Merged Bigfoot follies

[LAL]

Hey, I would love for Bigfoot to be real. It would be the find of the century. A primate that can throw a full 55 gallon drum would be cool and terrifying at the same time. You'd need a heck of a cage at the zoo to hold one.

When you ride around the woods in a loud, 6 wheeled vehicle, you just aren't going to attract many animals to you.

I just don't think that marching into the woods with 15 or 20 people in loud vehicles, planting human tainted food, electronics, and pheromone baits all over the place, blasting god knows what sounds into the air, and standing around talking in the dark is ever going to work.

Byrne said something like that about the Slick expedition in search of Yeti. They had 250 Sherpas, as I recall, plus campfires. Bryne said no self-respecting Yeti would have come anywhere near them.
The Skookum Meadows expedition came the closest yet with broadcasting calls, bait and equipment. Presumably they didn't do much talking after they went to their tents at 3:30 A.M. and the quarry showed up.

They probably need to get one person to stay by themselves in the woods for a couple months. One person every so many square miles to stay in the woods for a long time and get the smell of the city off of them. Give each person a good still and video camera and make sure they know how to use them.

Forget about footprints. Forget about hair unless it has the follicle attached. Forget about photos and video unless they are clear.

Even so, we are going to need a body or part of one.

From the BFRO:

" The BFRO frequently receives offers of assistance from people who want to help the effort in some way. We are offered various things -- equipment, free lodging in sighting areas, technical expertise on GIS mapping, etc. We are always impressed and moved by these offers of assistance, and we'd like to accept assistance when it matches some of our current needs.

This page will serve as a wish-list for things we need or could use at present or in the near future.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Seeking support for a project to obtain close-range video footage.

The BFRO is seeking an individual interested in supporting a breakthrough project to obtain close-range video footage of one or more sasquatches.

We know how this footage can be obtained. The main barrier is the expense of the equipment needed.

Close-range footage will eliminate the need to kill one of these animals in order to break the log jam of resistance to this subject.

The BFRO's expeditions have allowed us to learn about these animals and their habitats in significant steps, and shown a process for bringing observers to places where these animals live and can be seen and heard at night, after only a few days of persistence and bravery.

It becomes obvious to anyone within a few days that these animals do exist in some areas, and therefore likely in many other areas as well. It also becomes obvious that they can be documented on camera, but only with a combination of human efforts, and an ingenious utilization of small surveillance technologies.

It cannot be done cheaply, unfortunately, but it can be done.

Close-range daylight footage will be worth far more than the investment required to obtain it. We'll be happy to discuss the numbers with the right person.


Compare this prospect to a shipwreck treasure hunt, where you can be searching for a long, long time without knowing if the treasure is even there.

With this project, you will hear and see the "treasure" from the early stages. But it will only be reeled in with a combination of behavioral understanding, engineering, and clever deployment of surveillance devices in specific areas.



Consequences : Will it be bad for sasquatches?

Sasquatches have survived through the most environmentally destructive period in American history. The decimation of U.S. forests in general, reached its peak in the 1950's and 1960's.

In many places the forests have grown back and created super rich habitat areas, especially in the Midwest and eastern states. These habitat areas give rise to near plague levels of deer. They may also harbor more bands of nocturnal sasquatches, collectively, than in the Pacific Northwest.

The impact of close-range footage will not, even in the most epic scenarios, create anywhere near the amount of pressure they have already experienced, survived and adapted to. Whereas, the benefits of the footage will be rapidly self-evident after the first broadcast.

http://www.bfro.net/NEWS/needed.asp

Tom Slick would have funded this in a heartbeat.

 

[LAL]

What I'm trying to say is that advocates have to get enough quality evidence that the existence of bigfoot has to be more probable than hoaxes. I have seen no such evidence.

Just what evidence have you seen?

 

[LAL]

Certainly no bias there...


Considered by many to be "Mr. Sasquatch",

Green has put more time and effort into this than probably anyone alive.
Have you read Daegling? About the only effort he seems to have expended was to come up with a psychobabble explanation for the sightings.
I can see where Green, who's done actual fieldwork, might get irritated by the erroneous arguments of an upstart armchair theorist.
He has that right.

