Bigfoot Hunters Found Something in McDowell County. Then a Man in a Fur Suit Came Forward.

On a Friday night in August 2017, seven Bigfoot hunters were scattered through the woods of McDowell County, looking for a creature most people don't believe exists. They had deployed glow sticks among the trees, hoping to attract its attention. Around 11 p.m., one of the little lights seemed to disappear, then reappear. There were noises coming out of the darkness. Someone heard a whistle.

Then, according to the man leading the expedition, something enormous stepped into the moonlight.

John E. Bruner of Marion turned on his headlamp. He said he saw a towering, hair-covered animal walking on two legs. He followed it into the woods, saw it a second time by a broken tree, and came back convinced he had seen Bigfoot.

That's already a pretty good North Carolina story. But it got a whole lot stranger a few days later, when a visitor from Minnesota came forward with an explanation nobody could have anticipated.

He said he had been walking around those same mountains wearing a homemade suit made from roughly thirty raccoon pelts.

The group was called Bigfoot 911, a Marion-based organization that had spent years collecting reports and exploring areas around the Pisgah National Forest. On Friday, August 4, 2017, Bruner and other members set out on what they described as a research expedition in McDowell County.

By Bruner's account, the researchers divided into three teams and positioned glow sticks along wooded routes. When another team approached his position, they began hearing something moving nearby, a few steps at a time. He said he heard a whistle, then watched a glow stick about thirty yards away disappear briefly behind a passing form.

He turned on his headlamp and saw what he described as a large, bipedal, shaggy-haired creature. It immediately stepped off into the woods. Bruner ran after it, stopped to listen, then swung his light around. He claimed the figure was now standing roughly thirty yards to his right, with one hand resting on a tree broken about nine feet above the ground.

The face, he said, was solid black and hairless. The body was muscular, and its shaggy hair hung in strings. It turned, descended a slope, and disappeared. As the group left, Bruner said, rocks were thrown toward them from the darkness.

Blue Ridge Outdoors, Spectrum News, ABC affiliates and the Charlotte Observer reported the story within days. Spectrum News preserved the details of Bruner's original Facebook account, while Blue Ridge Outdoors also published his description.

This photograph was supplied by Bigfoot 911 to news outlets covering the encounter. Contemporary coverage identified it as showing the wooded area where the group claimed the figure appeared. We have put the source image directly in this article rather than making readers open another website.

Bigfoot 911 photograph of the reported research area, published in 2017 by WIS/WYFF. The image shows woodland—not an identifiable creature, footprint, or physical trace. Source image reproduced here for commentary on the reported sighting; copyright belongs to the original owner.

It's worth looking at this one for what it actually shows: branches, undergrowth, and a dark forest floor. The setting is authentic to the original news coverage, but it offers no way to identify the alleged animal. The researchers did not publish a photograph or video of the supposed Bigfoot during that encounter.

On August 10, news outlets reported that Gawain MacGregor, a man visiting from Minnesota, had been in the McDowell County mountains that same Friday night. He said he'd been wearing a costume of real animal skins while conducting a private spiritual practice.

MacGregor described himself as a practitioner of Enkiduism, a personal belief system inspired by Enkidu, the powerful wild man in the ancient Epic of Gilgamesh. In his own telling, he wasn't playing a prank on Bigfoot hunters or trying to frighten anybody. He was performing a ritual that involved wearing animal skins and walking alone through the woods.

He said he remembered hearing noises and seeing lights. He was startled, turned around, and went back to his camp. Only later, after seeing news of the supposed Sasquatch encounter, did he wonder whether the two parties had encountered each other. He told reporters he'd contacted police to explain himself.

His claim was remarkable, but we should be precise: MacGregor offered himself as a possible explanation for the encounter. His account did not independently establish that Bruner had seen him. We have not found a police incident report, a shared GPS track, or another record that conclusively puts the two men face to face at the same spot.

Unlike the alleged creature, the fur suit really was photographed. The image below, published during the 2017 news coverage, shows the kind of full-body clothing MacGregor said he wore in the woods. The suit is made of raccoon fur. He later told interviewer Jessie Schiewe it had taken about a year to make and used approximately thirty pelts.

Archival photograph of Gawain MacGregor wearing his animal-skin outfit, credited to MacGregor's Enkiduism material and reproduced in the Evening Standard's August 2017 coverage. Important: this photograph was taken in snowy woods and is not a photograph from the August 4 McDowell County encounter. Copyright belongs to the original photographer/rightsholder.

Looking at the photograph, it's not hard to understand why a human figure covered entirely in fur could create an extraordinary impression from a distance, especially in the dark. The outfit covers the face and hands, too. But the photograph isn't an exact reconstruction of what Bruner says he saw: it was taken at another time, in a different setting.

MacGregor also said his practice was meaningful to him. We can take that explanation seriously without having to share his beliefs—and without assuming he set out to deceive anyone.

Bruner did not accept MacGregor's account. In a response preserved by the National Cryptid Society in August 2017, he pointed to three differences.

First, size and fur: Bruner said the figure he saw was approximately eight feet tall, with long, stringy, matted hair. MacGregor's photographed outfit appeared shorter and its fur more closely cropped.

Second, movement: Bruner said the figure moved down the slope at a speed he didn't think a person could match.

Third, the face: He remembered a flat-nosed, hairless black face. MacGregor's photographed outfit had a furry mask with a pronounced snout.

These are specific objections, not simply an insistence that Bigfoot must be real. But the differences also depend on what Bruner could reliably judge while pursuing a moving figure through dark woods, by headlamp and moonlight.

