BFRO #71815: Law enforcement officers find and follow fresh snow tracks 33 miles NE of Moline

📍 Location

📝 Description

My name is Jerrod Reynolds. Years ago I was one of the biggest critics and thought that bigfoot was a spoof. I grew up hunting and fishing in central Illinois. My father who is a USMC Vietnam Vet taught me at a young age to hunt and track and pay close attention to my surroundings. After High School I joined the USMC infantry where I served two tours. One tour was Iraq in the Al Anbar Province where I walked point. My job was to read the lay of the land and look for anything out of place that was not natural to the surrounding terrain. The second was counter piracy operations on the coast of Africa in 2009. I am now 33 years old and I am a Police Officer and a Swat Operator in North Western Illinois. The first agency I worked for was right on the Rock River, and 3 miles from town is the Big Bend State Park which is over 1000 acres of wetland and forest. On Feb 13th 2018 around 11:00 PM I was given information about a stolen four wheeler which we recovered. During that time I was given information about a snowmobile that was stolen along the snowmobile trail right on the Rock River in between the town I worked for and the town a couple miles north of us. By the time I arrived on the river, it was now after midnight. Since the location of the possible stolen snowmobile was technically in the county jurisdiction, I was assisted by two county deputies. It just so happens that one of the deputies whom I've been friends with for a long time and had a bigfoot sighting of his own when he was a young man from 1981 which is currently on your website. This Deputy and myself have worked together as police and swat for 3 years by this time, and we have a good working relationship where we can feed off each others movements and know when something is up just by our demeanor. We knew where the stolen snowmobile was ditched so we made the plan for one Deputy to walk the snowmobile trail from the North, I would go directly along the river, and my friend would come in from the south off the snowmobile trail. We figured given the location that we would all converge on each other and one of us might come across the snowmobile at some point. There was a lot of snow on the ground this time of year and we knew we were in for a hike. As I walked along the river I could see the river was frozen over and I came to a tree line that ran East and West and was used almost like a water way for field drain off into the river. As I approached the tree line I heard a loud crash and running through the trees. My first instinct was that I kicked up some deer that were bedded down. The thing that stood out to me was the sound was like a heard of bulls crashing into the back of a stock trailer. The foot falls where very loud like whatever it was had some weight on it. At this point I thought nothing of it and continued walking. I walked around the tree line to where it stopped in the field to the west. I immediately found tracks that did not make since to me. I should know better given my background but I decided to walk into the tree line and investigate. What I discovered, I was not prepared for. I found tracks that looked like a human foot. They were about 15 inches long and there were three sets, two large sets and one small set that were about 8 inches long. Like many times before overseas, the hair on the back of my neck stood up and I could not put my finger on it, but I knew something was off. \As I stared at the tracks trying to process what I was looking at, my buddy sounded off wanting to know where I was, and there was a mild hint of concern in his voice. I said "I'm in the tree line, I have something to show you". He replied, "I have something to show you too". As he entered the tree line my friend whipped out his camera and we began taking pictures. The foot prints were distinct. You could see the heel and the ball of the foot as well as toe imprints. I could tell from the tracks that they were running. Some of the tracks had drag marks on the toe portion and had some wisp marks from the hair which made course, distinct marks in the snow.When I finally accepted what I was looking at, I knew that these were big foot tracks and I had come feet from seeing them first hand. Unfortunately I did not see them with my own eyes, I just heard them. By then I had an adrenalin rush and wanted to keep following the tracks. My friend knew it was a bad idea and said we need to back out now. Looking back on it he was 100% right. The tree line led straight to the river and it was a perfect pinch point for an ambush. We backed out of the tree line and went out into the open field. There we discovered more tracks they were the same as ones in the trees, but since it was a corn field that was harvested the previous fall we could determine that the tracks which were in a straight line had a five foot span between prints. We could measure it since the corn rows were on 30 inch rows when they were planted. We were able to put together that one of the bi

🔍 Circumstances

there were two others that observed the tracks. I was the only one that heard the noise. they were helping me look for a stolen snowmobile.

🌤️ Weather Conditions

incident was a little after midnight. it was very cold and had snow on the ground. it was very damp as rain was moving in and expected to be in the area with in a couple hours. it was very dark with low visibility but not pitch black.

ℹ️ Additional Details

incident was a little after midnight. it was very cold and had snow on the ground. it was very damp as rain was moving in and expected to be in the area with in a couple hours. it was very dark with low visibility but not pitch black.

🔗 Sources (1)

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