Media

Bigfoot may be dead!!!!

Date: 08-Dec-02

Guess my input is called for.

The first white man to mention bigfoot died about 200 years ago, not a man mentioned in any modern article from a modern newspaper. Native American stories of what we now call bigfoot go back only God knows how long. Of course the Native Americans are not real people with real brains so their input is useless. How would they know the creatures that lived in their forests? They were only stupid red men, without the awesomely superior European brain.

I found some approx 17 inch long by 8 inch wide tracks across a dirt slide in the South San Juan Wilderness in southern Colorado in 1993 that perked my interest in what we now refer to by the stupid name “bigfoot”. Bear tracks just don’t come along that big in Colorado, even for a now extinct Colorado grizzly with the front and rear tracks superimposed upon one another, but there were the tracks right in front of my own eyes. Now I am not your cousins sisters uncles friend, but just a bowhunter with only 25 years experience in tracking, but those tracks I found interested me in this impossible subject. Since we had a ranch in Colorado bear and cougar country, I had seen plenty of those types of tracks, but nothing prepared me for the tracks I found in the SSJWilderness.

I was interested enough in the tracks to do a little study of my own, and found many old references to just such tracks in the area, the earliest going back to about 1450, about a hundred years before the Spanish arrived in that area in 1540. This reference was a name of an old Jemez Pueblo ruin named in the Jemez tongue “Place where the giant man stepped”. I asked Jemez tribal archeologist William Whatley about the name, and he said “it was in reference to a hairy giant human-like creature that the Jemez said they encountered in the high ponderosa forests of that area when the pueblo was built in about 1450, but that it was all just part of the Jemez tribal origin myths.” Since I had found the same incredible tracks in 1993, I was flabbergasted at those 500 year old Jemez origin myths. I wondered if anyone else had found these tracks or seen the creatures that made them.????? Give Whatley a phone call to verify my report here, to see if what I am telling you is true. Should be simple for you to find on an internet search.

So, I went one step further and ask the local law enforcement. Then Conejos County undersheriff Joe Taylor Jr. (now a police officer with the city of Alamosa), told me that he had video taped two sets of these tracks in the winter of 1993/94, when wildlife was driven to lower elevations and out into the open by higher than average winter snows. The tracks he documented were 19 inches and 21 inches long respectively and in a remote area. They were reported to him by a person attempting to photograph mule deer at the edge of the forest in a valley near the Colorado and New Mexico Border, about 20 miles from where I found the tracks that same summer. Taylor had 7 reports involving about 30 people from that year of “bigfoot” from that one winter season, including the one that led to the tracks he followed. He said the tracks were in mud and snow and in places where the tracks were in mud, they were clear enough to even see the human-like toenail prints were the toes had bent downward to get a grip when the creatures were climbing a wet slope. Give Taylor a phone call at the Alamosa police department to verify what I am telling you. Should be simple to find the Alamosa police department phone number on an interenet search.

I also found out that an outfitter who owns the Conejos Cabins in Platoro Colorado had found a set of these same tracks in 1983 about 3 or 4 miles from where I found the tracks in 1993. In that same area, a local hunting guide named Ed Wisinger (He is the guide who was attacked by and subsequently killed the last documented Colorado grizzly in that area in the 1970’s, which he killed by stabbing the sow grizzly with an arrow) led an old shetland pony into the area and killed it as bait for a bear hunter. Something came in the night and flat picked up that 600 pound shetland pony carcass and walked off with it. The thing that took Wisingers bait did not drag it, it carried it. Another area hunting guide by the name of Williams also had just such a thing happen to him, but not with bait, but rather a 600 pound calf. Williams was riding range for a local rancher during the off-season and encounted a calf that had been killed in new fallen snow. The calf had been killed and fully picked up and carried off by something that left huge tracks. Williams was reluctant to say exactly what can fully carry a 600 pound carcass, only occasionally letting its hoofs drag, but he did say that it walked on two feet. Yet another hunting guide in that area had two of his clients report to him that they had come upon what they thought was a bear feeding on a deer carcass. The men reported that they stalked up on the reddish-brown “bear” just to watch it a little closer, as neither had a bear permit. When they got close, it heard them and looked their way with a gorilla-like face, stood up and walked away from them on its human-like back legs with powerful and very graceful human-like steps. They were certain it was not a bear and not a human, but something inbetween. This is second hand from the hunting guide, but interesting.

So, I spent a few years asking around and found some 6 different professional hunting guides in Colorado with either sightings of these incredibly impossible bigfoot or those who had found their tracks, not to mention the second hand reports they had. One of the guides (Jeff Dysinger/Colorado Springs) came forward publicly a year or so ago because he reported watching one of these “bigfoot” from a distance of only 125 yards with high powered binoculars for a period of over 10 minutes as it sat in the sun and scratched itself in an open meadow by a beaver pond. Dysinger had no doubt about what he was watching at the time, but did say that he thought at the time that it must be an escaped gorilla. All this is just damn fine and quite laughable until you talk to the men themselves or look at the tracks themselves.

I investigated a set of tracks found on the Eagle River in central Colorado, along with Eagle area Colorado Department of Wildlife biologist Bill Heicher. Heicher and I neither one can really bring ourselves to believe that a huge primate species who leaves huge human-like tracks is wandering around the Rockies, but both of us agree 100% after that investigation that the tracks were not hoaxed at all. Those tracks were about 19 inches long and represented a foot about 18 inches long, and were made by an animal of around 900 pounds. The tracks showed all signs of anatomical traits normally associated with these impossible “bigfoot” creatures, according to the worlds leading primate foot experts. They were also danged natural in the way they were laid out, for sure, by any track experts opinion. Kansas cougars may not leave many tracks behind after sightings, but Colorado bigfoot have left me a whole file full of track photos, and they are all the same anatomy, differing only in size from case to case.

This is not to mention the stuff I have from New Mexico or Wyoming. In Wyoming I actually have track reports and sighting reports from their own professional wildlife biologists. Two of Wyoming’s biologists have seen them and tracked them in snow. Again, the tracks are the same. One of the biologists is John Myonczynski (sp?). You can call him on the phone if you want and argue with him about what or what he didn’t see or track, but before you do you should know that in that case the critter had to crawl through one of those Wyoming split rail fences, and left behind some hair on the fence too. The hair does not match any other American critter, but is a primate hair, and it went through all the official channels for identification (Check with University of Wyoming anthropology department for verification of the hair samples).

Having said all that, I agree that bigfoot is impossible, and even laughable, but those are the facts and a small part of the physical evidence, non-the-less. You will not get any argument from me about how impossible this whole thing is. I did recieve reports that were laughable and quite ridiculous regarding bigfoot during the time I did that research. We can look at the facts, or we can just laugh and use our superior European brains to predetermine our position on bigfoot. Kansas cougars may be just as laughable, but I still think worth the effort to investigate. I only wish Kansas cougars would leave as many tracks behind to cast, photograph and study as Colorado bigfoot.

To convince myself that bigfoot is impossible and laughable, I am going to say it again. Bigfoot is impossible and laughable. Now I feel better and can get back to bowhunting. I am trying dang hard to forget that I ever found such ridiculous tracks in the first place. I would rather talk about bowhunting.

I am glad that bigfoot is dead now. Want to see something really scary?

Date: 09-Dec-02

Someone corrected me on the name of the guide that killed the sow grizzly in southern Colorado in self defense about 25 years ago. His name was Ed Wiseman, not Wisinger. The account and good reading is in the book “Ghost Grizzlies”, which I recommend to anyone interested in American wildlife. Interestingly, a local conservation group scoured the SSJWilderness for grizzly tracks after the sow attacked Wiseman. They found no grizzly tracks, but did find some interesting clawless tracks of over 15 inches in length in mud of an elk wallow deep in the wilderness. They were more like sasquatch tracks than bear tracks, so they were evidently of no interest, though they did document them. That account is in a past National Geographic, except it does not mention the sasquatch.

Colorado did evidently have some real outsize grizzlies when grizzlies lived in that state. Most Rocky Mountain grizzlies are not all that big compared to coastal grizzlies, but Colorado evidently did have some real brusier boars at one time. Too bad they are gone.

Colorado Bigfoot?

Date: 20-Jul-00

Been awhile since I have asked on this forum, but has anyone seen bigfoot in Colorado while bowhunting?

Last time I asked on the Colorado Bowhunter forum, I got two reports, one a serious hunting guide with 12 years experience and one group of 4 bowhunters to come forward with clear daytime sightings. The guide had a sighting in the 1970’s from a distance of 25 yards in broad daylight while bugling for elk in the Lost Creek Wilderness. The second was from 4 bowhunters who claimed watching a bigfoot run for some 100 yards in broad daylight in an area close to their hometown, so I won’t give the exact area on that sighting. I also got 1 joke report that I wasted some time on. Any reports sent to me will remain confidential if requested, but I will have to talk to you personally on the phone or in person. The information you can give will be important and I will treat it seriously. I am working closely with wildlife professionals and two college professors on this and am very serious. No jokes.

For those that don’t know me, I am Keith Foster, a custom bowyer from western Kansas. I have been bowhunting since I was a wee lad, and have been lucky enough to harvest a number of P&Y qualifying critters through the years and even officially entered a couple in the books when younger. I trophy hunted to extend my season, and so no longer enter the record book animals taken. I have spent more than 300 field days and nights in Colorado wilderness (backpacking,bowhunting, wilderness trout fishing). I also spent many summers in Colorado, as we had a family ranch there. I have hunted for bear, elk, and deer in Colorado and Wyoming. Have 5 or 6 Pope and Young qualifying mule deer bucks. No P&Y bull elk yet, but have bugled lesser bulls to within feet of me many times. I love calling game. Many of the mule deer bucks were rattled and/or grunted into bow range (it can be done). I have harvested maybe 20 some mule deer bucks through the years. I was hunting on the Adams Fork west of Platoro Reservoir in the San Juans in 1979 when Ed Wiseman was attacked by a grizzly sow that he subsequently killed after it chewed him up a bit. I have seen grizzly tracks there one time since then and know of a picture of a grizzly sow and two cubs taken in that area in 1998, in spite of them supposedly being extinct there for 20 years, and thought extinct for the 25 years prior to Wiseman being attacked. Funny what can go on in the wilderness without officials knowing about it.

We have found bigfoot tracks down there in that wilderness too, twice. 17 inches long by 8 inches wide. I’ve seen hundreds of bear tracks in CO/WY/MT, and these tracks we are finding are not bear tracks. They dwarf even coastal grizzly tracks. For you bowhunters in the Eagle River area, you are probably aware of the 19 inch long by 10 inch wide bigfoot tracks found on that river this spring by two different fly fishermen (see at www.bfro.net as there is a link on that homepage to the track report investigation brief). They are not bear tracks, that’s for sure.

Colorado has from 3 to 6 thousand cougars running around and we rarely see them without using dogs. I’m guessing that there may be less than 200 bigfoot in all of Colorado, so what are the odds of seeing one, considering they are as stealthy as a cougar, but with the brains of a chimpanzee. If you have seen 30 different wild cougars without using dogs, you should have seen a bigfoot by now too. In 300 field days, I’m still waiting to see a wild cougar or a bigfoot. Nobody shoots at bigfoot, because they look so dang man-like that a person would decide against it 999 times out of 1000. I know of at least 10 Colorado hunters who have watched bigfoot through a rifle scope. I’m still waiting for that 1 in 1000 hunter who will do the deed and bring one out. We don’t know if they are man or animal yet, but I am leaning toward them being no smarter than a chimp. If you shoot one, just say you thought it was a bear, and then you can’t be charged with murder of other lesser violations. Us bowhunters might not get away with that excuse though, considering our short range. The bigfoot are about the same size and weight as a polar bear or coastal grizzly, and so they a big, but still killable with an arrow. Better have a high tree stand though. I know of several bowhunters who have had a bigfoot walk right by their treestand. One bowhunter claimed to have seen three bigfoot (male, female and one small offspring in succession) following some deer that had just gone under his stand and he was completely serious about his report. Bowhunters represent a small portion of the human population at large, but we are much more likely to be the ones to see unusual animals. A large percentage of reports of bigfoot sightings are by bowhunters, even though there are not very many of us comparitively. We are either good at hunting, quiet in the wood and well camoflaged resulting in real sightings of a real animal or we are crazier than the rest of the people and hallucinating or lieing a bunch. As a bowhunter, I choose the first option as why bowhunters are seeing bigfoot, when city slickers aren’t.

After studying about 3000 sighting reports I think bigfoot are predators who like elk over anything else, but will kill and eat deer, beavers, marmot, and any other animal it can catch. It also eats berries and some vegetation at times. Bigfoot is real good at patterning the movement of prey animals, and so is also real good at knowing where people usually travel and avoids those areas. Cougars are also good at this. If you are bugling for elk or using a fawn distress predator call and accidently call in a bigfoot, you will likely never know it, unless it is aggitated at you and screams loudly at you for disturbing it (that happens BTW). Bigfoot are very keen and know how to circle downwind out of sight and size things up. They themselves stink to high heaven and are very aware of breeze direction for their own hunting purposes. If you smell a gagging smell in the forest that you have never smelled before, investigate it by walking into the breeze. The smell is usually like a sickly sweet musky sweat and urine smell mixed with the smell of something dead. Run towards the smell if you want some real excitement or if you don’t believe that bigfoot is a real animal. (: Bigfoot and elk are about the only two animals we bowhunters can hunt with our own inefficient noses. You experienced elk hunters know what I am talking about.

If you want to go find a bigfoot yourself to find out for yourself, I have put a map of sighting locations on the BFRO website database for Colorado. The summer sightings are at 9,000 feet and above, with winter sightings below usually. Find the dense concentrations of elk, and bigfoot will be close by. The S.San Juan Wilderness, Holy Cross Wilderness, Silverton area, and Lost Creek Wilderness are hotspots. Bigfoot are large and well furred and so are prone to heat stress, so check cool dense north slopes, shelves near timberline on north slopes, hidden water puddles. They are also moving around more at night than in day because of problems with heat. Backpack in and camp in unusual locations well away from human foot trails or roads to elicit curiosity on the part of bigfoot in the area. They will be trying to keep track of you, to avoid accidental contact. They are afraid of people for the most part, and usually quiet, but sometimes it will get interesting if you camp on what they consider home base. Do this enough times like I have, and you will soon know that bigfoot is more than myth. Keep in mind that one bigfoot may call a 20 mile by 20 mile area (400 square miles) home, and so it may take some time to find that moving needle in a haystack. The sighting map I have prepared will get you close though.

If you have already seen a bigfoot in Colorado or anywhere else, I want to know about it. It never hurts to ask, as it has given me reports in the past from bowhunters. I was as skeptical as most of you prior to personal experience, so I understand skepticism. Instead of laughing at this request, go there and find out for yourself. Time spent in the wilderness is never wasted time. You can email me at kfoster@gcnet.com Serious reports only please, to aid my research.

Date: 21-Jul-00

Bigfoot is rejected as real, precisely because we have no body to look at. I have decided not to shoot one myself if given the opportunity, and am in fact planning to spend over $5,000 of my own money to hire a professional videographer for a 14 day expedition where we will use calls in hopes of luring one in summer 2001. I am concerned that housing developements in winter habitat is having a negative effect on a couple of small groups of them in Colorado, and also am worried that developments in breeding corridors are being detrimental. The introduction of wolves will also hurt prey populations and possibly have disasterous effects (bigfoot sightings are rare to non-existent in high wolf density areas). There is also the possibility that this primate may visit human garbage dumps and contract human disease and transmit it through some local populations of them. If I don’t get the video needed, or if the video is rejected as real, we will be no further along in the protection of habitat for these predators. If one dies and science learns they are there, then hundreds will be saved as wildlife managers can put them in the equations used for decision.

Actually I was being facitious when I said “say it was a bear” as an excuse to show you that the responses are always against shooting one, for moral reasons. Now you can’t ask me “why hasn’t one been shot?”, as you have now answered your own question. Few have any qualms about shooting a cat, but none of us want to shoot at an animal that looks and walks like a man, even if it is hairy. Heck, I have an uncle that is pretty dang hairy all over. (:

How is it that CDOW/BLM/Forest Service has missed seeing grizzlies or finding grizzly bear bodies with their helicopters for 50 years in Colorado? We have proof that they have been in the San Juans at a breeding level for the last 50 years now, without ever being seen by our officials. They are seen by hunters or hikers every once in awhile, but not quite as often as bigfoot are seen there. Wonder why? Grizzlies are grass eaters for the most part for those of you that don’t know, and spend a great amount of time munching grass in open slopes where they also dig for rodents and roots or grazing on berries. They can flat tear up a hillside and yet our biologists can’t find them from foot or in the air, in spite of trying hard. Nobody in CDOW is trying to find a bigfoot, by air or afoot. A citizen group of “Grizzly Researchers” spent a bunch of time in the San Juans looking for grizzly bear sign all through the 80’s and early 90’s and came up empty, and now we get a picture of a sow and two cubs there in 1998. The only unusual tracks found by the citizen group was a very large set of “unidentifiable” tracks near a silted pond that looked more like large barefoot human tracks than bear tracks. They had no idea what those tracks were. So grizzlies spend a bunch of time in the open. Bigfoot is a predator of the dense forest, and avoids the open areas in daylight because of either shyness or because they are so large that they are prone to heat stress in full sun. Sightings are rarely in the open, if we believe the reports from the 20,000 witnesses.

There are some 20,000 black bears or more in Colorado, and have you ever found a dead black bear that died a natural death? When you find 1,000 dead black bears, then you might personally find a bigfoot body if you know what you are looking for. Can you tell the difference between a bigfoot bone and an elk bone? Little Johnny might pick up a bigfoot bone and say “Look dad, at this big bone”, dad would say “Put that stinking bone down and wash your hands, you’re not dragging that thing back to camp”. Even skulls break down into unidentifiable pieces in short order. Even a whole skull, with its saggital crest along the top, and pointy back might be misidentified as a bear skull with Johnny’s dad saying “wow, I didn’t know bear skulls were so big, they sure look wierd when the flesh is gone off it, come on Johnny, we’ll be late for supper”. One hiker/hunter in perhaps 20,000 or so might see that something is different/interesting about the femur they are looking at. So when that anatomy expert finds a bigfoot bone, maybe he will bring it out for further study. Should be a long wait for the expert and the bone to find each other.

When you see a bigfoot for yourself, you will be ridiculed and/or ignorred for the most part if you go public. If you find a track and photograph or cast it, you will be called a track faker by many. If you see a bigfoot track and report it, you will be called stupid for not knowing that what you actually saw was the fore and rear foot tracks of a bear on top of each other. If you go to the Holy Cross Wilderness and see a bigfoot and report it to officials, they will ignor your report to them, just like they have ignorred the reports of the 40 some witnesses that actually reported the same thing there in the last 40 years.

I know of one professional Colorado biologist that has heard and seen a bigfoot in Colorado, and he will believe your report. It will get to him through me if you come forward.

I know of one professional biologist in British Columbia that has found tracks himself. I know of two professional wildlife biologists in Oregon that have seen a bigfoot first hand, and another who has found tracks.

Utah actually has a Utah State biologist assigned and paid to track bigfoot and reports of it when they come in for some reason. Wonder why? Colorado has none assigned to that end, at least not officially and publicly.

Wildlife managers from many states gathered in Idaho this last spring to listen to another biologist give a presentation titled “Sasquatch Habitat”. Why is such a ludicrous presentation to professional biologists and state officials allowed?

Read; “Big Footprints”, by WSU anthropologist Dr. Grover Krantz

Read; “Sasquatch;North Americas Great Ape” by former United Nations wildlife biologist Dr. John Bindernagel

As a skeptic myself, I understand the mentality of “I’ll have to see it to believe it”. I was there myself. I’ve never seen a bigfoot myself, but that does not mean it doesn’t exist and that all the witnesses have lied to us. Odds are, you will never see a living bigfoot, and may never see a dead one either.

Don’t shoot one guys, let me try for the video first, and maybe if some of you will keep a video camera at the ready at all times you can get the needed video. Hope you do, because odds are against me getting it, even if I try long and hard. As a long time big game bowhunter, I know how to figure odds, and it doesn’t look good. I have a better chance of scoring on a new world record bull elk at 5 yards with my longbow, than I have at getting video of one of less than 200 bigfoot in Colorado. Because bigfoot are so big, there will never be very many of them, as the land cannot support very many. We had quite a few bigfoot sightings in the 70’s in the Lost Creek Wilderness, and then it just shut off there and no sightings there since. There were a number of sightings near Crestone and along the west side of that range in the 1900’s to the 1920’s, and then it just shut off there, none since. Sightings still continue from the San Antonio mountain area of New Mexico toward the northwest on a line over to Silverton, but that one may shut off too in the future. There are also still summer sightings in a line from Leadville to Eagle in summer, and over near the FlatTops wilderness in winter, but for how long. I just hope to answer this wildlife mystery while there is still time to do something about it. I love wildlife, even the ones I bowhunt to eat. If bigfoot is there, they are a natural animal and die natural deaths. It would be a lot less expensive for me to not hire a videographer and just use a bullet to bring in the evidence, wouldn’t it. I would perhaps save a species with that bullet, but have to endure the oral blasts from you people that didn’t believe it was even real in the first place. If I get the video, and it is rejected as real after having spent so much money to get the film, I’m going load a 375 H&H Mag to go out and drop one colder than stone, because I care what happens to the species as a whole. I’m also going to rub a whole lot of faces in the stinking fur of this animal that does not exist.

It is an animal, just like a chimp, gorilla, cougar or bear is an animal, and not a man. I can’t believe I am finding animal humanizers on a bowhunting forum. If it were a man, it would be hunting with a bow. (:

All animals live out a blissful and eternal existance and never die in nature, if it were not for man. Am I hearing you right Deernelk? I’ve watched coyotes eat the rear legs off a living and bleating newborn fawn, and you are telling me that a properly placed bullet into a bigfoot is cruel? I say that what is cruel is to let a whole species go ignorred to the point of going extinct. If you don’t believe bigfoot is real, what are you worried about anyway. Nobody can shoot something that is not real. If you do think bigfoot is real and are opposed to having one studied by science to determine the needs of the species as a whole, you are in the dark as far as what is required in wildlife sciences. If you see one for yourself Deernelk, don’t call me, call CDOW instead, they’ll treat you better, and it will give them a few laughs over coffee at your expense. Are you really a hunter? Have you ever killed an animal? Shame on you for killing bambi, just so you could eat it. If you are going to kill something, why not have that killing do some monumental good for a whole species and not just for your own personal and selfish consumption. You are just a selfish killer of another lifeform.

You must have watched the humanized version of bigfoot in “Harry and the Hendersons” to base your conclusions of what a bigfoot is. I say don’t accept the “Bambi” version of what deer are either. Some people here must be way removed from what nature/wilderness really is, and get their ideas and ideals from Hollywood. The bigfoot I know break the necks of elk with a twist, and if they are full will only take the liver. If they are full when hunting and have an opportunity, they will not kill the elk, but rather break both back legs and leave it there suffering, so they can come back later to kill it later and eat what they want at that time. Humans are far more humane in the way they hunt and kill compared to any other predator.

HornHunter, if I’m selling something, it’s sure costing me a bunch of money. What I’m doing is getting expensive, and out of my own pocket. I’m also giving up vacation time I usually reserved for bowhunting, to pursue knowledge about bigfoot. That really hurts, and I haven’t taken a P&Y animal for 3 years. You show your ignorance of the subject by your statement “there are a lot of people out in the wilderness doing a lot of research projects and none of these credible people have ever seen anything even close” is not even close to true. Would you like some names and phone numbers so you can ask them yourself. You are right about them “not ever having seen anything even close”, as in actuality it was not something close to a bigfoot they saw, it was a bigfoot they describe seeing. What makes a person with a degree in biology a better animal witness than a bowhunter who has spent more time in the wilds than the biologist anyway? A bigfoot is a bigfoot, no matter who sees it. Let’s go to court and you can testify that bigfoot is not real based on the fact that you have never seen one, and I will bring in a couple thousand people, including a fair number of people with degrees in biology, that say they have seen one. We will check all backgrounds of all witnesses to determine sanity and let the judge decide if your testimony of “not seeing a bigfoot” will win the case. Maybe I will sue the state of Colorado to collect the expenses of my research and bring in my number of star witnesses with biology degrees who claim to have seen bigfoot. I’ll also bring in Dr.s Krantz, Meldrum, Bindernagal, Sprague, Fahrenbach, Napier and a host of others with doctorates to testify in the very very positive on bigfoot. I’ll give the state your name and you can be their star witness of “non-seer”. The state could also bring in any number of anthropologists who have “not studied” bigfoot, and as their “unlearned” opinions. The problem with the states case is that those anthropolgists/primatologists/biologists who have studied bigfoot track consistancies, dermal ridge detail in tracks that the FBI says is impossible to hoax, unidentifiable American primate hairs, unidentifiable large feces, partial primate DNA sequence from hairs, sighting report consistencies, and other items of interest, have all come away convinced that bigfoot is not only real, but is still out there running around our American Forests.

Ya’ll should read about the evidence we do have on hand and the people that have seen bigfoot before making broad statements of what has or has not been forwarded as evidence and by whom. You’ll be surprised. You also might want to go look through a microscope at the hairs we have collected that sit in files at the Oregon Primate Research Center, a medical research center that uses primates in experimentation. Maybe you can identify the primate hairs that no one else can seem to find a match for. They are primate, so that rules out a great number of sources for the hairs. They are fairly long, so that rules out a bunch of primates as the source. They are not gorilla, chimp, orangutan, human, or any other known primate hair. They match some hairs found in central China that are attributed to an animal there that leaves exactly the same type of tracks as found here, that also don’t match any other primate hair. What are they? I’m trying to find out, but those who only have ridicule instead of lending assistance are making it like swimming upstream.

The largest and longest extant ape to ever live on earth, gigantopithecus, lived in China for some 3 to 5 million years and we only have 4 fossil jaws of it to say it even ever lived, and no other even little parts of bones of it. That is only 1 jaw fossil for every 1 million years of existance for that animal. Must have always been very rare. If that animal or one like it migrated to North America with the rest of the large mammals across the Bering Land Bridge some measly 15,000 years ago, then we might expect to find a fossil jaw of it in about 1 million years from now if we learn anything from the past.

Forget it, I won’t ask for help here anymore. I have enough sighting reports from Colorado anyway and don’t really need any more. I was just trying to track current sightings to give some idea of how the bigfoot population is proceeding or not proceeding. I probably won’t get too much help from guys sitting at computers. I need to go ask the bowhunters who are in the field scouting for elk season right now. I’ll be there with them in a few days and am wasting my time here on this forum probably. Nobody is going to see a living breathing bigfoot on a computer screen. They live in the deep woods, well away from computers.

I’m outa here!

Keith Foster

Date: 22-Jul-00

Many times when bigfoot is seen it is eating a deer or elk or actively chasing one of them or stalking a herd of them. That’s how I know what it eats. I know how it lives because I have been following them around and seeing where it does it’s thing. I also have studied habitat and habitat use, metabolic needs, and primate behavior. There is no other available niche for the animal called bigfoot except for the one I have concluded must be. All predators share certain behavioral traits, which fit well with their lifestyle. The reason I have so many P&Y qualifying big game animals is because I do my homework on my quarry.

Yuk, how can you even skin a marmot, marmotEater

The reason my post had to be so long is because you guys need to know where I am coming from and I can’t just say “bigfoot is out there” without backing it up somewhat. I came to the forum with a simple question and got jumped all over with ridicule.

Tell me what you have meatblender, I’ll keep it confidential, and thank you. Dates, times and locations will help, as well as descriptions of what was seen. I hadn’t heard of the local papers down there carrying an article. That is my main field research area, but I don’t live there so I miss a bunch. I still have some 20 people from 7 different sightings in that particular area that I have not been able to get the personal interviews completed on yet. You can just email the sighting to me at kfoster@gcnet.com instead of putting it out here in public.

Keith

Date: 22-Jul-00

Sorry buckhunter, I didn’t mean to stir up a bunch of crap.

The reason I am doing all this is that for the last 10 years I have been mapping old and new sightings and it shows a reducing distribution. In the time period 1900-1920 we had sightings around Crestone and down to Mt. Blanca and then they just shut off there. We had a number of sightings in the Lost Creek Wilderness up to about 1978 and then no more from that area. Sightings up around Steamboat Springs also quit after 1980. Sightings were pretty regular in the Holy Cross Wilderness (summer sightings) and in the lower elevation nearby Flat Tops (winter sightings) up to about 1980. Now that area only has very sporadic and rare sightings or track finds. Sightings in south central Colorado used to extend from Trinidad, down to Taos and up through the San Juans over to Silverton in the 70’s and 80’s and now are reduced to two small areas, one in the S.San Juan Wilderness and one spot over near Silverton. This map give indications we are losing them, which I hoped to avoid.

If bigfoot is real, I have a moral obligation now to do all I can to help it avoid extinction. Do I have anything better to do? Yes, I wish I could be in the dark on this subject, but I can’t now.

The maps show that there are not sightings everywhere in Colorado, but in specific locations, indicating specific distribution of a real animal. Since so many people visit Rocky Mountain National Park, one would expect bigfoot sightings to be highest there, if bigfoot is only a forest myth or folklore, as there are more people there to see a bear or stump and misidentify it. We have never had a report from there. Can you tell me logically why there are no reports from that Park? Why are the reports usually from less populated areas?

Where we had our encounters was in an area where I backpacked into a timberline lake less than 2 miles away, caught some nice size trout, and spent the 4th of July weekend without seeing another person the whole weekend. It’s nice to still have a few places like this in Colorado to get away to, with only elk, bear, bighorns, deer, and bigfoot as neighbors. I didn’t ask to see bigfoot and it’s tracks, because I didn’t even think bigfoot was real, let alone in Colorado, it just happened. It was very unexpected. Same with the other couple who saw one within 1/2 mile of where my dad had his sighting. They watched it through binoculars for approximately 5 minutes while scouting for elk in that drainage. The man’s last statement was “I’ve been all over this area for 25 years and never seen anything like it”. I was there for 15 years before I had any indication of them there. Why do sightings of them there go clear back to 1870, and why did the Jemez name a pueblo after them in 1540? Why did a hunting guide in complete sincerety say one stepped out of the forest within 25 yards of him at his hidden location on the edge of a forest meadow after he had bugled for elk there? Why did a Colorado father and teenage son hunting partners say they were stalking up on what they thought was a bear feeding on a deer only to have it stand up when they were within 30 yards of it, look at them with a gorilla like face and walk like a giant and strong man off into the forest? Why would both of them tell me that story in all sincerety? Why did a law enforcement officer video tape two sets of giant man-like tracks, the biggest of which was 20 inches long and 10 inches wide, on the CO/NM border on the back side of a ranch pasture next to the forest in the winter of 1993/94? Why did those tracks just trail on for miles through snow and mud? Why did those tracks have human-like toenail indentations where they pressed into the mud deeply? Why would someone fake them where they would likely never be found and how did they do it with such a long stride for such a long distance uphill and downhill? Why did 20 people report sightings in that particular area that winter? Why did a Colorado rancher report watching two of them stalking an elk herd on a slope near his home through binoculars for quite a long period of time? Why did two fly fisherman find 19 inch tracks on the Eagle River this spring in such a strange location for a faker to put them? Why did local law enforcement in that area rule out hoax in this case? Why did those tracks show indications of pressure ridges and pushoff ridges and appear completely natural to experienced trackers? Why do some of this countries top anthropolgists and primatologists think the Eagle River tracks are real? Why do you think they are not?

Sorry if you feel I have wasted your time, but I feel I have a moral obligation as a wildlife lover to see this unusual predator always has a summer and winter home and food to eat.

There are no unicorn, dragon, elf, troll, or tiger sightings in Colorado for some reason, but there are sure plenty of bigfoot sightings, many from extremely close range by experienced outdoorsmen. Three of the sightings I have on hand are from experienced guides who make a living in the wilds. Are they all lieing to me? I can give you their names and you can call them a lier to their faces. Or maybe you want to call them inexperienced with wildlife. Maybe you want to call me inexperienced with wildlife.

I got the 20,000 black bear figure from Colorado Mammologist David Armstrong, as that figure used to be listed on the DNR website. CDOW guesstimate is now 8,000 to 12,000 and I suppose a guess by Beck. I’ll use the 12,000 figure from now on. Either figure is a guess, as they will all tell you. We have to make educated guesses on cougar numbers too. You just don’t see these species from helicopters in head counts. That, and we don’t see another big mammal predator in helicopter head counts either. As a cougar researcher myself, I can tell you that that animal is quite keen, but there is another predator out there that is even keener.

Best to all of you, and thanks to those of you who took the time to send me your sightings, I’ll be giving you a phone call to talk about it. I, for one, believe you.

Still can’t figure out why some people here think I’m selling something. Paranoia?

Advice for this fall; Join NRA even if you don’t own a gun, vote for Bush, not Gore, if you like to hunt, try rattling mule deer late season, rattle big antlers hard and loud and for a long time, hunt north slope shelves for bull elk near timberline, and watch for big big tracks.

Keith Foster

Date: 22-Jul-00

Hey Mike Lee, you are sure rude to me in your posts. Why? What did I do to you? “Can’t believe you don’t have a P&Y marmot to your credit!”, is an uncalled for statement. Are you saying I don’t have any P&Y animals to my bowhunting credit? The only reason I mention my bowhunting experience is to let you know that I have been around the woods a few times. Want to compare trophy rooms? I’ll post photos of mine here if you will yours.

You have insulted my bowhunting ability.

Lee, when you said “Jeez Foster, after reading through both your posts I’m amazed at how much you know abut BF without ever seeing one!” ,you don’t realize that the countries leading field researcher of mountain lions never saw one in the wild that was not treed by dogs.

You have insulted my intelligence and wildlife knowledge.

Is that all you can throw, is insults?

Lee, evidently whenever a bigfoot poops, it leaves it at a bigfoot latrine or buries it like a good predator should if I take the word of Dr. Henner Fahrenbach and wildlife biologist Jim Hewkin who have collected it on several occasions. A “latrine” is what what the weasel family does and bury it is what the cat family does, in case you don’t know. When I am in the woods, I bury it. When I am at home, I use the latrine. I have seen where some of you guys didn’t take the time to bury it, but you should next time.

Lee, I’ve found two very large piles of excrement (around 2 quarts worth) that was not elk, was not deer, was not horse, was not cow, was too much for coyote, cougar, or any other known animal, but could have been soft bear crap if it ate only meat/hair. Soft gooy/pasty, black to gray coloration, with some kind of hairs in it (elk or deer hairs I think), amorphous mass (quasi diarria), dried deep in the surface to indicate it was kind of old. Had no odor that I could determine beyond an earthy scent. Looked like a large cow crap only with hairs in it instead of undigested vegetable matter. Could see no seeds, grass, berrie remains, in it at all. Could have been bear crap though, so there is a problem in bigfoot poop identification. If it looks like bear crap, you will always believe it is bear crap because you are great and mighty in wildlife knowledge.

Lee, do you really want to know about bigfoot crap, or are you just being rude. Why don’t you call Dr. Henner Fahrenbach at the Oregon Primate Research Center. He knows more about bigfoot crap than I do. His number is 503-690-5239. Ask him why we don’t find any bigfoot crap and you will find that we do. He may also have the phone number of biologist Jim Hewkin and you can ask him. Hewkin has collected a bunch of bigfoot crap through the years from latrines he has found. I’ve never found a bigfoot latrine yet. If you want to look for the latrines, they are supposed to occur up next to rock cliff faces most of the time. The crap is usually around 3 to 4.5 inches in diameter when in firm cylindrical form, up to three quarts worth, so you will probably know it when you see it. Big poop! I’ve been looking for a territorial latrine so that I can put out a camera trap there. If you find one, let me know.

Lee, marmots eaten by bigfoot are usually the babies, and they evidently don’t bother skinning it. Just pop it in their mouth after digging it up. (Thomas 1969, Hewkin 1973) Why waste all that calcium in the bones and protien in the hide. I’ll have to try marmot, sans skin, bones and guts though.

I give information, ya’ll just give insults.

Date: 23-Jul-00

HornHunter, If you will take a look through the pages of the Pope and Young you will see my name a couple of times. I specifically said in my first post that I have P&Y “qualifying” animals, as not all are listed. You want me to show you the “official measurements” on all the forms done by “offical” P&Y measurers. Why attack me on that subject? If I get a top ten animal some day, I may have that entered for the sake of helping other bowhunters know where the good genetics are, but for now, why enter and just push yours down the scale. It also costs money to enter an animal. Money I would rather put to other things, like donating custom bows to raffles for charity for disabled young bowhunters or bowhunting organizations. Those of you who know me from the “stickbow” threads, only know me as the guy who builds bows for charities, and may not have realized that I was the same idiot who researches the mythological bigfoot.

Hornhunter, I think you owe me an apology.

You all can read any thread you want, you don’t have to read here if you don’t want. I have now recieved two more leads on Colorado sightings of bigfoot from this one post. And two from the previous post. The guys are afraid to post here, as many of you are only full of ridicule for them. Too bad, as the sightings are interesting to anyone who loves wildlife, or even those who just enjoy it if they only think it is just “lore”.

Buckhunter, why don’t you register?

Bowhunters are important to my research, and since my research field is Colorado, that is where I must look for my information. I don’t know why this interesting subject should offend anyone, and if you are not interested in it, why are you visiting this thread, as there are plenty of other threads and room for more. I’m not hurting anybody and have kept my cool in spite of unfounded bias.

Waterdogutah, Why do you attack me too, and from Pennsylvania no less? I am a Christian and have never used drugs as I feel that drugs and drunkeness are a replacement for the peace that can only come from God. I’ll have a beer or two every now and then, but thats about it. I rarely hunt for P&Y animals anymore, as most of my bowhunting time is spent taking youngsters out and rattling in bucks for them instead of me. Now “there” is real excitement in bowhunting. Why be a taker, when you can be a giver. The smiles are worth more than all the P&Y trophies in the world when a youngster connects on a little buck.

There really are real bigfoot tracks in Colorado, I know that for sure. You all can decide for yourselves what those tracks mean, but don’t tell me they are bear tracks, because they are not. If they are fake tracks, they sure are being put in some strange places. My father and mother were also Christians and lied to no one, and certainly never lied to me about what they saw with their own eyes. As a very experienced hunter, if my father said he saw bigfoot at 3:00 in the afternoon of Memorial day 1990, he saw it, end of story.

I don’t know what mammologist the question above is refering to, the one who had the 20,000 black bear figure at one time, the ones I work with in bigfoot research, or the ones that have seen bigfoot themselves. ????

My best to you all, and sorry to those I offended for any reason, which is still a mystery to me as to why they are so full of hate for me. Thanks again to the two of you bowhunters who gave me sightings for Colorado, you have helped much.

Date: 23-Jul-00

Here is an interesting recent sighting report and subsequent track find in the Northwest for those interested. http://www.thesunlink.com/news/2000/july/0710trackingsasq.html

Actually, polls in the Pacific Northwest show that 40% believe that there are bigfoot out there, about 20% think there could be, 10% have no opionion one way or the other and 30% think is impossible. Like the UFO enigma, those with higher educations are the ones are more likely to believe that something real is possibly going on in both phenomenas. I’m in the 20% catagory on UFO’s, the “could be” catagory. And have to now say I am in the 40% catagory on bigfoot. I find few people in the Pacific Northwest that don’t personally know someone who claims to have seen a bigfoot. Bigfoot is less a coffeeshop or media subject in Colorado, but it is surprising the number of people who have seen them there.

Thanks waterdogutah. If you are from Utah, your state actually has a wildlife biologist (Rudy Drobnick) assigned to study bigfoot in the Uintahs and Wasatch ranges. I just investigated a case of a bowhunter approaching to within 25 yards of a giant hairy person sitting in the middle of a meadow, northeast of Ogden Utah. The bowhunter thought it was a burnt stump until it started swaying back and forth and messing with the something in front of it. The bowhunter was investigating a strong smell of something dead, wanting to see if it was a dead elk or deer there. Boy, that was one suprised bowhunter when the source of the stink was found.

