The ridge around the big toe was still a perfect point.
The teller wasn't a believer to begin with. After watching other people's analysis of Sasquatch footage, they decided that if the animals really existed, they could find one. They live in the Pacific Northwest, so they picked a likely-looking stretch of forest on a map and started walking it every day while their kids were at school.
Over more than a hundred hours they found stick structures, bent and arched trees, and footprints. They often felt watched or followed, and if they lingered too long in one place, small rocks would come flying out of the brush.
They measured every footprint they found, heel to toe and across the ball and heel. Over time they decided the prints came from several individuals they believed were a family: two small sets at 14 and 14.5 inches, then 16, 18, 20.5, 21 and 23 inches, and once a single print 26 inches long. The 16-inch prints turned up so often that they felt that one was following them.
Only once did they glimpse an animal. Looking downhill, they saw something running upright for three strides before it dropped to all fours and dove into a stand of trees, as if it knew it had been seen. As it went they saw a pale flash from the soles of its feet. They describe the panic they felt as unlike anything before or since.
Having read that the animals come closer to people with children, they started bringing their kids. On the first trip their six-year-old son stood with them at one of the stick structures for about a minute before something hidden in the bushes began bellowing at them, loud and furious, a sound like two big animals combined.
The next day they went back with the boy and his eight-year-old sister. After a picnic lunch, a powerful stench rolled over them on the wind, which the teller describes as like a dead dog in a sewer. The boy wanted to leave, but the parent talked the kids into walking to a muddy spot nearby. There they found the freshest prints they had ever seen: a 21-inch track heading uphill, an 18-inch track crossing over it, and a 16-inch track pressed on top of that. The rim of mud around the big toe was still sharp, which to them meant it was only minutes old.
Then they realized the smell was coming from the opposite direction to the one the prints were heading. Whatever made the tracks had circled around them. The son worked it out almost instantly and ran.
As they hurried after him, the parent told their daughter to watch the thickets downhill. She stopped and said she could see one. It had been watching her brother run, she said, and froze when it noticed her looking. When she glanced back it was standing upright with a rock it had just picked up. It seemed to realize she could still see it, and its face changed. The brow furrowed, it bared its teeth, the tendons in its neck stood out and its cheeks flushed red as its breathing got heavier. She described auburn hair, deep-set eyes under a heavy brow, and a nose much like ours but tipped up at the end.
It raised the rock but never threw it. She told her parent it was very angry and they needed to go, and they went.