Yellowstone backcountry ranger describes sighting, other incidents witnessed in Park County, Wyoming

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The following account was given to Colorado curator T.E. Stein during a phone interview with Bob Jackson in 2003. Recently, Jackson gave permission to submit his account to the BFRO. Jackson, also known as "Action Jackson," was legendary among park supporters - notorious among outfitters and scofflaws - for his enforcement of park rules and regulations. He retired as a Yellowstone ranger in 2004. Few people have ever known Yellowstone's backcountry and its wildlife like Jackson. "The first time heard anything was in the mid-late 70s. An outfitter and I were riding up Fan Creek in the northwest section of the park. Up the drainage in Stellaria Creek, we heard a sound that just kept going and going. It was probably a mile away. It filled the whole valley up - kind of 1,000 like elk going to their death. I couldn't believe this thing had that much volume for that long a period of time. He had never heard anything like it, neither. "A couple of weeks later, I was coming out from Sportsman Creek, taking a trail which comes out of Fan Creek. I was 11 miles back in, up high in a subalpine fir meadow complex. I was on a steep sidehill with horses and in woods but down below about 40-50 yards there was a kind of fairly flat meadow, with dense subalpine thickets. There were these low fir growths that have a centerpiece tree and then everything kind of cone-shapes to ground. They were about 20 yards wide or so. "The horses were flaring their noses and snorting, like they do when a grizzly bear is real close, but I could see fairly good all around and I couldn't see one. So I started looking down below me, and the horses were really agitated ' they're wanting to get out of there. I held them but only with effort. "I looked down to see where griz was, and I saw a deer at edge of thicket. All at once it bolted and started jarring ahead perpendicular to me. Right then coming out the other side was this thing that was running on two feet. It was black like a bear and it had long arms and ran. I think I held it there 30 seconds, but it got scared and then came out. It ran but not super fast. It ran to another thicket and went at angle out of thicket to another thicket about 40-50 yards away (At this point, the creature was 75 yards downslope.) "It kept hitting these thickets trying to get away from me. I've never seen a bear do that. They'll always take a straight line. "The first thing I thought was 'bear' but right away I realized this black shaggy thing wasn't a bear. This thing was smart. I've never seen animal trying to pick up protection as it fled. "I tied that together with sound had on other side of the drainage. "It wasn't that tall ' it looked like it was like 6 foot, maybe 6' 5". The side of the face looked like it had a lot of fur. Most of the time it was angling away, so I only got a good look at the head for probably the first 10 steps. "The proportions of the torso - it looked more stocky than anything else. I notived the arms swung more than a human's would and it didn't have elbows cocked. "This was no hoax. I've ridden maybe 50,000 to 70,000 miles in the backcountry on horses and you encounter a lot of bears when you do that. This thing, whatever it was, the horses looked straight down to it.