18 Responses to “Brooding About Bigfooters”

1. Rillo777 responds: April 4th, 2007 at 11:03 am

   Just my two cents on the topic, but while I absolutely agree we need, in fact, must have scientific researchers, I wonder if bigfoot is most likely to be discovered by a seasoned hunter. It seems the academics often get bogged down on a single footprint or arguing the “man or ape” hypothesis and so forth, while a hunter would be more likely to go track the darned thing and find it. Scientists definitely have a major role here, but somebody who can go out and capture a bigfoot is what is needed. I know, maybe it sounds like an old “great white hunter” movie but I still wonder if that isn’t what it’s going to take to get the job done.

2. DWA responds: April 4th, 2007 at 11:12 am

   The way I see it, no one involved in this, not the searchers nor the media, is going to cease and desist - or even change what they’re doing much - simply because It’s The Right Thing To Do.

   Well, some might (but not enough to make a difference). And the media treatment seems to be getting better. But don’t hold your breath about the Bad Apples, or should I say, those you perceive to be.

   When it comes to The Unknown, people who are convinced that what they’re doing is right simply are. If science isn’t paying attention, that’s all the more spur to them. I think folks who posit a paranormal Bigfoot are hurting the chances for scientific involvement, as are hoaxers. I don’t even think the name Bigfoot is helping. But I don’t think any of that’s going to change. As long as doing what you’re doing brings you attention, Biscardi, and particularly buckage, you’re going to keep doing it. Dollars comoing from the naive aren’t worth any less. And as long as you are convinced you are right, or that you are making people happy, or giving them hope, or that you must continue to press the message home until the blind finally see…well, this is how we are.

   I think that what will happen - if anything does to get us off the dime on this animal - is that a person here and a person there will chip away, and produce a theory here and a sighting there and a hair and a footprint and…a scientist or two will put things together and exchange emails and…

   In other words, it’s a snowball, rolling downhill, very very slowly. And there ain’t much snow. But it’s a big hill, and sooner or later we may, some of us, live to see that snowball hit critical mass.

   But until then…the way it’s being done, all of it, is the only game in town, and we’ll have to keep picking grains of wheat out of the mountain of chaff until we’re there. If we ever get “there.”

3. silvereagle responds: April 4th, 2007 at 12:50 pm

   Currently, the shotgun approach to solving the mystery, is in effect. Most pellets will miss the indefinite target. Some quite wildly. Only a couple pellets will actually hit the bulls eye. However, the disappointed majority will vote that the pellets that in fact were accurate, did not come close so that the shooting match can continue. Even though already over with.

4. hlw responds: April 4th, 2007 at 1:11 pm

   Wow, the media coverage is getting greater? There maybe more of it but quantity never is better than quality. For every minute of serious reporting there is 10 minutes with some clown making grunting noises in his favorite swamp, or a Russian “scientist” tackling a plastic deer to show how the local bigfoot clan does it.

   Worst of all are all the people who know who was in what suit or made what prints after the fact. They are probably getting more appearance $$$ than the serious researcher and they add nothing.

   If bigfoot is going to be solved it will have to be by mistake at this point. If someone hits one with a truck, then maybe everyone can or will agree on it.
   I am the same age as Loren, and I can only imagine the frustration he and other real researchers, who have done the work and paid their dues, must feel at the influx of phonies and wanabees.

   The whole cryptid issue is being overrun by people looking for instant fame, bucks, or personal stature.Real investigation is a long serious process, with few quick answers, few material gains, and a lot of headaches and frustration.

   What is going on now mirrors what happened in UFO investigations as it progressed from the 70’s into the 80’s etc. Any serious research got buried in the media blitz of phony films and pictures (thank god there was no photo shop then) and the rash of contactees and finally the over indulgance of millions of wanna be abductees. hey I enjoyed the x-files like everyone else but you cant believe its all real because its fun. If its 99% bugus we need to concentrate on the other 1%. The part thats not fun but serious work.

   Right now cryptozoology is like the flavor of the month, it wont last. When the money runs out for the almost documentaries we wont get to see almost stars like Boston Rob fall down a hill in a suit. We need to spend the time on the film he was mimicking. The media attention may be nice, but it doesnt make the visual foolishness any more real than the flood of reality T.V.

