MOGOLLONMONSTER.COM

Participants:  Kyle Barentine, Preston Smith, Alex Hearn, Mitchell Waite

Purpose of the trip:  Two weeks earlier, Mitch and Susan went camping in the Mogollon Rim area.  During the middle of the night, the dome tent was squashed down on Susan’s side and held about two inches above her nose.  The tent was released and popped back up to the dome shaped.  During this time there was a very foul odor which Susan believes was that of the Mogollon Monster (Arizona’s Bigfoot).  Both made an evacuation of the tent and made it to their vehicle, but saw no animals.  They left the area to return during the day to pack up their belongings. 

Two weeks later the expedition was organized to go back and try to find out what had happened.

Departure and arrival at camp:  Preston, Kyle, and my self departed Mesa, Az at approximately 4:25pm on Friday, 6 June, 2008.  We arrived at the Base Camp at approximately 6pm and went about setting up camp.  Once the tent was up, Kyle and Preston went exploring the area.

Kyle and Preston find Turkey Bones:  Up the trail from Campsite 1 they located the bones and feathers of a Turkey.  The odd thing was the bones were picked clean much like when someone sits down and eats a Thanksgiving dinner.  A bear, cat, or any other predator, will beat bones and all.  We decided to set up our first game camera on these remains hoping what ever would return and we would get a picture of the creature.  Later we find two more turkey kills.  Again, bones were all intact and not chewed.

Mean while I was working on getting my equipment working.  Night vision scopes and motion sensors needed batteries,  Game cameras needed SD cards, etc.  A final check and they were ready to go.

I walked up to where the turkey remains were located and set the camera looking up the small game trail leading to the camp.

I set up the motion sensors so we could tell if anything was coming down the trail into our camp.  Unfortunately the only 9 volt battery I had available was too week to operate the sensor with any distance.  It was virtually useless.  We would have to do without the early warning it would give if our turkey eating visitor decided  to come into our camp.  I came back to camp and put two propane lanterns hanging from tree limbs to light up the campsite for the night.  They were positioned as to leave no dark zones around the tent and cooking area.

 As I finished placing the last propane lantern, Kyle and Preston returned to camp and started working on dinner.  That is when the first rock came down from the sky just missing the hood of my truck.  It landed with a very definite thud, and was about the size of an golf ball.  It was not totally dark, but we were losing light so I fired up the lanterns.

Just before dark we heard Alex Hearn squawking on the walkie-talkies.  He was in his car headed for our camp and trying to reach us to see if we were already in camp.  A short time later he arrived at the campground.  When Alex arrived we showed him around the area and went to the first turkey kill to show him our camera set up.   Afterwards, we returned to camp for dinner.  It was good and tasty. 

After dinner, Alex started setting up his truck for sleeping.  He was going to spend the  night in his tuck.  As he was headed for the vehicle a second rock came crashing through the trees landing just short of him.  It rolled to a stop.  The rock came from uphill. 

When the rock fell, we all froze.  Instinctively we were listening for any clues of an attack.  Movement on the hill, told us we were not alone.  We were being watched.  Of course we had a few tricks up our sleeve.  We broke out the night vision scopes and began to study the hill side above us.  Slowly, we began to venture away from the circle of light around our camp.  We found nothing.

Being the first time we had ever encountered these circumstances we retreated back to camp when we didn’t see anything.  We were standing around the fire when the first vocalization was heard.  It sounded like a whoop type call.  It was not too far to the west of our camp.  It sounded several times and each person in the camp got to hear it.  This was not a pack of coyotes or wolves.  It definitely was not an elk.  We all agreed on this.

The vocalizations ceased, and we were talking about what we had heard.  Alex picked up a large solid stick and took a whack at a tree.  A few moments later, he did it again but this time three quick hits.

We listened for a few moments and suddenly the vocalizations retuned.  This time there multiple calls.  It sounded like two to the west of us coming our way.  Then another group sounded from the South.  We were getting quite excited about this when the third group chimed in from the North east.  We were surrounded.  The calls lasted for several minutes and ceased.  Things in camp began to return to normal.  We had just had some very interesting events and our senses were pretty much on over load.  Eventually, we one by one dropped out and went to bed.

