1) He claims to have been shooting a 25-06. Nobody hunts bear with a 25-06 caliber rifle. Its a very small caliber suited for varmints and target shooting. Folks sometimes use it for whitetail deer but soon switch back to a far more suitable caliber for any large quarry, being dissuaded by the cartridge’s lackluster performance on anything larger than a 75 lb deer. Perchance a hunter does hunt large game with such a caliber he is breaking every hunting ethic, mainly the wounding of animals that aren’t recoverable because they travel too far to be located after being wounded. A lot of suffering for any bigger than coyote sized animal.

2) He claims to have killed the juvenile at close range with his scope adjusted to 16 power (16X magnification) any target closer than a couple hundred feet away would be nothing but a blur (out of focus and without the necessary field of view.) It would be totally impossible excepting a once in a million lucky shot to hit the creature at close range using a scope as described. Smeja relates the distance at which he shot the juvenile in the neck;

“So eventually me and my buddy are split up, and I’m down this hill, and the little one is almost like straight uphill maybe 15 yards away, maybe 20, it’s is starting to approach me.

It’s getting closer…it’s getting closer, starting to make some noise, like the deaf chatter thing…it’s getting closer, and I was thinking, “I don’t know what’s going to happen here, but he’s going to get too close, it’s way too close for comfort. Screw it, I’m going to shoot.”

This part of the account is easily disprovable for any of you out there:
Go to your friendly neighborhood gunshop and ask to look through a sixteen power scope and look at something closer than his stated “Closer and closer” from 15 yards; as he reported his shot was taken from. You’ll see that the image is wildly shaking and impossible to sight with. Crosshairs won’t be discernible.

3) a 25-06 would not make muscular tissue wiggle like “jello” I have shot coyotes and ground hog with my 25-06 and this never happened even with hollow-point ammo.

4) If Smeja studied the creature from the truck at the range indicated with a sixteen power scope he would have seen very plainly that the creature was not a bear. He would have seen it in great detail at 16X.

@Redrose999 and CDC; I believe you guys have offered a very compelling hypothesis for the seeming veracity in Smeja’s audio interview. I don’t understand though why people aren’t looking at the forensic aspects of his account, (3) of which I outline above.

Something else that any police detective would catch immediately is his frequent and quick change of topic when certain questions are asked. Example:

“They were definitely faster on all fours”. Followed quickly by nervously sounding: “They had very long arms, and they had huge heads. They basically had an adult-sized head on a kid-sized body, which is really hard to wrap your mind around. And their hands were huge. Well, they were the size of mine, but if you put that on a little frame, it looks oddly proportioned.” etc (he wasn’t comfortable with the bipedal / quadrupedal topic at all)

I’m of the opinion after hearing this interview that Smeja is no hunter. He may be a clumsily inept road poacher who primarily shoots after dark using a high power spotlight which causes animals to freeze in their tracks, but sportsman or hunter…never! Even a properly licensed novice would have been easily able to follow the described spoor and recover the creature.

I am perplexed by people like the trapper9990 poster who believe this dribble and publicly validate such a sicko. I am perplexed by the fact that the companion attests to Smeja’s story. Am I to understand the Ketchum is a player in all this?

If per chance this story is as he reports it is ample evidence of the depravity so-called human’s are capable of. If it is true a multi-count murder indictment is in order. He is a hideous monster even in the way he reports the imagined and hoaxed story. Maybe a psycho badly in need of attention maybe a sadistic psychopath without any sort of empathetic heart. Who knows?

I’d say that if true or not Smeja’s karma just got unlivable.

