Forgot Bigfoot-Grizzly Spotted!
Date:02-Nov-00
I may have dug up something on grizzlies for you. USFWS is investigating a video of possible grizzly taken near the CO/NM border about 1 month ago by a man in Chama. We found out about this video while investigating some bigfoot stuff down there (yes, I’m the idiot from Kansas who seriously thought bigfoot might be real). CDOW ignorred the video information, so I am giving all that stuff to USFWS now.
I know that CDOW is sitting on a 35mm photo of a Colorado grizzly sow and two cubs taken near Pagosa Springs in 1998. I have my sources on that one. Why do they withhold the stuff? Well, the “Endangered Species Listings” can cause some real radical federal actions as far as land use in some areas go.
Tell you what, I’ve hunted the San Juan Wilderness for over 25 years now, and I was hunting on the Rito Gato when Wiseman was attacked by that sow on the Adams Fork a few miles away. We had found definite grizzly tracks in that area in 1975, and they were not sow grizzly tracks, but obviously from a big boar. We reported the tracks to a CDOW officer who checked our permits and he just laughed and told us flatlanders how poor we were at identifying bear tracks. A 200 yard walk and he could have seen them himself, but he was too lazy and too smart. He did not know that we had hunted much in grizzly country of the north for years and years and had seen those types of tracks before. We had all been on many bear hunts, moose hunts, elk hunts and other western hunts many times. I walked along behind my first grizzly tracks on the Bacon Creek in the Gros Ventre area of Wyoming, as they were extremely fresh in the falling snow and I was fall black bear hunting. I peeled off after I realized I was stillhunting and stalking a rocky mountain grizzly boar with my bow. I’ve spent over 300 days in a tent in the San Juans during the last 25 years, and another 200 days in a cabin there. How about you? Wish I could have found that particular gleefully intelligent CDOW officer and rubbed his face in the carcass of that sow grizzly that attacked Wiseman. Hope it happens again with grizzlies and other big rare predators.
I just found some photos of big, big, human like tracks that was taken at the upper elevations on the Rito Gato west of Platoro in 1988, that had been collecting dust. Wonder what is leaving those huge tracks there way back in places where few people go? Wonder why some hoaxer “faked” them way up there? Hopefully some day we will find out.
Also discovered another hunting guide and local outdoor daily cowboy who rides those mountains all summer in the last few weeks with some bigfoot tales from the San Juans. He says grizzlies are still there too. He lives there, and “out there” all the time, so who are you going to believe. If I want to find out something about the city, I ask someone who lives there. I trust that cowboy/hunting guide who told me that both grizzlies and bigfoot are still wandering the higher and lonelier places of the San Juans of southern Colorado.
I don’t know why city people are always trying to tell the country folk what exists and what doesn’t exist in the country folks backyard. I may not be a native Coloradan, but my grand-dad owned two ranches there and I have spent more time in the San Juan Wilderness than most Coloradans, by a dang long shot.
Colorado grizzlies are like bigfoots, and eastern cougars. There is no such thing, but they do leave tracks that are identifiable and found is some out of the way places more regularly than most know. My personal conclusion is that none of them really exist, but that their tracks are most definitely real. I’ll put my track i.d. skills and tracking skills up against any comers in an open and public contest, any day. You guys have no idea of some of the well known professional people who would rather keep quiet but that I am working with on this subject. You also have no idea of the extent of physical evidence we have collected in the form of tracks, hair and droppings and such. We collect the grizzly stuff too, as an aside. Keep your mind open, as there may be some hairy surprises in the future. Then again, maybe Colorado grizzlies and bigfoot are too smart to ever be caught.
Date:03-Nov-00
Thanks Hornhunter. I know you didn’t call me an idiot. I called myself an idiot. Really though, I can’t help it if I found the tracks. That was an accidental find that I kind of wish had never happened to me. I’m moderating my position a little on bigfoot and just looking at the physical evidence now, instead of following up every sighting in Colorado. This is why I say, “bigfoot can not possibly exist, but I know that it’s tracks do”. This is also the conclusion of the Eagle County Law Officials and Wildlife Officials in that area of Colorado after the track finds there this spring. You will see a series of articles in the Denver Post by their environment writer Theo Stein in a week or so that will likely detail the statements of the Eagle County people. So I have taken that position now too. If “officials” can take that stance, so can I. What it means to others, I don’t know.
I have to keep reminding myself that prior to the personal experience with this bigfoot creature, I would have never ever believed such a thing could be out there.
Probably is a waste of time, as one guy hunting for something so rare with a camcorder has about a ziltch chance of ever getting a video of it, by any means. I have seen no evidence of grizzly in the San Juans since 1975, but I still hold some hope of it’s existance there. My study into that is probably a waste of time too. One researcher, with little help and no funding does not have much chance of accomplishing much. I’ll just keep documenting the stuff and if the grizzly or bigfoot is ever officialized there, we will at least have some documentation to give us a little history of it for making future plans.
