Dumb things bigfoot hunters do.
I used to belong to a group of bigfoot hunters. I never saw bigfoot…don’t even think he was around at the time I was looking….did see some interesting stuff. But I’ve got to spill the beans on these folks. Most of them are city folk wandering around in the woods without a clue.
I used to belong to a group of bigfoot hunters. I never saw bigfoot…don’t even think he was around at the time I was looking….did see some interesting stuff. But I’ve got to spill the beans on these folks. Most of them are city folk wandering around in the woods without a clue.
One of the things this group used to do is put a net of fresh fruit out in hopes of luring bigfoot to the bag. It was then that I realized the leaders of this group knew nothing about Texas wildlife. That night as we waited for big furry by a stream behind a house…I watched flying squirrels descend on the bag like fleas on a dog.
I made mention of this to the group leader, and they haven’t put out bags of fruit anymore….as I recall.
Other dumb things they do for TV is show folks wandering through the woods in broad daylight after saying BF is nocturnal.
My father and grandfather and great grandfther believed something called the Burns Booger lived in the woods where I am originally from. They always ran into it when they were hunting. These were poor people who hunted with hounds in the deep south. The meat they put on the table was often alive that morning.
When my father was a boy something spooked his hounds when he was up a tree trying to drive down a raccoon. It scared him so bad he abandoned the raccoon and left the woods to whatever was coming. My greatgrandfather was driven out of the forest by something some time shortly after WWI. He said it was the booger. My dad later reason it was people making illegal whiskey…..but before he died a few years ago….he said whatever had been in those woods was still there.
I don’t think idiots with TV cameras will find bigfoot….that if anyone does…it will be a local man or woman who just happens to be at the right place at the right time.
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It would at least help if these people had a naturalist with them. If they could get one interested!
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Very interesting.
I have often wondered why bigfoot hunters don’t employ more conventional means.
Following footprints as long as possible would be a good start: large animals living woodlands tend to stick to certain paths. This could define patterns (if there are any) for population movements.
Being on the lookout for unusual droppings would also be advisable. Of course this means being acquainted with local wildlife to avoid coming back home with nothing more than a big bag of…
Finally a thing about calls: the so called best evidence for Bigfoot is the recording of a series of calls made by journalist Alan Berry in 1977 in the High Sierras of California. He turned over all the original tapes to the University of Wyoming. The study was the base for an MS thesis and is available to everyone. So why bigfoot hunters don’t carry high quality recorders with them?
There’s always something that got me wondering for a long time. Why aren’t hounds employed more often? A good Bloodhound can pick up even cold (more than two days old) trails and follow them for miles.
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I agree..about the recorders…and cellphone that take pictures…most folks have them anyway. But there is a problem with call blasting. My dogs know the difference between the dogs barking on TV and the ones barking outside. I even had a dog that would howl when I sang (yes I am that bad) but he wouldn’t howl when a tape was made of me singing.
I wonder if call blasting as they call it is really any good? No one has gotten an answer yet that I know of…and using gibbon or howler monkey calls would not be the same thing as bigfoot I would imagine.
Remember I said I’ve experienced some odd things. I was at a remote Oklahoma State Park with a group of horse enthusiasts and fell asleep in my truck when it got late. A stallion whinnying after midnight woke me up. I was really drowsy and didn’t pay much attention to him until I noticed that he was answering something across the lake. Something on the other side of the lake was moaning. I’ve been around cattle all my life so I was 99% sure it wasn’t a cow….and this was a ranch stallion. He’d have been around cattle all his life, too.
All night long that thing moaned…and after every moan the stallion whinnied. No other horse there did it. I can not help but wonder if the stallion had had experience with one in the past and was frightened by it.
At daylight the moaning stopped and so did the stallion./
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The calls recorded by Berry (using a sophisticated, for the time, magnetic tape recorder) consist in moans, whines, growls and whistles. Note that man is the only known primate capable of whistling.
There’s also what sounds like an articulated phrase which has been transcribed as "Gob-uh-gob-uh-gob, ugh, muy tail".
According to analysis made by the University of Wyoming (which at the time had the best equipment and staff available anywhere in the world) there was more than one speaker and one or more speaker was of larger physical size than an average human adult male.
