Hello and welcome to Missing Persons Mysteries!
For many people getting lost or turned around while
out in the wilderness is scary and nerve-wracking
but for the most part, it’s also quite understandable.
More often than not these tourists eventually
find their way or are found not much longer
after they originally became lost, no harm no foul.
However, it’s something else altogether when someone
who is very experienced in the woods; hunters for example
vanish without a trace because they are well prepared
for most anything and usually know the woods
they’re in like the back of their hands or know
how to survive in the woods in general.
When hunters disappear for any reason
but especially when it happens under bizarre
or suspicious circumstances it’s even more confusing
and perhaps frightening for not only those
involved but for the average person too.
There’s something really scary about the thought
of these very experienced and
well equipped men and women
out there in the wild being confused or seeming to
simply vanish without rhyme,
reason or a single trace left behind.
There are so many instances
of experienced hunters going missing
under these circumstances
that it makes us scratch our heads
and wonder what in the world is going on
out there in the wilderness areas of the world?
Today we bring you some more cases
of experienced hunters who disappeared
and whose cases make no sense.
At Number 1 we have:
David Peltier
On the first morning of firearm
deer season in rural Minnesota,
David Peltier and three other men went
out into the woods of Nemadji State Forest
to have a good time and hunt for buck.
David was a lifelong outdoorsman and experienced hunter
and he was excited about the first day of the season.
It was Saturday, November 3, 2018
and the group had decided to hunt
along the Gandy Dancer Trail
near Belden which is approximately
120 miles north of St. Paul,
just near the border of Wisconsin.
The men were staying in a cabin which belonged to
John Warner who was a member of the hunting party
and the person who left the cabin
with David on that fateful day.
The two men decided to go their separate ways,
with David heading to walk
along the edge of a pond nearby
and John walking up higher on the bluff.
The men were hoping to find
some deer drinking from the pond
and the plan was for David to flush them out,
sending them running off near to where John
was waiting and then John would shoot them.
David, however, was never seen again.
John must have thought he
had decided to go off on his own
and it wasn’t until the next day,
when David still hadn’t shown up back at the cabin
that John and their ther friend reported him as missing.
When he hadn’t shown up for lunch the day before
his friends had assumed he was simply
off tracking and stalking a deer or buck.
The weather was miserable with rain and snow falling
and the temperature dropping
to 21 degrees Fahrenheit.
The men searched by themselves for a little while
but soon after took the half
hour drive into town to call 911.
The 911 call was made at exactly 11:24
in the morning on Sunday, November 4th.
A handful of officers from
the Pine County Sheriff’s Office
and the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources
arrived and searched on foot and by ATV until dark.
No sign of David was found though and the next day
friends and family members
came to help search the massive
Namadji State Forest which contains a whopping
93,000 acres spreading through
Carlton and Pine counties.
David’s son, also named David Peltier,
explained that the snow and rain didn’t help
the already perilous
terrain and severely hindered
all of the search efforts.
Made up of trees,
swamps and bogs,
the searchers were
already in harm’s way
yet continued to search
anyway in the hopes of
finding at the very least
some sign of where David
could have gone or what became of him.
David Jr said of it all;
“You have to see it to believe it.
It’s just one giant bog.
There’s some high ground in there,
but not very much.
It’s so thick. It’s so easy
to get turned around.
We had a group of 12
of us in a search party,
and we thought we were
walking west and then
we stopped and looked at the compass,
and we were going southeast.
They typically find lost people within a
half-mile of their last known location,
but I think he’s a lot further
away than they think.
He was physically fit,
and I think he covered a lot of ground.”
He believes it’s possible that his father,
who was familiar with the
cabin and surrounding areas
and had just visited there the previous year,
might have become so wet and cold
that he also became hypothermic,
which causes disorientation
and sometimes, death.
He didn’t have a lighter,
a backpack or any supplies
with him aside from his
hunting rifle and he certainly
wasn’t dressed for the inclement weather.
When he disappeared,
David Peltier was wearing a
red sweatshirt, camouflage pants,
an orange stocking hat and
a blaze orange vest.
