Flintville's Bigfoot
By Ron Steelman
In 1971, I was living near Corder's Cross Roads, a tiny village half way between Flintville and Kelso, Tennessee. Being an avid hunter, I spent a lot of time in the woods and fields hunting rabbits, quail, and dove. That was a time before the coyotes migrated into southern Tennessee and the rabbits and quail were still plentiful. At one time, counting the pups, I owned 23 twelve-inch beagle hounds and spent many days hunting the Tennessee hare.
The biggest predator to the rabbit and quail population were red and grey foxes, and bobcats. Fayetteville, only ten miles or so away, had a furrier who agree to purchase all of the grey foxes and bobcats that we would bring to him. At that time, red foxes were protected by the state of Tennessee and we were very careful and selective in our harvesting what we considered predators to our rabbits and quail. We were paid thirty dollars for each animal provided to the furrier if the fur was in usable condition. As part of the deal, the furrier agree to skin the animals and harvest the hides. As result of our agreement, many nights we could be found with our fox calls in hand. The fox call's cry sounded very similar to a wounded and squealing rabbit.
Our method of hunting was typically to find a large open field and position ourselves so that our visibility was not restricted in any direction. We would pull our pickup into he center of the field. In the back of the truck, we had several bales of hay and would perch ourselves on the hay, blow our call and wait for our unsuspecting victims. We had a red-lens spotlight that we would shine straight up in the air, then slowly bring it down until we could see the white glow of the predator's eyes. At times we would entice the animals to within a few feet of our truck. When that happened a shot would echo through the hills and hollows and the folks at Flintville and Kelso would know that we were at it again!
We got to the "expert" level at our fox hunting. The poor creatures could not resist our calls, and some night we would arrive in Fayetteville with several of our victims draped across our truck bed and we would leave with a jingle in our pockets. We got so confident that we decided to try our luck with the bow and arrow. I had purchased a Ben Pearson Cougar recurve bow and we were ready to try our luck. Aiming the bow in the dark was a challenge but after a while we became fairly good at finding our foxes and notching our bow with another victim. With the 00 buck shot in our shotguns, our actions were close to murder and we thought the poor creatures at least needed a fighting chance.
One night, my hunting buddy, David Maddox, and I decided to hunt in a large field near Flintville. We knew that the area held a lot of potential to find both foxes and bobcats. Ten minutes after we arrived, we had three foxes in our spotlight. From the back of the pickup, we were preparing to make some money! Then a strange thing happened. All of a sudden, without any reason, the foxes sprinted away from us and hastily disappeared into the woods that surrounded the field. That had never happened before! Something had spooked them. Then we heard it!
From the south of the field, running through the brush, was a large creature. A cow maybe, we thought. Maybe someone's horse got out. We could hear the brush and tree limbs being pushed aside. We could hear the blackberry bushes being trampled under the creature' feet! It was purposely circling us. Then we saw what we could see of it. Although it made as much noise, it was certainly not a cow or horse. We watched its eyes and could see that it was standing erect, like a person. Maybe it was a lost bear transitioning through the area. Maybe it was standing on its back legs. The problem was, a bear had not been seen in the Flintville area for decades, maybe a century! "No," we whispered, "This thing is different." We could see it darting up and down trying to see us. Unlike the foxes, bobcat and deer, this creature's eyes were glowing bright red! As much as we had hunted, we had never seen any animal whose eyes reflected a deep, dark red.
We toyed with it by blowing our fox call. Each time that the call was blown, the creature would get very excited. We grabbed our shotguns just in case! It darted and danced in the brush, being careful not to expose itself. It appeared to be standing upright and, although it's hard to determine in the dark, it seemed to be taller than us. In later discussions, we concluded that it stood upright and stood approximately seven feet tall. Of course, in the excitement, maybe were miscalculated. I don't think that we did!
We watched it for maybe five minutes as it continued to circle us being very careful to remain hidden in the brush. It circled our truck until it got downwind of us and apparently detected our scent. Once that happened, it retreated along the exact path that brought it to us, except at a much faster pace. It was now running at full speed. In a few seconds was gone. The woods again became very quiet, and eerie.
We waited for a while, packed up our guns and headed home. As we drove through the fields and woods that brought us to our secluded hunting spot, our hearts were beating fast. We expected to get a glimpse of our strange creature, but that never happened. We made it home that night and returned other times to that same location, never seeing the creature again.
Not long after that, the people in the Flintville area were excited! Several residents had encounters with a Bigfoot-type creature. The newspapers all had stories of the sightings and several TV stations from Huntsville, Alabama and Nashville investigated the sightings. Stan Moore, one of the local residents, became the "Bigfoot expert" and set out aggressively to find it. He found lots of hair, huge footprints and scat, but no Bigfoot. Stan was interviewed on TV news shows and was convinced that Bigfoot was in the Flintville/Kelso area.
To this very day, I believe Stan and I am convinced that we may have been the first to spot Flintville's Bigfoot.
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