My Research

On the 4th of February 2008 DB Donlon of Virginia (The Blogsquatcher) was a guest on Squatchdetective Radio.

During the show DB shared some of his sound recordings. DB also discussed what he calls Sound Skeptics. I thought it was a very good statement and you can read it below and also listen to the original sound clip.

Sound Skeptics- play

DB Donlon –

Sound skeptics will object that you can’t tell what animal made a sound if you didn’t see the animal make it. I think this is true in the broadest sense. After all, I can play a file of a coyote and if you heard it in the distance, you’d think it was an actual coyote, and not a recording.

But an important point I want to stress is that these same sound skeptics are the first to say, “you’ve recorded a coyote,” or “you’ve recorded a hog” when they hear the sounds we get. They don’t say they don’t know what it is, they almost always define it as something known, and they get to that identification from the sound alone. If you can’t tell what made a sound without visually i.d.ing the sound maker, how do they know we’ve recorded coyotes and hogs?

I’m not just making that point to rub someone’s nose in it, I’m saying you can’t have it both ways. If it really is possible to id creatures by their vocalizations (and we do this all the time, don’t we? When we hear an owl call, we don’t say, “I’ll never know what that is..” we say, “oh, an owl!” The plain fact of the matter is that the calls we’ve recorded don’t sound like coyotes, and they certainly don’t look like coyote calls when you look at them in the software. They do sometimes sound coyote-ish, but they don’t sound like the coyote calls I’ve found on the net. (I’m being strict about definitions here — like serving as an = sign, rather than an approximation.) Nor does the East Central Ohio chatter sound like a hog, rather, occasionally hog-ish.

So when the skeptics tell you that we can’t tell what made the sound because we didn’t see the animal making it, you insist that they stick to that. They are right, we can’t really tell. So let’s stop calling these things misidentifications out of hand in an attempt to quell all interest in sounds. It’s a legitimate area of research. Who knows what advances will come in the future that will make this kind of research easier?

Vocal mimicry in bigfoot has been talked about among researchers. However it is difficult enough to recognize a bigfoot sound let alone a bigfoot imitating birds or other animals.

Mimic is described by Wikipedia as:

“….any species that has evolved to appear similar to another successful species in order to dupe predators into avoiding the mimic, or dupe prey into approaching the mimic.”

“….a mimic doesn’t try to blend with the surroundings, but to appear as some other creature.”

Sound mimicry has been described in many birds, marine mammals as well as primates, humans, cetaceans, seals and birds. Especially in birds is mimicry well known and accepted. Mockingbirds, catbirds, and various other birds do some really great imitation calls. I have seen a blue jay give a perfect red-tailed hawk’s call which I wouldn’t have believed if I weren’t watching it just ten feet away.

There is a great amount of scientific literature available that deals with all aspects of vocal mimicry, the great apes and human speech:

The Life of Mammals, Vol. 4 DVD
David Attenborough
..”only feet from an orangutan .. discussed the intelligence and mimicry abilities of these great apes. “…”and mimicry are all primate traits according to Attenborough. ”

The evolution of speech: a comparative review.
Trends in cognitive sciences, 4(7):258–267.
Fitch, W. T. (2000)
“At least two changes were necessary prerequisites for modern human speech abilities: (1) modification of vocal tract morphology, and (2) development of vocal imitative ability.”

The Biology and Evolution of Language
Philip Lieberman
Man, New Series, Vol. 21, No. 3 (Sep., 1986), p. 542
“All great apes have large air sacs attached to their larynges, …..”

Humankind Emerging
Bernard G. Campbell
“Vocal mimicry not only makes speech possible, but is used by hunters…”

Social Imitation In Neonatal Monkeys
“Mimicry exists throughout the animal kingdom, but imitation with a purpose–matching one’s behavior to others’ as a form of social learning–has been seen only in great apes.”

The Cognitive Prerequisites for Language
“Vocal mimicry, to say nothing of vocal imitation, seems to play, at most, no more than a very minor role among any species of primate other than humans (Seyfarth and Cheney 1997).”

Although none of the following examples can be proven to be a bigfoot vocalization most occurred in areas that had previous eye-witness bigfoot sightings.

Suspected bigfoot vocalizations:

1 – Barred Owl – I spent the night of 27th of August 2005 near Seneca, Illinois in my van and kept the microphone on the roof. I heard about fifty whistles and then rock knocking. After the barred owl hooting the rock knocking started up again.

2 – Barred Owl and dogs from the Argosy Project – quoting – “The day after the rock clacking incident, I came back to the location alone to leave the Bigfoot more food. It was about 6:45 p.m. and I was finishing packing up my gear at my spotters station when I heard a hoot to the east in the woods. I would call it more like someone doing a bad imitation of a barred owl hoot. It hooted a few more times, and each hoot seemed to be very low to the ground about 250 feet away.”

