That being said, I am not one to sit around and talk. I believe in doing. So, two of my friends and I just returned from a 6 day fishing trip to Snelgrove Lake in Ontario where we spent 5 nights at the infamous cabin. We decided to actually get off our butts and do our own investigation. Here are our thoughts:
1. Monsterquest is a TV show and as such, they must sell a product. So, we went up there to fish and test their claims.
2. We could not find any visible evidence on the nails, but we did find where the Monsterquest scientists drew the footprint on the board. To be fair, the board was out in the rain for many months by the time we got to it…so there is no way anything would be left on those nails. They were completely rusted. FYI, there are 400,000 lakes in Ontario and that makes for some strange weather patterns. It rains a lot and the winds constantly shift as High and Low pressure systems jostle about.
3. We read through the two journals in the cabin dating back to 1994. We could not find any entries referring to anything like a Sasquatch. In the TV show they mentioned that they found an entry. We could not find that entry. I am not saying that the show made it up….all I am saying is that if the entry they referred to is in the journals…we must have missed it.
4. Our wood knocking did not draw in a Sasquatch. Up there it is deathly quiet at night when there is no wind. There are no crickets or tree frogs or other such creatures that normally make noise at night. When it is calm, you can hear a pin drop. It is freaky quiet. The sun goes down very late and the moon comes out for about 3 hours and then sets across the horizon roughly N. When it is dark…it is very dark….REALLY DARK. We made enough noise during our trip that anything out there could have heard us for many miles. When you yell, the echo goes on and on. At night we heard nothing other than the occasional loon and wolves. Although one night my friend and I both heard something about 20 yards off towards the wood shed that sounded like something was stalking us. I cannot explain the sensation….but he felt it too…and my friend is quite the pragmatist and non-believer. My gut is that it was a cougar…but we didn’t stay outside to find out…and I have nothing to substantiate my gut feelings. Whatever it was, it scared us enough that we didn’t want to find out.
5. We set up game cams about 50 yards behind the cabin…in the woods where the Monsterquest crew said something had thrown rocks at them. We caught nothing on our game cams. In fact, we saw very little animal life up there…a moose and her calf, a seagull attacking a bald eagle, some otters, some frogs, some loons and the fish we caught. In fact, we thought it was incredibly weird that we did not see any squirrels or rabbits or chipmunks. And we definitely didn’t see an grouse. But we know that grouse is up there.
6. Many journal entries in the cabin mentioned the fact that Black Bears had broken in the cabin while the campers were out on the lake fishing. We made sure to always clean up after cooking and to bring in all pots, plates, etc. to wash after we were finished cooking. We also dumped all grease inside and made sure to keep all foodstuff trash inside as well to minimize unexpected encounters with wild animals.
7. There are wolves, coyotes, black bear, caribou, moose and cougar up in that part of the country. Nevermind Sasquatch, there are plenty of things that go bump in the night that, if you walk outside at 3am to relieve yourself, you do not want to find face to face unexpectedly. It is DARK up there at night. I do not think most people realize how incredibly dark it is up there. It is very hard to see without the use of a flashlight, and even then, it is really dark outside the light’s range…even moreso when your eyes have been exposed to white light. And because it is so incredibly quiet…any sound gets your imagination going.
8. Our cooking, especially our morning ritual of cooking bacon on the propane grill-pan, could easily have brought in bear, cougar, wolves or coyotes…and maybe even a Sasquatch. Fortunately, we never found any evidence of anything except for one nerf football sized and shaped dookie behind the outhouse, outback towards the woods. We think that either a Moose or Caribou left that one. But if it did so at night…we never heard it.
9. The woods up there are dangerous…period. It is mostly compost made from the fallen pines, covered by moss and fungus. The Moss is thick and spongy and we tested out walking about 200 yards from the cabin out back. My one friend, who is very athletic, slipped and fell in the daytime. They are the kind of woods where you will disappear, especially at night.
10. If the crew from Monsterquest are telling the truth and something was throwing rocks at them from the woods…all I can say is that I know for certain that it could not be another human being. NO WAY IN HELL COULD IT BE ANOTHER HUMAN BEING. The lake is roughly 200 miles from the nearest town. The only way in is via float plane. The woods are thick, hard to maneuver and there are animals that can cause harm. For someone to try to play a prank on the Monsterquest team, they would have had to have been camping out for days prior to the Monsterquest team’s arrival. NO FREAKING WAY. This is not the sort of place where you are going to risk getting hurt just to play a prank on someone. It is dangerous up there and you are on your own. If something were to happen, all you have is your First Aid kit and a Satellite phone. And they aren’t coming to get you until the sun comes up…because you cannot land the plane on the lake at night….it is full of granite rocks jutting up in many places. The whole area is littered with granite boulders.
11. We could not explain the rock throwing. The cabin has metal sheeting on the sides and roof and a rock thrown against it will go “bang” very loudly. The reason the Monsterquest team was cowering (as one poster put it) is because when you are the only humans around for 200 miles, and you are stuck on a lake where the only place you can walk-about is roughly 1/2 an acre…and you are on a pennisula of sorts with woods behind you and the lake in front of you…and your only way of getting out of there is to get in the boats, launch them and go out on the lake in the pitch black……you start to worry a little bit. It makes you get in touch with that primitive man who used to sit around fires in the caves while the big nasties circled the campfire. When you have to get up at 3am to take a leak, and you are by yourself and you use your peripheral vision to look outside before you walk out there…knowing full-well that there is that slight possibility that there is a cougar or bear hanging about….you relieve yourself quickly. If the Monsterquest crew is telling the truth…then take that base fear and amplify it ten-fold as a result of something throwing rocks at you, when you know that nothing in the woods can throw rocks. And then take that thought to the next level that even if you don’t think it is a Sasquatch….then that’s probably even worse….it could be some crazy guy out there messing with you. And if some human is out there throwing rocks…then he must be a truly insane person to be out in THOSE WOODS AT NIGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE THROWING ROCKS AT YOUR CABIN. THAT’S SOME SCARY STUFF AND THERE ISN’T A PERSON ALIVE WHOSE HAIR WOULDN’T TURN WHITE. There is no 911, not a soul to call for help…and you DO NOT HAVE A GUN.
12. We believe that the animal that broke into the cabin on the Monsterquest show was a black bear. In the journals, there are too many references to black bears breaking into the cabin for us to conclude otherwise. It has happened time and again, and I find it interesting that Monsterquest did not make mention of these entries. The reason for the boards with nails is to prevent the bears from getting in.
13. Monsterquest returned to the cabin a week after we left…so it will be interesting to see what they come up with this time. Who knows, maybe all of our efforts will pay off for them, but we did not find any evidence of Sasquatch…unfortunately. But, we did have a nice time fishing and relaxing in one of the most beautiful, albeit, remote locations in North America. I recommend it to anyone who needs time to get away from it all….but just remember, someone may be watching you…at least that’s what it says on the refrigerator underneath the Sasquatch photo.
14. We cannot explain what could have thrown rocks at the crew…but I can understand why they were so incredibly fearful. Only an insane person would trek a vast expanse of a wilderness to play a prank. And, one more thing, there was one reference in the journal that mentioned that some campers had heard gun shots and wrote in the journal something like, “Heard gunshots, who else is up here with us?!!!” Maybe there is a group of psychos living up there? Who knows….

