Hays
comes alive with Bigfoot rumors By
KIM SKORNOGOSKI
Tribune Staff Writer There
was a mystery afoot — err ... a Bigfoot — and if anyone was going to
solve it, it would be Ruben Horseman. The
volunteer fire chief and self-described snoop, Horseman's phone regularly rings
when his Hays neighbors are trying to sort out a story. "There
was a lot of little rumors at first," he said. "That's why I figured
we'd go out there and walk it and see what we come up with." Several
people had spotted strange, very large prints in the snow and dirt — some
marred with blood and hair — around the powwow grounds where Fort Belknap
tribal members hold dances every summer. Armed
with only a camera, Horseman and two friends last month bravely headed into Mission
Canyon, a mile south of Hays. What
they found surprised even the grizzled investigator. On the south end of the canyon
park, some 25 prints were spotted in a 75-yard stretch. The prints looked like
giant handprints, with fingers a good 4 inches longer than Horseman's. Along
the canyon wall, a few other handprints were scattered. One print was surrounded
by a clump of hair and blood. Then
Horseman and his sluethy crew found the most significant evidence of all —
a half-eaten coyote. "It
looked like the creature grabbed it by the front and back legs and bit it in the
middle," Horseman said. It
wasn't long before the area was abuzz with the possibility of Sasquatch in their
midst. Speculated
to be taller than 7 feet, the alleged ape-like creature is thought to inhabit
remote forests in the Pacific Northwest, with early sightings among Native Americans
living in the Spokane area dating back to the 1940s. As
Horseman continued to explore the area, it wasn't long before people began to
gather. Throughout the day, he estimates a hundred people drove in to check out
the Sasquatch scene. Tribal
medicine men even came out to give plate offerings to the creature. "Young
and old came out," he said. "Some people believed, some people didn't
believe in this kind of thing." Horseman
said because the weather had warmed and cooled, he could tell the iced print had
been made at least a day earlier. The
next batch of rumors was that National Geographic was sending out a team to document
the scene and search for Bigfoot. Horseman soon after received a call at home,
when a low voice confessed the scene was a hoax. Pressured
by the Tribune's staff of investigative reporters, Anthony Shambo spilled that
the trickster was his brother, Reno Shambo, who intended to simply pull a prank
on his young son. "He
brought it up to me two weeks before it happened," Shambo said Wednesday.
"I kind of laughed at him and said nobody's going to believe that." Reno
Shambo, a coyote hunter, had cut the large prints out of 2-by-4s and strapped
them to his feet. "We
laughed so hard about it, but then it got out of proportion," Anthony Shambo
said. His brother, who couldn't be reached Wednesday, eventually had to go before
the Fort Belknap tribal council, displaying his Bigfoot prints to prove it was
just a clever sham. "I
think they did an excellent job," Horseman said. "They really put some
time into it." "It
definitely livened the place up for a while," Anthony Shambo said.
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