Growing up in Central Florida, my interest in our Florida Sasquatch or skunkate began when I was 11 years old.

It was at the right age for an impressionable young mind.

In early 1974 1974 there was a rash of bigfoot or skunk ape

sightings all over Florida and this fueled my imagination. Even some of my friends told me of experience they had while camping and seeing

the skunk egg or Sasquatch.

My best friends and I would tell the scariest stories and scare the bajevies out of each other.

I was with my Boy Scout troop camping at a scout camp on the edge of Ocala National Forest.

Years later, I would learn that there were also many reports of sightings within a few miles of this area, as well as a couple of strange encounters of my own that I couldn't explain.

At the time, my best friend Tim and I own that I couldn't explain.

At the time my best friend Tim and I were the youngest kids on the troop camp out. After nightfall, the older kids decided to hike to a small general store two or three miles away.

Tim and I weren't interested in doing that, so we sat around the campfire and told

each other scary stories to get each other riled up, especially a frightening incident out in

Oklahoma where campers were torn to bloody ribbons by a monstrous Bigfoot with long sharp

fingernails.

Well, unbeknownst to us, Scoutmaster Bruce, who was also the Church of Youth

Pastor, heard us loudly carrying on. He came up and told us boys and y'all quit fooling around and

help out with the k-P wash the pots and pans from supper. Take two buckets

down to the pitcher pump and fill them up with water.

Saying back then that I was naive would be an understatement because I didn't notice that as soon as we grabbed the pales to fill up, Scoutmaster Bruce immediately disappeared.

The old iron hand-crank pitcher pump was about 50 yards away, maybe less, but the distance at night seemed like a mile for Tim and I.

The pump needed to be primed badly, which took a lot of work. There was a jug of stale

rust water next to the pump that I poured down the of the the water began to flow finally.

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