Georgia's Famous Bigfoot Print

Sometime around 1994, Pike County Sheriff's Deputy, James Akin, was called to the scene of a Bigfoot disturbance at a residence on Elkins Creek in Pike County, not far from Griffin, Georgia. The resident who reported the attack was a frequent caller to the Sheriff's department, having had several occurrences in the last few years. It seemed that the attacks generally happened at night. The man reported that whatever animal was doing this would slam its fist against the side of his mobile home, steal dog food from his dog pen, kill his dogs occassionally, leave prints in the dirt, and could even be heard breathing and grunting just outside the walls of the trailer, almost as if it were standing next to the trailer on the outside. Several times, the man would walk through his trailer to get a better look at what was going on, and he said that he could hear the creature walking on the outside of the trailer in a fashion that seemed to indicate he could hear the man walking inside and was following his path.
On the occassion where Deputy Akin was called to the scene, the man had reported that some time during the night, the animal came in to the yard, ripped the door off the corn shed and stole corn, dog food, and other things from the shed. At such time, the old man showed Deputy Akin the footprints of the animal causing the mischief. To do this, they had to walk a piece down to the banks of Elkins Creek, which was behind the man's residence. There were a few prints in the creek itself, while there was one print on the bank of the creek, one that was quite large and made Deputy Akin cringe. The print clearly did not belong to a bear, human, deer, cow, or dog. In fact, the print was much larger than anything he had ever seen. It measured over 17 inches in length. Akin made a plaster cast of the print.
Several years later, Steve Hyde, a friend of Akin, had been doing some research on Bigfoot and when told of this incident by Akin, he mentioned that it would be a good idea to send the cast to Dr. Grover Krantz, who was at that time a professor of anthropology at Washington State University. He was also one of the most famous Bigfoot researchers in the world. Before it was all said and done, the cast was examined by Krantz, Dr. Jeff Meldrum at Idaho State University, and fingerprint expert Jimmy Chilcutt of Texas. All three were astonished, theorizing that the print was real, and that it was obviously from a creature matching the description of Sasquatch. Indeed Dr. Meldrum reported to the author of this blog just a few months ago that it was one of only six or seven prints in the United States that could help definitively prove the creature is real and does live in North America. According to others, it is the largest authenticated print on record in North America, possibly indicating that the creatures that live in Georgia are as big or bigger than their counterparts in the Pacific Northwest. The print is back in the hands of James Akin, who is now part of the Southeastern Skunk Ape Research Center.