“Did you ever hear the one about why coyotes never attack men?” Mark giggled mischievously from across the fire. “Old native tale! Well… their version is a little different than mine, needed some improvement.”
“What are ya going on about now…?” I groaned, taking a quick swing from my beer, before raising the bottle to the light of the flames. A couple more swings and I’d need a refill.
“Listen, listen!” Mark rambled on. “It’s a good story! It all starts with a sweet little boy that wandered away from his village and found himself lost in the woods.”
“And the coyotes try to eat him, but he befriends them instead. Is this supposed to be how we got dogs?”
“No. Shut… Well fuck actually that would be a good story too… but no. Listen. So this kid is wandering through the woods all alone, and eventually, he comes across this bear.”
“I thought this was about coyotes…”
“Quiet Seamus, listen! So this bear, she’s a mother right. She’s got a couple cubs of her own already, and she sees this dumbass human kid, lost all on his own in the middle of the forest. Kids not gonna make it! So what does she do?”
“She tries to eat him, but the coyotes save him.”
“No. She goes to this kid right. And she’s like, listen! You’re not gonna make it out here, the fuck are you gonna do? Catch a squirrel with your bare hands? Eat the leaves off that bush over there? No! Squirrel will probably give you rabies before you put a hand on the thing, and that bush is jimsonweed! You’ll see the gates of hell before it even kills ya! Point is, you’re not gonna make it! So how about this… I’ll take care of you… I’ll raise you… Just like one of my own cubs.”
“You sure this is still about coyotes?”
“Shhhh! They come later! Anyway… She’s telling this kid. Like… I’ll fucking raise you and shit. But you need to promise me something. You need to promise, that you will never ever kill one of your bear brothers. Otherwise, Ima fucking eat ya!”
There was a pause as Mark began to break out in laughter. I too let out a chuckle, not for his tale, but at the stupidity of my drunken brother.
“So!” He finally said, still getting over the fits of giggles. “Kid becomes like American Mogali! Lives with the bears eat with the bears, shits with the bears. But eventually, kids gonna grow up, and the bears are nice and all but it’s not like there’s any really pretty lady bears around for him to settle up with. No, he’s all like you’re too hairy, and they’re all like, you’re a fucking monkey, and shits just not gonna work! So eventually he’s gonna venture out. This man now, he ends up finding a town right. Meets a pretty girl, buys a house, gets himself a job as a fur trader, cause of course, all that time living with the bears wasn’t for nothing. Kid was probably a better tracker than Don! Anyways… one day he’s out hunting, doing his thing right. But, there’s no game around, he’s not getting scrat. But just before he’s about to give up, he sees this beautiful cinnamon-furred bear. A pelt like that one would be worth a small fortune. So, what do you think he does?”
“He kills the bear?” I replied sluggishly.
Mark smiled. “He kills the bear!”
I took the last swing from my bottle before chucking it away into the abyss of the woods.
“Alright,” I said. “Then what happened?”
Mark’s smile widened. “So he’s killed this bear, and he’s just about to stick the knife in its belly when he hears this low grumbling coming from behind him. He turns around, and it’s dear old foster mom, the one that raised him when he was a boy. Now she’s all like, I told you if you ever killed one of your bear brethren I would eat you. But here’s the thing…”
“The coyotes come and save him?”
“Wh- NO! Why fuck would the goddamn coyot- Just shut up and listen! So mama’s pissed right? She’s standing up on her hind legs ready to maul this fucking guy. Well, unfortunately for mama bear. This happened to be around the time our guys were settling down, and poor old mama bear wasn’t up to speed on current hunting technology. By which of course I mean guns!”
I let loose a grin. Mark was practically gleaming with excitement now.
“So he pulls out his shotgun, and he says. NAH NAH NAH NAH! ME DO WHAT I WANT, WHEN I WANT, AND I WANT TWO PELTS TODAY MAMA! And then BOOM! MAMA EATS FUCKING LEAD!!!”
We both burst into laughter. Mark nearly falling off his seat.
“DIDN’T YA MAMA!!!” He exclaimed, grabbing the head of the bear we’d shot that morning and picking it up to look the corpse in the eye. “Did little merican-Mogali serve mama bear a nice lead sandwich??”
“oH yEs He dID!” He said, gripping the corpse by the mouth to make it talk. “sOn oF A bITch dOn tUrNed mE inTo a fUCking rUG!”
Some dumb fucking bird shot out of the bushes in fear as we began to bellow in laughter!
“And so- And so Then!” He continued, struggling to catch his breath. “The coyotes fucking see this shit! And they’re like… HOLY SHIT! THAT FUCKING MONKEY JUST BLEW THAT BEARS HEAD OFF! BETTER NOT FUCK WITH THEM! AND THAT’S WHAT HAPPENED! From that day on… All the coyotes and all the other critters, respected their place, as man’s BITCH!”
