Me and an out-of-state buddy of mine are also planning a trip to the Hock sometime soon.

Here are some things you should plan to take along with you:

1) an effective tick repellant. Remember, this is Lyme Disease country!

2) a strong, sturdy walking stick. Hockomock Swamp is chalk full of peat bogs, sinkholes and quicksand (yes, for real). A walking stick serves two purposes:
(a) to check the stability of questionable ground
(b) to use as leverage/something to sit on if you find your boots sinking down into the mire

3) some decent rope

Be safe – have fun!!

Deer in our area vanish when Hunting Season opens. How could they know?

The mob of crows ornamenting treetops across the pasture behind our home erupt in alarm the minute I step over the wire fence into the pasture with a long-range rifle in my hands.

They control their reaction until I walk halfway across the field when I am empty-handed, but wearing a shorter-range scope-mounted .22 Magnum Six-gun on my hip. Still, they fly.

When I am totally unarmed, I can stroll right into the trees below the crows before they even stir.

So maybe it is US radiating a combination of threat attitude and behavior that alerts the native fauna?

I notice I unconciously switched from “walk” to “stroll” in describing my approaches above ~ what if I had tried it with a rifle-shaped stick, or an empty cylinder in the handgun (but what about the 20 rounds in the belt ~ no immediate threat there, but still…).

What if I had walked across the field backwards, or in a clown outfit, accompanied by my tiny granddaughter? What if her mother came along, in a dress, carrying flowers? What if we carried a transistor radio, playing Mozart? Rock & Roll? Rap?

What is it animals (we?) can sense at that range? Mental & physical attitude? Metal? Electronic radiation? Quantum belligerence? Cosmic intent?

And how can we effectively deal with it? What kind of expedition would it be without any conceiveably threatening gear at all?

They also seem to be capable of broadcasting a super-low (or perhaps super-high, or some combination or harmonic?) frequency blast which creates “instant fear” in some (not all) nearby creatures!

So who knows what frequencies or sounds or smells or other sensory signals they can detect ~ and even simple batteries radiate!

That leaves us with manual film cameras, windup watches, matches and candles, paper maps, whispers and whistles…and rocks!

But when you realize that most S’quatch encounters are witnessed by totally unprepared folks who have almost no hi-tech gear on them, maybe that ain’t so bad. Probably wouldn’t get to use it, anyway!

The first thing to realise is that you SMELL.

Don’t wear clothing with any kind of scent. Don’t use scented soap. Don’t use any kind of deodorant or lotion/aftershave.

Bigfoot can smell you a mile away.

I have an extensive theoretical plan drawn up, based on my own excursions in search of the Thylacine & mystery big cats down here in Australia. I also worked as a hunter for CALM for some years. The best thing you can do is clad yourself in unworked hides or skins, if you want to get close to your cryptid quarry. I’m telling you that even a kangaroo can smell your Brut & the chemicals in your acrylic-cotton shirts from a kilometer away. A creature adapted to stealth & avoidance, more so.

Don’t take anything but the barest essentials. Even extensive electronic equipment may be a no-no, as we don’t know what kind of EM fields they give off or whether animals are sensitive to these. Any wireless or transmitting device is giving off not only EM radiation in a quite significant amount, but is making *noise* at subsonic & ultrasonic frequencies that humans, particularly older humans, cannot hear.