I was in the Marine Corps for eight years, and I spent my professional career in law enforcement.

I had my first encounter with Sasquatch when I was 12.

I didn't know anything about Sasquatch then. I came from a family

of outdoorsmen and hunters and loggers, but no one ever talked about Bickfoot. It was February of

1981, and I had been running trap lines and hunting the Canyon Creek area for muskrats,

red foxes, bobcats, and the like.

In the winters, I would make upward of $1,000.

That was great money for a kid my age, but it did take a lot of work.

When my friends were playing youth sports and watching cartoons and going to movies, I was

building up for the grueling cold and heading out to run my lines.

It gets brutally cold in Montana, 20 to 30 degrees below zero without the wind chill.

But every morning, while the rest of the kids I knew were still fast asleep, I would start

the coffee on the stove and pack my bag full of food, and I would insulate my entire body layer

over layer until I looked like the stay puffed marshmallow man, and that was before I even

put the parker on.

When I was all geared up, I tied my dad's Coleman lantern around my wrist with a length of

rope in case it fell in the creek, and then I'd grab my gun.

The creek was only a few miles away.

It was so cold and the air sparkle with the frost and the moot light bounced

off the snow, providing relatively good lighting for old dark 30 in the morning. I used my knotted rope

that I'd tied to the bridge and I started the 30-foot climb down to the bottom of the draw

through the knee-deep snow, down the steep slope.

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