Colorado Bigfoot Again
Date: 09-Jan-03
The guy that wrote Ghost Grizzlies, David Peterson, ran into a bigfoot down in the San Juans very near to where my family and I had our own bigfoot encounter and found those tracks in 1993. I am glad that someone of Petersons caliber also ran into one of these things down there. Several hunting guides and outfitters have also had some close range encounters in Colorado too, so Peterson and I are not alone either.
For those interested in catching one of these creatures on film or finding tracks, there was a recent sighting by a very high number of people right at the top of Kenosha Pass. This happened about 20 days ago, and it was headed east toward Baily. I have many records of sightings in this area, and they tend occur to the southeast of Kenosha Pass as winter progresses, so it may be that the bigfoot was headed back toward the place it winters just north of Woodland Park somewhere. They seem to hang around the elk herds, so if any of you can find a concentration of elk north of Woodland Park, you should be able to eventually find some bigfoot tracks for yourself and maybe even get close enough to get one of these incredible animals on film. I can guarantee you that these creatures are real, and living in Colorado. Check out my map of Colorado sightings on the BFRO website to know where to go. If you get one on film with any kind of quality, you will be rich enough to go grizzly hunting in Kamchatka annually.
For those in southern Colorado, the sasquatch down there seem to hang around the base of San Antonio Peak just across the border into New Mexico during cold winter weather, and sometimes there are also some hanging around the Navajo Reservoir area somewhere. Find the larger concentrations of wintering elk to find sasquatch. Sasquatch are evidently very rare, so odds are against you, but there is a chance at success. I know there were three different sasquatch in the Conejos River drainage in 1993, because three different size tracks were documented. So, at least there is more than just one of these things around. One set was 20 inches long, which is so huge you can’t believe it, but these tracks were followed for a very long ways by law enforcement and they never broke stride of nearly 60 inches between tracks. Many of these tracks were in mud, so detail was very good. This is the biggest set of tracks I have ever seen that I was certain were real. The animal involved must be heavier than a coastal grizzly, and just as tall as when a huge male grizzly stands on its back legs, and maybe taller. The one that made the 17 inch tracks that I found was well over 8 foot tall, so the one that made the 20 inch tracks must be incredible. The 19 inch tracks we investigated near Eagle in late March of 2000 indicated to us a weight of about 900 pounds for the animal that made them, which is also large male grizzly size. These sasquatch are naturally rare because they are huge and no one area can support very many of them. Big animals have big appetites.
There is a new documentary on sasquatch on the Discovery Channel tonight Jan 9 at 7:00 Mountain time. It also airs on Jan 10 at 10:00PM and Jan 11 at 1:00pm
Recent events and evidence have some of the worlds leading scientists now beginning to actively look at the evidence themselves too, so hopefully we can solve this mystery in a few years of effort.
Please don’t slam me too bad for bringing up this bigfoot subject again, but I just want some answers. I am always hoping some other fellow bowhunters have run into one of these animals recently, which is why I post here.
Hope everyones seasons went well. I ended up taking a fairly nice whitetail buck (147 P&Y)at 8 yards with my longbow out here on the plains. He came in to rattling in early November, circled upwind of me and gave me an easy shot, so I was pleased and very lucky this year. I didn’t get to hunt Colorado this year.
Date: 09-Jan-03
Better use a heavy arrow, a Magnus 2 blade, and a guide with a backup 375 H&H Mag. Any old bow will do.
Heloman, I talked to that lady from Eagle with the sighting of a white bigfoot at 45mph. Loonier than loony toons she was. It was one of the reasons I quit the BFRO, as they decided to just print all the sightings that come in, to let others decide which are legit and which are not. If bigfoot is not real, then all are from loonies of course, including mine.
If you ever hear a sasquatch scream directly at you, you will know it is not a cougar, elk, bear or any other normal critter, I guarantee it. You can feel it as well as hear it when you are close. I’ve been there.
We have some people who think bigfoot are shapeshifters, aliens from outer-space, or interdimensional beings, so simple sightings from a simple bowhunter of a simple flesh and blood animal are simply refreshing. I got a few from a few other Colorado bowhunters last time I posted here, so maybe this time if we don’t joke too much, they will post them here rather than emailing them to me incognito. Maybe even Petersen will come on here and give us his account again, and with more detail. Maybe I can even get some of the bowhunting guides with personal sightings to also come onto this forum and give us their accounts.
Protect Colorado elk habitat, because what is good for elk is good for sasquatch.
Date: 11-Jan-03
The 1967 Patterson Film was taken by Rodger Patterson, who died a few years after he made the film. The person who died recently was Ray Wallace, a known hoaxer who had made a film of his wife in a gorilla suit that no one ever took seriously at all. Wallace was a jokester, and everyone in bigfoot research already knew it from the get-go. Besides the incredibly stupid and obvious gorilla suit film he made, Wallace also made wooden feet and tried to make bigfoot tracks. Of course wooden feet on a person make tracks about as deep as a snowshoe on carpet, and leave a distinct ridge up at the toes when one steps along, looking so unreal that even an elementary school cub scout would not be fooled.
The tracks I found in Colorado, and the other tracks I have investigated here and in other states, were sunk into the soil deeper than human tracks in the same soil beside them. Boots spread out your weight when you walk, so we humans leave shallower tracks when we walk in boots than we do when we walk in dirt, mud or sand. When we walk barefoot, we leave tracks of about the same depth as a real sasquatch because our feet are more dynamic and bendable and more pounds per square inch are impressed in each area of the foot with each dynamic step. What this means is that a sasquatch has about the same weight per square inch of the bottoms of their foot as you and I do. A human of a given foot size may vary quite a bit, because some are thin and some are fat, but there is a ratio we can use for a healthy fit adult human, and seems to apply well to sasquatch when tracks are measured and depth recorded in the plaster casts. The tracks that we documented on the Eagle River in early April of 2000 were nearly 19 inches long and indicated by their impressions that a 900+ pound creature had made them. A 300 pound man in wooden feet would not have even broke the surface in the same soil conditions. Booted feet in the soil hardly made any impressions. If someone faked the tracks on the Eagle River, then they were wearing some kind of flexible sasquatch foot apparatis and carrying a 600 pound pack on their back while taking huge steps. If you ever come across a line of real sasquatch tracks, they will definitely leave you scratching your head. We know that some of the tracks have been faked in the past, but they are easy to identify because they do not meet the weight and flexon criteria. Actually, very little faking goes on. Our best tracks documented consist of lines of tracks documented well, because we can learn from each track by comparing them to previous tracks in a given line of tracks to see toe movement, and flexibility in different portions of the foot. Some tracks have been fresh enough when plaster casted to show the scar tissues around little cuts on the foot pad, and also show the pattern of the ridges (like fingerprints) that all primates have on their feet. Those fingerprint experts that have examined these casts have no doubt that sasquatch exists as a real species.
Even expert anthropologist, professor emeritus Daris Swindler, of the University of Washington, who was a long time extreme skeptic and critic of sasquatch research has decided that the evidence now is too overwhelmingly accurate to have been all faked. He is now pointing out to us less educated researchers some of the intracacies of the anatomy involved. The list of anthropologists, primatologists, and anatomists who realize sasquatch is a real species is getting longer and longer all the time, while the list of skeptical scientists is getting shorter and shorter. Generally it is skeptics who have not even looked at the evidence who still think it is all a bunch of foofa. How can they decide before even looking scientifically at the evidence? Shouldn’t we apply science to the matter, instead of making up our minds based on nothing at all? If the evidence is not real, then I want to be told by the skeptical scientist why it is not real. Period.
The Associated Press said that Ray Wallace started the whole bigfoot legend in 1958 by hoaxing a set of tracks. Well, I have news for the Associated Press, bigfoot was being seen and tracked long before 1958, and even long before white men even set foot on this continent. Then of course the creature itself was not titled by the stupid name “bigfoot”, but rather some less hoky names such as “sasquatch”. It was the media that termed the name “bigfoot”, not scientists. If you have ever had any articles written about you professionally, you already realize that the media is generally a very unreliable source of information. They rarely get any story correct, especially the Associated Press, which is riddled with inaccuracies and idiots who pass on those innacuracies to the public. Ray Wallace did not start the bigfoot legend and did not fake the many thousands of documented tracks from all over the western states and Canadian provinces over a period of 50 years as told by the Associated Press in their article titled “Bigfoot is Dead”. Wallace was a poor man, a bonifide lifelong liar, and couldn’t even afford to drive past the California state borders where he lived due to his lack of income, which was due to his lack of aptitude. His son and his widow are also bonifide lairs and now publicity stunt performers trying to get a little money from the media. People would rather believe these idiots than listen to the experts on the subject of sasquatch. You all can decide who you will listen to.
You can also think that I am fabricating my encounter with a sasquatch, along with Dave Petersen, hunting guide and bowhunter Jeff Dysinger and all the other hunting guides, outfitters and bowhunters with personal encounters with a sasquatch in Colorado back-country. We all got together in a big meeting a long time ago and decided we would create this big hoax so that people would think we were all idiots. It has really helped us in our professional careers, which is why we conspired to create this Colorado sasquatch hoax.
