(08-15-2023, 10:02 PM)Bally002 Wrote:
(08-15-2023, 09:03 PM)Ninurta Wrote: Re: Yowies, Bigfoot, Sasquatch, and Daniel Boone. I live not too far from where Ol' Dan'l is supposed to have killed that one, which he called a "Yahoo" as I recall. He got that name from "Gulliver's Travels". This is the first I've heard of it having supposedly attacked his son, however. I know his son James was killed a few miles south of here at Wallen's Ridge in 1773 I believe - but he was killed by Indians.
From what I understand about the story Boone and his son were returning from tracking indian horse thieves. They were separated by a short distance on the return journey to hunt. Boone heard a shot, then another and took to the scene whereupon he witnessed his son being lifted and thrown lifeless to the ground.
A well aimed shot to the eye by Boone took the big critter out. Boone thought his son was deceased. The lad recovered/woke up about an hour later.
It appears from an impromptu autopsy the boy managed to hit the creature in the chest but the slug didn't penetrate that area due to how solid the chest was. They left the big ape where it was slain and returned to tell the tale.
That's a recount off the top of my head.
Kind regards,
Bally)
Yup. I researched it a bit, and read that tale, too. It was apparently transmitted by Lyman Counts Draper, who collected all manner of pioneer lore from around here. The video said the material was in the National Archives, but if it is, then it's a copy - Draper gave all of his manuscripts to the Wisconsin Historical Society, and they have been used over the years for all manner of historical research. Alan Eckert used those manuscripts to reconstruct pioneer life in this area for an entire series of historical novels regarding personages around here and in Kentucky, like Simon Kenton, Daniel Boone, Lewis Wetzel, and a plethora of minor actors.
Draper noted that this particular tale came to him by way of a man who heard it from Boone when he was a boy. Daniel Boone had at least 3 sons - James, who was killed by Indians along with James Russell at Wallen's Ridge while trying to catch up to the Boone party heading into Kentucky through the Cumberland Gap, Another son, Israel, was killed by Indians at the Battle of Blue Licks, a big salt lick in Kentucky. A third son, Jesse, was never killed by the Indians, and may be the one in the tale... or it could have been Israel, depending on when the event happened. It wasn't James, as he was killed in 1773 before Boonesboro was ever established.
While researching, I found a reference to Tasmanian Aborigines who called the "yowie" by the name of "yahoo". There was speculation on whether Swift got the term from British sailors who had visited Tasmania or not, but the consensus was that Boone got the term from Swift's "Gulliver's Travels"..
Also during that research, I ran across a few other references to the wood boogers here, mostly referring to the Jefferson National Forest, a patchwork of forests surrounding me that are administered by the National Forest Service. The only bear skeleton I've ever seen in the wild was in that forest, while climbing Brumley Mountain. As many bears as there are here, and as much time as I've spent in the woods here, it's curious to me that I've only ever seen ONE bear skeleton out there. If bears are so commonly seen, yet their remains are so rare, it's not a wonder to me that wood booger remains have never been found - that doesn't mean they don't exist, it just means nature does what nature does, and the remains melt back into the landscape like everything else does.
There is also a YouTube video showing what is supposed to be a wood booger that was filmed by two boys out riding 4-wheelers up a creek to the south of here, just north of Bristol. So, whatever was still IS. There's Things in these hyar woods!
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Regarding the Alien Big Cats, there have always been tales of them around here, too. They used to be pretty common here, but over time were all allegedly exterminated. When they were common, they weren't "Alien" big cats, they were just a part of nature here. Pioneers generally called them "painters", our quaint way of saying "panther".
Fish and Game tells us that they no longer exist here, but I wonder.
When I was a young man, a friend named Donnie Miller and I went into a cave at the top of a cliff overlooking the Clinch River. The reason we went in was because we had seen giant rats in it before, 2 or 2 1/2 feet long not including the tail, and they built nests in there out of sticks, the nests being around 5 feet in diameter. But when we told people about them, no one believed there were rats that big, so we went back with a .22 rifle loaded with bird shot shells to kill one and prove our tale.
To find the cave on a map, if you extend a line right down the middle of Balltown Hollow, a hollow in River Mountain, Russell County, Virginia, until that line crosses the Clinch River, then the cave will be just on the north/east side of the line, at the top of the cliff there that is on the south/east side of the river.
