The Sierra Kills: Justin Smeja's claim to have shot two Bigfoots

Justin Smeja was not looking for a monster. "I was bear hunting. Not squatch hunting," he said later. A friend, never named, drove the truck. Their story first surfaced anonymously on Taxidermy.net: "If You Saw Bigfoot, Would You Shoot It?" Derek Randles of the Olympic Project then interviewed both hunters. "I completely believe him," Randles said.

October 8, 2010. About 5 p.m. A dirt road in the northern Sierra Nevada, somewhere near Gold Lake. In a small meadow beside the road, a large figure stood on two legs with its arms above its head. Completely covered in hair. "Best way I can describe it is it looked like a person in a suit," Smeja said. "It had its arms in the air and was waving them, almost like, 'Don't shoot, don't shoot!'"

It took 8 to 10 steps toward the truck. The driver, watching through binoculars, shouted: "Don't shoot! It's not a bear. Do not shoot." Smeja fired from between 80 and 100 yards. The driver saw "dust shoot off the side" and "waves in the side of the body." The figure fell. Then it got straight back up and ran, on two legs, then four, until it was gone.

Two smaller figures came out of the brush. About 3 ft tall. "Adult-sized head on a kid-sized body," Smeja said. "Human eyes, but it had the snout of a boxer, and the lips of an ape." They moved on two legs and four, chattering. "Wawwa Wo!" One climbed an outcrop above Smeja. He fired again. It fell and rolled down to him. The hunters hid the small body in the brush and left.

About five weeks later, under two to three feet of snow, Smeja returned with a researcher's party. Where the adult had fallen they recovered flesh, fat and "white gray hair with some black in it." It became the Bigfoot steak. Part went to Melba Ketchum, a Texas veterinary geneticist.

Then came the laboratories. Bart Cutino and Tyler Higgins sent skin to Bradley White. The result, revealed on 26 December 2012: black bear, Ursus americanus, with some contamination by Justin. In 2013 Bryan Sykes tested Smeja's boot for Channel 4's Bigfoot Files. No blood. What remained was bear. Jeff Meldrum reportedly found a sample inconsistent with a primate.

Ketchum's own study, published in 2013, claimed Sasquatch was a human hybrid. Critics called it contaminated human DNA. Whether the Sierra sample was part of it remains unclear.

In 2012 Smeja told Ro Sahebi a version in which he had wanted to shoot a small one. Randles cut ties: "Please send the cameras back, you are officially out of the Olympic Project." Depending on the interview, MonsterTalk noted, Smeja "either shot the animals, strangled one, or cradled a dying juvenile face-to-face before it expired in his arms." On 10 Million Dollar Bigfoot Bounty in 2014 he claimed feral human DNA. Todd Disotell replied: "If Justin killed a feral human, he actually killed a human, and he's committed murder."

Smeja reportedly passed a polygraph. Sceptics dismissed it, and pointed to every lab result and to a simpler picture: a black bear sow with two cubs. The driver's own first thought had been "a person in a bear suit."

October 2017. Sierra County charged Smeja with felony perjury and bear tag violations. The charges concerned deer and bear tags, not Bigfoot. No outcome has been found. The small body was never recovered. The story lives on in Dead Bigfoot: A True Story and, in 2025, Bigfoot: Mountains of Mystery.