Comments on: Marysville Track

By: mystery_man

mystery_man — Wed, 07 Mar 2007 16:28:17 +0000

arbigfoot hunter, please don’t let the debunking or sneering get you down. On this site, it is usually due to people not wanting to get sucked into a hoax, or they are trying to approach things with skepticism in order to make this a more legitimate, scientific field of study. It may get carried away sometimes, but remember even mainstream scientists will debunk each others theories. This is not always a bad thing, it merely requires that your evidence be of good quality and it sets a standard to be followed. I personally have nothing against skepticism at all, in fact I am a skeptic myself albeit an open minded one. From that viewpoint, I don’t think you should let it burst your bubble at all. If something is debunked or proven to be a hoax, that is good for everyone involved and keeps the pool of evidence clean. Comments here that try to look at the skeptical side of things here should not be causing you frustration, but making you think about what constitutes acceptable evidence. I think of these sorts of posts as a learning experience. As far as the people laughing at you at work, they are just close minded scoffers and you should not let those people interfere in your will to find the truth at all. As DWA said, keep your chin up and keep on doing what you do with the search. There is nothing out there that I see yet that says Bigfoot cannot exist.

By: DWA

DWA — Tue, 06 Mar 2007 21:32:15 +0000

arbigfoothunter: some people get so frustrated about this that they start faking evidence.

Don’t get THAT frustrated.
“I can’t wait for a new month to pop up to read the latest.” YOU TOO? I might need to start a support group! But no kidding: somebody needs to tell me what these folks are seeing. (I would LOVE to hear some of these “debunkings” people give you.) Too many of these accounts can’t be anything BUT what they say they saw. So they’re lying…or there are some really good drugs out there….or….

I think your “friends” really ARE afraid they might see something.

Too many folks think the “skeptics” (I prefer to call them “denialists”) just need to sit there waiting for the sas to be found. I disagree. They need to explain the (apparently) preposterous thesis that all of this is lie, hoax or misinterpretation.

ALL OF IT?

You have something bigger than Bigfoot if so.

By: arbigfoothunter

arbigfoothunter — Tue, 06 Mar 2007 21:15:26 +0000

Thanks DWA for your words of confidence. I guess that is what I need from time to time, because I DO get frustrated about this subject often. I spend 80% of my free time reading sightings from two of the top Bigfoot websites, and actually I can’t wait for a new month to pop up to read the latest. But it just seems to me that when an exciting report comes up, the majority of people are there to debunk it. I guess I may be exaggerating a bit though, eh? Once again, DWA, thanks for addressing this and I am very open to suggestions and new ideas or revamped old ones.
In closing, I work in a small supermarket with about 15 employees. Whenever I mention anything about Bigfoot, sightings in Arkansas, my personal research, etc., I get sneered at, laughed at, and criticized pretty badly. It seems strange though how these so called friends at work laugh at this subject, but when I ask them to go out with me some evening to ride around in some known “hot spots”, they simply refuse–like they are afraid they really may see something.

By: DWA

DWA — Tue, 06 Mar 2007 16:36:10 +0000

arbigfoothunter: I think you have this precisely backwards.

I have the score: proponents, tons and tons and tons. Skeptics, like two or three. Don’t know if it’s halftime or not, but the skeptics better be nothin’ but net from now on to have a ghost of a shot of catching up. And that simply isn’t gonna happen.

I can guess the ratio of hoaxes to tracks that may be the real thing. It’s (and this is a rough guess) like 0.02%.

You wouldn’t want all the buckets in your backyard that would be necessary to hold all the good - or inconclusive, which is really the same thing - evidence. (Actually you might. You’d never need to - or be able to - mow the lawn again.) The clearly hoaxed stuff? You could fit that comfortably in a corner of your basement where you’d never have to look at it again.

THIS IS WHY WE’RE STILL TALKING ABOUT THIS! How often does Nessie show up, even on this site? Perzackly. I’m not putting too many shekels on Nessie. But I think of the sas the same way I think of a real animal.

Why? The evidence makes it look real to me.

If you’re really a bigfoot hunter you need to do some stuff, pal:

1. Keep hunting.

2. Do you read sighting reports? Somebody has to come up with a good, rational scenario for what all those people are seeing. The only rational one I have heard? Real animal, unclassified by science. (If you think “man in ape suit” is rational, you haven’t read sighting reports. If you think “lying” is rational, you haven’t read sighting reports. If you think “known animal, misidentified” I can say, with confidence: not a chance.)