I love the outdoors and wild places. I am concerned about habitat preservation and the animals those preserved habitats support. Sasquatch is a real species, but lets joke around about it until they are extinct, instead of working to find out about the habitat needs of the sasquatch and preserving it. If the last elk was running around Colorado, I think some people are of the mindset that they would go out and try to shoot it so the extinction would be complete. I want my great grandchildren to be able to have the chance to see a splendid old bull elk in a wild place in the Rocky Mountains and also have the chance to see a sasquatch or come across sasquatch tracks so huge that it makes the hair stand up on your neck when you follow them. If you never come across sasquatch tracks or see a sasquatch yourself, I feel sorry for you, because I think it may be the most wilderness educating experience I have ever had. It pulled me into the pliestocene for a few moments, when huge tracks of huge beasts were common. Maybe sasquatch belonged to that age, and is now only a fleeting figment of a time that is supposed to go away and be replaced by housing additions, asphalt, concrete and satelite dishes. I am not mad that sasquatch is only a joke, I’m sad. When sasquatch tracks no longer are found in America, I am going to go to the tiaga of Siberia and walk in one direction for days on end through those vast forests until I am too tired to walk any further and just sit down, enjoy the quiet and hope something really wild eventually wanders within sight. I’m not coming back out.
Sasquatch is impossible to most scientists minds, and so is God. If sasquatch is never proven to exist, I will always know that it did, and that it was joked into extinction. I remember reading headlines that “God is Dead” too, probably by the Associated Press.
Date: 12-Jan-03
I sincerely felt the same way as ZEB in regards to sasquatch, unicorns, loch ness monsters, and all star wrestling. I still feel the same way about all of those fakes except I had the perhaps unfortunate experience of finding tracks of sasquatch in an area where I am certain that no one would have faked them. Plus the many other experienced people seeing these sasquatch in that same particular area is just too much for me to believe that it is all due to some guy in a gorilla suit back in that wilderness and track faking in that area for the past 20 years. I even have memior testimony from a government bear hunter named Willford of his experiences in that same area from 130 years ago. And we probably can not ignore the Jemez pueblo ruins not far away in New Mexico on the same ridge of mountains that is named “Place Where the Giant Man Stepped” in regards to the hairy giants that they encountered there in the 1450’s when the pueblo was constructed. Something is sure going on there, and has been for at least 500 years.
Back in the late 1800’s when men were apparently shooting anyting that moved in Colorado, at least one of these men should have shot a sasquatch if any existed at the time. The only reason that I can see for this not occurring is that sasquatch look so human-like that the thought of shooting one is kind of like the thought of shooting another human being for no reason at all. If I saw a bigfoot in my sights, I certainly could not shoot it. It looks like a man, in spite of the hair, which sets it apart from other animals in a very unique way. We have reports of sasquatch in Colorado, from miners and hunters of the late 1800’s, and even have reports of a few men trying to shoot one in what is now near and east of the Holy Cross Wilderness on the Lake Creek in the 1870’s. Reports of sightings and tracks too still come from areas around the Holy Cross Wilderness in central Colorado. The tracks we investigated on the Eagle River in the spring of 2000 were awesome, even to the CDOW biologists that also investigated the case.
Actually in the 1800’s there were not all that many people in Colorado, and plenty of places for sasquatch to hide from men then and now. Sasquatch does not apparently have the pee brain of a grizzly, yet at least one grizzly remained in Colorado for 25 years past the point that they were supposedly extinct, and there may yet be a few grizzlies in Colorado. Reports of grizzly sighting in Colorado in the 1960’s and 1970’s recieved the same kind of laughs by Colorado hunters and Colorado biologists as sasquatch recieves now. The laughable sighting reports were coming from the very places where Wiseman killed the last grizzly in Colorado. But then grizzly sighting reports really meant nothing and we put those last Colorado grizzlies in the same catagory as all star wrestling. The laughers also ate crow eventually, and may again. History is soon repeated.
Could cougars live in Michigan in breeding numbers for 100 years without any Michigan biologists knowing it? They did and have. Why wasn’t one shot in all that time? Or hit by a car? Plenty were seen and reported to the biologists, but why didn’t they follow up the reports?
Date: 12-Jan-03
Bear, one county in Washington state has made it illegal to kill a sasquatch, but no state or federal agency has made it illegal. Sasquatch appeared for a short time in one federal list of endangered species, but was removed and has not appeared since.
I don’t think sasquatch should be listed on any list of mammals, threatened, endangered, protected or anything. I still think that sasquatch should be completely verified by a type specimen (body we can study on a table), before any legal actions whatsoever. This might seem odd, but I think sasquatch should remain as only a legend/myth and not a real animal until such time as it is completely verified to exist at all. We also can not make management decisions based on “possible” grizzlies in Colorado. Neither species is verified to be living in Colorado at present, though both or either may be living here in very small numbers. I only think we should make continual official efforts to verify them both for awhile.
I know that sasquatch exist in Colorado, but I really can not expect you to believe it or officials to believe it off hand. What I really want is for you and the officials to look seriously and scientifically at what evidences we do have, and decide by the evidence, not just decide that they don’t exist because you think it is impossible. Michigan biologists decided cougars were impossible in their state, and so chose not to look at the evidence there. Don’t let presumptions rule.
Date: 13-Jan-03
Jim, has Wiseman run into a sasquatch in the San Juans that you know of? I have never spoken to him, but he sure spent a lot of time in the same general area where we had our encounter. I’ve had two other outfitters with encounters in that particular area, in addition to Dave Petersons encounter there, so Wiseman having some experiences there would not surprise me. I still think that the case where Wiseman had something pick up and carry a 400 pound shetland pony bear bait carcass may have been a sasquatch instead of a grizzly. Bears usually drag a carcass that heavy, rather than pick it up and carry it.
Date: 21-Jan-03
When I bowhunted on and near the South San Juan Wilderness a bunch, there was always sheep crap so thick and no grass left in some areas that the elk avoided the areas all together. Proof of grizzlies or sasquatch in some areas there would at least probably keep the USFS from allowing too much grazing of such otherwise pristine areas. There would also be less bear poaching by herders and such. One sheep herder also evidently took a pot shot at a sasquatch that he claimed was lifting a sheep, if his story is to be believed.
Things might indeed change as as far as land use if grizzlies or sasquatch were confirmed in that area, both bad and good for us hunters. If we could keep USFWS/EPA and other federal agencies out of the decisions, we would probably be okay, but it is very likely that they would step in to take control. This is why CDOW has no incentive to find either grizzlies or sasquatch. Can’t blame them really, as most of the commission is interested in keeping grazing rights alotted to residents for economic reasons and also keeping the outfitters and hunters happy, again for economic reasons.
Still, I would like to see wildernesses kept more as wilderness than it even is at this time, even if it takes the confirmation of grizzlies there to curb the abusive use.
What we don’t want is for the federal government to make the South San Juans Wilderness a National Park. Rocky Mountain National Park has no grizzlies or sasquatch, probably because of too many human visitors. Why no sightings of sasquatch in Rocky Mountain National Park, yet many sasquatch sightings and tracks in the SSJWilderness?
I think it is funny that Petersen searches high and low for grizzlies in southern Colorado, and then comes face to face with a sasquatch at 20 yards there. I search high and low for sasquatch in southern Colorado, so maybe I will come face to face with a grizzly at 20 yards. Turn about is fair play, but I think I would rather run into a sasquatch at 20 yards, rather than a grizzly. Safer I think. Actually, I think I would like to keep about a 100 yard barrier between myself and grizzlies or sasquatch.
Date: 21-Jan-03
Bear, I don’t think CDOW would have even been interested in your camera trap photos of a grizzly in Colorado. Because, during my sasquatch research there I found a man from Chama NM that had video tape of a grizzly sow and two cubs that he took in the SSJWilderness. I notified CDOW of the film and no one went to get it. Amazing, but I think that CDOW does not want to know about grizzlies, for fear of the very changes that you too fear. I don’t think they want to know about sasquatch either.
Bear, I do plan to go into a place that I know on the north edge of South San Juan Wilderness this coming summer if you want to go along. I don’t think we will find anything, because I spent 300 days there and only found one set of sasquatch tracks in all that time, but I will go there again, nonetheless. I will probably spend most of my time fishing. A new gold mine is going in where we had the best chance of meeting a sasquatch, so the area is changing constantly and I suppose the sasquatch that was hanging around that area is going to move deeper into the wilderness. I think he was a young male and he was braver than most sasquatch. He is also probably maturing and will be wiser and more cautious. I think we missed our chance to get him on film. No one has seen him since 1997, so maybe he is is dead, gone, or too mature now to find. Very few of the adult male sasquatch are seen, and the females are even rarer to see. Usually it is the sasquatch with 15 to 17 inch long tracks that are seen, which we think are the young adult males. We have tracks documented from southern Colorado that are nearly 21 inches long, but those sasquatch that we think are fully adult males are actually seen very rarely. We had 7 sightings of those two huge sasquatch in the winter of 1993/94 in the space of a 10 day period in one area near San Antoniio Peak, involving quite a number of witnesses, and resulting in documentation of the huge tracks. But, that was more due to harsh cold and deep snow at higher elevations that winter, and all the game was driven into the open more than normal. An outfitter found some 14 inch sasquatch tracks above Platoro Reservoir on the Rito Gato in 1988, so there are is at least one smaller one in that area, hopefully a female. I think that what Petersen saw was a young female or a very young male. His sighting gives me hope that we will have at least a few sasquatch in the San Juans for a number of years. The sasquatch my father personally saw was around 8 foot tall as compared to the eave of our cabin, and he guessed it was about the bulk of a fair size elk of 600 pounds. That particular one left tracks around 16 to 17 inches long in the silt by the stream as it ran away across open ground. He might have been fairly close on weight, because most scientists think that the weight distribution is about the same as human on the bottoms of the feet, and so the 600 pound weight figure works out pretty close to that calculation. A 21 inch foot makes for some awesome weights of well over 1000 pounds. I have heard of tracks up to 24 inches long in Alberta, which I can hardly fathom. I have not seen those casts, so do not know if they are real or not. I had a hard enough time fathoming the 17 inch tracks I found myself, and the huge creature that must have made them.
