Former Surveyor Recalls 1970s Bigfoot Encounter That Terrified 15 Bear Dogs

There's a video floating around YouTube right now that every researcher needs to carve out time for. A fellow by the name of Jaime sits down and shares one of the most layered, multi-witness encounter stories I've come across in a long time, and the details are the kind that stick with you long after the video ends. Back in the 1970s, Jaime was working as a land surveyor for the U.S. Forest Service out of Chester, California. The crew had been fishing after work at a spot where upper and lower Rice Creek meet on the Lassen National Forest, a beautiful stretch of canyon country that gets dark the moment the sun drops behind the ridges. On one of those evenings, Jaime stayed behind to fish while his coworkers, Wayne Clark (the crew chief) and Leroy Kirby, headed upstream. That's when the pebbles started hitting the water in front of him. He figured it was Leroy messing with him, so he played it cool, broke down his pole, and started the quarter-mile hike back to the Forest Service truck. But something was walking with him in the dark, just off to his right. Every time he stopped, it stopped. Every time he walked, it walked. And the breathing, he says, was so loud he held his own breath just to make sure he wasn't hearing himself. It was roughly fifteen feet away. Jaime bolted for the truck, a single-cab rig, dove into the driver's seat, hit both door locks, and laid down. Then he turned his head and saw something standing right outside the driver's door. He could only see it from the chest down. That's how tall it was. After that, he blacked out for about two hours. When he came to, Wayne and Leroy were pounding on the truck with their stringers of fish, and they found him curled up in the fetal position on the passenger floorboard. He came out swinging at Leroy, thinking his buddy had pulled the prank of a lifetime. They had no idea what he was talking about. Tuesday night, the crew wanted to go back. Jaime refused and stayed at the trailer to cook dinner. Around 10:30, the guys came back shaken. The same thing had happened to Leroy, except this time whatever it was screamed at him. Wednesday night, Wayne insisted on going again, and since Jaime was the only other guy with a government driver's license, he had to drive. He parked the truck in the exact same log landing, left it running with the headlights pointing down the path, and refused to shut it off. A little after 10, something slammed into the back of the truck. Wayne had dove over the tailgate screaming, "Get out of here! Get out of here!" Jaime did what any sane person would do, threw it in first gear, spun dirt and rocks and bark everywhere, and hauled ass back to the main road. Wayne was so shaken he couldn't even light a cigarette. Before they left the area for good, they stopped at a little fishing shop in Chester. Wayne bought some flies and told the guy where they'd been fishing. When they came back through on Friday, the shop owner asked how they did. Wayne said they'd never go back in there. The shop owner's response is the kind of line that gives you chills: "Why do you think those fish are in there? 'Cuz nobody goes back in there." Three or four years later, Jaime got the chance to revisit the site from the opposite side of Rice Creek while supervising a survey crew. He refused to cross the creek himself, but he sent his guys to verify the log landing and the path. They came back and confirmed everything was exactly as he'd described. He told them to get him out of there and that someone else could finish the road. But the story doesn't end there, and honestly, the second half might be even more compelling. Years later, Jaime became partners in a guide service out of Reno, Nevada, running Baron Mountain Lion Hunts with a bloodline of blue tick hounds he'd been breeding for over 50 years. His partner, Ed Bertran, wanted to take a crew into that same Rice Creek area because California Fish and Game had relocated some big Yosemite bears into the region and there were clients waiting. Jaime refused to go. Ed went in with Mitch "Frenchie" Benstein and Mike Warta, along with fifteen seasoned hounds, five in each of three trucks. These were tough, end-of-season bear dogs who had been running hard for weeks. Around three in the morning, every single dog in all three trucks blew up at once. Fifteen hounds baying in the woods makes a deafening racket you can hear for miles. Ed pulled over, Frenchie suggested dumping the dogs to catch a bear before sunrise, and they dropped the tailgates. All fifteen dogs took off like a shot on a hot scent, running so fast Ed and Frenchie could barely keep up paralleling them on the dirt road. Then the dogs caught whatever they were tracking. Ed figured they'd treed a bear or gotten into a fight with one. But instead of the usual baying and barking that comes with a catch, everything went dead silent. Fifteen hounds, not a peep. Ed and Frenchie looked at each other, kept going another quarter mile around a curve, and there were all fifteen dogs in the middle of the road, running back toward the trucks. The Lassen National Forest region has a long, long history with Sasquatch reports, and Rice Creek country fits right into that pattern of remote, rugged canyon habitat where witnesses tend to have repeat experiences over multiple nights, often with different members of the same group. The detail about the local fishing shop owner casually acknowledging that nobody goes back in there is the kind of quiet confirmation that researchers live for, because it suggests a pattern the locals have noticed but rarely talk about openly. And the hound dog behavior is something that comes up over and over in credible accounts. Experienced bear hunters will tell you that a pack of seasoned hounds going completely silent and retreating is not normal canine behavior around any predator they were bred to handle. Whatever those dogs ran into that morning, it wasn't a bear, and it wasn't anything they wanted any part of. The video is well worth the watch. Jaime tells the whole thing in his own words, and there's a calm, matter-of-fact way he describes it that makes it land even harder. Go check it out and see what you think.