High intelligence? You gotta be kidding me. This guy makes anything else in North America look, well, distinctly in need of a degree. (Including, sometimes, us.) This is why I don’t consider the lack of photo evidence or hunter kills or road kills to be convincing. Not only can we not be sure those things haven’t happened, with an attendant shovel-and-shut-up; the putative intelligence of the animal (combined of course with what I think we can presume is its rarity) is, to me, good reason to presume that if it has happened it sure is a rare occurrence.

Guess my point is that this guy doesn’t need, in my opinion, any special – as in, fourth-dimensional or telepathic – abilities to avoid science. All he needs is science’s refusal to seriously look, combined with the extreme smarts, omnivory and readiness to move, far and fast, to generally avoid enough of the rest of us to keep science comfortably ignorant.

As I’ve pointed out elsewhere, First Nations people had seen, by the time of first European settlement, far more wildlife than Europeans ever will. So they’ve observed the full range of animals’ behavior. Shoot, if the sas is a four-dimension telepath I’ll be the first to eat my hat. (Horseradish sauce.) It’s just that science isn’t in a place to document that yet.

The big guy – as I actually said above – may just be feeling us out, seeing if we’re ready for that talk.

Smart? Oh hell yeah. Culture, jet planes, automobiles, etc? So where are those, you ask? Hey, like I said. He’s SMART. Maybe he thought about it, and Just Said No.

Gotta have an open mind on these things.

If, instead, they’re staying away, well, somebody needs to tell me what other species of unknown animal is out there. Maybe the ivorybill is getting tired of our failure to find him.

I’ve said it before on other threads. These animals – anecdotally – remind me of bighorn sheep: extreme aversion to close contact with humans, combined with an insatiable curiosity about us that can’t help but get the better of them sometimes. Reading TBRC reports, their teams have considerable contact (unfortunately none of it conducive to photography, yet) with something that sure doesn’t seem like anything else in Texas.

I’ve also mentioned those (Bobbie Short a prominent one) who say that expeditions like TBRC’s are a waste of time. Well, they sure don’t read like a waste to me. Again, I bring up George Schaller and Jane Goodall. Given what they say about sas and yeti just from what they’ve read…what do you think they’d say if they’d been near those backpacks on that right-of-way?

As Alton Higgins pointed out in his after-action, people who aren’t there can chalk much of this alleged contact up to anticipation and nerves, and reading stuff in that isn’t there. Well, yeah. But they weren’t there.

I can’t bring myself to call this kind of work harrassment. I think of it as more an effort to make contact, and give the animal room to decline. (I don’t believe any sas would let you get within 30 feet at night if it didn’t want to be there. And I also have to say I would have flooded that big shadow with a white light, and that not doing so took restraint that might pay dividends later.) Now darting and collaring…well, for all it’s taught us, you don’t have to twist my arm to get me to think that crosses a line. We should be trying to do it differently, and the technology is there to do it differently.

What I like about TBRC is that they’re trying to start a conversation. Maybe with an animal that, with all the reason we give it for caution, might be hoping we’re ready for one.

“Sorry to take the minority view here, but an intelligent (and how can we say otherwise) quarry that can detect humans at a distance will never be detected because they will never venture into range.”

Well, according to TBRC’s report, if what they saw on the last night was a bigfoot, it definitely had ventured “into range.” CLOSE range. Those two guys said it was about 10-15 yards away (30-45 feet). Man, THAT is close. It sounds like this thing may have been confused as to what exactly was taking place out there. Those guys were playing all kinds of strange primate sounds, and maybe its curiosity nearly got the better of it.

I don’t think the TBRC cared that it detected them. I think their point was just to try to get it in a scenario where it could be filmed or photographed. It sounds like they may have had that opportunity for perhaps 5 – 10 seconds, and for whatever reason were unable to capitalize on it.

mystery_man said:

“Sure, people come across Bigfoot without staying out in the field for days, but these are typically chance occurrences and these encounters typically happen to those that are not equipped or mentally prepared for what they see.”

Mystery_man, NOBODY can be prepared mentally for an encounter with these things! They’re not supposed to exist!

It sounds to me that these were not “chance” occurrences, but may have been somewhat facilitated by TBRC’s persistence and methods, IF that’s what they encountered (although there has to be a measure of chance or luck involved); it sounds like it IS what they encountered to me, not just this time, but the last time they were in the area.

I think it comes down to time and finances, just like DWA said in the quotes above. I agree with DWA that TBRC, if properly funded and supported, could hit paydirt over a period of time. Maybe with their new non-profit status, that funding could be in the future. Who knows? Let’s keep our fingers crossed.

I have met some pilots at a local airport that fly helicopters for logging and they say they see Sasquatch all the time. As hearsay I am told this is borne out by Sherriff’s Department and Border Patrol pilots.The creatures seem to regard helicopters as a non-threatening, though interesting phenomena. This may be the way to go. I really think that we will discover these creatures in some unusual way. As an example, a bear recently was reported by a spooked homeowner in North Vancouver. The bear was sitting (I am not making this up!) at the kitchen counter, eating a berry pie and a pound of butter. The homeowner tried to shoo it away, but the bear wouldn’t go before finishing. A week later a bear walks into a nearby Safeway and makes his way toward the bakery. True story! I expect that is a more likely scenario than actually tracking down one of these creatures in the bush.