Your True
Tales
October 2003 –
Story
of the Month
Chupacabras Encounter
by Gus
The sighting took place in September, 2003 about eight miles SSE of Arivaca, Arizona in the Cerro Colorado Mountains, about 15-16 miles north of the Mexico/U.S. border. Arivaca is between Tucson and Nogales, Arizona.
The Cerro Colorado Mountains are a moderate size desert range rising out of the desert to a height of about 2,000 feet above the floor. There are plenty of animals there, including bighorn sheep, deer, javalina, coyotes, fox, bobcats, mountain lions and numerous small game. Water is abundant as this is mostly the high desert.
It was about 30 minutes after sundown; twilight would go for an hour or more. I had finished an afternoon scouting for deer as the hunting season opens the first week of November. I was on horseback about 1.5 miles from camp up in the rocks when I found a dead bighorn sheep lamb. The thing looked like it had been killed within the hour. There was a nasty-looking bloody hole in its throat just above the chest area. It appeared that the predator had eaten the heart and blood, nothing else. There was some blood on the ground but not as much as I would have thought for that type of wound. This is not the way the cats in Arizona kill and eat.
I looked around and picked up the trail of a three- possibly four-toed animal with each toe about the length of my finger with a claw or nail on the end of each one. I had never seen a track like that in all the years I've spent in the wild. I remounted and followed the tracks across the face of the mountain then down a draw. Looking down, I saw the thing about 50 feet below me headed down hill; I followed it. After a bit, it knew the horse was there and turned to face it, then saw me and moved more rapidly down hill, but it couldn't out run the horse. (I've hunted mountain lions on this horse so she's used to the hunt.)
Its stride was about 1.5 feet walking upright and 5-8 feet when moving on three or four limbs and possibly 15-20 when making a funny hop. It had a funny gait, almost a lope, but little jumps and sometimes bounds were involved. It only looked back at me three times that I saw. It finally got down to a steep rocky area that is full of cracks, crevasses and holes between the boulders. In the thing went. I circled around to the other side in hopes of picking its trail back up, but it had disappeared in the rocks. In all, I had it in sight for about 10 minutes and covered about 1/2 of a mile.
The thing looked like a cross between the Creature from the Black Lagoon and a rhesus monkey. It moved on both two, three and four legs/arms. It stood about 3.5-4 feet tall when standing and weighed, I would guess, about 50-60 lbs. It had large lemur-like eyes, brown skin, possibly fine fur, a large bald or hairless head, enlarged buttocks, and thick hind limbs. When I say it looked like a cross between the Creature from the Black Lagoon, it's because of the protrusions along its back. Not spikes because they were flexible and they moved as it ran - almost like four folding hand fans opening and closing along the pleats. It had claws or long gray nails on at least three of the digits on the left front and rear. It had more of a snout than a nose. I didn't see any teeth. It had a dead meat smell, but not rotten meat, no doubt because it had just fed.
I returned to the lamb the next morning and it was still there. Now that is truly unnatural as the area has lots of coyotes, fox, bobcats, mountain lions and badgers. All are carrion and meat eaters and none had even gotten close to the kill. I watched with binoculars later as the buzzards found and begin eating it. I went to the boulders, but could find no further evidence of the thing. I have seen a lot in my day; I've even been followed by a jaguar. I've lived most of my life outside the city in the Arizona Desert and have never seen anything alive or dead that slightly resembles the thing I followed.
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