Creature record / 1972
Winter, 1972. Trevor Silcox and another man were hunting wild pig high in the Coromandel Range on New Zealand's North Island. They were working along the top of the range. Across a gully, on a parallel ridge 150 yards away, a tall figure stood among the bushes. They took it for another hunter. They decided to walk over for a yarn. As they did, the figure moved away. Silcox later described it as a very tall, hairy animal that walked on two legs. Later versions speak of four large tracks left behind. It became one of the modern encounters with the Moehau, the hairy man of Coromandel folklore.
The creature takes its name from Mount Moehau, the 892 metre summit of the Moehau Range at the northern end of the Coromandel. Tales of the maero, hairy "wild men of the woods", run deep in New Zealand folklore. The mountain itself is called "the most sacred of the mountains of the Patupaiarehe".