Actually bo-n-aro (I like your moniker by the way), I think that the subject of bigfoot is very relevant to the western hunting experience. If it is there, it adds to the enjoyment. If it is not there and only lore, it adds to the mistik of the lonely wilderness places. Camping alone through the night on a far off ridge, deep in the wilderness a days walk in, with only a bow for protection, is more interesting with Teddy Roosevelts hobgoblins around at night. If interested in the experience, I can tell you the area to camp to change your mind about bigfoot. Ask Al Herrin, who writes for Traditional Bowhunter Magazine, what it is like to be put up a tree by an unseen creature in Colorado that can scream so loud it will rattle your innards. He wrote about it some 3 or 4 issues back. Bowhunting the wilderness is fun, and it is more fun with the bigfoot poking curiously around your tent, smacking rocks together, grunting and cooing back and forth. It’s not so fun when they scream at you. I’ve been there. It is also not so fun when they start hurling boulders at you in aggrevation that you are trespassing in their stomping grounds. Shine a flashlight at the sounds and look into the face of something that is not supposed to exist. Go there, do that. Then come back and comment on the experiences.

I understand the skepticism, as I was there myself. To my mind, prior to experience and study, bigfoot could not exist in Colorado or anywhere. Now I think different, that’s all. Enjoy the outdoors, all of it. I’m getting older, and am going to have to figure out a way to get my backpack down to 50 pounds instead of 70 pounds, so I am hoping some of you younger bowhunters will run into a bigfoot yourself and start doing your own field research. Someday we’ll have more answers to the mystery of Roosevelts forest hobgoblins that leave giant human-like tracks out there.

Hope you guys that have better things to do didn’t waste time reading this post too. Go do something else if not interested, please. There is room for thousands of different threads on this website. Start your own on something that you don’t have to “stoop so low” for.

Bigfoot love elk meat, so those of you who take the time to look at current summertime sightings from the BFRO, will know where the elk are very numerous and the bowhunting good. Plus, you get some excitement of having a big hairy neighbor if you camp there.

Keith Foster

Date: 25-Jul-00

“1. The place on the Eagle river where the tracks were found is not nearly so remote and seldom visited as you seem to think it is. As an objective and skeptical person the first thing I thought of when I saw that report was my cousin who has feet about that size. No “g” here, it’s the truth! The place where the tracks were found were exactly where a prankster would most likely put them.”

Size 26 shoe size feet are only a meesly 14.5 inches long and thinner for their length ratio than most human feet. If your cousin has 19 inch long feet that are 10 inches wide, then he exceeds the world record size for human feet by a width of 5 inches and a length of 4 inchs.

“2. Maybe there are so many reports of BF’s in the San Juans because you and a few others choose to focus on the arera!”

I don’t go out looking for sightings in specific areas, I just let them come is as they may.

“3. If a BF ranges in an area as large as you say (and it probably would as a major predator) how often and how far does it travel to use it’s “latrine”.”

I’ve never found a latrine or even a scat that I could say for sure was bigfoot scat. I have had to trust other biologists and scientists on this. I gave the number to Dr. Fahrenbach if you are really interesting in that kind of shit. I “guesstimate” territorial needs based on the metabolic needs of an animal the size of bigfoot extrapolated from known predators, which is all I can do, and this is also done in regards to other predators by biologists.

“4. If credible researchers have found BF poop why hasn’t it been analyzed to determine what it has eaten and whether or not it is that of some other animal? It’s not that hard to tell if scientifically examined!”

As I said before, call Fahrenbach for details on the many examinations done to find out content

“5. Why do you draw analogies between UFO’s and BF’s? You hurt your own credibility as a scientific researcher when you discuss the two together and repeatedly use the “belief” and “believe” word. A belief is a religious article of faith. It is accepted by the believer as such and requires no proof and indeed the believer usually does not seek, want or need proof. The possible existence of a BF on the other hand would be viewed as an hypothesis by an objective person.”

UFO’s are for sure real. The UFO’s over Pheonix a few years ago were confirmed as really there by video cameras. They are also obviously not alien ships from outerspace, but rather are military flares. They were UFO’s then, and IFO’s now.

“By the way, you have presented yourself as a custom bowyer and BF researcher. Why did you leave out the part about meat inspector?”

Who said I was a meat inspector? My occupation is in inspections of land for invasive species and enforcement of laws dealing with that subject. I couldn’t take a job that kept me inside too much.

Remember please how the CDOW laughed at us for finding grizzly tracks or reporting seeing grizzlies in the San Juans for 25 years prior to 1979, and then how they laughed again prior to now for reports of the same animal in that area for the last 20 years. Remember that CDOW used much manpower, money, time, helicopters, set baits, had many organized groups looking for sign and did everything they could for many years and came up empty and declared the Colorado grizzly extinct, only to have it reappear in the exact area they had searched. No one is funding any search for bigfoot, with helicopters, baits, money, time, or manpower. It is declared non-existant before even trying to find out. 10,000 people who have seen it are wrong, and you are right, bigfoot does not exist because you say it doesn’t. It is up to us idiots who have been unfortunate enough to have seen one or found tracks outselves. I still think I have a moral obligation to the animal involved to make it’s existance known.

If you find tracks or see one, then you will be morally obligated too. That is all there is to it. The only reason I hope somebody shoots or finds a fresh body of one is to end the mystery, start the real research and get some formal protection for it and it’s habitat.

First time this bowhunter has ever been called a “left coaster”. Ouch, that hurts. I’ve been called “right wing” before, but never “left”.

Marmoteater, since your cousin has feet more than 4 inches longer and 4 inches wider than Shaquille O’neal or any other known human, I’m sure Nike would like to talk with him. The 19 inch Eagle tracks are not human tracks, they are either fake bigfoot tracks or real bigfoot tracks. Time will tell.

Date: 26-Jul-00

Wow, Marmoteater, first time I ever ran into anybody that claimed to have a cousin with 19 inch long feet just to give a different answer to the 19 inch tracks found on the Eagle River. The biggest known human feet in the world are really less than 15 inches long and less than 5.5 inches wide. Which would make your cousin the new world record holder by a 4 inch length margin and a 4 inch width margin. Maybe you are mistaken and he wears size 19, as a lot of guys do. I wear size 13, but my feet are not 13 inches long. The Eagle County Sheriff Department has a 7 foot tall deputy that they were measureing for comparison of the tracks found there, not even slightly close.

I was answering all your numbered questions to the best of my ability, so what did you get pissed about.

It is one thing for me to call myself an idiot for putting up with critics and skeptics, it is altogether another thing for you to call me an idiot. Thanks a bunch, Mr. Mike Lee.

Mr. Lee, when you say,

“Who are you to tell me what my moral obligations are? If I find tracks or see one, I’ll keep it to myself and leave the poor sonofabitch to live in peace.”,

you are saying that it is all right to let an animal go extinct, as long as you know about it, and no one else does. This is wrong in anyones book, except yours I guess. If you see any very rare mammal, you should let officials know about it so that they can learn of it’s whereabouts. Keeping it to yourself is “selfish”, and benefits only you.

I will say right now that you “do” have a moral obligation to “all” wildlife, non-game or game, in “all” areas that you impact. I will demand that, and I will tell you that all day long!!!! I’ve seen others before that complained when I told them to pick up their trash, saying “you can do with your trash as you please, and we’ll do with our trash as we please”. You have that same “I don’t care” attitude about wildlife.

I do care about wildlife, which is why I take the critism of those who don’t know the first thing about wildlife.

I also can’t stand your “I didn’t save my trophy antelope horns because that doesn’t matter to me” hype. I’ve heard that before from guys that always seem to come home empty handed. They say “If a record book buck and a little buck walk by my stand at the same time, I’ll shoot the little one”. Give me a break!

I started this thread with a simple question and a little background to base it on. If you were not interested, or didn’t have any sightings to report, why are you even reading this thread. There are plenty of other threads for you to tell how you won’t shoot big deer. You could even start a thread called “Throw out your horns and antlers”.

Date: 17-Oct-00

Thought this thread had died a proper death, but since it is at the top again, thought I would give an update.

A bowhunter went after Colorado elk in the core area of where I do my bigfoot field research this season and found some bigfoot tracks. Only problem was they were 12 years old and existed only in the photo album of a local lodge. The tracks predated our track find there by 5 years, but were photographed less than 5 miles away from where I found tracks in 1993. Odd that those resident lodge owners would find these strange giant tracks specifically there and photograph them, unless of course there really are bigfoot in that area. I was excited about the new “old” tracks from that particular area. These tracks were also laid out with a stride of about 48 inches, just like the ones I found there.

Another piece to a puzzle that points to bigfoot as real, or a piece of evidence that someone was making fake tracks then too? These tracks were also found well away from normal human activity, and fortunately documented by a camera.

From that particular part of Colorado I now have this evidence in chronological order.

1540 Jemez Pueblo name a pueblo after the hairy giants there. (discovered by me in 1996)

1870 A government bear hunter reports in his memoirs of giant tracks, fearful indians, and horrible screams there. (came to my attention in 1997)

1920 Local miners report finding giant human tracks near mine opening. (came to my attention in 1997)

1920’s Local residents report seeing a hairy wildman that they give the name “Boji”. (came to my attention in 1997)

1960s-70’s Local Ute hunting guides report seeing them, tracks, finding hairs, and hearing them in the area while hunting there. (came to my attention in 1996)

1960’s A woman on a college class survival course reports coming face to face with a bigfoot there.

1967 Father and son elk hunters stalk up on what they thought was a bear feeding on a deer until it stood and walked away.

1970’s A group of 4 backpackers report seeing a bigfoot walk along a nearby ridge 3 afternoons in a row.

1988 Local lodge owners find and photograph huge man-like tracks in a remote area while hiking. (came to my attention in 2000)

1990 Man and woman report seeing an 8 foot running gorilla type animal with brown fur and conical head there. (came to my attention in 1990, my parents sighting)

1993 I hear loud unusual screams and find tracks there. (I start investigations after finding the tracks)

1993 30 residents report sightings in 7 different incidents in winter at lower elevations. (came to my attention in 1997)

1994 Local law enforcement finds and video documents two sets of tracks at lower elevations in winter. (came to my attention in 1997)

1997 Man and wife watch a bigfoot through binoculars for 5 minutes as it walks down an open valley (came to my attention in 1998)

1997 4 bowhunters watch as a bigfoot runs away from them after being surprised by them.

1998 Wildlife biologist and his friend hear unusual and loud animal vocalizations there (came to my attention in 1998)

These are just sightings and track finds documented from the San Juans, and only the ones that I am aware of. I am discovering new stuff all the time. The Holy Cross area stuff is pretty amazing too, with some pretty good track documentation there too, and sightings going back in that area to an article in a newspaper in 1881.

Interesting if nothing else, especially since none of the other witnesses knew of any of the previous sightings or of any history of such an animal in Colorado. Bigfoot is supposed to be in the pacific northwest, not in Colorado of all places. I just document the tracks and the sightings. You all can decide for yourselves whether they mean anything or not. Personally, I probably “couldn’t” believe it had I not found the tracks myself. So I’m sorry about coming off so pissy in former posts.

I’ve been documenting cougar sightings in Kansas for a number of years too, but we still don’t officially have any here at all. I saw one of those mysterious cougars in Kansas two weekends ago. First wild cougar I have ever seen, anywhere. They are amazing predators. Almost as amazing as bigfoot. Cougars leave their tracks and are seen every once in awhile in Kansas, but nobody can prove they live here. They must not live here, but I saw one here finally.

Thanks again to you guys who sent me your personal sightings of bigfoot, and also the newspaper article and second hand reports. They are all helpful.

lonegunman, Utah Wildlife Officials would be interested in your sighting in Utah (location, year, month, date, altitude, description particulars). Contact Rudy Drobnick or Mike Ray in the Salt Lake City main offices, it’s in the phone book.

 

Bigfoot Tracking

Date: 07-Aug-01

Colorado Bowhunters,

This information is just to help any of you that want to do a little bigfoot tracking for yourself. Most of you might not be interested, so just ignore this post and move on to something else. Nobody said anyone has to read posts they are not interested in. This post is very relevant to bowhunting because bowhunters are the ones encountering the animal involved most often. Guess we are stealthier and in the right places more than the general public which increases our chances of viewing rare wildlife.

After some recent incidents, some at CDOW are a little more open to the idea that there is something running around Colorado that makes huge tracks. In January 2001 a coyote hunter found a line of really huge tracks with a step length of 50 to 60 inches in an area where no one had been for over two weeks. This occurred near the road that leads in toward the west edge of the Lost Creek Wilderness (about 5 miles west of Monkey Creek). Somewhere in that area just outside the west edge of that wilderness is something huge. The coyote hunter followed them for nearly 1/2 mile before giving up the tracking because the snow was too deep and tiring to walk in. In any event, that animal will likely be in that general area again this winter and may be there right now. When the snow is on, about anyone should be able to find some tracks there somewhere to follow. Anyone with a snowmobile might be able to get close enough to it to get some good video. The reason I am writing this is that I may have some funding in the near future to send a good hunter or two into the area to recon, find tracks and track down one of the buggers. Any good clear film of the animal itself should result in $ of at least 6 figures if you want to go for it yourself. Does not matter to me, as I am not after $, but just want to solve the mystery.

That area is very near to where a Colorado bowhunting guide bugled in a large male bigfoot while bowhunting for elk and had a 30 yard distant daytime viewing of it. That bigfoot evidently thought the guide was a bull elk bugling and moved in on him to the surprise of both of them.

About 40 miles to the southeast of that location is where yet another Colorado bowhunting guide, Jeff Dysinger, a fellow guide and 6 clients had a bigfoot cross in front of them while they were packing out of the Raspberry Mountain area on horseback in 1998, and where Dysinger again saw one by a beaver pond in 1999 while bowhunting there. We think the bigfoot involved near Raspberry Mountain thought that Dysingers party was a herd of elk moving down the trail and was waiting beside the trail to waylay the elk, only moving off when it realized its mistake. All of them saw it from close range as it walked across the trail and away. When Dysinger saw it again in 1999, he got to watch it for about 10 minutes as it messed around near the beaver pond in the open. In any event, these creatures seem to hang around the elk and so elk bowhunters should stay alert in those areas for bigfoot or its sign.

Other areas with recent bigfoot sightings and track finds in Colorado are in the San Juans in and near the north edge of the South San Juan Wilderness. That particular area definitely has more than one of them as you will sometimes hear them calling back and forth there when they are hunting and several people have seen more than one of them at a time there traveling together. This is also near the area where officer Joe Taylor Jr video taped two sets of tracks in 1993. For snow tracking the bigfoot there in winter the bigfoot seem to follow the elk out to lower elevation, so wherever the large herds of elk go, that is where to look for bigfoot tracks in snow. Another area to look for bigfoot during archery season is down south of Silverton in the Twin Sisters Peak area or along timberline in forested areas east of Silverton about 40 miles as we get sightings from bowhunters there. I am not sure where these go in winter, but I think it is just to the south at lower elevation. Wherever the elk winter in that area I suspect there will be one or more bigfoot casing the larger winter herds, so that would be where to look for tracks in winter.

We did get tracks documented from the Gypsum/Eagle area last spring, but few sightings come from there anymore. Used to be lots of sightings from that general area in the 1960’s and 1970’s, but there are evidently few left there. The tracks from last spring there were investigated by the local CDOW biologist Bill Heicher and the Eagle County Sheriff Department and tagged by both as “real tracks”, “not fakes” and “not bear”. Those tracks were 19 inches long and over 9 inches across the toes. Several professional anatomists and tracking experts also tagged those tracks as real. Though there don’t seem to be many left in that general area, one might find tracks in snow in or near the lower elevations of the Flat Tops Wilderness where elk winter. I just mention this for those who frequent or live in that area.

There also seem to be a few in the northeast portion and just outside the Southern Ute Reservation for those that live in that area. A local hunting guide there had a sighting too, along with some other hunters through the years. This bigfoot or bigfoots may be associated with the ones in the SSJWilderness, as it is not too far away.

As you all know, finding tracks of bear or other soft footed animals in areas with no snow is rare in Colorado because of the rocky soils and pine needles, but when the snow is on the tracking is easier. You bowhunters that live in Colorado and hunt in snow in those areas mentioned have a chance to solve a mystery that has been going on for hundreds of years. If you find tracks and don’t have time to track down the bugger and get you film of one of them, let me know asap at kfoster@gcnet.com or call CDOW or your local Sheriff Department immediately so they can attempt to track it down. There are just not very many bigfoot in Colorado, and so finding even tracks is a rare thing, but it happens more often than most realize. Some day you might find some yourself as I have. I spent over 300 days in the SSJWilderness before finding my first set of bigfoot tracks to give you an idea of how rare even tracks are, but they are there to be found nonetheless. During those bowhunting years I took over 20 deer with a bow, 5 or which are Pope and Young Qualifying mule deer, to give you some idea of my wildlife experience. I have done a lot of tracking of many species, having bowhunted for elk, bear, moose, deer and antelope. Bigfoot tracks are real, and real huge, I can tell you from experience. I know 4 professional Colorado hunting guides who have seen them, and 3 more that have cut their tracks in Colorado. These 7 experienced outdoorsmen all describe the same exact kind of animal and the same kind of tracks. These 7 are not the only ones seeing these things or finding tracks either, as many bowhunters and rifle hunters have reported the same thing through the years in the same areas where the guides had their encounters with the impossible.

Bigfoot may be impossible, but it is seen regularly and tracked often in the areas mentioned by professionals and nonprofessionals alike. Go there and see for yourself some tracks that defy logic or see an animal that can’t possibly really exist. You won’t see bigfoot or its sign in the city, but in some locations in Colorado your chances are better than most.

You might want to be a little slow to ridicule this subject because we may have some real definitive proof coming soon that we already have on hand awaiting test. As Albert Einstein said “The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science.” Help us find the answers to this mystery for the sake of science. I need other old bowhunters with wildlife experience to be on the alert for this creature of mystery. To quote an old 1880 Leadville Evening Chronicle article……”so many area miners and hunters have seen this creature that the existance of this wonder of the natural sciences can no longer be denied”. That old Colorado newspaper statement still applies today, 120 years later.

It is about time we put this mystery to rest while a few of them still roam the Colorado forests. You guys find the tracks in snow and I will see if I can get it tracked down to its source if you don’t want to try yourself. They have huge lungs, long legs and can walk fast and walk for long periods, so you will need to have at least a snowmobile to have any hope of catching up, or you can go along quiet and hope it laid down to rest so you can catch up to it. These things don’t seem to be interested in killing people, but one should remember that they can kill a full grown elk when they want to and so some caution is called for. I would try to avoid making one mad at you or be well armed if you do. We are talking about an animal the size and weight of a polar bear when they are full grown. Following one in snow could be dangerous so be prepared to protect yourself. It may rush at you and scream at you if it sees you following, but most all charges will be a bluff, just as gorillas bluff charge. Get it on film as you back away and everything should be okay.

The tracks will be out there waiting for you this winter. When you personally find a set and follow them, you will see what I have been talking about. Hopefully you will get to see the maker of the tracks too. If you get a good clear film of a large male bigfoot in its full glory and size, you will certainly retire a very wealthy individual. If you do get the film, be sure to take video of humans of known height in the same exact location and from the same place where the filming was done for comparisons later.

Keith Foster

Date: 07-Aug-01

beartr, there is a hunting guide in Ignacio that had a sighting and knows a good area east to the Reservation where he has guided elk hunters for years. I don’t have his permission to give out his name, but I can give it to you and he can tell you where to go. If you want it, send me an email.

JDM, I can’t say too much about the evidence in hand yet because I don’t want to get the persons involved in trouble with their superiors. It involves two biologists from Wyoming Game and Fish, one of which is retiring soon and will release the information upon retirement hopefully. They have both seen these animals and one of them ran one through a barb wire fence and collected hairs afterward while they were documenting the tracks. Hopefully the hairs will result in some positive mitochondrial DNA tests that we can compare to other species. Even though one of them is a senior biologist, evidently his superiors have kept him from getting the proper analysis of the samples for several years. Fear of ridicule keeps this stuff out of the public eye for the most part. Only one of the many guides I mentioned with sightings from Colorado has allowed his name to go public, which is the fault of people that only know how to joke about this subject because they are so certain that the animal can not exist even though they have not studied this at all. There are over 4000 cougars in Colorado yet they are rarely seen or tracks found, and there may be only a dozen or two sasquatch left in the entire state to leave tracks or be seen. Such a rare creature is a rare sight indeed. Sightings have remained fairly constant during the last 40 years in Colorado, in spite of more people out there to see them or find tracks, so they must be getting rarer each year. Soon the sightings and the tracks will stop.

It is very selfish to think your hunting will be shut down to protect a rare species. CDOW already hid the last of the Colorado grizzlies from the EPA/USFWS to keep hunting and grazing open in the SSJWilderness and adjacent areas, so it is pretty safe to say that CDOW would trash any evidence of bigfoot that might come into their hands. The wildlife lived there first and are worth some protection aren’t they? My sighting maps show that there are several areas involved and so no one area will have to be shut down if the creatures are confirmed to exist. Yes, an area might be shut down if no one has my research to show that more than one area is involved, so hopefully the biologists will look at my research and realize that no shut down of hunting will be needed. Actually my current research will keep your hunting areas open if bigfoot is confirmed to exist, rather than the opposite. What is needed will be more preservation of winter habitat for not only the bigfoot, but also the elk they depend on. If you have not noticed, housing developments are swallowing up winter elk habitat faster than ever right now in Colorado. Pretty soon houses will gobble up all the lower elevation elk grazing areas and cut into your elk herds over time. Private lower elevation ranchlands are becoming housing developments rather than grazing land for wintering elk. Colorado is fine with high elevation summer habitat, but elk can only survive the weakest link which is the winter habitat areas that are disappearing. On your drive to your elk hunting areas this fall, just notice how many houses have gone up in areas that used to be only meadows and pastures only a few years ago. It is up to Colorado people to start something that will preserve this habitat for wildlife. Hunters should be friends of wildlife, not just worried about their hunting. I have bowhunted big game for almost 30 years now, in many western states, and my contact with wildlife has made me conservation and habitat minded. Look for the weak habitat links in your area and point them out to officials before it is too late. Help the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation buy more winter habitat next to higher elevation summer habitat. This is what the elk and the bigfoot need. It is hard for an elk to winter graze on asphalt, curbs and gutters. Hunting will only be preserved if there is something left out there to hunt in the future. Don’t worry about hunting, but rather start worrying about wildlife and wildlife habitat, so we can continue to hunt. I am willing to skip a year or two of elk hunting to preserve them and another species.

Why do we bowhunt? To enjoy nature? To get away from the crowds? To take up a challange? To get cheap meat? Elk meat is very expensive when you consider how much you spend on equipment, travel and time to bow kill one of them, so it must mostly be the challange and the enjoyment of wildlife that we are after. If it is the challange and the enjoyment of wildlife you are after, why not hunt bigfoot with a camcorder. No permit fees required and no closed seasons. Bigfoot is certainly the most challanging species out there to hunt, and the enjoyment of other wildlife and nature is the same as with any other hunting. The only difference is that you have to buy beef at home to eat, which is much cheaper than wild game in the long run anyway. I like to bowhunt as much as the next guy. In fact I love bowhunting, love wild meat to eat and antlers on the wall, but that is not why I bowhunt. I bowhunt because it is simply fun and a challange. Bigfoot chasing is also a blast and a challange. One of the biggest wildlife challanges I have ever pursued in fact. If you didn’t get that elk permit you were hoping for, go after bigfoot this fall and winter with a camcorder instead. If you happen to succeed, you can go brown bear hunting in Kamchatka every year right after your annual Marco Polo Sheep hunts with proceeds from the film. I have already done your scouting for you and told you where to go hunting for it. I can also tell you that they are attracted to cow elk and calf elk sounds, hoof sounds of elk or horses traveling along. They are attracted to even penny whistle sounds because they evidently think it is an elk sound sometimes. Dysinger, another guide and six client on horseback all traveling along made a bunch of noise and yet encountered a bigfoot from only 25 feet away. This was no accident. That bigfoot heard them coming for sure, and was waiting for them beside the trail. Why? Well, it thought a herd of elk was coming down the trail and was surprised as Dysinger and crew when they met. Why did the bigfoot come to the elk bugles and cow talk sounds of Colorado hunting guide W.E.?

Now you know where the bigfoot are and you know what they are out there doing, and this should help you have a better chance of success. If you don’t believe in bigfoot, go into one of the specific areas I mentioned at night and squeal away with cow and calf elk sounds and see what eventually shows up. If enough of us do this, one of us will have a kind of scary experience with something very large that is not supposed to exist and if you get it all on film you will have it made.

If nothing else, at least maybe we took some time to consider wildlife, consider habitat, and consider why we bowhunt. I think bowhunting goes way beyond just killing something with an arrow. That is almost an anticlimax to my hunts. Many times I have been sorry I harvested even a trophy animal, as I was not ready for the hunt to end yet. Some of you other long time bowhunters know what I am talking about. It is the experience that counts, not the kill.

Date: 08-Aug-01

It constantly amazes me how many professional outdoorsmen report seeing these bigfoot and that their descriptions exactly match each other. Even before there was any media attention to the creature, people were seeing and reporting the same thing. Sometimes the color is a little different, ranging from black to a chocolate or reddish brown, but besides that the descriptions are the same. Sometimes a really large bigfoot will be described as silvered or whitish, which may be a result of graying similar to how humans and gorillas get gray or white haired with age. When Dysinger sat and watched one next to that beaver pond in 1999 through binoculars, he could even see how its hands were kind of longer than expected through the palm, and that its nose seemed low down toward its mouth. The face was very gorilla like, but the body was like a very muscular man in proportion. Many are really impressed with the immense shoulder structure and how deep the chest is built. They seem to be very round through the chest, whereas humans have more of an oval chest. Because of this they might be very good at getting oxygen to the lungs and thus be able to really cover some ground while walking. I think of bigfoot as a huge super-oxygen-charged human-like hiker, which is why I think it would be almost useless to try to track one down on foot even in fresh snow. It might ge worth a try though if one could track quietly and hope the bigfoot had laid down to rest nearby. Anyone who tried to find tracks in the snow in the areas I mentioned, especially from Pikes Peak up to the Lost Creek Wilderness, could find some if they looked around enough. Many sets are found every winter by snowmobilers, cross country skiers and 4wheel drivers along the backcountry roads or trails. Finding a set might be no problem, but tracking one down would be very tough. I thought about using a helicopter, but it is so dangerous to fly helicopters in that country that no pilot will take me in anything but a really big chopper that costs too much to rent. Maybe some day I will get to do that anyway and film one from the air.

If anyone comes across a set of tracks in snow, let me know asap. You will know a set of sasquatch tracks when you see them up close.

Date: 09-Aug-01

Good Luck WOLVES. Hope you get a bigfoot to come in to your elk bugling and cow talk. There are at least two mature male bigfoot in the Conejos drainage area somewhere if tracks are any indication of size. A local law officer got video of their tracks in 1993 (19 and 20 inches long respectively) and I suppose they may still be around. If you get one of them on film you will have it made. Will make Shaq O’Neal look like a toddler. If you hear unusual sounds, record those with your camcorder even if you can’t see anything. 17 and 15 inch tracks have been found on the Lake Fork drainage and Rito Gato drainage just off the Conejos in the last 10 years. There was a sighting in the Wiminueche Wilderness last year, and a few sightings over near Silverton in the last few years. A long history of sightings just outside the east edge of the Southern Ute Reservation in the more remote areas there at higher elevations. Bigfoot seem to like the more secluded areas, so the farther from roads or trails you get, the better your chance probably. That is where the elk end up too, after the hunting action starts.

There are so few of them evidently that your chances of encounter are about nil. There are likely fewer than 1 bigfoot for every 30 cougars and you will likely not even see one wild cougar while hunting the San Juans. If you do see 30 different wild cougars, then you might see a bigfoot by odds catching up to you. I have spent over 500 days in the San Juans backpacking, hiking, fishing and bowhunting and have not seen a cougar or a bigfoot there. But, I have found bigfoot tracks there. Hopefully you will too. If you do, document them best you can and let me know. Odds are, you will never have any indication that cougars or bigfoot are around, but that does not mean they are not close by.

Have fun and watch out for the greatest danger there, which is lightning.

 

 

Forgot Bigfoot-Grizzly Spotted!

Date:02-Nov-00

I may have dug up something on grizzlies for you. USFWS is investigating a video of possible grizzly taken near the CO/NM border about 1 month ago by a man in Chama. We found out about this video while investigating some bigfoot stuff down there (yes, I’m the idiot from Kansas who seriously thought bigfoot might be real). CDOW ignorred the video information, so I am giving all that stuff to USFWS now.

I know that CDOW is sitting on a 35mm photo of a Colorado grizzly sow and two cubs taken near Pagosa Springs in 1998. I have my sources on that one. Why do they withhold the stuff? Well, the “Endangered Species Listings” can cause some real radical federal actions as far as land use in some areas go.

Tell you what, I’ve hunted the San Juan Wilderness for over 25 years now, and I was hunting on the Rito Gato when Wiseman was attacked by that sow on the Adams Fork a few miles away. We had found definite grizzly tracks in that area in 1975, and they were not sow grizzly tracks, but obviously from a big boar. We reported the tracks to a CDOW officer who checked our permits and he just laughed and told us flatlanders how poor we were at identifying bear tracks. A 200 yard walk and he could have seen them himself, but he was too lazy and too smart. He did not know that we had hunted much in grizzly country of the north for years and years and had seen those types of tracks before. We had all been on many bear hunts, moose hunts, elk hunts and other western hunts many times. I walked along behind my first grizzly tracks on the Bacon Creek in the Gros Ventre area of Wyoming, as they were extremely fresh in the falling snow and I was fall black bear hunting. I peeled off after I realized I was stillhunting and stalking a rocky mountain grizzly boar with my bow. I’ve spent over 300 days in a tent in the San Juans during the last 25 years, and another 200 days in a cabin there. How about you? Wish I could have found that particular gleefully intelligent CDOW officer and rubbed his face in the carcass of that sow grizzly that attacked Wiseman. Hope it happens again with grizzlies and other big rare predators.

I just found some photos of big, big, human like tracks that was taken at the upper elevations on the Rito Gato west of Platoro in 1988, that had been collecting dust. Wonder what is leaving those huge tracks there way back in places where few people go? Wonder why some hoaxer “faked” them way up there? Hopefully some day we will find out.

Also discovered another hunting guide and local outdoor daily cowboy who rides those mountains all summer in the last few weeks with some bigfoot tales from the San Juans. He says grizzlies are still there too. He lives there, and “out there” all the time, so who are you going to believe. If I want to find out something about the city, I ask someone who lives there. I trust that cowboy/hunting guide who told me that both grizzlies and bigfoot are still wandering the higher and lonelier places of the San Juans of southern Colorado.

I don’t know why city people are always trying to tell the country folk what exists and what doesn’t exist in the country folks backyard. I may not be a native Coloradan, but my grand-dad owned two ranches there and I have spent more time in the San Juan Wilderness than most Coloradans, by a dang long shot.

Colorado grizzlies are like bigfoots, and eastern cougars. There is no such thing, but they do leave tracks that are identifiable and found is some out of the way places more regularly than most know. My personal conclusion is that none of them really exist, but that their tracks are most definitely real. I’ll put my track i.d. skills and tracking skills up against any comers in an open and public contest, any day. You guys have no idea of some of the well known professional people who would rather keep quiet but that I am working with on this subject. You also have no idea of the extent of physical evidence we have collected in the form of tracks, hair and droppings and such. We collect the grizzly stuff too, as an aside. Keep your mind open, as there may be some hairy surprises in the future. Then again, maybe Colorado grizzlies and bigfoot are too smart to ever be caught.

Date:03-Nov-00

Thanks Hornhunter. I know you didn’t call me an idiot. I called myself an idiot. Really though, I can’t help it if I found the tracks. That was an accidental find that I kind of wish had never happened to me. I’m moderating my position a little on bigfoot and just looking at the physical evidence now, instead of following up every sighting in Colorado. This is why I say, “bigfoot can not possibly exist, but I know that it’s tracks do”. This is also the conclusion of the Eagle County Law Officials and Wildlife Officials in that area of Colorado after the track finds there this spring. You will see a series of articles in the Denver Post by their environment writer Theo Stein in a week or so that will likely detail the statements of the Eagle County people. So I have taken that position now too. If “officials” can take that stance, so can I. What it means to others, I don’t know.

I have to keep reminding myself that prior to the personal experience with this bigfoot creature, I would have never ever believed such a thing could be out there.

Probably is a waste of time, as one guy hunting for something so rare with a camcorder has about a ziltch chance of ever getting a video of it, by any means. I have seen no evidence of grizzly in the San Juans since 1975, but I still hold some hope of it’s existance there. My study into that is probably a waste of time too. One researcher, with little help and no funding does not have much chance of accomplishing much. I’ll just keep documenting the stuff and if the grizzly or bigfoot is ever officialized there, we will at least have some documentation to give us a little history of it for making future plans.

Without my documentation, if bigfoot is discovered in any one locale in Colorado officially, that area would likely be shut down to all use (no hunting of nothin) by USFWS. With my documentation that shows that they are in several areas and move around a lot, they will see that it would be useless to shut any one area down and land use could still be continued by hunters and other outdoor people, even in the local area of official discovery. My documentation should help keep areas open to hunting, backpacking, fishing, ect.. With the grizzly, I won’t be of much help, and some areas may be closed to human activity if they are proved to be in some particular area. My best guess is that if grizzlies are there, they hang on the west slope of the divide in the San Juans in a line from Pagosa Springs to Chama, and there “were” not more than perhaps 15 to 30 of them there. Less than 15 in 1979, and they could not have maintained a large enough genetic base to survive since 1979 up to this time, 21 years later. More than 30, and I think we would see them more. “If” they are there, they must be right at the edge of extinction and barely holding on genetically. The Weminuche (sp?) Wilderness also has some huge areas that see extremely little to no human activity, so perhaps there are a few grizzly there too. I’d like to spend a couple of months backpacking that wilderness area some day, just to poke around looking for animal sign.

My best to you all. Good bowhunting.

If you find bigfoot tracks, document them and contact me. If you can’t remember who I am, send them to Idaho State University or to the Utah Department of Wildlife Salt Lake City office and they will get to me. Thanks.

Date:07-Nov-00

http://www.bfro.net/GDB/CNTS/CO/EG/co_eg001.htm

Here are the tracks found at Eagle this spring. They are 19 inches long and just under 10 inches wide, which is a large set. The only larger set found in Colorado and documented were recorded on video by a law officer (Joe Taylor Jr. who now is a police officer in Alamosa I think, and should be in the phone book if still there) in Conejos County in 1993 and those were 20 inches long by 10 inches wide and a 5 foot stride in single file. Those videoed tracks consisted of thousands of them in snow and mud as the officer followed the tracks for quite a ways as they wound off up a saddle between two mountains. Actually there were two sets of tracks made in that case. The tracks I found in the San Juan Wilderness were “only” 16 inches long, and about 7.5 to 8 inches wide, with a 4 foot stride where it was walking a straight line and slightly less where it turned to head in a different direction.

The tracks look quite different from bear tracks in shape and how they are laid out. Bears have a wide straddle while walking, and the tracks will appear zig-zag. Bigfoot tracks are laid out like people tracks in a straight line. Bear tracks are also curved in an arc across the toes, whereas bigfoot tracks have a pretty straight toeline. Bears very often step their rear foot right on to their forefoot track, giving a double deposit in one spot that might be confuse with a bigfoot track, except for the pointed rear heel, curved toe line and claws usually showing. Bigfoot have wide and rounded heels as you can see in the track photos attached. Most bigfoot tracks are too wide for bear tracks, so it is easy to tell the difference most times. Smaller bigfoot tracks might be passed off as barefoot human tracks and ignorred by anyone who finds them while hiking in the outdoors. Probably many bigfoot tracks seen are given only a glance and ignorred as bear tracks by most people, especially those found in snow. Few would know the difference probably, and just see the track line in the snow and think, “hey, look, a bear walked in the snow here”. Certainly no one is expecting to see or looking for bigfoot tracks, and only the larger bigfoot tracks might draw any special attention, which seems to be the case in Colorado. They see the unusually large tracks and might take a photo or something, and that is about it. Every once in awhile someone knows they are unusual enough that “someone” might be interested and actually tell officials about the tracks. Most track photos or reports like that are probably collecting dust like those I found this month from a 1988 incident.

There are two options for the tracks as big as those found at Eagle this spring. They are too big for any bears tracks, and so were either faked by someone or belong to an unknown animal. The sheriffs office (sargeant Bill Kaufman; source) and forest service biologists (biologist Bill Heicher; source) there decided that they were not faked, because when they went to the location, there were no other people tracks there or near the tracks, they knew the man that found them, the tracks were located in a spot were softer and better faking soil was within a few yards, they were on the south side of the river where access and people use was rare, the tracks were pressed into the soil with much force (slightly deeper than their own human tracks there, but so much larger), the tracks were obviously pressed into the ground and not drawn on the ground by moving soil material, the tracks showed toe movement between the two better tracks, with the toes curled more in one track than the other, and several other factors too complicated to mention here. We were fortunate in this particular set of tracks that the animal that made them made a sharp turn to the left in one of the tracks and that particular track showed some of the foot toe movements and indicated exactly how the turn was made in an abrupt manner.

What was neat about the tracks video taped in Conejos County in 1993 by officer Joe Taylor Jr. was that some of the tracks were in very wet soft mud and the toes in some of the tracks squished in deep enough to show toenail prints across the top front of the toes. They toenails were kind of chisel shaped and very human (primate) looking, and not claws.

I’m just trying to find out what is making these tracks. If they are faked, the person faking all of them is doing one fine job of fooling the experts in physical evidence, including some of the best anthropologists, wildlife biologists, experienced detectives, FBI forensic scientists, and me. He has also been faking them with regularity for more than 50 years. The faker can also walk uphill with 20 inch feet strapped on and maintain a 5 foot stride for quite a distance while doing it, plus must be carrying lots of weight in a backpack to get the feet to squish into the mud like they did in Conejos County in 1993, the whole while he is walking uphill and maintaining that long stride, actually a running stride length for a person. After investigating a few of these track cases, it starts getting more ridiculous to assume faking than it does to assume a real unknown animal made the tracks.

The possiblity of bigfoot with 19 to 20 inch long tracks being real is ridiculous, I admit, but the tracks are there for sure, found all over the western mountains, quite consistent in shape and detail from all the hundreds of sources, and man are they real looking, with toe movements, soft portions evident and even dermal ridges in those made in soft mud that the FBI experts say could not have been faked.

I’ve personally only found one set of bigfoot tracks (summer 1993) in 25 years of hunting, fishing and backpacking all over the Southern San Juan Wilderness. I would have never found those, except I was investigating the source of a strange loud scream we had heard the evening before. Guess you can tell I am a curious dude. I have also only seen one set of bear tracks that I thought were grizzly tracks there (1975 or 76). Another set of bigfoot tracks was found there and photographed in 1988, about 4 miles from where I found mine. Those photos only came to my attention about a month ago, and had been gathering dust in the photo album of an outfitter/hunting guide who lives in that area.

Anybody else know of any possible bigfoot track photos from Colorado, let me know who has them, so I can investigate them. Or, if you don’t want to contact me, send them to Dr. Jeff Meldrum at Idaho State University. He is “the” pro on hominid tracks. He was chosen by the Leaky Foundation to make final assessment of the fossil hominid tracks (species source) found at Laetoli Africa by the Leaky’s, so you know he is good with tracks. He has come to the conclusion that many, in fact most, bigfoot tracks submitted to him are real. A few are faked of course.

Few hairs or feces are ever collected, because who is going to just go out collecting hair off things to determine source or know the difference between a bear poop or a bigfoot poop? We do have quite a few hairs collected from all over the west that match no known species yet, yet match each other (repository for these hairs is Dr. Henner Fahrenbach at the Oregon Primate Research Center, a medical facility). I wouldn’t know the difference between bear hair and bigfoot hair, so never wasted my time collecting any hairs from anything. Bones have never been collected, which is not surprising considering bones don’t last long in the wild, and that only 1 in a million hikers might know the difference between an elk bone and a bigfoot bone anyway and pick it up. Nobody is looking for bigfoot bones, as odds are too great against finding any, even if bigfoot was fairly numerous. There could be a bigfoot bone laying beside a trail in Yellowstone National Park for years and no one would know the difference. There could also be a bigfoot poop squarely on the same trail being stepped in by tourists who think they got buffalo poo on the shoe.

