YEAR: 2006

SEASON: Fall

MONTH: November

DATE: 11-09-06

STATE: Wisconsin

COUNTY: Washington County

NEAREST TOWN: Township of Erin

NEAREST ROAD: Troll Hill Rd.

OBSERVED: [Investigators's interview notes begin here. The witness did not write up the story himself.]


On November 9th, 2006, the local media in southeastern Wisconsin ran a story about a possible sighting near Holy Hill.
The story refered to the contracted worker whose job it is to pick up deer carcasses on the highway on a regular basis. Some versions of the news story said a deer carcass was stolen from his truck by an alleged bigfoot.

The story ran in many newspapers across the country and quickly got the attention of various bigfoot researchers. Local TV also started reporting on the story. Local TV also reported on the story and used it as a good humor story for their broadcasts.

Due to the topic awareness created by the local news story, other people in the area began talking about observations and experiences they had with a similar looking figure.

I first sought out the contracted worker. He was frustrated because the media seemed to put words in his mouth about the incident. He didn't know what the animal was, and he did not say that it was a bigfoot. He merely described what happened, and what he observed. He emphatically stated he did not call it a bigfoot.

The state trooper's report conveys what happened, and what Steve observed. It does not call it a bigfoot either, but some elements of the story seemed consistent with sasquatch behavior, especially the attraction to deer.

Because of the deer element, the BFRO wanted to get a detailed, first-hand account of what Steve K. observed and experienced. I met with him a week later (11/17). We spoke for 45 minutes. He came across as a patient, rational person.

I started off by measuring the distance from the front seat of the extended cab Dodge pickup to the end of the pickup with the tail-gate down, it was 13.5 feet. He showed me the lights he had on at the time: head lights, interior dome light, factory bed light, and he had an 18’’ amber beckon light flashing on top of the cab. The beckon light is positioned on the cab like a police car’s official lights where, there’s one flashing light on each end.

I got into the diver’s seat of the pickup, looked in the center mirror like Steve K. had done, AND had him stand were he saw the creature.

He stood in the middle of the pickup just behind the open tail gate. I could see all of his head, and on the bottom, halfway between his shoulders and his elbows.

Steve K. stands 6 feet tall and weighs about 230 lb. The lighting was sparse, but I could see his facial features. If it was an all black form like what Steve says, I can’t imagine being able to see a lot of detail.

Next we spoke about the sequence of events.

Steve K. was driving west-bound along Holy Hill Rd., on 11/9/06 at 1:30am, and 15 yards west of the intersection of Troll Hill Road he found a dead deer. The deer wasn’t on his list of dead deer to pick up. He had just happened upon it and he figured he’d pick it up because he knew he would have to pick it up later. Steve K. receives a list of dead deer locations faxed to him each morning. He lifted up the 80 – 100 lb dead doe himself, put it in the back of the pickup with the four other dead deer. He didn’t notice anything unusual about the dead deer and there weren’t any strange sounds around him.

He got into the pickup, closed the door, reached for his clip board. He didn’t have a chance to open the clipboard because that’s when he first felt the pickup shudder. He thought it was the wind. Almost instantaneously, it shuddered again. He instinctively looked up at the center mirror and saw a dark figure reaching into the bed of the pickup. He said it was all black, had a head that was a cross between a black bear and a wolf. Its ears were pointed straight up, not folded over. He knew it wasn’t a bear. He could see something like a muzzle, but he couldn’t see its eyes. He said it reached out with one “arm”. He could not see "whether it had claws or fingers or hands”. It had three-foot wide shoulders and described it as being “stocky”. He said it was about has tall as I am (5’10’’) when it was reaching into the bed.

I stood behind the pickup so he could gauge the height of what he had seen. He watched it at the most five seconds where the first couple of seconds he was trying to figure out what it was. The next few seconds fear was setting in.

“It scared the crap out of me”.

Steve K. quickly pulled away and didn’t bother to look in the mirror as he left. He heard the ramp hit the ground as he headed west. When he set the deer in the pickup ‘it must have gotten tangled with the ramp’. The deer that was taken was the one that he had just put in. He went back five (5) minutes later and there was no deer, and no ramp. The reason he went back was, because he needed the ramp along with the remaining ramp in the pickup to wench in heavy deer in to the bed of the pickup.

Background Info:

Steve goes out every other night to pick up road kill. He drives 450 miles a night and picks up from 9 to 18 deer. He’s been doing this for 18 months and nothing like this has ever happened to him before. On occasion he’ll pick up a deer and hear scavengers in the bushes.

Steve said, occasionally there won’t be a carcass to pick up at an assign spot, and he attributes that to a program called “Earn-A-Buck”. Washington county participates in a program where a person can bring in a dead doe and get a buck tag for it. He says the DNR knows that people are probably bringing in road kill to get the buck tag. He also laughingly suggested that people could be taking the road kill to eat.

The deer that he picked up on that night wasn’t more than 2 hours old, as rigamortis had not set in. He could not tell if it was still warm because he was using gloves.

On occasion he’d pick up deer that have been scavenged on, and the entrails will be gone. He can tell if a deer’s peritoneum cavity (gut) has been opened by something chewing on it, or if it’s been ripped open. He couldn’t say what would open a deer by ripping it open. He said that he could tell if something had been cut opened because he’s a deer hunter and knows what it looks like, and he has never seen that on road kill.

Bear rarely venture that far south in the state.

On the morning that I interviewed him, he said earlier in the night, he was at the intersection of Hwy 83 and Q, and he was picking up a deer. Steve said that had this uneasy feeling that something was watching him. Hwy 83 & Q is 4.5 miles southwest (as the crow flies) from where the dead deer was removed from his pickup.

Last, I asked Steve what was the likelihood it was someone in a costume. He said, ‘that was so far out there as someone telling him that what he saw was something from a different dimension’.

TIME AND CONDITIONS: 0130 hrs, 55 degrees

Follow-up investigation report by BFRO Investigator B.G. Martin:

[Editor's note: MM]

The hair on the heads of sasquatches is often described by witnesses as peaked or spiked. It is very possible that a sasquatch could appear to have pointy ears, due to the hair, especially if an observer had only a brief view in dark conditions through a rear view mirror.

The mouth area of a sasquatch protrudes out a bit, like a muzzle, as depicted in the William Roe sketch.

The more telling element of Steve's story is that the animal was standing outside the truck and "reached" into the back to grab the deer carcass.

That's not a bear, or a "bear-wolf". That is something with thumbs. A bear or a "bear-wolf" would grab a deer carcass with its mouth, not an arm.

Sightings occur periodically in North America, but they rarely become local news stories, much less national news stories. This one eventually became a national news story, albeit briefly.

The difference in this case seemed to be: 1) the willingness of the witness to report the incident directly to the authorities (highway patrol) immediately after it occurred, and 2) the willingness of the authorities to accept the story and take a statement.

Their willingness to take a statement from the witness put the report into the police blotter pipeline, where it caught the eye of the local news media. That path of transmission had meaning in itself. It subtly suggested that the report was a credible, though unexplained, observation by a reliable observer. This seemed to be the key element that made the report acceptable to the local media, and eventually to the national media.]

About BFRO Investigator B.G. Martin:

Investigator Since 2006

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