WHEN:March/April (Easter Time) 1974

ACTIVITIES OF WITNESS: In the mid 70's, some buddies and I went camping during Easter break. The snow was melting, but there was still plenty of it on the ground. We did a lot of winter camping over the years, finding it a good way to escape the crowds of summer. There was a small creek next to my tent. In the morning, we were going to a local cafe for breakfast, and as I crawed out of my tent, my hands got muddy from the wet ground. We had camped on my friends private/vacant property with no water facilities, and not wanting to go into town with muddy hands, I knelt down in front of the stream to wash them. The creek was very slow moving, just a trickle actually, probably from the snow thawing. When I looked in the water it was funny. The hair stood up on my neck, before I registered what I saw! There in the mud and silt at the bottom of the creek (which was only a few iches deep), was a large. perfect, bare human track. At first I didn't know what to think. Probably concerned that one of my friends had stumbled into it in the night while taking a leak, and undoubtedly freezing their feet in the process. Then logic kicked in, and while a couple of the guys played basketball, the size of this track definitly dwarfed theirs. I'd seen plenty of bear tracks and noted this didn't have claw maks that would have shown in the deep silt. Also, there were no other tracks visible in the vicinity, which pretty much eliminates both humans and bears due to the length of stride necessary to take them back up to firmer ground. I had an interest in bigfoot, and it did come to mind, but back in the 70's I thought they only existed in CA, WA, and Nepal.

ALSO NOTICED: This happened in the early 70's, sometime in early spring, still plenty of snow on the ground, but begining to melt. It was somewhere in the Brainerd area, on some lakeshore property my friend's family were going to build a cabin on soon. Not sure what lake, but at the time it was small, crystal clear, and very sparsely populated. There were 8 of us guys in 2 large tents, generally partying and making a lot of noise. No smells or sounds were detected that I can recall.

OTHER NOTES: This girlfriend of one of my buddies inherited 500 acres of land in the Brainerd area. She said that sometimes while 4-wheeling or especially when having keggers etc. they notice what seems to be a pine tree off in the distance and later it's gone. She thinks they are just curious and watching and when sitting take on the profile of a small shrub. These incidents have happened several times over the past couple years.