Could you hide in Yellowstone Park and never be seen by any human for 100 years. I could, and it wouldn’t be too hard even in that overrun place. How about in the San Juan Wilderness of Colorado. Could you and your family hide there if you wanted to? I think bigfoot try to hide from humans out of natural fear, but I don’t think they even have to try very hard to stay hidden for the most part. A bigfoot could be moving around all day in the black timber with all that downed old growth and never have to worry about running into a person. During hunting seasons few even go into that stuff very far, and when they do they could walk right by a bigfoot sitting beside the trail in his chocolate brown bark colored fur and never see the bugger. If bigfoot is a predator, which I think it is, then it is also probably good at remaining motionless beside a trail waiting for an elk to pass by. You yourself might have been within feet of one of them and never known it. But, bigfoot are evidently seen every once in awhile evidently if any of the thousands of eye witnesses are to be believed. You will have to decide if they are “all” lieing through their teeth.

Only the large and unusual tracks are very noticable, so that is what we have to study most often. I just happened to be fortunate enough or unfortunate enough, to have found a set myself in a wilderness area in Colorado, and got caught up in this mess. You all can decide for yourself if the tracks documented are real or fake, but don’t make the decision until you have studied 50 or more examples. Hopefully some of the new technologies will help us get better documentation of the creatures themselves, instead of just track signs, feces and hair. Thermal image cameras still cost about $10,000 or more, and no one has given me one yet, so the cost of technology will have to go down before I can use much of it. My first generation night vision stuff is about useless too, so I’ll just have to look at tracks every once in awhile whenever someone accidently finds some and listen to tales from other bowhunters. Generally, I trust other bowhunters as far as eyewitness accounts go, as most experienced bowhunters know wildlife pretty good. Bowhunters are a rare lot themselves, and may be getting rarer now. Glad to be able to visit with you other bowhunters on this very unusual wildlife subject.

Sorry if I go so long in these posts, but I try to anticipate questions that you guys might have and answer them. This odd subject takes lots of explaining, because the evidence is rather large and details important to establish facts vs fiction. I can provide names and phone numbers to all officials involved in all track cases and such if anyone is really interested to the point of contacting these people to confirm what I am telling you.

Is bigfoot impossible? Well, I would have certainly thought so, and did. Now I would just have to say, I think these tracks I have investigated are as real as any other tracks out there, whatever that means. The nice thing is that you can look at them too, and if you know much about tracks, can decide for yourself. But like I said, look at quite a few cases before finalizing the decision.

Date:08-Dec-00

A Colorado bowhunting guide claims to have seen a bigfoot this fall while guiding hunters and elk hunting himself. Many of you probably know him, as he is a fairly well known guide and bowhunter. They saw it first as it crossed their path while going out of the hunting area on horseback with 6 clients in tow. The guide returned to the area and found tracks the next morning after getting his clients to their airline flights. The guide saw it again under better conditions in September of this year, and watched it through binoculars for 5 or 10 minutes as it sat in the open beside a small beaver pond. It was sitting watching his campsite while he was out bugling for elk, and he saw it on his return to camp. It eventually saw him on an outcrop watching it, but seemed fairly unconcerned. He was not completely sure it saw him, as he was in camo, but it kept looking in his direction and stared, but also stared at his tent several times. He described in detail its body, color, its facial structure and hands. I think the BFRO is going to post his sighting, which occurred in Teller County, and so will be posted on the Teller County database on the BFRO website. I investigated the sighting, and if nothing else, at least I have made a new bowhunting friend and we plan to do some turkey hunting next spring with our longbows and some whitetail rattling and decoy hunting next fall. You might get to see some of those hunts on TNN in the near future, which will be fun for me. Hopefully we are both good enough hunters to eventually get some bigfoot footage for you to watch too, if the bigfoot stays in the area involved.

The other two Colorado hunting guides who have reported bigfoot sightings to me in the past also said that the bigfoot they saw seemed fairly unafraid of them, but afraid enough to move off when encountered. One of those guides said he bugled in the bigfoot he saw, it evidently thinking him an elk to prey on. He said it came to within 30 yards before discovering its mistake and just turned around and walked out of the small meadow the guide was hunting after it saw the guide. After visiting with all three of these guides, I know they are not pulling our strings, but just giving an accurate account of what they encountered. This non-chalant reaction to a human close encounter by a bigfoot always seems to surprise the witnesses, especially people familiar with wildlife reaction to hunters. Bigfoot seem to act like they are boss of the woods, but have never hurt anyone and seem to be mostly afraid of people and stay hidden most of the time. Female bigfoot with their young and big mature adult males are hardly ever seen by people. Sightings are usually of smaller males with tracks left of about 15 to 17 inches in length. Kind of like we see more raghorn elk and forkhorn mule deer than we do the well matured bulls and bucks. The younger males are a little more stupid, or maybe just brazen. We find bigfoot tracks up to around 20 inches long, so we know they get bigger than the 8 foot tallish ones with tracks around 16 to 17 inches long. Three of the better documented track events in Colorado, those found or documented by law enforcement, were of tracks from 19 to 21 inches in length. We have video and good photos of all those tracks and statements from law and wildlife officials as to authenticity.

I know it is hard to believe, and I wouldn’t believe it myself if I had not been so involved in the investigations and had some personal experience. So, if you don’t think bigfoot is possible, thats fine, and that “is” a logical conclusion. The only problem with coming to that conclusion though is that you are calling three or four very good and experienced Colorado hunting guides and quite a few fellow Colorado bowhunters liars, or at the least poor wildlife observors in spite of the close proximity of the daytime sightings and their wildlife experience that likely eclipses your own experience by quite a bit. I think we should at least give these 4 Colorado hunting guides the benefit of the doubt and keep an open mind and study and document the tracks left behind after their encounters. Also keep in mind that more than 4 hunting guides are involved if you also consider track finds by outfitters and guides, as I have more of them too. I have track find reports from three other outfitters/guides who saw the tracks themselves and some track photos from one of those events. A bear and cougar hunting guide who has cut bigfoot tracks twice while following hounds after cats in snow. These are not little tracks involved, and way too big to be bear tracks. Most are from 8 to 10 inches wide across the 5 toes and pretty dang clear and not just melted out tracks. Most occur in mud or soil, and it is kind of hard to melt bigger in mud and dirt. The sightings and tracks are usually found in particular areas where elk numbers are higher than other locations at the time. These same elk areas are usually fairly remote from lots of human activity. In fact, if you look at the more recent BFRO Colorado Database of bigfoot sightings, you will find that they show us bowhunters where the best elk hunting in Colorado is. Wonder why that is? I think bigfoot males would make dang good elk hunting guides and do if you consider sighting locations. They are so big, hairy and stinky though, that they would be hard to tolerate in camp or on the trail. ): I bet they know what direction the wind is blowing though, as an elk would be able to smell them a mile away. I would certainly sit upwind of my bigfoot elk guide to talk over an evening campfire, and not just to keep the smoke out of my eyes. (:

Date:08-Dec-00

I don’t know why bigfoot eat elk and not people. Why do cougars eat deer and rarely bother people? People are much slower and smaller. I do have a couple of cases of bigfoot possibly abducting a hunter for culinary purposes, but they consist of accounts of bigfoot tracks, blood on the snow, parts of the hunters clothing, and a missing hunter, so who knows what really happened in those cases. I only know of two of these kind of cases, one of which did occur in Colorado and involved a soldier on training from Camp Hale during WWII, south of Vail. Blood, clothing, bigfoot tracks and a missing soldier. Official records list the soldier just as missing, and all the rest of the story is rumor from long time residents in the area. And, it may be only rumor, but enough of them say it that it might have some basis in some facts. I don’t know why official records do not list the soldier as “eaten by a local bigfoot on Pearl Creek during snow manuvers”, do you? (:

I don’t know how many cougars out of 10,000 might attack and eat a person, but the numbers are pretty low. Same with black bears. Coastal grizzlies almost never attack people, but inland grizzlies do it fairly often. Cougars on Vancouver Island British Columbia attack people fairly often, but attacts on the mainland are rare. Figure that one out. Black bear boars are known to kill people for food, while black bear sows just attack out of defense of cubs and rarely if ever eat people. Some areas have higher rates of black bear attacks, and other areas with just as many bears very rarely ever have any incidents.

If bigfoot eats elk, like any other predator, it does not need to eat people very often. Elk are pretty good eating. I’ve never eaten human flesh and don’t plan to, so I’ll never know how the two compare as far as palatibility.

If bigfoot does not exist, then it will never eat anyone either. I wouldn’t lose sleep in bigfoot country, even if they do exist, as attacks are as rare or rarer than any other predator per bigfoot, if records are to be trusted. Who knows though, as many law officials would be very reticent to list cause of death as “bigfoot attack” for anyone found beheaded in the woods, even if tracks at the scene indicated bigfoot. You would be greatly surprised what “does not” go down on paper in some investigations for fear of ridicule. There could be ten or twenty missing person reports in the western mountain states where bigfoot tracks were found, and you wouldn’t hear about it in any newspaper, because it wouldn’t make it into the official investigative reports. The report might say “large tracks at the scene” but not “bigfoot tracks”.

Check Camp Hale Colorado records and go talk to old local residents if you want a gory story concerning bigfoot. Even to this day the Forest Service personel in that area will not go into the Pearl Creek area at night. At least those that know the story. Talk to Bob Poole, if he still heads the U.S. Forest Service in the Holy Cross Wilderness area, as I think he knows about some of that stuff. More goes on as far as bigfoot goes than the public knows about, alot more.

I’m serious, call some of these people if you want the scoop from somebody but me.

Date:10-Dec-00

Bear tracks are also hard to find. Soft footed animal tracks, especially the larger ones, don’t impact much and can rarely be seen in grass or in pine needles. Tracks of bigfoot are found, and by some pretty reliable and experienced guides and outfitters. If bigfoot is real, it must be very rare. I’m concerned too about how many tracks “aren’t” found, but always remember all the official searches for grizzly tracks in the S.San Juan Wilderness. They searched and searched and searched, but came up empty handed and proclaimed the grizzly extinct, and then the get proof positive of the grizzlies again there in 1979. They also have some very convincing photos of a grizzly sow and two cubs from 1998 from southeast of Pagosa Springs that is in CDOW possession. Where are their tracks if they live there? We do find quite a few bigfoot tracks in snow, but everytime they are found, the official answer to the mystery is that the tracks are hoaxed. Everytime. This might be a mistake.

Roadkills might not apply if the bigfoot is intelligent enough to avoid such contact.

My main negative about bigfoot is “why wasn’t one ever killed by hunters who shot everything that moved in the period from 1850 to 1925?” There was a 75 year period of wildlife slaughter in the western states, no permits needed and nobody worrying about who shot what. Why didn’t anyone bring in a bigfoot carcass? I can see why in this day and age that someone might not shoot a bigfoot or not report it if they did, but not during that 75 year period of “shoot everything that moves”. Sure, we have lots of “stories” of bigfoot shootings from that period, but no one brought the bugger home for all to see.

If bigfoot is real, it is likely to be a predator that is naturally very rare because it has to be to survive, because it needs lots of meat. Too many of them in any one area would effect prey numbers too much. It would be kind of like a cougar with the brain of a chimpanzee or even smarter. A cougar with the brain of a chimp would be an almost impossible animal to hunt, wouldn’t it?

I hardly ever carry a camera with me when I’m actually hunting, but always have one in camp. I don’t want my camera banged around while I hunt, and don’t want to carry the extra weight around all day. The hunting guide who claimed to see the bigfoot in Colorado in September was not after any attention from anyone, but rather is concerned about it having a negative influence on his potential customers. Exactly the opposite of any noteriety as a good hunter and guide. He came forward because he saw it and wanted to share it with someone. I felt kind of the same way when I found tracks. I didn’t want to tell anyone really, for fear of ridicule, but there they were and what was I supposed to do? I seriously thought about keeping it quiet, but eventually just had to let others know about it. I guess I felt like it was an amazing mystery that needed some answers put to it. I’m very curious about it I guess. I wanted to hear about other Colorado hunters experiences with the bigfoot and thus my search. I would guess about half the people who contact me with sightings or track finds in Colorado don’t care if their names are shared. The other half has the sightings to share, but want complete anonimity because of fear of ridicule. These are the smarter ones, as I have been ridiculed to no end, simply because I shared my own find of tracks and started the chase of the animal that could have made them.

What really amazed me about bigfoot in Colorado was all the history of it that I have found. Such as the stuff from the 1500’s in northern New Mexico, the stories from 1800’s era government predator hunters, and the stories from 1800’s era Colorado miners. I have miner stories from around Crestone, another in the Holy Cross Wilderness area, and some from the Tarryall area. I had no idea that bigfoot was even supposed to have been in Colorado, let alone have a history. The Pueblo and also the Southern Utes have many stories of such animals in Colorado that date way back. I don’t think anyone has ever put all this historical data together, but it is interesting to me. Seems the hoaxers involved have been laying down fake bigfoot tracks in Colorado for at least 450 years, and continue full bore today. The consistency of the tracks is amazing, as they are not just big human looking tracks, but have many anatomical characteristics all their own.

Put everything together, the history, the current consistent and unique tracks being found in backcountry areas, the hunters and hunting guide eyewitness testimony, the consistent descriptions of the size and shape of the animal itself, the law enforcement investigations to the fact that some of the tracks could not have been faked, and it starts to look very interesting. It starts to look like the impossible is possible. I too think it is impossible for this animal to have remained unofficial up to this point in time. At least until I start looking at the evidence myself and listening to the eyewitnesses myself.

I remind everyone that in 1935, Florida biologist stated in unison that it was impossible for the Florida cougar to have survived in their state. They were absolutely, positively, uncatagorically sure that the cougar was extinct there. 1935 was the year a frustrated sportsman named Dave Newell decided to take the matter into his own hands after giving up on the biologists, and hired the Lee brothers to come from Arizona to try to prove that cougars lived in Florida. They treed and killed three cougars on the first day of hunting with hounds, and ended up with 7 cougars killed. This occurred in a state where the states own biologists were sure there were no cougars living. What if those Florida cougars were as smart as a chimpanzee, and much rarer? After 1935, they finally determined there were not only cougars in Florida, there were hundreds of them. This is absolutely the true story of how the Florida cougar was discovered. An “impossible” animal became “official” there in 1935, thanks to a sportsman that braved the ridicule of the educated Florida biologists, and went on a “wild goose chase”. I don’t know how to prove bigfoot exists, as dogs evidently fear them and won’t tree them. The Colorado hunting guide who claims to have cut bigfoot tracks twice while hunting behind his hounds stated that his dogs showed great aggitation and fear at the smell of the tracks and quit hunting for the day.

Some things that appear impossible, have become possible in the field of biology. It is not that there is little physical evidence or eyewitness testimony concerning bigfoot, it is that bigfoot is ignorred as “impossible”, just like the Florida cougar. Florida biologists should have kept their minds open a little bit, and done a little investigations themselves. Then they wouldn’t have had their pants pulled down and had to suffer such astounding embarressment. Some day maybe I will get to pull some pants down too. Have you seen a Colorado wolverine, or a Colorado grizzly, or a Colorado lynx? I haven’t, but that does not mean they don’t exist, just because I have not seen one or found their tracks. I did find what I thought were grizzly tracks in the South San Juan Wilderness in 1975 or 1976, but was laughed at by officials then too. I have spent over 300 days and nights in that area, and only found grizzly tracks once and only found bigfoot tracks once. The grizzly did exist there in 1976, as proven by the Ed Wiseman attack in 1979, and I think there is a good chance they are still there. Why can’t our biologists find tracks of them? Why can’t I find any more bigfoot tracks there, in spite of looking and looking and looking? Why do officials ignor the bigfoot tracks being found every year in Colorado? I will tell you that some in Colorado official wildlife management have recieved some pretty good evidence of what they call “the other big mammal”. Not all CDOW officials are completely close minded about grizzlies or bigfoot. Utah also has an employee named Rudy Drobnick that officially investigates bigfoot sightings and track finds out of his Salt Lake City offices of the wildlife department. Wyoming has an official that is nearing retirement and is going to release some very interesting studies upon his retirement. Why wait until retirement? Because “bigfoot” is a subject of ridicule, even though the evidences are pretty strong. Florida cougars were also a subject of ridicule. Peer pressure does funny things to scientists, including keeping the “impossible”, “impossible”.

Just remember the Florida cougar and the story of it’s discovery, when thinking about how “impossible” things are not always as impossible as they might appear. I’m just keeping my mind open and collecting sightings and physical evidences to hand over to officials in the event that some impossible animal is officially discovered some day. You can ridicule me all you want, but perhaps someday my files will be relevant, and I will be glad I did the study. For now though, I wish I had never found the tracks, I wish I had not told anyone, and I wish I had not started this ridiculous search for the impossible. Somebody had to do it though.

Date:11-Dec-00

Actually, I like to listen to logical alternatives to bigfoot. I also have to remember that 10 years ago I myself would have said “no way” to any thought that bigfoot could be real. At that time I guess I thought that all tracks were either faked or the result of bear tracks overlapping and misidentified. Then when I ran across those tracks on that dirt slide on the north edge of the S.San Juan Wilderness where I just can’t imagine anyone would fake them, it just blew me away. When I close my files on physical evidence, forget all the testimony from hunting guides and such, and forget the tracks I found, I drift back to unbelief myself.

As for my opinion on poaching a bigfoot to prove they exist. I am going out of my way in time and expense to get professional video of one of them by using a professional wildlife videographer with $30,000 camera equipment, and buying weeks of time, to hopefully get definitive proof eventually. A rifle cartridge would be much cheaper, but I have elected the other route.

If any of you come across bigfoot tracks or see a bigfoot yourself, let me know about it. I’ll file it and keep your name a secret until definitive proof is had. If bigfoot is proven, only then will I turn my files over to wildlife authorities, to maintain your anonimity on such a controversial subject. I have recieved 4 sightings from bowhunters in Colorado and one from Utah from response to threads on bigfoot on this forum, so I guess the ridicule suffered is worth it. I also recieved info from an official in the Wyoming wildlife department, which you will all know about eventually, as he is going to make a public statement upon his nearing retirement. So all this has been worth it. Thanks again to you bowhunters who have forwarded your own sightings to me.

Date:12-Dec-00

If you shot a bigfoot, you would be crucified in the media, but I doubt any court could make any conviction stick, such as murder or poaching of an endangered species. There is no priori reason for conviction, as bigfoot does not exist as an endangered species or a form of man. I think there are three small locations now where bigfoot is officially listed as an endangered species or protected animal, and you would not want to shoot one in those areas as fines are specified already. There was even a meeting on “Sasquatch Habitat” in Idaho last year, attended by many of the wests most prominent biologists. Figure that out! Why have a meeting of biologists on an animal that does not exist? I didn’t attend, but heard of the meeting from the people that are doing the grizzly bear study in Glacier National Park. One of their biologists attended and said it was a very interesting presentation. I think Colorado is one of the few western mountain states that does not have someone in official wildlife management capacity that does not have someone studying sasquatch/bigfoot. There are three biologists/professors in Colorado that ask me to forward everything in my files to them as they are collected, but nothing official.

If you shot a man in a monkey suit, you would likely face charges of reckless endangerment and second degree homicide. The man in the suit would get a “Darwin Award” for one of the stupidest deaths. If bigfoot is real and as big as witnesses say it is, then you would likely know if it was a guy in a suit because people don’t come that big. If it was a female bigfoot of about 6 to 7 foot tall, it could be a guy in a suit, such as in the Patterson film of what is supposed to be a female bigfoot.

I will state here that I have some college training in anatomy and lean toward thinking the Patterson film is genuine. My reasons are that 1. I have seen films at the exact location and distances of a man that is 6 foot 5 inches tall, and the creature in the film is a little taller but almost twice as wide through the shoulders, which would make it much, much heavier. 2. If it is a fur suit, there should be some bunching of material at the arm rotation locations as the arms are swung fore and aft. (stretchy fun fur material was not to be had in the 1960’s, and animal hide that not stretchy enough to not bunch up) 3. The film is clear enough to see most of the correct muscle masses in correct movements, stretching and tightening during walking motion. 4. No suit joints can be seen. 5. The arm rotation location when measured is too near the top of the head (no neck) for a man to have room for his head in the suit. 6. The film was made in the 1960’s, when even Disney Studios (statements on record) said that they did not have the technology to make such a good monkey suit. 7. You can not see any muscle movement on any of the “Planet of the Apes” characters or on “Chewbaca” in “Star Wars, or any other film since then, while you can see almost all the muscle movement in the Patterson film creature. 8. You can see areas of hair wear on the creature in the film in locations where the hair appears thinner or worn. 9. Some said that makeup artist “Chambers”, of “Planet of the Apes” fame, made the suit, as he was the only one in the 1960’s that might have been able to make the suit, but he has denied this publicly. 10. Records of income from the film show that no one was paid for making a suit for Patterson to use, and someone of such high standards of makeup art would demand pretty good money for their services in suit construction. 11. The man with Patterson the day the film was made “Gimlin”, recieved no compensation from the film, yet still states that the creature Patterson filmed was very real to him the day of filming, and he held a 30-06 rifle on it the whole time Patterson filmed it (why would he continue to say the film is real when he recieved no money for it?).

Here is a link that has some photos from the Patterson film, http://members.aol.com/sabertop/pictures.html and you can see all the back, leg, buttock, and arm muscles and also measure the arm rotation locations and compare to where the top of the head and mouth is. As you can see, the mouth is pretty much below the shoulder rotation joint, and if you look in the mirror at a person, you will see how odd this is. Even our chins are way above our shoulder tops, let alone above our rotation joints. On first examination, the creature appears to look kind of like a person in a suit, but upon precise objective measurements, it goes way outside known human anatomical measurements in skeletal rotation locations. You could wear shoulder pads to get the shoulder tops up high, but you can’t move rotation points higher in a person. It is also obvious when making precise measurements on the creature in the film and comparing them to a large man in the same location and distance that the hips are rotating at a point about twice as wide as a large man. The creatures shoulder and chest width is also way outside known human measurements in comparison to height. A person could put pads on the outside of the arms to increase shoulder width, but increasing chest width to known width in the film is impossible. Also, if you watch the film frame by frame as I have, you can see that the hands open and close a couple of times, so there is definitely a hand moving naturally looking there, but the distance from the shoulder rotation point is also way outside human parameters.

It is easy to just reject the film as a man in a monkey suit, until you start making objective measurements. Then it becomes harder to disqualify the film as genuine. In fact, the more the film is studied through objective measurements, the more convinced any anatomist becomes of the films authenticity, which is exactly the opposite of what one would expect if the film were of a man in a suit. If it is a man in a suit, I would sure like to know how it could be done. This is sure a case where one can just say “it simply has to be a man in a fur suit, as bigfoot does not exist”, but I encourage you to make precise measurements and come up with objective answers to how the film was faked, rather than just stating that the film is faked. Most scientists feel no reason to study the film, as bigfoot can not exist, so why study and measure the creature in the film. If they did objectively measure and study the film in depth, they might come to a different conclusion, and we can’t have that, can we? The film is still interesting to me, and I have watched it forward, backward, slow motion, frame by frame, computer enhanced, in black and white, in color, and done measurements of the creature on most every frame. I have drawn stadia lines on the frames, measured and marked rotation points, measured the feet, measured arm and leg lengths in relationships to each other, identified most major surface muscle masses, measured muscle movement, identified ankle tendons and ankle skeletal surface indicators. I have measured all the tracks cast at the scene and collected by several persons besides Patterson, making comparisons to the feet seen in the footage. After all this, I lean more toward accepting the film as genuine than I did when I started the study. As a professional wildlife artist myself, I have to pay attention to muscle locations and anatomy, skeletal anatomy, and such detail as hair attitude and density with a critical eye to other details. In the anatomical detail of the Patterson film, I am amazed and impressed. In the measurements that fall so far outside human anatomy, I am flabbergasted that all science has not accepted the film as genuine, simply because no man could fit inside that monkey suit when all measurements are taken and all is said and done.

Sorry this also went to long, but I could not just say “I think the Patterson film may be real”, but rather had to explains a little about why I think it may be real. You can take your own critical measurements and come to your own conclusions, but do it thoroughly and objectively before making conclusions. One of the worlds leading anthropologists/primate anatomist measured the Patterson film subject and stated that “if it is a man in a suit, he had to have put his elbows out to where the shoulders are in order to rotate at the shoulder joint as shoulder and chest width can be objectively measured by anyone in the world, and it is way outside any human standards”. How was the film done if it was a fake?

Date:12-Dec-00

Patterson rented the 16mm film camera to make a documentary on bigfoot, hoping to get footage of one of them eventually. About 2 or 3 years into his documentary he got the infamous footage. In other words, it took him several years of efforts of tracking bigfoot, figuring out where they were living, and spending weeks on end in the areas involved in hopes of getting footage of one of them. They claim to have finally succeeded, but did they? That is what each person has to decide for themselves. I’m at about 90% convinced of the film authenticity I guess. I reserve 10% just in case there was some makeup wizard that we don’t know about or a genius taxidermist involved. Taxidermists can’t figure out how they got the skin to stretch with the moving muscles and stay so firm in all the movements. I have done a little taxidermy myself, and can’t see how they could do it so effectively.

Here is a link to an interview with Bob Gimlin, the man with Patterson. Patterson himself died of non-hodgkins lymphoma a few years after the film was taken. The link to the Gimlin interview is http://www.n2.net/prey/bigfoot/interviews/john.htm

I am more convinced by physical measurements of the subject in the film itself, the way the muscles move and the way the skin seems to stretch and contract with the muscles without any fabric or hide bunching usually apparent in animal suits on people, than any of the events surrounding the filming. But, when you know the whole story about the filming, it looks pretty convincing too.

With today’s fabric fun furs and stretchy nylon and polyesters and adhesives, you might be able to repeat the event fairly convincingly. I have seen one professional makeup studio try to recreate the film, and theirs was laughable and not at all convincing. Didn’t even look close to real, and there was zero muscle movement in their professional try at the suit. Their suit also looked right for a man in a suit as far as measurements go.

I guess if bigfoot is a real animal, that eye witness descriptions would all be pretty much the same except for differences in morphology due to gender and age. Actually, most of the larger bigfoot described are thought to be males and longer body hair is described than that in the Patterson film. Descriptions have been pretty much the same for the last 120 years, and fit well into the Patterson footage. If Patterson faked the film, he made his suit design after public descriptions, rather than vice versa. Patterson was a fair wildlife artist himself, but the film subject is genius, not just art, because of all the complexities involved. Could he have done it? Maybe so, but if he did, it was pure genius in construction. The film is also not doctored in any way, and was shown to an assembly of biologists/anthropologists the day after it was made. Patterson sent the film to Yakima WA to be developed and went straight from there to the scientists without even viewing the film himself first. Several other investigators and scientists were on the site of the film location the following day to take their own track measurements and track casts. I would think that if Patterson had faked the film, he would have kept the location to himself to avoid others going in and finding tracks that indicated the hoax. Exactly the opposite happened. Most people don’t know the incredible story of exactly the sequence of events of that 3 or 4 day period during and after the film was taken and all the people who were involved that makes it all even less likely to be a hoax. It is amazing. This is yet another reason I lean toward total acceptance of the film.

If bigfoot is proven to exist, the film will likely be hailed as the first true film of the creature and accepted by all scientists. If bigfoot is never proven, it will always be ignored as a hoax by most scientists who have never felt they needed to watch it or study it.

The Colorado hunting guide I mentioned said that the bigfoot he watched for quite awhile looked like its nose was down closer to it’s mouth than in a human face and flatter, but that the face looked kind of human, except for being all hairy. Eyes more sunk in, forward brow, slight prognostication of the mouth area, and head right on the shoulders instead of up on a visible neck. The hunting guide was more impressed with the hands than anything else, as he said they seemed pretty long and big. He saw no indication of the gender of the bigfoot he saw, but kept referring to it as “he”, so it must not have had any obvious signs of being female, such as breasts. I didn’t ask the hunting guide if he had ever seen the Patterson film to make comparisons, because most eyewitnesses I have interviewed have never paid much attention to bigfoot stuff prior to their own sightings and have no idea what I am talking about when I mention “the Patterson film”. So I don’t mention it anymore in interviews. Now that you mention association and possible influence of the film on possible lies or hallucination, I will start asking witnesses if they have ever seen the Patterson film. I usually only value eyewitness testimony and do interviews of sightings that occur in broad daylight with more than one person seeing the same thing at the same time. I make exceptions for people who have much outdoor experience if they were alone when they saw one, but close range and can give good descriptions. The two hunting guides in Colorado who have been close enough to see face and body details gave pretty much the same exact description, if that means anything. One was from 30 yards in broad daylight, and the other was from about 100 to 150 yards but through good binoculars. They either both lied about the same creature or hallucinated the same creature, or saw exactly what they described. One of those choices is correct. Was it a Lie from both of them? Was it a mutual Hallucination? Or did they both have a sighting of an unofficial but real animal? Neither were seeing a bear or some other animal and mistaking identity, as their descriptions are precise, down to the nose and hands clearly seen. It is pretty easy to discount their sightings until you visit with them yourself, and realize they are probably not lying to you and saw exactly what they claim to have seen. They also have families, jobs, no history of mental illness and are apparently as intelligent as the next guy. I have come to the conclusion that they are just telling it how they saw it. This is why it is awful to see one and then try to convince anyone else you saw it. Especially when you see one so clear, for a long period of time, and in broad daylight like the hunting guide did this fall in Colorado. No one will believe you, and you will receive nothing but ridicule. Poor guy. Kind of like seeing a car accident, phoning it in to emergency persons, and the police telling you that they don’t believe you and will not send any help. It is frustrating for the eyewitnesses, because they know what they saw. Theo Stein, the Denver Post’s environmental writer, just recently started interviewing eyewitnesses to bigfoot in Colorado and did an interview of the recent hunting guides sighting. Stein is not only convinced, he is absolutely convinced of the guides sincerity and also the guides knowledge of wildlife. Stein told me, “this hunting guide saw exactly what he is described to me, no matter how incredible that seems”. I think so too. If you are interested enough to call the guide yourself and visit with him, I will provide his name and phone number, but I hate to put it here on this thread without his permission. If you would like, maybe I can convince him to come to this forum and tell it in his own words and have him answer questions for you all. Maybe I can get the other guide to also come online and answer your questions about their individual sightings. They are probably about sick of ridicule by this point though, and I’m sure they would get plenty here unfortunately. One of the Colorado hunting guides has already agreed to a filmed interview, so maybe I will eventually have that to share at least.

Hoax does happen, fake tracks are made, people do lie and make up stories, but in Colorado the cases are pretty straight forward and the eyewitnesses are not only experienced, but more than one person is involved in many of the sightings. The tracks we have documented in Colorado are also pretty convincing when all is known about the events surrounding their discovery, knowing the discoverers themselves, and getting statements from law and wildlife officials who also saw the tracks themselves and recorded them. It is really easy to just say or think they are all fakes or lies, until you look in depth at all the circumstances and really get to know the people involved. It is really quite amazing, even if you discount every single sighting and only focus on the physical evidence left behind for law/science/wildlife investigators to look at. I don’t know if bigfoot lives in the Pacific Northwest, as we are told, but I am pretty dang sure they live in Colorado. There is just no other logical answer when you put everything together into one big case file. The native American references here, the historical newspaper accounts in Colorado, the memoirs of a government predator hunter from the 1870’s Colorado, the stories of miners in 1800’s era Colorado, the current multiple witness daytime sightings in Colorado, and the tracks left behind that are so fantastically naturally looking that even Colorado wildlife and law officials say they could not have been faked. Put this all together and it is amazing to say the least. To debunk bigfoot in Colorado, you would have to find logical and scientifically reasonable alternatives to every case. I have genuinely tried to find other alternatives, but can’t.

I am also only talking on this thread about a few of the sightings and track finds. If I could share it all, you would be blown away. I have 8 sighting reports from one area in just a two month period that involves over 30 honest citizens in Colorado and they have banded together to keep it quiet because they want no media attention in their area. These people all report the same creatures, more than one, and they are certainly too big to be some local in a gorilla suit pulling their strings. This case also involves two area law enforcement men and documented tracks that will amaze you. I have another case that involves 12 people who got to see a bigfoot from a few feet away, but since I don’t have permission from all 12 to share the sighting, there is nothing I can do with it. I also have second hand accounts by the hundreds for Colorado, but second hand accounts are not much evidence. Even the wildlife videographer I work with knows 5 persons who have seen bigfoot themselves in Colorado, and those sightings occurred in the 1960’s and 1970’s, long before I ever got to know the videographer, and certainly long before I started investigating bigfoot here. Another Colorado researcher has some 35 to 40 first person eyewitness accounts that I have not even started to investigate and know very little about. Some of his files might be more hunting guides and outfitters with accounts. I have only scratched the surface I think. Then there are probably hundreds if not thousands of Colorado persons who have told no one outside their families or kept it quiet completely. I know that we told no one of our own family’s experience until almost 10 years after the sightings and track finds we had. None of these Colorado eyewitnesses have profited from their sightings, and quite to the contrary, they have had to bear much ridicule. Most wish they had never said anything to anyone, but since more than themselves were often involved, the story gets out and then they have to answer too. This is why many of the cases are multiple witness cases. It is hard to keep everybody in the group quiet about such an amazing thing as a bigfoot sighting. John, Mary, Phil and Sue all see a bigfoot, John says something about it to somebody, then Mary, Phil and Sue have to answer for it too. Pretty soon quite a few people know about it and I might get word about it. I then call them and they tell me the story. They each one know that they have to tell the story, because they can’t just say “John made the whole thing up and is lying”. Once the scoop is out, they fess up and give their descriptions, tell it like it is, and bear ridicule of skeptics. If you put them on the sworn eyewitness stand in court, they would all say the same thing and claim they saw a bigfoot. I guess you could say that rejecting some bigfoot sightings is like rejecting the eyewitness testimony of 4 or more credible law abiding citizens that said they saw who murdered someone else and having all their testimony rejected for no reason. This would have to happen time and again and thousands of witness’s testimony rejected for no reason. Many of these rejected witnesses are law enforcement agents, who describe the same thing seen by the thousands of others. Pretty soon, the judge’s rejection of the same testimony would get pretty tiresome.

Camcorders have come down in price and size to carry around, so maybe we will eventually get some more film by somebody. Problem is that bigfoot don’t stand around and let people take pictures in most cases, but get the h*** out of there whenever they encounter people. Too bad our hunting guide did not have a camcorder with him, as he might have been able to zoom in and get some 5 minutes of fairly clear footage of a creature that is not supposed to exist. Camcorders don’t make very good film though, so it would likely be thought of as hoax, no matter how genuine it was though. The Patterson film is not taken seriously by mainstream science, because they have never studied it, so no video is going to be studied either most probably. Even 10 minutes of video of a bigfoot munching on an elk leg beside a tree of known dimensions is not going to be any kind of proof of anything. Wait and see, because somebody will probably get just such a video as this before long. I predict that within 5 or 10 years we will at least have a few amazing Camtrakker type accidental pictures of bigfoot or bigfoot legs or something like that. They will be called fakes, no matter how convincing they look. Anyone that shares the photos his Camtrakker captured of a bigfoot will be called a charlatan and a hoaxer and that will be that. Skeptics will claim he paid a Hollywood makeup artist to build him a suit to use to walk in front of the camera. Sad thing is, there may be some fakes done by using a camtrakker type camera trap and anything genuine will be thrown out with the others. This happens with tracks too, as some tracks are fakes, but that does not mean all tracks are fakes. I have seen fake films, but that does not mean all films are fakes. I have seen bad bowhunters, but that does not mean all bowhunters are bad.

Deernelk, Our files on sightings in Colorado could almost be used by wildlife authorities to show when and where elk migrate in Colorado. The overlap of the two is amazing. Check out the www.bfro.net Colorado database of a map of sightings from my files. The map is broken down into summer and winter sightings, and elevational change and elk locations is an apparent factor in where the sightings are located. If you want to look for bigfoot tracks yourself, I would go look in the snow in as remote an area as you can find where elk are wintering in good numbers and look all around the edges of the more dense forest areas on the edges where the elk feed in winter. If we get a real harsh winter, like that of 93/94, you can go down to the south end of the San Luis Valley and maybe even see a bigfoot yourself if you spend enough time with the elk, instead of just finding tracks. Bigfoot were out in the daytime and in the open quite a bit in December 93 and January of 94 during the roughest weather trying to get close to the elk, apparently to kill one of them. About 30 persons reported sightings down there that two month period and tracks were documented by law officials. Huge tracks, and lots of them, from more than one bigfoot. Check with officer Joe Taylor in the Alamosa area if you don’t believe me. I think he works for the Alamosa police department now, instead of for the sheriff department. He might even show you the track videos and stuff. You have a good chance of seeing your own bigfoot down there in winter, if you know where to go. Don’t expect location help from the locals though, as they hate bigfoot chasers coming into their home ground and also hate media attention to the facts. They are very tight lipped now for some reason.

Date:04-Jan-01

Cougars, badgers, wolverines, and other soft footed animals run around without fur on the bottom of their feet all winter, so I suppose if bigfoot is real it does the same thing. I have also seen large grizzly tracks in snow on the Bacon Creek just off the Gros Ventre River in the late fall in the early 1970’s. Lynx, snowshoe hares and polar bears have some fur under the pads, but I am told it is for traction on ice rather than much insulation. Thickness of the pad seems to be the better insulator, but the fur can’t hurt. I’d want the addition of fur. The bigfoot tracks found by law enforcement in Colorado in deep winter all appeared bare footed, no fur underside. I have walked through cold snow barefooted and it takes only a few seconds to start stinging, so bigfoot must have a lot more pad than I have, or less nerves in the bottom of the feet. I don’t see any problems here though, as nature is adaptable. Some peoples like those living in the Himalayas go barefoot in snow often, but I don’t know how they do it. Tough I guess. Actually they go barefoot most all the time and a thick callous pad is built up after awhile. Must be as good an insulator as a boot sole. Thick leather is a pretty good shoe bottom. Thick moose hide moccasins are pretty good in snow, even if no other insulation is between the foot and the snow. What really surprises me is a goose that is wading or swimming in icy water with no insulation at all on the foot. Man that water is cold and when you feel their feet, they feel the same temperature. I don’t know how they don’t freeze their feet. I don’t know how cougars and bigfoot don’t freeze their feet either. Adapted I guess. What about bare penguin feet!! Brrrrr!!!

Dr. Meldrum and Dr. Krantz both say that in bigfoot tracks made in gooey type mud that there is often indications on the side of the tracks that the pad on bigfoot feet is up to 1 inch thick and squishes outward when weight is applied, leaving tracks that you can’t pull a cast out of without pulling up the ground all around the track, because of the overhangs. I’ve seen track casts with this overhang on all sides where the foot edges squished outward and then unsquished as the foot was lifted. If you push your hands hard together, you will see how the flesh pushes outward when pressure is applied. Guess bigfoot have a good thick insulator sole from the cold, hard ground and sharp rocks. I’d hate to be barefoot out there this winter or any winter.

Mountainman, I have been in the Chromo area, but don’t know it all that well. I know the Conejos River area real well and the adjacent South San Juan Wilderness.

Date:04-Jan-01

For those interested, the sighting by a Colorado hunting guide that was made this last fall is now posted on the BFRO database at http://www.bfro.net/GDB/show_report.asp?id=819

There is also another new sighting from that Colorado area posted on the database by a rockhound with some training in anthropology. You can see it and a few other recent sightings from Colorado in the “Recent Additions” portion of the www.bfro.net website.

I’m not with the bfro anymore, so I only get to see the sightings come in as they are posted, like everybody else. Denver Post’s Environmental Writer Theo Stein is now the Colorado BFRO Official Curator. I resigned because it took too much of my time and every call and interview was pretty much the same and the same animals described and in the same places, so it got boring too. Same old thing each time.

Date:09-Jan-01

Bill in SD. There are so many sightings in the western states that mapping all of them would be very time consuming. I don’t think anyone has done it for all the states. I did it for Colorado, but I only used sightings I had personally investigated or interviewed and so it is not all inclusive. I think I only used about 50 sightings on the map, but there are probably a couple hundred more sightings that could be included eventually. I didn’t want to include sightings that I really didn’t know much about. Most of those other sightings are in the same areas though, so the map I did tells most of the story. I may do a map for Wyoming when the biologist up there retires and releases his information on bigfoot in that state, to see how his files might tie into my Colorado files. A Utah map would also interest me, but since they have an official bigfoot researcher on staff in Salt Lake City, I should think he has done a map already. You can check out the Colorado map I made on the www.bfro.net database for Colorado.

