Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Backpack Hunting Big Foot, Yeti, and other woodland haints..........

Tom, thanks for the great stories. I particularly appreciated the fact that you weren't trying to convince any one of bigfoot as much as laying out your experience and let people come to their own conclusion. Yes we've all heard things in the woods we have nothing personally to relate them to, who knows? But the fact that so many people have seen them, or tracks or smells, etc, There has to be some explanation. Not sure what.

I don't want anyone to "believe" just 'cause I said so. I'm really not in the cool aid dispensing biz. There are a lot of popular misconceptions about what data we have and what it says. Some are flat out deliberately misleading. You can be generous with the people doing the misleading and say they just don't know any better or you can suspect they are deliberately lying figuring nobody will make the effort to bust them.

My hope here is that some someones will start (politely) asking me hard questions 'cause there are some. Unless you're a "true believer" (someone who hasn't seen one, has no personal experience, but believes with religious conviction) or a denialist (someone who insists there can't be anything to see, without looking at the information themselves, and is sure of that with religious fervor), if you're interested you should be asking questions.

Things like

-- where are the fossils?
-- where are the current bones?
-- why are there no trail camera pictures?
-- where did they come from?
-- where do they fit in terms of dna?
-- where do they go in winter?

... and a bunch more.

If a person has not seen a bigfoot, these questions might seem to bear on the question of existence itself. For someone who has seen a bigfoot, they have a different context ... how and why ... but they're still damn good questions that should be addressed.

Tom

Well.......

-- where are the fossils?
-- where are the current bones?
-- why are there no trail camera pictures?
-- where did they come from?
-- where do they fit in terms of dna?
-- where do they go in winter?

Are they so intelligent that they can consciously avoid the first three and last questions?

Some things just can't be explained.

Here in SE Oklahoma, we have a guy who is part of a bigfoot club, research group or whatever. I don't know the guy but he is a level headed business guy from what I've seen and keeps his bigfoot stuff quiet for obvious reasons. A few years ago somebody did a tv show with him and another guy from around here. They never seen anything or even any possible eveidence except for a dark object way off in the distance which was later identified as a cow. The way tv is, they sensationalize everything and there just wasn't much to it. Then you have the goofy finding bigfoot show that turns most anything that might be something into a joke. It wasn't long ago some cops claimed to have shot one and had the body but were holding out for money and it was proven to be a fraud. How can any of this can be taken seriously?

There are scientists down in wilderness and forestry land that are seriously hunting with high tech, high dollar equipment, somebody believes something. A buddy who shared camp with them while bear hunting a couple of years ago said that listening to their "evidence" and seeing how serious they were, made him a little uneasy going to his tree stand with only a bow the next morning.

I was working on a tractor late one night in the middle of nowhere by myself when a 5 gallon bucket came flying through the open hay barn I was in. Things like that make you jump to all kinds of ideas. It was probably someone who worked on the ranch but I don't know 1. how they could've got there without me seeing or hearing them 2.how they could've thrown it that far 3. it was 11:00 at night and cold, why would they be out there? No one ever fessed up but I never did really react so who knows?

Then you run into a guy who actually saw something step over a 5 strand bobwire fence. I won't tell his story but after talking to him over the years, his story never changes, the events are well documented and people I know and trust, know he saw something and it scared him enough that he packed up his wife and baby and left without a place to go. He is not a guy to be taken lightly. He called his dad who came over the next day, they looked around and his dad told him he was seeing things, dismissed it and left but before he got to the main road, something (spidey sense?) got to him enough to turn around and go back. It got late and his dad was going to leave again when they both heard and saw something that made them all leave in a hurry. They returned the next day, packed up and moved out.

I believe that he believes and that's good enough for me.

In addition to the above questions, my questions are not so much about the existence of the "unexplained", i.e. ghosts, allies/UFOs, bigfoot..., but why certain people have multiple contacts/sightings when others who spend as much, or more time, in areas or places where such things occur, have none. Is their consciousness set to a different "frequency" as the rest of us?

There are differences in consciousness, yeah. I'd put it a little differently because, worded like that, someone might think I've gone off the "woo" deep end. I'd say there are differences in awareness.

Most here hunt (I hope). We all probably have some hunting buddy who is always the first to see game and another who about has to be lead to it ... even though it's right in front of both in plain sight. Right? It's the same thing. It's not simply a matter of eyesight, it's a matter of brains having different capacities for perceiving what the eyes see.

A non-hunting example: my boss and I generally go for about a 2 mile walk at lunch for fast food. Co-workers drive by and wave. We're walking side by side on the sidewalk. I see them, she doesn't. Same thing, we have a lot of deer in town. We're walking along ... way over 80% of the time, I see them long before she does.

Some people are aware of their surroundings, some are not.

