Well I have debated whether or not to put this up for almost a year now. I have thought about it and surfed the web for an explanation for it. I don’t have expertise in the subject so why not let others decide for themselves. This was found last year when I was on the BFRO Nothern California Expedition. My friend and I had gone off on our own to explore a road we noticed had been gated off. As we went down this road there were still downed trees laying across it and no sign of fresh tire marks. We figured it had not been used this year because the snow had just recently broke in the area to permit travel on the paved road.

As we were hiking we decided to split up on the road separating our selves by about 100 yards. We were moving slow and just observing things as we went to see if we could find anything out of the ordinary. I was trailing my friend and we had been hiking for over an hour.

I came onto one of many bends in the road as it switched back and forth down the mountain. I noticed a depression in the road that caught my eye as being made by an animal. Now I have found Grizzly Bear wallows in Yellowstone before along with Elk. I have also found many Elk wallows in Utah. My first impression from what I was looking at was that it was a wallow. Now why was the wallow in the road? I stopped to take a closer look and could not see any tracks to help me determine what type of animal made it. Now from my understanding because of the biomechanics of a four legged animal, in order to stand up they must put their legs almost directly beneath them to lift their bodies up thus leaving tracks in a wallow or bed. Because of this I almost always find prints in animal beds and wallows of the animal that made them. This was puzzling to me. I quickly got on the talkie and called my friend back up the road.

Now the measuring tape in this shot is showing six feet in length. Here are some things I would like to point out about this picture. On the right hand side of the wallow there are groove marks. It appeared that something had been digging into the side of the wallow. I know there are pigs in the area but I have also researched a bit since and most pigs will use their tusks to root things up and the tusks are so close to the face that the snout will sometimes smooth the mark out the tusks just made. Where are the tracks of an animal? I could not see any hoof marks or paw prints. There are also pine bows that are laying in the far end of the wallow. On these pine bows is a thin film of mud. I have seen this before when something muddy lays on a surface leaving a filmy dirt layer. The other thing that was noticed was that the pine bows were torn off of a tree that was about seven feet off of the ground with in feet of the wallow. The tree was tilting like a rainbow and was about twenty feet long with several bow missing that appeared to be torn off and the bows in the wallow appeared to match the torn areas of the tree. Something else to notice was a wooden stick in the wallow. One end of the stick closely matches the groove marks in the right side of the wallow. Below the groove marks the dirt is not compressed and is in small pebble shaped dirt clods. On a closer look at the stick there was fibers on it and small dirt clods on it. You also may be asking why we measured that length. It appeared that there was pressure on the surface of the dirt that far down.

One end of the stick had more mud on it than the other. Just something that looked out of place and was lying there.

Now here is a shot from the opposite angle. Why was one side of the wallow more slopped than the other? Why were there pine bows in one end? The tree was not directly above the bows so it did not appear they had fallen into place. There was no sign of other bows being in the road from possible snow stress placed on the tree. Plus the bows did not appear to be very old. The water source appeared to come from run off or rainfall traveling down the groove in the road made by old tire tracks. There was signs of erosion on a small scale from water in the tire grooves of the road. This could explain why it was not in the middle of the road and on the side where the tire track would feed the wallow. There was also good visibility from this location. If you wanted a wallow that was quit and did not have running water nearby this was also a good spot.

This is a higher angle from the down hill side of the possible wallow.

Here is a closer look at the groove marks on the side of the wallow. Note that the groove marks where on the one side. Why this strike me as odd is because most wallows that I have observed are smooth on all edges like a saucer dish. They are shallow bowl shaped and smoothed out by the animal rolling around in them. The only thing that disrupt this usually are hoof/paw prints and body imprints. This was nether and the mud or dirt below the groove was not smoothed out.

Here is a picture looking down on the groove marks. The dirt clods are more predominate in this picture.

This was something else that looked odd. Have you ever had mud caked on the bottom of your shoe because you were walking in moist earth? I have been gardening before or hiking around in the mountains and have mud caked to the bottom of my shoe. When I remove the mud from shoes with good tread on them it comes off in pieces or clumps up. Now in my garden I have had smooth bottom shoes before. To remove the mud I have walked on the grass, pressed down with my foot and in a sliding motion removed most of the mud from the bottom of my shoe leaving it in the grass. Some times I have even left a shoe shaped piece of mud. Now in this picture to the left of my boot is a thin layer of semi dried mud laying on top of needles and other debris. It looked familiar to me. On closer inspection it looked very similar in nature to what was left behind when I sluffed mud off of the bottom of my shoe. The mud had small grove marks in it running the length of the mud.

Sort of strange how the mud looks on the right end in this shot.

Here is a closer look. Toes maybe?

Another shot.

So what if something… say a Bigfoot made a wallow on the side of the road. Did the animal rip some pine bows down to give some cushion to the hard ground leaving a thin dirty film on the pine bows? Did the animal lay on it’s right side and with its left hand dig grooves with a tool in the side of the wallow? Did it sluff off mud from the bottom of its foot? Ultimately I don’t know personally. I can not figure this one out. I just could not come to any conclusion as to what I was seeing. The one thing I could tell is something was in the wallow and something made the wallow. Why was that piece of wood there? Why was there grooves on one side and not anywhere else? Why were there no visible tracks in the mud? Why were there pine bows torn from a tree laying there? I walked away with more questions than answers.

So I leave this up to you. You can decide for yourself what this was. I don’t know… this one has me stumped… Never seen anything like this but maybe someone else has.

…We never made it back down there. We left everything the way it was hoping to bring others to view what we had found. I was to sick at the time with pneumonia and hiking was killing me. This will be something to put in the back of my mind hoping to find something similar to explain it.

Later, Moose Magnet….