I don't know what is to be gained from criticizing Chris for his physical conditioning.
It is pertinent to the physical claims attendant to the alleged experience in outdoor sleuthing. Hiking mountainous terrain in particular results in excellent physical conditioning even if the mileage is low. If you aren't in condition it is proof you are keyboard BLAARGing, not hiking in the woods.
I don't feel good about pointing it out nevertheless. Empathy prevails.
But from the beginning of the bigfoot hoaxing, scientists were sneered at and derided for being egg-heads that don't get out in the field. Whereas the 'footers were out there doing the field investigation work.
It was John Green the writer and Rene Dahinden in Canada that were the first two North American figures of note, before the US got its start, and they were extremely malicious with scientists on this point. Their loudly announced expedition
never happened. They led a nonexistent expedition, yet came off with a self-promoted reputation of being field researchers who got out more than real scientists in the field!
Since then, nothing has changed. "Expeditions" are hoaxing photo ops. Your birders are in better shape than our interlocutor. They actually do get out hiking in the woods.
Because they are actually in the woods and studying real animals, there is no need to pretend they are in the woods and pretend they are studying some unknown animal. There is more than enough satisfaction from someone who actually is out in the woods to not need inventing fables about it.
So I am trying to say that for BLAARGers it is actually one of the notable things about them: the lack of outdoor experience as opposed to the presence of it. Our other major BLAARGer has been out twice in the last couple of years to my understanding, car camping.
On the moose, it took two generations to get to the point where he would lay down at my front door and wait for me to come home. We went for walks together in the woods. Anyone who has had a pet can relate stories of snuggling with them, or the dog licking all over their face and you can frame it as being a sexual pervert if you want - but in this case what it shows is how I could get a species that was so afraid of humans to eventually trust me to the point of being more or less a pet. I saw how moose interacted with each other and with other animals, and by so doing I picked up signals and tactics that much later I saw in a Horse Whisperer video. I used a dog too though, at first by accident and then later realized how important it was to show the moose I was protecting them from the dog.
There is another fellow who did the same thing with Grizzlys. I did it with ravens, porcupines - actually started with squirrels as a boy so I had a pet squirrel in graduate school that would come in my window and take nuts out of my mouth. So he came in the window next door and the girls started screaming, knocking over desks and creating a huge scene because they scared him so bad. I had to re-learn that same lesson with my moose. He liked to charge up to me and just brush my shoulder as he raced by. That was his way of greeting me.
The first time he did that with one of my neighbors, the hue and cry went out to assassinate the insane moose. He was full grown by then, so yeah it would frighten the socks off Mike Tyson.
Nobody here doubted me about my moose because you knew better. I don't doubt anything
shrike says about his field research either because we have reputations of backing up what we say.
The level of experience we are talking about here for either of us - God, it is just so far beyond being able to identify feathers. My four year old can distinguish eagle, raven, ruffed vs. spruce grouse - I do not accept anything so far related as evidence of significant outdoor field experience.
