Welcome to Botches Off Road.
Join us as we talk about everything from gear reviews to trail stories, tent camping to
rock climbing, and all things to do with the outdoors.
Today we're going to have a little cryptid mini-sode.
I'm going to talk about my cryptid hunt, how that went.
We're going to talk about some of the local stories, some of the local cryptids that are
in Michigan.
And yeah, I'll start off a little bit.
We did a cryptid hunt up in Wexford County, and that went pretty well.
We got up Thursday night to secure a camp spot on the river around the area of where
Dogman was first spotted.
We stayed Thursday night by ourselves, and it was kind of eerie, but nothing really happened.
Just one of those nights where it was really, really quiet.
There was no wind.
There was no animals.
There was no trees moving.
And I think those are the scarier types of nights when you don't have anything going
on and it's just silent.
That sounds like you were about to get murdered there, friend.
Yeah, I mean, we were a little on edge because of that.
New spot, we got there in the middle of the night.
We got there at about 11 p.m.
And we had everything set up.
The kid was in the tent.
And the only thing you could hear was the water from the river, but absolutely everything
else was dead silent.
And you don't hear that when you're out camping in the woods a lot.
So I was a little on edge.
I was packing, so I wasn't super worried.
But it's always just weird.
It's a little, I don't know, off.
We got up in the morning after, I don't know, pretty quiet night, nothing really happening.
And we went into town, grabbed a couple of things, did some trails on the way and met
everybody at an off road stop, the US 131 road park.
First you got a call from your friendly Alex.
I did.
Yes.
I don't remember what we talked about, but I was talking to you when people started showing
up at that off road at that turn or that parking area.
I don't even remember.
I do remember you calling now.
I don't remember what it was about.
I think you were just trying to chat and see what I was doing.
You were like, oh, you're out camping.
I'm like, yeah, I'm already out, dude.
Yeah, I think you were seeing what I was doing.
Yeah, probably.
I was probably bored.
Yeah.
That's how it happens with Alex.
So yeah, we were at the off road park, or off road park, roadside park, and we did introductions.
I introduced myself, my wife and my son, and we met Chris and Jen.
Chris has a pretty well built out Jeep Wrangler, a little overbuilt from Michigan, if I was
to say.
And he had a little overlanding trailer with him, which was very well built as well.
We talked about.
I was looking at that thing.
That is for overlanding.
That is pretty well built out.
Yeah, it's a manual, has manual windows, manual, everything else.
He tried to take out as much electronics as he could to stop any issues from electronics
happening.
So that was pretty cool.
We talked to him.
We talked about this little trailer, what his setup was.
He had a cool little diesel heater and a rooftop tent on his trailer.
We talked about what I had a little bit, and then we talked about just the basic overview
of what we planned on doing, which was going back to camp, setting up our tents, which
we already had.
And then I was, of course, have to pick up her dad later and drive him over there.
And then we were going to hit some trails maybe later that day, just to take some time
up and probably do a night ride and then do trails all Saturday, leave on Sunday morning
and go to the Trunker Treat in Hudsonville for the Riggs coffee.
That worked out pretty good other than seeing his dad getting lost and going to the wrong
road stop.
He borrowed his little Buick back there and we parked that at base camp and he came and
rode with us.
And that was the first time he had gone camping in 35 some years.
Wow.
So yeah, he bought a tent that he bought 10 years ago at the outside of the tent.
It was a summer Coleman tent.
And the outside of the tent, like the bag looked old as fuck.
The inside looked brand new.
It was crazy.
He brought some of his old sleeping bags that were also just as old.
And we gave him our air mattress and he just he did just fine.
He took a lot of pictures.
He really enjoyed it.
We got up Saturday morning.
We did a crap ton of trails and then our buddy Mitch joined us later at about 3am, you know,
Friday night.
He was at a rally for his job and that didn't end until like one or two.
So he came right out after he was done, like he said he would and set up his alucab on
his Tacoma and stayed there.
We got up in the morning and we started hitting some trails with the end result trying to
be getting down to some of the blue trails.
I want to say down.
I would gosh, I don't even know where this is by Lake Gitche Gumee.
And this again in our names, man, I tell you, that's what it is.
I'm sticking to it.
Lake Gitche Gumee.