 

[LAL]

So, Rene Dahinden is/was skeptical.. He should have been, since he searched for 40 or so years without finding anything conclusive...

So " looking no further than Rene Dahinden ", proves exactly what?


Rene Dahinden wanted soooooooooooooo bad for there to be a bigfoot ( I wonder if he ever felt like he had really wasted a lot of time and energy ), I find it commendable that he remained skeptical and didn't get all woo about the tenuous evidence.

He was wary of wild goose chases and hoaxers. His scepticism didn't include not thinking Sasquatches are real. I take it you haven't read his book?
He never challenged Krantz on the Bossburg tracks, despite his animosity toward Krantz.
He bought Gimlin's rights to the Patterson film and was responsible for getting it to experts for analysis.

 

[Kilik]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3948165.stm

http://www.parascope.com/en/cryptozoo/missingLinks03.htm

 

[LAL]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3948165.stm

http://www.parascope.com/en/cryptozoo/missingLinks03.htm

http://www.news.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/10/28/whuman228.xml

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/manchester/3631256.stm

 

[LAL]

I find it unbelievabe that you cannot figure out how to do both of those.

I am beginning to think you are being deliberately obtuse.

LAL, how would you make it look like a bigfoot had walked up to and stepped over a 43" fence? How would you cover your tracks in the snow or mud or whatever?

Does bigfoot ever just stand around, or does he just walk all the time?

Cleon, I would say LAL thinks things can't be faked, and just about everybody else knows they certainly can.

>snip<

I didn't deliberately ignore this post. For some reason I stopped receiving topic reply notifications and I thought the thread had died.

Let's go over this again:

"They were, and are still, among the most convincing tangible evidence to be turned up in his years as a Sasquatch hunter. The left footprint measured 17 ½ inches long, 6 ½ inches across the ball of the foot, and 5 ½ inches across the heel; the right one was 16 ½ inches long, 7 inches across the ball, and also 5 ½ inches at the heel. The right foot was deformed; the third toe was either badly twisted over or was missing, there being only a slight impression in the snow at its base; the little toe stuck out at a sharp angle; and the whole foot curved outwards and showed two distinct lumps on the outer edge. A careful count eventually showed there were 1,089 clearly definable prints on the path that the three followed through the snow.

The tracks led them from the river, across the railroad and across the main highway. Whatever had made them had stepped over a forty-three-inch-high, five-strand wire fence, judging by the single prints of the left and the right feet on either side of the fence. On the far side of the fence, in a cluster of pine trees, there was a marked depression in the ground among the pine needles, apparently where some heavy animal had rested. No one denies the possibility that this was made by a cow or a deer, there being plenty of each in the area, but its presence in the line of the crippled tracks is worth noting, as is the fact that right in the center of the depression was a clump of snow holding the imprint of the toes of the left foot, as though the snow had been shaken loose after building up on the foot. In the clearing beyond the pine trees were hundreds more tracks, leading across the flat land and up a small hillside. In the heat of what appeared might be the moment of truth, René, discarding his customary caution, cried, "Now we're going to get that hairy sonofabitch!"

He figured the prints were going to lead on up the hill and the hunters would be able to run whatever had made them into the ground. But the prints stopped, halfway up the hill, turned, and retraced their path downward. At one spot, between two side-by-side prints, the hunters discovered a deep yellow patch in the snow, apparently urine. It was probably against their interests that they neglected to collect the yellow snow; analysis may have given some clue as to what made it. The prints continued down the hill, parallel with their first ascending path, returned to the fence and crossed it again about fifty feet from the first step-over.

From there the tracks led the hunters across the road and back and over the fence several times, and eventually across the road and the railroad, through a patch of bush and to the edge of a steep part of the river bank, about one hundred and fifty feet above the water. There the bank was overhanging. The tracks turned and went upstream for approximately two hundred feet, to a point where the bank sloped gradually down to the river, and there they stopped. All the way down the bank was a deep groove, as one made by a heel and a foot acting as a brake for an upright body "skiing" down the bank. Below that there was just rocks; no further markings."

http://www.n2.net/prey/bigfoot/articles/bossburg.htm

Emphasis mine.
Do you think it didn't occur to Dahinden the fence could have been climbed?
It doesn't matter whether I can conceive of a way for something to be hoaxed or not; it's what the signs show.
Brush marks from attempting to conceal something in snow would be evident.