No experienced hunter goes bear hunting with a 25-06. The ballistics coefficient for even the heaviest load (most powder driving largest available bullet in weight) is just not adequate for making reliable kill shots one any big game animal. The round was specifically developed as a varmint round for animals like coyote, fox, crow woodchuck and prairie dog. It has great accuracy over relatively long distances but the bullet (projectile that leaves the barrel and enters the quarry is just too small. Its only .03” larger in diameter than a .22 cal. bullet. The maximum weight of bullet available for the .25-06 is 120 grains. A middle of the road deer round like the .308 Winchester’s largest projectile weighs 180 grains. The .25-06 is a bad choice for deer and a completely imbecilic choice for any size bear. No experienced hunter would use a 25-06 for big game hunting; period! I own a beautiful Kimber® bolt action in 25-06 and about all I use it for is woodchuck. Could it humanely kill a deer or even a bear…yes with perfect shot placement but I wouldn’t attempt it unless I was lost in the wood, starving and had no other option, and even then I doubt it would be a humane, (instantaneous) kill. All my Bear hunting was done either with a .30-06 with a 165-220 grain bullet or in the case of large brown bears a .375 H&H Magnum and I am typical of most experienced hunters—99% of any other experience d hunter you ask will come back with the same or ballistically equivalent choice for these animals. I believe that an adult sasquatch would be a very tenacious customer and that something more on the order of a .458 Win. Mag or 460 Weatherby would be in order.

Enough said regarding the ballistics of Smeja’s story. In reading it over several times I come to the conclusion that Smeja is no experience hunter. According to his own account he doesn’t act like one. He certainly doesn’t talk like one and obviously doesn’t have the type of kind heart experienced hunters always develop as a direct result of taking beautiful creatures. There’s a certain special respect for wildlife that non-hunters don’t understand and paradoxically this only comes with the taking of animals for sustenance or other justifiable reasons.

In my opinion Smeja is truly a wacko if he is reporting facts. He’s truly a wacko if he made it all up.
I think he’s a liar and a fraud and that he probably doesn’t know which end the round comes out of on his .25-06.

@scaryeyes, I think you might find his account “unsettlingly convincing” because you probably haven’t been a part of the hunting community.

@william: For the record a 7mm Mag. is also way too small for large bear. I know of large Alaskan Brown bear that took 8-12 well placed shots with very large caliber weapons (larger than 7mm Rem Mag) to anchor them for good. Yes; the venerable 7mm Rem Mag is an outstanding round for any North American game animal, except the big bears. There are many good books written on the subject from authors like Stephen Herrero, check them out.

In 1924 a man named Albert Ostman was kidnapped by a group of Sasquatch giant hairy people in the wilderness of British Columbia. He described them in great detail. He didn’t describe them as animals or as apes, but as giant people with hair all over. You can read the account in BFRO report #1091 if you’re not familiar with it. This was also the first witness report of “chatter” or the actual use of apparent language by sasquatch, later corroborated in many reports.

Check out the audio of “samurai chatter” attributed to Sasquatch in the Sierra Nevada mountains in California:

Among the details of Ostman’s physical description of his captors: “The soles of his feet seemed to be padded like a dog’s foot, and the big toes was longer than the rest and very strong.”

Justin Smeja: “And they were calloused. I’ve been saying that they have paws. They’re hands, but they’re so calloused, they look like paws. It looks like a pad, like two little pads on each finger, and a big pad. Their hands were very cushioned.”

Like many many other alleged witnesses, Justin Smeja describes them as having very human looking faces. Albert Ostman seemed to consider them to be giant hairy humans, not apes. There is a common belief that these are apes like an orangutan or mountain gorilla, but actual eyewitness reports support the much older belief in a sort of “missing link” between ape and human, sometimes called “the last caveman”.

Now let’s rewind to the “Bugs” story, apparently told by radio personality Ed Hale of Wellington, Texas. He claimed to have shot Sasquatches, which he believed were too human looking, and that he could have been tried for murder, so he buried them in the wilderness. He also described them as being of a rare breed with six toes, but that’s neither here nor there. An important element of his story is the allegation of government agents collecting all his evidence, and forcing him to show them where the bodies were buried and then collecting them to be secreted away somewhere.

