RAVENNA: Tim Stover Jr. holds a 17-inch-long plaster cast of a strange impression he found in the woods at West Branch State Park in November.It was one of seven imprints that led from a creek bed up a hill, spotted by a friend several yards from where Stover discovered a deer that was untouched except for a snapped neck.There was a time the lifelong Kent resident would have been embarrassed to utter the name of the beast he thinks could have made those prints, could have killed that deer. But experience and the support of fellow believers has erased any trepidation.Bigfoot, Stover says.“You can sort of see the toes here,” he said, pointing to details in a mold made rough by forest floor debris.Stover, 45, has been stalking Bigfoot for 20 years.The moment that set him off on his quest will be explored in the Animal Planet television series Finding Bigfoot, airing at 10 p.m. Sunday.Stover was asked to re-enact the events of Oct. 6, 1992, in the spot where he was deer hunting at Salt Fork State Park.He said when he woke that day, Bigfoot was the last thing on his mind. The mythical creature was no more real to him than the Loch Ness monster or aliens from Mars.All Stover wanted to see was a deer.For six hours, he sat in a tree stand, crossbow at the ready. But even the most avid outdoorsmen have their limits, and Stover was ready to call it a day.He released the safety belt that anchored him to the tree, then heard a rustling as if the click had roused something in a ravine about 40 yards away.Hoping the elusive deer was about to make an appearance, Stover rebuckled himself and reached for his crossbow. Then he caught his breath at the sight before him.“It was a whitish, silvery-gray color, and as weird as it sounds, my first thought was it looked like a hairy old naked man of the woods,” Stover said.The thing looked in Stover’s direction, took a step or two toward him, then turned and walked away.That’s when Stover decided he had seen Bigfoot.The creature appeared to be more than 7 feet tall. Hair 2 to 3 inches long covered its body. The head was attached to broad shoulders by a thick neck. Stover said he could see the muscles working in his back as he strolled out of sight.“It lasted maybe 50 seconds, but it seemed like an eternity,” Stover said.It took Stover 20 minutes to stop shaking enough to climb out of the tree stand. He made his way to his car walking backward, eyes pinned on the ravine.“I was never so scared in my life,” he said.For the next 10 years, Stover kept his encounter to himself.What would people think of him? Bigfoot? In Ohio? And wasn’t Bigfoot supposed to be brown or black? Surely people would laugh at his whitish-gray vision.But Stover said he knows what he saw — and he wanted to see it again. He didn’t have enough gas money to make repeated trips to Salt Fork, so he started exploring the woods around Portage County.Sometimes he would tell his friends and family he was going hunting, but he would leave the crossbow in the car and carry a video camera that no one knew he had.A decade later, listening to his parents casually relate having seen a UFO in their lifetime gave him the courage to mention his own strange experience.His confidence was buoyed as he learned others had claimed to have seen Bigfoot in Ohio, including whitish-gray varieties.For several years, Stover ran an Internet radio show interviewing fellow Bigfoot hunters, an effort he hopes to restart soon.He also posts many of his documented searches on
YouTube. His channel
(tcsjrbigfoot) includes videos of the strange dead deer and an impromptu post-mortem examination.He has invested $8,000 in high-tech camera equipment, and when he’s not at his job as a remodeling contractor, he spends 30 to 40 hours a week exploring.Stover loves to share his findings. He will present at the third annual Bigfoot Festival at West Branch on May 17, and at a similar event in August at Beaver Creek State Park.Still, as Stover waits for his first television appearance to air, he emphasizes that he never sought the spotlight for himself.“I just got into this because I wanted answers for myself,” he said.And no hard feelings for anyone who doesn’t believe in Bigfoot.“You can’t force anyone to believe something they’ve never seen,” Stover said. “You have to see it for yourself.”Paula Schleis can be reached at 330-996-3741 or pschleis@thebeaconjournal.com. Follow her on Twitter at http://twitter.com/paulaschleis.