Vermont Maple Farmer Reports Bigfoot Sighting in Sugar Bush

There's a video that crossed my feed recently that I just had to share with anyone who appreciates a solid, detailed witness account. It's the kind of story that sticks with you, not because it's flashy or filled with shaky footage, but because of how matter-of-factly the witness tells it. The kind of encounter that could easily go unreported because the person involved had a business to run and a decision to live with. The account comes from a woman named Clare Vale, who runs a family maple syrup operation called North Hollow Sugar Works in a narrow hollow in Calonia County, Vermont. She's 46, grew up in the sugar business, spent years in regional food distribution, and came back to the family operation in stages. Her mother, Helen, was handing over the managing member role of the company, which meant Clare would now be the one making the calls on which blocks of maples to tap, what equipment to buy, and how to handle a bad season. Here's where it gets interesting for anyone who follows these subjects. Clare's grandfather, Walter Vale, had a rule that had been followed for decades: no taps above the old stone wall. Thirty acres of maples sat untapped on the upper slope, and nobody questioned it. Walter had his reasons, bad access, bad grade, and the operation was already productive enough below the wall with 2,750 taps across about 50 acres. When Clare was a kid, she asked him about those trees. He said the trees look the same, but trees aren't the only part of sugaring. He never mentioned anything unusual. No strange tracks, no odd noises, nothing that would have raised an eyebrow. The rule just existed, like keeping chains hung with both hooks facing inward or never leaving tubing where mice could get to it. After Helen handed over the keys and the management binder, Clare looked at the block map and saw all that blank space above the wall. She had a road now. She wasn't collecting by gravity alone. The reasons from 1982 didn't automatically govern 2026. So she made the call. She carried spools above the wall, stretched the tubing, and drove the first taps ever put into that upper block. Her grandfather had planned to tap those maples 44 years earlier. He never did. She did. Then, on a March afternoon at 4:15, she was standing beside a granite outcrop above the old stone wall when she saw it. Sixty or seventy yards away, moving upright across the slope. Dark hair covering a body broader than a man, with arms hanging low between the maples. The first blue lateral caught across its upper arm and chest. The line stretched, snapped loose from somewhere she couldn't see, and dropped behind it. The figure kept moving. A second line drew tight across its shoulder. Then a third came down. Her radio cracked. Her mother told her the upper vacuum had just fallen hard. Clare watched another line sag as the figure turned toward the timber above them. She told her mother something had walked through it. Something big. By August, there was no blue tubing above the wall at all. The upper valve had been removed. The useful hardware was stacked in the lower storage bay. The revised block map sat under a coffee cup in the sugar house office. What makes this account stand out is the level of verifiable detail. Clare can show when the vacuum changed, what equipment failed, and what the decision cost. She kept records. The sugar bush is a real operation with real production data. The stone wall is still there. The maples are still there. The only thing she can't show is what crossed the slope that afternoon. For that, there was only her. There's something about a witness like this that resonates with anyone who's spent time looking into these phenomena. It's not a hunter stumbling onto something in the deep woods. It's a woman managing a working farm, making a business decision, and then dealing with the consequences of that decision in a way that changed how her family's land was used. The encounter wasn't the point of the story. The encounter was the cost. The full account is worth watching. Clare walks through the family history, the handoff from her mother, the old wall, her grandfather's habits, and the moment she decided to tap those maples after all those years. It's told with the kind of plain, grounded voice that makes the extraordinary part land harder. If you're someone who values witness testimony over grainy footage, this one is going to stay with you.