Date:09-Jan-01

Bill in SD, Percentage of Hoaxes?

When I collected sightings and interviewed witnesses for the BFRO I talked to maybe around 30 eyewitnesses and of those 1 was a nutcase for sure and another one eventually claimed to have made the whole thing up. Besides those there was also a couple that I am sure saw a bear and thought it was a bigfoot (mangy bear at night). I got to where I wouldn’t even make phone calls on night time sightings, as there is too much chance of being mistaken. Some tracks I investigated were only bear tracks, but the witnesses were not trying to hoax. Of the daytime sightings, most were completely serious and sure of what they had seen. They also seemed to be just normal people who saw an unusual sight.

Of course if bigfoot is not real, they were all either mistaken, lying, or hallucinating. The multiple witness sightings are hard to dismiss as hallucination, and probably not a communal lie, so they must have all been mistaken. When you get from 4 to 12 witnesses of a daytime sighting who all say the same thing about what they saw, it is hard to dismiss it as a lie or hallucination. When the sighting happens by several witnesses in broad daylight from real close range it is hard to dismiss the sighting after interviewing all the witnesses. If bigfoot is not real, we then have to consider whether someone was dressed up in a gorilla suit and hoaxing the witnesses. The actions, speed or size of the bigfoot reportedly seen is then considered and many times that pretty much makes the guy in a gorilla suit theory seem less plausible. Some of these “group sightings” that I have interviewed were completely serious about what they had seen and the size and action of the creature involved was just too big and/or fast to be a man in a suit. Interviewing the witnesses first hand is different than reading about a sighting. If I just read about sightings, I would have no problem dismissing all bigfoot reports, like most of you probably do. I could then also put bigfoot into the “National Enquirer” catagory. Before personal experience with this stuff, I didn’t give any bigfoot sightings or tracks any credibility. In fact, I never even thought about the possiblity. Why should I? Bigfoot could not be real in my mind then. If you personally start talking to witnesses and looking at the tracks and such, pretty soon you would also start to change your mind about bigfoot I think. It is sure a mystery how this creature, if it really does exist, has eluded us for this long. If it is real, it must be pretty rare, pretty sharp witted and very stealthy at avoiding people. Kind of like a cougar with the brain of a chimpanzee or even smarter.

I’ve got to where I mostly just want to look at physical evidence such as tracks. I don’t think there is much if any hoaxing being done in Colorado in regards to tracks, as bigfoot is not really known in Colorado by the general public in most areas. I think when it becomes better known in Colorado that faking is more likely to start happening though. In the Pacific Northwest states, track hoaxing is more likely, as bigfoot is better known there and expected, so somebody might make fake tracks to get attention. I’ve seen quite a few tracks from that area of the country that I am sure are fakes. Generally I like to see a series of tracks rather than 1 track before deciding whether I think it is real or not. If the series of tracks are all perfect tracks, it is likely to be a hoax. Animals just don’t usually make perfect tracks, although when track series are found, the people usually take photos or cast the best examples. If you look at the tracks from Eagle County Colorado from last spring as posted on the bfro website, you can see that the tracks were all the same size, but the actions of the feet made them all look a little different. In one track the toes are curled more than in the other track. In the last track, only the heel print shows very well and water has pretty much erased the toe prints and washed some sticks and stuff into the toe area of the track. You can also see that the tracks were pressed into the ground rather than brushed into the ground. I have seen fake tracks that were kind of drawn into the ground and they are easy to spot as fakes. I look for actions of the foot in a track and compare to human tracks in the same conditions. A bigfoot track should not be any deeper than human tracks in the same soil because thought the bigfoot might weigh a bunch more than a human, the feet are bigger and carry about the same weight per square inch. If a track is too deep or too shallow, it could be a fake. There are a lot of things to consider when deciding. The Eagle County Sheriff Office, several local wildlife officials there, and I, all came to the same conclusion that the Eagle County tracks were indeed real tracks of something with a foot that was over 9 inches wide and 18 inches long. The tracks it made were about 10 inches wide and 19 inches long. We all interviewed the guy that found the tracks, and also the guy that went with him to help photograph them. Then we looked at the tracks ourselves and found them so natural that we really had no other choice but to be amazed at them. Water level records, a snow event, and other characteristics indicated that the tracks were about 2 weeks old when found, which also indicates that they were not faked. You can decide for yourself of course. I have the complete investigation report on file if anyone wants to see the records of that particular event. It is pretty long, so I probably shouldn’t post it here, unless there is a lot of interest.

In the eastern states we get a few bigfoot sighting reports, but they are generally much different than western state sightings and there are many indications of mistaken identity or lieing in those cases. I have also never seen tracks from the eastern states that I thought were real, while I have seen at least 50 examples of tracks from the west that I think are probably real. Surprisingly, we don’t even get too many fake tracks from the eastern states, maybe one or two per year. While in the western states we get perhaps a hundred track reports per year. In the east, people report seeing bigfoot, but they never leave tracks for some reason. In the west, people find tracks at least as often as they see bigfoots, and when there are sightings, there are also some tracks left behind often. Why do we have tracks found often in the west, but never in the east? Colorado has many track finds that have been reported and some of them pretty well documented by law enforcement officials. The only bigfoot tracks from the east that I have seen that I thought might be real were some that were cast by a Florida biologist/naturalist who has written two books on Florida cougars. He said he has found bigfoot tracks three times in Florida Everglades pine forest areas in the last 20 years, and the ones he cast look pretty real and pretty much the same as those found in the west. 5 toes, broad width, wide heel, lack of instep, slight hourglass shape to the foot shank and other unique bigfoot track characteristics. The three toed bigfoot tracks reported in Florida and the 4 toed tracks from Louisiana are laughable hoax. Besides the odd toe number, there are also many other indications in the tracks themselves that point very directly to hoaxing. With a little tracking experience and logic, it is easy to tell even a 5 toed hoax track of even the right size and shape from a real track.

It would be interesting to have a complete skeptic interview the two hunting guides from Colorado and let us know their conclusions. If you read the latest hunting guide report, you will see that he not only described the face of the creature seen but also the hands. He also claimed to have watched it for quite awhile through binoculars as it sat there and then eventually got up and walked around. In visiting with this man, I found that he was a complete skeptic before his own sighting. He, like me, had never even really considered that bigfoot was real or even could be real. If you visit with him yourself, you will find that he seems completely sane and is a very good hunter and hunting guide. He knows Colorado wildlife very well in fact. He has taken many animals with a bow. If anyone wants to volunteer as the interviewing skeptic, I will provide you the name and phone number of the guide and you can talk to him, listen to his story, talk of bowhunting, talk of wildlife, talk of Colorado outdoors and generally get to know the guy. Then report back here on whether you think he is lying or was mistaken in what he saw and reported. I would be really interested to hear what a complete skeptic thinks after doing a personal interview of such a quality witness as hunting guide Jeff D. Maybe they would come to a different opinion than me. I would prefer someone who is pretty skeptical of the whole thing. Any volunteers to do the interview of Jeff D? Hornhunter, you seem real civil but properly skeptical, would you mind doing the interview and reporting back here on this thread on what you think about Jeff D? Then if you want you could also interview a few more Colorado witnesses and give us a report on what you think about the witnesses. The reason I would like to see this done is that I am perhaps “too” willing to accept sightings, and would like to know how somebody that is more skeptical interprets the same sighting. It would be interesting and might reveal that I am less than objective in my interviews. If anyone lives in the Colorado Springs area, maybe a face to face interview with Jeff D. and also his family would help and reveal more about the situation. Any volunteers? It shouldn’t take too much time or expense just to visit on the phone with him, and the results might be interesting and revealing.

Date:10-Jan-01

We are planning a 7 to 10 day expedition in that area next late summer. We will have an experienced pro wildlife videographer with betacam equipment, superior telephoto lenses and third generation night vision equipment along in case we meet a BF, day or night. Jeff will be guiding and busy during the hunting seasons, but we also plan to do some hunting together there. We are also planning some plains whitetail bowhunting together for his planned television program called “Strictly Traditional” that will be coming out on TNN. I am hoping we can get me on film taking a nice whitetail buck from less than 10 yards from ground level with me shooting from my back with my longbow. Not many trees where I have to normally bowhunt whitetails, so I have had to do some unusual techniques to get the close range shots I need. Instead of going up a tree into a treestand, I have had to go down on my back to stay hidden. Works great though, and the shots are easy with a little practice from that odd position. I’m only about 12 inches tall on my back, in spite of my 6’3″ frame, and it is pretty easy to hide when you are only a foot tall. Especially if you are wearing grass colored camo (Advantage Wetlands is great out here in native grass, CRP or corn stubble)

We also hope to get on film a rattling, decoy system I use during pre-rut to bring the wide open area bucks to within a few yards. I brought more than 15 bucks to within 10 yards or less this season, so we will likely get a couple of bucks responding on film next fall. Only one of the 15 was a keeper though. Hunting was not very good here this last fall, as I usually rattle into longbow range at least 30 to 50 bucks per season.

Funny how such an odd thing as BF brought all these bowhunting plans about too. I have met several really good, real experienced, and real nice bowhunters in Colorado who had bigfoot experiences there. Elk hunters and guides especially, because BF are usually around the better herds evidently. I’ve said before, if you want to know where the best Colorado elk hunting is, look at the Colorado BF sighting map and go to the summer BF sighting areas. I think the guys just like to know that someone is actually crazy enough to believe their sightings. It takes a lot of balls to tell others that you saw a BF, as ridicule or laughter is the usual response. When you see a BF as well as Jeff D. did, down to descriptions of the face, hands, and actions, you either will think he is spinning a wild yarn or else you can take it for what it is. These days such a wild yarn is only going to make people think you are crazy or a lier, so no sane person is going to make something like that up and be laughed at by other bowhunters. Jeff is sane, and also experienced with wildlife. I believe he actually saw exactly what he described. He is far from alone, with a few other Colorado hunting guides reporting the same creature too, along with a host of other Colorado bowhunters, and even a few rifle hunters. BF are seen pretty regularly and leave tracks in Colorado, but darned if I can figure out why we have never got a body of one of them to look at. The only thing I can figure out is that they look so human in the face, body form and movements that no hunter is going to shoot one of them for fear of murdering a man. I think that there are probably not more than 50 or so BF in Colorado. There may be a couple hundred of them, but I would think they would be seen more and that their impact on the elk would be more apparent. There is supposed to be from 2 to 5 thousand cougars in Colorado, and they are not seen very often, so maybe there are more bigfoot than I think. Who knows? There are many thousands of black bears in Colorado, and one hardly ever finds their tracks or sees them, even in wilderness areas chock full of them. So, I guess a few bigfoot around don’t even really have to hide much better than a black bear to stay unseen for the most part. Think about how many bears or cougars you see while bowhunting for elk or deer in Colorado, even though Colorado has thousands of bears and cougars. I think BF about went extinct when most of the elk were killed off in the mid and late 1800’s, and because they are primates they are really slow to reproduce to bring their numbers back up. All the history of the Indians seems to indicate that their might have been more bigfoot before the white settlers arrived. I have not been able to find a single tribe of Native Americans in America’s west that did not believe completely in bigfoot as a normal part of the wilds prior to white mans coming. Of course the Native Americans at that time lived more in the wild all their lives on a daily basis, so they should have been more aware of the animals here than we are today. We only visit the wild places, not live there like they did. If we lived there, they would not be wild places anymore. All the BF sightings around Pikes Peak surprise me, as one hardly considers that a wild place, but when you realize the fairly inaccessible elk and deer herds that are doing well there, BF there becomes more likely. That area where Jeff saw the BF also holds the highest concentration of cougars in Colorado, because the mule deer there are still doing fair, though beginning to suffer from too many cougars. Where Jeff saw the BF is a 6 hour hike from the trailhead, and he never sees other hunters in there, even though it is not that far from Colorado Springs. I guess you could say it is a small wilderness, hidden and tucked away almost at the edge of a metropolis. The small size of the area makes it more likely for us to see a BF if they are there. My usual stomping ground in the San Juans is so many thousands of square miles of forest that finding a BF there is like finding a very small needle in a very large haystack. I am looking forward to looking around for the needle in a smaller haystack for once. If nothing else, I might find a good bull to hunt or get to see a cougar.

Date:13-Jan-01

Bill in SD, We’ll probably go for a week to 10 days in August of next summer, set a base camp and spread out from there, so if you want to help look for tracks you are welcome.

Still no takers on the “interview the hunting guide” request. Hornhunter, you would be perfect because your wife is a biologist, and you might know some questions to ask the hunting guide. I think some of his account is going to be in Sundays addition of the Denver Post, but not sure if they are going to post his full name there. Also ask your wife what natural predator preys on adult elk in the Rockies. I know cougars can occassionally, and bears get a few calves when they are real small, but what takes an adult elk with any regularity besides man. Ask if there is a niche for a larger predator capable of taking adult elk regularly. If there is, what would be their social habits and how many could live in any one area? Would they be territorial like the cougar? Ask “where do cougars habitually live and hunt? Is it in the deep forest areas, or is it in the edges and more open areas where mule deer frequent? What predator hunts the deep forest areas? Are bears true predators or only opportunists that eat 80% vegetation in diet? After 10 years of study of predators/prey/ecology/environment/relative distribution/relative population/ and many other facets of the Rocky Mountain ecosystem, I find no priori reason why another rare large carnivore could not exist and thrive in the Rockies besides man. I challange any biologist to tell me why bigfoot could not exist. This is not to say that it does, only that it could.

I say we can’t reject bigfoot based on a lack of niche or a lack of food source to support it, so we must reject it on lack of evidence that it exists. I have no problem rejecting it based on “lack of evidence”, as I just can’t imagine how it could have eluded being killed and brought in for study in at least one case up to this point in time. That is my main reason for thinking bigfoot is only folk myth. Then what happens is another set of tracks are found and documented and they just look so dang natural and so much like the last tracks found that it sparks my curiosity again. And we have all those detailed daytime sightings by experienced outdoorsmen that seem so sincere, so natural, and when you look in the story tellers eyes and see his expressions you know that he is telling you the truth and really believes what he is telling you. It is so hard to consider they are lieing to you when you do the interview yourself. And then I have to discount all the old Indian tales from Colorado and the tales from old government bear hunters in Colorado of this creature. I have to wonder why places were named after them clear back to the 16th Century when Spaniards first arrived in southern Colorado. The stories are old, the stories are new, and they are always the same, with descriptions always the same, and with tracks always the same type and uniquely different than human tracks and distinct from bear tracks. Though my logic screams at me that bigfoot can not be real, the evidence of continual tracks and continual quality sightings keeps screaming the opposite. Had I never seen tracks myself, I would not believe at all either, because dang it, no bigfoot has ever been killed and brought home, so they just can not exist. Or can they?

I guess I’ve never seen a Rocky Mountain grizzly either, but they might exist too, as they too eluded the Colorado biologists for 50 years. No one killed a Colorado grizzly for a long, long time until that sow was killed by Wiseman in 79, because we “knew” they did not live here. We also “know” that bigfoot does not live here, don’t we? How long has Colorado had professional biologists, and have they ever looked for bigfoot? The pros looked for grizzlies and could not find them in spite of them being there all along, so what are their chances of finding something similar that they won’t spend even 5 minutes considering? Think about it. Maybe I should dig up some statements about Colorado grizzlies made by Colorados “professional” biologists in the 50’s, 60’s, and 70’s whenever somebody reported a “sighting” to them. I know that we were told how stupid we were in track identification when we found grizzly tracks in 75 in the SSJW wilderness and were stupid enough to contact CDOW. I wish I knew the name of the official we talked to, so I could talk to him again and tell the world what he told us then about how stupid we were. Because Colorado biologists know it all, so they don’t need to learn more, do they? I think I will go through some old negative statements by Colorado professional biologists regarding grizzlies, and advertise them. They sure never called us to apologize about the grizzly deal in the SSJW in 1979. They laughed at us rather than take a little 1/4 mile walk to see the grizzly tracks for themselves then, so they are not about to go out and look at the tracks of anything else either. That should tell you something about Colorado CDOW’s professionally open mind. They really did think we were idiot hunters that couldn’t tell a black bear track from a grizzly track, and didn’t mind telling us how stupid we were then.

The only real reason why bigfoot can’t exist is simply that it just can’t, that’s all. The only real reason why grizzlies can’t live in Colorado is that they just can’t, that’s all. If either were here, we would know about it. Statement from CDOW in 1975 “if grizzlies lived in Colorado since the 1950’s, we would know about it by now for dang sure because we have looked and looked and now we know we don’t need to look for something that can’t exist here”.

I’ve never seen a grizzly myself either, in spite of hundreds of days spent in the SSJW, but that does not mean they are not there. It only means that I have not seen one. Heck, I have never even seen a cougar there, and only seen a couple of black bears there through the years. If there is only one bigfoot for every 10 cougars there, I have a long wait before any chance encounter of a bigfoot. I’ll have to see at least 10 cougars first. How many days will that take considering I have put in over 300 days already and am still waiting for the first cougar sighting. Maybe cougars don’t exist there, but only a track every once in awhile.

All this is why I think bigfoot could exist. Why not? Whether bigfoot does exist, only time will tell.

I’m just a stupid bowhunter, so what could I know about tracks and tracking. Just ask CDOW, they are the professionals in regards to bigfoot and grizzlies. They ignorred us in 75 in regards to grizzly tracks found and so they are sure not going to have any trouble ignorring us in 2001 on something as ridiculous as bigfoot tracks found. No matter how many we find or who finds them. We have had two professional law officers find tracks in Colorado, and CDOW ignorred them too. The law officers did not find one track, they found tracks that went on, and on, and on, and on, and on. One was a Salida area policeman who found bigfoot tracks while elk hunting, and the other was a deputy who now works for the Alamosa police department who found hundreds and hundreds of tracks of two individual bigfoot and recorded the whole thing on video for all to see. Huge tracks, imprinted deeply in mud and snow, 5 foot apart, 19 inch long tracks almost 10 inches wide, that just went on and on and on and on along the forest edge and then on up into a valley and into the forest. Whatever made them had a bunch of stamina with that long stride for such a long ways and it was really really heavy. Whoever wore those wooden bigfoot shoes to dupe the deputy was sure an athlete to maintain such a long stride and weigh so much. He sure put the tracks in strange place way back in on private property too, where they were accidently found. Actually, since there were two sets of tracks, there had to be two big heavy athlete fakers involved in that case. Give the officer a call. His name is Joe Taylor Jr. in Alamosa. He’s in the book, or you can call the police department to contact him probably. He is not talking much about it anymore though probably, as he probably tires of skepticism. Problem is that it made itself onto television, so he can’t deny the whole thing ever happened. I’d probably deny it after awhile, just like I may someday also deny that I ever found tracks down there too.

I gave you the Alamosa policemans name, but I can’t give you the Salida policemans name because he requests anonimity. I can however give Hornhunters his name and he can call him officially to get the scoop, as long as his name is not released to anyone else. I will do that. The two hunting guides with close range daytime sighings and the two policemen with track finds would make four pretty good Colorado interviews.

Date:14-Jan-01

Thanks Hornhunter

Yes, I know lions take elk and even a horse every now and then. One tough predator. I research lions and lion predation as part of my career in wildlife damage control as a sideline of my work in invasives. I’ve looked at a few lion incidents through the years on horses and calves. They are really efficient at what they do. Cats are amazingly efficient predators. I have even got to see a Kansas leopard, believe it or not. The leopard was eventually killed by two bowhunters here, but we have no idea where it came from. It was obviously at one time a pet, but still effecient at surviving on deer as revealed in stomach content evaluation during necropsy. Neat. If it moves, is within range, and within size, a cougars eyes will see it and its predatory instincts will send it on its way post haste, no matter what the prey. People are even sometimes, though rarely, the trigger.

My apologies to CDOW biologists, I get irritable sometimes. I am still upset about the way we were treated in the 70’s in regards to our information we gave to CDOW concerning grizzly tracks in the SSJW. My official statement in the press about CDOW is “I don’t blame them for not looking for something so apparently ridiculous, but I wish they would or could eventually at least look at the track evidence involved”, which is what I hope appears beside my name in the Denver Post if Stein writes me into his articles on bigfoot. Of all days, my Sunday Denver Post has not arrived on my doorstep. There is very little interest in CDOW on bigfoot or grizzlies, but there is a little more occuring recently. I would like to see them at least start and maintain a file, just in case the future reveals something more concrete. I have also made a formal statement about CDOW saying “CDOW has done a good job building and maintaining the elk herds in Colorado, and that is what bigfoot needs if it is there, in my opinion”. You Colorado sportsmen really need to get the mule deer situation started turning around if you want to have mule deer hunting in the next 15 years though, and need to try to get CDOW to liberlize cougar hunting a little more to help out the deer some. Too many deer are not good either though, so balance is called for. Things are going imbalanced toward the cougar right now. I have also voiced concern about winter habitat reduction through urbanization for all the big game species. This winter habitat reduction is a weak link and getting weaker by the year in Colorado. People just simply want to build houses and housing additions in the game wintering areas. This is nice for the people, and I wouldn’t mind having a log home in some of those places myself, but wildlife suffers with human excess.

By all means if you can wrangle a Kansas archery deer permit or even a Colorado plains permit, we can do the whitetail thing. I’ll meet you wherever you get a permit for and we can at least educate a few old bucks. You would love the techniques I use for close range action packed whitetail buck hunting. Never a dull moment when rattling with a decoy setup.

Hornhunter, I’ll email you the names and phone numbers of the guides and policemen. Since I have not read todays paper, and Stein was planning on a series on bigfoot, you may already know the guides name there in the Springs, as he may have allowed Stein to use his name in the article(s). It may have been in todays D Post, but might not appear until a later edition of the paper.

Date:14-Jan-01

My paper came today finally.

Never mind keeping the guides name a secret, as he allowed it to be used in the D Post article today. His name is Jeff Dysinger. Please don’t think he is spinning tall tales about what he and those with him saw, as he is a good fellow bowhunter and reliable. Give him the benefit of the doubt and get to know him before casting stones. He can’t help it if a bigfoot plops down in front of him in the woods, anymore than you may someday encounter the same critter. Dysinger is far, far, from alone in seeing one of these things or finding tracks. They are not like seeing a bright planet, a meteor, or weather balloon and thinking you saw an alien spacecraft.

Stein did a good job of presenting the tip of the iceberg of evidence in todays Sunday Denver Post, but a newspaper article or two does not even begin to show the 700 examples of tracks on hand, or the detail found within them. It also didn’t mention Dr. Krantz, Dr. Bindernagal and all the other scientists researching the subject and their conclusions. It gets even more interesting than the article forwards.

Read the articles in the D Post if you haven’t.

Date:17-Jan-01

I want everyone to understand that biologist Bill Heicher did not ask to be in the wrong place at the wrong time in regards to bigfoot. He did the investigation, looked at the tracks, came to a conclusion about them, and that is all. His conclusions were proper and his logic about bigfoot is good. He is probably hating the “bigfoot expert” tag that is being put on him by peers. Poor guy, peer pressure is the main reason why few biologists even look at the plethora of evidence coming our way in regards to bigfoot.

Heichers conclusion is similar to the conclusion that I have come to on the Eagle River tracks this last spring, and many of the other tracks I have investigated. They appear natural, are found in unusual and remote locations, hoaxing is a more ridiculous assumption in the cases than bigfoot itself, and they are not bear tracks in most instances. Heicher properly and logically can not believe in bigfoot, in spite of his feelings that the tracks were genuine and natural.

Where we differ is I am intimately aware of the “missing hunting guide and houndsmen reports” that Heicher says are missing. They are not missing, they are being ignorred. Granted, I am sure that Bill Heicher is not aware of them, or even of the other tracks found by law persons in Colorado in the last few years. You guys that have read this thread are more knowledgeable of what has gone on in Colorado than anyone in CDOW.

I think I might have told you all that there

Date:19-Jan-01

I’ve never heard of a credible sighting of a bigfoot with a weapon, but rock throwing in anger or aggitation is told often. Chimps do that too. I don’t think bigfoot use rocks as hunting weapons though, and neither do chimps.

When chimps hunt, they grab a small antelope or monkey and with strong hands they wrench it to death, generally breaking bones, while also biting the neck sometimes. All the known apes are strong buggers.

I have observed human deer handlers, and usually a fawn is caught by a human as it passes by grabbing first one back leg and then the other to contain its movement. I have heard of adult elk and deer found in bigfoot country with both rear legs broken by something, but no associations can be really made objectively. One Colorado hunting guide told me that he has found game killed in some unusual ways in his area, broken rear legs, with evescration done, and covered with pine boughs. He also told of bigfoot tracks from another incident where a domestic cow had been killed and carried off, being carried fully most of the time but partially dragged at other times along the trail of tracks in the snow.

A 150 pound cougar can take down a fair size elk, so I guess a bigfoot would have no trouble if it could get ahold of one of them. I’ve had many many times while bowhunting where I could have reached out and touched living deer and elk, so I don’t see getting ahold of one as a problem. Bigfoot may also have better teeth than I give it credit for too. Most of the apes have pretty good canines, so bigfoot may also have a good set. Many reports mention longer canines, especially in the males.

Bigfoot are heavier than most people think. The tracks I have looked at looks to me like it weighs about as much as the coastal grizzlies when fully grown. The tracks look like they press into the soil about the same as a barefoot human in the same soil, so with those real big feet, they have to weigh a bunch more than a human to make the same depth of track. Bears press in about the same amount too, so bears and humans must put about the same forces per square inch on the bottoms of their feet. If bigfoot matches his feet and the descriptions, he outweighs a bull elk when grown, by a good margin. I think this is why bigfoot is so rare. They are big, have big food needs, and so no one area can support very many of them. They will always be rare naturally, if they are there in that niche as a top carnivore.

is going to be some very interesting information released from Wyoming at some point in the future in regards to two of their official biologists and some hair samples and other physical evidence recovered. That is if peer pressure does not make it end up in the trash with the rest of the collections. One of their professional biologists actually got to see one for himself and watched as it got itself hung up on a barb wire fence while escaping him. Fortunately he was knowledgable enough to know that the hairs left on the fence were going to be important. Unfortunately, any recoverable DNA on the hair roots may have degraged by this time and all we can do is put it in file with the other 11 examples of primate hair that match no other species yet. Everything I have ever told you in regards to bigfoot, the guides involved, the lawmen involved, the tracks found, feces recovered, unidentifiable hairs filed, game biologists involved, and all, is absolutely true. The info I now forward now about the Wyoming biologists is also true. All this taken together does not mean bigfoot is real “yet”, it only means that it is intiguing and worthy of some study. There are a few biologists that are glad I am doing it and not them. The rest of them think I’m nuts of course and trash everything I tell them without checking sources themselves. I’m sure they think I am lieing to them about the lawmen, the guides, the tracks, and the other physical evidence. In this way they are not obliged to look at the evidence and can blissfully believe that there is no evidence to look at. If they did look, they might start to think there is more to this than preconcieved notions, and then they would be ridiculed by their peers for studying the facts.

Hope no one thinks Heicher is a poor judge of tracks. He is not. He is experienced and logical. He is due support, not ridicule or myrth by his peers. He is due your support also. I am sure his peers will force him away from any further bigfoot study, and things can get back to status quo, and he can forget the whole thing ever happened. He was in the wrong place at the wrong time, that is all. Could have happened to any biologist.

Date:29-Jan-01

Here is a link to information on bigfoot tracks from Idaho State University, for anyone interested. http://www.isu.edu/%7Emeldd/fxnlmorph.html

Date:31-Jan-01

For those that missed the Denver Post articles on bigfoot a week ago, here is a link to the text from them.

http://www.denverpost.com/news/news0114a.htm

http://www.denverpost.com/news/bigside0114.htm

Date:01-Feb-01

I do understand skepticism, and would likely be right there skeptically with you had I not had some personal experience.

I already told you all that bowhunters have a grossly higher incidents of seeing bigfoot than any other outdoor use group, which is why this “is” relevant to bowhunters in Colorado. Check out the trophy listing for myself to see that I am a bowhunter, and not nearly all of them are listed, as I put the best ones on first and they were shoved to the bottom only allowing me to post 7 trophies. Had I known each person was limited to only 7 trophy photos, I would have picked the best 7, not just 7 at random. Healthy Skeptic, you don’t even have a name that goes with your moniker, as you are unregistered. I enjoy skeptical posts that ask me the “why not this” or “why not that” because it makes me think too, and brings me closer to understanding the same questions myself.

I see a big parallel in official ignorance of eastern cougars that I do in bigfoot. For 50 years these cougars have been sighted in the east, yet no carcasses ever turned up. Now all the sudden eastern cougars are being killed all over the place. The 5th one was just confirmed in Missiouri last month, and another one in southeast Nebraska and yet another one in Illinois. All in a few weeks. The reason is that only a very few cougars survived in the wild for the last 50 years in the east, and they have finally now gotten to a point where they are numerous enough to get hit by cars, trains and be poached. I’m telling you there are always more cougars around than you think there are. Missouri may have confirmed 5, but they probably have at least 100 cougars running around in that state, if not 500. Colorado has thousands. I would be surprised if Colorado has 25 to 50 bigfoot. Actually I think there is only three loose family groups of less than one dozen apeice. I think their might be a dozen left in the San Juans and only a couple in the Holy Cross area. There might be 5 or so in the Pikes Peak area. Giving a total of around 2 dozen. Thats my best guess based on many factors to long to detail here. This gives us a genetic potential of extinction in short order, as the pool has been drawn down to far. I graphed out sightings per person in Colorado, comparing the “possiblity of sightings” due to human use frequency and Colorado human population, compared to sightings and track finds themselve and the graph shows that the highest incidence of sightings per person occurred in the 1870-1880’s, and had a quick peak in the 1960’s and 1970’s with a sharp decline since. Though they are still being seen in Colorado, there are more people to see them now, yet the frequency did not increase. If they are what I think they are, they are rare naturally and also as slow to reproduce as any other large primate. One female only has the potential to raise about 3 offspring to maturity in her long lifetime, whereas a female cougar can often raise 8 in her short lifetime. The large primates just can’t handle more than one youngster at a time until it reaches a sufficient age. What killed the bigfoot is the killing of most of their prey in the west in the 1880’s through to around 1935. This brought them down to dangerously low population levels that I don’t think they will recover from. Inbreeding has likely been occurring already and the species suffers. The bigfoot was likely doing well in Pliestocene America, with its host of megafauna, but was rare even then because of its large needs. Gigantopithicus lived in Asia for the period from 3 million years ago,up to a point around 150,000 years ago, yet we have only 3 fossil jaws of it. That means only one fossil bone for every 1 million years it lived there in Asia. If it or a similar ape has lived in North America for only 20,000 years, after crossing the Bering Land Bridge, then we might expect to find a fossil of it in about 1 million years. I actually think we may find some bigfoot fossils in less than 100 years, with a bunch of cave excavations, but I really don’t think bigfoot even use caves much if at all.

Give me a logical explanation for all 700 tracks documented, and why they are hoax, picking over each case, one by one. Then you also have to call 5 Colorado hunting guides bald face liars, right to their face, along with a couple of outfitters, many very experienced Colorado bowhunters, a couple of Colorado law officer, and a host of other hunters and general outdoors people. Then you also have to call me a liar, because I have seen their tracks and heard them scream. You have to call my parents liars as they said they saw one in the middle of the day in broad daylight and watched it run for 200 yards and claimed it was 8 foot tall as compared to the eave of our cabing and that it left 16 inch tracks by the stream that runs next to our cabin.

You may be skeptical, but you are calling a bunch of people liars, a bunch of good people, people with names and faces, people with jobs and families. Do you want to call each one and tell them they are full of crap. Call me first. My phone number is 316-277-0127 Then I will give you the names of all the hunting guides in Colorado that have got a good long close range look at bigfoot in broad daylight from 30 yards, and you can call them liars too. Or you can tell them they don’t know the difference between a stupid bears butt and an apes face. You just don’t realize these hunting guides and other bowhunters are real people with real jobs and real families. Why the heck do you want to think thay are lieing to you. They also all have drivers licenses and don’t swerve for imaginary unicorns in the road all day. Do you think all those men are crazy.

Why are bowhunters and bowhunting guides the ones seeing bigfoot in Colorado!!!???? Do I have to give you a list of names and phone numbers so you can see they are normal people like “you”? Not a single one of them asked to see a bigfoot or expected to see a bigfoot, it just fricking happened.

Give me one logical answer why bowhunters are the ones seeing bigfoot in Colorado more than others Colorado forest use groups. Why is it also that way with eastern cougars? Why is it also that way with bigfoot sightings in Utah, Oregon, Washington and Idaho? Why do their bowhunters also report seeing these bigfoot, when the general populous does not nearly as often? Why aren’t bigfoot ever reported seen in Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado, where all the nuts go?

Keith Foster 316-277-0127 Bowhunter!

Date:01-Feb-01

As far as people shooting cougars and bears and not bigfoot. Are you going to shoot at a manform, even if it is big and hairy? What makes one think that shooting a bigfoot would be easy anyway. They are pretty sharp witted about man. Sharper than a cougar even. They are like a cougar with the brain of a chimp, naturally rare, probably dangerously rare now, and nobody wants to shoot one when it comes right down to pulling the trigger because they look too human. Now that is a unique animal.

If you can go out and shoot 100 Colorado cougars without the aid of dogs or predator calls, then you are a good enough hunter to go get yourself a bigfoot. Because I think there are less than 1 Colorado bigfoot for every 100 cougars in Colorado. I’d be willing to bet it would take a lifetime of hunting to get 20 cougars without dogs or calls. You in fact, might go years without seeing a cougar, in a state with thousands of them. What makes you think you should have seen a bigfoot by now, if they are real? What makes you think everyone should be seeing them? What makes you think a bigfoot is stupid enough to get hit by a car?

Date:02-Feb-01

Nobody said you had to come to any forum at all. The titles are on them. If not interested, don’t read. There are lots of forums I don’t ever read.

I’m not being hostile, I’m just wondering why you think all these people are lieing. Or, if you don’t think they are lieing, why do you think they don’t know a bears butt from a bigfoot butt. Most of these guides not only know a bear, they can tell you whether it is a book bear or not from 200 yards. I can too. I can also tell the difference between a black bear track, a grizzly track and a bigfoot track.

I base my “opinion” on what a bigfoot is by the niche available for it, the sightings where I have got to know the people involved, and logical assumption of how it lives where it does. I have never been dogmatic about what bigfoot is, but I am getting dogmatic about calling people liers or stupid and I am a little weary of ignorance of the many track examples documented.

Stories of “heard of” released pet cougars is tiresome. I’m surprised at this one in Kansas, as most Kansans blame the Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks for releasing cougars into the wild to control deer numbers. Oklahoma has that same rumor. Neither are true. Cougars have always been here in small numbers. Kansas lists the last cougar killed as occurring in 1916. I happen to know of one that was killed and even put on display until it rotted in 1968. The last one killed and known about by some ignorant writer was in 1916, yes. I know of one cougar trapped and killed and two killed by cars and another outright poached in my county alone in Kansas in the last 10 years. There are probably a lot more I don’t know about right here in this one county. The wildlife authorities recieve so little from the public on this Kansas cougar stuff that its ridiculous. Why should Kansas bowhunters report seeing a cougar in Kansas to officials? So they can be laughed at. Kansas does not have cougars, period. Seeing a cougar in the east is like saying you saw a bigfoot. Especially a “black panther”. Now there is another critter that is seen by lots of folks, yet does not exist.

I have quite a number of “black panther” videos and photos from all over in my files, as I started to keep files on that too. Because I was getting so many reports of them. There is no doubt in the world that people are seeing these things, as they are video taped regularly in many locations. Unless of course they are all just men in a black panther suits built by the guy that made the suits for the movie “Planet of the Black Panthers”.

If black panthers exist, why don’t we have a carcass of one of them? I say they do exist, and we don’t have a carcass of them because no one is out trying to get one for the table. Too busy laughing. We are getting so many of them now that I will predict that we will have an example body to look at within 10 years. I also predict it will not be a pet black leopard, but will be a melanistic American cougar. Another animal that is not supposed to exit. I have doubts about collecting a bigfoot, as I think they will be extinct before the laughing stops long enough to apply the technology required to get definitive proof. The cougars on the other hand are on the way back. There will be fewer and fewer melanistic ones as their genitics improve, but eventually a black one will be hit by a car or something.

For a couple hundred years of British going to India, there have been reports of “black tigers” from locals. This myth stood the test of time and remained a myth. No idiot would ever believe in a “black tiger” because none has ever been seen by any credible witness for hundreds of years. “Tigers are never melanistic” says the experts. Just look at all the thousands of tigers in captivity, do you see any black ones. No! This means they don’t exist, correct. Wrong. I say melanistic tigers do exist, because many credible locals see them and have for hundreds of years. They should know their wildlife better than anyone, shouldn’t they. Not all Indians believed in “black tigers” and many joined the laughing western scientists in ridicule of the people reporting black tigers. My opinion is that black tigers do exist, but are rare, and there are logical explanations for them. Explanations having to do with genetics. Just because science did not have an example of them did not mean they did not exist for the hundreds of years they were reported to scientists. No respectable scientist would have gone to look for a “black tiger” because of the ridicule he would recieve from his peers. So they didn’t. They would rather laugh, than look for a mythological beast called the “black tiger”. The first black tiger was brought in by a young Indian lad who killed it with a bow and arrow in self defence in late 1993. The second black tiger was found in the possession of poachers in mid 1994. Want to see photos? Maybe it was just a guy in a black tiger suit, and they never really discovered the person inside. Tigers are like all the other cats, there are more of them around than you think.

Science once thought the orangutan was down to only a few wild individuals, but recent studies have shown there are thousands of them. Apes are like cats, there are more around than you think there are. Gorillas were recently discovered living in a country in Africa where they didn’t think gorillas lived. Not just a few gorillas, hundreds of them. This is the God honest truth. How could hundreds of Gorillas hide from science, over a large area. Usually the locals know about these “discoveries” well before they are “discovered”. I can show you a whole community in Colorado where the locals know bigfoot pretty dang well. Bigfoot is no secret to them.

Central America is a place where black cougars are common. In fact, the locals just laugh if a gringo scientist says that black cougars don’t exist. They say “you mean the gringos don’t know we have many black cougars here?” They know the difference between a black jaguar and a black cougar too, as they kill both regularly. The black cougars there have not hid themselves from science, it is that science never went down to look for themselves. I still get people that tell me that cougars are never black. Even Texas Wildlife and Parks has that statement on their official webpage, which is to their fine scientific credit. Their website says “a black cougar has never been documented”. It should say “a black cougar has never been seen to be documented by our ignorant biologists who have only one preschool book on cougars that was written by a guy that had never read taxonomy papers”. Black cougars may be rare, but they are easy to see, because they don’t match the grass very well. People who report seeing them, are often seeing exactly what they report. If I said I saw a deer, would you believe me? If I said I saw a black panther in Kansas, would you believe me? What if I took video of it, would you believe me then? Or would it always be a guy in a black panther suit.

King Cheetahs are myth. Black tigers are myth. Black cougars are myth. Gorillas are myth. Okapi are myth. Florida cougars are myth. Eastern cougars are all hundreds of released pets from some etheral pet realm where people hate pets and turn them out weekly. All the black panthers on all the videos and photos from the east are all only some of the hundreds of pet black leopards that are let loose by the same pet haters who send them out regularly into the wild. Or else, my favorite “scientific” theory, they are guys in black panther suits. All bigfoot sightings are lies and all tracks are hoaxes by the hundreds for 100 years, even though the tracks look like the same kind of unique feet made them.

Go back and find my link to bigfoot track anatomy and think it over again. He put a very few examples on that ISU site, but he has hundreds just the same, from all over the west, from a plethora of sources. Did all these people go to some school somewhere to learn how to make these uniquely different tracks for the last 75 years. White man has not been in the west for all that long you know. Not near as long as we were in India laughing at reports of black tigers.

Date:02-Feb-01

In retrospect, I was perhaps too harsh.