It’s obvious to all who knew
him that he didn’t expect
to go off on his own, at least
not for any length of time.
After all, he was an expert
outdoors-man and hunted
all the time for deer and duck on his own
100 acre farm in Lake Elmo.
His daughter, Katie Nelson
said of the whole ordeal;
“It’s just like this big feeling of emptiness.
We have no idea what happened.
We have no idea where he ended up.
Every time we walked out of that forest,
I just felt like we were leaving him behind.
It was awful.
It’s really important that we recover him
because he’s just out there.
He’s still out there.”
His daughter Megan DeCorsey
also had some things to say
about what could have possibly
happened to her father,
saying of the search effort;
“If a hunter is in distress,
they’ll shoot three shots into the air.
They were waiting to hear anything like that,
which they did not.
They stayed up all night waiting for him.”
The authorities obtained
David’s cellphone records
and saw that he had attempted
to make three calls to
his hunting party on
November 3rd at 1:40pm.
Though no more calls
were ever attempted,
the records also showed
that his phone didn’t die
until 5:40 the next morning.
The Pine County Sheriff’s Office
headed up a multi-agency
search and rescue effort that
included over 100 volunteers
but on November 9th, 5 days
after he was reported as missing
and 6 days since he had actually
disappeared, the investigators
called the search off,
promising to follow up on any
and all new leads that are
brought to their attention.
Though there is no official
search effort being conducted,
the investigation into what
could have happened to David Peltier
is still open and his family
and friends have never stopped searching.
His daughter Katie stated; “We know he’s there;
we just can’t find him.
He’s just there by himself.
Nobody would ever want
that for somebody they love.”
What happened to David Peltier?
How could he have gotten
turned around so quickly;
one moment walking to a
fairly nearby pond to
stir up some deer to never
being seen again?
Once more we have a case
where there is no evidence
of foul play or an animal
attack yet also no sign
of the person who is missing
or anything else either.
Could he have gotten hypothermia
and in turn became confused and passed away?
Sure, anything is possible
but where was he that he was hypothermic
and far enough away not to even accidentally wander
back to the cabin he was so familiar with?
Why hadn’t anyone heard him call for help
and why were no shots fired in the air?
While hypothermia seems to
be the leading theory of family and friends
it still doesn’t explain HOW it
could have happened and this one is
yet another mysterious disappearance
of a perfectly healthy and extremely
experienced hunter who has gone
missing without a trace in a
densely wooded area, never to
be seen or heard from again.
Next up we have: Bart Schleyer
Bart Schleyer was a skilled
wildlife biologist who had worked on
The Grizzly Bear Recovery Project in
Yellowstone National Park in the 1980s.
He had gone to Siberia to lend a hand with
tiger conservation in his lifetime as well.
Not only was he familiar with being in
the woods for long stretches of time,
he was also familiar with and
knowledgeable of all kinds of wildlife
and had been to and hunted in some of
the most unwelcoming and inhospitable
woodlands throughout the world.
So in 2004 when Bart decided he wanted
to go on a hunting trip in the remote
Yukon back country of Canada,
his loved ones didn’t think anything of it.
After all, Bart had been on hiking
expeditions all over the world.
Somewhat ironically, for all of
the work he did to help maintain
and preserve wildlife areas and
the wildlife in them, he also loved to hunt.
He was an avid and enthusiastic hunter
and an experienced outdoorsman.
In September 2004 Bart headed
to the Reid Lakes of the
Yukon Territory in Canada where
he planned to be dropped off
by a chartered float plane and
then spend two weeks hunting moose,
then being picked back
up again by the chartered plane.
Having done this sort of
thing many times before,
Bart was excited about
the trip and didn’t mind at all
that he would be alone for so long,
so far from any other sort of civilization.
He brought along crates
filled with food and other
supplies and neither he
nor anyone who he told about
his plans had even a modicum of concern.
However, when the two
weeks had passed the chartered
float plane arrived at its destination in order to
pick Bart up only to find that he wasn’t there.
