Bigfoot Sightings

Date: 20-Mar-05

For those interested in looking for sasquatch sign in New Mexico, a winter hotspot seems to be around San Antonio peak. Two sets of fresh and pristine tracks were documented there by law enforcement in 1993. One set was 19 inches long, and the other set was 21 inches long, found in mud and snow and followed for quite some distance. The two that left the tracks were evidently traveling together. The officer that documented the tracks is now the sheriff of Conejos County Colorado. The set of tracks that I found was also in 1993, but in summer, and was found up in the South San Juan Wilderness (17 inches long). A couple more sets of these outsize tracks have been found in the Platoro area since the early 80’s. The first report of a sasquatch by a white man in the South San Juans was a sighting by a bear hunter in the 1870’s. He did not know about sasquatch and evidenty thought the sasquatch was some form of giant upright walking species of bear that made screaming noises, as detailed in his memoirs. History of sasquatch in northern NM go back to at least the 1500’s, when the Jemez moved into that area. The Jemez have lots of oral history of the creature there, and named a Pueblo in circa 1520 “Place Where the Giant Man Stepped”. The Pueblo is located there on Jemez land south of the Colorado border. The Jemez traditionally thought the sasquatch were some form of giant hair covered men who lived without tools or clothing in the high elevation ponderosa forests who sometimes killed people and ate them. If the Jemez’s giants really did kill and eat people back then, they have evidenty given up their man eating ways fortunately. When I, with local officials, investigated a set of tracks found on the Eagle River in central Colorado a few years ago, we were pretty much in agreement that the creature who made the tracks put about the same weight per square inch of foot bottom surface as a bare footed human. The tracks were 19 inches long and the weight distribution indicated an animal weighing about 900 pounds. That is as heavy as a well fed adult coastal grizzly bear, so it would probably have no problem killing a person if it wanted to. They are evidently usually shy and retreating, rather than aggressive toward humans.

Modern sightings and track finds in the border area of Colorado and New Mexico seem to indicate an association with elk in seasonal migration by elevation and location. So the best chance of you finding tracks or seeing one yourself might be to search in areas where elk density is greatest at any time of year. Tracks in snow would be much easier to find than tracks in the hard rocky ground. I spent over 300 days in the area of the SSJWilderness and only found one set of tracks by accident across a dirt slide, so finding tracks in snowless terrain is probably nearly impossible. Members of the Round River Conservation Group found one sasquatch track in an elk wallow in the south part of the SSJWilderness in 1980 while systematically searching for grizzly bear tracks. They found no grizzly spoor. I think it is very interesting that they organized the group to look for grizzly sign and find something completely unexpected instead. We found fresh grizzly diggings with tracks in the upturned soil while hunting elk near the Divide about straight west of Platoro Reservoir in 1975, but have seen no definite sign of grizzly bears since then. I fear grizzly bears are extinct in that area, but one never knows I guess.

I really have a very hard time believing sasquatch are real, but I do know that their tracks are very very real. I see no reason to think that someone faked the tracks where I found them, where the RRCG found them, or where any of the other outfitters or law enforcement have found them in southern CO and northern NM. Something is making those tracks and has evidently been making tracks there since at least the early 1500’s. We just need to have a truck hit one of the track makers on some highway down there to have an answer to what exactly the track maker is.

If it’s foot shape is any indication of the creatures shape, it is too human-like to shoot I would think. I would have a hard time shooting some creature that looked like a man, no matter how hairy it was, even if it is no smarter than a chimpanzee. Chimps are pretty smart in many ways.

Is sasquatch real? I don’t know. We will probably have to wait until we have a body of one of them to study at liesure. The tracks found and documented by many different people are intriguing however. I always just thought that bigfoot tracks were just fakes made by hoaxers with nothing better to do, until I found a set myself. Actually I never gave the subject any thought, as it was not really worth even thinking about. I am pretty sure now that I had the wrong attitude about sasquatch, but I can’t blame the complete skeptic for being skeptical. As probably no one was more skeptical than me. After I found the tracks and heard some awful loud screaming sounds of unknown animal origin from that area of the SSJWilderness, I began digging into the subject in that area and was surprised as anyone to find so much history of the creature there that went back to the 1500’s. I had never heard of sasquatch being in the Rocky Mountains, thinking it was only a ridiculous anomoly of the Pacific Northwest. Evidently the Jemez were right and that area really is a “Place were giant men step”. Hope you all get to find your own set of those giant tracks some day. It changed the way I viewed the area for sure. If they really exist, I hope we find out what they are before they go extinct.

