STATE FILE · MT
Cryptids of Montana
What cryptids are in Montana? The best-known are Shunka Warak’in, Flathead Lake Monster and Bigfoot.
Montana’s cryptid lore is written across enormous country: the glacier-carved peaks of the northern Rockies, the deep cold water of Flathead Lake, and the river valleys of the southwest where ranchers once guarded herds against wolves. Its two signature legends both come from that frontier landscape – a wolflike animal that nobody could quite identify, and a lake creature reported from the decks of early steamboats.
Cryptids reported in Montana
Shunka Warak’in
Madison Valley, southwestern Montana
A hyena-like wolf shot in Montana’s Madison Valley in 1886, whose mounted body – the “Ringdocus” – now draws visitors to a small museum in Ennis.
REGIONAL LEGEND
LAKE & SEA MONSTER · 1889
Flathead Lake Monster
Flathead Lake, northwestern Montana
An eel-like giant said to swim in Flathead Lake, the West’s largest natural freshwater lake, reported since a steamboat sighting in 1889.
REGIONAL LEGEND
HOMINID · 1958
Bigfoot
Pacific Northwest forests, reported across North America
North America’s most famous cryptid: a huge, hairy, upright ape-like being reported from the Pacific Northwest to Florida since the 1958 “Bigfoot” tracks.
WIDELY REPORTEDThe legends of Montana
The first is the shunka warak’in, a name drawn from Plains Indigenous tradition for a dog-like predator said to carry off camp dogs. In Montana it is tied to a strange canine said to have been shot in the Madison Valley in the 1880s, then mounted by a taxidermist and displayed for decades as a curiosity. The mount resurfaced in an Idaho museum’s storage and returned to Montana in 2007, where the Madison Valley History Museum in Ennis now exhibits it. Many zoologists think it is simply an unusual wolf or wolf–dog hybrid, a question only DNA testing could settle.
Flathead Lake, the largest natural freshwater lake by surface area west of the Mississippi in the lower 48 states, has its own monster, usually described as a dark, serpentine or eel-like animal. Reports are said to stretch back to the late 1800s, and Polson and other lakeside towns treat the creature with affection. Skeptics point to large white sturgeon, swimming deer or elk, logs and boat wakes. Bigfoot reports also come from the Bitterroot, Kootenai and Lolo forests of western Montana, where hunters and hikers swap stories of tracks and night-time knocks.
Hotspots
Displays the mounted wolflike animal linked to the shunka warak’in legend.
The huge glacial lake where a serpentine monster has been reported since the steamboat era.
Lakeside town at Flathead Lake’s southern end, a base for monster-watching from shore or boat.
Remote, heavily timbered country that produces most of western Montana’s Bigfoot reports.
Sightings timeline
- 1886Hutchins shoots the creature Shunka Warak’in
Settler Israel Ammon Hutchins shot a dark, hyena-like animal that had been chasing his geese and, it was said, harassing local livestock. The body went to taxidermist Joseph Sherwood at Henrys Lake, Idaho.
- 1889The steamboat <em>U.S. Grant</em> Flathead Lake Monster
Captain James C. Kerr and roughly 100 passengers reported a whale-like object in the water ahead. A passenger shot at it with a rifle, and it plunged out of sight.
- April 24, 1948“The Weird Wolf of Henry’s Lake” Shunka Warak’in
A feature on Sherwood’s mount called the animal a “Guyasticutus,” one of several joke names attached to the specimen in its roadside-museum years.
- July 1953“Like a big boat” Flathead Lake Monster
Mrs. Robert Olson told the Daily Inter Lake she had seen a huge creature in the lake that looked like a large boat.
- May 28, 1955The 181-pound sturgeon Flathead Lake Monster
During a prize contest run by Polson businessmen, C. Leslie Griffith landed a 7½-foot white sturgeon. It is displayed in Polson, though experts believe it was not native to the lake.
- 1977The “Ringdocus” in print Shunka Warak’in
Hutchins’s grandson published a photo of the mount and the family story in a natural-history book, the only published image for many years after the specimen disappeared from view.
- 1993The peak year Flathead Lake Monster
Laney Hanzel logged 13 reports in a single year, including two sightings 16 miles apart within 25 minutes of each other.
- 2007The mount comes home Shunka Warak’in
Jack Kirby found the specimen in the Idaho Museum of Natural History in Pocatello, which lent it to the Madison Valley History Museum, where it went on display.
- 2017A toddler’s rescuer Flathead Lake Monster
According to a widely retold local story (some versions place it decades earlier), a three-year-old boy who fell into the lake told his mother the monster had lifted him out.
- May 16, 2018The Denton “mystery canine” Shunka Warak’in
A rancher shot an odd-looking canine with short legs, large ears and short teeth, and social media linked it to the Shunka Warak’in. DNA tests by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, announced in June 2018, showed it was a two- or three-year-old female gray wolf.
Latest from Montana
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Videos
ARCHIVE.ORG3:07
Patterson–Gimlin film (unedited)
Roger Patterson and Bob GimlinThe original 1967 Bluff Creek footage – the most famous and most debated minute in Bigfoot history. Marked public domain on archive.org.
ARCHIVE.ORG4:59
The Film That Made Bigfoot A Star
Oregon Public BroadcastingOPB’s short documentary on how the Patterson–Gimlin film turned a regional legend into a global icon – and the hoax claims around it.
▶ VIDEO
Sts’ailes Sasquatch Days in Harrison Hot Springs
Tourism Harrison River ValleyShows the festival celebrating the Sts’ailes people’s Sásq’ets, the being behind the word “Sasquatch” (no archive.org equivalent).
ARCHIVE.ORG1:05:49
Western Heritage Center – High Noon: Cryptozoology
C7TV / Western Heritage CenterA Billings museum talk by community historian Lauren Hunley on Montana monsters, including the Flathead Lake Monster.