Close encounter for New Mexico hunters

quote:

---

Bow hunters Josh Brinkley and Daniel Lucero, dressed in camouflage gear, looked a little uncomfortable sitting in chairs at a local newspaper.

The Santa Fe County residents had just come into Taos after several days in rugged terrain near Cerro de la Olla, also called Pot Mountain, northwest of town near Ute Mountain.

They had a strange tale to tell and they weren’t sure of their reception.

“We’re a couple of guys that don’t believe in much, but we believe now,” Brinkley said.

They went hunting for elk.

They encountered aliens or something else so strange they don’t know what to call it.

Brinkley, 41, said he’s been going to the Pot Mountain area hunting for 15 years. He had never seen anything particularly odd.

He said he works construction and on movie sets. He’s a family guy who doesn’t want anyone to think he’s crazy.

He and Lucero have worked together for eight years.

They say they aren’t prone to seeing things and didn’t particularly believe in aliens.

---

quote:

---

Opening morning of bow hunting season was Sunday (Sept. 1). The two men had gone a couple of days early to scout the area for elk. Lucero, 26, had never been there.

They set up along the tree line on different sides of a field and waited. After three hours and no elk, Brinkley became restless. It was about 9:30 a.m.

“I take off walking, creeping around through the woods, looking for elk,” Brinkley said.

He reached the top of the mountain where there’s a caldera, a kind of wide bowl left behind by a collapsed volcano. He went to the edge on the southwest side. As he walked to the edge he noticed two figures on his side of the caldera. He thought at first they were hunters. But, they were “very tall shapes of these beings, standing side by side, staring right at me,” he said.

He walked toward them across the brushy field. He estimates they were about 35 yards away. As a bow hunter, where measuring distance is critical to hitting a target, he said he’s pretty adept at it. He went around the bush and looked again. The figures were gone.

He looked around and didn't see them. “Figured I would talk to them. They were gone, just gone,” Brinkley said.

He thought more about what he had seen: With their lower half concealed by bushes in the caldera, he had only seen them from the waist up. "The shape that would be like their heads, it looked like they had huge hoods on. It looked like two ribbons coming off either side to a point at the top and bottom (like a banana). The right side was black, left side was white and a little shiny. Torsos were kind of black, I couldn’t see many details. It definitely looked like clothes. In middle of the oval was just gray.”

He thought maybe it was the back of hunters' heads. “But it looked too strange, too crazy.”

Later, he drew what he could remember of them in a leather bound sketchbook he carries with him. And he drew what he saw next.

---