5. Bob Michaels responds: April 4th, 2007 at 2:22 pm

   The Cryptid Community needs a Frank Buck.

6. SaruOtoko responds: April 4th, 2007 at 3:51 pm

   I would be considered a weekend warrior. I love getting out there and staying in areas where sightings have occured. Sure, I’m no scientist… (my major was Japanese…) But I would like to think that anyone who actually cares about finding evidence of Bigfoot is of some little help. I wont be running around with a 6 pack and a gun, but, will be out there looking…. Hoping to photograph or run into one of these great creatures.

7. sasdave responds: April 4th, 2007 at 5:56 pm

   Loren
   Good points made. So what do you call guys like me that have witnessed one of these creatures and have found that most of the info out there is totally BS. Science has its merits; but, most of them follow a line and don’t appear to want to rock the boat. As I’ve said before seeing is believing; especially, when the hair on the back of your neck straightens and fear engulfs your being. Science will not prove that spirit exists let alone the existance of the ground burrower, what ever people want to call them. They are alive and well til they are caught caged and treated like the animal most believe them to be. My hat is off to these creatures; which, have a spirit, compassion and a brain of sense to stay away from humans if they can.

8. Daniel Loxton responds: April 4th, 2007 at 6:00 pm

   I think Rillo777 raises a good point with the remark,

   …while I absolutely agree we need, in fact, must have scientific researchers, I wonder if bigfoot is most likely to be discovered by a seasoned hunter.

   Bigfooters and skeptics often express opinions about the North American wilderness from a personal background that is essentially urban. This can lead to errors of a kind that folks with somewhat greater outdoors experience would be unlikely to make. (For example, you don’t need to go any further than myself or John Bindernagel to put to rest that old chestnut about how “bear skeletons are never found in the wild.” Both he and I have personally found bear skulls or carcasses.)

   Countless thousands of loggers, construction workers, silviculture workers, trappers, prospectors, hunters, and many others spend months (or more) of every year living in and penetrating all the way through sasquatch habitat. Many of them are armed. If there’s ever to be a hit on the long search for Bigfoot, numbers alone dictate that it’s those people who are most likely to make it.

   This is what John Green quite reasonably expected from the beginning. He wrote, way back in 1970,

   I have thought for a long time that the most likely way for the Sasquatch question to be settled is for some deer hunter to down one—and I believe that becomes more probable each year…

9. SharkFisher responds: April 4th, 2007 at 7:39 pm

   The biggest problem with the deer hunter theory is that most who hunt deer do so in each other’s backyards. Even individuals who hunt the more ” wild game ” will venture an outstanding 3 or 4 mi. into the woods. As I watch the bigfoot documentaries that are aired, I’m depressed because I see freeways in the background and can see the lights of the local city in the background.

   I agree with Rillo, at the top of this thread, that, the ” great white hunter ” needs to be the next great resource in the bigfoot tracking. Let him, or even a group of people, venture 30 or 40 mi. into the wilderness off of trails. Every year I camp in the Gifford Pinchot and wilderness in the state of Washington and enjoy vistas of over 100 mi. of unadulterated land. Men regularly look through and hike around less than 1/5 of this area, and there’s no telling me all things that are out there have been discovered.

10. joppa responds: April 4th, 2007 at 9:18 pm

    Great article Loren. However, as I think this through am convinced that the “Big Find” will be made by the Washington State Highway Department - road kill crew - alongside Interstate 90 about 100 miles southeast of Seattle.

11. lamarkable responds: April 5th, 2007 at 9:11 am

    Fools rush in where angels fear to tread. Substitute the traditional scientific community for angels and the analogy is apt. Science waits for evidentiary data to be handed to it on a silver platter. In the interim, someone is going to be injured or murdered on the other side of this coin. It is one thing to be an armchair theorist and another to be in the field at 3 am. There is something happening of high strangeness, no doubt. There is enough collaborated information to determine that whatever may be covertly lurking behind that stand of trees is not going to give up it’s cover and shake our hand in brotherly greeting. Curiousity killed the cat. This is not a game of paintball tag. Unless you have knowledgable field personel armed with non lethal defensive weapontry..someone is looking for a confrontation that is going to be as inevitable as the mathematical odds tick by as if in a clock, with each encounter. The hunted should not be the subject of false expectations and half baked expedititions, rather it is the hunters who should measure three times and cut once.

