A First Nation gentleman from the Mi’kmaq Nation, originally from the Northeastern Woodlands First Nations of New Brunswick, who, at the time, resided in Keno City, reported to have come face to face with a hungry sasquatch that was eating raw meat beside the Silver Trail, back in April of 1995.
He and his wife were on their way to Whitehorse, planning to shop for food and visit some of their friends and relatives. They had left Keno City, at the end of the Silver Trail (km110) at around 8 a.m. It was a nice spring day and they were enjoying themselves while driving along this scenic road and serene countryside.
After driving a few kilometres, they reached the outskirts of the small mining community of Elsa. This gentleman then remembered that his thermos of coffee was still in the box of his truck, so he stopped to fetch it.
While out of the truck, he had an urge to respond to the call of nature. He crossed the road, went through the ditch, walked about six steps to a small clearing and, as he was relieving himself, observed what he thought was a bear, some 10 metres away, farther in the bush amongst low buckbrush.
But he quickly changed his mind when the “bear,” at first crunched over the carcass of a dead animal, stood up and started jumping up and down with a piece of raw meat, with flesh dangling from it, held in his right hand.
This witness then realized he was not looking at a bear, at all, but rather at a tall, huge sasquatch, just a few metres away from him.
His wife, from the Na-Cho Nyak Dun First Nation, was standing by the truck and saw the sasquatch, as well, and yelled, “It’s a bocq [sasquatch]! Get back in the truck!” Which he did, taking off in a hurry and forgetting about the thermos full of coffee, which he had placed on top of the left-rear bumper. He drove to the old Stewart River Lodge, some 97 kilometres farther down the road—at the junction of the North Klondike Highway and the Silver Trail, across the Stewart River—without stopping.
They entered the lodge, breathless and huffing, and told the owner at the time: “We just saw a sasquatch!”
According to the report, he went on explaining what he had witnessed. He told the lodge owner that the sasquatch was about eight feet tall, which would be some 250 centimetres, and was big and heavy with large, bulging muscles; that it had black hair, sort of medium length with bare patches and long black hair on his head going down to his shoulders, with a scraggy sort of mustache. He could not recall any further details of its face but was sure it was a male because he did not see any breasts.
The witness also told the lodge owner, “This thing had to weigh over three-hundred-eighty kilograms—really huge, scary.” He further mentioned that the sasquatch “did not yell or anything like that” but that “he was just jumping from foot to foot, with arms swinging about, holding that piece of meat … obviously not happy to see me.”
I became aware of this encounter in July of 2020 when discussing the subject of sasquatch with some people from Mayo. The person who relayed this information to me had had a few experiences that he figured were because of a sasquatch. Unfortunately, I was not able to talk with the witness about the encounter, as he no longer resides around Keno City; nor was I able to talk with the owner of the Stewart River Lodge, as he was gone (as was the old lodge).
However, my contact person relayed one such activity that took place between Elsa and Mayo, in October of 2017, in the region of Haldane Creek, while he was hunting moose and heard some weird, soft yelling sounds, some low whistling and some noises similar to that of trees banging together. Then, while sitting on a log and after making a moose call, about an hour later, he could hear the sound of something walking on two legs—yet he could not see what or who was making the noise.
I went out with that gentleman to investigate this occurrence, but all was quiet during that visit.