“Then I heard a dog barking just north of the hooting. The barking didn’t seem very convincing to me. I’ve heard it numerous times before, and the barking sound is always stationary. After a brief pause, whoever was doing the hooting and barking moved closer together. I could hear rustling in the undergrowth as the two individuals met. I’ve never heard of an owl walking to a dog before. Shortly afterward I heard two whoops almost immediately to my left.”

3 – Dog barks – I have a report from Madison County, Illinois from a witness who has had several sightings this summer and fall. He relates that he heard what appeared to be a military type formation moving along the creek behind his house. He described the sounds as being dog-like “but not quite”. The sounds were proceeding forward, being answered left and right as it moved upstream, perhaps following a deer.

4 – Wild Turkey Clucks – On the 12 of April 2005 I went to my local state park. As I was sitting on a log near a large thicket I heard what I thought was wild turkeys clucking. When I turned around to investigate, the sounds stopped and I heard a loud wood knock coming from the top of the hill.

5 – Raccoon – I have a friend that does nighttime recording close to St.Louis, Missouri along the Missouri Bottoms. He has recorded what he describes as raccoon-like sounds but not quite.

6 – Raccoon – I recorded this raccoon-like sound near a feeding station where raccoons are not seen.

7 – Coyote – I recorded an unknown howl this spring in Central Illinois. This has been discussed at the Illinois Howl webpage. It has been labelled as either a coyote or wolf. However I have a Native American friend who reassures me that it is a bigfoot mimicing a coyote. I have reports of the same type of vocalizations being heard by hunters and researchers in Georgia, Oregon and four different locations in Illinois.

8 – Jungle birds – I have a report from Northern Illinois and I myself have heard in Central Illinois in the daytime, during the winter, what can only described as a jungle bird type sound.

What is the purpose of all these suspected vocalizations? Although no one knows for sure I think it is safe to assume that it is a way for an elusive animal to stay hidden and not give away their presence and position whether it be to prey animals or humans.

I have a friend at work by the name of Jennifer. Now when the topic of bigfoot research comes up in conversation she goes into a tirade usually along the lines of – Where’s the evidence? Where’s the body? Why hasn’t one been shot?

If you mention to her that all of these questions have already been addressed on many of the websites, she laughs boldly and walks away.

This reaction to the mentioning of the word bigfoot I admit is very common in our modern American society. I am not a psychologist so I can not adequately explain or understand it other than I suspect its root causes are

1) Fear of the unknown.
2) Fear of anything associated with the dark.
3) Fear of the “boogie man” or “monsters in the closet”.
4) Concerns that we humans are not the only upright walking ape.

What about me? Am I insulted or feel put down because of the ridicule? No. Although I may disapprove of their reaction or taunts I know that it has been a common situation for a long, long time.

What about the witnesses?

I have interviewed several hundred people who have seen an animal that is not accepted to exist by the general public.

I spoke with a lady in Southern Missouri who had been traumatized by seeing an animal who came very close to her car while she was driving. She was distraught and close to tears the hour I spent with her on the phone. My role of investigating the report for the website became secondary to counseling the witness and trying to reassure her that although she had been frightened by being so close to the animal she was in no real danger.

Nighttime sighting on country dirt road in Southern Missouri.

Other encounters that can be considered somewhat harrowing are:

Couple has car shaken and sees large animal up close near Tebbetts, Missouri.

Two teenagers have sighting east of Seneca, Illinois.

Considerations for witnesses coming forward with their stories.

To even report an encounter to a family member, co-worker or a website requires that the witness admits to themselves about the incident. I have a contact who after relating the story to me about the sightings he and his wife had been having I cautioned him about telling people about it at work. It was too late, his wife had already shared her story at the office. Her co-workers laid out a trail of M & M’s down the hallway and through the office and played a game called “follow the bigfoot”.

Many witnesses that I contact express their relief that they have someone to tell their story to. Often times they are not interested in having their stores published, they are just appreciative to have had someone to listen to them. Several times I have been told “in the twenty years since my incident I have spoken to no one about this other than my spouse and you”.

Several years ago when I got involved in research my wife’s family, although not outwardly skeptical, did seem to harbor a little doubt about what I was doing. One nephew told me “I am forty years old and have hunted these woods all my life and I have never seen or heard anything out of the ordinary nor do I know anyone that has”.

On the 23rd of Jan I gave him a phone call. I said “If you are not too busy I have something I want to show you.”

As he knelt in the trail and felt the depression that each toe had made in the ice and snow I saw a different look in his eyes.

It is amazing to see someone discover for themselves what the truth is and not what they have been told by society.