It goes a little farther I think. Some people are mentally more flexible than others. Some people ave a very narrow, very rigid view of the world. Anything that challenges their views is incredibly uncomfortable. If beaten alongside the head with it hard enough, they may notice, but as soon as the beating ends, they push it aside as if it never happened. Ask them about it a week later and they'll look at you like you've grown a second head.

I don't think "this stuff" is happening more often to some people than others. I think it happens with pretty much equal frequency to everyone who is in the right place at the right time. The variables are us, are in our ability to become conscious of the thing out of place, our ability to truly notice it, and our willingness to remember that we saw it.

Taking it a little farther, though, I think the ability to "see" grows over time. Like walking, you never take your third step 'til you've taken the first two. If something causes us to see once, it becomes slightly easier to see again if confronted by the same thing. There's a learning component. The best analogy I can think of is tracking. I'm not so sure it's an innate ability, it's just an informally learned skill in some.

... at least, those are my operating assumptions for now 'til something happens to make me change my mind.

Tom

And some believe their own bullshit whilst others are just too polite to point it out.

I think they all live with Marie LaVeau...

I think I'll start with avoiding trail cameras 'cause that ties to the eyes .. I think. To me the eyes are the only thing truly out of place. They seem to have incredible night vision. The ability to see into infared is known in some animals. A tapetum lucidum is known in many animals but not in any higher primate ... so far.

Absolutely, without the faintest hint of a doubt, whatever walked into my camp the 2nd of the 2 nights in August 2011 could see in the dark. Probably the several that came in the night before, as well, but I HEARD that "guy", coming in faster than I can walk, changing directions to miss tree trunks and branches. Again, we were down in a bowl, under fairly heavy tree canopy, and the sky was about 50% clouds from the t-storms that passed nearby earlier in the day. It was literally so dark I could not see my hand at arm's length. I could find it by holding it up and blocking out any of the few stars showing but I couldn't see the outline. "Whatever that was" (heh heh) it could see well enough not only to not run into a tree, it could see well enough to see me, slow down, and stop about 5 feet away rather than step in the middle of me. That's not normal.

I've played around with trail cameras using their infared flash to take pictures of each other. The camo that works pretty well to fool color vision in daylight doesn't do much to obscure them by I.R. So ... if bigfoot can see into lower wavelengths, that might be part of an answer. Most modern cameras use a passive sensor, they don't have a beam that would be visible to something that can see I.R., so that commonly made leap of logic doesn't work. The reflector for the I.R. LED bank may be shiny like a piece of mirror is to us. That's possible. It could be that they see the I.R. flash of the cameras taking pictures of other normal game animals which give the camera location away and allow them to avoid the cameras. Maybe.

I think the avoidance of cameras is mostly based on something else. Most cameras are put out by hunters and most hunters visit their trail cameras every couple weeks, sometimes more often yet. That's a lot of boot tracks. I assume if bigfoot is the awesome stealthy forest ninja they get credit for being they're probably also some seriously skilled trackers. It may well be they see those boot tracks we don't think about leaving. If there are a lot of trails converging on a single location in the forest for no apparent reason, if I were a paranoid forest ninja I'd approach that spot on high alert .. if at all. I think with their senses keyed in to whatever us sneaky bald pink monkeys are up to, the odds of seeing a camera out of place goes way up. They don't have to know what it is or what it does, they just have to know it is ours and avoid it.

So ... nothing "woo." Odd eyes for a higher primate. Otherwise, just at home in an environment we only think we're at home in.

... always subject to changing my mind if sufficient verifiable new data comes to me of course.

In the mean time, because it supposedly can't be done, I take it as a challenge to get trail camera pictures.

One further thought on trail cameras. I don't know why this is, but there are older trail cam pictures and security cam videos that look pretty good. They may not be public domain, maybe not on youtube or on the web at all, but I've seen some. The vast majority of that was shot on film, not digital, despite there being a lot more digital trail cameras out there in a lot more places than there ever were film trail cams or security cams. I hope someday I understand what the mechanism for that difference is ... 'cause everything that is real happens via some mechanism.

Tom

Sorry but that's a crock, I'd agree that people have different abilities to see things including game. Most aren't very good at it. A good hunter can be driving his truck and see game before most of his passengers do, because he's always looking for it. And I know a lot of really good hunters who've spent a lot of time in the backcountry and not seen "these things."

It's not because they're unable to.

I am not a believer. And here is why. It is the trail cam thing. The theory that they see the tracks to me doesn't hold up in that there are 360 degrees of where the bigfoot could come from and typically only 1 direction from which the trail cam owner comes from. Also, many people leave them out for months at a time, thus tracks would disappear. Even more, some areas aren't conducive to tracks or there is a big rain right after it was checked. Millions of trail cams and no clear pictures? To me that adds up to doesn't exist. To say nothing of cell phone cameras and other cameras. No clear pictures. Not one. How about bigfoot tracks? Dont see them either. at 900 pounds, they should leave a lot of tracks.