In fact, there was no sign of him at all.
The float plane operators
immediately contacted the RCMP
and a search effort was launched right away.
It didn’t take long for
SAR to find his abandoned camp
where there were signs
that he had cooked some meals
but it seemed odd how much
of his food and supplies were leftover.
It was thought there should have been much less
leftover for someone who
had spent two whole weeks
out there in the middle of nowhere.
It wasn’t exactly like he could just take a run
down to the grocery store after all.
Strangely enough too,
once the inflatable boat
Bart was dropped off
with was found, seemingly
abandoned about a half a mile
down river from his camp,
the RCMP concluded he had hiked
off to the nearest highway
and would soon show back up.
Obviously his family and friends
had a problem with this theory
and two of them, men named
Dib Williams and Wayne Curry
flew out to the scene having
decided to conduct their own
investigation into what could have
possibly happened to their friend.
Once they arrived at the abandoned camp,
the two friends immediately found it
odd that a lot of the equipment
Bart would have needed to survive
or at the very least keep
himself safe had he planned on traveling
even a short distance was also still there.
Important things like bear spray, a VHF radio
and backpack had been left behind
along with the large amount of food.
They made their way down to
where the inflatable boat
was found and saw what they considered
to be a makeshift hunting stand.
It was a seat atop a bag of gear
with a bow leaning against a tree.
None of this was extremely alarming,
not by itself anyway but what the friends
found next made them even more fearful
as to what could
have happened to Bart
and instantly red flags
were raised in their heads.
There, on the ground near
the makeshift stand was a
bloodied facemask with strands
of bloody hair stuck to it.
They radioed the authorities
and informed them of their discoveries.
The RCMP waited for the
worsening weather to clear up
and then went right back out
to the scene to further conduct
their investigation into the
strange disappearance of Bart Schleyer.
As they meticulously searched the area,
much more thoroughly this time,
they saw scattered clothing
and fragments of bone in the
immediate area to
where the mask was found.
They also saw wolf and bear tracks.
The bone fragments would later
be identified as Bart Schleyer.
Due to not only the tracks but also
the amount of feces in the area
from both animals, it was assumed that the
missing man had simply
been attacked by a bear.
However, there was evidence
to the contrary in the form
of there being no sign of a struggle
and the makeshift seat being undisturbed.
There was no blood splatter anywhere,
the bone fragments hadn’t been gnawed at all
and even the clothing scattered about the area
didn’t have a drop of blood on it.
Also, is it really likely that hungry,
wild animals would leave such a massive food source
such as the crates left behind by
Bart completely undisturbed?
Some speculated that perhaps
he had been attacked and dragged off
quickly but that too was an
unlikely scenario considering Bart
was an expert woodsman and
even the very soft moss covering
the entire area was completely undisturbed.
Had a whole human being
been quickly dragged anywhere,
at the very least the moss would have
shown some sign of it
having happened that way.
Later on, when Bart’s skull was found,
it showed no sign of an attack either.
There were no puncture wounds
on it and no bite marks either.
Because there was so much
evidence to the contrary
of him having been attacked
it was finally concluded that most
likely he hadn't been but that the animals
had come afterwards, for his remains.
How then did he die in the first place?
Bart’s friends and family insist he
was in peak physical condition,
and excellent health so the idea that he
could’ve had some sort of medical emergency,
like a heart attack seemed
unreasonable to them.
The authorities are adamant there was
no evidence of foul play anywhere in,
near or around the scene so it’s also
highly unlikely he was murdered.
Unfortunately it’s impossible to know
what really happened to Bart Schleyer
back in those woods in 2004 and his death
will most likely remain an unsolved mystery.
And our last case is that of:
Robert “Bugsy” Springfield
In September of 2004 Robert Springfield
was with his 13 year old son Colton,
and his adopted son Brent Brooks hunting elk
in the Big Horn Mountains of
southeastern Montana.
Robert was an avid hunter and a member
of the Crow Nation Indian Reservation.