About an hour before day break we (in the tent) awakened to a strange whistle.  It was like nothing we had heard before.  It sounded as if someone was whistling bird calls.  We lay in our beds whispering to each other trying to figure out what would be making that kind of a sound.  Eventually, the whistling moved around our tent and faded in the distance. 

Day break came none too soon.  It was good to be able to see the things around us.  Breakfast came and went and we were off to check our game camera on the turkey kill.  There were no pictures.  The camera had not been tripped.  But, the camera was working perfectly as evidenced by the picture of Kyle and Preston checking the counter on the face of the camera.

Our objective for the day was to go to where Susan had the tent collapsed down on her.  She was sure it was not a bear.  Her comments were, “Bears don’t have hands, and they don’t smell like that.”  We headed up the road to the area above the water falls.  On our way up we noticed a mine shaft on the side of the road.  It was an old Uranium mine, and still had the radiation hazard sign posted at the entrance.  Of course, none of us had any inclination to see if
we would glow.

We finally reached the campsite.  The first thing we noticed was how dense the growth was in the area.  Ferns were up to our waist.  The trees were very thick.  We found a small trail going down the hill side to a creek.  We began to notice the amounts of broken limbs with leaves laying on the ground.  It was almost as if someone had been harvesting the smaller branches with leaves.  We found several piles of these limbs under tree limb shelters.  The shelters were smaller trees pulled over and wedged under a much larger tree limb creating a lean-to shelter.  The limbs with leaves were all stacked under the lean-to with the broken (trunks side of branch) facing  up hill creating a bed.

Looking around we began to find some partial foot prints.  Nothing worth casting, but there was evidence of a lot of activity in the area.  We worked our way up stream on the creek and eventually came out on the road.  But, just before we got to the road we found a rain gage that had been totally bent to pieces.   It looked as if someone had tried to take it apart with a very big hammer. 

We topped out on the road and began to head back to our vehicles.  We  heard a truck coming, and sure enough it was the local Forest Ranger.  He stopped to talk to us for a few minutes because he was curious about my truck.  My truck had some magnetic signs on it displaying pictures of the Mogollon Monster and some big feet in the windows.  We explained to him why we were there and what we had been doing.  He just smiled at us and said he had seen nothing strange, but had seen some scat that he had not been able to identify.  He went on to say that there was a big brown bear in the area, but no one had seen it in about two years.  In fact, no one had sighted any bears at all.  However, there was a black panther ranging on a mountain to the south of us.  So he cautioned us to be careful.  He departed down the road.

As we were talking, Kyle was looking at something he had found o the side of the road  not 20 yards away from where Susan had previously  had her tent squashed.  It was a huge footprint.   We couldn’t believe what we had found.  We counted the toes and discussed casting the print.  None of us had any experience, but Alex had come prepared with footprint casting materials.  We took our first footprint casting.

When we returned to our trucks, I was in for a surprise.  A flat tire.  I was very lucky to have a spare tire that was pumped up and ready for service. 

We headed back home.  On the way down the hill, Ranger Dave pulled us over.  He wanted to talk to us some more about our sighting—not knowing about our latest find.  He told us more about the scat and where it had been found.  The location was not too far from where we had recovered the footprint. 

Ranger Dave went on to tell us about Crazy Larry, a hermit that lived in the local caves in the area.  He wanted us to be careful not to mistake him for a bigfoot.  We kind of laughed and showed him the footprint.  We asked him if the hermit could leave a footprint like what we had.  Dave got excited.  He had never seen a print like this one.  He was totally amazed.  He told us that there was many stories of the area about lost Indians, a jaguar, but no bigfoot.  He was now a believer.  Eventually we had to say good bye, and we headed for home.

We cleaned the print and got to see our success.  All we  had to do was spray off the plaster with the garden hose and this is what we come up with.  It is not an overstep bear print.  You can clearly see the toes are in a slant.  Bear toes form a V with the middle toe being the leading toe.  The other bear toes slant away from the middle toe.  Besides, there are no bears in Arizona with a 11 inch paw (compensating for the foot ending at the arch) being 9 inches wide.  Arizona has no grizzlies, no Kodiak , or no polar bears.