During the fall of 1977 a few friends and I decided to make a
duck-hunting trip to Red Lake up in the Kamloops region. We packed up
a couple of camouflaged boats, 50 or 60 rubber mallard decoys, grub,
guns and headed for the high country. Once we reached Red Lake high on
the Kamloops plateau, my friend Randy and I decided to hunt a marshy
area on the lake that we knew well from our eastern brook trout ice
fishing trips during the winter. (Note: At the time the closest ranch
or building was a good 10 miles away over bush roads.)
We had our boat loaded
before first light and made for the marsh. Once there we set out our
decoys and slipped the boat back into the high weeds and grass about
60 feet from open water. Hunting was slow due to warm weather and
little wind. We would blow our mallard calls once in awhile hoping to
entice a duck from the far end of the lake but nothing was moving. A
few hours had passed and we had not fired a single shot.
Myself and Randy were
both bored and staring out over our decoys on Red Lake when something
suddenly but quietly surfaced just outside the edge of our flock of
decoys. What came up appeared to us to be a human-type head covered in
long, wet hair ... something what a person with long hair would look
like if they surfaced while swimming. The skin under the hair as well
as the eyes, appeared dark brown in color. Our view of this strange
head was about even with the shoulders, although they did not break
the surface of the water. The eyes (what you could see of them under
the hair) looked dark (no white) like an animal's. The face had no
expression or movement. It seemed to look at our decoys and us for
maybe 10 or 15 seconds, and then slipped silently under the surface
with a large swirl or wake and it was gone. Nothing else was seen or
heard.
When we returned to
Cliff Tuscon's ranch where we were staying, I asked him aside if he
had ever seen anything like what we witnessed on Red Lake that
morning. I'll never forget the look he gave me. I think he figured I
was either piss drunk or on the verge of going crazy. In any case, old
Cliff never saw anything like what I described in his 40 years up in
that country.
My afterthoughts on the
Red Lake incident:
Firstly, I would like to state to everyone that reads this that I
honestly did not know I had possibly witnessed a sasquatch on the
surface of British Columbia's Red Lake until many years after the
incident had taken place.
Secondly, since Red Lake was considered fairly remote at that time, I
doubt whether any duck hunters had ever tried what we had that day. At
the time it was simply too much work for the rewards - but we were
young, looking for fun, a little foolish and still fairly green. To
tell you the truth, neither myself nor my good friend Randy had the
foggiest idea of what the hair or fur covered head and partial
shoulders of the creature we saw outside our flock of decoys could
have belonged to. Thinking back, I firmly believe the creature
(possibly a sasquatch) came in under water for a meal of fresh duck.
Upon reaching the decoys it likely saw no feet from the ducks that it
may have been used to grabbing from below, and then it likely saw the
strings leading to anchor weights and knew something was wrong or
badly out of place.
Last,
but certainly not least, after surfacing the possible sasquatch most
probably saw our heads just poking up out the weeds and quickly
decided a long underwater swim was required to get the heck out of the
country and away from us as fast as possible.
In
closing, I would also like to say that the swirl or wake that I
witnessed and the whooshing-type sound (like drawing a large canoe
paddle or boat oar very forcefully through the water just below the
lake's surface) that went with it when the creature departed was far
too big to have been made by a beaver or any other aquatic animal or
bird that I am familiar with in British Columbia.
©
Ken Kristian
West Coast
Sasquatch Research
http://www.westcoast-sasquatch.com
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