When compared with human data the results indicated that there could possibly be three speakers, one of which is, and I quote, "non-human".
Vocal tract length was extimated at 20.2 cm. Using human proportions this gives height estimates of between 6’4" and 8’2".
A hoax has been suggested and I personally favor this explanation. The sounds could have been manufactured by a very skilled audio technician or enthusiast using state of the art equipment available in 1977.
However there are two big problems with the hoax theory though. The first one is that articulation rate clearly suggests a "natural" (meaning untampered with) recording. The second is the hoaxer himself would have needed deep knowledge of speech processing tecniques himself.
Since I have serious problems setting up a stereo equalizer, I’ll take the experts’ word. And the experts say this is more believable than the highly controversial Patterson Film.
In all honesty Berry admitted he thought somebody was pulling his leg (he had previously been shown alleged Bigfoot tracks he quickly dismissed as fakes) and it was only after the University of Wyoming accepted to analyze the recordings that he said "The tapes remain open to challenge, and a lot of questions and answers remain".
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I believe in bigfoot. The forensic finger print analyst from Conroe Texas has found tracks with derma ridges on them that aren’t human. Dr. Bendernagel of Canada..whom I’ve met….presents a convincing argument for their existance. And I’ve met Loren Coleman who has collected reliable accounts.
I think 90% of the bigfoot stuff out there is fake…but not all of it. I just don’t know what it is or where it goes.
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Speaking with all due frankness I believe Loren Coleman to be only one step removed from a freak show manager. Meaning the freak show manager is one step above him.
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I must share this with you.TBRC, the group I once belonged to, had a conference and to raise money they auctioned off items of interest. One of the things auctioned off was a plaster cast of a bigfoot foot print. Chilicott (the guy from Conroe) said he believed the original print had belonged to the real thing.
Loren Coleman and another TBRC member got into a bidding war…it was awesome and actually got up to 200 dollars or maybe a little more. Coleman won…put his money down and gave the cast to a little girl who was helping with the programs and such.
He certainly has a powerful opinion about things…but in person he really is a nice man.
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He’s surely a nice, easy-going fellow.
But when he set up his "Museum of Cryptozoology" he infuriated lots of people. I don’t blame him for trying to make an extra buck but the way the thing was handled sent the more serious types into a "Hulk smash!" rage.
First of all his claims this is the first "Museum of Cryptozoology" in the world are bogus.
The first Museum of Cryptozoology is located in Lausanne (Switzerland): Bernard Heuvelmans left his library and collection to the Musée de Zoologie at the time of his death (1995) and the curator (Olivier Glaizot) did an excellent job of using it as basis for the present Department. The Department is currently being enlarged and will reopen to the public in 2011.
Second, Coleman’s Museum seems to be more akin to granpa’s attic hoard than to a modern museum. Exhibits are piled together without too much thought: even the most modest museum is better organized. At least Roman coins are kept separated from shards of Saxon pottery.
Third, most exhibits are of a kind even Phineas T. Barnum would have turned down. Fur bearing trout? Jackalope? If this the Museum of Cryptozoology or the Museum of Tacky Souvenirs?
A friend of mine called it "a roadside attraction, nothing more". He wasn’t too far off the mark.
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Amongst the many books I have collected over the years is one entitled ‘On The Track Of The Sasquatch’ – Encounters With Bigfoot From California to Canada by John Green, which I got as I was hoping to map out big Foot sightings on the website as I thought the googlemap format we use would be great to illustrate these. Again, it is something I just have to find time for….ahhh.
However I was recently playing with some cards from America showing bears and each one showing a tip for when in bear country, such as always cook 100m downwind of your tent. Don’t sleep in clothes you’ve cooked in etc. Sensible stuff, but things you won’t think about unless you trained or were used to operating in terrain that these creatures occupy. So, maybe Big Foot hunting should be left to the experts :).
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Ian, the problem is who are the experts? đŸ™‚
Grover Krantz suggested the hunt should be left to experienced hunters and the goal should be killing a Bigfoot and bring the body (or "the largest part you can carry" as Krantz put it) back for analysis.