3. Have you really done a mental tote-up of how many trackways there are, then compared it to the list of known, probable or quite-likely fakes? (That’s where my 0.02% comes from. Eyeball guess. But hey.)

4. The Patterson film shows a real animal. I become more and more convinced of this by the day. In 40 years, no one has either (a) debunked it or (b) come up with a rational scenario for how it could have been done. Until I see this, there’s yer ape, right there, on film.

5. KEEP YOUR CHIN UP! You’re doing God’s (or the universe’s ;-)) work here, man! He’s out there. FIND him!

First two rounds will be on me.

Hey, I need to step in here now and then to buck you guys up. Ben and Biscardi are NOT where the chips sit in this game.

By: arbigfoothunter

arbigfoothunter — Tue, 06 Mar 2007 15:25:50 +0000

Another story I was very interested in and excited about when I first watched the news video. The “finders” did seem pretty honest about the tracks. After reading all the comments here, though, my bubble kind of bursted again. Can anyone guess what the ratio might be between all of the hoaxed prints and the few we consider to be “genuine”? When I stop to think about the last 20 years or so of my interest in the Bigfoot phenomenon, the little bit of evidence we have collected isn’t enough to fill a small bucket, compared to the barrels and barrels of known hoaxes and bogus pictures and prints. I don’t know, but I am beginning to wonder…

By: DWA

DWA — Tue, 06 Mar 2007 14:09:10 +0000

Shumway 10973: I think we can rule out bear.

Claw marks show in bear tracks (at least they’d show in these), the print isn’t that long compared to wide, and the toes show nothing like that. It would much more likely be an anomalous sas print than an anomalous bear print, I’d think.

I’ve heard it said that private timberlands might be more sas country than old-growth or unitformly mature reserves. There’s much supporting that view.

By: shumway10973

shumway10973 — Tue, 06 Mar 2007 07:58:54 +0000

I think it is either a fake or it belongs to a bear. Look at the toes, they are almost square. The only thing that doesn’t say bear is the lack of claw marks. Besides, why wouldn’t someone using a measure tape in the photo not open to the full length of the footprint? All that is saying is that the footprint is longer than 9″. Doen’t look right to me at all. Besides, living just south of there I really don’t see enough wooded areas to support something of that size. At least the supposed reports coming from West Point (I think it has been a couple years now) makes more sense. I know West Point. It lies at the base of mountains, most owned by BLM and Southern Pacific Industries. There is lots of land mostly undesturbed. Marysville is rather large and encroaching into some beautiful habitat of animals that can survive near town.

By: 12inchPianist

12inchPianist — Mon, 05 Mar 2007 05:35:57 +0000

Good point about following tracks, Rillo777. I’ve found myself following tracks in the woods for different reasons. To see drama unfold in a chase between rabbit tracks and Fox tracks, or to find the mystery animal that made the funny looking print. Only a few times have I specifically NOT followed tracks. There were the little deer tracks followed by the big bear tracks that I had no interest in seeing the end of.

In the case of bigfoot, do people not follow the tracks because they aren’t there, or because they don’t want to meet a bigfoot? In the former, it would seem illogical that there would not be further sign, but I’m just an amateur so what would I know.

Anyway, this track is not high on my list of believable tracks. Number one reason, the toes are all small and uniform in size. Name one other animal with toes the same length and then we’ll talk.

By: Rillo777

Rillo777 — Mon, 05 Mar 2007 01:55:07 +0000

Joppa brings up a very good point. Where do these tracks lead? Where do they come from? Where do they start and end? Is it only a few tracks or many? What were the ground conditions like where they were found? Can we follow the beastie to its lair?
I know I’ve tracked animals to the point that the tracks disappear into a woods. Sometimes there is damage to the brush where they entered, sometimes not. Sometimes the tracks disappear but with some dilligent searching another set of tracks can be found. Rather than just take pictures of the tracks how about trying to follow them? I’m sure some people have but I seldom read about it. It seems more that those who find them are so focused on the footprint that little searching is done beyond that.
Something the size and weight of Bigfoot should leave more than just a few footprints in one spot I would think.

By: joppa

joppa — Mon, 05 Mar 2007 01:01:29 +0000

Which came first, the bigfoot or the track?

I’m with DWA, tracks are not in of themselves useful except to follow the beastie to its lair. Sure, I can follow a snowshoe rabbit track, but there’s a known critter I can bag at the end of the trail.

So we create a database of “tracks”, discard what we know is fake and we still have a bunch of mystery prints, from which I can fashion a better fake.