Two young hunters in the Appalachian Mountains in Breckinridge County, Kentucky encounter a massive, white, growling biped. They shot at it and ran away, not knowing if they had wounded or killed the beast.
“In July 2004, Dakota Cheeks and Ricky Joyce set off on a hunting trip into a remote area of Breckinridge County, Kentucky. Ricky's grandparent's cabin was at the foot of a hundred acres of dense timber. It would be their base camp.
On the first morning, one of Ricky's dogs would not come when called. They found her deceased in a ditch, her head twisted all around. “There's no animal up here that can grab an animal by its chin and the back of its head and twist it, you know, no coyote can do it, there's no bear, as far as I know up here,” Dakota noted. They had been hearing noises (growls and screams) coming from the top of the mountain and using their four-wheelers, they went out to the hilltop to look for what might have killed the dog. “We decided we're gonna hop on the four-wheelers and stake out the hilltop. We ended up going to the far side of the property where nobody really goes. There are no trails. We make a couple laps around the field that way we can both easily see where the four-wheeler has been so we know where to look.,” Cheeks recalled. They spent a good portion of the day looking for whatever it could be but found nothing. Eventually, they retreated back to the camper.
Right away they began hearing strange noises, like something was walking around. At around 5:00 AM, the dogs started barking. They ran off. Soon something began slamming into the trailer. “It literally sounded like all hell was breaking loose. It's almost like you can hear something pressing up against the side and you can kind of hear the tent start to bend. Just that weird, eerie metal sound,” Dakota said. Suddenly whatever it was, stopped and walked away. Eventually, they armed themselves and headed out on their four-wheelers to look for the creature that rocked their trailer. They looked most of the day into the evening.
Just after dusk, they had crossed through a cemetery and just entered an open field when they saw something. Ricky spotted it first, “I'd seen something standing in the field and at first I thought it was a tree. It was tall but it was also kind of hunched over a little bit. It was big. It was white.” “Its arms were long but they were kind of out like this and they had these long talons. It was too big to be a person. When it was on two legs, it stood at least nine feet tall. I mean it was massive. When it noticed us it let out this just ungodly gut curling growl. It came straight at us,” Dakota said, adding, “We saw Sheepsquatch. That's what we saw!” They shot at it while rushing back to Ricky's grandparent's cabin. They weren't certain they actually hit the creature but they never saw it again that evening. “I've been in some pretty scary situations but most situations you know what you're dealing with on that one I didn't so I didn't know how to react. That's quite possibly the scariest moment in my life,” Ricky recalled. “It made me believe the unbelievable. I didn't believe in myths. I didn't believe in wives' tales, none of that until I saw that, and after that changed my life forever, I mean there are things out there and we don't know what they are.”
The two friends continue to look for the creature to this day. Ricky and Dakota's story was reenacted for an episode of Travel Channel's “Monsters and Mysteries in America”. Along with Dakota and Ricky, Stacey Morgan, Dakota's aunt, and Wayman Morgan, Dakota's uncle, were also interviewed for the program. A Breckenridge County resident, Susan Noe, was also interviewed. She described seeing an upright Sheep-like creature while driving home one evening."
Source: “Appalachia”. Monsters and Mysteries in America. S1.E1. TV Show. Travel Channel/Blue Ant Media. Mar 24, 2013
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