If there is one recommendation in research that I try to live by and encourage others to do so also is “be prepared”. The Boy Scouts of America certainly picked an appropriate motto. Although I have not necessarily recorded anything significant I have tried to learn by my mistakes, have the correct gear and hopefully keep myself alert for opportunities to record when they are presented.

In doing wildlife research I feel that the two most important pieces of equipment are some type of camera or camcorder and a audio recorder. There are many new digital camcorders on the market and prices continue to drop. For doing a remote video setup I happen to like the Sony analog because it has 4 hours on long play and the aperture can be opened up to allow in more light. For audio recorder recommendations please see my soundrecording page.

I have had some successes and many failures in my quest to be ready. In March of 2005 I happened to be fortunate enough to get a digital still picture of a bobcat.

I was walking along a pond when Belle, my Karelian Bear Dog, assumed a point position. I saw some motion in the grass at about 300 yards distance. I immediately started clicking pictures. I did not know at the time what it was, I thought perhaps coyote until I downloaded the pictures on my computer. Even in the corn stubble the bobcat was still very well camouflaged.

On the 29th of August 2006 I had a cougar cross the road in front of my pickup at 7 a.m. in broad daylight. Was I prepared, no. If I had my camcorder running, sitting on the dash I would have perhaps recorded an excellent sequence. I had stopped the vehicle to allow my dog to greet the farmers dog that always comes out to say hello. When I looked back up the road the big cat was crossing the road only 50 feet in front of me. Since then I keep my camcorder running on the dash when I get within a mile of my research area.

I try to do 10 hr remote audio recording every night. My audio recordings can be found at:

my unknown sounds and bird and animal sounds.

Doing remote video setup I have taken video’s of deer, possum, coyote, bobcat, fox, squirrel, rabbit. Of course using night vision the pictures are never as good as daytime. Some of these can be found at:

bird and animal videos.

I think the future is bright for researchers getting new recordings. Prices have plummeted for both audio and video equipment. Almost everyone can now afford to have at least some type of recording gear. And whatever you do, always keep your recorders running while in the field.

Habituation is an interesting controversial subject in Sasquatch research. Over the years there have been several cases of people making claims of long term interactions with families of bigfoot. I have been fortunate enough to personally investigate two of these situations.

I have a Native American friend, John, who lives along the Illinois River in North-Central Illinois. For the last twenty years he has routinely spent time in the woods near his home. I can not prove his claims nor do I have any evidence as to what I have witnessed while I was with him. My friend is a soft spoken man, suspicious of outsiders and what their intentions are when it comes to the large animals that live in his woods. He was concerned about both the welfare of the animals plus how I would handle myself if the animals came in real close. After several meetings with John he eventually agreed to allow me to tag-along with him on one of his outings.

We arrived on location about forty-five minutes before sundown to take up our positions. As we stepped into the woods I heard a howl coming from around the hill, and then it was repeated again. I was amazed. John said “They know me”. Slowly we worked our way through the brush and upwards the base of a low lying hill. As the sun was going down we sat on the ground and awaited our “guests” or should I say that perhaps we were the “guests”. John explained that he had this “special technique” to draw the animals in. He would bang together two wooden sticks and set up a rhythm while singing a traditional chant. Many times the animals would come in very close to investigate, sometimes within ten feet. John said to keep our heads down and not to make eye contact. As with the great apes, eye contact would be considered a threat and the animals would leave.

During the twilight John sang his chant and we anxiously waited to see if we would be visited. On top of the hill 125 yards away I heard a wood knock. John said “they are coming”. I could hear movement behind me and to my left. For the next fifteen minutes we could detect brush being moved out of the way as something was approaching. I expectantly waited for whatever was hidden to show itself. The movement stopped about fifteen feet away in the nearest brush. We sat there for thirty minutes listening to the night sounds. Our “friends” did not come out in the open that night. Perhaps they were just being cautious about this stranger carrying a camcorder and recorder. We slowly made our way back to the van in the dark. Although somewhat disappointed I was still excited to have been let in to one man’s world, a world that the general public does not acknowledge or understand.

Bigfoot Contactees: 50 Years Of Coquettishness

Some Thoughts triggered off by the Kosovo Sighting

I don’t like evaluating tree breaks or twists. I don’t recognize them as being bigfoot related. There are just too many other things they could be attributed to: storms, winds, old age. I don’t say that Uncle Harry didn’t do it as some type of territorial marker, I am just saying it is “not my thing.”

On the 1st of July 2006 this twelve foot tall four inch diameter maple tree was snapped in two along the path in the pasture just up the hill feet from my feeding station. There had not been any other damage on my property or my neighbors property. There was a path of knocked down tall grass from the hay field to the east directly to the tree.