The laughter grew into howls! I tried to stand up and grab another beer, but found myself instead collapsing on the ground from the hysteria. It was a good night. One of the fondest memories I have of Mark. Our joy was cut short, however.
“Shhhh… hang on, hang on.” He suddenly said to me. “You hear that?”
thunk thunk thunk
And there it was out in the distance, the sound we had both been waiting for. The familiar sound of a log being smacked against a tree…
For a moment, an eerie silence fell over us. The hairs on my neck and spine stood up, as the dread of knowing we truly weren’t alone out here washed over me. Mark however was unfased, he turned to me with yet another grin, and whispered.
“Looks like we ain’t the only monkeys in the woods tonight!”
“Holy shit… Is that…?”
“Oh you bet your little ass it is Seamus. That’s bigfoot trying to call its mate!”
“Holy shit!”
“Shhhhh.”
“Okay… okay… should we go get him?”
“Nah… We don’t stand a chance against a sasquatch in the dead of night. Don’t worry Seamus, he ain’t going anywhere.”
With that. Mark grabbed a water bottle and began pouring it over the fire.
“We’ll get him come mourning.” He hushed. “Goodnight little brother.”
-
For the experienced, skilled, and somewhat bored hunter, Sasquatch will provide a challenge, unlike any other game. The first challenge to overcome is actually finding one of the basterds. You will hear tales of sightings almost everywhere you go across the northwest and even some outliers beyond this territory. Most of these sightings will be false flags. People spotting a bear with mange, standing upright as they may do. Or on even rarer occasions, escaped primates from zoos or black market traders. My first ever attempt at a hunt, led us to a drunk Gorilla that had been terrorizing some moonshiners up in Washington. A disappointing find, but he still made for a nice trophy.
Out of all the Sasquatch sightings reported every year. About one out of every ten will lead to the real thing. One out of every ten sightings in the northwest, that is, as for the claims of the creatures in the middle to eastern regions, I’ve never found a credible lead. To the inexperienced, this may seem to indicate hunting this particular brand of the game is more a game of chance than anything else, but to the experienced, they will know what trails to ignore, and which ones to take chase.
“What did it smell like?” Mark had asked the hippy kid. Unlike myself, my brother had already had his cherry popped when it came to encountering the sasquatch. His first had been at a very young age, bastards had actually tried to kidnap him. He later returned their generosity with a bullet. Never saw the creature alive, but they showed me the corpse. Big fucking animal, and eerily close to human. Since then, he’d been on probably hundreds of sasquatch hunts. Five of which were successful. To mark, there was no larger joy than finally seeing your work pay off when one of these beasts finally fell. We weren’t doing it for fame or money, why prove it exists and ruin it for everyone by throwing it on some protected list. For us, it was simply the closest we could get, to experiencing hunting, the most dangerous game.
“Putrid…” The kid replied. “Like a man who had never showered in years and was growing mold on his chest hair. Like someone who had never wiped their ass and let the shitstains ferment in their crack for decades.”
Mark’s smile widened. “Did you see its face?”
The kid was quiet for a moment, I watched as the color slowly drained from his skin as his mind recalled the encounter.
“Yeah…” He muttered. “It looked, so human, but just not all the way. I uhh… I remember the eyes the most. The way it looked at me… I’ve never seen so much rage in an animal before…”
-
The same sense of unease I’d felt the night before crept upon me as I stared at the large footprints before my eyes. The log laying on the forest floor was fresh, probably pulled straight from the earth before being snapped in half to be used as the creature’s instrument. I could only imagine the might needed to swing the log against the tree, over and over and over again. It was far too large for me to even lift.
“You smell it don’t ya?” Mark said to me. Unbothered by the sight before us, by now much more serious than before.
I inhaled deeply through my nose. It was faint, but the lingering odor of something putrid was still detectable.
“He hasn’t gone far…” Mark muttered.
“What now?” I asked.
“Now… We follow our noses.” He replied.
As we moved through the woods, that sense of dread only grew stronger…
We moved slowly, silently, creeping our way through the bush. It felt like hours passed without a single word spoken. Stopping only to observe the occasional footprint left in the mud. As we continued further, the smell began to grow stronger.
Then suddenly, mark placed a hand on me, indicating for me to stop. He didn’t say a word, merely pointed through to trees. As I looked forward, my heart began to pound in my chest. I had seen the corpse of this creature before, I knew for a fact of its existence, but this was the first time, one stood before me alive.