The three of them were having a good time,
and on September 19th they decided to
visit a place called Black Canyon,
which was land owned by the tribe.
It was still daytime when
they finally settled on a spot
where they would all meet
back up later on in the afternoon.
They were going off to
hunt solo for a little while
and see if they could catch anything.
All three were very familiar with the land itself
and expert outdoors-men in general,
splitting up for a while was
nothing out of the ordinary,
and the three of them
went on their way with
their meeting spot and
time having been decided.
When Robert’s children
got back to the meeting
spot they quickly noticed
he wasn’t there yet,
even though it was past
the agreed upon time.
They decided to give
him a little longer
before panicking or
alerting the authorities.
After all this was all
very normal and there
seemed to be nothing
to worry about- at first.
However, after a few more hours had
gone by with no sign of their father,
they called the authorities
and reported him as missing.
Tracker dogs and helicopters
using infrared cameras were brought in -
in addition to the Big Horn County Sheriff’s office,
and the Bureau of Indian
Affairs to help search for Robert.
They searched on horseback and on foot as well
but it seems as though it was all for nothing
as no trace of him could be found.
A little over a year later, in October of 2005,
a group of Native hunters in the same
area where Robert went missing
noticed a crow squawking incessantly
and otherwise causing a ruckus in a tree.
The crow was causing such a disturbance
it very quickly became clear to the hunters
that something strange was going on
and so they decided to go and
see what all the fuss was about.
The men were in for the macabre
shock of their lives when they noticed,
right underneath the
tree the crow was squawking,
a human skull sitting on
top of a pile of other bones,
and even more bones scattered throughout
the general vicinity of where they were standing.
To make the scene even more
bizarre was a perfectly neat,
rolled up belt lying just next to the bone pile.
Two boots standing perfectly
straight up next to each other,
a wallet almost overflowing with cash
and a men's coat in perfect condition
except for a small tear were also a part
of this bizarre and somewhat ghastly scene.
Of course the authorities were called in
and the remains were immediately
thought to be those of
Robert “Bugsy” Springfield.
The objects were said to belong to him as well,
but no cause of death could be determined
and his bow and arrows were never found.
The investigators came up with a theory that
perhaps a tree fell on top of
him and he perished that way.
However it was quite
obvious to all involved that the
evidence didn’t support this at all.
There was no blood,
no sign of a struggle and the
whole scene just looked odd.
His family and friends believe it’s possible that
the ex-marine and special forces member
was possibly kidnapped and murdered with
his body being disposed of where it was
eventually found later on.
Though there were no obvious signs of foul play,
Robert’s wife Veronica stated;
“If he was actually up there in that area,
to put it bluntly,
we would have smelled something,
the animals would have been there.
The birds would have been there."
Finally the FBI sent the found remains to
Quantico, Virginia for proper DNA testing
and two years later the results were finally in.
The remains found indeed
belonged to Robert “Bugsy” Springfield.
His sister, Myra Gros Ventre
said of the whole ordeal;
from her brother going missing to the macabre
scene found in the woods a year later,
and then having to wait all that
time just to identify and bury him,
“We went to hell.”
When the death certificate was released
to the family in November of 2007,
it had the cause of death listed as “undetermined.”
To even further the family’s theory
that Robert was taken elsewhere,
murdered and then disposed of where
his bones and belongings were later found,
when they were given back
his social security card and driver’s license,
neither one was weathered in the slightest.
The family takes this to mean there is no
possible way these things could have been
exposed to the elements for any length of time,
let alone more than a full year.
There is no tangible evidence, leads,
or factual information to suggest that Robert
was murdered or anything
else having happened to him.
The mystery of what befell
Robert Springfield remains unsolved.
Well, what do you think about these cases?
Please let us know in the comments down below.
But given the nature of our content,
please keep it friendly and respectful!
I'm your host Bob,
and I will see you in our next video!
What do you guys think about
these cases of hunters who vanished?
Please let us know in the comments down below!
But given the nature of our content,
please keep it friendly and respectful!
I'm your host Bob and I will see you in our next video!