Man Shoots at Bigfoot, Makes Bigfoot Mad, and Then Builds a $9000 Statue

Close up of Bigfoot sculpture commissioned in 1976 at a cost of $9,000 (photo: Kevin Pieper/The Baxter Bulletin)

"It reached through the window, grabbed me and shook the daylights out of me. It was terribly strong. I could feel its face about 6 inches away from mine and believe me I was in a state of tremendous fear."--Clifford LaBrecque quoted in the Examiner in 2000

Clifford LaBrecque, 73, of Norfork looks at his 8-foot-tall model of Bigfoot, which he keeps in his living room. (photo: Kevin Pieper/The Baxter Bulletin)

Recently the Baxter Bulletin showcased a statue commissioned by Bigfoot researcher, Clifford LaBrecque. Before we get into the Baxter Bulletin piece we found an article describing his initial encounter in detail. The excerpt below is from an Examiner article from 2000:

Clifford LaBrecque, now 65 of Cameron, Missouri told the Examiner he had been watching the creature for about two and a half months on the outskirts of Des Moines, Iowa back in 1977.

The fearful attack took place about 11 pm.

That night LaBrecque decided to shoot the creature. "It was about 25 feet away from where I was parked in my pickup truck." LaBrecque said. "Two of the creatures walked up from behind a hedge. One stopped but the other went to a woodpile, bent down and started to eat with it back towards me. I stayed in the car and waited for it to turn around but it just kept on gnawing at the wood. Finally I decided to shoot it from behind. When the animals turned and saw me, I got buck fever and couldn't shoot. As it came towards me, I couldn't get the window rolled up fast enough. It was really close." LaBrecque was petrified with fear as the creature advanced. He tells what happened next.

"It loomed over the car. It was about 8 feet tall. It reached through the window, grabbed me and shook the daylights out of me. It was terribly strong. I could feel its face about 6 inches away from mine and believe me I was in a state of tremendous fear. I could feel my whole body shaking. I felt a sensation of being twisted around and pushed down onto the floor. The creature's eyes were burning with fury. I was angry, very angry at me for trying to shoot it. Then I pass out. When I regained consciousness it was gone.

Read the whole article at the excellent Bigfoot Encounters

Fast forward to 2011 and Clifford still has his statue in his house and is interviewed about his encounter. Below is the article from The Baxter Bulletin:

NORFORK — What is believed to be the only sculpture in the world created to scale in meticulous detail of an adult specimen of the legendary "Bigfoot" resides in this Ozark town.

"It took three months to get it from my head to his (the sculptor's) head," said Clifford LaBrecque, 73, of the fiberglass-and-fur model of Bigfoot he commissioned in 1976 at a cost then of $9,000.

"It's accurate to the inch," LaBrecque says.

The striking model of Bigfoot stands 8 feet tall in the dining room of LaBrecque's home. He says it depicts accurately what LaBrecque remembers from sightings and a physical encounter with a Bigfoot specimen on June 18, 1977, and from many descriptions of the creature prior to his experience.

The encounter happened, according to LaBrecque, between 9-10 p.m. near a woodpile behind LaBrecque's home in the Windsor Heights suburb of Des Moines, Iowa. Prior to the altercation, LaBrecque says he observed almost nightly a Bigfoot specimen — about 8 feet tall — that sometimes appeared with two apparently juvenile Bigfoot creatures.

He says he called a Des Moines newspaper to tell of the sightings and had argued with the newspaper over copyrights to Bigfoot photographs should the newspaper act on his tip and obtain photographs.

On June 18 he had decided to shoot to kill the larger Bigfoot and had positioned his car for the shot that he believed would furnish incontrovertible evidence of the reality of the Bigfoot creature.

LaBrecque says he had been open-minded from an early age to the possibility that such a creature as Bigfoot existed.

"When I was a little kid, I heard stories about the wild man of the west, and I began watching out for one," he said. The busy youth found countless stories about American Indian legends of the wild man, and stories of similar creatures all over the world. As an adult he interviewed many people who claimed to have sighted a Bigfoot specimen.

First encounter
But it was not until 1977 that his eyes gave him all the evidence he needed to believe in Bigfoot.