I have a lot of reserves about Grover Krantz’s work, but this is one of the most sensible pieces of advice I’ve ever heard in the field.
At this point I must confess I DON’T believe there’s a large, hairy covered man running around North American forests. This doesn’t mean I don’t believe many witnesses to be sincere and BELIEVE what they saw. But just like UFOlogy, jumping to conclusions has only wrought havoc and ridicule to the field.
A few years ago, at a cryptozoology meeting, I brought up Krantz’s advice as a provocation of sorts, saying extraordinary claims require extraordinary proofs. To say the attendants jumped at me like a pack of hounds at a deer would be an understatement. These persons had come to the conclusion that not only Bigfoot exists but it’s highly intelligent and should be approached in a friendly manner, just like another human being. How did they come to the conclusion I wasn’t told. But as Bedb said above, if a "friendly manner" means setting up a feast for assorted woodland critters I doubt there’s much good to be had from being friendly.
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I’m sorry, I did not know this. I know at some time in the past few years he had some difficulty with the IRS over the museum…I believe. I know money and museum were mentioned in the same breath.
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There is an American outdoor writer named Chester Moore. He makes his living writing serious wild life articles, but he also looks for the unusual like giant catfish living below dams, ivory billed woodpeckers and wild redwolves in Texas.
http://www.chestermoore.net/crypto
I was a big fan of cryptokeeper….but as you see he shut it down. But he was affliated with Gulf Coast BigFoot researchers who advocate killing one to prove it exists.
http://www.gcbro.com/
this website is good for reports submitted by folks who’ve had encounters. As I’ve said…I’ve never run into one…don’t want to….but my dad and grandfather ran into something that scared them…and my dad was career Army/paratrooper.
bev
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What did your father and grandfather experience Bedb? Did they ever write up an account?
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No written accounts, but the oral traditions and stories would have kept you mesmerized and spellbound.
My grandfather lived in deep woods Mississippi. If you have ever seen George Clooney’s Oh Brother Where Art Thou…you will get a feel for that time. Deep pine forests, dirt roads, very poor people who lived off the land and raised cotton for cash.
One story my father told me involved his shop teacher..a man he said was very sober and God-fearing….this was his way of saying the man wouldn’t lie. There are two ways to get to the area where my grandfather lived, both dirt roads, but one way went close to the swamp..called a reebrake by the locals. It’s basically the headwaters of very slow moving shallow river. This teacher was walking home one night and something large stepped into the road in front of him. These people are very familar with bears and anything else that lived in those woods, but this wasn’t a bear. The teacher was so scared of what he was seeing he turned around and went back down the road to take the long way home.
Another time my dad and his first cousin went hunting with hounds after raccoons. These hounds were not afraid of anything according to my dad, but something scared them badly tht night, and Dad said it was the Booger.
My great grandfather was clearing some timber and something scared him out of the woods. He never went back down there.
In the 1960s my grandfather said a panther came through the region (and I remember my mother saying one came through in the forties) and the screaming terrified his fox hounds, but I checked on when panthers disappeared from Mississippi, and there weren’t any by then. There was always something screaming in the swamp that they said was a panther. But if you ever heard the men talk among themselves…you know they were troubled among themselves. And like I said my Dad believed to his dying day that something lived in the swamp below my grandfather’s house.
My grandfather told a story about fox hunting one night (the hounds run and the men sit around camp fires and listen). They were getting ready to go home and poured what was left of their coffee over the fire. They climbed the hill and looked back. Something was standing by the embers, and Pa said it was the Booger.
There could be explanations for most of these sighting. Dad thought moonshiners were in the area…but he also believed there was something nonhuman also in the area. If you are used to street lamps outside at night….this part of Mississippi will scare you at night. It’s so dark sometimes you can’t see your hand in front of your face. Just ask my daughers…hehehehe
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According to recent studies the Eastern Puma (Puma concolor couguar) survived the critical period between 1900 and 1930 and is now making a big comeback. The Texas Puma (P. concolor stanleyana) may also have a wider range than formerly thought.
