Man Records a Bigfoot Stalking His Farm Before Learning The Truth – Sasquatch Encounter Story

🌲 The Guardian of the Wallowas: What My Trail Camera Caught Changed Everything

I never believed in Bigfoot. Not even a little bit. Growing up on a cattle ranch in eastern Oregon, I’d heard all the stories—the campfire tales about giant hairy creatures lurking in the mountains, the tourists claiming they saw something by the road at dusk, the local hunters swearing they’d found footprints the size of dinner plates. Bar talk, mostly, stories that got bigger with each telling and each round of drinks. I always figured it was bears standing on their hind legs or shadows playing tricks on people’s eyes when the light hit the trees just wrong. Or maybe just too much whiskey and an overactive imagination.

My family has worked this same stretch of land near the Wallowa Mountains for three generations. My grandfather homesteaded it back in the 30s; my father expanded it over forty years of hard work. Now I run 400 acres, raising Black Angus cattle the same way my family always has: honest work, simple life, nothing fancy. In all that time, across those three generations, nobody in my family ever saw anything stranger than a cougar creeping through at night or a black bear raiding the apple trees in fall.

So, when weird things started happening last September, Bigfoot was the absolute last thing on my mind. I was thinking predators, maybe disease in the herd, possibly vandals from town. Anything that made sense in the normal world I’d always known, anything that fit into the categories I understood. I wasn’t prepared for what was actually happening. Nobody could have been.

🐄 The Unsettling Silence of the Herd

The reason I’m sharing this story is simple: what I captured on my trail cameras changed everything I thought I knew about what lives in those mountains. I’ve got footage that’ll make your skin crawl and a story that still keeps me up at night, even months later. Whether you believe it or not is entirely up to you. I’m not here to convince anyone of anything. But I’m telling you exactly what happened, step by step, detail by detail. I’m telling you why I’ll never look at my property the same way again, why I check the tree line every evening before dark, and why I leave offerings at the edge of the forest once a week without fail. This isn’t a ghost story or a legend passed down through generations. This happened to me, on my land, over the course of six weeks last fall.

Mid-September hit like it always does in eastern Oregon: cool mornings where you can see your breath, warm afternoons that make you shed your jacket, and the cattle settling into their autumn routines as the grass starts to brown. Except this year, they weren’t settling at all.

I noticed it first on a Tuesday evening when I went out to do my daily check. Usually by this time of year, the cattle spread out across the pasture to graze, relaxed, moving slowly, some lying down to chew their cud. It’s peaceful. But that particular evening, all eighty head of them were bunched together in the southeast corner of the main pasture, pressed up against each other like they were trying to form a single massive unit. The calves were in the center, the cows surrounding them in protective formation, the bulls on the outer edge facing outward.

I walked out there, thinking maybe a coyote had spooked them. Coyotes are a constant problem. But when I got close, I didn’t see anything unusual. No tracks, no scat, no signs of a scuffle. The cattle watched me approach with a nervous energy I’d rarely seen before, their eyes wide, showing white at the edges. They wouldn’t budge. Normally, I can get them moving with a few shouts and some arm-waving. But that evening, they just stared at me, feet planted, refusing to leave their defensive cluster. When I finally managed to break their formation, they just moved to a different corner of the pasture and immediately grouped right back up again, facing the same direction: toward the western tree line.

🐴 The Horses That Wouldn’t Walk West

The next morning brought more of the same strange behavior. The cattle huddled together again, this time in the northeast corner, refusing to spread out and graze in the western pasture—the one with the best grass on the property.

That’s when I noticed the horses acting strange, too. I keep three horses on the property, including an old mare that’s been with us for fifteen years. She’s seen everything—lightning storms, rattlesnakes, mountain lions screaming in the night. Nothing phases her. But that Wednesday morning, when I tried to lead her toward the western pasture to check the fence line like I do every week, she planted her feet in the dirt and would not move forward. Her ears went flat back against her head, nostrils flaring wide, her whole body trembling, muscles tense and quivering under her coat. I had never seen her like this.

The other two horses were the same. I could lead them anywhere else on the property without issue. But the moment I tried to head west toward that tree line, they stopped dead in their tracks, their body language screaming fear and refusal. Something out there beyond those trees had them absolutely terrified.