Thanks for registering Healthy Skeptic.

I should say I don’t hold much hope for most world mysteries, just because I believe that a few melanistic cougars are in the east and a few bigfoot are in the west of North America. I have studied these two extensively and find much credibility in them, and physical evidence that you can look at too.

As for other wierd stuff.

Crop circles are laughable designs by idiots who should pay for crop damages, but probably started by somebody seeing where a whirlwind laid down a crop in kind of a circle.

UFOs are exactly that “Unidentified”.

Nessie is likely a combination of waves, underwater currents raising logs, and a host of other natural phenomena.

African dinosaurs will likely be found to be some kind of Congolese crocodile or something, though that area is little explored and about anything could pop up there. Even a whole new group of undiscovered gorillas. Did you know there are some African gorilla-like skulls in a museum in Belgium that are way different than any known gorilla?

Atlantis is either a complete myth, or else you are living on it. It is real hard to find something you are standing on. Think about it. Hey, we live in a land that is in the Atlantic. Actually, I don’t think the Americas are the source for the tales of Atlantis. Atlantis is likely just a travelers story.

The Bimini Highway in the Bahamas? Natural rock formations only.

The Shroud of Turin is a piece of 14th century art.

As for the seas, anything is possible. We have video of whole pods of whales that match no known official species, so if air breathing whales can hide from us, anything can.

Giant squids, yes, there are giant squids. I believe in those. I have seen objective proof in the form of sucker claws collected off the radar dome of the USS Stein, that far eclise any giant squid that has washed ashore. So there are not only giant squids, there are some really huge giant squids or octupus out there.

Megalodon, the giant great white shark of the deep. Is it out there? Could be, because something that big and flesh eating has got to be naturally dang rare. Could eat those huge squids. Megaladon teeth have been found that were less than 10,000 years old. Pretty much all the same critters live in the ocean now as did 10,000 years ago, so why is Megalodon gone? Is it? Makes “Jaws” look like a baby. Shark expert Eugenee Clark will capture us a photo of a megaladon if she is given enough time and funding. Like bigfoot, the bigger they are, the rarer they are.

Giant snakes? Snakes can only get so big, because they would collapse and squish themselves. Maybe in the water one might get to 40 foot with water bouying its mass.

African leopardmen? Good way to kill your neighbor and blame a leopard.

Werewolves? Good way to kill your European neigbor and blame a crazy man.

Chupacabra, The Horrible Goatsucker? That one is too bizaare for even me to look into.

Huge short faced bear in Siberia? Why not? Big predators are naturally rare and hide easy when no one looks for them.

DeLoy’s Ape? The very clear photo looks like the worlds largest spider monkey.

Giant ground sloth in South America? Probably just your ordinary bigfoot running around down there. (: South America still holds many surprises for zoology. 4 new monkeys found in the last couple years. 30 some new mammals from there recently. The bigger they are, the rarer they are, so some big animals might even come from there.

Strange South American Big Cats? Hides have been purchased from natives of large cats with swirling design like nothing else. Probably partially melanistic jaguars, which would be called a “King Jaguar” I guess. Might be completely new species of rare and large cats down there. Nobody is looking for them, and cats are nortorious about hiding from man, even when he does look for them. We have not seen the last from the world of cat discoveries I predict.

Sea Serpents? Anything is possible in the ocean, and the bigger they are, the rarer they are, of course. Everything I have ever seen washed ashore or dragged up in Japanese fishing boat nets has been decayed basking sharks or whale sharks though. Too bad.

Yeti? Few tracks ever reported, but no one is looking either.

Yeren(Chinese bigfoot)? Same tracks as here. Same species? The fossils are there for it. Have not seen enough to have an opinion.

Orang Pendek (A small Indonesian ape that walks upright)? I know and have visited extensively with two persons, Debbie Martyr and Jeremie Holden, who have seen these slightly smaller than man apes that walk upright. The worlds oldest conservation group is funding their expedition in search of it at this very moment. Apes are like cats, there are more of them around than you know about. Martyr and Holden have been setting out camera traps, and discovered one new rabbit species and one bird thought extinct in a short while there. Will wonders never cease. It think the Pendek is a little predator ape too, because of the way it walks upright. Upright walking apes are hunters. Yep, I’m a hunter, born and bred for it. If I ate plants, I would crawl along the ground on all fours or swing through the trees for my food. Ever wonder why bigfoot walks, instead of goes on all fours like a gorilla?

I also think there is a small kind of tailess ape or monkey in South America that walks upright and hunts for meat instead of foraging for fruits and leaves. Again, rare. Too many credible witnesses have seen them there, for me to disregard them. The natives fear them greatly, and don’t hunt them at all. No gringo scientists are looking for them yet, though one gringo scientist saw one a couple years ago while looking for fungus specimens. I know, I know, magic mushrooms in the gringos diet.

The greatest mystery of all is why science always thinks it knows everything and have reached a pinnicle of knowledge. Like I said, in the 1970’s, zoologists uniformly proclaimed that few new mammals would be discovered on the face of the earth. Over 400 new and distinct species of mammal have been discovered since then. We may be discovering new mammals for hundreds of years, because they were making the same statements in the 1700’s too. Science never learns about its own ignorance, because we are too busy laughing and gloating over what we think we know.

Now you know my opinion on many mysteries.

Some tracks I found opened my mind up a little to other wildlife mysteries, but I still need proof too. So I study. All mysteries enthrall me, as we learn from enigma and we gain knowledge by observation.

Date:02-Feb-01

Ignore the sightings from the Colorado hunting guides who said they had a view of bigfoot under optimal viewing conditions.

Just look at the physical facts.

Why does Jim Chilcutt, “the” worlds leading forensic primate fingerprint expert state that he has “no doubt at all” that bigfoot tracks are real?

Why do many of the worlds leading physical anthropologists feel the same way after years of study of bigfoot tracks? There are getting to be more physical anthropologists that do believe bigfoot tracks are real, than don’t. The only that don’t are the ones that have not studied the tracks. Those that have studied the tracks believe many of the tracks are real.

Why is it that CDOW biologist Bill Heicher and the Eagle County Sheriff Department believe the 19 inch long tracks from Eagle Valley this last spring are “not faked”, “not bear”, and “not human”. What conclusion can we draw from those tracks then? What conclusion can we draw from the tracks recorded on video by undersheriff Joe Taylor Jr. on the CO/NM border in 1993?

Here is a link to the tracks from Eagle this last spring. You tell me why the faker did not put them in the better faking soil 5 feet away from where the tracks were found. You can see the track photo yourself of the scene. See that nice soft faking soil in the background? Why is one track all strange looking where the maker turned to go to the left? Why is there vegetation all washed into the toe prints of the third track? Can anyone tell me how old the tracks were when photographed? Do you have river level records? Do you know when the last snow was before the tracks were found? Where these tracks snowed on after they were made? There are hundreds of questions I ask myself, the Eagle County Sheriff Department asked themselves, and CDOW’s Bill Heicher asked himself. Most of those questions we answered. I could post the complete 10 page report here if you want. A very brief overview can be found on http://www.bfro.net/GDB/show_report.asp?id=1355

Date:02-Feb-01

For those that have not seen 19 inch long tracks that are nearly 10 inches wide at the toes, they are huge!!!! There were lots of forces used pressing those big feet into the gravelly soil there. Lots of force.

I thought the 16 by 8 inch tracks I found in the San Juans were huge, even beside my size 13 hiking boots. These 19 inchers make my feet look like baby feet.

These tracks are real, I tell you!!!

But, what are they? I hope you all get to stumble onto some of these tracks some day. It will make your hair stand on end!!! Keep your eyes to the ground while bowhunting Colorado.

I and the hunting guides are not making up tall tales. Please at least give them the benefit of the doubt and look at least at the tracks from all over the west. Read Meldrums research, and read Dr. Krantz research and Dr. Napiers research, before deciding. Those men are not stupid, nor did they set out believing in bigfoot. Krantz and Napier indeed set out to disprove bigfoot through scientific analysis of the facts. Meldrum saw Krantz work and Napiers work and built upon it. Krantz is the most skeptical guy you will ever meet, and once laughed at bigfoot tales along with the rest of us. To his credit, he studied the evidence and came to conclusions that were against his prior opinion. Same with Napier. Same with forensic expert Jim Chilcutt. He was going to be the one person who could discredit all bigfoot tracks, yet he now has no doubt bigfoot is real. No doubt whatsoever.

Man those Eagle tracks are big!!!

Date:02-Feb-01

I’m pretty much done with the bigfoot thing now, thank God!!

A guy from Washington state told me on the bowsite community forum that he has ridden a horse over 1000 miles in that state and never seen a bigfoot, a bigfoot track, or a bigfoot dwelling. I could understand how he could not see a bigfoot or a track in 1000 miles of riding, but now that he mentioned never finding a bigfoot dwelling, I can see the logic of bigfoot rejection. Sorry I wasted everyones time and wasted a thread on this forum, because if there are no bigfoot cabins out there in Washington state, then how could there be bigfoot out there. I had never thought of that before now, so that pretty much wraps it up. About time.

I’m still wondering why about 2 hours ago I got an email about a sighting from an experienced hunting guide in British Columbia who claims to have watched a bigfoot from 80 yards in broad daylight as it walked away from him down a trail. That guide has seen more grizzlies in the wild than we have probably seen on television, yet he makes this claim of watching a bigfoot. Guess I’ll put it in the files with the other hunting guide sightings and wonder why I have never come across a bigfoot cabin either.

Sorry again for wasting everyones time. A guy just can’t argue against the logic of the missing bigfoot dwellings. Its pretty much cut and dried. I guess if they were there, they would pretty much be similar to elk dwellings, which we see all the time.

Have a good one.

Date:03-Feb-01

I guess I’ll stay on the Colorado forum, simply because thats my field research area.

Zinger; I can’t see any correlation between the guides sightings and their finances. Bigfoot hunting is not an industry, and most of these guides only let me know about it and didn’t want anyone else to know. Wonder why? (: I’ve tried to get them to go public, but only Dysinger had the balls to. I respect that guy, and he really is sane, a good bowhunter, a good guide, and not making any money off bigfoot. Might actually be detrimental to his guiding if people think he is looney. He got a good long look at the bigfoot up there, from close enough that he could see some face and hand details. A person either has to accept what he is telling us, or say he is lieing to us. He was not mistaken about what he saw, and it was no guy in a gorilla suit for sure. I also know of about 40-50 supporting eyewitnesses to bigfoot over a 40 year time span in that area alone. You decide.

I really don’t think anyone is out there laying down fake tracks in Colorado, and neither do the law enforcement that has investigated along with me. Guess you would have to see the evidence first hand to really know how amazing it is. For example the tracks documented by undersheriff Taylor on the CO/NM border were found by a lady trying to photograph mule deer on the far backside of a pasture on private land at the edge of dense forest. Those two sets of very large tracks had a stride of over 5 feet and continued that way along the edge and eventually went up a valley and up toward a saddle, never breaking stride. They were obviously made by something heavier than a human to press the big feet into the mud and snow like they did. The feet showed mobility in the toes and in articulation. A 5 foot stride with big wooden feet and carrying weight on your back running uphill is quite impossible physically for a human over any distance. Such an athlete would make better money for a professional sports team, and obviously didn’t make any money off the hoax in Colorado. Then, if you logically look at the tracks from Eagle County, and consider all the events surrounding them and the people that investigated them you can see how intrigueing they are. CDOW biologist Heicher and the Eagle SO did not go into that investigation with an open mind, quite to the contrary. No one is more skeptical than the area biologists and law. Yet they came away from that one with “no doubt” the tracks were “not faked”. If they are not faked, what are those 19 inch tracks? And, why have so many people been reporting seeing bigfoot in that area since at least 1880. I have one case from about 5 miles from where the Eagle River tracks were found that involves 12 mountain climbers who saw a bigfoot in the 1960’s from less than 20 yards in broad daylight. Were they all lieing or mistaken? It just gets to the point where the combination of the tracks and the eyewittness testimony point to a conclusion.

The sighting my folks had is interesting. It occurred in 1989 or 1990 at a cabin we had been renting on an annual basis at the north edge of the SSJWilderness. My dad told me about it at some point after that, saying first something like “we saw what could only have been a bigfoot by the cabin when we drove in to turn on the water system in May”. My first response put him on the extreme defensive, because I asked him after his short statement whether they were sure it was not a bear. He got very upset and said “I know a @#%# bear when I see one”, and never told me another word about it at that time. My dad was a Christian man, and for him to cuss was extremely rare, so I knew I had made a mistake. He just shut up and did not tell me one more thing about it. Why should he? He was an experienced hunter and has hunted more bears, elk, deer, and moose than 99% of all living hunters, and for me to question his game identifying skills was like slapping him in the face. I should have known better. I didn’t think any more about the incident and kept my mouth shut until 1993, when my sons and I got screamed at, and I found the tracks the next day at sunrise when I went back to investigate the source of the scream by myself and with a firearm. Interestingly, I found no tracks where the scream came from, as the ground was too covered with pine needles and rocks, but after looking around for about 3 hours, I found the tracks that were at least a couple weeks old and had been rained on several times. I apologized to my father when we got back home, and then he related the full story to me. We had never heard of such a thing in Colorado at all, and so I started researching and the amount of eyewittnesses I found and historical references I found were amazing. I guess I am paying my dues with ridicule from others, kind of like my short questioning of my fathers sighting that first time he tried to relay it to me. I quietly started my research, but told no one outside our family of the events. Then in 1997, a man and his wife were scouting for elk just about 1/2 mile upstream from where I found the tracks in 1993, and they watched a bigfoot for 5 minutes, passing the binoculars back and forth as the animal walked down and across the open valley as it was escaping from three hikers and a dog that caught it in the open. After they went public, I did too. This resulted in helping my research, as now I didn’t have to be so discrete about it. It has not helped me, as I have a profession where I have to make decisions on wildlife and am on state committees dealing with wildlife conservation and management in Kansas. I’m on one committee for invasive plants that is formed by USFWS, and I always hope they don’t catch wind of my bigfoot research. I have pretty much avoided having any repercussions. Bluntly, this bigfoot thing is not good for me, and is costing me in more ways than one. The only reason I am doing it is that I love wildlife, am very curious, and this is a wildlife subject. I did not ask to hear those screams or find those tracks. Neither did undersheriff Taylor, or any of the hunting guides in Colorado. None have faired well once they go public, but only recieve ridicule. Officer Taylor finally said “crap on everybody”, and I think he may have destroyed the video of the tracks”. The last thing he said to me was “make sure no one comes down here and bothers the witnesses in my area, we don’t want any publicity”. There are about 30 eyewitnesses in that one small area. Not just “bears at night” witnesses, but full blown accounts of watching these bigfoot trying to kill elk in the broad open in broad daylight that winter of 93/94. Weather was tough that winter and game driven into the open down there more than normal and wow did things pop. Veteranarians, ranchers, homeowners, farmers, hunters, and many others got to see one or more bigfoot down there that winter. These were not little runty guys in gorilla suits, but two big males most of the time. Huge. Big as a polar bear, believe it or not. We have three different sizes of tracks documented in that area from 1993, so there are at least 3 of them. Surely there are more than just the males. The thing is, you yourself can talk to these people and find out first hand. They are not just statistics, they are people. They are lawmen, hunting guides, hunters, and even trained biologists. Two biologists from Wyoming will be going public fairly soon we hope. With not only sightings by themselves, but hairs collected and tracks documented. Most non-biologists don’t consider documenting tracks or collecting hairs, so it is nice when a trained biologist has a sighting, as they do.

I always consider whether a sighting is of a mangy bear or other expected animal when evaluating a sighting. I work with people in wildlife damage control and have looked at many calf kills and such that were blamed on cougars, but obviously not cougar kills. Stuff like that. I don’t even file night-time sightings of bigfoot. Colorado is unique, in that no one in the past has expected to see a bigfoot in Colorado, simply because publicity of bigfoot has been rare to nonexistent. In the Pacific Northwest, you might expect someone to see a stump and think they are seeing a bigfoot, but not here. Before our own incidents, we had never heard one single thing about bigfoot in Colorado. We didn’t expect to see a bigfoot or its tracks in Colorado anymore than we expected to see a tyranosaurus rex walking around leaving tracks, if you know what I mean. I know many people are quite bad about wildlife knowledge and identification, but I have never had one single report of a bigfoot sighting come from Rocky Mountain National Park, with all its wonderfull forest habitat. Yet a hundred miles south, I have large numbers of sightings from one area that spans 50 years or more. Why don’t the neophyte campers see bigfoot in Rocky Mountain National Park? I think it is because bigfoot is not there to see it there. Please look at the map of sightings I made for the bfro, it shows distribution and it shows seasonal migrational pattern. You can double the spots on the map, because I have not updated it for a couple years, but the new spots are in the same places as the old spots. The spots represent historical data, and contemporary daytime sightings by multiple witnesses. Again, why none in Rocky Mountain National Park, if they are due to human wildlife stupidity. Actually, the people seeing bigfoot are the most knowledgable by a large slant of the graph. Hunting guides, experienced hunters, lawmen, experienced bowhunters galore. In the mountain west, it is bowhunters who report seeing bigfoot more than any other outdoor group. There has got to be a reason why this small group is the ones with the best chance of seeing a bigfoot. What is the logical reason for this? Is it that bowhunters are the least experienced in wildlife identification or are they more prone to lieing than other outdoorsmen? One of those has to be correct if bigfoot is not real. You decide whether bowhunters are the poor judges, or are they the big liers of the outdoor world? One choice is correct. Of the bowhunters, the hunting guides are the highest frequency group. I have sightings on file from 4 Colorado bowhunting guides. This means that if you want to see a bigfoot, you should become a Colorado bowhunting guide, because they have an extremely higher rate of bigfoot sightings than any other outdoor user group. Extremely higher!!!!! How many people in Colorado are bowhunting guides?????? Do you see what this means!!!!! Please tell me a logical answer why this high rate is so.

Please, if you don’t believe the eyewitness, at least look at the tracks objectively. Think about where they have come from, and look for consistency and uniqueness of traits.

Please consider that the tracks have come from hundreds of different incidents in the west, from many different sources, and yet they are not just big human tracks. They have traits all their own. Wouldn’t hoaxers just make big human tracks? This documented track evidence spans well more than 50 years, with sightings of tracks going back to when white man first started coming to the west. Why, in at least 1450, did the Jemez name one of their pueblos “place where the giant man stepped”, which is a direct reference to bigfoot according to archeologist William Whatley. Why do the Utes and Pueblo down there in southern Colorado have so many traditions of bigfoot type creatures living in their forests of long ago.

Why do bowhunting guides see bigfoot more than any other users of Colorado forests? There has got to be a reason why Jeff Dysinger, W.E., M.W., and J.H. have seen bigfoot up close and personal in broad daylight Colorado’s backcountry.

Look again that the website of the Eagle River tracks and look hard and long at those tracks. Measure them and consider them. Look at the location photo of all the nice soft hoaxing soil in the background of the photo of the tracks.

Dysinger is not lieing to you guys, and neither are my parents, and neither am I.

Date:06-Feb-01

This thread has been downright civil in comparison to some on bigfoot. I sometimes get dogmatic about things, but really enjoy the differing opinions. I have spoken to quite a number of houndsmen in years past, andthey always gave me the impression that dogs probably couldn’t be trained to chase a bigfoot down, but maybe I am wrong. Santiams experience and logic is good about bigfoot probably not being able to get ahold of a good hunting hound. I too would think a dog would be too quick. Undersheriff Taylor (Alamosa area) told of a farm dog (german shepard I think) killed down there on the CO/NM border in the winter of 93/94, by whatever leaves these huge tracks. Another farm dog got thrown against a house and was severely injured, but not killed. Whatever grabbed it supposedly threw it over a 6 foot fence.

I have had two Colorado houndsman tell me they have cut bigfoot tracks in fresh snow while trailing their dogs. One of them gave me his name, the other didn’t. The one that did not gave the information on the very first time I asked about this on the Colorado forum a number of years ago, or on some Colorado bowhunters forum, maybe CBA, if they had a forum then. Did CBA used to have a forum, or was it always on the Bowsite regional? We could go back and retrieve it maybe and look at it again. The one who did give me his name is from southern Colorado, and said he has seen bigfoot tracks in that area, but cut tracks in Idaho while using his dogs there. He cowboys for a rancher in the San Juans and said he saw where a 600 pound calf was killed by one of the things that leaves bigfoot tracks, and that it carried it off, with only the hooves dragging every once in awhile.

The other 4 Colorado hunting guides and 2 outfitters who have reported bigfoot sightings to me, did not use dogs, but were rather elk guides and outfitters. You guys know Dysingers story, and I think I related W.E.’s sighting at one time. I think I also related a couple of the other sightings. Can’t remember. Anyway, all these guides seemed real sincere and real serious about it. You will just have to decide why they say they see bigfoot in Colorado. Actually, percentage-wise, Colorado hunting guides have the highest numbers of sightings per person of any outdoor use group. Bowhunters are second, followed by hunters in general and other such outdoor users such as hikers.

Oddly, I have had zero sightings from the places you would expect the most, such as Rocky Mountain National Park. Not one report from there ever. One would expect all the inexperienced people going there to see a mangy bear and think they are seeing a bigfoot, but they don’t. In fact, the more experienced you are in Colorado wildlife identification, such as a hunting guide, the more likely you are to have a bigfoot sighting. The less experienced in wildlife identification just rarely have a sighting report to give. I just recieved a sighting report from two of Wyomings official wildlife biologists. Figure that one out.

If bigfoot is nothing but a myth, then we have only three options for the reports from the guides and wildlife biologists I mentioned. 1.They are telling tall tales. 2.They are mistaken about the identity of what they saw. 3.They love ridicule from skeptics.

If they are telling tall tales, then that means hunting guides tell more lies than any other human group, by a very wide margin. If they are mistaken about wildlife identity in broad daylight from 30 yards to 125 yards with Zeiss binoculars, then how can they judge whether a bear is a book bear or not for their clients, which they do. It just gets to a point where listening to quite a number of not only Colorado hunting guides, but Idaho hunting guides and British Colombia hunting guides, accounts of close range bigfoot sightings becomes too hard to dismiss. I try to research mostly physical evidence left behind, but these guides accounts can’t really be ignorred. Especially if you would just get to know them a little, and realize they are not trying to pull your leg or anything else. They are dead serious. Most of these experienced guides don’t give a sh*# whether anyone believes them. They know what they saw. Just tell them to their face that they only saw a bear and “thought” it was a bigfoot. You might not come away in very good shape. My father almost decked me when I ask “are you sure it wasn’t a bear?” after he tried to tell me of his sighting. He said “I know a $#@$ bear when I see one!” And by golly, he did. He is the one that taught me the difference between black bear tracks and grizzly tracks, when I was still a snotty nosed kid. For me to question his game identification skills was like slapping him in the face. He never even told me the rest of his sighting until I found bigfoot tracks in the San Juans 3 or 4 years later, and I apologized for my “bear” remark.

You guys can believe what you want to believe. I don’t have time for you. There are plenty of books and websites on the subject. Just keep in mind that not all bigfoot sightings are bigfoot, and not all bigfoot tracks are bigfoot tracks. Also know that I have not found one single good bigfoot track from any eastern sighting event, whereas in the west, tracks are found at least as often as bigfoot is seen. Why the difference? Don’t look for bigfoot where its tracks are not seen regularly. Study the tracks to know the difference between bear tracks on top of one another and bigfoot tracks. Once you have seen hundreds of examples of bigfoot tracks like I have, it gets to be a moot point to deny the existance of these unique forms of track in our western backcountry. Also realize that in Colorado we are talking at the most a couple dozen bigfoot, not hundreds. I did a study on how many miles each bigfoot might be expected to walk each day, and how many good tracks it might lay down. In summer it is a wonder tracks are ever found. In snow, it is also a wonder anyone ever stumbles on the tracks of a few dozen individual bigfoot. It snows about every other day in many areas, erasing tracks from the day before. These tracks are found, and found more often than most people realize. Bigfoot avoid people like the plague, and avoid places where people activity is high. Bigfoot are not numerous, nor are they stupid. They may even be fairly sharp about their tracks and where they leave them. I don’t think they really worry about leaving tracks that people can see though, as I don’t think they have too. Tracking conditions for soft footed animals is lousy in almost all of Colorado’s high country. Too many rocks, grass, and pine needle duff on the ground. They don’t have to try to hide their tracks, as there tracks are hard to see anyway. Hunting guides do tell of coming across bigfoot tracks in snow while trailing cougars with their hounds, but not very often, which is some indication of the rarity of bigfooot. No one found grizzly tracks in Colorado from 1950 to 1979, but that did not mean they were not there. Many people were even organized in official groups looking for grizzly tracks in the San Juans, and could not find them, but grizzlies proved to be there anyway. Now that’s impossible, right? I have fact after fact of just such things in regards to grizzlies and cougars. A rare bigfoot is even less surprising.

Bigfoot are likely on the verge of extinction anyway, so don’t worry about it. I just wanted to see one before they are gone. I thought maybe if I applied my hunting experience to it, maybe I could get close enough to get some close up video or something, but I think they are too rare for me to have any hope. I’m not too bad a hunter, but not good enough.

If you see one up close and personal some day, don’t tell a soul, because no one gives a flying flip anyway, and all you will get is ridiculed and called a lier or a bad judge of wildlife. Don’t report cougar sightings in the eastern U.S. either, as you will get the same laughs from officials who “know” cougars are not there.

Date:07-Feb-01

deernelk, I graphed sightings of bigfoot in Colorado from my files by in 20 year catagories, starting with sightings from the 1870 and 1880’s Colorado. I have quite a few old reports from that mining era, in spite of few people really living in Colorado. The sightings/person ratio in Colorado was highest then declined to the 1960’s and 1970’s which had quite a few sightings. Since the 1970’s, people use of forests in Colorado has shot upward, while bigfoot sightings have dropped downward. When graphed in comparison to human use of forests, the sightings should have gone up too, if bigfoot numbers remained stable. Instead, bigfoot sightings remained similar to and lower than the 1960’s/70’s. One area, the Lost Creek Wilderness had quite a number of sightings in the 1960’s and early 1970’s, and none since. I have some real high quality multiple witness daytime sightings from that area then, in addition to one by an experienced hunting guide for that area and time frame. After the 1970’s no other sightings have come from that area, that I am aware of (extinct there now?). Sightings were high in the area from Leadville to Eagle, through the Holy Cross in the 1960’s to early 1970’s, but also petered almost clear out at that time. The tracks from Eagle were a surprise to me this last spring, but I am sure they are real tracks and not faked, as was CDOW and Sheriff Personel in that area. I was down to where I was expecting no tracks or sightings from that general area of Colorado, since it had been so quiet there evidently for a long period of time. The problem though is that many sightings occur that are never shared with anyone outside immediate family.

My files and graphs from them are based on daytime sightings, as I pretty much disregard night time sightings, though many night time sightings may be real, and a some daytime sightings may be false. My files are not complete either, as there are no doubt hundreds of sightings and track finds that I have never heard about. A bowhunter (Sam) who read of my bigfoot stuff on this forum went to southern Colorado bowhunting this last fall and ask around about bigfoot and found out that a local outfitter had found and photographed bigfoot tracks in 1988, and the photo had been sitting in an album at a lodge there for 12 years. I just recieved a copy of the track photo the other day. What is interesting is that this particular photo was taken less than 4 miles from where I found tracks in 1993. The bowhunter (Sam) also found another local hunting guide/houndsman/cowboy with bigfoot information. This all was just from asking a few locals. So I know there must be bunches of other stuff out there such as track photos and many more sightings than I am aware of. The evidences are already in the hands of people, but finding that stuff is tough. Witnesses are reluctant to talk, and those that would talk, don’t know who to tell. Those with track photos and such also don’t know anyone who would want the photos they have. Like the ones we just found, how many others have set in albums for years. We might be amazed at such evidences and witness numbers.

I say all this because my theory on “nearing extinction” might change, with more knowledge of more recent sightings or track finds in Colorado, making my graph lines look better on the level. For now though, the graph drops off at the end. If I get too many recent sightings though, it might skew my results and give a false upward at the end of the graph. In other words, I might only know about 10% of the 1880 sightings, but might know about 20% of the 1990 sightings, giving a false comparison.

I have not totaled the number of people who claim to have seen bigfoot in broad daylight in Colorado, but the number is in the hundreds now, just in my files alone. Quite a few hunting guides, bowhunters, rifle hunters, hikers and climbers and general local residents. I have only one professional wildlife biologist with a sighting in Colorado, but I have two from Wyoming, and one from Utah. So even the trained official wildlife persons are seeing bigfoot. But these guys are sure mute about it to the rest of the world, as it is not widely acceptable in wildlife sciences to say you saw a bigfoot. What a shame these guys can not be more open, or have to worry about their jobs just because they accidently saw a bigfoot.

Jim in Ohio, After looking at lots of tracks of bigfoot, and seeing how that unique foot works. The tracks show that the foot has a long heel that has much more leverage than the human heel, and the foot has more articulation below the talus. This means that it has an additional way to propel itself forward in running action than humans do. Kind of like a spring loaded mechanical advantage through the foot, with calf muscles and thight and buttock muscles to match. 50 miles per hour is no doubt an exaggeration on the part of witnesses, but I do think bigfoot is quite a bit faster at the sprint than a human, because of that mechanical advantage through the heel bone tendon arrangement. Really though, bigfoot does not need to be any faster than a human to catch a deer or an elk. I have bowhunted for 25 years, and have taken more than 30 deer, and have stalked to within touching distance of hundreds of deer. I have also sat on the ground down wind of trails and watched deer after deer file past at less than 10 feet away. I could have jumped forward and grabbed one anytime I wanted to, if I wanted to be kicked or gored. Bigfoot does not have to be fast to catch a deer or elk, it just has to be smart, agile and careful. I am sure it is a much better hunter than I will ever be.

Thanks for everyones input, the sightings emailed to me, and even the skeptical questions. I have already asked myself almost every question that could be asked, but it never hurts to think about the whys and why-nots.

We should probably let this thread die now. People who think bigfoot is an impossibility will never take the time to look at the physical evidences themselves anyway, and so are never going to change their minds. I’m not going to change anyones mind here in a few words about the sightings or tracks. One has got to study all the stuff in Meldrums and Krantz lab if you want objective answers. I have never thought people should decide on something until they study it though.

You know I don’t have one single unicorn sighting, or troll sighting, or any other odd animal sighting from Colorado. I think there was a kangaroo reported east of Colorado Springs in the 1970’s, but that is about it. Wonder if this lack of sightings of other mythological animals means anything, when compared to the hundreds in Colorado who report bigfoot? A few do report grizzly sighings down in the San Juans every once in a great while. Wonder if those sightings mean anything?

Look at the maps, look at the sightings, consider who is seeing these bigfoot, and who is not, consider where they are being seen, and where they are not, consider the tracks to see if they are unique and consistent as the antropologists say, and then decide for yourself. I guess it really does not matter in the scheme of things whether bigfoot is real or not. The important things in life are loving and caring for your family, being a good neighbor, giving yourself in service to others, being thankful to and loving God, and enjoying all that God has given us. Take care all. Oh, and sharp broadheads are important to, we can’t forget that. (:

 

 

 

 

Sasquatch Hunt

Date: 20-Mar-04 

Supporting link - http://www.bfro.net/GDB/show_report.asp?id=6785

I am a bowhunter of 30 years big game experience, have taken way more than my share of Pope and Young qualifying animals in those years. I love wilderness areas and places few other humans ever wander, especially when seeking places to fish for big trout in timberline lakes. I found a set of a couple dozen 17 inch long sasquatch tracks in the South San Juan Wilderness across a dirt slide which perked my interest in the possibilities (who would fake 17 inch human-like tracks in such a remote area?). So, in spite of how ridiculous the notion of sasquatch seemed to me and others, I started collecting sightings from other bowhunters and eventually got 6 sightings and track find reports from Colorado hunting guides and outfitters. Some of these sightings by hunting guides were long term daytime sightings, one of which was from less than 30 yards distance in broad daylight while the hunting guide was bugling for elk. Another guide in Colorado watched a sasquatch sunning itself by a beaver pond for over 10 minutes through binoculars at a range of 125 yards. Long enough and close enough to see detail of the face. None of these experienced Colorado outdoorsmen seemed to be making up their stories. Weird, but true none-the-less, that these reports were made to me. A few years ago I investigated a set of 19 inch long tracks along the Eagle River that were found by fishermen in the month of March. Another set had been found by fishermen near Gypsum about 7 miles from the set I investigated in the same time frame. The local CDOW biologist, local law enforcement and myself came to the conclusion that this 19 inch long set of tracks were “genuine” and not hoaxed. Several foot experts anthropologests also came to the conclusion that the set of tracks from the incident were not faked. Pretty neat, but weird of course. A search of local historical archives in that area revealed that sasquatch have been reported from that area by white men since the 1880’s, as detailed in an article from an 1880’s newspaper article from Leadville of miners and hunters seeing sasquatch there. The indians that lived in that area previously of course had tales of sasquatch, just like all indian cultures of western North America. All of the indian stories and the miner sightings and current bowhunter sightings are all of the same critter. An upright walking hairy man-like creature of large size, usually dark brown to reddish tinted hair, that leaves these huge somewhat human-like tracks that I found and have investigated a few times that others have found.

So, here I am, an experienced bowhunter, who found tracks of a creature that can not possibly exist, in my favorite stomping grounds in a wilderness in my favorite state of Colorado. Is sasquatch real? Hell, I don’t know, but I am pretty sure its tracks are real. Bear tracks just are not 17 to 19 inches long and are not all that human-like. I am in a mental stalemate, my mind tells me that sasquatch can not be a real creature, but my eyes tell me that the tracks are real. I also listen to very serious hunting guides in Colorado as the relate to me their very personal experiences with sasquatch, and just know they are telling me the truth.

Overall, I have no trouble thinking that it is insane to think that sasquatch could possibly exist, but have very much trouble believing my own eyes in regards to the tracks I found and have investigated along with CDOW and local law officials. A deputy sheriff also video taped a series of two sets of 19 inch and 21 inch long tracks down near where I found that set of tracks. The tracks he recorded were in snow and mud and he followed them for over 1/2 mile as they wandered along the backside of a local ranchers land along the treeline and up a valley with a stride of about 48 inches long going uphill. The deputy said that in the better tracks in the mud, he could even see where the tracks showed chisel like toeneal imprints and the front of the toes very much like human toenails as the sasquatch evidently curled its toes downward into the mud to get a grip when walking uphill in slippery conditions. Pretty weird.

So, overall, we have Colorado hunting guides, bowhunters, hunters, and general hikers seeing and reporting the same exact kind of critter, and we have these tracks that are all pretty standard in Colorado being found every so often and recorded. We have law agencies and CDOW biologists investigating the tracks from time to time, scratching their heads, and filing them away. Sasquatch can not possibly be real, so why bother pursuing the stupid thing?

Though I still have trouble believing that sasquatch could be real, I do have opinion to what it might be if it exists. I think that if it exists it can only be one thing. I think it could possibly be a predator that has a social system similar to the orangutan. Orangutans are not highly social primates, but live pretty much to themselves except during breeding. Orangs have territories that they protect and keep other orangs out of, especially orangs of the same gender. Cougars have a very similar social system. Sasquatch tracks are always found in high elk density areas at the times that elk are there, so I think that sasquatch specialize in preying on elk. I think that sasquatch males protect a large area of territory and that they are very much rarer than cougars. Dominant male cougars may have a territory of over 125 square miles, and I think that for a sasquatch to survive a male sasquatch may keep a territory of over 400 square miles to himself. I think they are very much more intelligent than a cougar and much better at avoiding humans. Kind of like a cougar with the brains of a chimpanzee, which would be almost impossible to hunt. I think that if sasquatch exist at all, that the track finds and sightings indicate that there are three main areas in Colorado that have them. These three areas are the South San Juan Wilderness and adjacent national forests, the Holy Cross Wilderness and adjacent forests, and the Lost Creek Wilderness and adjacent forest areas. Especially where elk densities are highest in those three areas. This is where the lions share of the tracks and sightings are being found. Like cougars, when someone sees a saquatch, it is almost always alone, and usually the indications are that it is a youngish adult sasquatch of from 7 to 8 foot tall with tracks around 15 to 17 inches longs. Tracks up to 22 inches long have been found and recorded, but the largest set I have personally investigated were the 19 inch tracks from the Eagle River just east of Eagle Colorado. Several of our nations best physical anthropologists have determined that the tracks are very real and fit into a very specific anatomy. I agree with them on the track morphology, but still have a very hard time accepting the reality of the track makers.

Is sasquatch a very rare type of predator primate that came over here from Asia during the ice age and a few of them still remain to hunt elk in our western forests? We have a few fossil pieces of such a large primate from Asia, and most Asian animals migrated here from the old world, so I suppose that this primate could have come to American shores to. All I know is that I found those tracks and heard many tales from other bowhunters and hunting guides from Colorado, along with investigating several other tracks since. Like I said, I have a hard time believeing that a creature such as sasquatch could exist, yet have a hard time disbelieving my own eyes or the serious stories from hunting guides. Sasquatch can not be real, but it’s tracks are real, is my opinion. So maybe the sightings from Colorado hunting guides are real too. ???

For you other bowhunters who have harvested most every other big game animal in Colorado with your bow and want another challange, here it is. You will be hunting this quarry with a camcorder instead of a bow and arrow. It is a predator that preys on elk. It is well furred, large and very very rare in any one area. It likes to spend its days in cool or cold environments and hates heat. It stays pretty much to the deep forest areas where it waits for elk going to or returning from bedding areas. It avoids human trails and human contact almost completely. It knows human habits and elk habits. In summer it likes heavily forested north slope exposures because they are up to 10 degrees cooler than other places in the mountains. It seems to usually be seen near standing water, such as small lakes or beaver ponds in that environment, though streams seem to also be part of its travel routes.

The whole reason I am writing here is that last May (May 29 of 2003) a sasquatch was reported on a trail to Mt. Elbert as detailed in this link from the BFRO http://www.bfro.net/GDB/show_report.asp?id=6785 Perhaps sasquatch are creatures of habit and that a sasquatch will be in that area in the last weeks of May or first weeks of June in 2004. This is only a couple months away and time enough to plan to intercept it on its travel route. Maybe that sasquatch lives there year around, or maybe it was only traveling through, or maybe sasquatch do not exist at all. But, if they do exist, here is at least a better chance to encounter one of them perhaps. Sasquatch are the ultimate quarry I suppose, or maybe a wild goose chase, you decide. In any event, just being in the woods away from the rat race for any reason is a good thing in my opinion. It is too far for me to drive to the Mt Elbert area for a sasquatch hunt in May, but maybe some of you guys live closer and can have a chance to get good video of a sasquatch there this coming May. As you experienced bowhunters know, it is nearly impossible to find tracks of any soft footed animals there, due to rocky compacted soil and pine needles everywhere, so finding tracks is very rare and very unlikely. Maybe there will still be some snow on to help with that. In spite of sasquatch size and weight, they only make tracks about as deep as barefooted human or bear tracks in any type of soil, simply because their feet are big too. On the tracks I have investigated, such as the 19 inch tracks at Eagle, the depth of track was the same as human tracks, which indicated a weight of about 900 pounds to have the same weight per square inch of foot bottom in comparison to the human tracks at the same location and condition of soil. Someone faking the tracks would have had to have had a pile driver to get the huge tracks as deep as normal human tracks, because of the size. Our investigations of the tracks reveal that the sasquatch seem to have about the same weight per square inch of foot bottom as human, which makes them very heavy when you encounter a set of tracks nearly or over 20 inches long. You can not really envision the immense size of these tracks until you see them yourself in person. I have seen 12 inch grizzly tracks in person, and these sasquatch tracks dwarf them. Of course grizzlies walk on four feet, so they spread their weight amongst four legs, so don’t need all that big of feet to get around on. I have size 13 feet, only 12 inches long, and only weigh about 200 pounds. Sasquatch are apparently much larger and much heavier if the tracks and sightings are any indication. Similar in body mass to coastal grizzly bears, with males often over 1000 pounds. Some of the tracks I have investigated were every bit as deep as human tracks, yet so much larger that if they were faked the hoaxer would have had to be wearing a 700 pound backpack and taking steps over 48 inches long while walking uphill. If they were faked, I have not figured out how. The tracks were definitely not drawn into the ground, but rather naturally pressed into the ground, even showing flexibility in the toes and such. Like I said, sasquatch can’t be real of course, but the tracks are real. Hope you get to come across a sasquatch or at least its tracks some day, and then you will know what I am talking about.

