July 22nd and 23rd, 1999 - Thursday PM and Friday AM

Got a call from Bigfooting companion. Wanted to investigate an incident that had occurred at Detroit Lake the night before. Quick trip in my truck. He left his car in my garage.

Detroit Lake is about 45 miles straight east of Salem, Oregon or about 80 miles SSE of West Linn. It is a major recreation point for boating, hiking and camping in the area. Bull of the Woods Wilderness is just to the north and Mt. Jefferson is to the east. Mt. Lowe is about 30 miles to the north of the lake. Much of the tree land in the area is privately owned.

We went to a campground on the south side of the lake. Private timber land rose up the slope behind the campground. The little town of Detroit was about one mile away across the arm of water. There is a narrow, wooded flat land band around the lake where we were.

Companion had gone on investigations before. This was my first. He carefully interviewed the two witnesses. No one had actually seen the critter. What had happened was about dark, a fisherman was walking back to the campground from a spot about 1/3 of a mile west and something had roared mightily at him. He was seen running absolutely as fast as he could through the campsite, clear to the other end. He immediately packed his things and left, as the two interviewees had done. They were closest to the roar and it scared them very bad. They had come back to show companion the situation.

Companion found a bedding site in the ferns that was about 8' x 4' near the origin of the sound. Apparently the fisherman had startled the beast awake. He also found some fresh, wormy scat and took a sample of that. Later he said, it was analyzed as "unknown primate origin."

We stayed up late and made a small fire next to the tent. I decided to sleep outside. About 3AM, I was woke up by a screaming roar up the hill. By the time I woke companion, it was done.

The next morning, he found some long stride imprints on a dirt embankment above the campsites. There were clearly two beasts, one large and one smaller from the indistinct imprints.


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