I spent the rest of that day checking the entire western section of the property. I walked every inch of fence line looking for tracks, bear scat, cougar scratch marks, or kill sites. I found absolutely nothing that would account for this level of fear in my animals.

🐕 The Primitive Warning

Then the dogs started in with their strange behavior. I have two blue heelers, the best working dogs I’ve ever owned, fearless and smart. These dogs have faced down angry bulls without backing up an inch. Now, they were barking, not at a specific target, but deep into the forest at night.

I’d go out there multiple times each evening with my big Maglite, sweeping the beam back and forth across the tree line. Sometimes I’d see the reflection of deer eyes or a raccoon scurrying. Normal forest animals doing normal forest things. But the dogs wouldn’t stop their barking no matter what I showed them with the flashlight. They’d glance at the deer and immediately go back to barking at something else, something deeper in the forest that I couldn’t illuminate.

This went on for a week straight, every single evening. I should have recognized that something was seriously wrong much earlier than I did. The animals knew; they sensed it weeks before I caught on, using instincts that evolution gave them for exactly this kind of situation. Instincts that we humans have mostly lost in our comfortable modern lives. The cattle knew there was a threat nearby. The horses knew. The dogs knew. They were all trying to tell me, and I just kept dismissing it. But humans are stubborn creatures. We like our world to make sense, to fit into the categories we’ve built up. And my lifetime of experience on this ranch said there are no monsters in these mountains. So, I ignored the warning signs, figuring whatever was bothering the animals would eventually move on.

Except this time, I was wrong. Dead wrong.

💀 The Bull and the Footprints

Early October arrived, crisp and clear. I went out at dawn like I always do. Then I found him: one of my best breeding bulls, lying dead in the middle of the east field, maybe 200 yards from the barn.

He was a strong, healthy animal in his prime, and now he was dead for no apparent reason. I walked around the body slowly. No visible wounds, no blood anywhere on his hide or the ground around him, no defensive injuries. No sign of bloat or poisoning. He just looked like he’d laid down and died peacefully, which absolutely does not happen with healthy five-year-old bulls. Something killed him. I was certain of that. But what?

While I waited for the vet, I checked the area. I was grasping at explanations, trying to make sense of something that made no sense. That’s when I found the footprints, and everything changed.

About twenty feet from the bull’s body, right at the edge of a muddy patch near the water trough, where the ground stays soft from constant overflow, there they were, clear as day in the morning light. At first, I thought they were bear prints. They were absolutely huge, way bigger than any human footprint I’d ever seen. Bigger than my own size 11 boot—they dwarfed it.

But the more I looked at them, the less sense they made as bear prints. Yes, they had five toes, but the arrangement was all wrong. Bears have their toes in a curved line. These prints had the toes arranged more like a human foot, and the shape itself was wrong for a bear, too narrow, too elongated from heel to toe. The heel print was deep and rounded, more like a human heel than the elongated pad of a bear’s hind paw.

The prints were at least eighteen inches long, maybe twenty. And they were pressed deep into the mud, at least two inches down, which meant whatever made them was incredibly heavy, probably pushing five hundred pounds or more.

I tried hard to tell myself a story that made sense: it had to be a bear that came to investigate after the bull died. But the stride length between the prints bothered me deep in my gut—about four feet from one print to the next. Bears don’t maintain that kind of stride when they’re upright. They waddle. Their gait is awkward and short-stepped. These prints showed a confident, long-strided bipedal walk. The weight distribution was too even, too balanced.

The vet arrived, examined the bull, and shrugged off the cause of death as a heart attack or lightning strike. I walked him over to the muddy patch and showed him the prints. He barely glanced at them before saying they were bear prints, nothing to worry about. I wanted to believe him desperately. But I couldn’t shake the feeling that he was wrong. I was letting my imagination run away from me. The alternative—that something humanoid but impossibly large had walked through my property last night—was too ridiculous to consider. I don’t believe in Bigfoot. Never have. So, these were bear prints. End of story.

🎥 The Evidence on the Western Fence Line

I went to town and bought six trail cameras. The good kind, with infrared night vision and motion sensors. I told the clerk I was trying to get pictures of elk, but that wasn’t the truth. I needed to know what was coming onto my land at night. I needed evidence.

