WHEN: January, 1997

ACTIVITIES OF WITNESS: Here is a bigfoot encounter I witnessed first hand outside of Ely MN. Ely is in Northeastern MN, 15 miles south of the Canadian wilderness - used to be an iron mining town. The incident occured an evening in January 1997 after a fresh snowfall - soon after Christmas in an area just west of Ely, known as "Lucky Boy". (Lucky Boy was an old iron ore mine). Anyway, this land has the Taconite Trail (a state snowmobile trail) running through it. I spend a bit of time out there on my snowmobile setting traps on a few of the lakes. It is very secluded and a lot of the land is low and swampy. On this day upon returning to town (about 2 miles out or so) it had just become dark and I was riding along, when something dark to the side of the road in some reeds caught my eye. It was about 50 feet or less in front of me. It was round and looked hunched over. At first I thought it was a bear and slowed down to see what a bear was doing out in the middle of winter. But as it made its way into the woods , I realized that it was standing - it was quite large. I stopped the snow machine and watched. it appeared very hairy (brownish)apelike,and its eyes shone as it looked at me, then turned and made its way into the woods. Needless to say, I have never been so scared in my life and drove out as fast as I could. Every shadow along the road on that trip back made my heart jump. I have never seen anything like it since.

ALSO NOTED: Legends and stories occaisionally float around - stories of unearthly screams in the night way back when Ely was also a logging town. One legend has a logger disappear from the Knox lumbercamp, never found, belongings left behind. A man named Waino Sarri claims to have seen an ape-man out on the ice of High Lake, eating the remains of a wolf -killed Moose. his account claims that the ape-man was black with large arms. It got spooked and loped across the ice into the woods. What is your opinion? So, I hope this might be useful to you or to other "closet" Ely or Northeastern MN bigfoot people. It might be abundant up here.