Trail Camera Recorded Bigfoot Building Something Massive –

The Hidden Rituals: A Hunter’s Encounter with Bigfoot’s Ancient Secrets

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Last fall, my trail camera started picking up something that changed everything I believed about those forests. What started as mild curiosity turned into full obsession. And that obsession led me down a path I never could have imagined. It led me to discover something I still have trouble believing actually happened.

I’ve been hunting the same woods for 15 years. I know every deer trail, every clearing, every spot where the big bucks bed down in winter. I know where the doe’s feed in the early morning and where the turkeys roost at night. I know which ridges catch the wind and which hollows stay still on the coldest days. I thought I knew everything about those woods, every secret they held, every pattern of life that moved through them.

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Turns out I was wrong.

The Beginning of the Strange Sightings

It started simple enough, the way these things always do. Nothing dramatic at first, nothing that screamed danger or mystery. Just a regular September morning. The kind of crisp fall day that makes you grateful to be alive and out in the woods instead of stuck behind a desk somewhere.

I set up my cameras like I do every season, positioning them carefully near game trails to track deer movement patterns. It’s something I’ve been doing for close to a decade now. Part of my pre-season ritual that I take as seriously as some guys take their fantasy football drafts. I study the patterns, figure out where the deer are traveling at different times of day, and plan my entire hunting strategy based on what those cameras show me. Over the years, this system has helped me tag some really nice bucks.

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I had eight cameras spread across my usual hunting grounds that year, each one covering a different area that I knew from experience produced good sightings. The first week of September, I made my initial run to check the memory cards and swap out batteries. It’s always exciting that moment when you pop the card into your laptop and scroll through what’s been moving through your woods while you weren’t there watching. It’s like Christmas morning for hunters—seeing what bucks have survived the summer, which does have fawns, what newcomers have moved into the area.

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Most of the footage was exactly what you’d expect to see. Does with their fawns still in their reddish summer coats. A few young bucks, their antlers just starting to harden for the fall rut. Raccoons waddling through at night, their eyes glowing green in the infrared flash. The occasional coyote slinking past, always looking over its shoulder like it knows it doesn’t quite belong.

Standard stuff, the usual cast of characters I see every year.

But one camera, the one I’d positioned near a small creek that runs through a thick section of hardwoods, had caught something different.

The First Encounter

At the very edge of the frame, barely visible in the early morning light, there was a dark shape moving through the trees. It was maybe a hundred yards from the camera, far enough that the details were blurry, but close enough that I could make out the basic form. Whatever it was stood way too tall to be a deer. I rewound the footage and watched it again, leaning closer to my laptop screen. The shape was moving upright, walking on two legs through the underbrush with a gait that looked almost human, but not quite. The proportions were off somehow, the stride too long, the shoulders too broad.

I figured it was probably a bear standing up on its hind legs. We don’t get many black bears in that part of the state. Our population is pretty sparse compared to some areas, but they do pass through sometimes, especially in the fall when they’re fattening up for winter. I’ve seen it before—a bear standing upright to get a better view or to reach something in a tree. It’s not that unusual. I made a mental note of it, thinking it was interesting but not particularly remarkable, and moved on to checking the other cameras.

The Pattern Emerges

The next day, I was going through footage from a different camera, this one positioned about a quarter-mile from the first, and I saw it again. Or at least I saw something similar. This time, the figure was even farther in the background, walking upright through a stand of pines on a ridge above where the camera was mounted. The figure was dark against the lighter background of the morning sky, massive in size, and definitely moving like it walked on two legs all the time.

That detail stuck with me. It wasn’t like a bear that stands up for a moment to check something out and then drops back down to all fours. This thing walked upright the entire time it was in frame, maybe 30 seconds of footage. Moving through the trees like walking on two legs was the most natural thing in the world for it.

I started getting curious. This was weird enough to warrant more attention. I spent the next day repositioning three of my cameras to cover the general area where I’d seen the figure both times. I placed them strategically, trying to create overlapping fields of view that would catch anything moving through that section of woods. Then I waited.