If you are already aware of the government cover-up going on concerning extraterrestrial contact, this concept fits in perfectly with it. Smeja claims government agents came looking for the bodies? Not surprising. These are intelligent indigenous life capable of using language and making very limited tools. This is not only the final nail in the coffin of creationism, but also could be evidence of something more. What if these are the remaining members of an alien race now cut off from civilization like the native Americans (or First Nations if you’re Canadian) were cut off from the roots of Chinese civilization many thousands of years ago? What if they’re the seed race humans were bred from hundreds of thousands of years ago? What if the government routinely intercepts many valid stories of captured or killed Sasquatches and hides the remains, and that’s why there are no bones or bodies found?

On a final note for all those who are judging Smeja and calling him a killer, let me remind you that hunters kill animals. That’s what they do. If you want to protest against hunting, fine, but don’t single out one guy for being a hunter. A lot of troops are coming home from wars with bloodlust in their hearts and they want to kill PEOPLE every day of their lives, but can’t in civilized society. If you eat meat, but judge people who kill animals, you’re hypocrite. Period.

Try killing your own hamburgers and chicken nuggets for a change and see what it feels like to be a killer.

What kind of individual shoots at something that could easily be a person in a suit, and then justifies it by blaming it on them?

“Well, if that’s a person in a suit, then we’ve got a real problem here, ‘cause they’re walking around during bear season with a fur suit on.”

“Gee, I guess they get what they deserve if they’re stupid enough to do that” – seems to be his attitude. It’s morons like this that give hunters a bad name. Then, to just kill what he describes as a juvenile in the way that he did it – this person is an absolutely sick individual that needs help.

Maybe it’s different in CA, but here in NH you cannot ride in a vehicle with a loaded rifle or shoot from a vehicle during hunting season as this guy seems to have done. Did he even have a license for deer or bear? First he’s out bear hunting, then talks aboout deer hunting also in the 1st paragraph. Does the deer and bear season run concurrently in CA as it does here in NH?

If I were a CA CO or Game Warden, I might be knocking on this guys door.

I admit that I haven’t listened to the interview. I have a desktop computer without speakers, and when I tried to listen to it on headphones there was so much static I could barely make out the words. I was thinking of a personal experience I had when I was about twelve. I was horseback riding with my brother when I saw a cougar only about twenty feet in front of us, right by the road, poised to spring. I completely panicked and fell off the horse. I think if I were in his position, I would have never thought of trying to capture the animal. That shock from seeing something I knew was in the area and had seen before, if only from a car, was so overwhelming and irrational that if I was in his position, I would probably have had a nervous breakdown, instead of losing my head and killing the baby. If I get a chance, I will try to listen to the interview, though.

My understanding is that those who have killed charging grizzlies say: forget a head shot, with any caliber. You might have to go through an eye to stop the bear, and good luck with that. You’re aiming for a triangle below the head, encompassing the heart, and…um, good luck with that one too.

Many with a gun and the chance to use it on a bigfoot have thought: one shot and I make history. (Then there are all the reasons they didn’t shoot.) Then there were the ones that held fire because – OK, among other reasons – they were totally not confident of the ability of the weapon on hand to stop the animal.

Wow,

not only did he shoot a creature that “looks like a little kid”, he’s selling it’s meat with Tom Biscardi. If it is true (and the more convoluted it gets the more hoax it screams), it is so twisted on so many levels that it boggles the brain.

You are welcome. I have never personally hunted bear but have a good friend who has killed many (he lived in Alaska for years). He used nothing smaller than a 7MM Magnum and he said even with that big of a caliber that a Big Brown Bear was hard to kill. He said even with a well placed shot they would sometimes expire slowly and claw the ground while doing so to the extent it looked like a backhoe had dug around their carcass. The reason being they have a very slow heart beat. I also stand corrected that you could easily kill a bear with a shot to the head using a 25:06. Perhaps with a small Black Bear but an Alaskan Brown or even a Grizzly has a very thick skull and it is highly possible the bullet would just make them mad!