So we did some trails.
Nothing really crazy in the Walton area.
Just pretty much two tracks.
Took some regular dirt roads because you have to cross the Manistee River and there's really
not a lot of bridges to get across.
So we found a couple of bridges.
We found a one lane bridge that was really cool to go on.
And then we did a bunch of the trails down there.
We did Hart Creek Trail, Rooted River Trails, Twin Lakes Trail Loop, a couple of them there.
And then we did that blue trail, which it was high rollaway river loop.
And honestly, it was super boring.
It's a blue trail and it should have been not even a blue.
It should have been like just a forest road.
But like most of Michigan trails, as Mark and I were talking earlier, they're probably
rated in the spring where they are going to be a lot harder.
So I'm sure it was hard at one point, but it was kind of a letdown.
We did do number 19 road, which is pretty fun and nothing crazy either.
But it was just a lot of fun to go do that.
And I think that was the one with the really steep decline.
That thumbs up my alley.
Yeah, it was really steep decline.
And then it's a one way.
So you actually have to turn around and go back up it.
Oh, yeah.
Chris was going up in his manual and he hit a rock and his wheels just started turning
and I thought maybe he had stalled out, but he actually had to just put it in the four.
So it's not so crazy that it's so they I mean, I had it in four wheel because I was kind
of nervous for no other reason than it's probably 100 yards decline, pretty sharp.
What you're telling me is whoever marked as the blue trail did it in a lifted Prius.
Yeah.
OK.
Right.
I roll away for sure that that trail there in the winter.
I would not do that trail.
You would not catch me dead on that trail.
The right side of that trail as you're going down is like a couple hundred feet drop.
It's scary as fuck.
It's like it's almost cliff edge if it wasn't for all the trees and stuff and the fact that
the hills going straight down.
But it's pretty scary.
Sienna was looking down on the side and was like, all right, that's gnarly.
Looking up, it wasn't as bad, but doing it in the winter, one mess up, you hit a rock
that goes wrong or something like that.
You could really screw up, not really put your rig into some trouble.
So, Mark, that sounds like the trail we need to hit this winter.
Yeah, I can show you that I will stay up top as safety advisor and safety officer and will
watch with my phone.
I bet I wouldn't be surprised if the DNR shuts it down for snowmobile use, though.
It might.
Yeah.
A lot of trails in Michigan, they're dual use.
They're good for us in the summer, fall and spring, but then come winter time, it's all
groomed snowmobile trails.
Yeah.
It is.
Michigan gets a lot of tourism for snowmobile trails.
When we have snow.
Yeah, when we actually have snow.
Yeah.
But it was good.
Other than that, and like I said, we found a water crossing and I found some really cool
trails that were not really a part of any other trail.
Just me going and bebopping off the side.
We found some cool stuff.
Nothing really crazy.
We got back at camp that night.
We were all really tired.
I mean, we literally spent from 10 to five, we were out there wheeling.
So very, you know, it was a pretty long day for just wheeling around and everything.
And we were all pretty tired.
And we were supposed to do the night ride that night and we honestly, we were just like,
dude, we're all tired.
It's getting really cold and it's getting dark quick.
And we're like, we haven't even eaten dinner.
So we actually forgoed the night ride.
Did you find dog man?
Yes, no, we didn't.
So as we were talking about him, actually, it got really creepy.
We were talking around the campfire.
We were talking about the different types of dog man, because I guess you could really
compare dog man with skin walker, dog man with.
Yep.
I'm sorry.
Windigo's and walkers are, I believe.
Sorry to anybody if I'm wrong, but skin walkers are more pointed towards the Navajo tribe,
whereas windigo's have their are kind of the off branch off of that.
That's they're separated.
So skin walkers were made in their own certain way.
There's a couple of different theories.
Some people say that they were medicine men who would transition to animals to travel
to one of the four great mountains to get their medicine and travel back.
And they would transition to animals and get stuck.
So in our area, it would probably be considered a windigo.
Windigo's originate from the I'm going to slaughter this name, the Elgon Queens, Elgo
Queens, something like that.
They're indigenous North American groups that were heavily in Canada and then Michigan,
their territory, very heavily encapsulated Michigan.
So yes.
Yeah.