In any event, believe in sasquatch or not, there is a chance to meet one on a trail to Mt Elbert in late may or early June of 2004. If you can’t be there, try the Lost Creek Wilderness in December or January of next year, the more remote the better. Maybe it’s a wild goose chase, or maybe not. The ultimate quarry may be out there waiting. Colorado has from 4000 to 10,000 cougars, depending on who you ask, and you know how hard it is to even get to see one of them. What if cougars had the brains of a primate and there were only less than 100 of them in the whole state of Colorado? Now you know what you are up against, if it exists at all. The tracks exist, and they are huge, but what are those tracks from? The tracks themselves seem to match the animal reported by the hunting guides, bowhunters, hunters and hikers, so maybe it does exist.

Go out, sit down by a tree in the dark forest at night in late May at 11,500 foot elevation on a trail to Mt Elbert and just bugle on your elk bugle to wake up and perk the curiosity of any nearby forest grimlin. Then just sit silently in full camoflage and scent shield and see if anything shows up. It is a different way of hunting, but it might get exciting. A bugling elk in the spring time at night would sure perk my interest if I was a nocturnal elk hunting ape. Maybe one will show up if it is within a mile or so of you. You might never see it if it does come to check out the night noises, but maybe you will. Maybe you will get to hear its own vocalizations to ponder for the rest of your life.

For some reason, even though I am a grown man and know better, I get a little tingle up the spine when sitting quietly alone at night in the quiet forest on a cold north slope of dense forest far from any other human. My senses are at their highest, and I am keen to every forest sound. Stepfalls of animals become louder, elk breaking deadfalls sound so much bigger than they do by daylight. I feel very alive, but also feel out of place. I feel like I belong there, but also feel like an intruder. I didn’t feel this way until after I found those huge tracks that fit the sasquatch mold in that beloved remote deep forest habitat. Now I live in a world with something that makes huge human-like tracks in a place where before I only found elk and deer tracks and an occaisional bear track. If a 1000 pound, 9 foot tall ape comes walking into your Colorado wilderness world some night, it will make the forest nights more interesting from then on.

Any reason to get into the backcountry with a backpack on at any time of year is a good reason, so just do it.

Good hunting.

Date: 21-Mar-04

Bear, I prefer to go it alone instead of with a large group, simply because that is the way I am successful bowhunting too. Several of the bfro people are good investigators however and you could learn much about preserving evidence and such from them. They will be broadcasting what they think might be recordings of sasquatch vocalizations, so that will be interesting, but more likely to be successful if employed alone or with only two people instead of a large group of noisy people.

In regards to sasquatch vocalizations. My sons and I heard what may have been a sasquatch screaming at us in the SSJWilderness. The sound was different than any other animal sound I have ever heard and much louder. The source sounded to be about 100 yards from us with willows between us and the sound maker. Hard to describe the very loud sound, but it sounded kind of like car tires peeling out on dry concrete with kind of a gravelly nature to it. Really, really loud and scary sounding noise to hear in the forest at close range. It also had a resounding nature to it that you could feel as well as hear, similar to the way you can actually feel an African lions roar when it is close by you. Since we did not see what was screaming at us, we can’t really say it was a sasquatch, but I have no idea what else could make that noise. Some of the recordings of supposed sasquatch noises sound very similar to what we heard. Others don’t sound anything like what we heard. Al Herrin, of Traditional Bowhunter Magazine, had a similar incident of a screamer south of Silverton. South of Silverton is where 4 bowhunters reported catching a sasquatch in the open in the Twin Sisters area. They all reported the same well furred heavily muscled man-like creature that ran in full view of them for some 200 yards across open ground while they were there elk hunting. They had taken bear with their archery equipment, so knew it was no bear. Bears don’t run on their back legs anyway. I don’t think they conspired to make up the story, so you can decide what they saw and reported. So that area might be a good place to go look for sasquatch in the archery season period. Two motorcycle riders reported seeing a sasquatch above a timberline while riding east of Silverton. They were speeding along and evidently got between it and the cover of the forest below. They reported that it evidently felt threatened because it started screaming at them and hurling large rocks down on them. One of them was almost hit with the first throw, which is what alerted them to its presence in the first place. They left of course. Quite a few other bowhunters have heard those loud odd screaming/roaring sounds that are unmistakingly out of place and abnormal for Colorado, but we just can’t say for sure it is a sasquatch making the noises heard.

As for protection, one would want a weapon capable of stopping a coastal grizzly charge. I don’t think you have to worry about it, because I don’t know of anybody killed by a sasquatch. There are only a few cases where something killed a hunter and left tracks at the scene that might have been sasquatch tracks. I have never investigated any attacks personally, so have no idea as to any merit of the few incidents. Most encounters where a sasquatch has been aggressive were false charges similar to the way a gorilla bluff charges. A chase, and that’s it. A sasquatch could easily catch a man, so they evidently don’t want to come into physical contact for the most part. Rock throwing is very common however. If large rocks start plopping down around you in the wilds, you might want to investigate the source.

Back in the 60’s there were places in northern California and southern Oregon where just about anyone could go out for a few days of searching and find at least one set of sasquatch tracks, due to the ashy nature of the soil there. Hundreds upon hundreds of sets were found there by very many people and documented during that period. They were all pretty standard in shape, but varied only in sizes found. Nowadays you can go to the same area and search for months on end and never find a set, which does not bode well for sasquatch there. I spent over 300 days in the SSJWilderness in southern Colorado and found only one set of sasquatch tracks there. So searching for tracks in Colorado is pretty tough because of the rocky nature compacted nature of the soils. Soft footed animals are very hard to track in Colorado environment. Two other Colorado outfitters have found sasquatch tracks in the SSJWilderness area, so there is a chance to find them if enough time is spent there. While hunting elk there in 1975 we found grizzly diggings on a hillside with grizzly tracks in the turned soil. That was about 3 miles from where Wiseman was attacked by a grizzly sow in 79. We told the local game officer about the diggings and the tracks when he checked our permits in camp, but I guess no one officially investigated the diggings or the tracks. We found no grizzly sign there before or since, so they are probably extinct there. One interesting thing happened in the SSJWilderness with a conservation group scoured the area for grizzly sign in the early 80’s. They found a 15 inch track in the edge of an elk wallow that was determined not to be a grizzly track. Interestingly the track was like a huge wide human track with 5 toes and no claw marks. So they were searching for grizzly spoor and find a 15 inch long human-like track. They make no claim as to what the track was from, but it is interesting non-the-less that they found it there. Interesting to me, because I found a whole line of that type of track there too, only difference being that the set I found was 17 inches long each and looked to have been made by a foot about 16 inches long and nearly 8 inches wide. Hope you guys get to find a set of these tracks for yourself some day.

It might be a good idea to be in a stout tree when calling at night. Might be a good idea to be pretty high up too, if a large sasquatch happens to come to you. Some of the tracks I have investigated in Colorado were pretty big and may indicate a pretty tall creature. If it has as long of arms as the Patterson film creature it can reach pretty high too. If you measure the relative length of the arm on the Patterson film subject, you will see that the arms are nearly as long as its legs. No human has arms that relatively long to leg length, which is why many anthropologists believe the film is genuine. If it was a man in a gorilla suit, you could get the arms that long with extensions, but you can’t get the elbows to bend in the correct place as is clearly seen in the film. There have been 7 people so far that have claimed to have been the man in the gorilla suit that Patterson filmed. Just recently two more people have claimed to have been the person in the gorilla suit that Patterson filmed on that fateful day. None of those people have arms nearly as long as their legs, nor do their arms bend that far down at the elbow when walking. The film needs looked at scientifically as is, not just taking some persons word that he or she was the person in a gorilla suit. If I were Mrs. Patterson, I would get all 7 of these claimants in a courtroom at one time and sue their butts for defamation. I also wonder, if it was a person in a gorilla suit, how they got the arms to hang straight down in spite of the chest being wider than any human chest on the face of the earth. You could build out the chest width on a suit, but not also get the arms to swing straight down as is clearly evident in the film. When scientifically measured, you just can not get a human being to fit into the mode of where the joints bend on the Patterson film creature, which makes the film very interesting to me. Most people do not know that we also have photos of people with marked measuring sticks at the same location and the comparison to the dead trees in the area that make measuring the filmed creature very exact. Dead trees don’t change size. When put to the test it puts Shaq O’neal to shame. It is about the same height as Shaq, but the chest is about twice as wide, and the arms still hang and swing straight down anyway. How do you do that with a gorilla suit? The thighs on the filmed creature are nearly the same diameter as Shaq’s chest measurement and the upper arms are in comparison diameter to Shaq’s thighs. And, that was just a little girly sasquatch that left 15 inch tracks. Can you imagine the critter that made the 19 inch tracks along the Eagle River a couple of years ago? Show me scientifically how one fakes the creature in the Patterson film, and I will say that it could be a faked film too. A doctor recently watched a good copy of the film and discovered that it has a torn muscle in its right thigh that bulges every time it puts weight on the right foot, which makes one wonder why a hoaxer would put that identifiable malady into the gorilla suit. I’m not a doctor, so I can’t say whether he is right or wrong in his interpretation, but it is interesting. I will just stick to the measurement of relative joint locations in comparison to human joint locations and say that it differs quite a bit from any human ever measured.

Date: 21-Mar-04

Here is young Mr. Hodgeman at the exact location of the film Patterson made. Hodgeman is 6 foot tall and skinny built young man holding the measuring stick. We know this is compared exactly because we overlayed the dead trees in the background with the photos from the film and the photos of Hodgeman to get exact comparison of relative size. I place a photo of Shaq sized at the 7 foot level on the measuring stick being held by Hodgeman. Compare the mass of the filmed creature to Shaq. Same height, but oh so much more massive. Man in a gorilla suit? What man!

Date: 21-Mar-04

Here is 6 foot tall Hodgeman in a full view photo with several frame overlays from the film with the dead trees in the background sized exactly to each other to give relative size of each exactly. Remember that dead trees don’t change size and this Hodgeman comparison photo was taken only a couple weeks after the film was made. Other comparitive films and photos were made and all come out the same in relative size mode. The creature makes Mr. Hodgeman look like a skinny little elf doesn’t it?

If you want larger photos to look at, to do your own measurements, I would have to email them to you. Photo size is limited in this forum format, but I think that you can at least see the relative sizes here.

Date: 21-Mar-04

The photo came out pretty little, sorry. Hodgeman is the little guy in the white teeshirt in the photo in front of the four frames from the Patterson film. Hodgeman is standing facing the camera with his left arm extended holding the measuring stick. The tall dead trees are what is used to match up the photo and the film frames.

Ron, sasquatch are kind of like Kansas cougars. Bowhunters see them every so often, and they leave tracks that are found every so often, but they don’t exist. I have no trouble believing in a few cougars in Kansas, but have a hard time accepting the reality of any sasquatch anywhere, and this in spite of actually finding tracks of them myself. It is just too unbelievable to my mind, but the evidence is pretty dang good in spite of it. If I could get over the hump of my mental disbelief and trust the evidence, I would be better off maybe. I still need to see a dead body of one of them to be convinced completely, but several years of investigations into track finds and such have been very interesting to say the least.

Date: 23-Mar-04

Some hair was collected in Bhutan after a bunch of sightings of an apeman occurred there. The hair was fresh and sent to England and DNA analysed by Brian Sykes, on of Britain’s leading genetics experts. Conclusion was that it was a higher primate hair of unknown origin or species. There are only so many higher primates known, so comparison is easy. However, all we know about the hair sample is that it is from an unknown higher primate, not what that primate is.

Our knowledge and ability to extract DNA from samples of hair and scat is getting better all the time. If sasquatch incidents were treated like crime scene investigations, a series of consistencies would result through time if sasquatch is real. If sasquatch is not real the evidence would be inconsistent. No investigators have looked into fingerprints at the scene of equipment messed with and such, but it could be done. Dermal ridge expert and professional crime scene investigator Jimmy Chillcut seems to think that the dermal ridges evident in some tracks are consistent and unique to sasquatch feet, but it doesn’t make credible evidence to me yet. I am more impressed with the consistent foot morphology on hundreds of tracks from hundreds of different cases, collected by hundreds of different people from hundreds of different places. The tracks I found and have investigated are of the same morphology too, so that inspires me to at least be interested in the whole subject. Morphology not only includes shape, but also length to width ratio, unique attributes of toe placement, relative toe sizes, relative toe flexibility, foot flexion placement, weight distribution in the print, flexion crease placement and others. General track lay-out is also consistent and uniquely different from human. Some of the criteria have never been publicized for fear that some hoaxer will make tracks consistant with the baseline criteria. Some of criteria even I don’t know, so when I collected track evidence from a scene, I passed it on to the physical anthropologists who do know and they would evaluate the tracks for that particular criteria.

Scat evidence might be useful in the future, if we know what to look for. One bowhunter contacted me last time we brought this subject up on this forum and said he found some odd scat that appeared to have been latrined over a period of time. Weasel family creatures are latrine animals that return to the same locations time and again to defacate. The very outsized scat he described, all in one area did not fit the norm for any other creature, so perhaps he had accidently happened upon a sasquatch latrine. Other theories are that since sasquatch is a predator it buries its feces like a cat or it covers it somehow with a deadfall or something or defacates in running water. I know that when I have the call of nature while bowhunting I either bury it or lay a log on top of it in timber country. Separating DNA from bacterial contamination is getting better and better, so if you find any scat that fits no known animal that you can think of, collect it without touching it and bring it home with you and contact Dr. Jeff Meldrum at Idaho State University asap. If you are in Utah, you can contact their wildlife department because they have a biologist who is waiting for your sample. The only Colorado biologist who would be very interested just recently retired. Wyoming hunters can contact Dr. George Gill at their University and he will take the sample properly. Dr. Gill took the hair samples from a Wyoming incident that involved one of their wildlife biologists who saw a sasquatch that broke through one of those split rail fences and left some hair samples behind. It was before the days of DNA extraction, but the hair morphology was most similar to chimpanzee hair but with some differences when studied. The samples were sent to two different labs, only one of which ran did analysis. The other lab lost it’s sample and the former lab eventually lost the samples Dr. Gill had sent. If we still had those two samples collected by a trained biologist with a personal sighting, it would be a step in the right direction. Actually, Wyoming has had two of its own state employed biologists actually see a sasquatch in that state. Sasquatch sightings and sign have dropped off drastically of late in most areas however. A few places in Colorado and northern New Mexico and a few places in British Colombia down into Washington and Idaho still show some promise, but overall I think that sasquatch will be extinct before too long and we won’t have to worry about it. We will probably find bones in some cave in about 50 years, but sasquatch will may be gone for good by then.

Why haven’t we found any fossil bones of this rare primate? Gigantopithicus existed in Asia for well over 1 million years, yet you could put all the fossils we have of it into a 1 gallon bucket. If such a creature migrated to North America and has only lived here for less than 30,000 years, how many fossils of it would be available for study? Maybe they have been here longer, because we have a human-like primate hair extracted from a cave deposit of mineral deposits over 100,000 years old. All have agreed that the hair is over 100,000 years old, but have not agreed as to the species that wore it, human or some other higher primate. What other North American higher primate is there besides human? Interesting, but inconclusive.

It is all interesting thus far, but all is inconclusive. Sasquatch simply do not exist, in spite of the hairs that can’t be identified. Dr. Henner Fahrenbach of the Oregon Primate Research Center (a medical research facility), has 7 samples of hair from 7 different incidents that are consistent with each other, of unknown species origin, a higher primate morphology, all collected in western North America, but what are they from?

If there are less than 100 sasquatch in all of Colorado, they would hardly ever be seen, tracks very rarely ever found, and absolutely about zero chance of happening upon a fresh enough carcass of one of them to be identifiable. I say that you could lay a sasquatch femur in a human foot trail in Yellowstone National Park and people would step over it until someone finally threw that big “buffalo” bone off the trail so someone wouldn’t trip over it. I have seen unidentfiable pieces of skull bones in the woods, and never gave them more than passing interest as to the species that left it. A sasquatch jaw with a few teeth left in it might last a year or two on the forest floor provided one happened across it and knew the jaw was anything other than a part of an elk or moose jaw. This is provided a bear did not chew it up first upon smelling it while fresh, with the rodents not far behind getting their calcium supply. The teeth might last for 10 or more years, little white jewels buried by pine needles quickly, forever lost to science, and certainly hard to find in millions of acres of western forests.

There are good answers to every question as to why sasquatch could live in America’s western forests and remain undiscovered officially. The main answer being that very few are looking for evidence of it because it is impossible for it to be here.

My questions are, If sasquatch is real, then why wasn’t one shot and brought in when miners and hunters were shooting everything that walked in America’s west during the 1850’s to 1910’s. 60 years of wholesale slaughter of large animals in western America? Seems to me that at least one would have been killed and brought out then. In my research into Kansas cougars, I have no trouble seeing how sasquatch avoid modern science, but still have trouble seeing how they avoided buffalo Bill and his ilk. However, I think back still to the article from the 1880’s Leadville Colorado Newspaper and how miners were very scared of a sasquatch in a stream drainage in what is now the Holy Cross Wilderness. A good experienced hunter went into the area to put an end to the “monster” and was unsuccessful in his hunt. I think about how in the 1940’s the U.S. Army supposedly lost a member of it’s Mountain Division training in the area snowy forests, with the only evidence of his disappearance being some of the soldiers articles, blood in the snow, and huge human-like footprints. Such stories are nothing but old newspaper articles and tales by local residents still living in the area. Relagated to myth, not fact, especially with the passing of time. All the “tales” from the original native (indian) inhabitants of that land are relegated to absolute myth, not fact, because it is a known fact that the original natives of this land were backward idiots who knew nothing of their own environment.

Keep in mind that Asian aborigines tales of giant primates in their forests were relegated to “complete” myth by European contacts until such time as fossils of real giant primates began to trickle back to the “real” world.

The Jemez Pueblo came into the area of southern Colorado and northern New Mexico in the early 14th century and have plenty of “tales” and “myths” of giant hairy manlike beasts encountered in the high ponderosa forests in the very areas where I found just such tracks in 1993. They even named at least one pueblo city after the man creature. I had never even heard of or considered such a creature being in Colorado until 1993 and my track find, but my research in that area found that a government bear hunter named Willford had encountered a huge upright walking bear of some sort in that same area in the 1870’s and his stories of how the native indians would not go into certain areas because of this creature. I think these are interesting “tales” because of my own experiences with tracks and sounds that don’t belong to reality in just that exact area. Maybe I spent too much time in the woods and slipped into some alter realm where furry monsters that leave outsize human tracks and make horrible noises really do exist. If some thing starts throwing huge rocks at me from some hidden location there some day, I will not run away from it but rather take off running toward it to see just what the hell it is. If it kills me, I hope a crime scene investigation is done thoroughly. For now though, I have quit collecting sasquatch evidence and just wait for it to come to me while I am out there fishing a timberline lake of bowhunting some herd bull or timberline buck.

You know, I don’t expect a single one of you to even start to really believe that sasquatch could be anything but a native myth or misidentified bear by some outdoors inexperienced white neophyte citified backpaker. I still don’t “believe” in sasquatch after finding it’s tracks and hearing those aweful sounds in might make myself, or interviewing 6 Colorado hunting guides and outfitters with experiences with it, 3 professional wildlife biologists with experiences, and a whole slew of other bowhunters and other wilderness seeking people with sightings and track finds. I looked at those awesome 19 inch tracks from the Eagle River and just shake my head as to how some person hoaxed them so damn convincing to me and everyone involved in the investigation. It is ridiculous and beyond reality that some 900 pound creature with 19 inch long feet is walking around Colorado in the 21st century.

I look at that film that Rodger Patterson made in the 1960’s, and can identify most of the major muscle masses in form and natural flexation, realize its extreme bulk, outsize chest width, arms bending in the wrong place by scientific comparison, watch the smooth movement and joint rotational axis, know the 7 idiots that claim to have been the “man in the gorilla suit”, realize that no computer graphics or even very good gorilla suits or makeup art existed in the 60’s by comparison, realize the film was made by a rodeo cowboy and not a hollywood makeup artist, and think that maybe I am getting to see a female member of a species that made 19 inch tracks that I investigated myself. I guess I just say forget the media hype and look at the Patterson film real close and use a measuring device on every frame of the film like I have and come to your own conclusion. Even if sasquatch does not exist in Colorado, I think it might have in California in the late 1960’s. Go back and look at that one comparitive photo I pasted above and see how many muscle groups you can name from anatomy class and then go look at the 1970’s era Chewbaca suit and see how many muscle groups you can identify in the Chewbaca suit?

Date: 23-Mar-04

If you look at the upper arms of the Patterson film creature, I guess they are quite a bit larger than Shaq’s thighs, in spite of her similar height. It would be a moot point to compare her girly figure to a photo of “the worlds strongest man”, because she dwarfs him in musculature. You can do it if you want, because photos of both are available. I just wanted you to know the scientific proof of the massiveness and flexion points of the creature in the Patterson film. If you watch the film frame by frame, you will also notice that it curls and extends its hands from time to time while walking, which is an interesting part of the gorilla suit with extended arms.

Just this last week yet another person has come forth to say he was the man in the gorilla suit. He said that Patterson ordered a gorilla suit from some novelty supply place in the east and that he wore it in the film. Looks just like a 1960’s era gorilla suit doesn’t it?

Date: 24-Mar-04

I just watched a program on PBS TV about the Inca of South America. The European anthropologist talking on the program was climbing at high altitude, without oxygen, and commenting on “how did those ancient Incan people climb to these heights?”. Geez, You would have thought he was some kind of super human European and belittling the Incan peoples of old. It was like “I can get up here but how did some backward stupid indian get up here at these heights over 500 years ago?”

I think it is about time that white European people and American descendants of those people who have been in America such a short time, like me, give our native peoples a little credit. Sasquatch may be a Native American myth and nothing more, but it is a dang common myth in western North American culture and it’s tracks are still found by me and others in spite of the myths from these “stupid” Natives who don’t know better according to European scientists.

I am an invasive plant species professional by occupation and so I know a little bit about plants, non-native and native. I give presentations about native plant species, and so I study the uses of those plants as done by the native inhabitants of this area prior to our own invasion of this land. When I see modern science “discoverying” the uses of these native plants, I only shake my head because I know that the selfsame uses for those plants was discovered long ago by the native inhabitants of this land and even published by the first geographers and explorers of this land. Why do I say all of this? I say it because though you might be of “superhuman” European descent and belittle the sasquatch and those native peoples who have very seriously had the sasquatch in their forests for millenium, before you were born, you may be wrong about sasquatch if you reject it’s existance out of hand.

I once also rejected the existance of sasquatch, not because I was scientific, but because I was possibly blind to anything that didn’t fit into the preconcieved perception of the world I lived in. Sasquatch was just flat impossible and nothing else. Prior to finding tracks that fit this animal I maybe had watched the Patterson film once as a child and thought no more about it. It was simply just some guy making a film of some other guy in a gorilla suit, and that was as far as I took it. I have since studied not only every frame of that film but also the background of the events and people surrounding the film. I have heard 7 people say that they were the person in the gorilla costume and heard of at least 3 professional film makers who were behind the makeup art. The problem is that the 3 people who were supposedly behind the makup art have said in no uncertain terms that they had nothing to do with the film, and 7 different people can not wear the same costume in the same film. If you take even the simple evidence I have shown here as to the extreme bulk, chest width and the rotational axis of joints of the subject into consideration, you will see that the Patterson film subject is not as simple as some media would have you to believe.

Life may be easier if you are French and take a nuetral or negative position on everything, but that does not mean that the French are right, it only means that they are doomed to destruction some day. While I am attacking the French and their holier than thou attitude, let me also attack the liberals and the liberal media. Our president is currently being attacked by the media for not preventing the 911 attack, in spite of him being in office for only 9 months and working with a 8 year previous administrations entrenched peoples who were supposed to be the intelligence of this country. Was Bush supposed to kill every would be terrorist proactively and before the fact? Had he come into office and immidiately started dropping bombs on every terrorist cell in the world he would have been called a “Hitler” by the same media that says now that he should have done something more in those 9 months. Bush did see proactively that the obviously evil Saddam Hussein was a threat to not only America but the world, so he took proactive steps in that regard and is persecuted by the media now for that proactive step. He can not win for losing, can he? His predecessor did absolutely nothing to prevent any terrorist activty, yet is glorified by the same media. “Predecessor”, means the president who was president before Bush, who was Bill Clinton, to those of you who actually believe what the liberal media says and probably don’t know what the word “predecessor” means.

Let me tell you a few truths. The truth is, sasquatch might not be a flesh and blood creature as we know it, but it is truthfully a part of American native heritage and oral history and tracks fitting it’s description have been found repeatedly. The truth is that Native Americans have every bit as many brain cells as European stock. The truth is that militant Muslims will forever be killing innocent peoples by terrorist acts as long as they reside on the face of the Earth, no matter what political party or president is in office.

What does European attitude, French parliment members, political affiliation, the media, and sasquatch have in common? The answer is that “you will believe what you want to believe or hear based on your preconcieved perception or conception of your world and reject anything you hear that goes against that preconception”. Right now the highest court in the land is contemplating removing “Under God” from our “Pledge”, and eventually will likely consider removing it from our currency as well. I personally “believe” in God, though I can not convince you scientifically of His existance if you don’t want to hear about it because you have already rejected His existance. I can tell you the scientific odds of how millions of amino acids in exact combination came together by “accident” to form the smallest and most simple of life forms, and how impossible such an accident is, but if you already think that life came by accident you will reject it anyway. I will say that scientifically a simple bacteria is more complex than a Boeing 747 airliner with onboard computers, fueled and ready to fly, but you won’t believe me because it is impossible that a 747 airliner with onboard computers, fueled and ready to fly could have formed by accident in some primordial soup. Yet you will say that a bacteria formed by accident in some primordial soup, but also say that forming an aircraft ready to fly by accident is impossible. Such is science vs. fact or mathematical chance. My opinion, and it is opinion only, is that, if I can exist, why can’t God the Creator of things exist? You have to decide by what you percieve. I see the footprints of God on the natural world that I enjoy while bowhunting or fishing in some relatively pristine environment, and the footprints of sasquatch are so minute by comparison that they are rather unimportant. You can decide for yourselves. I emplore you however to consider the natives of this land and thier heritage. I emplore you to not discount Mr. Rodger Patterson and the one film he made after very many years of hunting quest nor the integrity of his living wife who loved her long dead husband and has forever believed in him and his met goal. I have spoken to this woman and she is a sweetheart, not just some woman out to make a buck on a film her husband made years ago. Real people, with real goals and real accomplishments, not just media figures to be downtrodden by the masses or the media they follow blindly.

If some sasquatch or some eastern cougar is hit by some truck or car, I hope that you will reconsider not that sasquatch is real, but rather reconsider the important quetions in life about yourself. Do you base reality on preconcieved notion of what you think might be real or unreal or do you base it on something else, scientific or otherwise. Iowa and Missouri scientists fully rejected cougars in there respective states until such times as very many cougars have been hit and killed by cars there very recently. Cougars are just coming out of the woods there now, in number, in spite of previous scientific rejection. Same could happen with God and sasquatch too, in spite of how both are not supported by very many scientists. Though we can mostly all hope that God is not hit by a truck on the highway to prove His existance, we can at least hope that we can someday know more about Him.

I hope that sasquatch is proven to be real someday, just so we can rethink our other other scientific preconceptions about reality. My reality has more questions than answers, but I am not afraid to seek the answers in spite of being called a fool. I have been called a fool for believeing God is worth seeking answers about and been called a fool for seeking answers to Colorado sasquatch and Kansas cougars. I am used to it, so call me stupid for seeking answers and make jokes about any of the above.

The last time we had a discussion about sasquatch on the Colorado forum a couple of years ago I gave names and contact information on at least 5 or 6 professional Colorado hunting guides and outfitters with very personal sasquatch encounters to one of the most outspoken critics and he evidently never personally contacted them himself to hear firsthand their personal accounts. The forum died and no one changed their opinion on the subject one way or another. So be it. Here we go again!

Date: 25-Mar-04

Dogcatcher you have to be kidding. Native Americans didn’t need wheels, as they had good self bows. I used to use wheels, but went back to the simple form too. No troubles, no fussing and oh so sweet to shoot and hunt with. My hunting bow weighs 17 ounces and shoots a heavy arrow like a pile driver right through any critter that walks.

Native Americans also had no horses to pull wagons, and a tavois worked fine and never broke down. Even when they did finally get horses they shunned the heavy wagon, as they knew how to survive without the proverbial kitchen sink, because they were wilderness saavy. When pulling something by hand through broken terrain, give me a travois rather than something with wheels anyday. Especially big heavy wooden wheels that catch on deadfalls and eventually break anyway. You would think if our European ancestors were half smart that they would have shunned the big heavy wooden wheels on their wagons and used titanium wheels.

Date: 26-Mar-04

Right now the largest natural gas field in the world, that I live nearly on top of, are running very dry fast. I heat my house with natural gas, and we run a large portion of our irrigation pumps on natural gas to supply your food. When that runs out what will happen? Our whole civilized society is almost entirely based on fossil fuels right now, in form and infrastructure, and most types of fossil fuel are coming to an end rather fast. All hell will break loose in the “civilized” world if we don’t start yesterday changing over to a hydrogen based society using renewable resources for hydrogen production. We are not making the transition fast enough in my opinion, so it may be that burning buffalo chips for heat and walking instead of driving a 10 mpg vehicle was perhaps a little smarter way to live to a ripe old age. Put several million people into a city, turn off their power, the power to deliver them water, and stop taking food to them by truck and see what happens. It could very well happen. Who had more survival strategy intelligence, we or the native societies we displaced?

As for me and mine. I am convinced that you could strip me buck naked and turn my family and me into any rural area of North America and I could feed us and clothe us in short order and we would live well and prosper. I know which plants– wild, native, non-native and domestic have high and edible starches and which ones have high proteins. I know how to hunt and snare my meat with simple things that I can build myself in very short order from natural materials. I know how to simply process poisonous prussic acid levels out of some of the highest protein seeds, and know how to convert poisonous starches into edible starches and sugars. I know how to make some of of those sugars into a simple brew to make for a little relaxation or party time whenever we want. I know which plants have poisonous alkaloid levels or other poisons and to avoid them. In the depth of winter I know where to get vitamin C, and carbohydrates from below ground.

If you and yours are dependant upon society and “civilization” to feed you, clothe you and keep you warm, you might some day be in a world of hurt and wish you were as “smart” as the natives that lived in this land prior to our coming. Intelligence is based on need, not on anything else. Necessity is the mother of invention, not the “superior” European brain.

Necessity continues to be the impetus behind invention, but smart people plan ahead. We are not very smart as a modern civilized society in regards to food supply and energy supply for the masses we have developed on the backs of fossil fuels. Nuclear energy is smart and modern nuclear energy plants are very safe, but we have stupidly planned on stockpiling radioactive residues all in one or two places. When men mine the radiaoactive elements and refine them into fuels, he does not create the elements, but rather only takes from the earth those very elements. They were at relatively low levels of radiation in their former form. but of high level in the risidue form that must be disposed of, simply because they are in one place. Instead of spending the time to recombine those elements back into the earth at previous low level in the very places they came from, we choose to make a stockpile of high radiation in some desert area. We are lazy and “stupid” in that regard. Making a problem that does not have to exist. How smart is that?

Though I know about how to survive in primitive situation, I also know how to produce alcohol from a pile of limbs through simple enzyme action and turn that alcohol into hydrogen through a homemade reformer and the hydrogen into a home-made fuel cell to produce electricity very efficiently. I am convinced that I can aquire all I need to do this within walking distance of my home, so if civilization collapses, I am not going to live very primitively am I? Why do I tell you this, I tell you this because I am no smarter than the European superbrains of old or the native Americans, but I just have a different base to work off of then they did. Neither Europeans nor native Americans were turning ethynol into hydrogen into electricity 200 years ago. Was it because they were stupid because they had less brain cells than I do? No it wasn’t.

You can learn how to make limbs off a tree into electricity too, by simple study on the internet. Where did that information come from? It came from unity of goal of getting it to you by peoples that were of every race and every color and creed.

I will defend any genetic pool of the human race, be they red, yellow, black or white in regards to intelligence potential. It is time for us to forget color and think about our species as one race, the human race. It is time to work toward goals together, whether it be to solve our energy needs, to pass on the value of hunting to our children, or even to solve biological puzzles such as sasquatch. Did you know that very very many persons in this civilized society look at hunters as barbaric idiots of low intelligence. They think this because they also view hunting/gathering societies of old as groups of unintelligent dimwits. I differ. My son has asthma of life threatening proportion and if society collapses what drug store am I going to go to to get his bronchial dialaters to keep him alive? I won’t have to because I have a very good brochial dialater growing right in the pastures beside my house. I learned of this life giving brochial dialater from the natives that lived here hundreds of years ago. Smart people weren’t they? Smart enough to preserve the life of my son hundreds of years later.

Date: 27-Mar-04

Sorry about the heavy discussion, but I just wanted some to see how so called intelligence is relative to need, so I had to explain the process fairly in depth I guess, to make people think about it a little.

There is nothing common about bowhunters. I have found that bowhunters on average are amoung the greatest thinkers. I think this is because those who choose bowhunting over other forms of hunting like to challange their minds and their bodies toward a goal. Since they are predisposed to that kind of challange/goal orientation, they also challange themselves in other areas of life and learning. I am proud to be in the group of humans who call themselves bowhunters. Those bowhunters who disagree with me on controversial subject are not at all any less intelligent than me either, but rather just working off a different baseline of experience than I, and that’s okay. Their arguments are sound for the most part, and their questions good. I argue with myself too in the question of sasquatch. My eyes and investigations have revealed the possibility of the reality of sasquatch, but my mind still tells me it is implausible.

There is something very interesting that I have found out about locations of sasquatch sightings and tracks in western North America that applies very much in Colorado too. If sasquatch is nothing more than misidentification or fabrication of a forest animal, the locations of sightings of it should occur in a random geographical order based on human/forest interaction. In Colorado there is a place called Rocky Mountain National Park that has very nice sasquatch habitat, plenty of wildlife of all kinds, and really good places for people to misidentify something or make up a story about a sasquatch sighting. There are also plenty of humans of all fabric of society who go there to have a sasquatch sighting, more so than almost any other Colorado location. That area should recieve the most sasquatch sightings by means of the highest number of human visitors, by virtue of relative mode. I however have not one sasquatch sighting from Rocky Mountain National Park, whereas I have a whole slew of sightings from one area less than 70 miles away that is visited very much relatively less by humans. Why is this? There is difinite correlation, but I don’t know exactly what it is, if sasquatch is nothing more than fabrication and misidentification. The correlative answer is simple if sasquatch is real, and that correlative answer is that sasquatch hates to be around a bunch of human activity to a great degree. There is also a correlation to sighting/track locations and relative elk density in western North America for some reason, including Colorado. What does that correlation mean, if anything? I have also found that in eastern North America, where bigfoot sightings also sometimes occur, the sightings are random and no tracks that fit natural deposition or morphological form are found. This tells me that if sasquatch is real, it is real only where tracks of a distinct morphology occur and where sighting locations for the most part can be correlated in some way to a distinct habitat. But, sightings of it in eastern North America indicate that only a percentage of sightings of it in western North America are real and true. Why do we have hundreds of documented tracks of a distinct type collected by hundreds of different people in hundreds of different locations in the western states and none from eastern North America? Are westerners better at faking sasquatch tracks by the hundreds, and easterners so bad at faking tracks that they rarely try and when they do try it is obvious? In this age of information, it should be that easterners could fake tracks every bit as well as westerners. One other oddity is that eastern American soils are more conducive to tracks by virtue of being usually of a less rocky nature on the whole than western mountain soil types, so faked tracks should be found there in relatively higher number because there are more places to fake them for some yahoo to find. Interesting, to me anyway.

How many professional guides and outfitters are there in Colorado compared to any other occupation? Those who make their living by hunting are a very small lot indeed, yet by correlation they have so much larger percentage of sasquatch sightings and track finds of sasquatch in Colorado than any other forest visiting persons of any occupation. Is it because hunting guides and outfitters are worse at wildlife identification or track identification than the general public, or is it because they are liars to a much greater degree than the general public? If sasquatch is not real, then one of those is true. I don’t believe that hunting guides are liars to such a greater degree, nor do I think that they are worse at wildlife identification than the general public, so I am at a point of stalemate. Sasquatch sightings in Colorado come from those who visit the wildest places more often than the rest of us for some reason. There has to be a logical answer for this. What is it?

Date: 27-Mar-04

I want you guys to see these three tracks from three different locations found over a period of 15 years by three different people and found before anyone published any criteria as to what a sasquatch track is supposed to look like. These three tracks range from 13 inches long to 17 inches long, but I have sized them all the same here for easier comparison of morphology.

These tracks are all obviously pressed into the soil instead of drawn into the soil. They all show absolute flexible foot bottom by virtue of relative weight distribution and lack of any impact ridges that would result from an inflexible wooden foot. Please note that each shows the most compaction of soil in the same locations as the others. Note that a short ways behind the largest toe that there is an indentation and flexion crease in that ball area of each of these track examples. Each of these tracks is from a series of tracks in relatively good tracking soils and each showed great flexibility in the toes as in some tracks the toes are more extended and in some tracks the toes are more curled and the tips of the toes show in the soil on some of the tracks moreso than in other tracks in the same track-line. Note that in each of these three examples that the heaviest compaction of soil occurs in a way indicating a relatively squishy foot bottom whereby the soil is not quite as impacted toward the center of the foot. Note the relative length to width ratio that is so much different than human footprints and how the foot is completely different than human in spite of a similar shape. Note the arrangement of toelines and how the little 5th toe does not track very well in many cases. I could go on and on and on as to morphological sameness of these tracks and why they are not from wooden fake feet. I can also go on and on and on about how they are different from human tracks or bear tracks. Having investigated the events, timeframes and the peoples surrounding these track finds I could also go on and on and on as why they were not faked by the same person. I can also tell you that I found tracks myself that fit this morphology and have personally investigated others that fit this morphology exactly in every way. What are these tracks from and why have they been documented just so in western North America over the last 50 years in photo and cast form? Why were these giant human-like tracks reportedly found by miners and hunters from Crestone Colorado to the Pacific Northwest since the 1840’s? Why did the Jemez Pueblo indians name one of their northern pueblos after the huge humanlike tracks they reportedly found at that location in the 1500’s? I wish cameras would have been invented in the year 1500 and that the forty-niners would have had cameras or plaster of paris to record the tracks they found too.

As information of this type of track becomes more and more available to the public, the incidence of these tracks is becoming less and less frequent. This is backwards to what one would expect if they are faked and indicates that the real makers of these tracks are becoming less numerous rather than more numerous as time goes by. Why? I am getting more and more convinced that this particular type of track will eventually disappear from North America, just as you can no longer find Columbian mammoth tracks here any longer, though mammoths used to be tracked and hunted by man here in North America. Sad.

