Bigfoot or big misunderstanding?
WEST BEND - A 39-year-old Menasha man has found himself in the middle of Washington County "wildman of the wilderness" fever. Steven Krueger doesn’t know where all this Bigfoot talk came from, but he will not be sorry to see it stop.
"I hope it just goes away. It’s starting to get irritating," Krueger said. "I never once said it was a Bigfoot or yeti."
The sheriff’s department report bears that out, only mentioning a creature "approximately 7 feet tall, very black, and very wide."
After some kind of creature startled Krueger early Thursday morning while he was working at his Department of Natural Resources-contracted job, he deliberated reporting it because he knew there would be skeptics.
Krueger finally decided he should alert the sheriff’s department in case it was a bear or other dangerous animal. Krueger said he used to hunt black bears, which is what this animal looked like.
Except for the ears.
"They were sort of pointy - not exactly like a wolf, but definitely not rounded like a black bear," Krueger said.
The DNR contracts and specially licenses Krueger to remove deer carcasses in Washington, Ozaukee, Fond du Lac, Brown, northern Manitowoc and northern Waupaca counties.
"Washington County faxes me every morning and gives me a complete list and exact location of where the deer are, and I make a run," Krueger told the Daily News in May.
At around 1 a.m. Thursday morning, he stopped to pick up a small doe on Highway 167, about a third of a mile east of Station Way Road in the town of Erin. He put the deer in the bed of the truck and sat in the cab, filling out the necessary paperwork. He left the gate down, because he still had to tag the deer.
Krueger felt the truck rock and thought it was the wind, but when it rocked again he checked his mirror to see - in the light of his truck-mounted spotlight - an animal reaching for the doe with its front paws. He said he was startled, so he slammed the truck into drive and peeled off.
The deer was dragged - or fell - off the truck, along with an all-terrain vehicle ramp. Krueger couldn’t be sure exactly what he saw.
"A black Lab(rador retriever) could’ve jumped in the back of the bed and it would’ve startled me because I wasn’t expecting it," Krueger said.
Krueger said Milwaukee television stations had contacted him trying to push the Bigfoot angle. He said kept the discussion away from that direction but they ran the story anyway. He’s asked for a correction.
The attention had the area abuzz with the idea of a southeastern Wisconsin sasquatch.
"That’s the word we were bombarded with," said Bill Mitchell, the county’s DNR conservation warden. "We were working this morning and everywhere we went people wanted to know about it."
With hunting season coming up, folks joked with Mitchell about licensing: Would it require a big game or a small game license, or would an archery license work? Read on...