It was large, so much larger than I had remembered. The girth of its arms alone where probably fatter than my torso. The fur was a light golden brown. Like that of a cinnamon bear. Its head was turned away from me. It sat on the forest floor, munching away at something. And in it’s lap…
It took me a moment to spot the little one. It sat lazily staring about. Face looked almost like that of a child’s, almost…
A hand on my shoulder suddenly snapped me away. Mark was staring at me with his familiar grin.
“alright seamus…” He whispered. “give ol mama a lead sandwich…”
My gun had already been loaded. Slowly I aimed down through the cracks in the brush towards the creature’s head. The gun shook in my hands, swaying side to side as I stared down the sights. For a moment, it would line up perfectly before swaying away. Uncommon for me, but I was truly scared. I did not want to see what this thing could do if I missed my shot.
“breath…” Mark hushed. “take your time to line it… mama ain’t going anywhere right now…”
A deep breath in… The tip of the barrel rises up.
A deep breath out… The tip drops… pointing right at her head…
The forest erupted with the loudest roar I’d ever heard!
BANG!
The sound made me jump! Causing my finger to slip back on the trigger. Sharp recoil suddenly punched me in the shoulder.
“SHIT!” Mark suddenly shouted. “SHIT! SEAMUS! GET UP! GET UP WE GOTTA-“
Something huge was crashing through the trees to my left. It roared again, cutting my brother off. I didn’t have time to think, suddenly marks hand was on my collar, pulling me upright. Just in time to see the pines by my side, smashed straight out of the ground.
There was a brief second where I looked up, that time seemed to stand still.
This one was even larger than the other. Towering at least nine feet tall. It’s fur was black as the night. For a brief moment, my eyes locked with the creatures. All I could think was that the hippy kid from the gas station was right. Never before, had anything stared at me with such rage in its eyes as the beast before me. I could feel, that with every fiber of its being it wanted nothing more than to kill me.
“SHOOT IT SEAMUS!” Mark shouted!
I raised my gun, only to get knocked airborne by a giant fist. Crashing into the trees several meters away.
BANG!
The sound of my brother firing at the creature echoed behind me. Followed by another one of the creature’s roars.
“SHIT!!!” Mark cried out again. “SHIT! SEAMUS! SEAM…AAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGHHHHH!!!!” Suddenly I heard my brother scream.
Bruised from the blow, I managed to roll over just in time to see the creature grab my brother and lift him in the air.
“HELP!!! SEAMUS HELP!!!”
And those were Mark’s last words…
Still unable to stand, and nearly frozen in fear. I watched in terror as the bastard wrapped its other hand around my brother’s head, and with one quick yank, pulled it clean from his body. I watched his body drop, his head bounce and roll away like a rock. I watched the creature turn, and stare at me with those same hate-filled eyes.
And I felt the fear in my blood boil into rage.
“You… You motherfucker…” I managed to spit out. “how Dare you…”
The beast grunted and began to charge.
I raised my gun, aiming without thinking, and fired.
It yelped! A spray of blood painted the ground below. I watched lurch back, covering the side of its head with one hand. Then, it slowly turned back to face me.
A graze… but still a hit.
I cocked the gun and raised the barrel to its head. “How DARE You!” I growled.
BANG!
The bastard took off running into the sticks, just a second before I squeezed the trigger…
“YOU FUCKING BASTARD!” I shouted after it. “FUCKING COWARD! HOW DARE YOU! HOW GOD DAMN DARE YOU!”
Slowly I lifted myself to my feet. The blow had done a little worse than knocking the wind from me, but on aching legs, I managed to stand. Rabidly breathing in air through gritted teeth. That was when I heard it, moaning through the trees to my right. There, the first of the pair laid in a ball on the forest floor. My shot had hit.
Slowly I limped my way towards it. Cocking the gun once more as I drew near.
A crash of bushes and a high-pitched cry made me snap my head just in time to see the little one charge me.
“NO!” I shouted at it. Swinging my rifle like a bat and striking it in the head. “MAMA FUCKING DIES!”
The small one shrieked as it was knocked over from the blow. I looked up to me for a second, no rage in its eyes like the black one, only fear. It turned its eyes back to its mother, and then looked back to me before charging again.
“I SAID NO!!!!!” I screamed. This time pointing the gun and firing. The little one fell limp in an instant.
Now, I towered over what was supposed to be that day’s game. It looked up at me with terror in its eyes, painting. Mark was supposed to teach me how to skin one. We would have frozen the meat for over the winter and made it into stew. We could have made two coats for the both of us from its hide, and fought over where to best hang its head.
“How dare you….” I snarled at it while bringing the tip of my gun to its head.
“I’m going to kill you… I’m going to kill you all…”
r/Sawyershuntinglodge