I spent the next day setting them up strategically: two along the western fence line where the horses had been refusing to go, one near the water trough where I’d found the footprints, two more along the northern boundary, and one pointed at the main pasture.

For the first three nights, the cameras caught exactly what I expected: deer, raccoons, a coyote. Normal stuff. But Night four changed everything.

I checked the memory cards on the fifth morning. The first five cameras showed the usual nighttime activity. But the sixth camera, the one mounted on the western fence line, had captured something at 2:47 in the morning.

The footage started with an empty field. Then something massive moved into the frame from the left side. A creature walking upright on two legs, moving along my fence line in the middle of the night. It was huge. The fence posts are five feet tall, and this thing’s shoulders were well above them, putting its height somewhere between eight and nine feet. Covered in dark fur, black or dark brown in the infrared footage. It moved deliberately, each step careful and measured. Every few seconds, it would stop and turn its head toward the forest like it was watching for something or listening. But it never looked toward the house or the barn.

I watched the clip five times, my hands shaking so bad I could barely work the mouse. The proportions were all wrong for a human. Arms too long, shoulders too broad, head too large. The way it moved was too fluid, too natural for a person in a suit.

🛡️ The Protector

Over the next week, I became obsessed with those cameras, checking them every morning, sometimes twice a day. The creature showed up again and again, always between two and four in the morning, always following the same route: western fence line to northern property boundary, then back into the forest. It was like it was patrolling. I captured it on four different cameras over those seven days. The movements were intelligent, purposeful. This wasn’t some mindless animal wandering through; this thing was thinking.

But here’s what really got me: the creature never approached the barn, the house, or the cattle directly. It stuck to the fence line, to the edges of my property. And after about a week of this, I noticed something strange. The cattle had stopped bunching up at night. They were spreading out again, grazing normally. The horses weren’t spooked anymore, either. The fear was gone.

That’s when it hit me. The animals weren’t afraid anymore because whatever had been threatening them was gone, or at least being kept away. This creature, this thing walking my fence line every night, wasn’t causing the problem. It was solving it.

The cattle were calm because they felt safe. The horses relaxed because the threat, whatever it was, had been driven off. This massive figure I’d been watching on my trail cameras wasn’t stalking my property. It was protecting it. The realization was both terrifying and bizarre. I had a Bigfoot—or whatever you want to call it—acting as some kind of guardian for my land.

🥊 The Standoff

Night twelve, the camera on the north boundary captured something that made my blood run cold. Around 3:00 in the morning, the protective creature entered the frame, following its usual route. But this time it wasn’t alone.

Back in the tree line, maybe fifty yards behind the fence, I could see eyes, multiple sets of glowing eyes reflecting the camera’s infrared light. At least four, maybe five pairs, all at different heights, all watching.

The creature on my side of the fence stopped walking and turned to face them. For a long moment, nothing moved. Then the creature started making aggressive displays. It pounded its chest with both fists—the sound loud enough to register on the camera’s audio. It grabbed a dead branch and shook it violently, then threw it toward the tree line. The display went on for maybe twenty seconds—chest beating, branch shaking, asserting dominance, telling those things in the forest to back off.

And they did. One by one, the glowing eyes disappeared back into the darkness.

Whatever was out there beyond my fence line, it was what had been terrifying my animals. Those eyes in the forest—those were the threat. And this creature had positioned itself between them and my pasture, acting as a barrier, a protector. The animals knew it. They’d been afraid of what was in the forest, not what was walking my fence.

💥 The Final Battle

The protective creature’s patrols became more frequent. The tension was building towards something. Then one evening at dusk, I saw it with my own eyes. I was out by the barn when I caught the movement near the tree line. The silhouette was massive, upright, unmistakable. It was standing at the edge of the woods, just watching. We made eye contact. I’m certain of it. Even in the failing light, I felt the weight of its gaze. It wasn’t aggressive, just acknowledging that I was there. Then it turned and walked back into the forest.

Late October, around 3:00 in the morning, I woke up to chaos. Roaring, screaming, the crack of breaking wood. I grabbed my rifle and headed outside.

Something massive was fighting near the north pasture. The sounds were deafening. I could see movement in the darkness: large shapes grappling with each other, throwing each other around. The protective creature was fighting for its life against at least four others, maybe five. They had it surrounded, and the fence was getting destroyed in the process.

