Jack Howery of Cliffield, Va., stands with his latest creation in Pounding Mill. The statue of Bigfoot, carved from a towering weeping willow tree, stands nearly 14 feet tall and weighs close to a ton.
POUNDING MILL, Va. — A huge figure has been seen in the foothills of Tazewell County, Va. He’s almost 14 feet tall and he weighs about a ton. He looks hairy, resembles an ape and his shoe size is breathtaking.
If this fellow sounds like the legendary Bigfoot, you’re right. Bigfoot now stands very tall thanks to local artist and woodcarver Jack Howery of Cliffield, Va. Howery has carved three or four other examples of Bigfoot – one family of them stands in his front yard – but the newest specimen in Pounding Mill is also the largest he has ever sculpted.
Howery led the Bluefield Daily Telegraph to the spot where the new Bigfoot now stands. Sawdust and debris left over from the tree from which the Sasquatch, another of the many names for Bigfoot, emerged was piled behind him. The statue was carved from a towering weeping willow tree that was almost reaching into the power lines high overhead. Like a real Bigfoot – the creature’s existence is widely debated – Howery’s creation stands much taller than most human beings.
Howery visited the site about eight times to carve out Bigfoot with a chainsaw and other tools. About three gallons of brown paint went into creating his fur. The family that owns the land upon which Bigfoot stands asked Howery to carve the unique statue.
“Stephanie Sizemore, she paid me to do it,” he recalled. “It (land) belongs to her daddy Bobby Matney. There’s not a finer friend that ever lived and we love him. He came to my house maybe seven or eight times with pictures and everything else, how he wanted to design him and everything. And the tree had a slight lean to it. We tried to pull him back forward a little bit, but we couldn’t get the height. That’s about the best we could end up with.”
The Bigfoot of Pounding Mill seems to be rocking back on his heels with a look of wide-eyed astonishment on his huge face. While Bigfoot is often called a monster, the statue’s anything but monstrous. Howery said Matney’s two grandchildren, who like looking for Bigfoot tracks, like the addition to the neighborhood.
“Everybody who’s seen him loves him,” Howery said with a smile. “Nobody’s had anything negative thoughts about him whatsoever.”
“I’ve done some at the Tazewell County Fair and there’s some people who have come up and said they’ve seen something,” he said. “I don’t know about that. You don’t know. It’s one of those things you just don’t know. But this would work good with Halloween and everything else. Sometime later on they might put something on his eyes that glows after dark when you shine a light on him. Really makes him look prettier.”
— Contact Greg Jordan at [email protected]
