Bigfoot - serious, not follies

[RayG]

Ray, you have got to be kidding if you think that true disbelievers live and regularly post on BFF. Who over there regularly argues about the authenticity of the PGF (arguing that it is fake) as oppsed to saying that it might be a hoax?

I'd like to know who has irrefutable evidence one way or the other.

Try looking at Terry's posts, he argues against bigfoot even existing. He may not have a terribly high post count, but he's gotten very little flak for stating his position. (That can't be said about the pompous people that spout off, whether they are skeptics or not.)

Saskeptic seems unconvinced that bigfoot exists.

http://www.bigfootforums.com/index.php?showtopic=12664&st=0&#entry260248
"I'll tell you this: If I really believed that sasquatch was out there, right now, living and breathing in my own state as the greatest wildlife mystery of our time, i would be knocking myself out trying to be the one to get to the bottom of it. I can think of no greater glory for me as a North American biologist than to be forever associated with the first defintive proof of these amazing creatures in the flesh. I think every last one of my professional colleagues would express the same thing. If we believed, we wouldn't be quiet about it."

Have you noticed the general forum treatment and regularity of postings by Coltrane, Baboon Extra Head and Avindair?

I notice you said general forum treatment, as not everyone jumps on the bandwagon. I appreciate ANY contribution that relies on facts, and I also appreciate intelligent questions. If I recall correctly, I even defended BEH's right to post thoughtful questions.

RayG

 

[RayG]

A couple other folks over at the BFF seem unconvinced:

Yetifan.

http://www.bigfootforums.com/index.php?showtopic=12349&st=0&#entry254393
"What I'm saying is is that those who claim they know 100% that the film is authentic (with the possible exception of Gimlin) are being presumptive and not scientific in their conclusions since it hasn't been conclusively ruled out that it could be a guy in a suit. I'm of the opinion it's fake given all available data on it. However, I could be wrong."

Likewise SkunkHunter.

http://www.bigfootforums.com/index.php?showtopic=1146&st=20&#entry260254
"If the P&G film was proven to be a fake, it would not surprise me as I hardly believe BF exists anyway."

I'm sure there are others, but I have neither the time nor the desire to search for and repost each and every example. There's a search button over there, make use of it.

RayG

 

[LTC8K6]

RayG, what are your thoughts on the appearance of that print photographed by Laverty on Patty's path? If you have already mentioned them here, I missed it.

I think a fake wooden wallace type foot was put down first to make a whole footprint. Then I think the heel of the fake foot was either pressed or hammered in a few times, creating the deep stepped heel print, and the pushed up dirt in the middle.

Since the photo is of a track made by Patty during her cinematic appearance, and I believe the track is obviously fake, I am led to only one conclusion.

 

[LTC8K6]

I see the footers use "water erosion" to explain the stepped appearance, which is ridiculous.

Here is a big old scan of Patty's tracks. They are just sceaming WALLACE to me. The third one really looks like a Wallace special to me. I think I can see that the dirt is pushed forward to form the "tarsal break" in the print I think was clearly faked. If it's pushed forward, it was done by a hoaxer, not by Patty on the fly.

http://www.bigfootforums.com/member_images/pg_tracks_001.jpg

 

[tube]

Have you folks seen the cast that was made of this track? I have, and I am no longer willing to throw out a quick dismissal. The cast is much more ROUND than this photograph shows. The ball of the foot is part of a bowl shaped depression.

To throw a bone to the skeptical mindset, I might suggest that the unusual roundness could come from the man-in-the-suit's foot sort of sloshing around in an oversized boot affair. I suggest this simply because I have not seen this suggestion made before. This would seem like something that could be tested without too much effort.

I'm skeptical that this track was made by a flat Wallace style wooden foot because of the unusual roundness of the heel and ball of the foot. I've learned the hard way, I don't read too much into photographs alone!

 

[LTC8K6]

Wallace's feet look pretty well rounded to me, especially if you take away a few years of wear and tear.

I cannot recall seing any cast that matches that track. The stepped heel should be a dead give away.

 

[LTC8K6]

Interesting pre patty still of the P/G film.

The straight black line in between the "pole trees" and the object in the lower left corner.

 

[RayG]

RayG, what are your thoughts on the appearance of that print photographed by Laverty on Patty's path? If you have already mentioned them here, I missed it.

That track looks practically hinged. I'm certainly troubled that the print doesn't resemble any of the casts that are presented as belonging to bigfoot.

See if you can find a match:

#3 shows an arch but appears very human-like.

No pronounced arch in that one.

No apparent hinge in this one (on the right).

And on and on it goes. Are we not seeing the abnormal arch because it's hard to discern depth on a flat 2 dimensional photo of a cast? If the track were presented on edge, would the indentation be readily apparent? It would be interesting to see photographs of the original Patterson prints before they were cast. Did all the Patterson prints have the same funky arch?