The only hoax I know of where beer was actually involved was the Pennsyvania reservoir incident I've already referred to. It was quickly exposed.

Fake feet have been crude carved affairs (possibly one case of cut-up wading boots - I read about it in an old newspaper clipping on a bulletin board at Spirit Lake Lodge circa 1969) and in two cases I know of the intent was to impress or scare tourists, not to try to fool investigators.
Remember, many, if not most, trackways have been found in extremely remote areas. Hoaxers tend to pull their pranks where the handiwork is apt to be found.
The surviving Bossburg track casts don't show signs of push-off, so it's likely the animal was standing.
Often people cast the "best" tracks, which are not the ones that reveal the most information.

Napier and Krantz both came to the conclusion the Bossburg tracks could not have been faked. Meldrum considers them some of the best evidence, despite "tainting" by Ivan Marx' antics.

You might want to watch the false assumptions. It seems I know more about hoaxes than my detractors do.

Check the stretch of the 6' man trying to duplicate the stride on this site:

http://www.lloydpye.com/flash/9-Hominoid-tracks.swf

The "peas-in-a-pod" look is caused by bunched up toes. The toes are apparently longer proportionately and more prehensile than human toes.

 

[LTC8K6]

Well, you didn't really answer my question.

Whatever had made them had stepped over a forty-three-inch-high, five-strand wire fence, judging by the single prints of the left and the right feet on either side of the fence.

Yes, that's exactly how a hoaxer would have it appear. So what?
Again I ask you, how would you do this? It seems a trifle to me.

Do you think it didn't occur to Dahinden the fence could have been climbed?

It never occurred to me that the hoaxer would have bothered to climb the fence to make the footprints look proper.

It doesn't matter whether I can conceive of a way for something to be hoaxed or not; it's what the signs show.

No it doesn't, but it keeps you grounded when you realize you could have done what is before you. Thinking about how you might have done it is good. What the signs show is what the hoaxer wants them to show, which it's good to think about as you consider evidence. Sort of like a staged crime scene. It's what the criminal wants you to think happened, not what actually happened. If you go in believing, you aren't going to think about it being staged at all.

Brush marks from attempting to conceal something in snow would be evident.

They certainly would. Of course, if you are a good hoaxer, you'd know very well that there is no need to remove your own tracks along the way at all, since you wouldn't have made any that anyone could see.

All the way down the bank was a deep groove, as one made by a heel and a foot acting as a brake for an upright body "skiing" down the bank.

Yep, just the thing a human would do too, so it would obviously occur to a hoaxer to have bigfoot do it. I have descended a hill or two that way myself.

Remember, many, if not most, trackways have been found in extremely remote areas. Hoaxers tend to pull their pranks where the handiwork is apt to be found.

This quote is self debunking. Clearly the hoaxers are going into remote areas, hence all of these silly footprints.

In the heat of what appeared might be the moment of truth, René, discarding his customary caution, cried, "Now we're going to get that hairy sonofabitch!"

How objective of him. I wonder if the hoaxer, like an arsonist, was observing this closely. No doubt suppressing a lot of laughter and or beginning to see $$$$.

 

[LTC8K6]

So about 18 or 19 days went by between the time it was known a "crippled" bigfoot was in the area, Nov 24, and the time the 1,089 print long trackway was found on the morning of Dec 13?

Interesting.

 

[LAL]

Well, you didn't really answer my question.

Maybe not. Who's answered any of mine?

Yes, that's exactly how a hoaxer would have it appear. So what?
Again I ask you, how would you do this? It seems a trifle to me.

It has never been established there was any hoaxing involved in this incident at all.
Personally, I would never attempt to climb, step over, or otherwise negotiate a five-strand barbed wire fence. I value my skin.

It never occurred to me that the hoaxer would have bothered to climb the fence to make the footprints look proper.

It didn't? I thought you were the expert on how hoaxes could be carried off so that mere expert trackers, forensic fingerprint experts and people with PhD's in anatomy and primatology could be easily fooled.