I watched, too stunned to move, as one of the aggressive creatures picked up a solid fence post and swung it like a club. The protective creature blocked it and countered with a punch that sent the attacker sprawling. But it was clearly hurt, its movements slower, more defensive. It was going to lose this fight. And then there’d be nothing between them and my property, my cattle, my home.

I didn’t think. I just raised the rifle and fired three shots into the air.

The crack of gunfire split the night. Everything stopped. All five of the aggressive creatures turned and looked at me, their eyes glowing in my flashlight beam. Then they scattered, turning and running back into the forest.

The protective creature stood there in the wreckage, breathing hard, favoring its left side. It looked at me across the distance, and for the second time, we made eye contact. I saw something in its expression—surprise, maybe, or gratitude. Then it nodded. I swear to you, it nodded its head just slightly, acknowledging what I’d done. And then it limped back toward the tree line, disappearing into the woods.

🍎 An Understanding

The damage to the fence was demolished for about thirty yards. The ground was torn up like a battlefield. I found toughs of fur caught on the broken wire, some dark brown and some lighter, almost reddish. There was blood, too. And the footprints were everywhere—at least six distinct sets of huge, five-toed prints, overlapping and crisscrossing in chaotic patterns. The fight had been real.

The protective creature’s tracks showed it had been favoring its left side, with drops of blood marking the trail. I wanted to follow, but some survival instinct told me to stop. I looked into the woods, hoping it had found somewhere safe to recover. The cattle were fine, unharmed. The damage was limited to the fence. The thing I’d been thinking of as a threat had been the only thing standing between my property and real danger.

The weeks after that fight were strange. The protective creature still showed up on my trail cameras, but less frequently and always keeping more distance. It had recovered from its injuries. But something had changed—it was more cautious now, more aware of my presence.

I started leaving things for it. Nothing dramatic, just offerings at the edge of the tree line: apples from our trees, bags of corn, salt licks. Every morning, whatever I’d left would be gone. It felt like the least I could do after what it had done for us.

The aggressive creatures never came back. The forest went quiet again. The protective creature had won, and my land was part of its territory. That thought should have terrified me, but it didn’t. If anything, it made me feel safer.

I started thinking about these creatures differently. They had social structures, territories they defended, concepts of honor or debt. Some protected, some destroyed, same as humans. They weren’t just animals, and they weren’t just monsters. They were something in between, something we don’t have a category for.

🙏 A Gratitude I Will Never Betray

It’s been three months since that night, and I still check the trail cameras every morning. The protective creature shows up occasionally, usually around dawn or dusk, still following its patrol route along my fence line. Sometimes it stops and looks toward the house like it’s checking to make sure everything’s okay.

I’ve kept all the footage, hundreds of clips now, stored on an external hard drive in my desk drawer. I haven’t shown it to anyone except my wife. The moment I expose this, my property becomes a circus. The protective creature trusted me enough to let me see it. Trusted that I wouldn’t betray its presence to the world. I won’t betray that trust.

The world is stranger and more wonderful than we give it credit for. The wilderness still holds secrets that we haven’t uncovered. Mysteries that maybe we’re not meant to solve. And sometimes, just sometimes, those mysteries decide to protect us instead of harm us. The monsters we imagine lurking in the forest aren’t always the ones we should fear. Sometimes the creatures we think are monsters are actually the only things keeping those real threats at bay.

I still ranch this land the way my family did, but with an awareness now that I’m not alone here. I share this place with something ancient, something powerful, something that chose to protect me when it didn’t have to.

Every evening when I finish my work and head back to the house, I glance toward the tree line. Sometimes I see nothing. Sometimes I see a shadow that’s darker than the rest, a shape that doesn’t quite belong. I never try to approach it. I just raise my hand in acknowledgement, in thanks. And the shadow seems to shift slightly before disappearing back into the forest.

I leave apples at the tree line every week now. It’s become part of my routine. And every week, the apples are gone by morning. That’s all the confirmation I need that my guardian is still out there, still watching, still protecting. We have an understanding, this creature and I. I won’t expose it, and it won’t let anything harm what’s mine.

Believe it or don’t. I’m past caring about that. I know what I saw. I know it walks my fence line at night, and I know that I’m grateful for it. Some mysteries are better left unsolved. As long as the apples keep disappearing and the cattle stay safe, that’s all I need to know.