{"id":3026,"date":"2023-11-26T22:25:43","date_gmt":"2023-11-26T22:25:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/?p=3026"},"modified":"2023-11-26T22:27:28","modified_gmt":"2023-11-26T22:27:28","slug":"ftv-mythical-beasts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/?p=3026","title":{"rendered":"FTV: Mythical Beasts"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0No, I am not thinking about the Wykon or the Hodag.\u00a0 If you are wondering, the first is the school mascot for the West Iron County (Michigan) school district and the latter is a tourist attraction who roams the forests somewhere in the northern counties of Wisconsin.\u00a0 No, what I have in mind are the creatures, critters, or (possibly) beasts that have been (pick one) a) rumored to be found in, b) have been seen in, or c) are at least talked about existing in Michigan\u2019s Upper Peninsula.\u00a0 In no particular order, I will present the (ahem) \u2018evidence\u2019 and let you decide.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Let\u2019s start with the biggie – the one every state, province, or region with wild country galore wants to claim as their own:\u00a0 Bigfoot (aka:\u00a0 Yeti, Sasquatch, Skunk Ape . . . you can look up the rest).\u00a0 Once the TV show <\/span>Finding Bigfoot <\/span><\/i>came to call north of the Mackinac Bridge, surely the true \u2018Squatch believers felt their hearts go \u2018pitty pat\u2019.\u00a0 It was only a matter of time before the U.P. would have proof that Bigfoot was one of their own.\u00a0 As they do on the series mentioned above, the core players gathered for a townhall kind of meeting to hear testimony from people who claim to have had a Bigfoot encounter.\u00a0 Some are very interesting stories, but without video, photographic, or other hard evidence, it is difficult to verify these anecdotal claims.\u00a0 Nonetheless, the <\/span>FB<\/span><\/i> detectives chose a couple of these folks and went to the areas where\u00a0 their alleged contacts took place.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The <\/span>FB<\/span><\/i> hosts use various methods to investigate these claims.\u00a0 They usually seek physical evidence scouring the spots where encounters have taken place or trek off into the boonies, usually at night, seeking their elusive prey.\u00a0 Calling out into the night (I will make no attempt to recreate the sounds \u2018expert \u2018Squatch callers like BoBo Fey use) or smacking tree trunks with big sticks are favored tactics.\u00a0 They then wait for a call or tree smacking response to their invitation to chat with any Bigfoot who feel inclined to answer them.\u00a0 The U.P. episode followed this familiar script . . .\u00a0 and then went south, big time (at least in my eyes).<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Of course, the Upper Peninsula is known for the pasty.\u00a0 Pick your ethnic group – like those areas who want to claim Bigfoot as their own, every nationality who populates this remote region of Michigan takes credit for bringing this culinary delicacy to the region.\u00a0 Excuse me while I show my bias – no matter which group brought the concept to the U.P. (historians favor the Cornish), it had to be the immigrants from Finland who perfected it.\u00a0 The Bigfoot crew lost what little credibility I had afforded them when they took to planting pasties on tree limbs with the hope of attracting a shy \u2018Yooper Bigfoot\u2019.\u00a0 I watched this show with muted interest off and on when everyone was hunkered down during the COVID 19 Pandemic, but this episode pretty much killed what fleeting interest I had in the show.\u00a0 In that no \u2018Yooper Bigfoot\u2019 was lured out of hiding by the smell of pasties, then we must concede they do not exist\u2026right?\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The two memories <\/span>Finding Bigfoot<\/span><\/i> did stir for me were the night hikes we took the three summers I worked at the Huron Mountain Club.\u00a0 When the club guides would take kids from the club on overnight camping excursions, we would often engage in a ritual known to those who have worked at the HMC as \u2018moon killing\u2019.\u00a0 No celestial bodies were harmed – it was just the name used when we would take a couple of flashlights and night hike to their camp site for something to do.\u00a0 If there were any \u2018Yooper Bigfoot\u2019 hanging out, we were in prime country.\u00a0 The trails through the big pines were well marked so we weren\u2019t in any danger of getting lost.\u00a0 Pointing a flashlight into the dense stands of trees never revealed anything except maybe the eyes of a few startled deer.\u00a0 Just the same, it was a little unnerving to see the flashlight beam fade out in the spaces between the big Hemlocks and White Pine.\u00a0 If a creature wanted to play hide and seek, these vast old growth forests were just the kind of place they could have gotten away with it.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The second memory?\u00a0 Snipe hunting.\u00a0 Rookie moon killers were always offered a chance to go \u2018snipe hunting\u2019.\u00a0 Some of the stories describing exactly what a snipe is and how to catch one were quite imaginative.\u00a0 A few who got pranked with this tale were actually disappointed that there were no such creatures to hunt.\u00a0 While we never did see any Bigfoot signs (or snipe either for that matter), some of our night hikes did stir up some wolf activity.\u00a0 Full Moon nights were especially great for hiking to the top of some of the Huron Mountain summits.\u00a0 A favorite near Ive\u2019s Lake had a particularly open view where one could see the surrounding peaks and Lake Superior in the distance.\u00a0 Hearing the wolves howling in the distance and then answering each other had an eerie sound that is hard to do justice to in print.\u00a0 I guess you had to be there.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Another one of the elusive beasts said to haunt the U.P. forests is the mountain lion.