How about two hoaxers meeting on opposite sides of the fence. Three times. Tracks were found on the other side of the river, later. Clever of those hoaxers to put tracks where they'd be found after everyone had given up.
Remember, there were sightings in the area prior to this event. Dahinden got the license number of the jeep. Those people had seen the tracks and "got the hell out of there".
There were other events in Washington that year. Would you like me to believe it was all the same hoaxer? Or was there a network, something like the "Washington Bigfoot Track-Makers Association" with regular meetings at neighborhood bars?

Without really trying, I've found four incidents just this year on the Internet, one on a bow-hunters' website. Are the hoaxers travelling from state-to-state and Canada or are there separate organizations? How do they get through customs with the gear, or is it all done by long distance telephone as Daegling suggested, apparently with a straight face?
Who hoaxed the Indians before the coming of the whites?

No it doesn't, but it keeps you grounded when you realize you could have done what is before you. Thinking about how you might have done it is good. What the signs show is what the hoaxer wants them to show, which it's good to think about as you consider evidence. Sort of like a staged crime scene. It's what the criminal wants you to think happened, not what actually happened. If you go in believing, you aren't going to think about it being staged at all.

One of the first things investigators look for is signs of hoaxing. Witnesses are interviewed, reports taken. It is rather like a crime scene investigation.
How much do you know about foot anatomy? Would you be able to design a foot that is perfectly adapted to carrying great weight over rough terrain? How about the scars? Would you be able to duplicate a healed scar properly? Would you be able to duplicate the compensation for injury evident in the Bossburg tracks? What about tracks of different individuals over several years? Got a big closet to hide the feet in?
How many well-engineered ape-suits are there that show all the adaptations to match the footprints? Where are the prosthetic devices to lengthen the arms? How does one build moveable muscles and tendons into a fur suit? And why has no one ever come up with so much as a bill for the time and materials needed?
There are three pieces of footage, at least, that appear to show living bipedal hominid primates, but no suits.
How strange.

They certainly would. Of course, if you are a good hoaxer, you'd know very well that there is no need to remove your own tracks along the way at all, since you wouldn't have made any that anyone could see.

You would have to be a very tall, very weighted hoaxer with an enormous stride and excellent balance. Be sure to master the compliant gait. There's a difference in the way human tracks appear in snow and the way Sasquatch tracks appear. Be sure you know what that difference is before you even attempt snow.

Yep, just the thing a human would do too, so it would obviously occur to a hoaxer to have bigfoot do it. I have descended a hill or two that way myself.

So have I. Why wouldn't another hominid species employ a similar method? Do other Great Apes scoot?

This quote is self debunking. Clearly the hoaxers are going into remote areas, hence all of these silly footprints.

Clearly there are no hoaxers doing this. Known hoaxes have been close to home.
Or are you going to try to convince me hoaxers lay down thousands of tracks where they may never be seen just for practice?

How objective of him. I wonder if the hoaxer, like an arsonist, was observing this closely. No doubt suppressing a lot of laughter and or beginning to see $$$$.

$$$$ for what, from whom? No money was made by anyone off this incident, that I know of. In fact it cost money for Dahinden and others to travel to check it out. There might have been some severe consequences for a hoaxer, given Rene's temper and the tendency some Washingtonians have to shoot.
Ray Pickens came forward with phony feet and wasn't even believed (for the rather good reason his carved feet didn't resemble the prints), let alone paid.

You are assuming it was a hoax with no evidence to back that up and then twisting everything you can to fit, but it still doesn't fit.

Having lived in a PNW forest with other elusive animals, I have no problem with the idea of an unidentified higher ape species living there too. There's plenty of cover and abundant food, even in winter.
I also knew the town drunks and the resident practical joker and I can just about guarantee none were smart enough or energetic enough to pull off hoaxes that could have fooled even the greenest deputy sheriff.

Are you a city kid by any chance?

 

[LAL]

So about 18 or 19 days went by between the time it was known a "crippled" bigfoot was in the area, Nov 24, and the time the 1,089 print long trackway was found on the morning of Dec 13?

Interesting.

And?

