After 40 Years, Daughter Reveals Wyoming Rancher's Secret Sasquatch Rescue

A 1984 Wyoming Sasquatch encounter is finally being shared after 40 years of silence. Rancher Harlon, who lived alone with his 19-year-old daughter Dela on a cattle outfit west of Tensle, discovered a wounded 7-foot Sasquatch in the willows of a coulee while searching for missing heifers. The creature had been shot through the right shoulder, which had gone septic. Rather than reporting it, Harlon secretly transported the dying animal back to his calving shed under cover of darkness and began treating the wound with iodine and clean rags. Over the following weeks, the Sasquatch recovered and began displaying remarkable behaviors—it learned to change its own wound dressings by folding the rags the way it had watched Harlon do, and it gently cradled a feral barn cat that had never allowed any human to touch it. Harlon kept a tally book documenting the creature's habits, leaving blank the space where he would normally write a name, as if recognizing it as more than an animal. The arrangement grew into an uneasy domesticity, with the family's life bending around keeping the Sasquatch fed and hidden. Now 61, Dela has decided to speak publicly about the experience as the property is being sold and the calving shed is slated for demolition, after which she says there will be nothing left to prove any of it happened.