I wonder how big the tracks were that James Slack found across the border in New Mexico were? Must have been fairly big, to draw his attention to them while bowhunting there. Smaller tracks might just be passed off as bear tracks at a glance.
Date: 24-Jan-03
Ron, I think the Camp Hale incident is probably a dead end, due to poor records at Camp Hale. 6 men died during training at Camp Hale during WWII, but causes of death were not available on any records that I could find. If one of the soldiers training in the mountains there was missing and presumed dead after they found his bloody clothes and the sasquatch tracks in the snow at the scene, it probably would not be listed that way in the records anyway. All we have to go on is the fact that Camp Hale residents did claim the story was true. But, it may just be unfounded rumor. Another fact is however that Camp Hale residents claimed that the incident with the sasquatch occurred on Pearl Creek, just east of Camp Hale, and even the Forest Service personel in that area would not stay in the Pearl Creek area after dark, clear into the late 1960’s for fear of the sasquatch there. About the only information I can get from current Forest Service people in that area now is that they do still recieve sasquatch sighting reports from time to time, but mostly west of there in the Holy Cross areas.
http://www.bfro.net is the website of the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization.
The BFRO recieves lots of sightings of bigfoot, and at least half of them are pure fabrication or complete misidentification. There are hundreds of documented tracks from the Rocky Mountains and points west that fit a distinct morphology and appear in all ways natural, and no documented tracks that fit that morphology from east of the Rockys. What this tells me is that eastern bigfoot reports are most likely all pure bunk. When reading the reports, one also begins to realize that the eastern reports are all nighttime fleeting glimpses of something or sounds or indistinct tracks, and if a daytime report of a good sighting is had in the east, thorough investigation usually reveals that it is a fabrication. Just the opposite occurs in the Rocky Mounains and points west. In that area, sightings are had in daylight, often in full view, often by more than one witness, distinct tracks are often found, and when investigating the sightings the witnesses stick to their story and are quite serious. We also have many sightings in the western states by very experienced outdoorsmen, law enforcement officers, forest service persons, and even trained wildlife biologists. This is something else that is lacking in the eastern states. What is the logical reason that sightings in the east lack physical evidence, quality witnesses and daytime sightings, and these very things are present in western sightings? One would think that eastern residents could hoax tracks as well as western residents, but it has not happened.
I am a skeptic by nature, and have to see some physical evidence I can study at liesure for the most part in an area before taking any sightings from that area seriously at all. I would also guess that in the western states, at least half of the sightings there are also not worth reading. Case in point is the sighting of a 45 mph running white sasquatch that a lady from Eagle Colorado said she saw when she was a teenager which was a nightime sighting from a car. This lady also said she and a friend saw about a dozen sasquatchs recently in the Eagle area. A whole herd of sasquatchs, LOL. I know that there is at least one sasquatch that has been in the Eagle area in the last couple years, because of the physical evidence I have seen there, but I also know that we can discount this ladys sighting in that area.
As a skeptic by nature, I believe that ghosts are peoples imagination, Loch Ness is too small to hold a population of large predators, crop circles are the work of idiots who destroy crops, the Bermuda triangle is a busy area of boat and plane traffic that will result in a higher number of boat and plane losses simply because there are more of them traveling there, and most bigfoot sightings are nothing more than imagination and fabrication. But, I also think that some bigfoot sightings are real and many of the tracks are real in the western states. The only reason that I think this is that I found tracks myself, and have investigated and studied enough tracks since then to have a good base of knowledge on that form of evidence. On the track evidence, I agree with the track assessments of Dr. Jeff Meldrum at Idaho State University. Feet are Dr. Meldrums specialty. So much a specialty in fact that he recieved a grant from the Leaky Foundation to study the fossil hominid tracks from Laetoli Africa, because of his expertise on the subject of primate feet. Meldrum is not an idiot or one to be given to flights of fancy. Meldrum is a thorough scientist who applies proper scientific method to the tracks of sasquatch. Other anthropologists would do well to listen to him on this subject. Those who do are soon shown that the tracks fit a very distinct functional morphology, and that morphology signifies a distinct mammal of the primate order that leaves tracks all over the western mountains of the United States and Canada. Not only do the individual tracks themselves fit a morphology, but series of tracks in line also fit into a distinct pattern in the way they are laid out that differs from any other animal, including man. Sasquatch walk on two legs similar to man, but not like man. Sasquatches walk like sasquatches and humans walk like humans. There is a distinct difference. Why?
Date: 24-Jan-03
For more on tracks, from Dr. Meldrum himself, visit his Idaho State University website http://www.isu.edu/~meldd/fxnlmorph.html
Date: 31-Jan-03
Wow, the thread is alive and I have not been here for awhile. Some real good input and questions.
I would have to say that the main problem with the reality of bigfoot is that there are no bodies to study. I agree, but I also have seen too much current evidence of the existance of sasquatch to dismiss it. Science looks at evidence, not lack of evidence.
I would also have to say that the main problem with anthropology is that there are too many missing bodies of missing links. These links probably existed, but we have no fossil record of them. Why? We just found a new fossil hominid in Europe. One that had never been found before and one that upsets old conceptions of hominid evolution. We are a long ways from finding all the types of hominids that ever walked the Earth. We may also be a long ways from finding bodies of hominids that still walk the Earth. Humans know much less than most humans think we do.
As for what sasquatch eat in winter…..Winter provides more food for predators than any other season of the year. Food in the form of winter weakend and winter killed animals, small and large. One long walk or drive through Colorado will reveal a plethora of dead elk, deer and other critters that could not survive the harsh conditions. Predators willing to eat carrion have a heyday.
There was a question as to whether tracks are found in winter in Colorado. Yes, and pretty often considering that tracks in snow usually get covered up almost daily by fresh snows. You can recognize sasquatch tracks by not only their size, but also by how they are laid out one foot far in front of the other. Adult sasquatch tracks are usually 48 to 60 inches with each step, and no straddle and little toe out (angle of gait). Human tracks are generally 25 to 36 inches per step, with much foot drag and some straddle or toe out(angle of gait). Humans in snow shoes also leave much drag and disturbance of snow. Bears leave huge straddle. Large ungulates leave some straddle, lots of drag, and when they leave walking tracks the tracks are less than 40 inches, even for moose. As an ungulate increases speed to a trot, gallop, pronk or run, the tracks are spread out and do not look anything like a line of sasquatch tracks. An 8 or 9 foot tall human might leave tracks like an adult sasquatch, but with smaller feet. Sasquatch are heavy animals, and so have bigger, and wider feet per length and per height than humans. The 18 inch long feet that made the tracks on the Eagle River in the spring of year 2000 were over 9 inches wide. A human foot of that length, provided it stayed the same width to length ratio of other adult human tracks would be much under 7 inches wide. Ratios of weight per square inch on the bottom of a sasquatch foot is about the same as on human feet. The tracks from the Eagle River indicated a 900+ pound animal, which is about the same weight as an adult male coastal grizzly. The impressions of those tracks were studied for this very weight distribution and found to be accurate for the conditions at the location, when comparing to human tracks near the scene. Most people who have not seen a sasquatch track underestimate what we are talking about in regards to foot size. An 18 inch foot that is nearly 10 inches wide is absolutely and positively huge and massive when compared to a human foot. For a human to press that large of a size of anything into the soil is impossible without the use of heavy equipment. If you wore wooden feet that size and took a step, you would not even make an impression as your weight would be so spread out as to be like standing on a large piece of plywood. But, if you go barefoot and take a step, you make an impression to a depth similar to a sasquatch track. The foot weight is less spread out, and rolls through the step, impressing each portion of the foot as the weight is distributed along with movement. The Eagle River tracks were seen by Colorado Division of Wildlife biologists and the Eagle County Sheriffs Department at the location. None thought that any hoaxing or faking could have been involved, in fact quite to the contrary. I agree. The tracks were completely natural. 7 miles of them intermittently along that river in late March of the year 2000. I have seen tracks like that in other locations too. Completely natural. I am not an idiot when it comes to tracking wildlife. I do have some 8 or 9 Pope and Young Qualifying big game animals and I had to track a few critters in my day. I have hunted bear a few times too, without bait, and tracking was involved there too. I have seen grizzly tracks a couple of times in my years in the outdoors. There is nothing that even remotely compares to a set of sasquatch tracks.
