Longtabber,
In regards to your first "maybe" sighting:
1. Am I correct in assuming that "SC" stands for "South Carolina?" If so, I'm not so sure about your comment about the chance of the thing being a bear was remote (but, granted, you did say that bears did irregularly come into the area). I plugged ""south carolina" +bears coastal" into Google and
found a few pages that seem to say (I've only skimmed them) that bears are more common in that area than one might think. However, I will note that a lot of the focus on these pages seems to be bears/encounters in recent times.
2. You mentioned that one of the details that kept you from fully accepting the idea that you encountered a bear were the side-by-side ice holes.
This is a trackway consisting of bear prints overlaid enough to show how a quadrupedal animal's tracks can seem like those of a bipedal animal, but not overlaid enough to give the impression of a Bigfoot trackway. Is this anything like what you saw that day?
I won't touch the thickness issue since I don't know the thickness of the ice or how much a bear would have to weigh in order to make holes in it.
3. Your comments about the noise you heard are very interesting. It's been ages since I've listened to any of these, but
here are some bear vocalization links I've gathered up.
Here are
some elk and
deer-
related links, in case you're interested.
With the obvious exception of the zoo, were any of the bears in those cases being shot at or spooked by gun shots?
As for the second "maybe" encounter:
1. Were you (and any other witnesses) "level" (I hope I'm using the right term) with the moving object you saw? I ask because I recall that the subject of the Redwoods Bigfoot video was originally estimated to be over 8 feet tall, only for someone recreating the filming conditions in an RV found that the "Bigfoot" was actually much shorter than it appeared. If at all possible, I would like to see whether or not if a similar scenario occurred during your sighting.
2. You mentioned that the object was acting "animal like" and cited its pulling up of grass clumps as an example of this. You also opined that this would not be the behavior of a drunk person. I did a little Googling and did find
an anecdotal claim (yeah, yeah...I know...) of someone doing that (the third listing from the top of the page). They were on their hands and knees, but they were still pulling up grass. Although it's far from being proof of drunken people doing that sort of thing, I thought it was at least worth noting.
3. You mentioned:
What if someone who was there with you was in on it and reported it back to the lead prankster sometime later?
4. This has nothing to do with whether or not Bigfoot was involved; I'm just curious about something: Why was no action taken if an unidentified person was spotted wandering around a military range? I know little to nothing about military protocol, but that would seem to be the sort of thing to arouse attention. Is there something I'm missing here?
I hope none of these come off as being rude or anything like that. I'm just curious and trying to see if I help you figure out what you saw.