Humboldt County, California 1986

I don't know that my experience has a bigfoot connection or not. Nevertheless, I will relate what happened. 

I was on a VERY remote parcel of land in the mountains of Humboldt County about a 15 minute walk down the side of a huge valley. The valley floor was at least another hour walk downhill to a river at the bottom from where the other side of the valley wall began a long ascent. The valley was many miles long. The entire terrain was heavily forested with thick undergrowth. There were only a few houses along the many miles of road along the top of my side of the valley ridge top. The point is, this location was rugged, heavily forested with almost no human presence in the middle of hundreds of square miles of nearly unexplored forest. I was there engaged in "agricultural" activities that required isolation and anonymity.

On the particular day I am writing about while tending my plants in a small clearing in the forest I suddenly heard loud thrashing and crashing sounds in the forest downhill from me and I'd guess about 50 feet deep in the almost impenetrable forest. The crashing sounds had to have been made by a BIG animal. Almost immediately in conjunction with the crashing sounds I heard a VERY loud, high pitched scream or screeching that went on for just a few seconds. Then all sound stopped. I thought maybe it was a mountain lion that had attacked a deer or elk but mountain lions are stealthy and wouldn't make all that thrashing racket. Nor do deer or elk make loud screeching like I heard. I had encountered several of both living in rural Humboldt and never heard such noises from them. But, maybe it was. The only other large animal in this region are brown bears but I don't know them to make piercing screeches. I ran towards the top of the ridge where I had a camp and a rifle in case there was a nearby mountain lion. That was all I experienced and I didn't investigate the area from where I heard the scream/screech.

When I started reading bigfoot case files recently some accounts describe the noises bigfoot makes but didn't describe them as the screeching sounds I heard. Then I came across accounts of them making such sounds. As I was in Humboldt County, which is known to have many bigfoot sightings/encounters I cannot dismiss that I may have heard a bigfoot.

Once again, I realize this is not a significant bigfoot experience and may not have been a bigfoot at all. But, given that location, the large size the animal must have been to make such loud noise from thrashing in the trees and heavy undergrowth and screeching, I suspect it may have been.