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We spend a lot of time on land most people never walk, private acres in Central Florida where the woods do most of the talking and we mostly just listen. This is Florida Skunk Ape country, and it doesn’t ask to be believed.
On one walk, in that particular late-afternoon light that turns everything gold and a little unreal, we found a deer foot. Just the foot. Cut clean, resting in the grass like something had left it there on purpose. We didn’t linger on it. Predators do this. So does time.
But standing there, swatting at mosquitoes and half-listening to something moving through the palmetto a few yards off, we thought about a story that’s been part of Florida for longer than most people realize.
Reports of something moving through the swamps and scrub go back to the 1970s. They call it the Skunk Ape. The name comes from the smell, which is said to arrive before the creature does. Accounts differ on the details, height, color, exact shape, but the basics repeat across decades of reports: a large, upright animal, moving through terrain few people bother to enter.
Searching for Skunk Ape: Florida’s Bigfoot on Prime Video spent time with people who’ve made these same reports, following their search for evidence and walking through decades of the same accounts we just described.
One photograph gets circulated more than any other. It’s not clear. It’s not close. Most people who’ve seen it assumed it was a bear, or a person in costume, or nothing at all. A smaller number have never quite let it go.
We don’t know what left that deer foot behind. Most likely, nothing unusual. Florida’s woods are full of ordinary explanations for strange things. But it was quiet enough, right then, that the ordinary explanation didn’t feel like enough.
We’re not here to prove the Skunk Ape exists. We’re here because these stories are part of what this state is, and stories like this tend to disappear if nobody bothers to write them down.
Had an encounter of your own? Tell us. We’re listening.
If you decide to go looking for the Skunk Ape yourself, deep in the woods is no place to be unprepared. Consider carrying some of what we bring on every trip: What We Carry.
If you love Florida lore like we do, here’s a deep dive we found: The United States of Cryptids by J.W. Ocker. The Skunk Ape gets its own chapter, right alongside Bigfoot and the Jersey Devil.