And MacGregor's own account has limits. Even if he was in the same general mountain area, the published stories do not establish that he passed the same glow stick, encountered the same team, or was beside the broken tree that Bruner described.

So the question remains open: Did a group of Bigfoot hunters mistake a person in animal skins for a creature—or did two different events happen that night? The available record cannot settle it.

By the time the story reached South Carolina, the Greenville Police Department had joined the conversation. On Tuesday, August 8, 2017, the department posted a deliberately funny but sensible warning on Facebook: don't shoot at anything you think might be Bigfoot. You might be shooting a person in a costume.

The timing is worth noting. The police post came before MacGregor's involvement became public on August 10. It was a response to the North Carolina sighting coverage and another circulating Bigfoot video—not a police confirmation that MacGregor had been the figure Bruner saw.

The warning made national news on its own. And beneath the joke was a real point: nobody should be firing a weapon at a silhouette in the woods, no matter how confident they are that they just found Sasquatch.

The original warning is documented in WYFF's August 9 report and WBTV's contemporary account.

There's a later development many quick retellings miss. In an extended interview published in 2019, MacGregor spoke with journalist Jessie Schiewe about his practice and that trip to North Carolina. He said he had been traveling with his family around the Southeast, and that he'd gone off alone from their camping area to perform his ritual in a less-crowded part of the woods.

He recalled becoming aware of a group of people, seeing their lights, and leaving without an interaction. He also described the fur suit in ordinary, practical terms: hot, difficult to see out of, and uncomfortable enough that he generally wore it at night or in winter.

The longer interview adds context for how someone dressed that way might end up alone on a mountain after dark. But it doesn't produce independent proof that MacGregor and Bigfoot 911 crossed paths. Read the full 2019 interview with MacGregor if you want to understand the person behind the fur-suit headlines.

A small warning for anyone reading archived coverage: that later article mistakenly says the episode occurred in August 2018. Multiple news stories published at the time establish the actual encounter date as August 4, 2017.

For all the excitement, the central claim still rests mostly on eyewitness testimony.

Documented: Bigfoot 911's contemporaneous Facebook account, republished by regional news organizations; a photograph of woodland the group identified as the research area; MacGregor's photographed animal-skin outfit; his August 2017 explanation; Bruner's public rebuttal; the Greenville police advisory; and MacGregor's later on-the-record interview.

Not documented: a photograph or recording showing the alleged animal that night, verifiable tracks from the encounter, a recovered specimen, a confirmed match of the men's positions in the forest, or an independent investigation establishing whether the two stories describe the same event.

There was a real expedition. There were real news reports. A real man really did wear a remarkable fur costume, and he said he was in the area that night. None of those facts, alone or together, scientifically verifies a North American ape—or definitively resolves Bruner's encounter.

That's what makes this such a good story. It has a witness who believed he'd seen Bigfoot, an unusual alternative explanation, a detailed rebuttal, and enough surviving reporting to let us examine both sides instead of just circulating the punch line.

Our Fall 2023 edition of Foothills Digest, Ghosties, Witches, Haints & Spirits (Issue #23), includes our original “Bigfoot” feature beginning on page 10. The real magazine spread is displayed below. Click the spread to open the issue directly at the correct page.

For more reports close to home, see our features about the 1979 Knobby excitement, Tim Peeler's 2010 call to 911, the 2011 five-second video, the two Taylorsville sightings in 2013, Rick Lunsford's cornfield account, and the 2025 Highway 64 report near Highlands.

I'd love to talk with somebody else who was actually on the Bigfoot 911 expedition that night. Was anyone besides Bruner close enough to see the figure's face or estimate its height? Was there a camera running? Were photographs taken of the broken tree or any tracks? Were the glow sticks still in place the following day?

And what about the other side? Can anyone independently confirm where MacGregor camped or walked that night?

If you were involved in the August 4, 2017 expedition—or know someone who was—we'd like to hear what you remember. Especially if you have original, dated photographs, video, messages, or records. At this point, both the sighting and the counter-explanation are interesting, but documentation from someone else who was there might finally tell us which version fits the evidence.

• Spectrum News, August 7, 2017 — Bruner's original encounter account, including the glow sticks, headlamp, tree and rocks.
• Blue Ridge Outdoors, August 8, 2017 — additional reporting from the first week.
• WIS/WYFF, August 8, 2017 — contemporary coverage carrying the Bigfoot 911 woodland photograph.
• Spectrum News, August 10, 2017 — MacGregor's alternative explanation, outfit photograph, and Bruner's dispute.
• National Cryptid Society, August 11, 2017 — a preserved three-point response from Bruner explaining why he rejected the fur-suit identification.
• WYFF, August 9, 2017 — the Greenville Police Department's August 8 warning.
• Atlas Obscura, August 11, 2017 — commentary on the competing explanations and MacGregor's beliefs.
• Jessie Schiewe's 2019 interview with Gawain MacGregor — extended firsthand explanation of the suit, the ritual and his recollection of the 2017 trip.
• Foothills Digest Issue #23, pages 10–11 — our original Bigfoot feature.

Editorial notes: This is a report about claims made in 2017, not proof that an unidentified animal exists. The costume image was taken on another occasion, in snow; the woods image contains no creature. Both historical photographs are credited to their source creators and shown for analysis of the competing claims; their reuse permissions have not been independently established. Featured Smoky Mountains photograph by Wes Hicks/Unsplash is illustrative and is not the encounter location.