Anecdotal I know, but a resident later reported seeing tracks like that twenty years earlier. The individual may have been near the end of its life and was scouting the garbage dump where the first tracks were found in search of food.

 

[LAL]

Found this report while looking for more on Ray Pickens. It was originally published in Fingerprint Whorld.

http://www.rfthomas.clara.net/papers/whorld.html

I don't know how Krantz' classified this; under "Very interesting", perhaps?


Is anyone making any progress on debunking the other 8000 or so reports that didn't get this much attention? Since some are quite recent it should be an easy matter to contact the witnesses and have their heads examined.

 

[LAL]

Note Pickens states he did his faking after Bossburg and thought someone else did that.

http://www.bfro.net/GDB/show_article.asp?id=131

Has anyone come up with the name of the individual who allegedly faked Bossburg? I believe Diogenes was going to do that, or was he just asking rhetorically if that would count?

See the note on the wooden figure. I've read about another incident where Krantz was fooled, but there's really nothing to substantiate it. He was thought to be gullible by some, but, as Richard Noll has noted, why does Krantz get criticized but not the perpetrators?
Honest people sometimes have a tendency to think everyone's as honest as they are.

 

[LAL]

Incidently, I've seen an Orangutan scoot across the floor of the cage. It wasn't downhill and modesty prevents me from saying what he was trying to do, but he did scoot

 

[Red Siegfried]

Wow! All that really convinced me! I KNOW bigfoot is real now! Not.

Still no specimen. Still no DNA. Still no bigfoot. Show me one of those and I'll reconsider my stance. Footprints and hairs, although somewhat interesting, aren't enough to name a new species after, and they never will be.

Instead of wasting your time memorizing questionable passages of evidence I suggest you go find a bigfoot. All you have to do is find and bring back one. Just one. Dead or alive. You don't even need the whole thing, just one smidgen.

Just one.

Not to sound snotty (probably too late for that) but this kind of evidence is a waste of time. Without a specimen to compare them to they mean nothing.

Just. One. Specimen. Where is it? I submit: nowhere.

But I promise I'll change my mind if we can find a specimen and validate it.

 

[LAL]

Wow! All that really convinced me! I KNOW bigfoot is real now! Not.

Still no specimen. Still no DNA. Still no bigfoot. Show me one of those and I'll reconsider my stance. Footprints and hairs, although somewhat interesting, aren't enough to name a new species after, and they never will be.

I don't think that's being proposed, but a more dignified name might be in order. I'd be for anything that would disassociate them from the Weekly World News.
What about film? You've seen the Patterson film, I assume? Freeman's 1994 footage? Memorial Day? Care to dissect them?

Instead of wasting your time memorizing questionable passages of evidence I suggest you go find a bigfoot. All you have to do is find and bring back one. Just one. Dead or alive. You don't even need the whole thing, just one smidgen.

Just one.

Not to sound snotty (probably too late for that) but this kind of evidence is a waste of time. Without a specimen to compare them to they mean nothing.

Just. One. Specimen. Where is it? I submit: nowhere.

But I promise I'll change my mind if we can find a specimen and validate it.

Y'know, for years I hoped just to see one. I don't think it ever occured to me to try to bring in a specimen. For starters, I'm terrified of guns (thanks to being shot with a .357 Magnum by one who was shot at for three years in Nam), I'm now close to 3000 miles away from the area, and physically I wouldn't be able to do much but camp. I don't think you would have thrown out that challenge if you knew more about me.

There have been sightings somewhat near me here, but the chances aren't nearly as good as they were where I lived near the Columbia (smack between two well-documented incidents) and I've rather lost my taste for camping after camping my way across the country. Now I just do it once a year with a group and a guitar. I regret I was so tied up with my disabled ex I wasn't able to get out more. I did get to meet Peter Bryne, though.

Most encounters are accidental anyway, where one is spotted crossing a road at night, e.g. I was nocturnal, but my husband wasn't. I thought I'd left all this behind when I had to leave Washington, but it seems to have kind of followed me.

I leave the search to the young and able while I settle for debating on message boards and Googling like a maniac. If nothing else, I may be able to show the characterization of "believers" as" woos" is false and acquaint people with what evidence there is. There's a great deal of it and some is compelling. There's been some serious research going on and Dr. Meldrum's book is due out sometime next year. From what I've seen of his writing, it should be excellent. He is extremely sharp and investigates thoroughly.