Now that you know what sasquatch tracks will look like, go out and drive every backroad while snow is on the ground from Pikes Peak to Kenosha Pass and 75 miles in any direction from those two points. There are hundreds of miles of roads all over that country. You will eventually find at least one set of sasquatch tracks crossing the road, maybe fresh, maybe a day or two old. If you find steaming tracks, you can take off hot on its trail, but you must realize that the sasquatch making the tracks can walk in pretty dang deep snow at a pace of more than 5 mph, and you will have trouble keeping a pace of 2 mph in the same terrain. You need a snowmobile for the first half mile of trail maybe, until you hit a steep grade or timber, and a helicopter after that. If you fly a helicopter in that terrian much, you will soon die in a crash. Hopefully you can see how hard it is to track down a fresh set of sasquatch tracks in fresh snow. We have seen the tracks in those conditions, but catching up to the critter that makes them is a different story. I really did try to lease a helicopter and pilot once, and they would not do it because of the danger involved. They did not want to die! Hopefully things will improve in the future as far as equipment needed to catch up to a walking sasquatch. One thing that many people have told us after seeing as sasquatch is that sasquatch have a big butt. Why the big butt? Muscle man, muscle. Run up and down a mountain 7 days a week all your life and you will have a pretty big muscle in that butt area too. With sasquatch though, they are made for it and have that big butt as a natural part of their anatomy. Ask Dave Petersen about big butt on sasquatch. He even titled his article for Bugle magazine “Big Butt” after his viewing of one of Colorado’s sasquatch. Petersen is not the only Colorado outdoorsman to mention the big butt on a sasquatch they saw.
I have never seen a sasquatch, so can not say for sure that they even exist, but I can guarantee you 100% that their tracks are real and are not faked by some person making jokes. Because the tracks are very real, I take seriously the sightings by the many very experienced Colorado outdoorsmen that have told me of seeing these sasquatch there. The list of these witnesses is long and getting longer. Many of them are your own hunting guides and the guys that write the hunting articles that you all read.
Sasquatch seems incredibly impossible to me too, but I can not trust my impressions of possibilty based on nothing. I have to base my opinions on the evidence at hand.
Why has no sasquatch been shot? I think they indeed have been shot accidently or in fear on a couple of occaisions, but not recovered so far. All the persons who were hunting and saw them that I have personally investigated had no thoughts of shooting the one they saw. They had no sasquatch permit in their pocket, and the sasquatch look so human that no moral person would shoot at such a human form anyway. Would you shoot some guy in the woods just because he was hairy and bigger than you? I hope not. Sasquatch are unique among animals, because they walk like us, and look kind of like us, except for the size and the fur. They look nothing like a bear or a deer. Only one idiot in a million goes out and shoots at anything that moves. That slob has evidently not run into a sasquatch yet.
Hair? We have hairs from about 9 incidents that all match each other but match no other North American mammal. They are very similar to human hairs, but with some morphology that also matches chimp hair. Definitely primate. None so far have had fresh enough root to get mDNA, or enough strand of any genetic sequence to be definitive as to species yet. Several examples have been destroyed during testing, by the test itself. The hairs collected by Woodland Park Colorado police after a sasquatch tried to get into a cabin were analysed by the University of California, San Franciso, and found to be primate, non-human, but similar to chimpanzee hair. They were destroyed by the final tests for spectroanalysis. This was before the days of current mDNA extraction process. The hairs collected in Wyoming at the location of a sighting by one of their own biologists from a split rail fence the sasquatch crossed came to the same exact conclusions. It was submitted to the University of Wyomings, Dr. George Gill by Wyoming G&F biologist John Mioncyncski (sp?), and subsequently sent to Arizona for the tests.
Fossil hair of non-human North American primates have been found. One was found in pliestocene mud of a cave in Oregon. The other was found imbedded in a stalagmite deposit in a cave in New Mexico with indications of an age of over 100,000 years. The latter hair is thought to be close to human morphology, but of a different age than human existance in North America. If it is human, then humans were in North America about 80,000 years earlier than current accepted theory. Could be human though. The hair from Oregon matches no known human mDNA.
Fossil hominid bones of many species have yet to be discovered. All anthropologists will tell you that. So missing fossil evidence of sasquatch is no problem at all for any thinking paleontologist. It takes very unique circumstaces to fossilize bone in identifiable form. A rare species such as sasquatch is going to be one of the last fossil hominid species found if they have only lived in North America for the last 100,000 years or so. Sasquatch are naturally rare (low population) because of their huge body size which dictates that no one area can ever support a large population of them. They would eat themselves into extinction.
Fresh bones of sasquatch may have been found by you. Do you know what to look for, or know what you are seeing when you see it? If you saw a large bone in the woods, would you think it was an elk bone or a sasquatch arm bone? Your kid might have picked up a sasquatch arm bone and swung it around and you told him to put down that stinking elk bone and wash his hands. Skulls, especially large skulls with thin brain cases, break up quickly into small parts and lay flat on the ground, if they survive at all. Most break down pretty dang quickly. If there are 200 sasquatch running around Colorado, how many die each year, and how many skeletons are going to be found? There are from 4,000 to 12,000 cougars in Colorado at any one time. How many cougar skeletons do you find while out hunting? How many of the 24,000 bears in Colorado do you find dead. Actually, I think there are less than 50 sasquatch in Colorado at the present time, maybe less. I only know that 3 different size tracks were found in southern Colorado in 1993, so maybe there are only 3 sasquatch in Colorado. Who knows? I suppose they are rare, that is all I can theorize from the evidence.
I don’t believe is sasquatch, I only believe in evidence. I do believe in sasquatch tracks, as I have seen a bunch of them. So if you do not believe that sasquatch can exist at all, it is a waste of time to read any of this forum. Biological science has had many surprises in the last 50 years, and I think we will eventually have at least one very big surprise in the future. I hope that whatever leaves those huge tracks I have seen will exist long enough to let us discover all about it. Colorado had some 6000 cougars in 1999, and only 3 got themselves run over by a car according to CDOW statistician Mary Lloyd. If only 1 in 2000 wild cougars has trouble avoiding getting hit by a car, how long is the wait for a superior brained wild predator to get hit by a car if there are only a 100 or less of them in Colorado. Never will it happen probably. Sasquatch are not stupid, far from it. Retarded sasquatch never live past their first birthday.
If Colorado has more than 6000 cougars, how come I have not seen one yet? I have spent plenty of time in the places where they are supposed to live in Colorado. I remember seeing a set of cougar tracks at our ranch southwest of Pueblo in the early 1970’s, so I guess Colorado had cougars then. Or at least cougar tracks.
If I hid in a one square mile forest of old growth, and you came out to find me and I didn’t want to be found, you would never even see me. Want to give it a try? Sasquatch have thousands of square miles of forest to hide in. Go find one. Good luck, you are going to need plenty of it. Some luck on the order of winning the lottery. Maybe less, because more people have seen sasquatch than have won the big lottery. Does big lottery money really exist? (:
Date: 31-Jan-03
I have to take exception to the statement that “THERE ARE NO BIG FOOTS!”. My feet are “BIG”, compared to the feet of a rabbit.
Here is a BIG FOOT story that all of you unbelivers can identify with. This lady went into a bar and saw this Colorado cowboy sitting with his very big boots up on his table. They were the biggest boots this lady had ever seen, so she went up to him and ask “is it true what they say about men with big feet?”, and he replied “come home with me tonight and I’ll show you how true it is”. She decided she had nothing to lose and so she went home with him to spend the night and give his big part a try. In the morning she gave him a $100 and started to leave. He said “You don’t have to pay for what we did last night”, and she replied “the $100 is not for last night, it so you can go out and buy a pair of boots that fit”.
BIG FOOTS DO EXIST, but they just might not be all they are cracked up to be.
Date: 31-Jan-03Â
Someone above stated “Let me guess how many bigfoot believers have a college degree in something other then hallucinagens.” That is an interesting statement. Far more than half of college graduates believe in UFO’s and advanced entities on other planets, but ironically UFO’s leave no physical traces to be studied and we have no idea if any other planet is occupied by intelligent beings in the universe, yet we do have many hundreds of example sets of sasquatch tracks to study at liesure. I think more college graduates are actually probably more open to the existance of sasquatch than non-graduates. The reason is probably that the more you know, the more you realize that you don’t know.
I still believe in God, but I have never seen him, so maybe I am just stupid and need more college. I try to order my life by logic, and I still think that even the minutist bacterial life is too complex in its DNA and rDNA replication process to have happened by accident. Though I have never seen God, I see his tracks on Earth. I see design in natural things. Too much design for it all to be accident. I also believe in evolution, but an evolutionary process with design, by a Designer. Maybe I am wrong however, and millions of amino acids came into an extremely complex sequence of spiral association in some oozing mud and multiplied itself sometime in the past accidently and I was born. The mud man. This is by far a more important question than if sasquatch exists or not.