Since three different size sets of tracks, 17″, 19″, and 21″ were found in 1993, maybe that means that at least three sasquatch were in that general area in that year, so maybe there is hope that they are still of breeding population numbers. The tracks found by the Round River group were 15 inches long in 1980. Another set found by an outfitter west of Platoro on the upper Rito Gato in the early 80’s was also 15 inches long. Smaller tracks, if they exist, might be mistaken for human or bear tracks, so evidently have not been reported that I know of.

Date: 20-Mar-05

Most people in the general public do not know that at the location of the Patterson film of a possible bigfoot that people went back to the same location later and took photos for scale. The young man in this photo is over 6 foot tall, and the frame from the Patterson Film are overlayed with the photo of the young man, scaled exactly to each other by sizing the dead trees in the background of both the film and the photo. This gives us exact size of the creature in the Patterson film. It is built huge and left only 15 inch long tracks. Wonder what one that leaves 20 inch long tracks looks like?

Date: 20-Mar-05

Here is zoomed in a little for better view of comparison of size of the Patterson Film subject

Date: 20-Mar-05

Here is Patty, the young man, and Shaq all scaled to height and size. Notice how huge the Patterson film subject is in comparison to Shaq, even though they are about the same height. Her thighs are about the same diameter as Shaq’s waist diamenter and her arms are about the same diameter as Shaq’s thighs. Notice arm length differences.

One thing that is interesting is that in the film, the creatures arms hang straight down as it walks, which means that the rotation of the arm at the shoulder joint is very much wider than any known human that ever lived. You might be able to put a 7 foot tall person in a gorilla suit of similar size, and build it up to look massive with padding, but you can’t change the width of the chest without having the guys arms angle outward awkwardly.

Whatever it was that Patterson filmed, these photo comparisons show the exact size of it for you to decide. No one has been able to show that the film was a hoax, quite to the contrary. So far 7 people, 6 men and one woman have said that they were the person in a gorilla suit that Patterson filmed that day, and each time the media has accepted their tall tales. None of them were even close to 7 foot tall, and none of them were anywhere nearly as wide through the chest as the real film subject.

Date: 29-Mar-05

7 people have admitted to being the person in the gorilla suit that Patterson filmed in California, which proves that the film is fake, as told to us by newspapers and television news reports. However, none of them were around 7 foot tall, nor did they have such extremely unhumanly wide shoulder rotation joints. That the film is proven to be fake is only in the minds of those who want it to be fake. True scientific study of the film differs, and says that the filmed creatures skeletal size is far outside known human possibility.

True—Very many thousands of backpackers, hikers, hunters who spend alot of time in roadless backcountry have never seen anything like bigfoot, including myself. What about the many thousands of them who have reported seeing something EXACTLY like bigfoot? Some 6000 sighting reports are now on record. That includes at least 6 professional hunting guides/outfitters in Colorado who have reported seeing sasquatch or finding clearly sasquatch tracks in that state while hunting. What about them? Just because I have never seen a sasquatch does not mean it does not exist. I have never seen a cougar in Colorado. Does that mean cougars do not exist in Colorado?

Why has no one shot a sasquatch and actually brought in back to civilization? Would you shoot a man shaped form while hunting in New Mexico for elk? I hope not, it might be me. Only murderers shoot at other people, no matter how hairy or how big, not hunters.

Could you hide in a 1 square mile block of old growth forest in Colorado and avoid being seen by someone looking for you if you wanted to hide from them? I could. We send hundreds of people out looking for lost children who want to be found and they are usually rarely found. Why? Is it because the lost child never existed in the first place? Surely if thousands of people including trained search and rescue people were out looking for the lost child in a relatively small area of forest that the child would have been found if they ever really existed. If the sasquatch naysayers are so good at finding anything and everything that walks in the woods, why don’t they contribute their extrordinary woodsman skills and find those lost children for us? There are also a couple hundred airplanes that have gone down in western North American forests that have never been found in spite of organized efforts to find them. Where were these exceptional woodsmen when they were needed to find those airplanes? After all, it is impossible to hide a big-O bright metal airplane in a forest from them. What about hiding something smaller than an airplane that moves around and doesn’t want to be found? Like sasquatch.