"Our neighbors had a big black lab. One night I heard the dog barking around the woodpile. I looked out and saw what I thought was the dog on the wood pile. I remember thinking: 'That (dog) is going to knock my woodpile over.'

"Then it dawned on me that my woodpile is this high and what we were seeing is much, much taller than the woodpile. I got my wife to look and she saw it.

"We couldn't believe it."

An inspection of the woodpile the next day and after subsequent sightings found bark pulled from the split wood and the inner surface of the tree bark gnawed away.

That first sighting set in motion a series of sightings that would lead LaBrecque to spend night after night in the woods hoping to see the Bigfoot party traveling to the woodpile. He even conducted surveillance from settings in trees, but did not see the migration.

Skepticism
LaBrecque understands the skepticism some people may bring to his story. At 73 he can do without it, along with the skepticism the public would bring to a videotape of what he says shows a Bigfoot in its natural habitat.

He has shown the video privately but declines to show it publicly because of the ridicule that some people have for those who claim to have had unusual or paranormal experiences.

"I'm not going to listen to anyone who doesn't know crap telling me I don't know crap," LaBrecque said. "Right now if one of these creatures walked across the back yard and I called and tried to tell about it, people would say, 'Oh. That's the guy with the Bigfoot model in his house.'

"You are done before you start. You're not going to win that one."

A showing of LaBrecque's Bigfoot model at the 1977 Iowa State Fair attracted many spectators, LaBrec-que said, and several with stories of Bigfoot sightings.

After talking publicly about his Windsor Heights experience, LaBrecque says a farmer came forward to share a story of a Bigfoot sighting and to warn LaBrecque about continuing to talk about the incident.

A second witness to the Windsor Heights incident has long stopped talking about it because of the skepticism, ridicule and laughter the story evokes from listeners, he says.

"You have to understand just how hurtful this can be to the people who have seen Bigfoot," LaBrecque said. He says he has been the subject of extraordinary skepticism for his creation of the Bigfoot model before he actually saw Bigfoot. To LaBrecque it is simply good fortune that the sighting confirmed for him all that he had heard about the creature. It enabled him to better endure the scorn people bring to his story, he says.

LaBrecque said he is resurfacing now in the Bigfoot culture only because of a news reporter's call and renewed interest in the creature that he says was sighted four years ago in a rural area near West Plains, Mo.

"They're here in Norfork," LaBrecque said. "I have talked to people who have seen them."

"This is what they say it looks like," LaBrecque says, pointing to his model.
SRC: Baxter Bulletin

Interview: A man who would kill Bigfoot

J Anderson is free-lance writer for Associated Content who plans on going on a BFRO Expedition soon. Recently he has been in contact with individuals who would favor killing Bigfoot in the name of science.

He writes an interview with one of the individuals with the pseudonym "Dave".

We have a short teaser of the interview below.

Bigfoot: Would You Shoot One?

Published September 10, 2010 by:J. Andersen

I'm excited about an upcoming Bigfoot expedition I will be attending soon with the BFRO in the northern region of the U.S. I always enjoy doing actual field research in addition to blogging about Bigfoot. What I'm also curious about is an invitation I recently received from a Bigfoot researcher who wants to shoot a Bigfoot in the name of science. And he's invited me to tag along. Is this guy crazy?

You might be surprised to know that a small minority of Bigfoot researchers carry out the same fantasy as this man (let's call him "Dave") and they believe the only way to prove Bigfoots exists is to shoot one. I personally don't believe that killing something is the best way to prove it's living, and most fans from www.facebook.com/findbigfoot and other Bigfoot sites would probably agree.

I've also been contacted in the last few months by a man from New York who is willing to hire retired military commandos to go into the field to capture or kill a Bigfoot. It beginning to feel like a techno-thriller Vince Flynn novel or maybe something from the late Michael Crichton (think Jurassic Park)...

It begins by asking the field research habits of Dave field research methods, but then gets into the ethics of killing Bigfoot:

....J. Andersen: Why do you hunt Bigfoot?