\u00a0 Trail cam photos have captured many images of these big cats in more recent years, but back in the day, the Department of Natural Resources had a party line anytime one was reported:\u00a0 \u201cThere are no mountain lions in Michigan.\u201d\u00a0 I have been a believer since my third year at the HMC.\u00a0 We were taking a day hike to the top of Ive\u2019s Mountain when we ran into a grandson of the Longyear clan.\u00a0 Their family has maintained a residence at Ive\u2019s Lake and he spent a lot of time there.\u00a0 We exchanged pleasantries and John mentioned he had been on the far side of the mountain taking photos of some mountain lion cubs playing outside of their den.\u00a0 He used a telephoto lens because he did not want to intrude on their secluded hideaway.\u00a0 As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words and from that day forward, denials about mountain lions in Michigan always made me chuckle.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0We had a mini-reunion in Marquette with Todd from the WOAS West Coast Bureau recently when he was back in the U.P. visiting his folks and brother.\u00a0 Over lunch, Brian (our central U.P. rep from Ishpeming) and his father told me their mountain lion tale.\u00a0 Years ago, they were bird hunting with Brian walking down a two rut road to the left of his dad.\u00a0 To their right was a field of ferns that had already turned yellowish-brown but were still standing.\u00a0 In the middle of this patch, Brian spotted an similarly colored pole sticking up our of the top deck of fern leaves.\u00a0 He was pondering what it might be when the top end of the pole twitched.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Brian was struck a little dumb when he realized what he was seeing and gestured to his dad in the direction of the \u2018pole\u2019.\u00a0 Tom, his dad, thought he was pointing out a partridge to the right of the track they were on and he waded into the ferns to try and flush it out.\u00a0 Brian was a little horrified when his father unknowingly charged toward the mountain lion who was obscured by the thick layer of ferns and his first thought was, \u201cOh no, he has the car keys!\u201d\u00a0 Fortunately, the beast took the sudden rush forward as his cue to exit the area, much to their relief.\u00a0 Yes, they called in their sighting and got the party line:\u00a0 \u201cThere are no mountain lions in Michigan,\u201d but they knew better.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Back in the late 1970\u2019s, I had gone back to Marquette for a weekend and I told my folks the story of the cubs playing on Ive\u2019s Mountain.\u00a0 My dad was not at all surprised.\u00a0 He said, \u201cI was going to camp ten years ago and I saw a mountain lion cross US 41 just before I got to the rest stop at Tioga Creek.\u00a0 He was going left to right (to the north) and you could tell it wasn\u2019t a deer (too low to the ground), a bobcat (too big) or anything else.\u00a0 The legs moved differently than a bear and I could see that long tail sticking out.\u00a0 I have no doubt it was a mountain lion.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Amazingly, I saw a mountain lion crossing the road almost ten years after my dad\u2019s sighting.\u00a0 It was on the same stretch of road only I was traveling toward Marquette and not toward L\u2019Anse.\u00a0 At the time, I observed exactly the same things dad had and ruled out anything but a mountain lion.\u00a0 The only difference was the direction of travel – mine was going south.\u00a0 I doubt it was the same animal, but we still laughed that maybe he was finally going back to wherever it had come from when dad encountered one.\u00a0 It is no surprise neither of us had bothered to tell anyone else because everybody knew \u2018there are no mountain lions in Michigan\u2019.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0How about smaller critters? \u00a0 When the Forest Service was working on an interpretive trail in the Courtney Lake area, one of the signs for the script they were following described a badger hole in a sand bank along the trail near Six Mile Lake.\u00a0 I had questions about this but kept them to myself because I figured they wouldn\u2019t make something like this up.\u00a0 Just because I have never seen a badger doesn\u2019t mean they couldn\u2019t be here.\u00a0 I shared this information with a fellow teacher some months later and they said, \u201cYou know that old sand pit across M38 from Six Mile Lake?\u00a0 I was hiking through there a few weeks ago looking for blackberries and I saw a badger scurrying along toward the lake.\u00a0 This encounter took place less than a mile from the badger hole on the trail we were working on.\u00a0 Sadly this trail was never completed but the last time my wife and I hiked that portion of the trail, the badger hole was still there.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Possums in the U.P.?\u00a0 I am told they don\u2019t like the cold weather much but occasionally they can stray this way.\u00a0 They can\u2019t swim the Mackinac Straits or cross Big Mac, so they would have to take the land route north from southern Wisconsin.\u00a0 I was given this information by a wildlife specialist who did a Michigan United Conservation Club program we arranged for the students in Ontonagon.\u00a0 One of the critters she had with her was a possum, so when I asked if there were any in Michigan, she said yes, but in lower Michigan.\u00a0 I was relieved she told me the migration story because I saw what could only have been a possum cross in front of my truck as I was driving east on Paul Bunyan Avenue.\u00a0 It was another case where I didn\u2019t share the tale because it didn\u2019t make sense – at least until this program presenter told me it was rare, but possum sightings do occasionally happen in northern Wisconsin and Upper Michigan.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0I have had similar \u2018first encounters\u2019 with creatures of the avian kind.