I checked those cameras every other day for the next week, driving out to the woods after work, hiking in to swap memory cards, going home to review the footage. Nothing unusual showed up. The cameras picked up plenty of deer, a whole flock of turkeys moving through one morning, even got a great shot of a bobcat that I’d never seen in those woods before. But whatever that tall, upright figure was, it had vanished completely.

Then I started noticing something strange. Something that made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. The cameras weren’t capturing the figure anymore, but they were missing it by just barely. I’d review footage from the morning hours, and way in the background, just at the very edge of what the camera could see, there’d be movement. Dark shapes shifting between trees, too far and too brief to make out clearly. Or I’d arrive at a camera location and find fresh tracks nearby—big tracks in the mud or soft earth. But somehow the camera itself hadn’t triggered despite the fact that whatever made those tracks had to have walked right past it.

The Footprint

It started feeling intentional, like whatever this thing was had figured out where my cameras were positioned and was deliberately staying just outside their effective range. I know that sounds paranoid, maybe even crazy, but that’s exactly what it felt like.

One morning in late September, I went out before dawn to move a camera that hadn’t been getting much action. I wanted to reposition it to cover a different angle on a trail I knew the deer were using. When I got to the tree where I’d mounted the camera, I found something in the mud near the base that made my blood run cold. It was a footprint, a massive footprint, easily twice the size of my boot, pressed deep into the soft earth.

I knelt down next to it, my heart pounding, and studied every detail. This wasn’t a bear print. I’ve seen plenty of bear tracks over the years, and this was nothing like that. Bears have visible claw marks extending well beyond the toe pads, and the overall shape is different—more rounded. This print was elongated, almost human-shaped with five distinct toe impressions that were clearly defined in the mud. The heel was deep, showing that whatever made it had significant weight. The stride length, based on the other partial prints I could see nearby, suggested something tall, something that walked upright with long, confident steps.

My Obsession Grows

That’s when I decided to get serious about this whole thing. This wasn’t just a bear passing through anymore. This was something else. Something I couldn’t readily explain, and I needed to know what it was.

I spent the next week playing a frustrating game of cat and mouse with whatever was out there in my woods. I’d move cameras based on where I found tracks or saw distant movement, trying to predict where the creature would go next. Every time I thought I had it figured out, the thing would avoid my cameras completely or appear just barely at the edge of frame.

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The Hidden Cameras

I was burning through batteries like crazy, filling up memory cards with footage of everything except what I was actually trying to capture. The whole thing was maddening. What really got under my skin was how intelligent it all seemed. This wasn’t random. I started noticing clear patterns in the behavior. The creature, whatever it was, only appeared on cameras that faced certain directions. Never the ones pointing east toward the access road and civilization. Always the ones facing deeper into the forest toward the wild country where hardly anyone ever goes.

It was like it understood the concept of cameras and was actively working to avoid them while still going about its business in the woods. I was wasting money on batteries and memory cards, losing sleep over this mystery, spending every spare moment either in the woods or reviewing footage. My wife started making comments about my obsession, asking why I was spending so much time on this and what exactly I thought I was going to find out there.

I couldn’t explain it to her. I barely understood it myself. But I couldn’t let it go. Something was in my woods, something big and smart, and I had to know what it was.

Then I got an idea, something I’d never tried before. I started marking the trees near my camera locations with small scratches in the bark using my knife—just little marks down low near the base of the trunk that you wouldn’t notice unless you were specifically looking for them.

The Discovery

Two days later, I came back to check on the marks. Every single one had been disturbed. The bark around each scratch had been peeled away, pulled back to expose the pale wood underneath. It looked like something had run its fingers or claws over the marks, found them, examined them, and then deliberately pulled the bark away to get a better look.

The Final Discovery

That level of intelligence, that ability to adapt and counter human tactics, scared me more than the size or strength the track suggested. This was something that could think, could reason, could learn our patterns, and develop countermeasures.

But it also gave me an idea for how to finally get clear footage. If the creature was checking trees for cameras, then I needed to use that behavior against it. I needed to give it exactly what it expected to find while hiding my real cameras somewhere else entirely.

Three days passed. 72 hours of anticipation and doubt, wondering if my plan would work or if I was just wasting more time and batteries on this fool’s errand.

