Florida's Famous Skunk Ape Sighting 1971

A team of scientist in 1971 were excavating an ancient Indian village in the Great Cypress Preserve in the Everglades National Park. The team was lead by Buz Osbon and they had made camp where they kept a fire burning at night for security. He said around three o'clock in the morning strange howls were heard coming from the surrounding jungle. His team was awakened and startled to see the outline of something standing on the edge of their camp that was not supposed to exist.

The animal was upright at about seven feet in height with thick matted hair. It came into the camp and was swinging its long arms around like it was looking for something. Osbon knew it was not a bear. They scared it and it ran off into the thicket.

In the morning, the archaeologist found 17.5 inch footprints in the fresh dirt they had unearthed in the Indian mound  they were digging in.

They went back out to the mound one week later but this time they were determined to find the beast and more evidence.

"This time, however, the group was equipped for a visit from the yeti. “The first thing we did after setting up camp was to lay an electric wire around the camp’s entire perimeter,” Buz said. “This in turn was connected to an ultra sensitive electronic device which would immediately sound an alarm if anything crossed the wire. Needless to say, we had plenty of camera equipment with flash attachments and portable lighting. “About midnight we heard something with heavy, sluggish steps sloshing through the water in the nearby swamp and our instruments started beeping. Knowing that “something” had crossed the wire and was on the edge of our camp, we excitedly searched the area with heavy floodlights, but we saw nothing"....Bigfoot Encounters

 You may wonder why it was just this scientific team that claims to have had an encounter with the Florida Yeti. That is not the case. There have been reports going back centuries that are very similar. I would have to conclude based on the fact the entire team were scientist, that they must have had a real class A encounter in the Florida Great Cypress Preserve.

I am doing research on this sighting which seems to be part of the 1971 outburst of Bigfoot sightings Nationwide. Perhaps these animals 'surge' every few years or decades. There does not seem to be much information on this sighting. Most of the info is coming from Bigfoot blogs. I will dig deeper and follow up on this. I hope it is not just folklore.