Science said very matter of factly and with no doubt whatsoever that no hominid or primate species migrated south of the Wallace Line in the Indonesian chain that sprawls from Asia to Australia prior to invention of the boat by humans. Their proof was that no fossils of such primates had been found south of the Wallace line. When the diminutive homo erectus type homo florensis fossils were recently found there south of the Wallace Line they said it was impossible that it was a decendant of homo erectus and that the first fossil skull found was only a skull of a microcephalous suffering homo sapien who came later. After finding more of the skulls and skeletons of these 3 foot tall micro sized homo erectus type hominids there, those naysayers are eating crow once more. Interestingly, those 3 foot tall, 12,000 year old fossil hominids with beetle brow, chimpanzee size brains and receding forehead found in Indonesia recently exactly fit modern descriptions by natives living there of some creature that still lives there. Now scientists believe that these creatures had to have lived in those island chains for well over 200,000 years, yet why didn’t we have any fossils of them until now? Very many millions of those hominids had to have lived on those islands over the last 200,000 years to have survived and passed on their genes, so where are all their fossil bones. Saying that sasquatch fossils have not been found in North America proves their nonexistance is ludicrous by comparison. North America is huge by size comparison to those islands as a place to hide rare fossils. If scientists are so good at finding fossils, why can’t they find the ancestors of homo florensis who lived by the millions in such a small area for over 200,000 years?

I just love the argument that if sasquatch was real, some hikers, backpackers and hunters would have seen it. I guess the many thousands of hikers, backpackers and hunters who have reported seeing sasquatch don’t count. Shouldn’t your argument be that, since you have not seen sasquatch or its tracks that it does not exist?

Date: 29-Mar-05

If you can find a copy of the Nov-Dec 2000 issue of Bugle Magazine, you will find a couple of articles by fellow hunters who also happen to be fairly well known outdoor writers who have very seriously seen sasquatch or tracks of it in southern Colorado and northern New Mexico. What about them? You read their articles to learn how to hunt elk, you pay them to take you elk hunting, and you trust their judgment to help you succeed at elk hunting, then when they tell you they saw a sasquatch or found it’s tracks you call them liars, insane or poor in animal identification. That is very kind of you indeed.

Even though I have never seen a cougar in Colorado, I have seen a cougar in western Kansas while hunting antelope, where they are not supposed to exist. Interestingly, I have killed very many Pope and Young qualifying deer of both species in Kansas over the last 25 years. I recently helped a neophyte bowhunter select and set up his bowhunting equipment, taught him how to shoot, taught him how to tune his equipment, took him out hunting several times and rattled in two different P&Y qualifying whitetail bucks to within easy bow range for him which he promptly missed in both cases. When I told him I saw a cougar at 40 yards in ankle deep grass of a CRP field in broad daylight in western Kansas he thinks I am full of ****. Gee, he is so happy to have me give so many hours of archery and bowhunting training and give up my own bowhunting time to take his sorry inexperienced ass out hunting to teach him how to hunt deer but when I tell him what else lives out there in the wild he flat thinks I’m either lieing or don’t know how to identify cat species. Geez.

I know two professional Colorado bowhunting guides with more big bull elk under their bowhunting belts than most bowhunters will see in a lifetime who have seen sasquatch very clearly and distinctly in plain sight in Colorado. One of them had an 8+ foot tall sasquatch come to within 30 yards of his hidden location and step fully into an open meadow while bugling elk. The other sat and watched for over 10 minutes a huge sasquatch sunning itself in short grass beside a beaver pond from 100 yards through $2000 binoculars from uphill of the sasquatch’s location, with no doubt about what he saw. Yet I am sure when they each tell their sorry ass inexperienced bowhunting clients about the sightings that the clents think they are both nut cases poor in animal identification.

When the famous Bristish Columbian grizzly bear hunting guide Clayton Mack told his accounts of his two sightings of B.C. sasquatch to his city slicker clients, I am sure he was treated the same way too. After all, if some dude from New York City paying to be guided to a grizzly bear in B.C. has not seen a sasquatch, it can not exist there or anywhere. When you have walked as many backcountry miles in B.C. as Clayton Mack and not seen a sasquatch, then come back and give a more learned opinion.

If grizzly bears did not live in southern Colorado for 25 years between 1950 and 1975 because no one saw them or found their tracks there, then why was a grizzly sow who had born cubs killed there in 1975. Some boar grizzly had to have lived there too during that time to breed her, how did he hide from you? After all, how can you hide a pee brained grizzly boar, sow and her cubs from so many hikers, backpackers and hunters running all over the SSJWilderness for 25 years. If it was there, someone would have seen one of them during that time. Maybe they did see one of them and you chose not to believe them. Wildlife authorities certainly thought any grizzly sighting in Colorado during that time period was a bunch of crap, no matter who reported it. A few long term hunting guides had seen sign of them, or seen them themselves, but then so have a few guides seen sasquatch in Colorado. But they don’t count, because hunting guides don’t know how to identify species anyway.

