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

It's not about bodies. It's about body parts, parts that are moved to the surface later on. Dinosaurs and such died thousand of years previous, yet parts still are being discovered. Parts that have DNA unrelated to anything else recorded.

So, if you never found dead bears, how is it that you are so sure of where they go to die?

Just curious. Seems that if no one ever found dead bears, we'd have no clue about where they go to die.

BF best not find your cheap whiskey cache. He will be stumbling into people everywhere. I hear they are weak for the alcohol.

The breeding population required to sustain this species to the current day....would have to be in the thousands.

All the while, burying (without any trace) their dead......killing the thousands of animals required for sustenance......leaving no tracks.....leaving no hair........and always avoiding us (sometimes armed) mere-mortal humans.

It appears those with BF experience....often have more than 1 encounter. If you hunt hard enough, you'll usually get what you're after.

Standing in a remote wilderness area at midnight can often be very creepy.....after watching the "Legend of Boggy Creek" DVD the week before.

It's the adrenaline rush from the (possibly huge/dangerous) unknown. It simply wouldn't be there if you were pursuing an undiscovered insect species.

Read the last couple posts. You should understand the hesitation now.

I was going to get into the DNA evidence, fossil record, report distribution, statistics, etc. [bleep] it. I'm done. Should never have started. I knew better. Should have listened to myself.

Ignorance has a way of preserving itself.

Tom

I've seen and heard things that, to this day, I still don't know what they were. Maybe if I was convinced that sasquatch exists, I'd be convinced that's what I saw.

But I'm not convinced and my brain did not make that connection. Everyone is familiar with the classic optical illusions where you see a few lines on a drawing and your brain fills in the rest to complete the picture. Only your brain fills in details that aren't actually there. Like the line drawing that can represent either an ugly old woman or a pretty young one, depending on how you look at it and what you're looking for.

So rather than conclude that sasquatch exists and some people just can't see it, I tend to go in the other direction. I think people see things they can't explain, and their brain fills in the rest with what they want to see.

Just my opinion.

So, if we all chant "Shallow Hal wants a gal.".....they will snap out of it?

First time I heard a Deer grunt was years ago. Pitch black before daylight broke and right behind me. Footsteps, then a couple of those nasal growls. Hmmmm, I didn't know what it was, but it got my attention. Years later I heard it again in daylight and a Deer was the source. Pa is one of the top States for BF encounters, I could have thought it was BF.

For decades, maybe 3-400,000 Bear hunters in the wood on opening day and no BF have been taken to the tag station. 800,000 plus Deer hunters? Hmmmmm again. Coincidence I guess.

Tom,

I'm enjoying reading your commentary, please continue. That doesn't necessarily mean that I believe in BF, but I enjoy reading the evidence that you're bringing forward. There will be people who believe and those don't believe. Don't take it too personally. People are being pretty civil in this thread, and I'm sure I'm not the only one who would enjoy seeing what else you have to bring forward. It's a good thing for a rational mind to consider all information, data, and evidence, and draw its own conclusion.

Yes Jordan, I agree. I think its a good thing to have access to all the information one might have, and consider the evidence presented. T O M might find it beneficial to simply allow folks to present their questions concerning the phenomenon, rather than telling people what kind of questions they should be asking him, as he mentioned in a couple previous posts. He gave alot of info for people, who were curious enough, to examine. But he walked the line between arrogance and enthusiasm, when he then tells folks what questions they should be asking; obvious attempt to control the thread to narrow the scope. This is the Campfire, not a Bigfoot Forum.... When talking about cryptids, one could do well to have a thick skin and temper the control issues. Anyone who has spent enormous time and resources studying Bigfoot phenomenon might consider himself a scientist, but also with personal subjective anecdotal experiences. He wants to be seen as credible. But truth works both ways. He also needs to try to accept other's personal "non-Bigfoot" interpreted or "maybe bigfoot related" experiences as credible/valid too. That seems to be a problem with other Bigfoot enthusiasts" I've talked to. They only accept their own research. Alot of good "contrary" info was presented by folks here . Instead of accepting the info as credible and problematic to the question of Bigfoot existence, the BF enthusiast gets all defensive and snarky about it.

I didn't read the question-list that way at all. I read it as Tom being very forthcoming about the difficult questions that anybody serious about understanding the broad picture would need to ask. A cut-to-the-chase as it were.

An area of personal expertise for me is recording and mixing music. Did it professionally for almost 20 years. It's an arcane, complex, difficult subject and has many non-intuitive facets. If I wanted to truly try to explain the process to a naive audience, it'd take some serious doing, and I'd have to go slowly, break it into pieces, and work through the info and the chains of causality for the "whys" of lots of stuff. AFTER all that, I might attempt to stimulate those who'd made the journey by demonstrating some of the questions a motivated person might still have. Sound familiar?

I have enough baggage on this site that I'm extremely hesitant to do this due to fear of "taint transfer"... haha... but I'm just gonna say that Tom is a very "real" person, well known in his area by numerous other very real people, some who are members here, and that he has rather dramatically UNDERsold the quality and quantitty of his backwoods experience. Gonna leave it at that.

PS- I'm a Bigfoot skeptic for many of the reasons you guys are. But I'm not a Tom-skeptic.

I'm not a Tom skeptic. But I question why he would be defensive after other skeptics have presented problematic BF info. He HAS made previous comments about being annoyed that moderators don't control post content. Heck its the campfire. I'm not throwing out the baby with the bath water, I'm reiterating the fact that this is the campfire, and the audience is a varied bunch, and their comments reflect it. And I accept their comments as credible, just as I accept his narrative as credible.

I'm not a TOM skeptic either. But he is putting arguments forward that I don't agree with. When anyone does that on any subject, I will take issue and/or ask questions.

That's why it's called a forum, not a monologue.

Jeff, your analogy, while well intended, was not an accurate one IMHO.
Your reference to a "naive audience" in no way applies to the outdoorsmen of the Campfire, in this topic.
The folks who responded, and those who read this thread, are likely some of the MOST knowledgeable and experienced people in the outdoors.
Tom is not talking to a "naive audience."


Smokepole, once again, you say more in one sentence, than I ever could in a whole paragraph.

Tom, regardless if you continue or not, I've enjoyed your stories. So thank you.

Perhaps not only liberals.....

Man, doesn't that fool know that it is aliens that go around sticking things up the arse of the primitives...sheesh.

They're gonna lose their Jack Links sponsorship!

This.

I'm also enjoying your commentary Tom. The detail you provide paints a picture. Thank you for taking the time.