Finally, on the third day, I couldn’t wait any longer. I took an early lunch from work and drove out to the woods to check the cameras. I checked the obvious cameras first, the ones mounted in plain sight. The footage was unremarkable—deer passing through, some raccoons, a couple of squirrels, the usual inhabitants of the forest going about their daily business. Nothing unusual whatsoever.

Then I hiked over to the first hidden camera, the one I’d buried in leaves near the creek. My hands were actually shaking a little as I dug it out of its hiding spot and popped out the memory card. I slid it into my phone’s card reader and pulled up the footage. And there it was, right there in the frame, clear as day, was a Bigfoot.

Not blurry, not at the edge of frame, not mostly hidden by trees. It was front and center, walking past the camera at a distance of maybe 30 yards. I could see every detail. The creature was massive, at least 8 feet tall, maybe more. Its body was covered in dark brown fur that looked thick and shaggy, catching the morning light as it moved. The build was humanoid, but exaggerated, with shoulders far broader than any human, arms that hung down past where its knees would be, massive hands that looked like they could crush a bowling ball.

The Bigfoot and Its Construction Site

I stared at my phone screen in shock, watching the footage loop over and over. The timestamp showed the Bigfoot had walked past at dawn, right around 6:00 in the morning, two days ago. It moved with purpose, heading deeper into the forest with long, steady strides.

But it wasn’t just walking. It was carrying something. A tree trunk, a massive log that had been stripped of all its branches, was resting on the creature’s shoulder like it weighed absolutely nothing. The log had to be 15 feet long and probably weighed several hundred pounds at minimum, but the Bigfoot carried it with casual ease.

Walking smoothly through the undergrowth without any apparent strain or difficulty, I stared at my phone screen in shock, watching the footage loop over and over. The timestamp showed the Bigfoot had walked past at dawn, right around 6:00 in the morning, two days ago. It moved with purpose, heading deeper into the forest with long, steady strides.

Now, I went through the rest of the hidden camera footage. The second camera had captured even more. The same Bigfoot or possibly a different one. It was hard to tell for certain, but it looked similar. This time, it was empty-handed, heading back in the opposite direction from where the first footage showed it going. The creature was returning like it had made a delivery somewhere and was heading back to get another load.

I checked the timestamp on my other hidden camera. At 11:00 in the morning, same day, there it was again. Another log, another trip deeper into the woods, moving along what had to be some kind of regular route. This wasn’t a random encounter. This was systematic behavior, purposeful activity, work being done with clear intent.

The Final Decision

I drove home in a daze and spread my topographical map out on the kitchen table. Using a pencil, I marked every location where I’d gotten footage of the creature. Then I drew lines showing the direction it was traveling each time it appeared on camera. All the lines pointed the same general direction toward a section of forest I rarely visited because the terrain there was too rough for good deer hunting.

Too many hills, too much thick undergrowth, too many fallen trees and rocky outcrops that made walking difficult and shots almost impossible. Whatever this creature was building, whatever all those logs were for, it was being constructed deep in the forest where almost nobody ever went. The nearest trail was miles away, and even that saw very little foot traffic outside of peak fall color season.

I spent the next two days completely obsessed with those images and what they meant. I must have watched the footage a hundred times, maybe more. I studied the way the Bigfoot moved, analyzing every detail of its gait and posture. The casual strength it displayed carrying those logs like they were cardboard tubes instead of hundreds of pounds of solid wood.

The intelligence and how it avoided my obvious cameras while walking right past my hidden ones, never even glancing in their direction because it had no idea they were there. The purposeful route it was following, moving through the forest with clear destination and intent.

This wasn’t some dumb animal wandering around the woods randomly. This was something smart, something that could plan and execute complex tasks, something that understood it was sharing the forest with humans and had developed sophisticated strategies for avoiding detection.

I thought about telling someone, bringing another person into this mystery—my brother, maybe. But what would I even say? “Hey, I’ve got trail camera footage of Bigfoot hauling lumber through the woods. Want to come check it out?” They’d think I’d lost my mind.

I didn’t. And I won’t.

The woods keep their secrets for a reason.