So the way I've always understood the windigo was always based off of the cold winter and
lack of food, which led to cannibalism, which is the origin for the windigo.
Well, yeah, one of the main ones.
Yeah.
And so there are a couple of different theories of why indefinitely cannibalism being one
of them.
While we were out telling these stories, the campfire, it got really, really quiet.
We're right on the river.
And as soon as we stopped talking about it, and I mentioned talking and not bringing up
the name windigo.
So I said, you know what I'm talking about?
I said, I don't really like to say it much, but I'm talking about the windigo.
And they go, okay, yeah, yeah, I know what you're talking about.
I said, okay, don't really like to say it much because I'm kind of a believer in like
names give power.
And right as I did that, a pack of coyotes right across the river sounded off.
And I mean, right across the river.
And we all jumped a little and I was like, it's okay.
You know, everything's good.
But there are some legends of and stories.
Nice crack.
Thank you.
Of windigo is actually traveling with coyotes to help disguise.
So it was really it's a good way for them to travel, travels and packs with the dogs.
Nobody suspects anything.
So when you hear a pack of coyotes and you hear a pack of coyotes sound off right as
you mentioned the name and not saying that you like to say it, it was definitely eerie.
You know, middle of the night.
Again, like I said, it was one of those quiet nights.
There was no wind really going on.
Kind of creepy, especially with it being as quiet as it was.
So we didn't really hear anything else after I mentioned that we kind of changed topic.
We didn't really want to talk about it that much more.
We went to, you know, Bigfoot and then, you know, my sighting of Bigfoot, though I've
only had one that I believe is genuine.
So I don't know.
We woke up in the morning, nothing really weird going on, nothing really happening.
And we kind of left.
We saw a sign of Bigfoot.
So that kind of count.
But also later Saturday night, we saw what we thought was a UFO.
And then at that time, was classified as a UFO and we saw a bright light that seemed
extremely close.
Like what would an airplane, a low flying airplane would be.
It was a bright light and it had a dark middle part to it.
And then it had four or five, you know, lights, all the same color, nothing flashing.
And it was moving really slow.
We thought at first it was like a meteor.
But then we realized how slow it was moving across the sky.
And it is so kind of weird to us out.
We had no idea what it does.
We got a little bit of video of it.
And after chatting with a couple of people, Alex and Mark, they said, oh, it's got to
be the Starlink satellite.
So I'm like, no, it seemed like it was way too close for that.
They sent them the video and they go, oh, yeah, that's Starlink.
So it was funny.
It's really funny because we saw Starlink that same night.
Yeah, just way further away from us.
Or that's just what they want you to think.
Yeah.
I mean, how is the cover?
Well, I mean, how perfect is that of a response, though?
Like all the satellites that were just launched.
Well, right.
It's such a convenient response.
And nowadays, everyone's going to believe it.
I don't know, man.
I don't trust the government that much.
You know what?
I think you're right.
It's definitely aliens and Starlink was created to just hide their existence.
I think Starlink's used to help hide their existence.
I think they're a good blame game for them.
Turns out Starlink actually has transceivers on the other direction talking to aliens.
That's the real reason that happened.
The whole reason it got launched in the first place was a communication device.
To alien.
So they can talk to them.
Really that's air traffic control for space.
And that's what each one of those satellites are, is they help with the air traffic control.
The earth gets all of its money from tourism, space tourism.
We're just not seeing any of it.
That's it.
We're just a zoo.
Yeah, that sounds about right, actually.
Look at these stupid humans fighting amongst themselves.
No wonder Elon's so rich.
Yeah.
That's why he looks like an alien.
That's why him and Zuckerberg look like they're from a different planet.
Zuckerberg paid to catalog all the people in the world so that he could farm them out
too.
I'm pretty sure that Zuck is just a lizard person from within the earth.
I'm pretty sure, I'm pretty sure, was it Hillary Clinton?
Pretty sure.
Yeah.
Until I see otherwise, I'm convinced.
Taylor Swift is definitely a skinwalker.
I just think she made a deal with the wrong demon, dude.
I think she genuinely made a deal with a crossroads demon.
He made a deal with a crossroads demon.
You never know nowadays.
I'm just picking one and going with it because you never know.
There's this whole conspiracy right now that Taylor Swift's actually a guy because she
has an Adam's apple.