When we got inside, we didn't see any more rats anywhere. The nests had all fallen into disuse. We found some rat-gnawed deer bones in the cave, but no rats. So, we thought the rats may have retreated deeper into the cave, and we of course went deeper, going after them to kill one.
There was a tunnel section where you had to get on your belly and crawl through a fissure about 8 or 10 feet, and once through it, it opened into a smallish room that was maybe 12 feet across and about as much high, with a dry dirt floor. No rats there, either. Off to the side, another tunnel, or rather an upright fissure in the rock opened. It sloped downward for maybe 20 feet, bottomed out, and then inclined upward. The upward section was soaked from water seepage, and was a muddy mess. In that muddy mess, we saw numerous cat tracks, the size of a house cat's track... but we were pretty sure that no house cat had tackled those giant rats. Upon climbing part way up that slope, we suddenly found bigger cat tracks, about 4 or 5 inches wide.
It suddenly dawned on us that the "cat" tracks were really tracks from painter kittens, and momma was in there, too. It didn't take us nearly as long to exit the cave as it took us to get into it.
I guess that might explain the rat-gnawed deer bones. Maybe it wasn't the rats that dragged them in there after all.
Once we were back out in the daylight, I mentioned to Donnie that it was a CAVE - protected from the elements, those tracks could have been hundreds of years old. Neither of us really wanted to go back in, though, and the absence of the giant rats didn't provide any further incentive to re-enter, anyhow.
Going back up the draw to the road, I did notice scratches in some of the boulders in the stream bed where moss had been raked off of them in patches 4 or 5 inches wide. So, maybe not as old as I had convinced myself they were in the cave.
Over the next month or so, a number of neighborhood dogs got attacked, some killed, some just torn up. A fella named Jackson who lived on the next farm over, about 3/4 of a mile away from my house, had a pack of hunting hounds roughed up pretty bad. A friend of mine, named Gilbert, had a pet dog entirely destroyed. It was a pug that had no fear and no sense, and it was ripped up pretty bad, deader than 4 o'clock. We found the same tracks in the mud near the body, so I got some plaster and cast the track, and gave it to Gilbert. I dunno if he still has it or not - that was 40 years ago or so.
Donnie died of congestive heart failure a few years back, so I reckon he doesn't mind me mentioning his name. He's not got anything to lose by it any more.
After about a month, the attacks stopped just as suddenly as they had started. i don't know why.
A few years later, in the 1990's while I was away from here, "something" killed a bunch of sheep and goats on a farm in Russell County, just across the mountain from my patch. Either 17 or 22 of them were killed, depending on who was telling the story. Folks were saying it was a painter, but Fish and Game saved the day by the simple expedient of telling them there was no such thing in Russell County, and hadn't been for well over 100 years.
In late winter or early spring of 2016, on top of a mountain at Vansant, VA between Poplar Gap (now "Southern Gap" - if you Google Map it, you'll see a small oval race track there where they race go-karts) and a building that housed Sykes Enterprises then, the Virginia Employment Commission now, I saw a big black cat hiding in the grass and weeds at the edge of a field where elk are known to congregate. It was a fleeting sighting, 10 or 15 seconds at the most, and all I can say is that it was a cat, it was way bigger than a house cat or a bobcat, and it was solid black. Folks would say that what I saw was a "black panther", but Fish and Game also rescued that, and says there are NO panthers here, have not been for well over 100 years, and that when they WERE here, none of them were black - cougars apparently don't go melanistic at all.
So, I dunno what it was, other than a big, black, cat-like beast. Couldn't have been a black panther, because there ain't no such thing, I'm reliably informed by wildlife experts... none of whom have spent as much time in these woods as I have.
In the same field, I saw a large wolf a few months later... but there aren't any wolves here, either. It wasn't a coyote - I know the difference. When I had a wildlife license, I raised wolves and wolf-german shepherd hybrids, so I know a wolf when I see a wolf. It had the rounded ears of a wolf, and the shorter, blunter, heavier snout of a wolf. it was about 5 feet long from the tip of it's nose to the root of it's tail, so, not counting the tail and about 3 feet tall at the shoulder. Big for a wolf, but not unheard of. Whatever it was, it wasn't a coyote... but it did appear to have an uncommon interest in elk, just like the kitty-kat did!
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