Date: 27-Mar-04

By the Way, please don’t blame me for faking the tracks in the 3 photos I submitted, because I was in diapers when the black and white photos were taken. I have very very many more track photos and photos of casts in my files that fit just this morphology. Way to many to submit on a forum that is getting too long to download with small photos anyway. Actually I really came to the point that it was a moot point to collect any more track photos or casts because they were all the same anyway, no matter when or where in western North America they came from, as long as they were coming from high elk density areas. I have seen a few faked tracks and they were so obvious that it took me about 5 seconds to evaluate them. I live in an area with antelope and two species of deer. I have no trouble distiguishing antelope tracks from deer tracks even though they both have similar characteristics, they are distinctly different. Usually I can tell the difference between whitetail tracks and mule deer tracks by depth of the hoof edges, but not always. They are so similar that it is most often very difficult to distinguish between the two. I also have no trouble distinguishing sasquatch tracks from human or bear tracks, they having so many differences that distiguish them from each other. Why is their a distinct morphology to sasquatch tracks in comparison to human tracks? Why wouldn’t sasquatch track fakers just make big human tracks through all of these years or in at least some cases when the tracks looked naturally deposited? Never happens. When the tracks are rather obviously naturally deposited they all fit the same mold in spite of the size differences found. The 19 inch tracks I investigated a few years ago from edge the Eagle River fit the morphology exactly, even though they were in gravelly soils that are fairly hard to see detail in. The fact that within a few feet of these tracks that there was better track faking soil available only convinces me more of the genuineness of the tracks that were photographed. You may be surprised to know that the local law enforcement investigators and the local wildlife biologist came to the same conclusions as I. The tracks were real, they were 19 inches long, they were from an extremely heavy animal, and they were real, but what thing made them? My experiences with these tracks is kind of like living in the dang Twilight Zone. 19 inch long tracks about 9 inches wide and pressed dang hard into the soil can only be appreciated when viewed for yourself in full and glorious reality. You simply can not appreciate the size of the tracks and indications of weight involved until you see them yourself. If you even begin to believe that they are real tracks, the indications are scary and Twilight Zonish. Really big grizzly tracks are kind of that way too when seen, as they make you feel on the smallish size and kind of like you entered perhaps a realm of existance that you should probably avoid. I saw some pretty big grizzly tracks on Wyomings Bacon Creek while hunting black bear, and that was just a little boar inland grizzly. I can’t imagine seeing in person a very fresh set of big boar coastal grizzly tracks in person with only a bow in hand. Some bowhunters do, and they have my condolances. Did you know that Colorado once had grizzly boars who’s hides squared more than 10 feet and that apparently weighed more than 1000 pounds? This is in spite of most biological theory being that the farther south one travels the smaller any given species of mammal. Colorado grizzlies of old were big suckers. Wish they were still here. Wish there was a chance that my grandkids could find a set of sasquatch tracks while bowhunting Colorado 50 years from now. But I fear that sasquatch tracks will go the way of Colorado grizzly tracks in the near future. It’s not sad, it’s damn sad, to never see those tracks there again. Sasquatch just needed more space than we can give it now days. Maybe there will be a few sasquatch holdouts in British Columbia for awhile, if human disease does not wipe them out there. Maybe I will take a long walk in some relatively untouched area of British Columbia someday, uphill and downhill as far as my quickly aging legs will take me in a week or two and see whats there. There are some areas there where you could spend months on end and never see or hear another human even if you tried and the only indication of other humans is a plane flying over every once in awhile. I used to be able to hike uphill for hours on end with a 70 pound backpack strapped to me full of tent, bedding, clothes, food to last a week,and many things I never really needed (my personal limit during youth), but not anymore. I suppose I could take a piece of lightweight plastic to put over my lean-to for solid rain protection, a light axe, a little light cording, a light flat-bow, a couple arrows, a light sleeping bag with goretex outer, and live off the land. I would probably loose weight even though I am already a little too slim, and might not come back out, but it might be a fun challange to do it. I have responsibilities to wife, kids and grandkids here at home that kind of prevent me from doing that now, but I think that about the time that most people go into old folk homes I am going on a walkabout in a one way direction into the deepest darkest portion of North America to see what is there if I still have half my mental wits about me. I hope it is still deep and dark there 20 or 25 years from now. Don’t you think Saxton Pope, Art Young or Fred Bear would have rather ended their days on a walkabout rather than an old folks home? I do. We all have to say a permanent goodbye, but we might have a choice on how we go if we pay attention to indications of the end. Since women usually outlive their husbands by quite a few years, I wonder how long it takes to collect life insurance if your husband disappears into the depths of British Columbia? The older you get, the more you wonder about things like that because you know that life does have limit. My dad died at not quite 70 years old, so I might have to decide in less than 25 years if all goes well. With my luck I will probably start my walkabout at age 69 and come back out because of loneliness at age 75 to end my days playing cards in some old folks home and not knowing diddly squat because of aging brain cells and my wife will have collected the life insurance that she has to pay back and remarried. Guess if I go I will have to ignore loneliness until the end so that my wife doesn’t have to pay back the insurance payment. I don’t like playing cards or watching re-runs on television anyway. I would much rather feed my skinnly old carcass to coyotes, wolves and grizzly bears rather than anaerobic bacteria 6 foot underground anyway. I just know that Fred Bear, giving the choice in hindsight would have had it that way too. Maybe I will ask him someday, the same day I find out if sasquatch tracks were real or faked by some really good track fakers. Forgive me if I think that there is some great truth behind Mel Gibson’s film “The Passion of the Christ” and Christs death and resurrection on our behalf. Forgive me if I think that life is more than 70 years of thought and struggle that ends in blackness and nothingness. I can’t scientifically prove that God created man, or intercessed logically on man’s behalf to make for Himself free will beings in difference to unthinking robots to keep Him company for eternity, any more than I can prove that sasquatch tracks may be more than faked tracks. But, God is universally and completely more logical to me than sasquatch. Sasquatch is relatively unimportant by comparison. You know, I would hate to go off into a final wilderness walkabout without preparing a good bow and matched arrows, and I would hate to end my last day on planet earth without preparing a good set of spiritual bow and arrows to take that trek, just in case I am more than flesh and blood. Never hurts to be prepared. I don’t care whether you ever find sasquatch tracks in the woods, but I hope that while you are in wilderness places you see the tracks of the creator. That is where I feel closest to Him, not in church. Ever wonder why the planets that circle our sun are so balanced in orbit and supposedly accidently spun off of some theoretical molten mass some billions of years ago, yet are so different from each other in spite of being from the same accidental spinning molten mass. If you don’t believe in God or creation, do this test. Put watery mud, sticks, stones or what-have-you into a ball and spin it at high speed and see what flys off and where it lands. You will see by this test that you have masses that will land at certain distances from the center of rotation in an ordered way depending upon relative mass. You can repeat the test over and over again and it will end the same relative way again and again as many times as you try it. The spinning mass that supposedly accidently happened to create our one solar system according to science is completely different from the result of this simple test of orbital deposition. Why is that? Is science ignorring something that is right there in front of it’s face because they want to ignore it? Like I have always said, you will see what you want to see, no matter how much evidence, even scientific evidence, contradicts it. I don’t care whether the morphological sameness of sasquatch tracks indicate a real species, as much as I care whether God exists or not. Science does a great job itself of ignorring any evidence of either it doesn’t want to see, so why should I. It also took science hundreds of years to admit that meteorites came from outer space, in spite of them holding them in their hands and human witnesses to the fact that these unusual rocks came falling out of the sky and the impact craters created that anyone could go out and see. Scientists by and large would rather stick to the very well known fact that rocks don’t fall from outerspace to earth.

Date: 01-Apr-04

I have talked to at least a couple dozen hunters in Colorado, both rifle hunters and bowhunters, who have reported seeing sasquatch in that state. Most times the sasquatch was in firearm range and in several cases the sasquatch was within bow range. None of these hunters even began to think about shooting such a man-like creature. Good thing, as I don’t want hunters shooting at me, in case they are mistaking me for a sasquatch. The only case I know of, of a sasquatch being shot was in the mid 60’s in Wyoming, when two college age rifle hunters from Ohio reportedly shot one, thinking it was a bear. They had never heard of “bigfoot” and thought they had accidently shot a local human freak. They fled home without telling anyone. When the Patterson film came out as a documentary in the early 70’s, the two men decided that this is what they must have killed and reported it to the authorities. No one evidently went to the location to look for any residual teeth that might have remained somewhere in the soil of the general location of the killing but the men supposedly both kept to their story. The two Wyoming biologists that have reported seeing sasquatch themselves in Wyoming had their personal experiences in the 70’s and 80’s, after the incident with the two hunters. One of the biologists, senior biologist John Myonczinski (sp?), recently retired from the Wyoming game department and so has gone partially public with his experience. He was their bighorn sheep field biologist and spent very much time in tents at timberline areas doing field study. The other biologist, who saw a sasquatch in open ground and somewhat chased it with his vehicle, causing it to break through a split rail fence and leave behind tracks and hair samples, still works for the state of Wyoming and so has not gone public. Those were the hair samples that went to two labratories via Dr. George Gill at Wyoming State University that were deemed to be similar to chimpanzee hairs. I have the test results somewhere in my files, but they really mean nothing now as the hairs got lost and were never returned to Dr. Gill. Interesting though, since a trained biologist was involved with the sighting and the hair collection according to professional evidence recovery standards.

The reason that I still don’t “believe” in sasquatch in spite of finding tracks, investigating tracks that are just so real looking, reading professional reports on hair samples, and talking to so many biologists with personal experiences and quite a number of professional hunting guides and outfitters with personal experiences and track finds, is that my logic may be faulted. Logically, after evaluation of so much evidence and testimony from evidently completely sane and experienced witnesses, I think that sasquatch must be real. However science dictates that all real things are logical, but not all logical things are real. Therefore, ultimately, sasquatch is not real until such time as the evidence is indisputable. I am also completely convinced that “sightings” of sasquatch will continue after sasquatch is completely extinct, even if it still exists in reality at this point in time. My reseach is completely useless until such time as sasquatch is proven to exist. If it is proven to exist in Colorado, my research will then possibly be important to establish possible distribution and location to begin official study of the species. That, and my own curiosty about the tracks I found, was the impetus of my research into the subject in the first place. Personally I have learned many things about all facets of science, biology, wildlife and human nature through my research into sasquatch, so it has not been a complete personal waste of time for me.

Date: 01-Apr-04

For those who completely discount any possibility of sasquatch being real, I just want to say that paradox exists in many forms in science. Some may appear to be contradictory instead of paradoxical, but there is a difference between those two expressions. It may seem that if we don’t yet have fossil or fresh flesh and bone example of sasquatch that it can’t be a real species to the point that this particular lack of evidence is contradictory to scientific reality, but that may not be the case. I believe that it is rather a paradox and that sasquatch is still worth investigative effort, by me or someone else according to expertise. I am not an expert in many areas that apply. Saying that, I don’t believe that sasquatch fits the realm of ontological arguments about reality in a generic sense, but rather in the realm biological argument.

Date: 03-Apr-04

Matt, if you did strike it rich, I don’t think any amount of money would result in catching up to a sasquatch. What would it take to catch a fairly intelligent 1000 pound ape with thighs bigger around than Shaq’s waistline. If the Patterson film is genuine then that musculature indicates that possibly it can walk all day long, uphill and downhill at over 5 mph. One sighting on the Colorado/New Mexico border was by a professional veternarian from the Chama area who said he watched a huge sasquatch walk up a rockslide just off Hwy 17. He said it rarely touched the rocks with it’s hands and walked steadily up the rock slide without stopping once. It ascended the rock slide in less than 10 minutes. The vet went back to the location the next day to try to find any tracks below and above the slide on the creatures route and he said that it took him about an hour, with several rest breaks needed to climb the same rock slide. He was just as impressed, excited really, with the creatures physical ability as he was the creature itself. When we look at the tracks, there are also very many indications of extreme flexibility lenthwise. They can evidently bend their feet more than we can, similar I suppose to how we can bend our hands, only not quite so extreme because of the thickness of the pad evident on the bottom of the sasquatch foot. What this bending might be for is climbing trees, similar to how an islander human shimmies up a palm tree for coconuts. I think that momma sasquatch sends junior sasquatch up a tree while she is out hunting, and perhaps that is why their feet are adapted to climbing. I really think that they are very good at hiding when young and when old. So they must be smart, can get from point A to point B in quick order, and can hide very well and know that hiding will help them survive.

Besides those things, if sasquatch is real, then it is a predator for the most part, not a herbivore. If it was a herbivore it would be seen in more open places where sun hits the ground enough to grow good plant foods. Their relative low population also indicates a predator species. Predators are naturally lower in number than their prey, and the bigger the predator the rarer they are because no one area can support very many of them. In my calculations based on size of a sasquatch male and prey availability, I think they need at least 400 square miles of forest each to survive, with perhaps one or two females and single offspring in that area too at times. In some areas a male cougar may require as much as 125 square miles that he defends against other male cougars. I think that sasquatch and cougar social systems are very similar. This type of lonely social system also exists for the orangutan, who also spend most of their lives alone. The hunting nature of a sasquatch also means that it knows how to hide in waiting for an elk or deer to come along down a trail. It knows about wind direction, and one thing it knows better than anything else is the movement patterns of its prey. Because it’s intelligence is geared around pattern of movement, it would naturally be very good at patterning the natural movements of humans that travel within its territory and be good at avoiding humans. Humans really do stick to the drainages and human trails for the most part, even most hunters. Even when I backpack into wilderness areas, I do most of my travel on human foot trails, because when going long distances I usually have a backpack on and it is easier to walk on the established trails rather than taking off cross country. Sasquatch also know where humans hate to travel, such as timber that is heavily strewn with deadfalls. That is where sasquatch likely spend their rest time, in the horrible stuff that even elk and deer avoid traveling through. Elk can run right through that stuff, but it is energy consuming for them and they avoid it if they can. Like us, most animals choose paths of least resistance until just before they bed down, if they like to bed in heavy cover.

If you think it would be hard to hide a 1000 pound dark colored animal, go moose hunting. Moose seem to be one of the dumbest of the herbivores, but they can hide without even trying. If there were only 50 moose in Colorado and they were as smart as a chimpanzee, you would probably never see one of them.

So, if sasquatch is real and living in Colorado in number between 30 to 100 of them, smart as a chimpanzee, a hunter par excellance, a lover of the forest and hater of open areas, how do you find one of them on purpose?

Since they spend almost all their time in heavy forest, even FLIR equipped aircraft can’t see down through the trees sufficently to see them.

I think the only way that you might have a chance at collecting a sasquatch is by an orchestrated effort of helicopters covering thoroughly a 400 square mile area of forest looking for sasquatch tracks in the snow. When a set of tracks is found you then concentrate on following it down by tracking with helicopter and foot soldiers dropped off from point to point until such time as you come to the end of the tracks where a sasquatch is making them. Flying helicopters in the mountains under such conditions is very dangerous, so it is likely that no one will undertake what it would take. Maybe it would be an ultimate challange for the military to track down a sasquatch, and the trained military and their equipment is probably what it would take. Even trained military with hundreds of men on the ground and many helicopters in the air have been unable to track a man that was hiding in a 40 square mile forest in eastern North America, so maybe that won’t even work. However, I think it would be much easier with snow on the ground. The last thing that any branch of the military is likely to do is use it’s resources and risk its pilots lives to try and track down a creature that doesn’t even exist, and I don’t blame them.

I hope some day that some law enforcement officer finds some good fresh tracks in snow and has the gumption to try to use some resources to try to follow them up to the end of them. Officer Joe Taylor Jr. almost did just that with two sets of sasquatch tracks in snow and mud in about 14 years ago southwest of Antonito Colorado, but he was on his own and in unofficial capacity. All he got was some video of the tracks and a lot of exercise. Those tracks were 19 inches long and 21 inches long respectively. 21 inches long is the longest set of tracks that I know of from Colorado. That is one huge set of feet making those tracks. I have seen 19 inch long tracks, and I can’t imagine them any bigger than that myself. Pretty scary looking. No wonder officer Taylor eventually gave up following those two sets of tracks, as he was probably afraid of finding the things that made them. I’m not sure I want to come face to face with one of them either, but curiosity would push me on I think. I really really hope that at least some of you other bowhunters will come acoss a set of these tracks yourself some day, and you will know exactly what I mean when I say the tracks are scary looking.

In officer Taylors case, the tracks were found at the edge of the forest on the backside of a ladies pasture while she was out tring to photograph some mule deer. She was Taylors niece, so she called him to go look at the tracks she had found on her property. He went, he saw, he video taped them, he followed them. He described them as having a stride of over 48 inches even while walking slightly uphill. He described how he could even see the human-like toenail imprints in the mud in tracks where the toes were curled downward. Who in the world would hoax such tracks in southern Colorado on the backside of a pasture where no one would likely ever find them and how did they walk with such huge feet on with such a long stride uphill?

Why did someone fake 19 inch tracks along the Eagle River in a gravelly area when only a few feet away was very nice soils to fake tracks in? How did they get them so pressed into the soils so well? If sasquatch is not real, then I don’t know who is out there faking these tracks or how they do it so well in so many places and cases.

Date: 03-Apr-04

Sorry, but I have to explain myself when talking about something as controversial as sasquatch.

Provided dogs would chase a bigfoot, a houndcam might work. About 8 years ago I was contacted by a professional Colorado houndsman/hunting guide who said he cut fresh sasquatch tracks in snow with his hounds and that the dogs acted cowardly and oddly at the scent for some reason. Whether his story had any merit I don’t know. I had sent emails to 23 long time Colorado outfitters/hunting guides asking whether any of them had had experiences with sasquatch in their hunting careers and that was one of the responses I got back from one of the guides.

Only 7 of the 23 responded to my email, four positively with experiences with sasquatch or tracks. One of the longtime hunting guides reported to me that he had a 30 yard range sighting while bowhunting and bugling for elk in the Lost Creek Wilderness in the 70’s. He thought it was responding to his elk bugle calls, which is why it got so close before detecting it’s mistake. He said it stepped in full view in a small meadow right next to him, so that he had no doubt about its size and every feature on it. He was very serious and glad that I was investigating the subject, and I could find no reason to not believe what he told me happened. I also found no reason to doubt Jeff Dysinger about his long duration sighting near Raspberry Mountain while he was guiding out of Colorado Springs. Raspberry Mountain is only about 20 miles from the other hunting guides personal encounter. Raspberry Mountain, immediately southwest of Woodland Park seems like an odd place for a sasquatch, but it also seems like an odd place for so many cougars. Most every winter there are sightings or track finds in the general vicinity of the Lost Creek Wilderness. Last sighting there that I know of was on 12/14/02 by several different motorists that reported a sasquatch walking near the edge of the highway during a heavy snow storm right on Kenosha Pass as reported to me by a sheriffs deputy who responded to the several calls they got from the motorists. Tracks were found by a coyote hunter 9 miles southeast of Kenosha Pass on Long Gulch on FR127 in Jan of 2001. So if you want to find sasquatch tracks yourself, your best bet might be to drive all the roads of that area in winter and look for big tracks. Then you can try setting the houndcam in action.

Sorry about getting long again, but if I don’t tell you about the reports from law enforcement and hunting guides, who will? As far as I know, CDOW is not planning any brochure on “Sasquatch in Colorado”.

Date: 03-Apr-04

Zeb, show me a body and then I’ll believe too. My first thought about the sighting on Kenosha Pass was that somebodies car broke down and the poor guy was walking along in a fur coat and people were going by thinking they were seeing a bigfoot. The deputy told me however that the people who reported the sighting were certain it was not a person in a fur coat or a gorilla suit. One of the motorists even reported that at first he thought it was some kind of joke until he got closer and also then realized how unlikely it would be for someone to be making a joke in such a serious and dangerous situation as a heavy snow on Kenosha Pass. Stay skeptical, but be aware and be thorough.

MF, there are so many different situations as far as how long a track will last that it is hard to say how long one will last. Tracks in snow are usually quickly covered with fresh snow in Colorado. However a gas powered leaf blower can sometimes reveal them in detail because the tracks themselves kind of turn icy where compressed. I have seen dinosaur tracks in Colorado on the Purgatory River, so I guess that tracks can sometimes last a long time. There are faked bigfoot tracks, but that does not mean that all bigfoot tracks are faked.

I think someone could fake dermal ridges in tracks, and most every other thing too. The only thing that convinces me of authenticity is anatomical continuity between tracks collected by many different persons in many different locations in many different years, before any publication as to what a sasquatch track is supposed to look like, such as the three examples above. The tracks I found personally and the tracks from the Eagle River were also very convincing to me, knowing every aspect of the situations involved. I can see no reason in the world to think the tracks are not real in many cases, but just still have trouble accepting the creature itself as being real. I hope the mystery is solved someday.

Date: 11-Apr-04

DSL, The tracks I found in 1993 were on the north edge of the South San Juan Wilderness, near the Lake Fork of the Conejos River, due south of a little lake called Rock Lake. A local outfitter found a set on the Rito Gato above Platoro Reservior in the late 80’s. A hunting guide found a fresh set in snow on the eastern edge of the SSJWilderness. Some people with the conservation group that went into the south edge of the South San Juan Wilderness looking for grizzly tracks found one sasquatch track in an elk wallow somewhere southwest of Conejos Peak. The two sets that officer Taylor documented were near the CO/NM border northwest of San Antonio Peak.

I spent 20 years hunting, fishing and hiking in that area before I ran across sasquatch sign, so maybe you are due for your own encounter.

There is evidently sasquatch activity all the way from San Antonio Peak in northern New Mexico toward the northwest clear over to the Silverton Colorado area. The Weminuche Wilderness is smack dab in the middle. There are certainly some huge areas in the Weminuche that are very rarely visited by humans. There are even some places that total more than 100 square miles that have no topographic map listed human trails on them. That is probably where sasquatch and grizzlies like to spend their time.

I heard from a former CDOW employee that a photo of a sow grizzly and two cubs was taken in the Weminuche in 1999, but I have not seen a copy of it to verify. There’s a kind of hush. It would be awesome to see a Colorado grizzly bear, especially after reading about how big the boars used to get in Colorado. Evidently Colorado had some really big grizzlies, which goes against the fact that usually the more southern one goes in North America the smaller the size of any given species. Evidently some of the Colorado boar grizzlies squared over 10×10 feet. Wow.

Date: 13-Apr-04

Maybe next time you will get to see what you think is a stump that then stands up like a 9 foot hairy man and walks off, instead of the other way around. I hope I do some day.

About the only time I was really startled while bowhunting was when I was in grizzly country and had a friendly horse come running up on me in the starlight darkness at high speed. I could have killed that horse, but he nudged me gently and softened my wildly beating heart. Took several years off of my life and gave me a few grey hairs in an instant however. I know carry my flashlight in my hand while hiking by starlight, though I usually still leave it off, so as not to disturb the peace.

Date: 24-Sep-04

Believer and “Rather be Hunting”, where did you hear your screams and could you describe the smell to me Believer?

I’ve heard bull elk make all sorts of sounds from normal bugling to braying and grunting. Sometimes their bugling is pretty raspy and could be mistaken for something else. I have also heard cougars several times, usually female cougar mating screams, but they are pretty easy to identify once heard.

At the time that I found that line of 20 or so 17 inch long sasquatch tracks in southern Colorado that got me interested in the possibilitie, I heard from pretty dang close range a series of three awesome roaring screams that have to be heard to be appreciated. I have no proof that the sounds were of a sasquatch, but whatever it was had a big set of lungs and good vocal cords and didn’t match any known species that I know of. Wish I would have got the sounds themselves on video tape, as I had a camcorder in my daypack but didn’t think about it being able to record sounds until later.

I definitely believe in sasquatch tracks because of the ones I found myself and the sets I have personally investigated since then and I believe in those sounds I heard. Something is making those tracks and I don’t believe that all of them are faked. Something is also making those horrible sounds out there.

Date: 24-Sep-04

Thanks Gary. Something messed around our cabin just outside the north edge of the SSJWilderness in Colorado one night according to my sister and a cousin of mine that smelled the exact description to the smell you describe. Their description was an outhouse smell with skunk and BO mixed in. Guess humans are pretty good at describing smells similarly. I have not smelled anything like that in any location before, but can kind of understand the description. While this aweful smell was going on, my 45 year old cousin said he saw a huge upright walking thing circling his RV that night. It eventually grabbed hold of the RV and rocked it violently while my cousin sat on the floor with a pistol in hand to protect himself. This happened about a year after I found those tracks in that area and he knew nothing of my track find or other experiences, as we had told no one outside immediate family.

Bears have been known to rock vehicles, including RV’s, and they also can sometimes stink to high heaven if they have been feeding on carrion. ???? As far as I know, bears do not scream however, nor walk around gracefully on their back legs.

Still, I will have to almost shake hands with a real sasquatch to be completely convinced, in spite of what I have found. Mostly because I am an extreme skeptic on nearly everything like this.

Date: 16-Dec-04

Possible clues on where to search.

My collection of Colorado sasquatch reports shows that December/January is best up around Kenosha Pass (last sightings there on 12/14/02), and up road FR127 which heads east just south of Kenosha Pass (tracks found there Jan. 21 2001 crossing the road on Long Gulch). Might need a snowmobile to get up FR127 most years in Dec/Jan.

Another location for Colorado sasquatch hunters in winters is down south across the border into NM, around the base of San Antonio Peak.

Good luck if you go searching for winter sasquatch or sasquatch tracks. If you find tracks, record them well photographically and with precise measurements and send them to me at kfoster@gcnet.com

Late March might find some migrating sasquatch along the Eagle River, around Gypsum to Eagle. I think they head from the lower country back into the Holy Cross about the last of March and the first of April depending upon the weather. I have some real interesting info from Sheriffs Dept. there that is not publicised. Actually some of their own deputies have seen the big pine apes with their own eyes, which is why it is not publicised of course. A good way to lose your law enforcement job is to say you saw a sasquatch I guess. I can’t say who, when or exactly where, but trust me on this. Sasquatch may be very rare, but it sure leaves real tracks and some very credible people have seen it lately in Colorado.

Date: 24-Dec-04

Stevet, Dysinger was very serious and straightforward in his descriptions and was in my opinion telling the truth in my visits with him on the telephone after the incident he described. Dysinger was not the only hunting guide to have a sighting in the general area. Another bowhunting guide also reported a sighting to me from that area. His occurred in the mid 70’s and was much closer range, about 25 to 30 yards distant. So we have two hunting guides in that particular area with personal close range and clear view sightings. Neither of the guides knew of the other guides sightings, as I had never shared with the public the first guides personal sighting. Their testimonies support each other very well in detail description of the creature involved despite the 20 years between the sightings. Dysinger got a long look at the details of the face as he watched it for 10 minutes or more through good binoculars at close enough range to see details pretty good. Generally he said it looked pretty much like a gorilla in the face, but with nostrils lower down closer to the mouth and not as flared. Kind of like a squished down human nose. It will be interesting to see the carcass of one some day to see the exact details.

The guide with the 70’s sighting is still alive, now lives in the Rifle area, and sticks to his story too.

I think sasquatch are animal and not human, but I still don’t think I could shoot one of them simply because I would hate to remove any individual sasquatch genetics from the general population. If it was a very old looking silvered male, I might collect it for science. I’d just like to see one myself, or at least personally find some more tracks. If I shot one, I would take lots of photos of the carcass, and cut off one foot and take it with me as I went out for help to get the carcass out.

Like I have said many times, I am convinced the tracks are real, consistent in a unique morphology, and made by a very heavy weight creature. I am pretty certain that most of the witnesses are telling the truth, but I still have a very hard time believing that the creature itself is real. I’ll have to see one myself to be completely convinced. It is definitely worth study however. I just hope they don’t go extinct before we know exactly what they are. There used to be locations in northern California where about anyone could go search for tracks and be pretty much assured of finding a set for themselves with enough searching. That is no longer the case in that area, which does not bode well for sasquatch population there. Tracking soil conditions are much better in most of the pacific northwest than in Colorado. I don’t think we could make population estimate decisions based on track finds in Colorado, simply because most of Colorado is not very conducive to tracking soft footed animals, due to rocky or hard packed soils and pine needles. Clear bear tracks are hard to find, and bears are quite numerous in many Colorado locations, so finding clear sasquatch tracks is kind of like winning the lottery. Snow would help, provided it was not snowing regularly to cover up tracks soon after they were made.

To find sasquatch tracks in snow, search in the areas where elk density is highest in any one locale. Sasquatch are evidently searching out good elk hunting, so I think we can increase our odds by a search for sasquatch where their evident food is located. A map of quality sasquatch sightings and sign are pretty much a map of good elk numbers at any one time of year, so their must be some correlation. Sasquatch are not prone to wander about in open areas for the most part, due to loss of stealth, so searching forested areas close to where elk feed in more open areas in winter might increase odds. If you wanted to have the best chance to catch an elk during winter and stay out of sight of humans, where would you go and how would you hunt. That is where I think you will have the best chance to find sasquatch sign yourself. If sasquatch is real, there are not very many of them because no one area will support very many of them. Like all predators, they are naturally rare. The bigger the predator, the rarer and the more territory each one needs individually. If an individual cougar needs nearly 100 square miles of hunting area, a sasquatch needs 4 times more at least I think.

I truely think that if sasquatch is real and is the predator it seems to be, that every fiber of its mental being is honed toward being able to pattern daily and annual movements of its preferred prey species. This unfortunately also makes it superb and being able to pattern human activity and movement within its territory for human avoidance. I think sasquatch are not dim witted, but very intelligent in the ways that it has to be. It may not use fire, tools, or make clothes, but it doesn’t have to.

Date: 26-Dec-04

Bear, I don’t believe 100% that sasquatch exists simply because it really seems absurd to my mind that sasquatch could have remained unofficially discovered up to this point in time in North America. Though I certainly know the tracks well, I just can not force my skeptical mind to completely fathom the creature that makes them. I am mentally torn between finding tracks that were so real, so natural, so huge and so dang off the beaten track, that it is also absurd to think they were possibly not real. Oh yes, the tracks were real, but what made them? When you find 9 inch wide tracks with 5 very clear toes across the front of each in somewhat human arrangement in some out of the way place and so naturally deposited with such evident weight involved, it is perhaps easy to jump to the conclusion that some form of huge man-like creature walks about in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado. Especially when several outfitters and hunting guides in the same area have also found these tracks or have reported seeing a creature that evidently matches the tracks. Not to mention the other bowhunters and rifle hunters who have seen the creature there too. Logically, if we put the testimony and the physical track evidence together, it would make a completely good court case, but it still does not make a perfect scientific case. Though there is no reason for someone to hoax tracks where I found them or even where I have investigated tracks found by others, and though there is no earthly reason why these hunting guides have any reason to make up stories, in fact the opposite. Tracks can be and sometimes are hoaxed, and people can and do sometimes make up stories. That is why science, and I, needs an example, living or dead, of the creature itself to be 100% convinced of the species itself.

On the other hand.

Of the general Colorado human population, professional hunting guides and outfitters by occupation represent a very small percentage of population. Lets say hunting guides represent .0003 percent of Colorado residents, and 6 of those guides have reportedly seen sasquatch or found their tracks in Colorado. And then lets say that 200 other Colorado residents or visitors to Colorado have reportedly seen sasquatch or it’s tracks there. If we scientifically chart the ratio of sightings by professional occupations, we find that hunting guides have a hugely greater rate of sightings and/or track finds than any other professional occupation. Why would this be? If sasquatch is not real, it means that hunting guides tell lies or are worse at wildlife identification at a hugely higher rate than the general public. Is this true? It has to be true if sasquatch is not real. On the other hand, if sasquatch is real, it means that hunting guides must have the best chance of seeing them or finding their tracks. Which conclusion seems more logical. It does seem more logical to me that a person who makes his living observing wildlife and searching the ground for tracks would be the one to have the greater chance of seeing what is living out there and also finding tracks of what is living out there than the general population. This is exactly how it is with sasquatch sightings, like it or not. If you want to have the greatest chance of seeing a sasquatch, be a hunting guide, specifically a bowhunting guide, in Colorado. In Wyoming, the ratio of chance increases if your occupation is “professional wildlife biologist”. Two Wyoming State wildlife biologists have reportedly seen sasquatch in that state. This means that if you want to have a hugely greater chance of seeing a sasquatch in Wyoming than the general population, you should choose the occupation of wildlife biologist. Why is that the case?

Why is it that in Colorado, there are no known sasquatch sightings in Rocky Mountain National Park, yet 80 miles south of that Park there are very numberous sightings in one area smaller than the park itself, and a couple of those sightings are by professional hunting guides? If sasquatch is not real, couldn’t it also be seen by wildlife inexperienced National Park visitors. If sasquatch is not real, this tells us most assuredly that National Park visitors are better identifiers of wildlife and/or more truthful than hunting guides. You can not have it both ways.

So, if you do not want to see a sasquatch or find its tracks, become a member of the general public and visit Rocky Mountain National Park as often as you please. If you do want to see a sasquatch, become a professional bowhunting guide and visit the Pike National Forest/Lost Creek Wilderness often. Why is it this way? One would think that inexperienced weekend campers, scared of the dark, and prone to wildlife misidentification would have the best chance of seeing something that does not exist, but they very evidently don’t. Why?

Some of the best evidence of the reality of sasquatch is not the tracks. Some of the best evidence is where sasquatch is not seen and by whom it is not seen, if one applies graphs, charts, maps and even a small amount of logic. Convince me that sasquatch is not real by telling me a logical reason why the general public is not seeing them in Rocky Mountain National Park at anywhere remotely at the same rate as hunting guides are seeing them in the Pike. This ratio is nearly wierder than sasquatch itself, so I guess maybe sasquatch must be 100% real afterall. I am arguing with myself here.

Please tell me why sasquatch is not ever seen in Rocky Mountain National Park by inexperienced weekend campers or anybody else for that matter, while at the same time quite a large number of persons, including hunting guides, see them with some regularity in the Pike National Forest 80 some miles to the south.

Date: 01-Jan-05

After years of investigating sasquatch sightings by doing interviews and such, I am convinced that a fairly high percentage of sightings are misidentifications. A few sightings are also simply made up lies. I truely think that sasquatch only lives in North America in places where a unique and identifiable type of tracks have been found. This area is from Northern New Mexico, up the spine of the Rocky Mountains clear up into the Yukon and over into the Pacific Northwest and into southern Alaska. The rest of North America may have sightings, but no tracks except for a very few tracks that seem fairly obviously fake to me. Sasquatch sign is rare to absent in the west however where wolves have a strong population footholds. Montana has very few sasquatch sightings and even less track finds, especially in and near National Park areas. If you want to rid the west of sasquatch, a good way might be to get lots of wolves in an area. Bears evidently don’t compete directly with sasquatch for prey base like wolves do. Bears are mostly vegetarian for the most part. Wolves are true predators, living nearly entirely on meat. Wolves kill elk and moose regularly, whereas cougars are pretty much specialists at hunting deer size game, taking few elk and nearly no moose. If sasquatch is real, there is only one environmental niche for it, and that is the niche of a true carnivore. If sasquatch were a herbivore, there would be more of them, plus they would be seen more as they would have to go more into the open meadow areas where sunlight makes vegetation grow and they would have to spend lots of time eating there. I truely also believe that there is a very good reason why sasquatch sign is always found only in areas where elk density is high. Elk are the perfect prey for sasquatch, as they are not as quick out of the starting block as the smaller deer.

How does a sasquatch catch an elk? The same way that you or I get within a few feet of an elk. I have sat within a few feet of the downwind side of an elk trail and had whole herds of elk trickle past without the least knowledge that I was there. If I weighed more than 600 pounds and was strong and quick, it would be a simple task to take two quick steps and grab a passing elk and snap its neck, or break its back legs. I have watch zoo keepers go into pens with small deer size animals and catch them and they always end up doing it the same way. They invariably catch both back legs of the deer and hold on to control it. If they were strong and wanted to, it would be a simple matter to snap the lower leg bones of both back legs with a quick twist, rendering the deer unable to walk. I have very many times stalked to within less than 6 feet of bedded deer. One of my largest mule deer, a 7×8 buck, I shot in its bed from a distance of 2 yards, while it was sound asleep. I had to get that close because of the vegetation protecting its vitals and the angle of the shot needed. I shot my arrow down into its vitals while pretty much standing over it. If I can get that close, a sasquatch can certainly stalk to within grabbing distance too I would think.

Sasquatch may hunt cooperatively with each other at times too. In the winter of 1993 a rancher living near San Antonio Peak in northern New Mexico reported watched two sasquatch hunting a herd of elk cooperatively. The elk were grazing in an open sage area adjacent to the forest edge near the ranchers house. The rancher noticed a sasquatch stalking up on the herd and another sasquatch on the opposite side of the herd waiting unmoving. The rancher had time to grab his binoculars and watched the show from his house. Both sasquatch, according to the rancher, were bulkier in size than the elk they were attempting to catch. As the stalking sasquatch approached the herd, it bolted toward the hiding sasquatch, but they failed in catching one of the elk and eventually both moved off into the woods. This event occurred within a week or so, and in the same general area where officer Joe Taylor Jr. recorded two sets of absolutely huge sasquatch tracks, which may lend credibility to the ranchers story. The tracks recorded by Taylor were 19 inches and 21 inches long respectively and traveling together side by side. Taylor is currently the elected sheriff of Conejos County Colorado, so maybe he will get some more reports from locals in the future of sasquatch activity down there. I would sure like to see a sasquatch that leaves 21 inch long tracks, at a distance however. Might be pretty scary to be close to that size of predator. People are evidently not on the menu, which is good. The largest set of sasquatch tracks that I have personally investigated were 19 inches long (on the Eagle River) and the pressed depth of the tracks indicated about the same weight per square inch of foot bottom as occurs in bare footed human tracks. This meant that to make the natural depth of impression, the animal itself had to weigh in the neighborhood of 900 pounds. The tracks were very obviously naturally pressed into the soil and not scraped or drawn into the soil. It took alot of weight to get that large of a footprint pressed into the ground. The shod human tracks in the same soil were not as deeply impressed simply because shoes spread our weight out quite substantially. If you walk on soft soil or sand with your shoes on, you will leave tracks nearly half as deep as you leave when walking barefoot on the same soil. Bears also carry about the same weight per square inch of footpad as humans, or a bit less when in lean condition or more in fattened autumn condition. Some coastal grizzly boars get very heavy prior to winter, when they weigh over 1000 pounds. Sasquatch probably don’t go through drastic seasonal weight changes as they don’t seem to hole up in winter, but stay active. Winter might even be the easiest hunting or scavaging time for them, just as it is for wolves and cougars. Good thing, as they likely need more meat to fuel them to keep their bodies warm in the cold winter weather. At any rate, sasquatch are built large and bulky and probably handle cold weather quite well simply because of their apparent huge body mass. Sasquatch must be a holdover from the cold pliestocene, when it might have done quite well in North America. I actually think that sasquatch do not tolerate heat well at all, preferring the coldest areas in summer in the rocky mountains, which is up near timberline. Nearly all summer sightings of sasquatch in Colorado are along the spine of the continental divide, within a couple thousand feet or less of timberline. Many summer sightings are right at timberline in fact. Elk like it there too of course. It would also not surprise me if sasquatch sometimes cool off in summer by soaking themselves in a stream or isolated mountain lakes and ponds. Collecting hair samples from the soil at the water edges of isolated mountain pond edges might reveal some samples that are “unidentifiable” as to species if done enough. Who knows?

Date: 16-Jan-05

I emailed you Matt

Date: 10-Jun-05

More tracks were found in January in snow near Crags Campground northwest of Pikes Peak, heading southeast at the time. Again about 22 or more inch feet and a 5 foot plus stride again. Looks like the same tracks found two years ago in January up north of there about 30 miles. January must be a good time to look for tracks in that general area. Wish I had a logging copter and a good pilot to follow the tracks to the source. Sure can’t catch up on foot.

Date: 18-Feb-06

The whole reason I ever posted this thread is so that I can do exactly what you think I should do. Get a helicopter and solve the mystery. However, it costs alot more than one would think to rent a copter and pilot for mountain flying. One needs a large copter that is less effected by errant mountain downdrafts and such. Mountain flying in a copter is dangerous stuff, especially in an affordable size copter.

What I need from fellow bowhunters is just let me know where you find sasquatch tracks in Colorado. The more I know about the creature, the better my chances when I do decide to spend those big bucks to implement a plan of attack. I’m still having trouble even believing that such a creature could exist, in spite of the evidence I have looked at pretty closely. So if such a creature does not exist, I sure don’t want to spend money pursuing such nonsense.

Thanks

New Bigfoot Info

Date: 09-Jan-03

For those interested in bigfoot, there is some new information. Some of you know that my family encountered a bigfoot and we found tracks of them down in the South San Juan Wilderness of Colorado in the early 1990’s. I have since been slammed pretty bad for going public with this, but it really happened nonetheless. Anyway, I am not alone now. The naturalist that wrote “Ghost Grizzlies”, David Peterson, also ran into a sasquatch down there in that same area while searching for grizzly bear sign. Yet another hunting guide has also had an encounter down there. This now makes a total of 6 professional hunting guides in Colorado with either personal close range sightings or track finds of this unbelievable animal. I don’t really blame people for not wanting to believe me, as I agree this seems impossible. David Peterson was not expecting to see a sasquatch down there any more than we were or these hunting guides were. This animal came as a complete surprise to us too. I spent too much time in the outdoors in out-of-the-way places and paid the price. Maybe the scent of San Juan ponderosa pine trees causes hallucinations. LOL

There is a new documentary on sasquatch that airs on the Discovery Channel tonight Jan 9 at 8:00. It will also be aired on Jan 10 at 11:00pm and Jan 11 at 2:00pm

Bigfoot is not dead. There were at least three of them in the San Juans of Colorado in 1993, because three different size tracks were documented there in that year. If you don’t believe me, believe Peterson or the hunting guides.

