True Story Alert:

When I was a kid, we used to love hiking up into the mountains behind our house to build forts, throw rocks at wildlife and to roll large boulders down the steep hills towards our neighbor’s house. Some of the best times occurred during the pinecone fights would take place to try to “take over” the old tree house that my father built. The tree house stood just at the rim of the trees at the base of a steep mountain near our home.

One evening, we all decided that it would be a good idea to invite a few friends over and sleep overnight in the old tree fort. We grabbed out blankets, some snacks and our trusty guard dog (which we immediately tied underneath the tree house for protection.) After a few hours, we fell asleep.

At some point during the night, our dog became very agitated and started barking wildly. His barks turned into growls as we heard “something” coming down off of the mountain directly towards the tree house. Every one of us was afraid to look up over the rim of the tree house to try to see what was coming down to eat us alive. But we heard it getting closer and closer. We dared not speak a word to each other in case the “monster” was listening. Trees were being pushed over, grunts could be heard and our guard dog was in a rage. As the noise came closer and closer to the tree house, the “beast” suddenly ran back up the mountain and disappeared and our dog stopped barking.

Morning came and we ran up to the house to fetch our parents. They grudgingly put on their clothes and walked up the mountain to see whey we were so energized. In the mud and dirt we found over 20 large footprints that were twice the size of a normal man. Small trees were torn from their roots and tossed between other large trees about 20 feet in the air. The footprints came within 10 yards of our tree house. Bigfoot had arrived.

Dad called the local newspaper to come out and take pictures of the evidence but they laughed and said it was a prank. My older brother immediately started bawling his eyes out because they didn’t believe us. I pulled him aside, calmed him down and said “if only we had the Bushnell Binoculars with an Integrated Digital Camera so that we could have captured a close-up picture of that hairy beast. We could have been rich AND famous! Everyone would have believed us.” From that point on, the Bushnell Binoculars became a permanent appendage of our family’s bodies, just in case Sasquatch decided to make a return visit.