As told by Bosco Olson, Sr.

On July 4, 2014, around 8:30 am, I rode down to the beach on my ATV below Hooper Bay to check for driftwood. Within 20 minutes or so, I got to the big rotten walrus that had beached earlier this spring on the southside of the Nuvuk Spit.

When I was about 300 yards or so away, I saw something bobbing up and down from each side of the super-sized walrus (probably due to the stomach being bloated). The walrus is decaying and rotting. The right arm bone is showing with the meat rolled down from being rotten. About five days earlier, I had seen a raven picking on the walrus and figured that was it until I got closer and realized it wasn’t a raven.

I stopped and spent a half-hour or more waiting to see what it was. Whatever it was, it stayed behind the walrus, with its head bobbing. Maybe it was bobbing its head to see over the walrus to see if I was still there, or maybe it was bobbing his head while it was eating the rotten meat from the walrus. But I could not tell what it was until it finally stood up.

When it did, its left leg came out first and stood up real easily on the right side of the walrus. It was huge, very tall and dark, but its legs seemed somewhat brownish. Its body was very broad and muscular. It stood up with its legs semi-apart and fists clenched and I could see knobby knees. Its hair seemed raised on its upper body. We stared at each other for five long minutes or more. It looked like it was challenging me.

It was unusual for anyone to stand there so long as it did just looking at me. He was standing erect and seemed larger and bigger than any people that I have seen fishing in the area before. If it wore clothing I could have seen colors of his coat or clothes. He finally turned his head to look down at the walrus and started walking northerly along the beach. He took long strides as he walked.

At first I figured he was still a person and was going to his boat, but there wasn’t any boat or ATV nearby. When he got to a big log, he picked it up real easily and started walking back to the walrus. He seemed to walk a little slower with the log.

That’s when I finally remembered I had a camera – I took it out and began to take video of it, even though I was getting terrified and every sense of my body was in a fleeing mode. But I stayed since it didn’t seem to mind me too much of my being there.

Almost right away, I couldn’t take any more video as my card got full, but I watched it a few minutes longer as he reached the walrus and saw him use the log as a lever to try and turn over the walrus. (A live walrus weighs 4,000 pounds, so a dead one must weigh 1,000 to 2,000 pounds.) And I didn’t want to get closer because the ground between me and the creature was really rough and if I had to run away even in my ATV, the ground would slow me down.

One funny thing about this is he didn’t even ask for help or assistance – and I knew that walrus was old and rotten which no human would touch or consume. Only the seagulls and ravens had picked on it. No person would never attempt to salvage very bad meat from long-dead animals as this thing was trying to do.

Then it began to get visibly frustrated being unable to turn the large rotten walrus over with the log, although I didn’t hear any sounds or noises from the creature. I knew the sand was soft and soggy there and the tide was starting to come in. Finally I decided to get out of there seeing his demeanor changing with each unsuccessful try at turning the big walrus over, and I was getting too terrified of it. I didn’t want to stick around no more. I cautiously left the area looking back constantly to be sure I wasn’t followed by it. I could still see him using the log and working on turning that walrus over.

When I got further along and could see it no longer I felt safe enough to pick up some driftwood on the way out. I got a small load of driftwood and went on back home, being glad that everything turned out good even with whatever it was I saw that morning.

The next day on July 5 – this time taking my shotgun along – I went down to the old walrus but the creature was gone. I decided to check the rotten animal and found it to be about 3.7 feet high and the creature was much, much taller than that. I also found a small steak knife stuck into the meat but nobody cuts up seals or walruses with such knives. This creature apparently had found the knife from somewhere and learned how to use it. There was a good-sized piece cut off from the neck area, about a foot and a half by a foot wide. The meat was ruggedly cut with a lot of cut marks. It smelled very terribly – people in Hooper Bay wouldn’t be touching that stuff.

I took the knife and stored it in a ziplock. It’s really smelly and stings your nose due to the odor. I looked for the log the creature had used but had no luck finding it. Maybe it floated back out to the ocean with the tide.

Later that day at the post office, I learned from a cousin and her husband that while clamming in a nearby area they came upon large footprints. Another person told me he had found unusual footprints that had toenail or claw marks and when he compared them with his own size 10 shoes, they were bigger by 5 inches, more or less. He had been fishing for humpies, but when he found the tracks he upped and took off for home.

After the sighting, I told fellow Hooper Bayers about the creature. In hindsight, maybe I should have kept this to myself, but I wanted the community to become aware of other beings and creatures that live with us. There are creatures out there. My grandmother instilled in my mind daily when I started hunting around eight-years-old, saying to me, “Do not ever panic when you encounter something that is strange.” She told me, “One of these days, now that you are traveling to the wilderness, you will meet creatures that live with us, but they don’t trust people”.

This incredible freeze frame photo was taken from video footage shot by Bosco Olson Sr. of Hooper Bay on July 4th, 2014. The footage is of a Bigfoot on the beach salvaging a dead walrus. Above the creature is carrying a log to use to roll the walrus over. Photo by Bosco Olson, Sr.

The illustration depicts the size comparison between a walrus and a 6-foot man.

(Editor’s Note: Photos are used with the permission of Bosco Olson. The photos of the Bigfoot are still pictures from the video, and were used for measurements on the creature and the walrus. The creature is 2.5 times taller than the walrus – so if the walrus is 3.7 feet according to the witness, then the creature is 9.25 feet tall. Each freeze-frame photo shows a dark creature with a coned head, a broad and muscular body, large feet, and carrying a 15’ x 1’ log that a person would have difficulty carrying, if at all, since it would weigh several hundred pounds. The video has not been offered for public viewing as of this time.)