Interesting read, appreciate the effort put into the post, and don't change your opinion because of me, but I don't for a second believe in Bigfoot.

The calories required to support a 600-900 lb animal would prevent anything from being too secretive. Grass/greens are not going to cut it.....even in mild climates. A bipedal that would require almost the speed of a cheetah to meet its' substantive protein requirements. All while leaving no sign and on the lookout for game cameras.

I will say this one thing about trail cameras. I have a friend who knows someone in South Al with 1000 acres high fenced. They found an old buck that died of old age and they never had one picture of that deer and they ran alot of cameras. Just food for thought. Ive never seen or experienced anything I can attribute to big foot, but whatever my wife saw cannot be explained by any animal we know about.

Just reading the dramatic narrative cast doubt. "I smelled a foul odor and checked to see if had chit myself. Nope, not this time. Must be a Bigfoot!" Geez...

Tom is a credible observer in my book.

However, I'm a skeptic in general. Here's another question: poop! Where's the poop? Caloric intake aside, they'd have to make MASSIVE poops. If they bury them, that'd be obvious. And dogs would find them.

Here's an interesting notion though. A while back, within 25 miles of where I sit, they were excavating the skeleton of a tree sloth that stood over 10 feet at the shoulder....... about 11,000 years ago! That's a blink of an eye. Maybe we are looking in the wrong place for these. Maybe we need to look UP.

Thanks, Jeff.

"Poop" is another good question I should have put on the list I haven't gotten to. You're right, there should be turds found. Diet-wise, they compete directly with black bears so turd content isn't much help regarding identification. Because stuff passing through critters' guts scrape off epithelial cells, there is testable DNA but without a type specimen, there's nothing to match the DNA to. It's circular ... can't really prove a turd belongs to a bigfoot without proving bigfoot exists first. It's a dead end. All you can prove, via DNA, is the turd leaver is unidentified. All there is to go on is size and structure.

I haven't found anything myself that seemed to out of the ordinary, nothing that makes me think "that wasn't a bear." I've talked to a couple people who have found turds that look bear-like so far as content, human-like in terms of structure, but they're coke-can diameter and 2-1/2 to 3 feet long. Seem like good candidates but ... without a known bigfoot turd to compare them to, the best you can do is guess and interpret.

Tom

edit to add: regarding WHERE they poop ... there aren't a lot of reports related to location, but most I can think of involved pooping into streams. Maybe funny but no joke ... seems like a REAL good reason to use a water filter.

I know I'm always surprised by how much "up" there is in the Oregon woods. I'm actually out in my own woods right now, looking for fir to cut down... there's some kind of disease or stress killing 10-20% of the mid-aged firs up here in the Willamette valley; I've dropped 4- 5 of them in the last week or so. It's a real pain figuring out who needs dropping though because they start to die at the top and that's REALLY hard to see. Anyway, in the process of this, I've spotted a crazy number of nests I'd never noticed, way the heck up there.

I remember hunting one time up near Hidden Lake (Tom knows where that is, it's a secret) and a giant crash in the brush just about gave me a heart attack. I stood perfectly still waiting to see WTF. I've seen a big bear in that area... so I start to move again after a while and CRASH! This was getting weird. Decided since I was, after all, armed to the teeth I'd go towards the noise. Anyway, cutting to the chase, it's old-growth around there, and way the heck up above me, so high I couldn't ever see or hear it, a squirrel was nipping giant green fir cones loose, which must weigh 8-10 lbs, which were then plummeting down.

I think a whole herd of Bigfeets could've been up there and I'd never have known. That said, there's logging... birdwatchers... and spotted-owl spotters all observing the tree tops in one way or another. So that speaks against my descendants-of-sloths theory.

Aight. Found a dying fir. Time to get to work. If there's a Bigfoot in it, I WILL report back!

Great stuff Tom, keep talkin'....

Where are the bodies? Immortal?

Jeff -

Indeed, Hidden Lake is an amazing place. I was only there once. Ironic, after you telling me about it, that "Mizz A" took me up there to fish. She heard at least one wood knock up sort of in line with the slide behind the lake, but closer in the timber. I missed it, I was too bad kid-wrangling. Small world. I really need to go back.

battue -

Immortal? I doubt that. If you'd been paying attention to what I said before, I grew up in a bear preserve. One thing we did not find were dead bears despite having them around by hundreds, maybe thousands. When they get sick, old, with death approaching they climb into incredible [bleep]-holes ... brush, rocks, logs, places nobody in their right mind would go voluntarily. If bears aren't found, numbering hundreds, maybe thousands of times as many as bigfoots, it's totally unreasonable and unrealistic to expect to find dead bigfoots just laying around dead.

Tom