Comments on: Siberian Footprint Photos

By: norman-uk

norman-uk — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 21:27:56 +0000

These footprints may be genuine but clearly only have anecdotal significance without the full story. I guess the use of the blow lamp is to try to reveal more detail in what looks like mud or was when the print was made. The rather thin snow might have come later.

The prints are reported as being 2 meters apart, if they were a running reindeer I wonder if the prints would look like this? They seem a bit large even for a reindeer.

If I may mention Igor, don’t give up on khwit and zana’s DNA. I would take with a pinch of salt the negative result you received. My reading is that a lot depends on interpretation and where there are preconceptions then the interpretation may be skewed. Best wishes.

By: Igor Bourtsev

Igor Bourtsev — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 19:56:05 +0000

Now after having seen the photo ot the prints I recalled on one occasion of ours with Dmitri Bayanov’s research. Several years ago we visited one village near Moscow invited there by one “eyewitness” of a wildman, and stayed in his (the eyewitness’) house. He showed us the line of footprints, which have the same look as these shown here in this post. We followed those footprints for a while until l realized that those were of elk footprints.

An elk puts his hind leg onto the print of its fore leg or just behind it, thus the combined print on the snow looks like one long print and you can imagine that it is a big man’s footprint. I suppose this case is a similar one.

It was a confusing time then: at that time we finally came to the conclusion that that the “eyewitness” was just a crazy, a mentally ill person, because he told us later that an “American spy medical nurse in the clinic wanted to kill him with a poisoned syringe”. Immediately after his saying this, we took our bags and left that man’s house for Moscow.

Nevertheless, there are no elks in that region of Salekhard (where the posted prints were found). But there are many reindeers there and they leave similar footprints.

By: RyanWinters86

RyanWinters86 — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 19:36:17 +0000

HMMMM….They look fake to me.

By: cliffhanger042002

cliffhanger042002 — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 18:44:15 +0000

Yep Shumway, everyone carries a 1 dollar bill or something similar around to drop next to the photo for reference and scale. A good investigator would carry a yardstick or standard ruler, etc. and would have that shown in every footprint photo taken. Procedures people, mind the procedures!!!

By: shumway10973

shumway10973 — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 17:01:05 +0000

One more thing…When photographing something like a footprint, you are suppose to set some sort of measuring device next to the footprint. That last photo makes the print look like something a giant would produce. The pic with the person close by helps to get an idea of size, but it’s not exacting.

By: sschaper

sschaper — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 16:26:57 +0000

In the first picture, the lower right track appears to be two super-imposed tracks. The second image could easily be of a human boot track, with chunks of that wet snow falling off as the foot lifted up created those ‘toe prints’ in front. I’m very familiar with that kind of snow.

I think this so far qualifies as “chaff” rather than “wheat”.

By: jkeiche

jkeiche — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 10:21:35 +0000

Wow! And they only used the blow torch to clarify/enlarge/contrive/manufacture/propagate the tracks a little bit!