hat bothers me is certain parts of this show. Choosing to waste air time on the mohawked DNA expert from NYU (who MonsterQuest went back to twice!) who came up with zilch versus the physical evidence of the destroyed interior of the cabin. I think if we all are going to believe that #1. Bigfoot/Sasquatch exists or there is a very real possibility of it’s existence, then I also believe that the majority of us also believe that it’s a relatively intelligent being, much more so than, say a black bear.

So why is it that the exterior of the cabin wasn’t damaged at all and the interior was? At least it wasn’t mentioned that the exterior was damaged. It sure didn’t appear that the exterior sustained any real damage vs. the interior. To me, the interior damage all points to a black bear. I live in Colorado and have all my life and I have seen first hand what a black bear can do to a cabin. Yes, most bears are in hibernation from October to March but that doesn’t mean that they all stay in hibernation. I’ve witnessed black bears pilfering cabins and trash cans in the middle of December/January, and the damage looked very much like the interior of the cabin at Snel Grove. Just because the insulation of the refrigerator wasn’t messed with does not mean this wasn’t a black bear. In my experience, a hungry black bear generally couldn’t care less about the workings of a fridge vs. what the hell is in it,  especially if it is starving and is looking for real food! Bears have a sense of smell 1000 times as good as a dog and a hungry black bear in the middle of winter ain’t gonna care about some insulation, unless that is all there is to eat. A lot of black bears don’t get the sustinance they need during the fall and basically have to continue pilfering during the dead of winter. I have seen it first hand!! Now if we all are going to believe that there is a North American ape out there that is 8 feet tall and weighs upwards of 6-700 lbs, I also think that we are also going to give it superior intelligence to a black bear. If this Sasquatch in Snel Grove does not like humans or human encroachment on it’s “turf” why just destroy the interior of the cabin?!

Those 4×4 posts holding up the “patio” of the cabin would make easy targets to a (BIG) superior being enraged that humans invaded his territory every summer, or better yet, a big intelligent animal who just stepped on a bed of screws! A big, intelligent animal like, say a sasquatch would have felt extreme pain and then pure rage and would have taken it out on the exterior of the cabin as well. If it can throw rocks, then IMO it has the ability to know that if it wants to destroy the inner workings of a human dwelling it would destroy the whole damn thing!

Just my 2 cents.

I will reconsider the decision to not watch this documantary and now am curious as to its content however the nailboard method of discouraging a pest by maiming is still unacceptable in my humble opinion. There are many non-violent methods of discouragment for those who care enough to look for them. Others sadly become vengful and would rather harm the problem-causing critter.

As a certified fur-bearing mammal trapper we are taught to respect the animals to be harvested and ensure their quick and humane dispatch in traps set and to never create a trap set that would cause any undue stress and suffering to the animals. (N.B. - Even though fully licenced to trap for furs I have only live-trapped and released small mammals and mist-netted and released songbirds!)

The folks who came on the expedition for the show simply found tissue and blood traces on the nail board. They were old traces, not recent. Now, I’m not making any claims about the morality or lack thereof of using nailboards in any way. I’m just saying it wasn’t the researchers who set them out.

With all the technology and survival gear available today for any of those with sufficient resources to truly explore for evidence of sasquatch these people obviously have sufficient money but lack in moral ethics. I know that’s one of the only sasquatch documentary I will have no interest in watching!