Date: 04-Feb-03
Henner Fahrenbach at the Oregon Primate Research Center has some 9 samples of hair from 9 different sasquatch sightings in 9 different places, collected from a period spanning nearly 50 years, that match each other morphologically but match no other known critter. It does look to be primate hair, but none thus far have had enough root to do a full mDNA sequence. Anyone can go there and look at the hairs themselves. The problem is that maybe all those samples are from some type of South American primate that no one has any hair types specimens of to match with. So hairs, even if genuine are not proof, until we have a type specimen of a sasquatch to match them with.
I think that DonV is very logical in his assessment of the sasquatch situation. I too can not bring my mind to “believe” in sasquatch, though I have even seen tracks myself that match the descriptions of the creature that might make them. I’ll still have to see a sasquatch myself to fully consider them a real species. I have thought much about the logical reason for the tracks I found in the SSJWilderness, and think it is illogical that someone faked the line of tracks there in an area where few people ever venture. I don’t know which is more illogical, the track hoax theory, or the “sasquatch must be real” theory. The tracks I found matched those of hundreds of other track events documented over many years in many western states. And, the other tracks I have investigated in Colorado matched those tracks too. So, someone is either hoaxing many hundreds of tracks all over the western states for many years, or there are sasquatch out there making them.
The tracks from Eagle were a good case in point, and I really did thoroughly investigate the people that found the tracks, who were two completely unassociated people from two different cities. Though the tracks they found matched each other and were on the same river, they were over 7 miles apart and found two weeks apart. The second set, when found, was two weeks old, but still pretty clear because a light snow on them had kept them from drying out and crumbling. The time of year that they were found was a time when very few people fish on that river. The law agencies and the fisherman that found the tracks said that very few people fish that river in late March, when the tracks were made. Only one other fisherman had been there that anyone knew of, and lack of human tracks at the scene of the sasquatcht tracks bore that out. Now, why would a track faker make deeply impressed 19 inch long/9 inch wide sasquatch tracks along more than 7 miles of riverbank along the Eagle River in late March when extremely few people go there, and why did those faked tracks show much toe flexibility and completely natural deposition? Most of the tracks were far from perfect, which is natural in any track line. The tracks walked in and out of the river water, even fully crossing the Eagle River just upstream from Gypsum Colorado. This is odd for a track faker, because the tracks crossed the river from north to south at that point, meaning that the track faker went to the side of the river opposite of the location of the towns along the river where more people go down to the river. Very many more people would have had a chance to find any faked tracks on the north side of the river. So, it seems that the track faker was actually trying to keep anyone from finding the tracks, as he put them in the least likely place for them to be found, and at a time of year when the fewest people even walk along the Eagle River. The local CDOW biologistm, the Eagle County Sheriff Department, and I, tried in every way to explain these tracks in any way other than that a real sasquatch with 18″ long feet walked along that river that early spring, but we can conclude no other way. I simply do not even want to “believe” in sasquatch, but I have no choice but to see these tracks as very genuine after the thorough investigations I have done. Most of the tracks in the Eagle River case were not in fine mud or sand where they could be seen well, but were rather almost imperceptable in gravel infested soils other gravel deposits and in rocks of various sizes. They were certainly pressed in deeper than a person with that large of wooden feet could have pressed them in. If they were faked, they were done with some form of flexible faked foot of 18 inches long, and the guy would have had to be carrying many hundreds of pounds of weight on his back. It was clear to all of us who investigated the tracks that none of the tracks were scraped or drawn into the ground, but rather completely made by compression forces of great weight. You people can probably not really appreciate how huge these tracks were in the Eagle River case. Draw a rectangle 19 inches long and 10 inches wide on the ground and put your foot into it to compare to your own foot. I wear size 13 boots, and my feet are only 12 inches long and less than 4 inches wide. If you think you can make faked tracks 19 inches long, then make a pair of fake feet that size and walk in them and see what happens on soils. You will not even make an impression in soils like those along the Eagle River. Whatever made the tracks in that case pressed pretty deeply in gravelly soil, pressing the small angular rocks down deeply into the soil and rocks beneath. I guess you really have to see them to appreciate the foot size involved, the forces required to press them in, the flexibilty very readily apparent from track to track, the huge strides involved, the terrain involved, the water crossings, the naturalness, the locations involved and every other facet of even this one case. I found tracks myself in the SSJWilderness, but the Eagle River tracks were even more convincing to me because they were just awesome in every single detail. I just wish that some of those tracks would have been in some real fine silt where more fine detail such as dermal ridges could be seen, but the fact that they were in less definable soils even made them more believable to me, because who would fake tracks in such an odd location, odd time, odd side of the river, and in such odd soil conditions. And, how did they wade a cold river with those huge paddle size feet strapped to their boots.
After investigation of the tracks at Eagle, CDOW biologist Bill Heicher said, “well, these tracks are certainly real and not faked, but I would think that if sasquatch lived around here that some of the hunting guides would have seen one of them”. To that I say, “how long of a list of Colorado hunting guides with personal close range sasquatch sightings in Colorado do you want, as I have 6 or 7 phone numbers of experinced professional Colorado hunting guides with personal sightings of Colorado sasquatch that you can talk to all you want”. After you are through with that list, I will give you another list of hunters with sightings, and then when you are through with that list you can start calling the backpackers with sightings in Colorado. Then you can branch out and talk to two Wyoming biologists with personal sightings, and look at tracks they have collected. Then you can go to Idaho State University and look at examples of matching tracks from hundreds of other isolated events that all match each other in fine morphological, anatomical and functional details. The thing is, sasquatch tracks are not just oversize human tracks, but rather have very unique details, shape, deposition details, and stride and straddle details all their own, and very unhuman. Why so unique? Why so consistent over the last 75 years that people have been documenting them with plaster and photos? Why are they the same from so many different western states? Why did we already have hundreds of examples before any of these unique details were ever publicized. Science did not even really realize this consistency and uniqueness until we got all these examples together into one place and started comparing them to each other.
After all that, I still have a hard time believing in sasquatch as a species, but I certainly believe in sasquatch tracks as very real. No, not just “very real”. Sasquatch tracks are extremely real, and really impressive. I just hope you all get to come across a set of tracks of a large sasquatch sometime too.
If you think you are going to dazzle me with a faked track, you had better design your fake foot with toes that move in all directions to the correct proportion, can bend powerfully into the dirt or extend softly in different tracks, can flex throughout the foot itself, can even bend laterally a little bit, have flexion in exactly the right places, have depth of print in the right locations, push up soil in exactly the right places and not in others, press into the given soil the exact amount for the correct pounds per square inch, and on and on. Because I have seen very many examples that do just that, and do it consistently and well. But, why put all that kind of energy and time into what is essentially a bald face lie. I can not tolerate decievers and liers, so don’t ever try to lie to me or decieve me with faked tracks or faked stories of sightings. On the other hand, if you want to build a fake foot to make fake sasquatch tracks, go ahead and do it and learn from it. I have thought about making a fake set of sasquatch feet to experiment with to see if anyone could even fake such a thing as I have seen, but soon realized that the intracacies of soft tissues and interior muscle arrangement and obvious muscle power involved would be impossible to make effectively, and then I would have to figure out a way to carry a seven hundred pound pack on my back and still take 48 to 60 inch steps. I have seen faked tracks, by someone who thought he could do it well, and they were laughable. That Ray Wallace guy that died recently tried to fake tracks, and they were barely perceptable in even soft soil, too close together, showed a steep ridge at the toes where he stepped off because the feet were rigid. Looked more like snowshoe tracks in dirt than sasquatch tracks. What an idiot. I might be able to do better, but not much better if I tried. It pretty much takes a real sasquatch to make very convincing sasquatch tracks. Then, after we have tried to make the fake sasquatch feet, we have to finely engrave dermal ridge details into the feet to convince some of the forensic experts that have already identified the correct patterns from several examples on file. Dermal ridges don’t just go along the foot in any old way, but some ridges end and others start, and the width of each ridge has to be just exact and have tiny little pores along its length that can only be seen through magnification. Some of the tracks show this detail and in known patterns and ridge size. It gets pretty tiresome in study details, not only in this facet but the complete combination of facets. Sasquatch feet are just simply very unhuman and very unique in so many ways that I have only touched on the very tip of the iceberg in this forum. When you walk in your faked sasquatch feet, you better know which way to tip your feet or not tip your feet to convince me of the authenticity of the tracks, and many other things that you might not think of when faking tracks. Because when I send your faked tracks to be evaluated by Dr. Meldrum, he will be looking for the tracks to match a long list of criteria, much of which has never been publicized in any way. Dr. Melrum even sees things in the tracks that I don’t see, and the worlds leading primate ridge detail expert Jimmy Chilcutt will look at them with a sharp eye to details that even Meldrum can not see. Funny that so many examples from such a wide range of sources, wide range of time, and wide geographic distribution all pass the muster of these experts that look for things that you and I would have never thought about. If the tracks are faked, then there is a huge conspiricy of very well trained anatomical experts that all got together over 50 years ago and decided the exact details then that they would put into their faked sasquatch tracks over the next 50 years in all the western mountain states and in odd locations and times. And, they also must dress up in 8 foot tall gorilla suits and parade themselves in front of Colorado hunting guides, bowhunters, rifle hunters, and backpackers in some of the most remote wilderness areas available. You get to the point that you either have to accept this huge “conspiricy theory” or accept this huge animals tracks and start thinking that maybe these hunting guides are not pulling your leg either. Why would Colorado hunting guide Jeff Dysinger tell you he sat and watched a sasquatch for 10 minutes through binoculars in full view at a very close 125 yards in an open meadow if he didn’t? He didn’t gain anything from his account, any more than the other guides or more than Dave Petersen gained from telling you of meeing a sasquatch on a mountain trail in southern Colorado.
