Media Article # 386
Article submitted by Kevin Lee Henderson
Article prepared and posted by Kevin Withers

Sunday, November 18, 1979

Bigfoot: Is he real or just a hairy hoax?

By David Brown
Des Moines Register

MINBURN, IA. - It was something less than a full-scale hunt for Bigfoot. But it was something more than a walk in the fall woods.
Dry twigs crackled underfoot and deadfalls blocked the way.
The muddy ground was crisscrossed with scores of tracks of the Raccoon River Valley's wild residents - deer and coons, mostly.
Crows littered the air with their raucous calls as nuthatches and cardinals pecked away at the skimpy fare offered in mid-November.
There were no signs of human residence, although less than a quarter of a mile away, Dixie Wilson was trying to fend off a television reporter eager for details of the Bigfoot that had been seen in her back yard Thursday night. By Her Husband
Wilson was protesting that the creature was seen not by herself, but by her husband, Larry, and that only he could describe it.
Three orange squash had been placed beneath the yard light to mark the location of the creature's 13-inch footprints. The prints had been etched in the morning frost; now they were melted away, just like the thing that made them. The creature probably came from the tangled timber of the river valley behind the house, across 100 yards or so of alfalfa, the short plants still green in the waning of the year, towards the Wilson house.
Wilson was home alone when he saw the apparition in the glare of the outside light. He said it scared him.
Wilson said he wouldn't be surprised to discover it was a hoax, although before he saw the thing he apparently had heard it breathing when he stepped outside the house. It was a heavy, rhythmic breathing and Wilson said it reminded him of the panting of a winded horse, although more regular. Siting by Trapper
Another sighting of Bigfoot occurred Oct. 26, when a trapper looking for raccoon tracks in a wooded area near Webster City spotted instead a seven-foot animal with long, thick red hair down to its shoulders.
Bryon Davis, 48, of Webster City, said his Bigfoot was "just laying there sleeping," and Bryon's movements spooked him away. However, authorities were later unable to confirm the siting as their search did not turn up Bigfoot.
In the daylight, in the woods behind the house, there were only the birds and the small animals that are the ordinary inhabitants of the land unused by humans.
But it was not inconceivable that a larger beast or creature - Bigfoot for instance - could inhabit this back country. What kind of creature would it be, wondered a visitor to the woods?
A foot away, a fat, foxy squirrel crashed off into the brush.
The visitor jumped about two feet in the air, and when his heart beat slowed he walked back into the sunlight, away from the woods.

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