Oh my gosh.
There's so many stupid conspiracy theories.
There's one about Lady Gaga too back when she became my friend.
I don't care.
I don't either.
They're just funny to me.
Well, yeah, no, the celebrities, they're just so far away from me that they just mean nothing.
I have local celebrities like Derek Finns-Bronson.
The Michigan's premier.
Overland.
Or Derek Becker.
One of the owners of Midwest Four by Fours and also one of the hosts of Rigs and Coffee
in Hudsonville.
The only person in Michigan who can use the Rigs and Coffee name.
Yeah.
So those are my local celebrities and there's nothing crazy dogmen about them except, I
don't know, Derek could be something.
I don't know.
Derek's probably a skinwalker.
I ain't gonna lie.
We'll have to get him on that one.
We'll do a blood prick and see if he responds.
But circling back to local stuff, I don't know how much you guys know about the whole
drudge and swamp thing in White Cloud.
No one does.
I have nothing about it.
No, no.
I say no one does and because I mean nobody listening will probably know.
I was asking the two of you specifically.
I know.
I just want to expand on that and be like, I don't think anybody knows.
I just heard about this and was like, interesting.
And of course, Alex has some kind of part in that.
So the dudge and swamp back in, man, I got to look up dates just to make sure I'm not
telling lies here.
The early 1900s.
1920 is when it really started.
There was a family called the Dudgeons that moved into an area in White Cloud that we
now know as the dudge and swamp.
The dudgeons, everyone hated them because they were rough and they always wanted to
fight.
That's important because it kind of seems like the community turned on them in a way.
The daughter had married a guy and then he ended up murdered and the whole community
just framed the dudgeons for this murder.
And of course, small town, however you want to look at it, that twisted into modern day.
Dudge and swamp is full of incest cannibalistic ghosts of this family who probably wasn't
cannibalistic and probably wasn't incest.
Who knows?
I mean, if you think about it that early on, dudgeons, drudgeons, however you want to say
it, to me that sounds like they were rough and tumble Irish immigrants.
And that's the story I'm going to go with.
Oh, no.
Alice dudge and the mom, she was rough and tumble for sure.
She would get upset with somebody and then begin to poison them.
And that is documented.
The father, I cannot remember his name.
I want to, yeah, I can't remember the dad's name, but she,
ended up poisoning the dad and she ended up getting charged with his murder instead of
the murder of David Hodel, who was the daughter's husband that she had married.
So she was evil.
Oh yeah.
The mom was evil, man.
What did she poison with back then?
1920, there's so much you could poison with.
What was the well-known poison back then?
Just bleach, arsenic.
If I have another dream, when I talked to my great-great grandfather, who was the undertaker
at the time, I'm sure I could ask him.
Yeah.
Alex had a weird dream and of course he was connected in some way.
Then he fact-checked his dream and everything, almost everything was right, right?
Yeah.
Everything was right.
I mean, I had, and I asked my dad questions about the situation without telling him about
my dream and I had dates, right?
I had names, right?
I had the findings from the autopsies, right?
I mean, it was, to me, it was really scary, but my dad says I have an overactive imagination.
Well, you do, but I don't think that was part of it.
I think that was something else.
But I mean, Alex's family has been around since the beginning of this area.
So that's, you know, it's not, there's got to be some kind of history there.
I mean, and like I said, the drudging thing, if anybody has even thought about the witch
trials about this, it's so similar.
You just have to look at someone and know you don't like them.
And it takes one person to go, it's a witch or, you know, anything.
And it's not very hard to get a community to not like someone based off of, you know,
maybe the mom pushed someone at the store at one point or something.
You know, it's, yeah, especially in these small communities, it's not hard to turn anyone
against anyone.
It's really interesting.
If you look up dudge and swamp, there's a lot of different twists to the story.
And they all crack me up.
There's one, excuse me.
There's one from a website called the post Kelvin.com, whatever that is.
And the way he tells the story, a disgruntled farmhand hung all seven members of the drudging
family, but we know that's not true because all the drudging or dungeon, dudge and family
just got out of prison, you know, in the like forties and fifties.
So they were in prison at one point.
Yep.
And they got out in the forties and fifties.
How many of them are in prison?
Was everyone, was it just mom?
