Genuinely terrifying encounter on the Bodmin Moor - help identifying what this was

I need to write this down because it's still bothering me and I can't explain it to anyone without sounding mad. This was August 2023, around dusk, I was hiking near Rough Tor on the Bodmin Moor with my partner Sarah.

We saw something moving through the gorse that was... wrong. Not a deer, not a dog, not anything I can confidently name. It was large - bigger than a dog, smaller than a horse - with this peculiar gait. Four-legged but the movement was jerky, almost mechanical. And the colour - it looked like the light was being absorbed into its coat rather than reflected. Sarah described it as 'like looking at a moving shadow with weight.'

It didn't acknowledge us at all. Just moved through the scrub and disappeared over a ridge. The whole encounter lasted maybe 20 seconds. Neither of us felt threatened exactly, but we both felt this weird pull to not follow it. Like our brains were actively telling us it was a bad idea.

I've looked at every cryptid database and animal reference I can find. Nothing matches. The Bodmin Beast is usually described as more cat-like, and this was definitely four-legged and bulky. I'm not even sure what I'm asking, just... does anyone recognise this description?

Could easily be a wild boar or a big dog that's gone feral. Bodmin's got wild animal populations. The 'light absorption' thing is probably just low light and your brain doing what brains do - making sense of incomplete visual information by filling in details.

The 'jerky movement' and 'mechanical gait' descriptions are interesting. That's not how living animals typically move unless they're injured or very distressed. Did it seem hurt or distressed?

Like looking at a moving shadow with weight

This is either really vivid memory or you're describing a genuine perceptual experience that your brain couldn't quite categorise. The fact that you both felt the same 'don't follow it' instinct is worth noting - animals do give off pheromones and body language that we unconsciously read. Could mean it was something that your threat-detection was reading as dangerous even if your conscious mind didn't recognise it.

Bodmin Moor gets studied by cryptozoologists fairly regularly. Have you contacted the British Bigfoot Research Organisation or similar? They take witness statements and might have other reports from that area that match.

Honestly, this sounds like you saw a large ungulate (deer or similar) in poor light conditions and your perception did the rest. Not dismissing your experience - that's genuinely what happens to our brains. Low light, unfamiliar movement patterns, adrenaline - our visual cortex goes into 'threat assessment' mode and we remember details that were probably more normal than we think.