\u00a0 Today it isn\u2019t uncommon at all to see Sandhill Cranes, Turkeys, Pileated Woodpeckers, and Turkey Vultures in Ontonagon County, but it hasn\u2019t always been so. \u00a0 I wasn\u2019t aware of Sandhill Cranes until I spent two summers at NMU\u2019s field study station at Cusino Lake in Alger County.\u00a0 When we were doing classroom field studies on the Kingston and White Rat Plains, we often heard them. Their loud, rattling call is hard to miss, but we never set eyes on them the first summer I was out there.\u00a0 The second summer, the Biology professor running one of the classes I was auditing as a grad student was determined to show us Sandhill Cranes before our four week class ended.\u00a0 Even though I had worked there a previous Summer and my advisor, Pat Farrell, told the prof, \u201cKen\u00a0 knows his way around and and get you to the areas you will see them,\u201d the Bio guy never asked me for directions.\u00a0 We never did see any cranes and after the prof left, I spent the next four weeks locating one acre plots so I could measure the dry stumps left over from turn of the century logging (so I could estimate the board footage that had been removed).\u00a0 Ironically, every day I worked on my own on the Kingston Plains, I heard and saw Sandhill Cranes.\u00a0 It took me some time to realize they can be found in Ontonagon County as well and, on occasion, even within the village limits.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Pileated Woodpeckers put the capital \u2018E\u2019 in \u2018elusive\u2019.\u00a0 I had seen signs of their work on trees as long as I can remember.\u00a0 I had heard them at work (that loud knocking you hear in the woods is them working on a dead tree) but I had never actually seen a live one.\u00a0 Twenty years ago, I happened to look out at the tree that used to decorate our front yard and there were five of them sitting on various branches.\u00a0 They like old growth trees for the bug content, but they also began to visit the suet feeders we put out every winter.\u00a0 Pileateds are now frequent visitors and even with their shy nature, we have spotted them on utility poles on River Street in downtown Ontonagon.\u00a0 They fly with an unusual \u2018flap-flap-glide\u2019 motion and the bright red crest on their head make them easy to identify, even at a distance.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Turkeys and Turkey Vultures share only part of their name.\u00a0 I first encountered a tree full of vultures along a farm field on the south end of the Norwich Road.\u00a0 I had never seen one, let alone a tree full so I stopped just to be sure I wasn\u2019t seeing things.\u00a0 That first encounter happened almost 40 years ago and they, too, have become a common occurrence in the area.\u00a0 Turkeys?\u00a0 I never saw a Turkey in the wild in the northern U.P. until this millennium.\u00a0 The DNR started a program to reintroduce them in lower Michigan (and then eventually the U.P.) in the 1950s, but their populations were found mostly in Menominee, Dickinson, and Delta Counties.\u00a0 A hardy species, they have now moved as far north as the Keweenaw Peninsula.\u00a0 If you haven\u2019t seen a herd of them crossing the roads in recent years, you are in the minority.\u00a0 We had 17 of them waddle down our street, up our driveway, and across our backyard on route to the Ontonagon Golf Course two winters ago.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0How about the grand-daddy of large creatures out there, the Moose?\u00a0 Moose were known to inhabit the swamps of Upper Michigan in days of yore, but the rapid growth of the U.P. deer herd had an adverse effect.\u00a0 The White Tailed Deer carry a parasitic worm that infects Moose and most people thought they died out (save for the population on Isle Royale).\u00a0 In 1985, the DNR transported 59 Moose from Ontario to the area north of Champion, MI (western Marquette County), they spread out and sightings became more common as the herd grew.\u00a0 The latest census shows there to be over 350 Moose in the U.P. and my father documented them with photos he took in the 1990s of a Moose crossing the mouth of the Silver River in Baraga Country.\u00a0 Having hunted in the hills east of Huron Bay since the 1940s, he said he had never seen any Moose sign.\u00a0 The year of the first Moose transplant, he came upon the skull and antlers of a full grown male in an area he had been through many times in the past.\u00a0 It had to be a resident Moose who had lived out his life with no desire to be found.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0If you have your own story about encountering Bigfoot in the U.P., I would love to hear it.\u00a0 I won\u2019t even ask to see photos, casts of footprints, or DNA analysis of fur or scat samples.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Top Piece Video – Want to know about more mythical beasts?\u00a0 Just as Sheb Wooley<\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0No, I am not thinking about the Wykon or the Hodag.\u00a0 If you are wondering, the first is the school mascot for the West Iron County (Michigan) school district and the latter is a tourist attraction who roams the forests somewhere in the northern counties of Wisconsin.\u00a0 No, what I have in mind are the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,8,12,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3026","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education","category-from-the-vaults","category-humor","category-woas"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3026","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3026"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3026\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3029,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3026\/revisions\/3029"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3026"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3026"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3026"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}