Rest assured, there are individuals and groups looking to bring in the corpus.

It's a good thing I've had a couple of years debating with Creationists. I'm used to the "that's not evidence" type of argument and plenty of cherry-picking and quote-mining and even assaults by "scientists" who were on my side of the evolution debate. You guys don't bother me a bit.

And I don't consider looking into it a waste of time. I do the same with Cosmology, Genetics, Paleoanthropology..........I'm always up for a new learning experience. Keeps me from getting Alzheimer's.

 

[turtle]

Y'know, for years I hoped just to see one. I don't think it ever occured to me to try to bring in a specimen. For starters, I'm terrified of guns (thanks to being shot with a .357 Magnum by one who was shot at for three years in Nam), I'm now close to 3000 miles away from the area, and physically I wouldn't be able to do much but camp. I don't think you would have thrown out that challenge if you knew more about me.

Rest assured, there are individuals and groups looking to bring in the corpus.
[/B]

This might be derailing the thread but there's certainly the "kill/no kill" argument. Personally, I have no interest in going out and killing a BF just to prove it exists. I'm against killing BF. Some BF researchers disagree, but for myself, I say leave it be.

 

[LAL]

This might be derailing the thread but there's certainly the "kill/no kill" argument. Personally, I have no interest in going out and killing a BF just to prove it exists. I'm against killing BF. Some BF researchers disagree, but for myself, I say leave it be.

I say leave them be.

One of the stupidest debunking attempts I've seen yet was from someone who claimed Ishi (the last of the Yahi) was the best refutation of "Bigfoot". He noted one is not a breeding population and argued against one wandering around for centuries and making comparisons with life spans of Great Apes in the wild.
And he was an MIT grad, working in genetics. Geez!


There are problems even with trying to tranquilize one. How to estimate the dose? Too much could be fatal. Too little could allow the animal to get some distance and possibly fall off a cliff when the drug hits. And how to get a shot in the first place? If they followed any kind of predictable route, it might be possible to trap one, but they seem to have no set pattern. Someone set up a cage in Oregon. It's still there and still empty as far as I know.


This is a pretty good thread.

http://www.internationalskeptics.co...s=&threadid=14947&highlight=Sasquatch+Bigfoot


Where's this Alan when I need him?

I especially like this:

"But, science can help confirm that something exists. BTW, contrary to your claim that we can't prove the sasquatch doesn't exist, doing so would actually be rather easy. How? By investigating to see what else could've provided all that evidence. Maybe it is deer hair or bear ****. How do you find out? You test it. Not just one lab, but a number of labs, and when those labs come up with the same results, even if all the results are "unknown primate", you accept the results. Properly applied science will give you answers, but they won't always be the answers you want."

He links to the Discovery Channel website and I've read Sasquatch: Legend Meets Science was available as a free download from there. I haven't been able to find it.

I can get the name of the technician and lab in B.C. that did the testing for the documentary, though.

 

[LAL]

This thread started with the Manitoba sighting, didn't it?
Here's more on that :

http://blogcritics.org/archives/2005/05/31/171547.php

(There has been nothing on my local news that I've seen. Bias? You bet. They gave plenty of coverage to Wallace's family.)

 

[LTC8K6]

LAL, you just bring us those proper scientific studies of some good evidence and I am sure we will all be glad to look at them.

No more opinions of Bigfoot fans, please.

Healed scars? Are there any other kind?

Gee, I have no idea how a person would know what a "healed scar" looks like. Golly, I just can't figure that out. Must not be a hoax then.....

Oh wait! Why look at that! There's a scar on my forearm. Why look, it's healed too! I'll be darned. It's even in the shape of a capital L. I wonder if anyone else on the planet has a scar of their own....?

I must be special. I know what a "healed scar " looks like.

Personally, I would never attempt to climb, step over, or otherwise negotiate a five-strand barbed wire fence. I value my skin.

It's good for you that bigfoot doesn't value his then, huh?

The idea that no one made any money is ridiculous.

Besides that, believing you are going to make money is the point, not whether you actually made any.