Date: 05-Feb-03
I give up.
Thank you to those who at least listened without the laughs. Thank you sincerely to those with rational and logical alternatives, as that is proper process of solving a mystery. Sasquatch is indeed not proven at all to exist at all, but please look critically and rationally at what evidence we do have. Look at all of it, look close, but do stay skeptical.
Some people laugh so hard that their eyes close and they can’t see anything right in front of them anyway. To those young elk hunters who laugh at the thought of sasquatch and have spent less than 25 years bowhunting wilderness areas in Colorado, I give a little prayer to God that you will some day come extremely face to face with an agitated Colorado adult male sasquatch and that others will laugh at you when you tell about it. It is only poetic justice. I believe that justice in most things will prevail eventually, but it is up to God I think.
See you in the wilderness.
Date: 06-Feb-03
Thanks for the support. Really though I just can not fully explain on this forum the full scope of the evidence without writing book length input. My one investigaton of the single event of tracks at Eagle resulted in almost a book length investigation report. So I can’t really try to explain all of the reports in enough detail to convince anyone that does not want to be. My inputs here on this forum are too long as it is.
As a complete skeptic on sasquatch prior to my personal experience, I do fully understand skepticism on this matter. I am still skeptical of most of the things regarding sasquatch, and sightings in and of themselves are not very convincing to me. I pretty much am at a point where I need physical evidence that I can study. Same pretty much goes to sounds reputedly of sasquatch. Many animals make some pretty odd and even pretty loud noises, so really I would have to listen to recordings to form much of an opinion. I do know that I heard sounds that were of no animal that I can think of, and so loud that we could feel it. Kind of like the resonence an African lion makes when roaring, that you can feel as well as hear. If you have ever had a lion roaring within a few feet of you, you know what I am talking about. I think if sasquatch is real, then it likely has a pretty wide range of vocalizations, just like the other large primates have, but I also think that most of the sound recordings of purported sasquatch on the internet are probably pure hogwash. Much of the information on sasquatch on the interenet is also pure hogwash, which is why I think that one should probably pay attention to mainly the recognized scientists involved in this research, and pretty much ignore the rest of the internet information.
There were some recordings done by several residents in the Puyullup Washington area in the 1970’s that sounded pretty much like the awesome and awesomely loud sounds I heard in the SSJWilderness, so I pretty much reject the other sound recordings on the internet. I may be wrong however, simply because a species can make a range of sounds. I have heard bull elk bugle in ways that sounded like no other bulls. Some are clear toned and high pitched, while others are lower toned and raspy. I have even heard one bull that roared very similar to the way that European red stags roar. Sounds can be very deceptive, especially in mountainous country where they can echo and be changed while bouncing off the terrain. However, the closer one is to the source of the sound, the better. Such as the sounds heard by the two different elk hunters in their accounts given recently in Bugle magazine. One has to wonder what made those extremely loud and extremely unusual sounds. I get reports from hunters all the time of really loud animal sounds heard by them that did not fit the expected norm. Hunters are pretty aware of the sounds that should be in an area and what shouldn’t, so reports from hunters are kind of interesting to me. But, I just wish I had recordings to listen to in each case. We had a camcorder with us when we were getting screamed at by something there in the SSJWilderness, but I didn’t think about it being a sound recorder as well as a video recorder, so don’t make that mistake if you ever hear something unusual sounding off in the wilds. You can record the sounds with a camcorder, even if you can’t see anything.
It is amazing how long these bigfoot subject threads always get to be. I suppose because it is a mystery in need of some answers, and there is much contention. Plus, the jokesters account for about half of the thread inputs, and really do not forward anything of any value, so that makes the threads run long. The jokesters discourage me, because it is that kind of reaction that keeps many scientists from any investigation into the matter. I’m not really too thin skinned, so the joking does not bother me, but it does bother me that such joking has some effect on the research itself. The jokesters are the ones that fully accept the newspaper accounts such as the recent ones that said that the guy that hoaxed all the tracks ever made has died and so now bigfoot is dead. They ignore the Native American history, and truely think that bigfoot started and ended with one person and that he was responsible for the bigfoot tracks made in all the western states for over 50 years. That is pretty shallow. People will believe what they want to believe, without looking at the evidence at all with a critical eye and knowledge base.
As hopefully my last input on this forum I want to say that I have learned much more about science and about human nature in my search for sasquatch, than I have about sasquatch myself. I have learned that even scientists will look at evidences with a very biased eye. For example, I can ask an anthropologist why there are no fossils of hominids of a type between australopithicus and homo erectus that are intermidairy species in the evolutionary history between those two human ancestors, and they will tell me that the “missing links” are there because we simply have not found any fossil evidence of those intermediary species yet in spite of hundreds of years of looking for those very fossils. Actually there are a missing million years of fossils in the human evolutionary line. I can then ask the same scientist about sasquatch, and his main reason for rejecting it as a species is that there are no fossils of it in North America, and if it was here we would have very many fossils of it. Even though there is a very distinct possibility that sasquatch migrated to this continent less than 30,000 years ago, along with other species that have been here only that amount of time, that anthropologist expects fossils of this sasquatch species to be in hand. That anthropologist fully accepts the intermediary spiecies that we have no fossils of in the human evolutionary line in spite of the missing million years, yet fully rejects sasquatch because of missing fossils from a 30,000 year period. Properly that antropologist should reject both sasquatch and human evolution, because neither are supported by fossil evidence. You can not accept one and reject the other based on missing fossils. We do have fossils of extremely huge primates that lived fairly recently in Asia, in the form of gigantopithecus, but that means nothing here in North America, beyond the fact that it lived in the very areas where the species that did migrate to North America also lived. It very well could have migrated to North America, and if it didn’t, then that is a mystery in and of itself in regards to why the other species from there migrated here and gigantopithecus did not. I am not saying that sasquatch is a decendant of gigantopithecus, but it is one of the possibilities. Probably we will discover other fossils of yet other very large primates in the future, including some others that also fit very well into the exact descriptions of sasquatch.
If you remember nothing else about this forum, remember that science is biased in the way it accepts missing fossils of one species and rejects missing fossils of others. Human evolution is far from being fully supported by fossil evidence at this point in scientific history, in spite of hundreds of anthropologist trying to verify that very thing for over 100 years of great efforts. I have studied the evidence for fossil hominids in detail, and have found many inconsistencies. For instance in Africa they find what are deemed to be 3 million year old fossils of the australopithicenes and also find modern human remains in the same strata and condition of fossilization, but, since the australopithicenes are “known” to be 3 million years old, and homo sapians are known to be less than 300,000 years old, they say the human fossils are somehow washed into the strata, and the australopithicines are not. They may be right, but they may also be wrong. They accept what they want to accept and reject what they want to reject, based on current theory, not based on science or evidence itself. Same goes for the fossil homind tracks found at Laetoli. The tracks are in supposed 3 million year old strata, and thus are supposed to be australopithicene tracks. However, the tracks themselves are so human that you would not distiguish them from human if they were on a beach in the 21st century, yet we have no australopithicene feet fossils that match the tracks themselves in form or in size. No known australopithicene has feet as large as the tracks at Laetoli. So, what made those human-like human size tracks at Laetoli 3 million years ago? I don’t even trust the theory that they are 3 million years old, let alone that they are australopithicene tracks. There is too much speculation in science, and not enough trust of evidence or lack of it. Properly we should reject sasquatch as a fossil species, and also reject the other missing hominid fossil species. Where does that leave us. Well, it only leaves us with more questions. We recently discovered yet another hominid species in Europe that does not fit into the current evolutionary theory of human ancestry by strata or type, so all the anthopologists are busy rewriting their human evolutionary theories again. The very fact that new fossil hominid species are still being discovered should tell us something about how sane it is to reject sasquatch as a species based on a lack of bones. Especially since the larger a species is, normally the rarer that species is compared to other species. The rarer a species naturally is, the less likely you will find a fossil of it.