If there’s a lesson I’ve learnt, big carnivores are extremely hard to track down even when they carry a radiocollar (because the damn things break down all the time). That’s why the best park rangers/game wardens have always been recruited among experienced poachers…
Not saying the screamer was a Puma but the possibility is not as remote as it may sound.
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I understand that…and neither my Dad nor my grandfather ever called it anything but the Burns Booger (this being the name of the land where the swamp was)
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It certainly makes me glad that Britain has no big predators lurking in the bushes……well, we’re not supposed to have anyway.
Going back to Mauro’s earlier post I agree that we’d need a carcass or living specimen to prove the existence of a Big Foot. I am of the opinion that eventhough there is enough forested ares in the United States to hide a population of these creatures, it does not mean that they do.
So what is evidence for these creatures and how could it help us find them if they exist?
I am assuming it is basically witness accounts, Indian folklore and casts of tracks. Do these tracks indicate the paths supposedly used by the sasquatch, and if so could a series of secret motion sensitive cameras be set up to cover them?
Also I take it that they must be a Big Foot cemetary somewhere in the woods unless they are immortal or discard their dead in other ways.
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A friend of mine went to Mongolia to interview a nomad who’s supposed to be one of the last living persons to have seen an Almas (wildman). The sighting took place in 1986 if I remember correctly.
The nomad also took my friend to the exact spot where the sighting took place. They were accompanied by the guide/interpreter and a park ranger.
My friend noted the area of the sighting is literally full of natural caves, something no previous "armchair investigator" noted since nobody bothered asking the nomad to go and see the place. He later told me passing those caves through a fine comb would probably yield better results than walking around at random in what is by any standard unchartered territory. No "spectacular find" would be needed, just a few subfossil bones in acceptable conditions.
The famous Pangboche Hand was exactly a case of a "smoking gun", for no other reason that anthropologists couldn’t agree on what it exactly was: while everybody agreed it belonged to a member of the genus Homo, the species was a matter of controversy. It was variously identificated as belonging to a modern H. sapiens, to an archaic H. sapiens, to an H. neanderthalensis and to H. erectus. Osman Hill said it displayed "both modern and archaic traits", though this may be due to the fact some genuine bones were replaced in the ’50s.
Whatever it was it’s now gone: it was stolen five years ago. According to investigators it now resides in Japan.
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I can not say this enough…I have never seen bigfoot….but I’ve looked. When I was in TBRC we had monthly meetings with discussions on encounters and such. And I started wondering why there were human attacks in certain areas (the most famous being Boggy Creek)
On one outting we wandered around this lake in a remote area. It was the paranormal tourist trip. Impress the city folk. Only I grew up in the big woods and saw things the city folks didn’t. Cedar trees if you don’t know come in male and female trees. Cedar berries are food sources for many animals from deer to migratory birds.
At the parkinglot for the boat ramp was a huge female cedar tree…ten to twelve feet tall. I’m five foot seven which is just shy of being model tall. I don’t know the conversion. So this tall tree was full of cedar berries. I walked past it going into the woods (pine trees and oaks) and looked around but saw nothing interesting.
On my way back…I looked at that tall female cedar and stopped. Something had picked every berry off the back side of that tree from ground to top. I walked up to the tree and looked…and every berry was picked clean off the back side. A small tree that I thought was male was bent over beside it…alive but bent over….except I found either two or three berries still on it. Something had bent that small tree over in such a way that it did not come back up and almost picked it clean. This was on my right.
I looked to the left and on a straight line was another giant female cedar. Something had pulled a branch down without breaking it off and took the berries off the branch.
I showed all this to the senior members of the group and they looked at it without comment. I do not know if bigfoot was feeding here…but something big was having a nighttime snack here.
That’s when I started looking at the different kinds of cedar trees. The most common…which grows in England and Europe and Canada…does not grow in Texas. We’ve got some others…and two of them are down right deadly. Actually these are junipers…and the bad boys are Juniper ashei and a swamp cedar.
The poison in them is called alpha thujone…these two have the most of any species of jumiper/cedar. Definately not vermouth and gin friendly. The boggy creek bigfoot…lives in the heart of the ash cedar’s growth area. I figured IF Bigfoot is real…then the animals in this area are getting their brains fried by cedar berries.