Oregon Christmas Tree Farm Trail Cam Captures Bigfoot

Posted Monday, July 27, 2026

By Squatchable.com staff

A Christmas tree farmer outside Sweet Home, Oregon has stumbled onto something that might just be one of the most intriguing pieces of evidence yet, and he didn't even know what he was looking for when he started. For 17 years, this farmer has been working his 42-acre property, growing noble fir, Douglas fir, and a few grand fir he planted as an experiment. Like any farmer, he knows his land intimately. So when 60 seedlings vanished from his farthest northeast block one spring, he noticed. But here's the thing — there were no dead seedlings, no browsed tops, no girdled stems. Just holes. Holes that had been carefully filled back in and tamped down so neatly you might not have noticed at all if the planting grid hadn't still been visible. Who steals baby Christmas trees? A noble fir plug costs about 90 cents. Sixty of them is less than a tank of diesel. And whoever did this wasn't just taking them — they were taking them with the entire root system intact, working each one loose by hand in the dark without leaving a single bootprint in the April mud. The farmer replanted. The next spring, 200 more disappeared. Same pattern. Same neat holes. Same tamped dirt. And this time, he could see the shape of it — the missing trees came out of the outermost three rows along a 400-foot stretch closest to the National Forest boundary, like something had taken a bite out of his operation. Now, here's where it gets really interesting. An elk hunter named Dale Apprentice came down off the slope one October evening and mentioned he'd seen "somebody's trees" planted up on the bench above the farm. Little ones. Couple hundred of them. Noble fir, two and three years old, the same stock, spaced out in a long staggered line along the downhill lip of the bench. Each one in a proper hole, roots down, soil firmed, with a little collar of moss and duff pulled around the base like mulch. Some had been tucked into the shade side of rotten logs on drier micro sites — exactly what you'd do if you knew what you were doing. The stolen trees were alive and thriving on federal land a quarter mile from his fence. The farmer tried every reasonable explanation. Tweakers? A tweaker doesn't backfill a hole. Competitors? He's known the other tree farm families for decades. Environmental activists liberating trees? That was the best theory for two years, but it doesn't explain how someone extracted seedlings with full root systems from packed clay loam by hand in the dark without leaving tracks. So he bought cameras. Trail cameras with visible infrared glow. The first one lasted four nights before it was found face down in the grass, strap unbuckled — not torn, unbuckled. The second lasted a week before it was found sitting upright on a stump, aimed at the sky, like someone had picked it up, turned it around, and set it down gently. Whoever was out there was smart enough to case his cameras. He upgraded to no-glow infrared Browning Dark Ops units. He hid one inside a hollow cedar stub, screwed to the inside of the shell with only the lens showing, packed with bark. He buried another in a brush pile with a shooting lane cut through the branches. He wore rubber gloves and sprayed everything down with scent-killer spray. He didn't go back for three weeks. The brush pile camera captured 11 seconds of video on a Tuesday night in May at 2:14 a.m. The frame shows the last row of block 13, his little trees in their grid, and the wall of dark timber behind. For the first two seconds, nothing happens. Then the timber moves. A piece of the tree line detaches and steps out into the row, and the infrared catches it. And that's where the footage cuts off. Sweet Home, Oregon sits in a region that's no stranger to sightings of the tall, hairy kind. The dense timber, the remote ridges, the proximity to National Forest land — it's exactly the kind of habitat that draws them in. And the behavior described here? The careful, deliberate work done by hand in the dark. The intelligence to disable cameras without destroying them. The pattern of taking trees and replanting them in a new location. These are not the behaviors of any known animal. If you're a researcher or just someone who appreciates a good piece of fieldwork, this video is worth your time. The farmer's methodical approach — the cameras, the scent-killer, the patience — is something any investigator can learn from. And those 11 seconds? You'll want to see them for yourself. Check out the full video over on the Werewolf Dominion channel. Just a heads up — you'll want to stick around for the end.