In any event, don’t write off sasquatch as a species based on lack of fossils, and do not fully accept human evolution as it is written in your text books now, because it will change and even perhaps be fully rejected in the future in almost any form. Fossil evidence at the current time show us that each species of animal that has ever lived seem to just appear on the face of the earth, and then disappear, never much changing while here. That is if we trust just the fossil evidence and reject the many missing links. Mathematically we should have just as many intermidiary species fossils as we do of known fossil species. How is it that mathematically we can find 30 fossil australopithicenes and not one of its ancestor species between itself and homo erectus. It seems as though if australopithicus evolved into homo erectus, it did it in a day or two at some point a million years ago or so. One day it was an australopithicus, and the next day it was a homo erectus. Something is wrong here, or some huge time spans are missing in the fossil record for some reason never explained. Seems to me that some Creator must have been introducing new species almost instantly at certain points in the past, displacing others. If you place skeletons of all the antelope species currently living on earth side by side from the smallest dik-dik to the giant eland, you would have a very convincing evolutionary line of skeletons, yet they all live today. You can make a very good case for evolution with fossils if you want to place them in places that tell your story for you, but the antelope skeleton arrangement is a good case in point that maybe things are not as they are made out to be by those who want to make things out to be the way they make them out. I think that science does not really know even a small percentage of what it thinks it knows. Science is not immune from bias, not by a long shot. All sasquatch tracks are currently rejected by most simply because sasquatch can not exist in the mind, even if it does exist in the wilderness. Scientist will accept the tracks at Laetoli, as what they want to accept them as, but will reject tracks in their own backyard. Based on nothing except bias.
Thats all.
Date: 08-Feb-03
Attacks against me or my research are not really too bothersome, except for the space it takes up on the thread that adds nothing to the thread itself. The personal attack on the intelligence of CDOW biologist Bill Heicher was completely unfounded and unneeded though. Heicher did not ask to be sucked into the sasquatch thing, but since he was in that area it was perhaps his job to see the tracks and identify the species involved. Like me, he had no choice but to see the tracks for what they were to the best of our ability. Not one single CDOW biologist has found or forwarded any alternative to the conclusions of Heicher or myself in that Eagle River case. So I guess we are all idiots and the joker is the only person with reasoning ability or track identification ability. It is my hope that those without an opinion one way or the other on the reality of sasquatch or its tracks will compare and contrast the input from me to the input from the jokesters and determine which is based on research and knowledge and which is based on nothing but a simple bias. I also ask each to consider that Heicher has a college degree in wildlife sciences, which says more about his ability at track identification than most people have. I am sorry that his person was attacked here on this forum, and simply had to respond in his behalf. People can say all they want about me on this forum, but I would request no attacks on others who have not attempted input to this thread. If you are going to laugh, laugh at me.
As far as being an out-of-stater, I would guess that my family has paid more in-state Colorado property taxes than most people that live year around in Colorado. About 15,000 acres worth over the last 50 years on an annual basis, from three Colorado farms and ranches. Some of the people that visit this Colorado forum have hunted on our property in Colorado. Some of you know that I am also a bowyer who builds custom longbows and recurves in my spare time and am long time bowhunter. I also do not just put input on threads dealing with sasquatch. I am also a nut about bowhunting big mule deer bucks, and can and have contributed information on that subject. I have harvested way more than my share of book qualifying muley bucks and have spent many hours passing on information to young bowhunters to help them also eventually harvest a big mature mule deer buck. I am not just some invader to the bowhunting world with an agenda on sasquatch to force down the throats of bowhunters. I come to this forum to forward information and recieve information that may someday be important to all of us.
If you have not read Dave Petersens account of running into an upright walking creature in southern Coloraddo in Bugle magazine, you should. Many of you know Petersen through his articles on bowhunting and articles and books on Colorado grizzly bears. Petersen has never been given to flights of fancy in any of those subjects, and was very down to earth in his evaluation of Colorado grizzly bears and such. So now why is he telling you about a 20 yard distant encounter with a species that is not even supposed to exist? Why are the hunting guides with close range sightings telling you about encountering this same very unusual species in Colorado? Why am I telling you about finding tracks myself? Are we all lieing to you for no reason? Is that a reasonable conclusion? Are we all simpletons and idiots with no reasoning ability of our own, and the jokesters the only persons with a logical mind? Why do the tracks confound or convince the experts in tracks that have looked into the subject? Add it up, add it all up, and come to your own logical conclusions. Yes, sasquatch is impossible I agree, but I also think that the tracks found and the witnesses such as Petersen and the experienced hunting guides have something to tell us. Maybe they are very simply telling us that mankind does not know everything yet. Sometimes I talk as if sasquatch is a real species, but I admit that I do not know. Actually I am very much like the logical skeptics that have input on this forum, as sasquatch does seem to my mind to be an impossibility. I have asked myself the same logical and reasonable skeptical questions a hundred times that the logical skeptics have asked on this forum. I do not at this time declare the sasquatch to exist in Colorado, even though sometimes I talk like it does exist, but I do declare that the evidence and the sightings are interesting and worth some studied consideration by us people that bowhunt in Colorado forests. It is easy to forget the historical evidence and forget each more credible sighting and forget each track find as they happen, but we must not. I ask thinking people to put it all together and base conclusions on that. Actually I don’t expect you to personally conclude anything, but to remain open to the next Colorado sasquatch event, because it might involve you. If you stumble across an outsize femur, bring it home with you. Same goes for extra large bear poops or unusual poops you stumble into.
Date: 11-Feb-03
Heloman made the best point about Bill Heicher. Heicher absolutely did not claim that the tracks were that of a sasquatch, only that they were not hoaxed/faked. This is kind of the position I took on the stickbow forum when I renounced my “belief” in sasquatch. I still renounce a “belief” in sasquatch, but I fully accept sasquatch tracks as being real and not faked. Plus, I fully support a particular anatomy to sasquatch tracks. I want to be rid of this sasquatch thing, but things keep happening that keep me interested. Are the tracks faked???? I don’t think they are, as I very seriously doubt anyone would have faked such a thing where and when I found tracks myself in the SSJWilderness. So where does that leave me. I don’t know.
I really do wish that Dave Petersen had not not seen what he describes as a sasquatch so dang close to where I found those ridiculous tracks across that ridiculous place to fake such a thing as sasquatch tracks. I was almost to the point of forgetting all about the tracks themselves and go back to a “normal” life of bowbuilding, bowhunting and the drudgery of work. Maybe the best thing to do if you guys come across a set of 17 inch long and 8 inch wide tracks with 5 toes and spread out in a bipedal fashion with more than 48 inches distance between them is to look the other way and forget instantly that you ever saw them. Don’t make my mistake and the mistake of that Mr. Slack in New Mexico and tell your friends you found some sasquatch tracks. You will never hear the end of the laughter.
I have two recurves and a longbow in the works right now, so I guess I am going to devote some time to finishing them, and will likely not respond to this thread for awhile.
You can see Interstate 70 from the Eagle River every once in awhile, and you can also see the Holy Cross Wilderness from the rivers edge, which happens to be on the south side of that river where the tracks were headed. Don’t tell very many people this, but you can also catch some wallhanger brown trout from that river in early March. I used big gold rapalas when I want to catch a brown trout that is measured in pounds rather than inches. I am a traditionalist when it comes to bowhunting, by choice, but when it comes to catching big trout I usually leave the fly rod at camp and take spinning tackle and big shiney minnow imitation lures. See you on the river or in the woods.
Date: 16-Feb-03
Hi Bill, good to hear from you. If you hear of any sasquatch sightings or sign while in Colorado this summer working for USFS let me know. I was really surprised at the plethora of sightings and track finds you found out about on your bowhunting trip. I was really glad to get the photos of tracks taken on the Rito Gato by the outfitter you put me in contact with. It was nice to see smallish 14 inch long tracks from that area, as it gives me hope that at least a female or young sasquatch was in that area. Most of the track sign from that area had been over 16 inches long, besides the 15 inch long tracks found by the Round River Conservation group in the south part of the SSJWilderness in the early 1980’s while they were in there searching for grizzly tracks. I wish tracking conditions were better in that area. I have pretty much given up hope of ever finding another set myself in that area. It sometimes takes days to just find a good clear bear track, let alone a good clear sasquatch track.
I never did give a phone call to that other Antonito area outfitter that had found tracks that you talked to. It would just go into my files with the other outfitters and hunting guides with sightings/tracks information from that area, so I suppose I don’t need yet another case from that area anyway.
Stay in touch, Keith
Date: 02-Mar-03
Thought you might like to see this photo. It was taken a couple of weeks after the Patterson film was made and overlays a photo of a man in the same location. The two photos were exactly sized to each other using the tall dead trees to the right of the man. The man in this photo is Mike Hodgeson, who is 6 foot 2 inches tall. You can see that the trees to the right of him are actually in the photo of him. Dead trees do not change size, so the scale is exact. When the comparison is digitized it is easy to count pixels to calculate accurately all the sizes involved in the creature in the Patterson film. Hodgeson is also holding a stick that has every 6 inches marked on it for scale, which is visible in larger photos of this. Bowsite limits the size of the photos, so you can’t see the details very good in this small attached photo, but you can see that the Patterson creature is enormously bulky by comparison. Since we have film of the creature from both the side and the back in that film, we can very accurately measure things like height and waist and chest size. By using this exact scale in comparison to Hodgesons known height, we know that the creature has a waist measurement of approx 81 inches and a chest measurement of 83 inches. This is huge and beyond any human size that I am aware of. Her thighs are at least as big around as Hodgesons waist measurement. What really gets me is when you see this creature walking away, you see that the arms are hanging straight down from the shoulder joint and swinging naturally, not at an angle outward as would be the case if it were a man in a suit with a chest that huge. This means that if this is a man in a gorilla suit, that the man indeed does have an 83 inch chest measurement, and that it is not fat or padding, but rather his actual skeletal chest size. Weight calculations can also be made, which place the creature in this film at nearly 700 pounds if it is muscle, blood and bones of similar weight per cubic inch as any other mammal.