Makes Kansas cougars seem downright plausible doesn’t it. LOL At least we know that cougars are a real animal.

Date: 09-Jan-03

For those interested in bigfoot, there is some new information. Some of you know that my family encountered a bigfoot and we found tracks of them down in the South San Juan Wilderness of Colorado in the early 1990’s. I have since been slammed pretty bad for going public with this, but it really happened nonetheless. Anyway, I am not alone now. The naturalist that wrote “Ghost Grizzlies”, David Peterson, also ran into a sasquatch down there in that same area while searching for grizzly bear sign. Yet another hunting guide has also had an encounter down there. This now makes a total of 6 professional hunting guides in Colorado with either personal close range sightings or track finds of this unbelievable animal. I don’t really blame people for not wanting to believe me, as I agree this seems impossible. David Peterson was not expecting to see a sasquatch down there any more than we were or these hunting guides were. This animal came as a complete surprise to us too. I spent too much time in the outdoors in out-of-the-way places and paid the price. Maybe the scent of San Juan ponderosa pine trees causes hallucinations. LOL

There is a new documentary on sasquatch that airs on the Discovery Channel tonight Jan 9 at 8:00. It will also be aired on Jan 10 at 11:00pm and Jan 11 at 2:00pm

Bigfoot is not dead. There were at least three of them in the San Juans of Colorado in 1993, because three different size tracks were documented there in that year. If you don’t believe me, believe Peterson or the hunting guides.

Makes Kansas cougars seem downright plausible doesn’t it. LOL At least we know that cougars are a real animal.

Date: 11-Jan-03

Ever hiked through the South San Juan Wilderness? I have. I have spent a total of about 300 days in there through the last 30 years. There are just a few human trails, and for the most part that is where the humans stay. No vehicles are allowed of course anywhere. By the time you get 4 or 5 miles back into it, you are generally too tired to get more than 1/4 mile or so from the few trails, let alone penetrate the really wild country. A few people, like Dave Petersen, might get off the trail a little further, but then he has seen a sasquatch there so he doesn’t count. I have been there quite a number of times during hunting seasons, and the hunters are very predictable where they go and where they don’t go. Many places never see a hunter. Humans are generally very predictable in movement patterns. I try to figure out those patterns and go places no other hunters go, and it works pretty good for finding the game who escape the masses, but then I also found sasquatch tracks there, so I don’t count either.

I spent the 4th of July at an alpine lake in the South San Juan Wilderness, catching a few trout that are measured in pounds instead of inches, camping beside the lake for three nights, and never saw another human soul besides the two other men with me. I caught one trout that we cooked over the fire, turning it as it cooked and eating off the meat. There was still meat left on that one trout by the time we were all full. If that place was overrun with people and roads, I sure couldn’t find them.

Looks kind of easy on a topo map to get from point A to point B, that is until you actually get there, lace up your boots and try to actually walk from point A to point B. What looks like a little 3 or 4 mile hike on the topo turns into a blister and cramp causing hike from sunrise to sunset because you have to go around cliffs and old growth forests with so much deadfall that you can’t negotiate it. By the time you get there you wonder why in the hell you went back in there to bowhunt for elk because no idiot would actually shoot an elk back in there and have any hope of ever getting the meat out unspoiled. You would never find a way to get a horse into and out of there in the time required, and packing out the meat would take a week. I have had perfectly easy shots at elk back in that situation and was smart enough not to shoot. I don’t know why I even carried my bow in there with me, because morally I couldn’t use it. I might be able to pack out the antlers, and one small backpack load of meat, but the rest would likely be wasted and claimed by a bear or coyotes before I could get back for a second load. So why shoot? I now will only bowhunt in the places that are more easily accessible, where other bowhunters also tread, and where sasquatch rarely ventures.

We have never had a sighting of a sasquatch in Rocky Mountain National Park, in spite of perfectly good habitat there and thousands of citified hikers traipsing all over that country to misidentify a bear as a sasquatch. Why is that? Why don’t the city folks see the sasquatch, and the experienced outdoorsmen who penetrate the more wild places do see sasquatch and their tracks? If sasquatch is only a misidentified bear or burnt stump in poor lighting conditions playing on the minds of scared hikers, then it should be the city folks visiting Rocky Mountain National Parks that are reporting seeing them, not Petersen, Dysinger or myself.

I sent a survey to about 30 Colorado outfitters asking if they had ever seen a sasquatch or sasquatch sign. 6 of them responded positively that they had either seen a sasquatch or come across some tracks of them. One of them had come across a huge set of fresh sasquatch tracks while trailing a lion with dogs. He reported that the dogs were frightened, confused or agitated by the scent of the tracks and quit hunting for the day. So I am not sure if dogs could be trained to follow a sasquatch. Maybe if we get a dead sasquatch to use for training scent we could get the dogs to know what to follow. At present the dogs are trained to specifically follow a certain scent and not others. It would do no good to hunt cougars with a dog that got on an elk scent trail and followed it, or a sasquatch scent trail for that matter, if cougars were your goal. Cougar trained hounds are trained to follow cougar scent by doing it with dogs already experienced in following cougar scent. The young hounds learn from the older hounds what the goal is. Those hounds then teach the next generation of hounds, and so on. I don’t know how the very first hounds were trained to follow only cougar scent, I suppose with scent from a dead cougar. So give me a sasquatch body, and I will see if someone can train up some sasquatch scent hounds. That would sure make it easier.

Date: 13-Jan-03

The man who died recently was a known hoaxter named Ray Wallace. Wallace made wooden feet that he belted to his feet to make tracks that were ridiculously easy to tell they were fakes. Wallace also did make a film of a person in a bigfoot suit, but that too was more than laughable. It was his wife in an floppy gorilla costume and was nothing more than a joke. The film that is still being studied by scientists is the 1967 Patterson film, not the hoky film that Wallace made. Associated Press said that Wallace started the whole bigfoot legend in 1958, evidently ignoring all sightings and track finds prior to that, including the historical accounts from all the native American tribes of the west. AP was also the one that confused the fake Wallace film with the Patterson film. It only takes one AP writer with extremely limited knowledge and a quick pen to kill bigfoot. All the sightings will stop now that Wallace is dead and his wife is too feeble to hike into the woods dressed up in a hoky gorilla suit. We should have shot her when we had the chance down in the San Juans.

Date: 14-Jan-03

Kirk, I live in the Garden City area of Kansas. My family had two ranches in Colorado however. We spent much time at a cabin we rented for about 20 years just outside the north edge of the South San Juan Wilderness, and had hunted and fished that area for about 10 years prior to that, which is how I came to know that country fairly well. I’m 45 years old, and I was going there as a small child.

I only know of one sighting in the Weminuche Wilderness area, by a hiker with some llamas that camped in some back country there. I have never spoken to him personally, so can not attest to his sighting. I think the grizzly sightings have also ceased from the Wiminuche too. Too bad, as it was nice country for grizzlies 50 years ago, and could be again.

Most all of the sightings and tracks in southern Colorado have occurred in and around the South San Juan Wilderness and over into the eastern portions of the Southern Ute Reservation forests toward Ignacio and then down into the northern part of New Mexico along the Continental Divide. Quite a few winter sightings and track finds occur in the area around the base of San Antonio Peak in New Mexico, just east-southeast of the South San Juan Wilderness. The sasquatch sightings and tracks apparently occur where the elk are concentrated at any one time of year. Many of the professional Colorado hunting guides and experienced hunters I have spoken to with personal sasquatch sightings were bowhunting elk at the time of their encounters. One father and son team of hunters watched a sasquatch feeding on an elk carcass. A local rancher near San Antonio peak said he watched two large sasquatch trying to catch an elk out of a herd that was feeding in some sage scrub at the edge of the forest on his ranch. A local deputy got some video of two sets of huge tracks in that area a few days prior to or after that incident. So I guess they are eating on elk they catch or find dead. I have some old memoirs from a man who hunted bears for the bounty in the late 1800’s in what is now the South San Juan Wilderness who evidently had some meat stolen by a sasquatch that he had hung high in a tree out of reach of bears. Though a few sightings occur irregularly outside of a certain area, almost all of the sightings and tracks come from fairly specific locales from year to year. Still a pretty big area though. I have spent more than 300 days in that Wilderness area, most nights spent in a tent on the trail, summer and fall, and only had the one encounter that set me to investigating the matter.

I too was not impressed with the recent Discovery Channel show on sasquatch. It did not get deep enough into track morphology and fingerprint patterns in the tracks that have led so many scientists to conclusion that sasquatch has to be real. There was a reason for that lack of information. I am involved with some of the people who made that documentary. The scientists involved to not want the public to know the intracacies in detail, because they do not want people to know how to make a fairly convincing fake track and such. Tracks found and documented have to pass a long list of criteria to be of value or considered real. A one hour documentary is far too short to give detail anyway. They wanted the documentary to show the public the general position of sasquatch, and the jury is still out on the subject until such time as a sasquatch body comes into possession of science, no matter how good the other evidence. Many anthropologists who have long been staunch critics of sasquatch are now completely convinced that sasquatch is real, one of which is retired professor emeritis Daris Swindler of the University of Washington. For Swindler to back the recent evidence is kind of like having a group of athiests suddenly start preaching the gospel. Complete turn around. Such well known primatologists as Jane Goodall and George Shaller are also supporters of sasquatch research after looking at the evidence. Our top forensic scientists who have looked at the evidence are convinced, along with many of the top physical anthropologists. About the only scientists still skeptical are those that have not looked at the evidence at all. They base their conclusions on nothing at all, no study at all. Shouldn’t we start listening to the top scientists who HAVE looked at the evidence, instead of listening to the people that have taken no look whatsoever?

I do not come onto this forum to lie to you about what I have seen, but rather to tell you what I have seen. The hunting guides who have come forward are not lieing to you so that you can laugh at them, they are dead serious. They are also very experienced in outdoor things and not prone to misinterpretation. Most of the sightings by them have been so close that there was no room for error anyway. I am telling you, these men are seeing exactly what they say they saw, whether we like it or not. Even if you prefer to ignore me or the professional hunting guides, when you look at a well cast set of fresh sasquatch tracks and can see the detail of the dermal ridges on the foot pad and also see the little scars that have re-healed on the bottoms of the foot, the wooden feet theory is out the window. Scientists have identified over 100 different cases of track casts from hundreds of miles apart and a span of over 50 years of track casting that all conform to a very specific set of anatomical characteristics that fit no other animal yet match each other precisely and in find detail and most collected well before the general public knew anything of that expected anatomical detail. Why? Well, a black bear track is a black bear track and a sasquatch track is a sasquatch track. There have been some fake tracks made, but very few, and they did not fit the criteria. Besides the many high quality sightings by experienced outdoor professionals in Colorado, we also have documented tracks that do fit the criteria. Sorry, but rather we like it or not or whether we can accept it or not, sasquatch are real and being seen and tracked in Colorado. Ask Colorado bear biologist, the worlds leading bear biologist, Tom Beck, what he thinks of sasquatch in Colorado. The answer might surpise you. Ask outdoor writer Dave Petersen what he thinks of Colorado sasquatch after he has spent so many days in the South San Juan Wilderness. Every person who can not believe that sasquatch exists in bodily form should pitch their tent for a couple of months in a few valleys that I know about in the South San Juans and take long walks in the dark forest there to see what comes poking around. A simple name like Canyon Diablo “Canyon of the Devil” take on a whole new meaning. These sasquatch are not really “devils”, but they sure scream like one and leave tracks that will make you feel very small indeed.

Hope you get to experience a sasquatch some day. With a little effort, you might find sasquatch tracks down around San Antonio Peak about this time of year if so inclined to look around for a few weeks. Some really big tracks have been documented down there in the past 10 years, especially when the snow is deep at higher elevations. More remote areas seem to be the normal abode of sasquatch at any time of year however, but they have been known to cross roads every once in awhile, probably mostly at night. You never know, you might find some if you know what you are looking for. Big big tracks. One does not really realize how big they are until you see them yourself. Awesome. My size thirteen feet look like toddler feet in comparison. How does something that big hide. About like a moose hides I guess, and moose are sometimes hard to find for sure and surprisingly hard to see. For the most part though, sasquatch don’t hide well enough not to be seen, as thousands of eyewitnesses can attest. They may have hidden from you and I, but they have not stayed hidden from everybody. We’re just not paying attention to those who have seen them, preferring to think its all impossible. I know, because I was there with you in complete skepticism of such ridiculous things as sasquatch prior to my experience. Hope you all can listen better than I did. Those thousands of tall tales of sasquatch sightings are not just tall tales.

Sleep tight in your tent in the South San Juan Wilderness, for the fuzzy giants mean you no malace. At least I don’t think that man is on the menu yet. Elk flank is much better I guess. There are hundreds of square miles of forest there, so odds are you will be in a different square mile than one of the few sasquatch there anyway. Even if you occupy the same square mile, odds are that you will never know it, but the sasquatch might. He lives there 24/7 and knows every tree in his home range, so will have no trouble finding one to hide behind. Ever see a bear hide behind a tree? They do it and will let you walk right by them if they think they are hidden well, and they have a weasel brain, not a primate brain. Sasquatch must be the supreme wild creature, and I think it is neat that at least a few of them are still around, dodging skeptics.

Date: 20-Jan-03

For those who do not get Bugle magazine, here is what was written in it by several outdoor writers regarding their own possible sasquatch encounters. A couple of these occurred in southern Colorado and northern New Mexico, not far from where I found sasquatch spoor that got me interested in the subjects of sasquatch and Kansas cougars.

In the November/December 2002 (Volume 19 Issue 6) issue of “Bugle” magazine, publication of the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, several writers shared their possible encounters with sasquatch.

One article titled “Bigbutt” in this issue of Bugle was written by David Petersen, author of the book “Ghost Grizzlies”, which deals with the possibility of a few surviving grizzlies in the mountains of southern Colorado. Petersen is also a regular contributor to many outdoor magazines and has also authored other books on outdoor subjects. Petersen’s article in “Bugle” details how he met a sasquatch on an old road-cut at dusk while bowhunting in a forest in southern Colorado. Walking quietly around a bend in the road-cut, Petersen was startled to see an odd upright creature coming down the road-cut toward him at a range of only 20 yards. Petersen described the creature as somewhat over 5 foot tall, perhaps 200 pounds, having somewhat short legs compared to a man, longer arms than a man, thick through the torso, upright posture, bi-pedal locomotion, and Petersen was struck by the creatures apparent large butt as it eventually turned and stepped off the trail. (A description rather reminiscent of the female sasquatch in the Patterson/Gimlin film, but on a slightly smaller scale). It was too dark to see facial details beyond the fact that it had a flat face. The two strangers stopped and stared at one another for awhile on the road-cut before the creature eventually stepped toward the edge of the road, where it swayed back and forth for a time as if trying to get a better sense of the bowhunter it had encountered on the trail. Eventually the creature walked off into the darkening forest and Petersen went on his way.

Other articles in this addition of “Bugle” also dealt with possible sasquatch activity. Experienced bowhunter James Slack of Farmington, New Mexico wrote in his article of finding a very large, human-like track in a sandy wash while bowhunting elk in the mountains of northern New Mexico. (This would have occurred not too far south of the sighting experience of author David Petersen in Colorado)

Chris Mortenson of Avon, Utah wrote an article titled “Keeping an Open Mind” about an experience he had while hunting elk near the Utah-Idaho border. Mortenson describes a long series of incredibly loud animal sounds he heard, “a very loud, low-pitched sound that I had never heard before—like a cross between a shout and a growl” with each blast of noise “lasting maybe one or two seconds”. He could hear the animal as it seemed to approach him, screaming and popping brush and limbs. Mortenson wrote “The most eerie thing about the noise was the sheer volume,?.” He also wrote, “What I heard that October day was not an elk, moose, cougar, bear, wolf, coyote or anything else I have ever heard in the wild”.

48 year old veteran bowhunter Terry Coon of Nampa, Idaho wrote an article titled “It Had to Be Big” which details an experience he had while bowhunting elk in Oregon in 1991. Coon describes how he began bugling on his elk bugle in hopes of luring a bull elk, but the answering call was not an elk but rather “the loudest and longest scream that I have ever heard”. The screaming thing kept screaming then began to loudly approach Mr. Coon and his wife with a steady walking sound. Coon wrote “The scream that erupted would make the hair on your entire body stand straight out. Whatever it was was clearly outraged by my bugle”. He also wrote “in all my years in the mountains, I have never heard such a sound”. The couple departed hastily in fear after the outraged screamer loudly circled them off trail in the underbrush to within 50 or 60 yards.

It’s Bigfoot Tracking Season

Date: 25-Dec-05

Merry Christmas.

As one who found physical evidence of sasquatch in Colorado about 12 years, and have investigated several other track events since, I need you good bowhunters to help me find more. Nearly every winter from December through February for the past 10 years or more, long lines of apparent sasquatch tracks in snow have been found in an area triangulated by points of Kenosha Pass, Pikes Peak and Manitou Springs (generally in the Pike National Forest and Lost Creek Wilderness). This track maker might be there all year, but only in snow can one readily find it’s tracks. The large sets found consist of individual tracks of about 19 to 22 inches long in that area with a step length of about 5 to 6 feet (whereas adult male human step length is usually close to 3 feet). Because the tracks are huge, they are fairly easy to see from a vehicle if one takes notice of tracks of wildlife. Sasquatch also apparently lift their feet high and don’t drag along like humans, so it is pretty easy to tell the difference from a distance. From a distance it will look like large depressions spaced quite a distance apart and nothing else makes similar tracks series. If the tracks have been snowed in since being made as very often happens, one can blow out the newer snow and see the compressed icy sasquatch track below in detail to identify positively. A gas powered lawn blower would work well for that.

In any event, if you are of the mind to look for such tracks in that area, or if you drive through that area on a regular basis and just want to keep your eye out, I would like to know about tracks found. The reason I need this info is that I am trying to see if there is a pattern to sasquatch movement in the area so that I can eventually form a team and hire a logging helicopter and pilot to track down the maker of these tracks found there annually. Humans just can’t keep up fast enough to ever track down a sasquatch to source on foot or even probably on horseback in broken country. If we are ever going to solve the mystery of these tracks and apparent sightings of the track maker, that area is the area we could do it in with planning, teamwork and a helicopter.

To give you some idea of where to look, the last three sets found were 1. A set crossing FR127 on Long Gulch about 2 miles due north of North Tarryall Peak in January 2001. 2. Right on the Highway 285 on Kenosha Pass on 12/14/2002. 3. Near the Crags Campground, 4 miles northwest of Pikes Peak in January of 2005. However, tracks could pop up anywhere in that general area at those general times. If you find a set that you are certain are too large for anything else, please contact me as soon as you can and also contact the local sheriffs department as some in the local departments are also interested and would like to know in time to do some of their own investigation. Photograph the track lines, as many individual tracks as possible with something in the photos for scale, and record the location as precisely as possible, also noting direction of travel in your notes.

Attached is a photo of what a set of tracks might look like from a distance. In this case each track is about 24 inches long and stride is from 5 to 6 feet in distance with each step. Human tracks are beside the large tracks in this photo to give idea of size and step length. Even going uphill they seem to still take pretty long step lengths and seem to walk tirelessly. Gives one some idea of how hard it would be to follow one of them and actually think you might catch up close enough to see it. But, with such large tracks and in such an area as that area, one might be able to follow and see the tracks from a helicopter.

I am pretty dang certain these tracks are very very real, so I hope to find out what makes them. If I spend the money on a helicopter and find some guy on stilts with big feet on the end of the stilts at the end of a long line of tracks, he is likely going to get the full dose of tranquilizer from my tranquilizer gun anyway. After seeing some of these track lines, I don’t think I have to worry about some hoaxer making a long line of tracks as has been found.

BTW, if I do ever get one real sasquatch tranquilized, I will not bring it out. I plan to take tissue samples, dental impressions, foot and hand impressions, stomach content samples, fecal samples, lots of measurements and lots of photographs. Insert one radio transmitter and let it go on its way.

If you are in southern Colorado, another good place to look for tracks in winter is down near San Antonio Peak just across the border into New Mexico. The harsher the winter, the lower elevation the tracks will be found. Generally, where elk concentration is the highest is where the probability of finding sasquatch tracks will be highest. For some reason, they seem to hang around the elk herds, summer and winter. I think there is a fair possibility that they prey on elk.

Sasquatch are not behind every tree in Colorado, and of course most believe that sasquatch are not behind any tree in Colorado. But, entertain me with the idea that these tracks just might be real and the creature that makes them might be real too. All it will take is you personally finding and following one set of these tracks yourself to see why I pursue such nonsense. I agree, sasquatch tracking is nonsense, but only until you actually do it yourself.

Even if you don’t think sasquatch can be real, you can at least go coyote hunting in the mentioned areas and maybe you will find something you thought completely impossible. Sure better than sitting in front of the television in January. I was once also completely and fully skeptical of sasquatch until June of 1993. I understand logical skepticism, but I don’t understand joking about others pursuits or hobbies. I also have a hobby of bowhunting and building bowhunting bows and I am sure there are plenty of left coast people to make jokes about those redneck pursuits too. One could also joke about my belief in God, and many do lately.

Date: 08-Jan-06

Thanks for holding back jokes everyone.

I noticed on a program on the history channel the other day that Wyoming senior biologist (bighorn sheep biologist) John Myonczenski has retired and gone public with his personal sighting in that state. He and another biologist with that state also collected hair samples off a split rail fence after the other biologist ran one of them through the fence rails when he surprised it and tried to get closer to it with his pickup. Those sample hairs are deemed primate by two labs and morphologically closest to chimpanzee hairs. So we have hair samples from a sighting by a trained wildlife biologist, collected by pro biologists. One sample still resides in a mammal hair collection in New Mexico but has not been dna tested yet. The testing will destroy the sample. I’d still like to see if they can get the dna from it, even if this valuable sample is destroyed in the process. Maybe dna extraction process will eventually progress to the point where the testing can be done without destroying the hair itself.

Wonder why two professional Wyoming wildlife biologists would claim to have seen a sasquatch, when all it brings is laughs from their more skeptical peers? Guess they just like being laughed at, or alternately they care enough about wildlife to tell the truth and withstand the jokes. I think the second hypothosis is more logical. Colorado has some law enforcement officers in the same boat, having seen these creatures themselves too. Why? I think it is because the creature itself is most probably real, leaves real tracks and can be found at the end of a line of real tracks. Thats all I want to do, get to the end of a line of those very real but very rare tracks and find out what is there. Thanks for volunteering to search and find. Kind of the ultimate hunt. The rareist and smartest quarry is at the end of the line of tracks. Kind of like a puma with the brain of a chimpazee or smarter, and so large that they are naturally very rare and have very large individual territory. A needle in a large haystack that keeps moving around.

Date: 12-Jan-06

I have the book “Tom Brown’s Field Guide to Nature Observation and Tracking” which is the least “Magical” of Brown’s books on magical tracking. I never believed much in magic, apart from enjoying illusions set up by real illusionist magicians. I would like to put any self proclaimed tracker to the test in the hard packed soil and rocky Colorado mountains and see if they can find me with 10 minutes head start. I’ll even wear my regular waffle stompers. Make that 5 minutes head start. With snow on the ground, even my preschool grandsons could probably track me down. Snow is the answer in the Rockies for tracking. Bear and cougar are dang hard to track otherwise, let alone sasquatch. If sasquatch are real.

I have also looked into and wondered if satellites would be helpful in finding a sasquatch. I used such images in my job in hopes of finding large acreage size patches of invasive plants, but gave up on it. I could see my house and my gas guzzling SUV by satellite however, but could find no bedded deer with it either. Resolutions are not good enough, even if one devoted the best of them into looking for such nonsense as sasquatch. Plus, the smaller you look, the less area you see and one needle in a haystack is very very small indeed. Sasquatch may be big, but they are small in comparison to the forest. That is why you don’t see elk head counts by satellite.

My questions about the reality of sasquatch are 1. During the late 1800’s, when people were killing every big animal that lives in western North America, why did no one shoot a sasquatch then if they are real and lived there? 2. If sasquatch is real and leaving tracks near Pikes Peak, why hasn’t one wandered into NORAD defense zones at Cheyenne Mountain and been detected. They surely have to go on false alarms for bear, deer, elk and cougar there that penetrate their “no go” zone.

My only answers to these two questions is, maybe sasquatch are too humanlike to be shot offhand by any moral human, even in the late 1800’s. We know of plenty of sightings by humans in the 1800’s, even in Colorado. Actually, some miners hired a hunter in the 1870’s to track and kill a sasquatch in the Leadville area of Colorado according to a Leadville newspaper archive. So I guess they tried to kill one then. I would have never search archives in Colorado for sasquatch had I not found tracks in 1993, as I had never heard of such a thing in Colorado. Prior to 1993, sasquatch was a myth to me, and certainly not in Colorado of all places. Maybe I was right then and am on a wild goose chase, maybe I was wrong. The track evidence I have seen since is telling me I was wrong. My logical mind tells me it is all nonsense, but 13 years of intense research into the physical evidence tells me that something is really leaving these outsize tracks out there.

My only answer to the NORAD thing is that there are so many large critters running around that general area that to follow up on every moving critter would be costly and futile. If you don’t jump the fences at the Cheyenne Mountain facility and knock on the door, you are pretty safe from armed soldiers. I think sasquatch “seek and find” would be a good practice exercise for the military, so maybe I should work on getting that going. Good mountain training. Maybe they could use the training to get Bin Laden finally. I would kind of like to go hunting for him myself, but my hair is light brown, skin tone light, and I have no prowess for learning new languages, especially arabic languages, which makes it hard to blend in over there. A 24 year old young son of a friend of mine was killed last Friday in Iraq fighting terrorists, and it makes me wonder why I am not over there rather than our young men. Our military really needs a very large unit of us older guys to go in harms way, and save our young men to preserve the American way. For some reason they won’t except guys like me that can’t hike as far as I used to. I guess “special forces” does not include “special medications” for shoulder bursitus brought on by too many years of drawing back overly heavy bows. Had I known a 55 pound flatbow would shoot clean through the lung cage of any American big game walking with a nice heavy arrow, I would have been using less bow poundage sooner. Oh well, live and learn.

After nearly 30 years of bowhunting, I have found a “magical” way to track down game after the shot that works much better than Brown’s mystical magic. Make dang sure you put that broadhead through both lungs and you don’t have to track far. If you don’t, you might need some magic. one “magic” to getting close enough to game before the shot that I have found is patience, make that “extreme patience”. I’ve blown way more stalks on grand mule deer bucks with impatience than anything else, so I am still learning that magic. The other magic is to bring game to you, which I am relying on more and more as I grow older, and it works well.

Date: 12-Jan-06

Beau, that sounds kind of Native American or like Einstein time theory. I think however that if they were of the past and we could somehow view the past, that we would also view mammoths more often too. Plus, saquatch leave very defined and long lasting tracks in snow, mud and dirt in Colorado to view for days afterward. They are evidently pretty physical when they pass. We don’t in science understand everything about time and space yet however, do we? With sasquatch, I suppose any theory is okay still. Even the theory that all the sasquatch physical evidence is hoax and sasquatch don’t exist at all is still likely the most scientifically relevant. However, I still wonder why anyone would leave such evidence in a place in the SSJWilderness that no one would likely find it, such as in my case. That doesn’t make logical sense. Plus, looking at several other sets of tracks since that match those I find, what am I to think? So, I am on somewhat of a quest to find the answer.

Date: 22-Jan-06

bullelkklr, I guess I don’t really know what you mean by my being so special. The only thing I was trying to get across was the tracks I found were in an odd place for anyone to hoax them if they hoped someone would find them. Quite a number of other people have found tracks, even in the same general area I found them in the SSJWilderness. An outfitter found a set on the Rito Gato above Platoro in 1980. A hunting guide found a set in the early 90’s in the SSJWilderness about 10 miles southwest of where I found the mentioned set. A conservation group found a 15 inch track in an elk wallow in the southern portion of the SSJW in 1982 while looking for grizzly tracks (they don’t claim it is a sasquatch track, but it matches in every way). All these tracks were found off the beaten paths, and the only thing special about these other people finding tracks is that they just happened to come across them, like me. Quite a number of other hunters and even other hunting guides have also come across sets in other places in Colorado. You might some day too, which I hope excites you about the possibilities.

When we investigated a set of very huge 19 inch long tracks found by a fisherman along the Eagle River in 2001, one of the things that convinced me, at least one local CDOW wildlife biologist and the local sheriff department, was the location and specifics of the location itself. The tracks were found on the mostly untraveled south side of the river at the location. The tracks were in not so good tracking soil, when less than 10 feet away was very good soft fine tracking soil. It was almost like whatever made the tracks was trying to keep them from being seen as best it could at the location. I really don’t think it was particularly trying to hide its tracks, but just traveling through the area and its tracks fell where they did. Had a hoaxer made the tracks, why not on the north side where more people travel and why not in the very nearby soft fine tracking soil where people could see them better? The fisherman that first found them thought the tracks were 13 inches long because he did not see the heel marks when he first contacted the sheriff department, thinking the ridge pushed up by the middle of the foot in stepping forward was the back of the track. All of us who investigated that particular set are completely convinced that the person who found the tracks and reported them had nothing to do with their construction. We think the tracks were made by a living 18 inch long foot, resulting in very dynamic 19 inch long tracks of a very unique unhuman, but human-like, morphology. That particular set of tracks was investigated with a very skeptical eye, and those tracks erased many local officials skepticism. Guesss one had to see them to know the detail involved. I can’t convince skeptics that just want to say “sasquatch is an impossibility”, without ever having looked at the evidence themselves, either in the field or by inspecting the evidence in collections at Idaho State University or other universities. I do know one thing, the media is full of misinformation about the subject, and not to be trusted at all. If you want answers, go to the universities or straight to the source itself and completely ignore television shows and news stories on the subject.

Like I have said many times before, I have a very very hard time believing that sasquatch could be a real breathing creature, but I have no other answer for the tracks I found and others I have investigated. I got sucked into this seemingly ridiculous subject quite accidently. If you find a set, I want to find answers to what made them. That is all I am after.

About all I have got out of the whole subject is that most people think I must be a nut case or just stupid. I probably should have kept quiet about the tracks I found and just gone on peacefully with blinders firmly on my eyes. But then again, I’m kind of nutty, and often stupid.

Date: 22-Jan-06

That area of northern New Mexico is fairly common for tracks found in winter too, so I do hope she comes across some more there that you can document properly. Sure gives one an awesome sense of mystery to follow such huge tracks, even a little sense of fear of something so unusual and so big. I hope there are still “child” sasquatches in the area, as it might give us more time to solve the mystery of what is making the tracks. All the tracks I have heard of or were documented from that area were 15 inches to 20 inches long, but maybe smaller tracks are not noticed as they are more bear size or human size and might not attract attention unless accompanying larger tracks, such as the case you mention. It would sure be really neat to document the smaller tracks with the larger tracks especially if fresh and detailed and could be followed for miles. Thanks bear.

Date: 18-Feb-06

Sasquatch, if they exist and are fairly intelligent might not even have to live in remote areas where humans never go. I don’t think there are too many places left in North America that have not been seen by modern humans. I know that there are more than 50 airplanes crashed in the western part of North America that have never been found, but for the most part people go about everywhere. But, if you think about it, I think about any good bowhunter could go into the forests of Colorado and live and hide from other people pretty much for the rest of their lives without anyone ever seeing them, if they tried to hide from all other humans. This would be especially easy if that bowhunter could see in the dark fairly well. Hunker down in some bushy cover in the day, and do most of your moving around in the dark. Pretty simple to hide, if that is ones intention. If sasquatch are real, they must be pretty good at hiding from humans and from the prey they pursue. We find their tracks, we hear their vocalizations now and then, they are sometimes glimpsed by bowhunters, hunting guides and such.

I think it is interesting that hunting guides, especially bowhunting guides, represent a very small portion of the human population in Colorado, but have a vastly greater percentage of sightings of sasquatch than any other portion of the human population. Wonder why that is the case, if sasquatch is not real? If sasquatch is not real, then it must be that hunting guides are vastly more prone to hallucination or more prone to telling fabrications than people in other professions that go into the woods. I really don’t think that hunting guides are more prone to those things than other people. So why would bowhunters and bowhunting guides be the ones that have the greatest chance of having a sighting of an unreal creature? That is even stranger than sasquatch itself.

 

 

BIG FOOT!

Date: 27-Aug-05

Bigfoot is all funny and laughable until you step into the track of one of them.

I ask you to read the full evaluations of tracks made my Docters Krantz, Meldrum, and Farenbach at the University of Washington, Idaho and the North America Primate Reseach Center (a medical research center) before deciding that sasquatch is all myth. I ask you to read evalutations by law enforcement officer Jimmy Chilcutt, one of America’s premier authorities on primate dermal ridges, before deciding. It is easy to dismiss sasquatch as nothing but lore if you have not seen their track yourself. People who sit at city desks and type on city computers and think all native Americans are completely stupid should be thrown into a cage of hungry sasquatch.

I too have trouble believing that American sasquatch are real, but I have seen their tracks in person. Once accidently and a couple of times after they were found by someone else and I was called to investigate. I, several biologists and a handful of law officers in Colorado have no trouble believing that the tracks of sasquatch are real here from time to time after critical evaluation. It is the creature itself that we have trouble swallowing.

Not all sasquatch sightings are real, and I seriously doubt sightings where no tracks are left at the scene that fit known criterea. But that does not mean that all sasquatch sightings are false. It is easy to sit in a city office and say sasquatch is all bunk and hoax. It is less easy to deny sasquatch after spending a week in a sleeping bag under the stars in Canyon Diablo. If you want to meet a sasquatch, I can drop you off in a helicopter there if your legs or heart are too frail to hike there yourself, and pick you up a month later to ask you about sasquatch. Surely after a month in the wilderness a sasquatch will have wandered by to check you out in the Canyon. You will not find sasquatch in the city or on paper. You have walk a thousand miles with a bow in hand in sasquatch country to meet one, just like the natives that once bowhunted this land for a living once did. Jeez.

Just beecause you have never seen a lynx or wolverine doesn’t mean they don’t exist. I spent 300 days in tents in the South San Juan Wilderness of Colorado before finding a whole line of 17 inch long sasquatch tracks, only once. How may nights have you slept and hiked there? Don’t tell me from some city office what exists in that there wilderness.

Be skeptical, be critical of sign, but put that sign through critical scientific analysis and then decide what you think about it. Discounting sasquatch because you think all historical native Americans were stupid or because you think that it is an impossibility is a mistake. Sasquatch still leaves tracks, in Colorado at least. I too am skeptical and don’t trust sightings where tracks are not found, so I am with the skeptics in that regard. But skepticism based on preconception of what you believe to be true is not science, it is citified bull pucky. I think you guys need to leave your city jobs and get into the western wilderness more. I spent 4th of July weekend at a timberline lake and fished for trout measured in pounds instead of inches and never saw another human the whole time. Where did you spend that weekend? If you think every trail is paved in North America, you are going to the wrong places. It takes a day or two of hiking with a heavy pack to get to the real North America. Yes it still exists if you are willing to use a topo map and go to the places where a simple short mile on the map ends up to be a full days hike and you can not find the marked trails. That is where sasquatch still leaves tracks for you to find.

Instead of retiring to rot in an old folks home when I am too old to pull back my flatbow, I am going on a walkabout in some remote area of B.C. to answer some quetions I still have about sasquatch. It is fitting however that skeptical citified bowhunters rot in an old folks home when elderly and never experience such excitement as the old pine apes and their natural habits. You probably don’t believe in God either, even though you can see his fingerprints on every natural thing around you. It’s really easy to reject what you have never seen with your own eyes, or what you don’t want to see. Easier for sure than carrying a 70 pound backpack uphill all day. Better visit those wilderness areas while you are young, because once you age the trails get longer and longer. Sasquatch usually spends it’s time at the end of a very long trail. They hate human company.

Date: 29-Aug-05

The Shroud of Turin is of 15th century material, so was about 1400 years too late to be a covering for Christ. Sandwiches, potato chips and wall stains that look like the vigin Mary are even more ridiculous.

I see God our creator in the smallest form of life that we have ever identified. The simplest bacteria is very far from simple. Put together millions of amino acids in perfect combination and give it a little motor to drive itself around and then say that such a perfect combination came about by accident. A jet airliner with all onboard computers and jet engines is less complicated than a bacteria. So I guess that those who reject an initial creator are telling me that a jet airliner can somehow form itself in the mud, all fueled up and ready to fly. Give me a break. Mathmatically the odds are too great. I like math, as it never changes. Science forever changes. I think evolution is a design, not an accident. You all can believe what you want, but I really think you need to research the very simplest lifeform ever discovered now or in fossil record to decide that no Creator ever existed and all things living are an accident hundreds of millions of years ago. That may be a much more important enigma than sasquatch.

I have to say this here, because I do believe that Christ was a figure that can not be ignorred. If you base faith on something like the Shroud of Turin or a stain on a wall, you are headed for trouble. Here is my personal take on creation, Christ and life. I believe that when God said in the Bible that a day is as a thousand years and a thousand years is as a day, that He was saying that to Him that time is unimportant. I believe that the Earth may very well be billions of year old and that life hundreds of millions of years old. I believe that God introduced needed life forms only after established life forms that could support them were here on Earth over those millions of years. I believe that the story of Genesis pretty much shows the order of introduction over those millions of years. I believe that many forms of what we might consider man evolved toward that form we now consider homo sapians. I also believe that up until 6000 years ago that those manforms were without something essential that made “man in the image of God”. They had no eternal spirit. I believe that God introduced “eternal spirit” with a man called Adam and made that man more than body and mind (soul). I believe that God made Adam and all of his descendants like Him, having not two parts, but rather having three parts, body (physical body), soul (your thinking mind), and spirit (an eternal existance that carries your soul with it to the eternal life). I believe that Adam sinned and that God had already said that the wages of sin were death. To overcome that sin and death, I believe that God made a way back to life through a new contract with man through Christ. Not the Christ portrayed in the Shroud of Turin, but a real salvation whereby a perfect man (Christ) lives sinless, but took upon Himself the wages of sin (death on a cross). I can not anymore prove that my belief in such a savior as Christ is true than I can prove that the tracks I have found were really sasquatch tracks. You decide for yourself if such things as the shroud or stains will make you reject God.

My belief in God and history are my own and probably not complete or set in stone, but I think the fossil record shows some amazing jumps and the earliest life forms are of fantastic “design”.

UFO’s are easy. Anything flying that you can not identify is a UFO. I’ve seen birds flying that I could not identify. Maybe they will poop and deposit a dropping that looks like John Lennon and somebody will worship it and make John Lennon a saint someday.

Date: 31-Aug-05

Sorry if I got off subject in response to such things as the shroud of Turin. I really don’t know for sure if sasquatch is real, but such things are unimportant compared to ones relationship or understanding of God and how God relates to them. Christ said to pray for the truth and that is what we all should do. I still have lots of questions too.

For what its worth, http://www.bigfootencounters.com/ has scientific papers published on that website from quite a number of acadimics in regards to sasquatch. Dr. Jeff Meldrums (Idaho State University) interpretation of tracks is close to my own interpretation and so I support it at this time. Since I have seen the tracks myself in person, I can come to at least some interpretive evaluation. I think they are real and from a real physical being of substantial form. Rare, but real. I think it is a species that must have been more adapted to the pliestocene era than now. Sasquatch may be going extinct, like the mammoth and mastodon, but I think a few still must exist if the tracks are any indication.

I also am pretty sure that some of the pro hunting guides and wildlife biologist that I have interviewed with personal sightings in Colorado and Wyoming are pretty reliable. You guys will have to do your own research and decide for yourself. Until I see a sasquatch with my own eyes, I will have to say that the tracks are very real, but will have trouble believing that sasquatch itself is real. Maybe all the native American peoples were right and a very large hairy primate lives in North American. Rare but real. ?????

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-03 

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.