Uh, like from, I know that, uh, Alice Meady, which is the daughter, they were both in prison.
And then the, uh, the two brothers got in, went to prison.
One of them that got released early as having nothing to do with it.
The other one was an accessory to murder because he helped hide the body.
Well, that's one of the very few of in what white cloud there's pretty, I don't know.
There's not really a lot of like crazy stories in Michigan, I guess, unless you'll go down
to the town level, but like there's a no way go, I know way go ghost in the, from the high
school there's, I mean, there's all sorts.
You'd talk to one person and I guess the drudging is probably one of the most popular other
than the dog, man in Michigan.
I don't know.
Is there any other popular cryptids in Michigan that you guys know of?
I really only know the dog, man.
There's one up deal with like superior from her correctly.
I just don't remember the name of it.
Yeah.
Oh, that ghost ship.
Oh, the ghost ship.
I was talking about like a cryptid.
There was another one.
Oh, I think I remember what you were talking about.
Um, I don't remember the name, but I think I'm, I don't remember the name either.
But that was a native lore and all that too.
Yeah.
And there's a whole lot of that too around here.
So I don't know.
I know that I'm pretty sure pretty a hundred percent, pretty 99 cent sure that big foot's
around in Michigan.
And I feel like I've had some experiences to where I would say we're pretty credible
if you, if you believe me, but
I mean, Gavin's a fairly credible person.
I'm fairly credible.
And I'm also the safety officer.
So I give him like a seven out of 10, whereas most people that talk about big foot are like
a four out of 10.
So yeah, well, mine was, uh, there was a point where I was living in my tent for a period
of time.
Uh, at that point it was, uh, it wasn't a 10.
It was a carport, uh, that I bought from menards.
And at that point in my stint of living in a tent, I was, I dunno, I'm used to all the
sounds I've heard everything.
And you know, I've seen all the shows talking about big foot.
So I was laying in my bed, AKA six pallets that were lengthened out to my bed.
Gavin's had a great childhood guys.
Yeah.
That one was, it was by choice, but, um, still one of the rougher choices.
But so I was, yeah.
So I was sleeping in my bed and I hear that very typical of you like big foot, like the
knocking on wood with like branch or wood.
And it goes, and it was in a rhythm.
And I said, Oh man, I just kind of sat there and I'm listening and I closed my eyes to
try to hear better because I can't see anything out of this tent.
You closed your eyes to hear better.
Yeah.
If anybody, everybody, everybody's had to have done this or maybe it's just my ADHD
to where I have to like shut down other systems to make other ones work better.
But yeah.
So sometimes I have to turn the radio down to see better.
So I get it.
Yeah.
I turn the radio down to focus.
Yeah.
So, so I'm listening, listening, and I'm like, that was weird.
You know, you don't hear that usually in the woods.
And I'm like, it's probably just trees rubbing against each other.
That's pretty typical in that area.
And then I hear it again.
It is the same rhythm.
And I'm like, okay, that's, that's someone out there fucking around by the railroad tracks,
which was where I was living by.
And I'm like, yeah, there's someone out there messing around.
But you know, I got my, got my handgun, got my flashlight out and I have a really long
distance flashlight got out of my tent and scanning, scanning, and I heard it.
And out of the three times of the pattern, it stopped at like two as I was like putting
my flashlight towards it.
I put my flashlight over there and all I see is green eyes and it just, it wasn't, couldn't
see any kind of facial features.
It was so far that the light wasn't bringing in facial features, but it was glowing green
eyes from, you know, from a flashlight, not because of any other weird shit.
And I'm just staring at it.
It's staring at me.
It's not moving.
It's like frozen.
And I'm like, hello?
Like if you're, you know, if you're on our property for a reason, you need to get off.
This is private.
Nothing happened.
And I'm like, okay.
I'm like, maybe it's a deer.
So I'm like trying to walk closer, walk closer.
Nothing's happened.
It's staring at me.
And I'm like, I have a handgun.
I'm like, if you're, if you're a human, because I was trying to really like, if you're a deer,
this sounds stupid, but if you were human, because I don't want to shoot you, get off
our properties, private property and just leave and nothing happened.
And at this point I'm getting kind of freaked out.
I get a little closer and I'm like, all right.