I have never seen these accurate comparison photos used in any documentaries on the Patterson film, so thought you all might like to know some of the measurable truth about the size of the creature involved in the Patterson film, be it a man in a gorilla suit or a real female sasquatch. Does anyone you know have an 83 inch chest measurement? What do you suppose Shaquel O’Neals chest measurement is? Or the chest measurement of the biggest NFL lineman?
I have measured the muscle movements in nearly every one of the frames of the Patterson film, and the muscle structures can be seen well, and the muscles move as they should in tightening and relaxation as muscles do, so if it is a man in a gorilla suit, the suit itself has some form of muscle movement arrangement built into it and the guy wearing the suit has nearly an 80 inch skeletal ribcage. No Hollywood movie made in the 1960’s or even today has equaled the muscle movement or size in any human manufactured suit. Yet a rodeo cowboy named Rodger Patterson accomplished this muscled gorilla suit of immense size and accurate muscle movement in the 1960’s on over 900 frames of 16mm film?
Date: 02-Mar-03
Here is a little closer view of the comparison is size between Hodgeson and the creature.
Date: 02-Mar-03
Here is a higher resolution frame of the creature. Note the musculature with a realization that the creature has a chest measurement of around 83 inches give or take a few inches considering some hair depth unknowns. If you want to see a photo from the film that shows the creatures backside to assure you that the arms hang straight down, just let me know and I will attach that photo as well.
Date: 02-Mar-03
For another comparison, here is what a man in a bigfoot suit looks like. Compare the lack of muscle structure in this suit to the muscle structure of the creature in the Patterson film. The people that produced this suit thought they had done a wonderful job of making a bigfoot suit that would fool anyone. Pretty hokey. What about the best that Hollywood offered us in the 1970’s, in the form of Chewbaca in Star Wars. You can see no muscles, let alone any muscle movement in the Chewbaca suit. Why is this? Such technologies did not exist in Hollywood in the 1970’s, let alone in the 1960’s when the Patterson film was shot. Even today no Hollywood special effects artist has come anywhere close to equaling the Patterson film. They have tried, but can’t do it.
Even if you still think the Patterson film is some guy in a suit, you have to answer the question of where they got a 7 foot tall guy with an 80 inch chest and waist measurement to star in the film.
Date: 02-Mar-03
Here, this might help you all realize the mass involved in the Patterson creature. Note that she is only 7 foot 3 inches tall, but compare her upper arm size to the upper arm size of Hodgeman, who is 6 foot 2 inches tall. Or a 7 foot tall man for that matter. These two photos are accurately scaled to one another for the height. Compare her upper arm diameter to Hodgemans waist. Compare her thighs to his waist diameter. If a 7 foot tall NFL lineman had were this massive, no other football player in the world would survive the snap of the ball. Look at those shoulder and upper arm muscle sizes. Sure, humans grow to 7 foot tall, but they don’t have proportions like this creature at all. No scientist argues against the creature in this film being over 7 foot tall, because we know it is by the comparisons we have on file, but they evidently do not really realize that even though it is only 7 foot tall, it is way too massive to be a human in a suit. Look again and again and compare and compare the sizes of each body part to the man in the scaled photo.
Date: 02-Mar-03
Not seen enough. So okay you say, no big deal, Shaquille O’Neal is a big guy at 7 foot 1 inches tall and 338 pounds, so people can get big enough to wear the costume. But, compare the arm diameter of Shaq to the arm diameter of Patty. Also look to see that a sasquatch is built oh so much differently than a 7 foot tall human. Look at Patty’s arm muscle definition from the deltoids down. Built a little different than human isn’t she?
Shaq makes Hodgeman look pretty small at only 6 foot 2 inches. But how does Patty make Shaq look, even though they are similar in height. Compare the arm size again between Shaq and Patty.
Remember, the scientists who have seen the photos of Hodgeman at the location all agree that Patty is over 7 foot tall in the film. No doubt about it. Why do they not realize the mass involved too? Because they don’t want to see it I guess.
Wonder if they would let Patty play on an NFL football team, even though she is only a girl? Wonder what her daddy looked like?
Date: 15-Mar-03
I have been out of town and away from computers for awhile, so I could not respond.
bear, like David Petersen, I am not sure that I “believe” in bigfoot either, even though I have seen tracks that could be from nothing else to my mind. In Dave’s article he mentioned the fact that others had seen “bigfoot” and went on to say in his article “just like the one I saw”. It was he who said “bigfoot” or “sasquatch” in his article prior to recounting his real experience. Now he probably wishes he had never said anything about it, and really wishes he had never written anything about it. He probably has the right idea to try to get his sighting forgotten. I probably should have never said anything about the tracks I found or the sasquatch my parents said they saw in that same area a few years before. Big sasquatch have to at one time in their lives be young little sasquatch. Dave Petersens descriptions sounds very much to me exactly what a young sasquatch might look like, walk like, and act like. Unless of course he saw a troll, but then he did not use the word “troll” in his article, but rather said “bigfoot” himself in the article. He obviously now has had second thoughts about sharing the sighting in print or othewise. I have been in Petersens shoes in this regard myself, because I did not want to be seen as some crackpot. Let’s honor Petersen’s wishes that his sighting be gone and forgotten and let it drop. Maybe if sasquatch are someday proven to exist, we can get the full scoop from Petersen. I was hoping to someday get a personal interview from Petersen for my files, but now see that I might as well forget that. Oh well.
Travis, I have never researched any possible correlation between annual game numbers and annual bigfoot sightings. I do not have the required information on game number fluctuations. I have correlated elk density numbers with bigfoot sightings and find that bigfoot sightings are heaviest in high elk density areas of not only Colorado, but all of the western states and Canadian provinces. Track finds in fact only occur in good elk country, and not elsewhere in all of the western states. Sasquatch sightings also occur in correlation with elk seasonal migration in Colorado, but I have not studied whether this is the case in other states too. I have so many sightings in which I have done personal interview that involve elk nearby, actual sasquatch pursuit or stalking of elk, and sasquatch actually seen eating elk, that I think elk are a major component of the sasquatch diet. Perhaps even “the” major component of it’s diet. If you especially use only the tracks of a certain anatomy that we think are the true tracks of sasquatch, and put a push pin in a map of North America at the locations where the tracks were collected, the resulting map is very much a map of the current distribution of the American wapati. That distributional correlation is a very interesting one.
One the subject of the Patterson film creature. The reason that the documentary people have not used the comparisons of photos of Hodgeman is probably because they do not even know about them. They have used other photos of a man named Jim McClarin at the scene of the film for use as comparison, and those came out very similar in results.
50-52 inch chest sounds about right for Arnold Schwartenager. In the “Worlds Strongest Man” competition, the commentators were ohhing and ahhing about a rather fat competitor who was 6 foot 9 inches tall and had a 63 inch chest. Looked like it was mostly fat around the chest area, and his arms kind of hung at an angle outward, like the fat was holding his arms out some. Knowing that, consider that the Patterson creature has a measurable 80 inch chest and her arms obviously hang straight down and swing naturally as she walks, not at an outward angle. If it was a gorilla suit, how did they accomplish an 80 inch ribcage and still get the arms to swing straight down??????????? Human ribcages just don’t get that big, and if it was a gorilla suit padded out to 80 inches the mans arms would stick out at a radical angle rather than swing straight down as is obvious when watching the film. Anyone can simply say the Patterson film creature is just a man in a suit, until you apply true science to it. We can except the simple explanation of it being a man in a suit, or we can trust the science that says otherwise. I would like to see a scientific explanation of the Patterson film being a man in a suit, but none have come forward, yet many scientific explanations have come forward supporting the film as genuine. I now accept the film as genuine, not because I want to, but rather because there is no other explanation for the size and mass of the creature in the film. It can’t be a man in a suit because of the rotational placement of joints and the sheer mass of the creature that skeletal system supports, so what is it? Show me a man with an 80 inch chest whos arms swing naturally straight down when he moves and I will say the Patterson film could possibly be a man in a suit, but will always wonder how they accomplished such detailed muscle shape and movement in the suit when Hollywood has come no where near such successes in special effect yet. How did a former rodeo cowboy named Roger Patterson with rather elementary artistic skills accomplish what Hollywood has not been able to accomplish yet?
Date: 15-Mar-03
Supporting Link - http://www.n2.net/prey/bigfoot/
You can see the report by Jeff Glickman, Diplomat of the American College of Forensic Examiners on the Bigfoot encounters website http://www.n2.net/prey/bigfoot/ Once at that website go into the “Biology and Papers” section and then go to the section titled “NASI Toward a Resolution of the Bigfoot Phenomenon”
About the only thing in that paper that I disagree with in regards to the Patterson film is the estimated weight of the films creature. Glickman used an allometrical comparison with other primates based on chest diameter and came up with a weight estimation of nearly 2000 pounds. I think he was wrong to use an allometric comparison and should have used a measured mass comparison. I come up with well under 1000 pounds when using measurements of the whole body and applying the weight of water.