Dave: To prove that he/she exists I'm gonna try my hardest not to kill it if I can capture or immobilize it alive I would rather do it that way, but if I have to kill it then so be it. I will do it that way, Ican't say until that day comes.

J. Andersen: How do you plan on doing it?

Dave: The same way any other animal is hunted with a gun, proper camouflage and LUCK.

J. Andersen: Are you concerned with the Ethics of shooting a bigfoot?

Dave: Yes and No, there's no law against hunting Bigfoot where I'm from. Most people hate me for what I'm doing and that's fine but the only way to prove 100% that it exists is by capturing one dead or alive.

J. Andersen: What motivates you to shoot/capture a Bigfoot?

The thrill of being in its element, the thrill of being in his territory, the thrill of the hunt and to prove to the world that Bigfoot exists...

What Dave describes here is a real, growing frustration among Bigfoot researchers. Why can't we capture this thing on good video? With all of our modern technology and the hundreds of thousands of dollars of gear that the Bigfoot community owns, how do Bigfoots continue to avoid camera and thermal imaging? I can't answer that question...

Ho do long-term field researchers feel about the kill no kill debate?

Some serious researchers have been in the camp of killing a Sasquatch. Dr. Grover Krantz and John Green have been known advocates for killing one. On the other hand, more recent voices like Dr Jeff Meldrum, a protege of sorts of Krantz have distanced themselves from the idea of killing. Included in this alternate camp is Loren Coleman, in an 2006 article for Cryptomundo he gave a rational case for the captivity:

The first large unknown hairy hominoid captured will live its life in captivity, no doubt, and there it may be examined internally. MRIs, CAT scans, EKGs, and a whole battery of medical and other procedures may be used to examine it.

It is doubtful the first one will be returned to the wild, so, of course, it will die someday within the reach of future scientific examinations. Then it will be dissected, just as newly discovered animals, including various kinds of humans, have been for further study. But in the meantime, why not study the living animal’s captive and adaptive behaviors?

The days of Queen Victoria, when only killing an animal would establish it was real and not folklore, are, indeed, long gone. --Loren Coleman 2/6/2006

In case you were wondering, we do not think killing Bigfoot is necessary, and we aren't that frustrated that we don't have proof yet. There's enough unsorted data out there, that is still being dissected, to build a better physical and behavioral model of Bigfoot. As we build a better model and share information with each other, we will all eventually have the proof we pursue.


EXTERNAL LINKS
The full Interview with Dave
Bigfoot Civil Rights
Cryptomundo: To Kill or Not to Kill Bigfoot
Bigfoot Encounters: To Kill or Film

St. Petersburg Times: Roosevelt related Bigfoot story in his book

The Bauman story as related by "Rough Rider" Teddy Roosevelt is a familiar one to seasoned Bigfooters. The St.Petersburg Times allows us to revisit it.

The article is framed as a Q&A format:

Q:Is it true that President Teddy Roosevelt once claimed to have seen a Bigfoot-type creature?

A:It doesn't appear that Teddy Roosevelt ever saw a Bigfoot, but he wrote about another hunter having an encounter with one in his book, The Wilderness Hunter, which was published in 1893.

Roosevelt related a story told to him by a "grizzled, weather-beaten old mountain hunter, named Bauman" that occurred near the Salmon River between Montana and Idaho. According to the story, Bauman and another man were hunting and trapping beaver when they learned they were being stalked by a creature they thought to be a bear.

Roosevelt writes the creature ransacked their camp while they were gone, and the next day, while Bauman was away, it broke his companion's neck.

"Bauman, utterly unnerved and believing that the creature with which he had to deal was something either half human or half devil, some great goblin-beast, abandoned everything but his rifle and struck off at speed down the pass . . . until beyond reach of pursuit," Roosevelt wrote.

The creature did more than broke his companions neck, as Roosevelt describes in detail in his book...

...The unfortunate man, having finished his packing, had sat down on the spruce log with his face to the fire, and his back to the dense woods, to wait for his companion. While thus waiting, his monstrous assailant, which must have been lurking in the woods, waiting for a chance to catch one of the adventurers unprepared, came silently up from behind, walking with long noiseless steps and seemingly still on two legs. Evidently unheard, it reached the man, and broke his neck by wrenching his head back with its fore paws, while it buried its teeth in his throat...