And we all know that Native Americans who reported seeing and tracking sasquatch in western North America for millinia are nothing but stupid redskins who don’t know how to identify wildlife too. We European decent intelligent humans are after all the only people who can truely identify wildlife in our forests. All the Native American tribes who lived themselves for thousands of years off the land in the forests of western North America are wrong and you are right because you have a superior European brain.

I for one think I will trust the peoples that lived right in the forests on their opinion of what lived in those forests. I am also getting more and more sure that those mysterious creatures still live there and still leaving tracks there and still being seen by the more experienced outdoorsmen who visit there. Maybe if I spend another 300 days in the SSJWilderness and wait real quietly somewhere remote I see a sasquatch there too. I don’t know though, there are lots of trees and brush for them to hide behind.

Date: 12-Apr-05

Quite a few people think the creature in the Patterson film is a man in a costume, except people with degrees in anatomy or someone willing to take the time to measure the creature scientifically. The media easily accepts it as a man in a costume along with joe blow public. Here is a recent letter to the editor of the Yakima Herald from a doctor after the Herald published an article claiming the person in the suit was a man named Bob Heironimus. Every true scientist I know who has truely studied that film comes away with the realization that it is not a man in a costume.

Letters to the Editor of the Yakima Herald, Re: Greg Long’s book and the Bob Heironimus claim that he was the man in a suit in the Patterson Film……. Dear Editor, I read the absurd assertion that some guy named Bob Heironimus was the bigfoot creature in the Patterson/Gimlin film of 1967. One of my colleagues, Dr. Phil Mortensen actually met this Heironimus; allow me to say that if you believe that he actually was in the film, you are a fool’s fool. I have had the opportunity to examine the film frame by frame, and no way, especially in ’67, was such a suit that exhibited muscle movement and contraction available. Nor would one be easy to create today. I have attached frame 72, and prior and subsequent frames show muscular contraction and expansion, as one would expect from an upright, walking biped. And I speak specifically, the latissimus dorsi of the back, the gluteus maximus of the rear, the semitendinosus and biceps femoris of the back of the upper leg, and the plantaris tendon and gastrocnemius of the calf area. Even if none of that makes sense to you, this Heironimus is not nearly big enough to fill the suit out. We have determined the creature in the film to be nearly 7 feet tall, and in the area of 450-500 lbs. I know you have to write books, and hopefully this is just a ploy to sell them. You can’t actually believe the guy-in-the-suit theory…Can you? The muscles I wrote of were, of course, those of the human (and some primate) anatomy. I too, was hugely skeptical about the possibility that the bigfoot existed. I am now 60, and didn’t actually view the P/G film closely until 2002. I remember seeing it way back, probably in the early 70’s, but didn’t get the chanc

Bowhunting is not about killing something, it is about being close to nature in a one on one way to my way of thinking. Sasquatch may be part of that natural environment that I go out to enjoy with my longbow in hand. I never think about KE, because I know my longbow will propel a heavy shaft plenty fast to go through lungs of anything that walks in North America. Since I have got so many reports from bowhunters of their personal witness to sasquatch in Colorado and New Mexico, I think sasquatch is very relevant to bowhunting. Eagles, wolves, and other creatures that I don’t bowhunt are also very relevant to bowhunting.

No one forces anyone to read any forums you don’t want to read. I may be from Kansas, but since we had two ranches (one in the hills and one on the plains) and a high country vacation property in Colorado, it is hard for me not to visit the nearby Rockie Mountains. Oh yes, another little ranch near Tucumcari NM, but it was so close to Roswell that we sold it in the mid-70’s for fear of alien attacks. Okay, I admit that we no longer pay property taxes in NM, so I won’t post here anymore.

I still say that if sasquatch is running around in your bowhunting area, it is very relevant to bowhunting. Bowhunting is not just about killing things with an arrow, in my book.

e to dissect it, as it were, until fairly recently. I truly can think of no way to replicate such proper muscular movement. The creature we see in the film is alive, and is NOT a human being. In fact, the concurrent contraction of two or more muscle groups that occurs during a human walk (leg and lower back, for example, or gluteus maximus and upper leg) is nearly impossible for a layman to comprehend, much less contrive. Now the trick is to catch one of these beasts to lay all skepticism to waste. However, if one IS found, do the masses flock to the backcountry to see for themselves? Is it better left an unknown? Is the thrill gone should a corpse or live creature be collected? Ah.. the mystique of it all. Best wishes, Dr. Lawrence Willard Foley, Orthopedist

Date: 15-Apr-05

 

 

 

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.