12. Daniel Loxton responds: April 5th, 2007 at 5:19 pm

    SharkFisher writes,

    The biggest problem with the deer hunter theory is that most who hunt deer do so in each other’s backyards. Even individuals who hunt the more ” wild game ” will venture an outstanding 3 or 4 mi. into the woods.

    Humans have a much greater presence far, far off the highways than many people realize. But there is a more important point in regards to hunters.

    Let’s assume that hunters do stick pretty close to home. It is also the case that eyewitness accounts of Bigfoot encounters often come from relatively high-traffic locations close to population centers—roads, trails, farms, parks, and so on.

    This is a real catch-22 for Bigfooters. Either the eyewitness accounts are accurate, in which case we know that Bigfoot shares range with human hunters; or, the eyewitnesses accounts are inaccurate, in which case there is far less reason to suppose the creatures exist.

    I don’t see any real way around it. If people can see them, people can shoot them.

13. DWA responds: April 5th, 2007 at 9:43 pm

    This one’s worth parsing.

    @@@@@Look for these.

    “SharkFisher writes,

    The biggest problem with the deer hunter theory is that most who hunt deer do so in each other’s backyards. Even individuals who hunt the more ” wild game ” will venture an outstanding 3 or 4 mi. into the woods.”

    @@@@He’s right. I’ve hiked and backpacked for over a quarter-century, with loads of time well away from maintained trails. In all that time off trail, I have seen a grand total of three people - at one campsite, together. The great majority of this time has been in Shenandoah National Park, one of the busiest in the whole park system, where it’s almost impossible, in most places, to get one linear mile away from the nearest trail. People almost never leave trails; and those that do, don’t go far. (I have never seen a hunter away from a maintained trail in all the time I’ve spent in places where people hunt.) And I hope I don’t have to say it’s logical to presume my experience isn’t some kind of fluke, but closer to what the average person could expect if he did what I did.

    “Let’s assume that hunters do stick pretty close to home. It is also the case that eyewitness accounts of Bigfoot encounters often come from relatively high-traffic locations close to population centers—roads, trails, farms, parks, and so on.”

    @@@@@Just as often, actually much more often, the encounters come in remote places, many about as remote as a human can be and still be on a road or trail. As one who’s spent much much time walking roads and trails I can tell you that most of them do not qualify as either high-traffic or close to population centers. The Texas Bigfoot Research Center’s analysis of sighting reports in Texas - one of the places with the most of them - shows that the lower the human population density, the greater the number of sightings - not at all what one would intuitively expect to be the case were these reports of people seeing things. I have read many reports, and they are overwhelmingly in quite remote places. Where they are near habitations, the habitations are on the edge of extensive wild areas. Very rarely - I have read less than ten such reports, and again I’ve read many - is the sighting near what anyone would term a “population center,” for which in North America read “city.” (And “near” is a VERY relative term, even in these reports.) Sightings are overwhelmingly in rural and wild areas in, or at the edge of, extensive swatches of what evidence indicates to be excellent habitat.

    “This is a real catch-22 for Bigfooters. Either the eyewitness accounts are accurate, in which case we know that Bigfoot shares range with human hunters; or, the eyewitnesses accounts are inaccurate, in which case there is far less reason to suppose the creatures exist.”

    @@@@The catch-22 doesn’t really exist. Many hunters do see these animals; in fact, if you grouped sightings by occupational category, hunters, from the many reports I’ve read, constitute one of the largest such categories. (They’re also notorious for skepticism, I might add.) Hunters overwhelmingly decide not to shoot. They have numerous reasons, every one of which makes total sense. Most of them I’ve read - quite sensibly - recognize they are under-armed to kill an animal that may be twice or more the size of a bear. Many probably recognize that their hunting regs make anything illegal to shoot that isn’t specifically allowed in the regs. Almost all of them were so utterly stunned, or in awe of what they were seeing, that the thought of really shooting never occurred to them, even if the likely result of shooting did. Most of the shootings I’ve read about involve non-hunters who went for guns. Needless to say, they tend to be bad shots (although a number of apparent woundings are reported). I think it’s a safe assumption - again from what I’ve read - that any hunter that would shoot one would be most unlikely to report it if he did. Hunters are pretty practical people; and the practical difficulties in becoming rich rich rich - rather than, say, jailed or very heavily fined - from shooting a sas become very evident once one spends any amount of time thinking about it. The BFRO website has an excellent, thoughtful treatise on why hunters don’t shoot them. It’s also worth remembering the kill/no kill thread we had here a while back. Almost all the hunters said they wouldn’t shoot one; almost all that said they would said also that self-defense would be the only reason.

