Huge Gray Bigfoot Caught on Camera by a Hiking Couple—Not a Bear, Not a Hoax, and Way Too Close for Comfort

The Port Renfrew Footage (2013): The Vancouver Island Bigfoot Video That Gets Worse the Longer You Watch

In 2013, a couple vacationing on Vancouver Island, British Columbia, filmed something moving through dense forest that they insist was not a bear. The figure was huge, upright, gray, and hair-covered. It didn’t drop to all fours. It didn’t move like an animal trying to flee. It just stood there—bipedal, swaying, partially hidden by brush—while they kept the camera rolling.

And when I studied that footage frame by frame, I found a detail that genuinely gave me a sick feeling in my stomach. Not because it was “scary” in a campfire-story way, but because—if my interpretation is right—it suggests anatomy and limb length that simply doesn’t fit the easy explanations.

This is the story of that clip, why it’s so debated, and why it’s so hard to reduce to “just a bear.”

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1) The Setup: A Random Stop on a Lonely Road

The footage was filmed in August 2013 as the couple drove a narrow backroad toward the small hamlet of Port Renfrew. If you’ve driven those roads, you know the vibe: tight lanes, dense forest walls on both sides, and long stretches with no visible civilization.

They pulled over near a small creek—nearly dry that time of year—and decided to hike in. There weren’t trails. The idea was simple: follow the creek bed to avoid getting turned around.

They made it only about 200 feet into the trees when they heard branches breaking ahead.

Roughly 75–100 feet farther in, they saw it: an upright figure, standing and swaying.

Then they did something most people don’t do in alleged Bigfoot encounters:

They filmed for over two minutes.

That duration matters. Most “blob-squatch” clips are seconds long. This one shows sustained behavior.

2) The Witnesses: Not Bigfoot People

The couple later posted a follow-up on their YouTube channel Gulf Island Rock, describing what they saw and repeatedly stressing they didn’t think it was a bear. Their channel history—gardening, beaches, vacations—doesn’t look like a Bigfoot pipeline.

They also don’t oversell it. Their tone is more “we don’t know what it was, you decide” than “this proves everything.”

That kind of restraint is not proof of truth—but it’s consistent with ordinary-witness psychology.

3) What the Footage Appears to Show

The subject is partially obscured by foliage, so any conclusion has to be framed as probabilistic, not absolute. Still, several elements stand out.

A) A cone-shaped head and heavy upper body

At certain moments, the silhouette reads as:

a conical / sloped head
a flat, more horizontal forehead
broad shoulders
a thick back, with the suggestion of an arm hanging down

That “cone head” detail is repeated in many Sasquatch reports and is one reason viewers instantly think “ape-like” rather than “bear.”

B) Possible facial structure during rotation

As the figure shifts, some frames give the impression of:

a chin line
a wide, flat nose
a darker eye/ocular area

The narrator in your transcript compares this impression to “Patty” (Patterson-Gimlin) style facial proportions—especially the body-turn behavior (more on that next).

C) The “no neck” turn

A recurring observation in Sasquatch reports is that the creature doesn’t just turn its head—it rotates the whole torso, as if neck mobility is limited or the build encourages full-body turning.

In the clip, the figure’s repositioning can look like that: less “head swivel,” more “whole-body look back.”

4) The Detail That Makes the Clip Disturbing

Here’s the part you flagged—and it’s the most important analytical claim in the whole breakdown.

While scrubbing frame by frame, you can see foliage agitation to the left of the main mass—movement that appears too far away from the body to be explained by a bear’s reach or posture if the central body position is interpreted correctly.

The argument is:

the leaves move as if contacted
the contact point appears displaced far left of the torso
there are flashes of lighter tone that could be a hand/skin patch
therefore, this may indicate a long, extended left arm reaching outward

That’s why it produces that “stomach drop” reaction: long-armed reach is an ape trait, not a bear trait. A bear can stand, sure—but bears don’t have orangutan-like reach, and they don’t typically extend a limb laterally to manipulate distant foliage while maintaining upright posture for minutes.

To be clear: this is also the easiest place for skeptics to argue illusion + occlusion—branches shifting from wind, parallax from camera movement, or misreading overlapping shapes. But if the motion is truly limb-driven, it’s a strong point.

5) Color, Size, Smell: Why “Black Bear” Doesn’t Fit Cleanly

A) Gray / silvery coat

Vancouver Island is overwhelmingly black bear territory, and black bears are most commonly… black. Cinnamon phases exist. But gray is uncommon enough to raise eyebrows.

Skeptics sometimes propose “glacier/blue phase black bear.” Those exist, but they’re generally described as rare and geographically limited. Even if one could appear in that region, rarity doesn’t equal impossibility—it just lowers probability.

B) Size impression

The couple say it looked bigger than the bears they’ve seen, even standing. People can misjudge size in brush, but their confidence + familiarity with bears is part of what makes this clip linger.

C) Musty odor

They mention a subtle musty smell. That’s not diagnostic—bears, wet fur, forest rot can all smell musty—but witnesses reporting odor is a recurring theme in many Bigfoot accounts, so believers note it.

6) Behavior: The Two-Minute Upright Sway

This is one of the stronger arguments against “curious bear.”

Yes, bears sometimes stand to see or smell better. But the footage suggests:

continuous upright posture (not a quick pop-up)
side-to-side oscillation/swaying for an extended period

The transcript links this to documented great ape behaviors (rocking/swaying during agitation or uncertainty). Whether or not one accepts that comparison, the key claim is simple:

Minutes-long upright swaying is not typical bear behavior.

7) The Tie-In: A Nearby 2024 Encounter

You also connect this 2013 clip to your own September 2024 experience roughly 30 miles away in the same broader corridor:

a small stone thrown with high velocity from an implausible spot
a strange grunt/growl at close range
fresh snapped trees
a massive dark shape seen at ~50 meters, broad and tall, too big (in your view) to be a bear on hind legs

Whether a viewer accepts your interpretation or not, the narrative point is continuity: the region produces repeated “something big in the woods” reports across years.

8) Skeptical Alternatives (and Where They Struggle)

“It was a bear”

To make “bear” fit, skeptics must accept multiple stacked conditions:

an unusually colored bear (gray-ish)
unusually large size impression
sustained upright posture for >2 minutes
swaying behavior
the “long arm” effect being an illusion

Possible? In isolation, some are possible. All together? That’s where the pro-authenticity argument says the probabilities collapse.

“It was a person in a suit”

Your transcript’s argument here is logistical:

remote, dense roadside forest
spontaneous stop by random travelers
hard to stage a hoax at the exact spot and time with no prior knowledge

That’s a reasonable point. However, skeptics could counter that hoaxes don’t require predicting a specific car—only picking a road where cars occasionally stop. Still, nothing about this couple’s channel suggests a hoax motive.

9) What Can We Conclude—Responsibly?

This clip is compelling largely because of duration, upright behavior, and the possible long-limb foliage interaction. But it’s also limited by:

heavy occlusion (brush hides critical anatomy)
lack of a clear size reference
no confirmed location markers in-frame

So the strongest responsible conclusion isn’t “case closed.” It’s:

The footage is not easily explained by the most common dismissal (“just a bear”), especially if the long-arm interpretation holds.
The witnesses’ background and restrained presentation reduce—but do not eliminate—the likelihood of a staged hoax.
The clip remains high-interest because it shows sustained behavior rather than a fleeting silhouette.