I said, I'm coming over there.
Nothing happened.
Like, so now I'm just kind of like not shaking in my boots, but I'm like trying to think
of my next steps.
Like, what am I, what am I actually going to do?
I like, I'm scared, no intention of using my handgun, but I have it there.
You know what I mean?
And so I start walking a little bit closer and then I hear like something like not crashing,
but crunching on the ground in that area.
And it's almost like it backed up because it made that sound, but never turned away.
And then, so it backed up.
And this is what I think before anybody says, you know, anything, but it looked like it
backed up.
It looked like it got up from, it looked hunched it.
And I say hunched because where its eyes were, it went up like a whole nother foot, but it
was, it didn't seem like it was enough to be crouching.
Like crouching would have been lower.
You know what I mean?
To me, it almost looked like it was hunching, trying to just make itself look smaller and
it brought itself up.
And that's when I was like, Oh, fuck, this thing's bigger than I thought.
To where I was like, I don't think this is a deer.
So I had nothing really for reference at that time.
All there was was like a berm.
So I was like, okay.
And all of a sudden I watched his face just slowly turn.
Again, I don't see its face.
I'm seeing eyes, but you assume that's where it's at, right?
Right.
So I just slowly turn away.
And then you hear crunching for a couple of steps and then nothing, nothing at all.
So I walk over there.
I walk probably about 15 feet closer to the area and I'm like, fuck this.
I'm not doing it anymore.
And honestly, I wussied out.
I went back to my tent, had my gun in my hand and pretty much stayed there all night.
And what's what always interests me about Bigfoot is that Bigfoot is said to have been
seen in the Pacific Northwest, but there are sightings of Bigfoot across all of the United
States all the way.
I mean, as far as Asia, I've heard of reports in the Middle East.
I mean, there's Sasquatches everywhere, dude.
Yeah.
So I've always known them not to be scary.
And so when I got up in the morning, I walked over to that area and kind of realized something
that was kind of creepy.
When I saw the berm, he was standing behind that.
And the berm was like, and some of these old towns, people bury their trash.
So it looked like a hole that someone had put and there was old garbage from like the
early 1900s down to the bottom of it.
But at that point, it was all grassy.
So that berm was just the top part of that hole, maybe some of the dirt that was dug
out from it.
And down at the bottom was probably, I want to say it was a pretty good sized hole.
And because of the way that was sloped, I'm just going to guess that it was probably five
foot and then maybe a couple, a two or so feet behind the berm, the berm being that
tall going down into that hole.
So the fact that I saw him at what I thought was a pretty normal height, and then he got
even taller behind that berm told me that he was, I mean, again, because I'm no professional,
told me that it was pretty close to around nine to 10 feet, just judging by where his
face was.
And the fact that it was five foot, you know, five ish foot down and you know, a good two
foot berm, you know, these are big berms.
So that right there, I was freaked out and I'm not going to lie to you, I did not sleep
a wink for like the next three days.
Nothing happened.
What year was it?
This was when I was probably 22 or 23.
So what's it now?
2024.
Yeah, it was probably like 2018 around that.
2017.
Yeah.
See, because the dog man comes out on the seventh year.
Oh, there's a not wrong.
I was I lived in Wexford County.
I was living in Wexford County, dude.
Wexford County was when he was first saw and oh my God, dude, it was right next to a fucking
swamp.
Yeah, he's been seen in Wexford County, New Agua County, Muskegon County.
What's one of the big rapids then?
Macosta?
Yeah.
Dude, that's crazy that you said that because if anybody knows the Walton Junction area,
Walton Junction used to be an old railroad area that was pretty big back in the day before
the ship burned down.
Well, they used to have a cranberry bog behind and it was like a little lake.
And to the right is a big marsh and bog area.
And that is crazy that you mentioned that because connecting the dots, obviously, dog
man is I don't know.
I don't know.
I'm kind of got me really thinking here for a second because everything connecting to
that being in Wexford County, the swamp, the eyes and the height dog man is around that
same height too.
So yeah.
But hey, on that note, Gavin, on that note, Gavin, we are at our 30 minutes and we are
going to have to make a longer episode about this.
Yes.
All right.
Thanks, everybody.
Thanks for listening on our Cryptid episode and we will see you later.