    That having been said, the BFRO website also has a detailed interview by a researcher with a Manitoba hunter who killed one - with one shot - in 1941. It is very worth reading. If there’s a credible encounter report in the record, and I’m chary to point to any SINGLE encounter and hold it up this way, this one would be it.

    “I don’t see any real way around it. If people can see them, people can shoot them.”

    @@@@Yes. But they don’t. With exceptions. What we’re dealing with here are what I call the “urban objections” to the sasquatch - the ones a suburbanite might buy, but that don’t hold water with people who really know the American outdoors. If you’ve spent the time I have in the wilder places - many of which are traversed by good solid trails and by paved roads - you’ll know that the”urban objections” are less “evidence against” than the sheer number of sightings, easily fitting within the bell curve of individual differences one would associate with a species, are “evidence for.”

    The animal may or may not exist. But the arguments against it offered so far really aren’t.

    I’m telling you, folks. Read sighting reports. You have to read lots; you can’t just accept a couple. But when you read them, you see what people are missing when they try to casually argue the sasquatch away. Those folks are seeing something. There are too many to argue otherwise.

14. Rillo777 responds: April 5th, 2007 at 10:40 pm

    Please understand that I was not advocating shooting a bigfoot. I was merely attempting to make the point that hunters are more likely to move through areas less travelled by hikers and the like. They know how to move quietly and can be extremely tenacious when tracking an animal. They learn how to spot and follow a trail and most of the ones I know are very curious about the natural world that lies beyond the well-travelled routes. That said, definitely there are those who “hunt in each other’s backyard” but those lands often contain hundreds (or more) of acres that few people except hunters ever see. Often times it’s a whole different world out there even a hundred yards off the interstate.
    These are the people who I think would be a great resource if we could find any who would like to hunt the ultimate game–not for killing, but for discovery of a new species.

15. Rillo777 responds: April 5th, 2007 at 10:49 pm

    BTW–wouldn’t it be great if all the reputable bigfoot groups got together, pooled their resources and funded a small group of scientists, hunters and trackers to go out and really search for bigfoot? I envision it being a sort of bigfoot “Corps of Discovery” kind of like the Lewis and Clark expedition. Let the hunters search and the scientists evaluate the data. I know, I know! I’m daydreaming.

16. DWA responds: April 6th, 2007 at 8:51 am

    Here’s a good line, by Rillo777: “Often times it’s a whole different world out there even a hundred yards off the interstate.” I think fifty feet is more like it.

    People really underestimate how much unpeopled, unvisited land there is in North America. We’ve talked about this before. And the funny thing is, the interstate highways are one of the best ways to see this. Most folks keep their eyes on the dotted lines. Me, I’m looking off the sides of the roads constantly. (I’d give you my plate numbers, but just be careful out there, OK?) It’s amazing, really, how little our actual physical footprint on the land is. No, don’t get me started on pollution or global warming. I mean where we actually, physically are. And as someone once said, roads are an intrusion in proportion to their width, not their length. How wide are most roads? In most sasquatch sightings from vehicles I’m aware of, the driver didn’t see another car anywhere near where he saw the animal.

    If the sas is out there, one of our critical errors is in assuming how much room he has to operate.

17. DWA responds: April 6th, 2007 at 8:08 pm

    lamarkable: that’s one of my favorite posts on this site.

    Just how curious is mainstream science? Is their dance card really that full? Finding this animal would really open some doors to knowledge.

    You’d think someone - a lot of someones, with degrees - would want to put the question to rest. But hey, we were done with the moon 35 years ago. The unknown is SO last century.

18. Loren Coleman responds: April 8th, 2007 at 4:09 pm

    Thank you all for commenting. I find it unfortunate that one individual, offsite, has found it important to make remarks that they placed their comment on here to “quash” further discussion by others.

    Actually, I think people are open to hearing all sides, and that’s what I was hoping for in speaking up against the media trying to characterize the diversity of people who are Bigfooters as merely “one kind” of seeker.

    Best wishes to all….

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