I think a fake wooden wallace type foot was put down first to make a whole footprint. Then I think the heel of the fake foot was either pressed or hammered in a few times, creating the deep stepped heel print, and the pushed up dirt in the middle.

I've not played with any fake feet...well, there was that time I had a GI Joe... so I can't speak from experience whether or not what you describe is probable, or even possible. Did you test your hypothesis to see if it would produce a similar effect? If not, you have nothing more than speculation.

RayG

 

[LTC8K6]

Well, any experiments I do would be to try to get that stepped appearance on the fly with the nice round heels that bigfoot and I have.

I think it's crystal clear how you'd get it from pounding in the heel of a fake wooden foot. The wood will slip forward a bit with each impact, making the steps.

Meldrum's illustrations only further confuse me as to how such a foot would make the casts we see.....

 

[Skeptical Greg]

Interesting pre patty still of the P/G film.

LTC8K6,

Interesting.. What is the source of this still ?

 

[LTC8K6]

It is from LMS, according to the person who posted it at BFF.

I forgot the most interesting thing, the proximity of the woods.

 

[LAL]

You'll notice they actually found the plane, only one plane in a huge area of forest but it did eventually show up a few years later. They weren't even looking for it, but there it was. Several thousand 3-metre tall apes spread across the area for what must have been thousands of years, that's another matter entirely.

They found the Ceolocanth, a fish no one had seen in about 300,000,000 years and no one had any idea existed, but they found it. They weren't looking for it, but there it was. Now we know they're in several areas of ocean living far beyond the reach of the sun in small numbers where humans have practically never ventured, yet they were found.

And here we have Lal, dedicated to the religion that is Bigfoot, despite nothing having been found to show they ever existed at all, and to this day is treated as a fairy story by the sane amongst us. "You cant prove it doesn't exist" is the mantra of this religion, and verbage of massive proportions is it's succour.

Time to wake up and smell the coffee Lal, when someone finds one you can go looking for more but right now all it is is an invention of the mind. All the searches fail, all the traps and cameras find nothing, all the films are bogus and many of the tracks are found by hoaxers and people who believe in the religion. Yet you continue to believe, and belief is all you have and probably all you ever will have.

The flight path was known, the plane stayed put, there was an extensive search and it wasn't found for over twenty years. Native people were eating Coelanths for years not knowing they'd been "extinct" for millions of years. (Thirty new species of fish were "discovered" recently, but they've presumably been there all along.)

What does "it was found" mean; what about all those years when it wasn't?

Some films have been bogus, others not. It's pretty easy to tell the difference. There's quite a bit of physical evidence and the documented sightings, often backed up by tracks, are in the thousands. There've been a few hoaxed tracks, easily exposed, and your assertion many have been "found by hoaxers" and "people who believe the religion" is simply false.

There may be some evidence from Noll's camera traps. Luring seems to work better than tracking. What traps do you know of that have failed?

There's no "religion" about this. I've accepted their reality for over thirty years because of events near my land in the Columbia Gorge. There's much more evidence now than there was then and some top scientists and other experts have accepted it as well. Swindler examined the Skookum cast four times and stated his conclusions unequivocably on camera. He'd been a sceptic for thirty years. Dr. Fish was a sceptic, too (he was on the expedition.)

Reject it all you want, but don't make false statements as though the were factual. That doesn't help your case.

 

[Correa Neto]

On the quality of bigfoot evidence...

RayG,

I´ve asked LAL a lot of times why should we take evidence for bigfeet as OK but disregard the evidence for UFOs and ghosts when they are of the very same kind.

1) Sighting reports
2) Pictures
3) "Physical evidence"- footprints, landing marks, hair, aleged UFO pieces, scratches etc.

If sightings and pcitures numbers are used as a refference, I would say UFOs would have more backing. Disclaimer: I do not think there are gray and reptiloid aliens (neither nordic-type) flying around us.

How and where to draw the line? Because bigfeet are, according to LAL´s POV more plausible? Can anyone please clarify?

I suggest that bigfeet researchers should change their methodology and dump all such unrelianble data. Yes, it may sound harsh, but most of what´s been shown so far is not hard data. Then make a fresh start, but one from the point that bigfeet existence is a possibility (unlikely IMHO), and not by assuming they are real.

 

[LAL]

Interesting pre patty still of the P/G film.

The straight black line in between the "pole trees" and the object in the lower left corner.

They're poles at the base camp. There's a lengthy discussion on this on BFF. It's a piece of prior footage on the roll.

 

[LAL]

Lu, please explain the appearance of the back of the heel in this footprint. A footprint that was made on the fly by Patty on camera.

I have already offered the only possible explanation I could think of.

