‘My Trail Camera Caught Bigfoot’ – Hunter’s Terrifying 
THE SOUND IN THE PINES
The first time I heard the sound, I convinced myself it was just the wind.
That was easier than admitting something else might be moving in the pines behind my cabin.
I’d lived in that patch of Montana forest for seventeen years — long enough to know every bend of the creek, every nesting spot, every trail the elk followed when the snow got heavy. Nothing ever surprised me there.
Until the night something screamed.
It wasn’t a cougar’s shriek or a fox’s bark or anything with lungs I recognized. It was deeper, layered, like two voices calling from inside the same throat. It rose through the trees and rippled the air, and for the first time in years, I felt the hair stand up on my arms like a kid again, afraid of the dark.
I told myself I wouldn’t look for it.
I lied.
Three nights later, when the scream came again — closer this time — I grabbed my flashlight and stepped out onto the porch. The pine trunks were black silhouettes against the moon. Everything was quiet except for the slow crunch of snow under my boots.
Something big had passed through my property. I could see the depressions in the snow: not quite a human footprint, not quite a bear’s. Too long. Too narrow. And spaced too far apart for any man to walk without running.
I followed them to the tree line, telling myself I’d go no farther.
But curiosity is a kind of leash. And it pulled tight.
The next day, I set up a trail cam.
Not because I believed the old stories — the ones whispered around bar counters about tall shapes and red eyes — but because I needed proof of something, anything, that made sense.
For a week the camera caught nothing but deer, a wandering bobcat, and a black bear sow nosing around for leftover berries. Normal stuff. Comforting stuff.
On the eighth morning, I pulled the SD card, popped it into my laptop, and leaned back in my chair with my coffee, expecting the usual.
The first three videos were ordinary.
The fourth one wasn’t.
At exactly 3:12 a.m., the camera’s infrared lit up. A figure walked into frame.
Tall. Straight-backed. Moving with a deliberate, almost fluid stride.
Its shoulders were so broad they nearly brushed the edges of the video. Its arms hung low, fingers brushing its knees. The head tapered to a slope in the back, almost conical, and its hair rippled with each step like a heavy, living coat.
I froze the frame. Leaned closer.
The eyes glowed like embers catching light.
The creature paused, turned toward the camera as though listening to something only it could hear, then stepped closer. Much closer. Until its entire face filled the frame.
A heavy brow. A flat nose. Scars across the cheek.
A face that knew violence.
The video ended abruptly, like something had swiped at the camera.
My coffee went cold in my hands.
People like to think fear freezes you. It doesn’t.
It makes you restless. Makes you stupid.
That night, instead of locking my doors and waiting for daylight, I grabbed my gear — not a rifle like the old hunters would have, but my father’s old compound bow. It felt right to carry something quiet.
I followed the creek, using the moonlight to guide my way. The forest felt wrong — too still, as though everything else had gone silent to let one thing move.
Half a mile in, I found something I hadn’t expected.
A structure.
It sat between two ancient pines, woven from branches thicker than my arm. Not a nest. Not a shelter. Something ritualistic — an archway of bent trunks, decorated with feathers, bones, and strips of bark tied into spirals.
I raised my light.
Symbols had been carved into the trees around it — circles inside circles, slanted lines, patterns that almost looked like writing.
My breath fogged in front of me.
Someone — something — had made this intentionally.
I stepped closer, heart pounding.
Then the forest behind me exhaled.
No animal that size should be able to move without sound. But I heard nothing until it was already there — a presence behind me, huge and quiet, shifting the air itself.
I didn’t turn around. Not at first.
My body locked, some primal instinct screaming at me not to look.
When I finally forced myself to turn, I saw it.
Ten feet away.
Watching me.
The creature from the video.
Its chest rose and fell in slow, heavy breaths. Steam curled from its nostrils in the cold air. Up close, it looked even more… ancient. Not like a missing link or some primitive cousin of ours. More like something that had evolved entirely separate, in silence and shadow.
Its expression wasn’t angry.
It was studying me.
Then it made a sound — low, resonant, almost like a hum. It vibrated through my ribs. A question, maybe. Or a warning.
I lowered my bow. My hands were shaking too hard to shoot anyway.
The creature tilted its head slightly, as if surprised.
Then it stepped aside.
At first I didn’t understand. Then I saw what it was showing me behind the archway.
A second creature.
Smaller. Younger. Hurt.
It lay curled at the base of the tree, one arm bent at an impossible angle, chest rising in ragged, shallow breaths. Blood darkened the snow beneath it. The leg-snare trap — the illegal kind poachers use — still clamped around its ankle.
A snare set by a human.
Not me. But one of us.
I looked back at the bigger creature. It looked at me with an intensity that made my throat tighten.
It wasn’t asking for help.
It was demanding it.
I don’t know how long it took. Minutes? Hours?
Time in terror moves strangely.
The adult creature held the injured one steady while I worked on the trap. My hands kept slipping. Not from the cold — from fear. Every so often, the larger creature would make low clicking sounds, almost soothing the younger one.
When the snare finally came loose, the injured creature groaned and slumped, but its breathing eased.
I backed away slowly.
Hands up.
The adult stood and stepped between me and the younger one. Not threatening — protective.
For a long moment we just stared at each other.
I expected anger. Dominance. A warning to stay away.
Instead, it did something I will never forget.
It touched its chest — once — then pointed toward me.
A gesture that felt like acknowledgment.
Recognition.
Then it turned, lifted the younger one effortlessly in its arms, and slipped into the trees without another sound.
The forest closed behind them, swallowing their shapes like they had never been there at all.
I removed every snare I could find. Twenty-seven in total.
The trail camera stayed down.
And some nights, when the moon is low and the wind pauses between breaths, I hear something deep in the pines — not the scream from before, not fear, but a low rhythmic hum.
A warning to others.
Or maybe… a thank you.
