If you've ever wondered whether Southwest Montana might be hiding something big and hairy in its rugged terrain, this recent upload from Rocky Mountain Sasquatch might just convince you to start packing your hiking boots. The crew takes viewers deep into the Mussigbrod area near Crazy Creek, which happens to sit close to one of the most infamous Bigfoot encounter locations in North American history.
The video walks through a layered investigation that starts with historical accounts and ends with fresh evidence. The team has been returning to this region for years, drawn in by the legendary deadly Bowman Bigfoot encounter that Teddy Roosevelt himself wrote about. That story alone is enough to give anyone chills. Bauman and his trapping partner were harassed for days by what early settlers and Native Americans called a "wildman," and the description matches what researchers today would call a Sasquatch. The terrain described in those old accounts lines up perfectly with the Montana-Idaho border area, and there's only one pass between the two states, which makes the geography even more compelling.
But the history doesn't stop there. The video also touches on David Thompson's 1811 account, which is fascinating in its own right. Thompson was an experienced hunting guide and tracker who openly admitted he dismissed reports of wild hairy creatures as fantasy until he laid eyes on 100 yards of fresh tracks. What makes his account stand out is the detail about small nails at the end of each toe, a feature that has shown up in other credible footprint discoveries over the years.
The real meat of the video, though, comes from a more recent sighting report. A man named Fred Hill reached out to RMSO after watching a large upright-walking Sasquatch in 2019 near Pintler Lake in the Anaconda-Pintler Wilderness Area, an area known as Clam Valley. Fred's description is detailed and consistent with what countless other witnesses have reported. He spotted the creature around 8:30 in the morning while hiking with his dog. A bull elk and a mule deer doe were both frozen in place, staring up a steep ridge. When Fred looked, he saw a black-brown haired figure standing about 6 feet 6 inches tall and weighing somewhere around 600 pounds. The creature looked directly at him and his dog before turning and walking up and over the ridge. Fred also noted a pungent smell in the air, which is a hallmark detail in Sasquatch encounters. When asked about the face, Fred said it was somewhere between a human and a primate, which again matches the typical description.
What makes Fred's report even more interesting is the timing. Just five months after his encounter, Dr. Mike Johnson documented Bigfoot tracks in Southwest Montana, suggesting the area was very active around that time. The RMSO team recently measured a footprint in the same general region that came in at around 17 inches long with an 8-inch toe splay. That's a massive track, and it was found just a few feet from a strange log structure on a steep mountainside. The structure itself is a mystery. The logs were enormous, and the location on a slope made no sense as a human camping shelter. The track was pointed directly at the structure, which raises all kinds of questions about what (or who) might have been using it.
The video also dives into a 2005 sighting that took place along Highway 93 between Sula and Conner, Montana. A truck driver named William Earl Thornton and his wife were driving south when a Sasquatch sprinted across the road just 40 feet in front of their rig. Thornton knew bears, having worked at Glacier National Park, and he was adamant this was not a bear. His description is one of the most detailed I've come across in a long time. The creature was around 9 feet tall, heavily muscled with no visible neck, covered in reddish-brown or mahogany hair that was 8 to 9 inches long in places. It had a conical head profile similar to a gorilla, and its arms were noticeably longer than a human's, bent at the elbow with a large swinging motion. Thornton described the hair as flowing horizontally behind the creature from the sheer speed of its sprint, and he noted a peculiar foot-rolling motion where the heel landed first and the foot rolled smoothly forward to the toes. The creature crossed the entire road in just three or four steps and vanished into the brush along the Bitterroot River without ever looking back. David Petty from the BFRO followed up with Thornton by phone and confirmed every detail.
Honestly, this video is worth every minute of your time. The combination of historical accounts, a credible recent witness, a documented 17-inch track, and a mysterious log structure all in the same region is the kind of thing that makes you want to grab a camera and head for the hills. Definitely check it out and see what you think.