You want more? You can't beat Bobbie Short's article on the classic at Bigfoot Encounters

RELATED LINKS
St.Petersburg Times Article
The Classic Story at Bigfoot Encounters

Alaska's Urayuli and Kushtaka added to AKA Bigfoot World Map

View AKA Bigfoot World Map in a larger map

Below is an exerpt from a page on Bigfoot Encounters titled "Many Names, Alaska's Bigfoot" which contains an article written by Mary J. Barry, author of Alaska's Ghosts, Enigmas, Outlaws and Things That Go Bump!

It should be noted that the Kustaka is more generally described as an otter-like creature. In fact according to Wikipedia,  Loosely translated, kushtaka means, "land otter man". The monkey-like description below is unique to Mary J. Barry's article. To learn about the classic version of the Kushtaka, please read the Wikipedia Page.

John Active, a Yup'ik storyteller from Bethel, has gathered a large number of accounts told by the Yup'ik people of Southwest Alaska concerning their encounters with Urayuli. This being was described as standing ten feet tall, covered with hair, with glowing eyes. Its arms were so long, they reached to the creature's ankles. It was said to roam the tundra and cry out its loneliness with a voice resembling that of a loon. Although its appearance terrified the persons confronting it, the Urayuli never harmed anyone, according to the accounts gathered by Active. However, legendary accounts lore has it that children who disappear while in the woods are transformed into Urayuli.

The Southeastern Kushtaka has a less benevolent reputation. The Natives feared the creature and avoided its habitat. Harry D. Colp described a miner's encounter with the Kushtaka, in an account, which was later published as "The Strangest Story Ever Told."

Colp and three other prospectors teamed up in 1900 at Wrangell. They sent Charlie, one of the four, to Thomas Bay to look over a gold prospect, while the others sought grubstakes to pay their expenses. Charlie went about 50 miles up the coast to this location. There the rains kept him confined to his tent for several days. He then went out, trying to locate the landmarks given to him by an Indian.

By chance, he found a gold-flecked quartz ledge and loosened a piece with his gun, breaking his gunstock in the process. As he was taking his bearings, he said, a troupe of creatures he called "devils," that looked like both men and monkeys, swarmed after him. These shaggy beasts, with long, coarse hair, stinking and covered with sores, pursued him back to his canoe. During the chase, they screamed and scraped his back with "long claw like fingers."

RELATED LINKS (all are at Bigfoot Encounters)
1993 Alaska Hairy Man Article
Many names, Alaska'a Bigfoot
2005: Alaska's Bigfoot: Creature of Lore or Reality?

Really Robust Bigfoot Site

Good Morning BfRL Clubber's!
In our ever diligent self-appointed duty to find only the best Bigfoot info worth Reading we have found quite a gem!

WWW.Bigfootencounters.Com is probably one of the best sites for a newbie Bf researcher to stumble upon. For one I like how it focuses on sightings located to single state of California. Although there are a few databases that cover North America and beyond, I feel like sighting reports can be personal and are equally about the local color and communities surrounding them. Bigfootencounters.com obviously believes the same and allows visitors to share their own storiesof past encounters.

The site is extremely well-planned and organized. After the California sitings database. It starts with The Classics A collection of the most famous sightings any Bf researcher worth their binoculars would know. Followed by Bigfoot creatures: the many different versions of half-men half-beast around the world. Then on to some research and science with links to anthropology and biology.

Bigfootencounters.com descibes themselves best on their first page.

This website came together through the years with the help of many wonderful people including scientists, friends, forestry, fish & game, loggers, USGS workers, Native Americans, First Nation Canadians, the Chinese, Mongolians, Russians, Tibetans, Indonesian scholars; trackers, guides, coolies, porters, translators and skilled laymen. It is primarily put together for the benefit of placing easy access information out there for those who have an interest. This website is not here to persuade, only to place information for the perusal of the interested.

I've added it to the top of my list of recommended BigFoot Web resources. Browsing through it is like taking an accellerated college course: Introduction to Bigfoot. The 1040EZ of BF411 101.