. Hood region—wood knocks, strange howls, glimpses of massive figures crossing roads at night, tree structures found deep in the forest.

He noticed patterns:

The smell
The vocalizations
The feeling of being watched

His story fit too well.

So he did something he later described as “the stupidest, smartest thing” he’d ever done.

He went back.

This time he brought offerings.

Apples, a bag of trail mix, and—because he’d read about it being used by other researchers—a small mirror with a cheap plastic frame. He felt ridiculous loading them into his bag, but he did it anyway.

He parked where he always had.