Do you have one?

How did we get the stepped or layered effect at the back of the heel?

How did the material in the middle not get flattened as the foot rolled over it?

The explanation is in the article we've both posted. The sand was pushed up during step-off. The foot had already rolled.

"In October 1967, Roger Patterson and Bob Gimlin claimed to have captured on film a female Bigfoot retreating across a loamy sandbar on Bluff Creek, in northern California. The film provides a view of the plantar surface of the subject's foot, as well as several unobstructed views of step cycles. In addition to a prominent elongated heel, a midtarsal break is apparent during midstance and considerable flexion of the midtarsus can be seen during the swing phase. The subject left a long series of deeply impressed footprints. Patterson cast single examples of a right and a left footprint. The next day the site was visited by Robert Laverty, a timber management assistant and his sales crew. He took several photographs including one of a footprint exhibiting a pronounced pressure ridge in the midtarsal region. This same footprint, along with nine others in a series, was cast two weeks later by Bob Titmus, a Canadian taxidermist. A model of inferred skeletal anatomy is proposed here to account for the distinctive midtarsal pressure ridge and "half-tracks" in which the heel impression is absent. In this model the Sasquatch foot lacks a fixed longitudinal arch, but instead exhibits a high degree of midfoot flexibility at the transverse tarsal joint. Following the midtarsal break, a plastic substrate may be pushed up in a pressure ridge as propulsive force is exerted through the midfoot. An increased power arm in the foot lever system is achieved by heel elongation as opposed to arch fixation."

http://www.isu.edu/~meldd/fxnlmorph.html

I have no idea what you're talking about with the heel. It's shadowed.

 

[Skeptical Greg]

The explanation is in the article we've both posted. The sand was pushed up during step-off. The foot had already rolled.
Why just one track like this in the trackway? Are you saying you cannot see the terraces in the back of the heel ?

http://www.isu.edu/~meldd/fxnlmorph.html

I have no idea what you're talking about with the heel. It's shadowed.

The drawing is a joke.. What is the 2-3 inch thick sole of the foot ( on Bigfoot ) supposed to be about?

 

[Skeptical Greg]

They're poles at the base camp. There's a lengthy discussion on this on BFF. It's a piece of prior footage on the roll.

Who has this film? Do you have a link to the discussion ?

 

[Skeptical Greg]

There may be some evidence from Noll's camera traps. Luring seems to work better than tracking.

Where is the evidence from Noll's camera traps ?


Lets do this again...


1. Luring = No Bigfoot


2. Tracking = No Bigfoot


Explain how we get " Luring seems to work better. " out of this..

What traps do you know of that have failed?

Duhhh, ........ all of them ?

 

[LAL]

Re: On the quality of bigfoot evidence...

RayG,

I´ve asked LAL a lot of times why should we take evidence for bigfeet as OK but disregard the evidence for UFOs and ghosts when they are of the very same kind.

I've already given my thoughts on UFO's. Ghosts don't leave footprints. And I don't have a taste for herring, red or otherwise.

1) Sighting reports
2) Pictures
3) "Physical evidence"- footprints, landing marks, hair, aleged UFO pieces, scratches etc.

If sightings and pcitures numbers are used as a refference, I would say UFOs would have more backing. Disclaimer: I do not think there are gray and reptiloid aliens (neither nordic-type) flying around us.

I'm still waiting for you to back up your statements about most scientists you've "checked with" think the data is "rubblish".

How and where to draw the line? Because bigfeet are, according to LAL´s POV more plausible? Can anyone please clarify?

I suggest that bigfeet researchers should change their methodology and dump all such unrelianble data. Yes, it may sound harsh, but most of what´s been shown so far is not hard data. Then make a fresh start, but one from the point that bigfeet existence is a possibility (unlikely IMHO), and not by assuming they are real.

There's nothing wrong with the best evidence and there's no point in discarding it. Confirmation will come when someone brings in a body or a hunk of one. Until then sceptics will dismiss new evidence just as they do old evidence.

 

[LTC8K6]

They're poles at the base camp. There's a lengthy discussion on this on BFF. It's a piece of prior footage on the roll.

The discussion at BFF has them as trees, not poles. I still don't know which they are, though.

I thought "pole trees" was a big giant clue that I had read the thread at BFF. Maybe I should have made it flash?

No comment on the black line and the lower left corner?

This is quite a bit of prior footage I have become aware of in the last few days on my own, despite often asking about it. Why no one could reveal that this footage was available is beyond me....

This brings up the question of the length of the film again, doesn't it? I think someone was asking how long the P/G film on LMS was.....

Next thing you know, someone will be posting clear stills from the first roll.....

Diogenes, the discussion is quite lively about this at BFF. Unfortunately I was using my laptop last night and I do not have the link handy here at work.