Without my documentation, if bigfoot is discovered in any one locale in Colorado officially, that area would likely be shut down to all use (no hunting of nothin) by USFWS. With my documentation that shows that they are in several areas and move around a lot, they will see that it would be useless to shut any one area down and land use could still be continued by hunters and other outdoor people, even in the local area of official discovery. My documentation should help keep areas open to hunting, backpacking, fishing, ect.. With the grizzly, I won’t be of much help, and some areas may be closed to human activity if they are proved to be in some particular area. My best guess is that if grizzlies are there, they hang on the west slope of the divide in the San Juans in a line from Pagosa Springs to Chama, and there “were” not more than perhaps 15 to 30 of them there. Less than 15 in 1979, and they could not have maintained a large enough genetic base to survive since 1979 up to this time, 21 years later. More than 30, and I think we would see them more. “If” they are there, they must be right at the edge of extinction and barely holding on genetically. The Weminuche (sp?) Wilderness also has some huge areas that see extremely little to no human activity, so perhaps there are a few grizzly there too. I’d like to spend a couple of months backpacking that wilderness area some day, just to poke around looking for animal sign.
My best to you all. Good bowhunting.
If you find bigfoot tracks, document them and contact me. If you can’t remember who I am, send them to Idaho State University or to the Utah Department of Wildlife Salt Lake City office and they will get to me. Thanks.
Date:07-Nov-00
http://www.bfro.net/GDB/CNTS/CO/EG/co_eg001.htm
Here are the tracks found at Eagle this spring. They are 19 inches long and just under 10 inches wide, which is a large set. The only larger set found in Colorado and documented were recorded on video by a law officer (Joe Taylor Jr. who now is a police officer in Alamosa I think, and should be in the phone book if still there) in Conejos County in 1993 and those were 20 inches long by 10 inches wide and a 5 foot stride in single file. Those videoed tracks consisted of thousands of them in snow and mud as the officer followed the tracks for quite a ways as they wound off up a saddle between two mountains. Actually there were two sets of tracks made in that case. The tracks I found in the San Juan Wilderness were “only” 16 inches long, and about 7.5 to 8 inches wide, with a 4 foot stride where it was walking a straight line and slightly less where it turned to head in a different direction.
The tracks look quite different from bear tracks in shape and how they are laid out. Bears have a wide straddle while walking, and the tracks will appear zig-zag. Bigfoot tracks are laid out like people tracks in a straight line. Bear tracks are also curved in an arc across the toes, whereas bigfoot tracks have a pretty straight toeline. Bears very often step their rear foot right on to their forefoot track, giving a double deposit in one spot that might be confuse with a bigfoot track, except for the pointed rear heel, curved toe line and claws usually showing. Bigfoot have wide and rounded heels as you can see in the track photos attached. Most bigfoot tracks are too wide for bear tracks, so it is easy to tell the difference most times. Smaller bigfoot tracks might be passed off as barefoot human tracks and ignorred by anyone who finds them while hiking in the outdoors. Probably many bigfoot tracks seen are given only a glance and ignorred as bear tracks by most people, especially those found in snow. Few would know the difference probably, and just see the track line in the snow and think, “hey, look, a bear walked in the snow here”. Certainly no one is expecting to see or looking for bigfoot tracks, and only the larger bigfoot tracks might draw any special attention, which seems to be the case in Colorado. They see the unusually large tracks and might take a photo or something, and that is about it. Every once in awhile someone knows they are unusual enough that “someone” might be interested and actually tell officials about the tracks. Most track photos or reports like that are probably collecting dust like those I found this month from a 1988 incident.
There are two options for the tracks as big as those found at Eagle this spring. They are too big for any bears tracks, and so were either faked by someone or belong to an unknown animal. The sheriffs office (sargeant Bill Kaufman; source) and forest service biologists (biologist Bill Heicher; source) there decided that they were not faked, because when they went to the location, there were no other people tracks there or near the tracks, they knew the man that found them, the tracks were located in a spot were softer and better faking soil was within a few yards, they were on the south side of the river where access and people use was rare, the tracks were pressed into the soil with much force (slightly deeper than their own human tracks there, but so much larger), the tracks were obviously pressed into the ground and not drawn on the ground by moving soil material, the tracks showed toe movement between the two better tracks, with the toes curled more in one track than the other, and several other factors too complicated to mention here. We were fortunate in this particular set of tracks that the animal that made them made a sharp turn to the left in one of the tracks and that particular track showed some of the foot toe movements and indicated exactly how the turn was made in an abrupt manner.
What was neat about the tracks video taped in Conejos County in 1993 by officer Joe Taylor Jr. was that some of the tracks were in very wet soft mud and the toes in some of the tracks squished in deep enough to show toenail prints across the top front of the toes. They toenails were kind of chisel shaped and very human (primate) looking, and not claws.
I’m just trying to find out what is making these tracks. If they are faked, the person faking all of them is doing one fine job of fooling the experts in physical evidence, including some of the best anthropologists, wildlife biologists, experienced detectives, FBI forensic scientists, and me. He has also been faking them with regularity for more than 50 years. The faker can also walk uphill with 20 inch feet strapped on and maintain a 5 foot stride for quite a distance while doing it, plus must be carrying lots of weight in a backpack to get the feet to squish into the mud like they did in Conejos County in 1993, the whole while he is walking uphill and maintaining that long stride, actually a running stride length for a person. After investigating a few of these track cases, it starts getting more ridiculous to assume faking than it does to assume a real unknown animal made the tracks.
The possiblity of bigfoot with 19 to 20 inch long tracks being real is ridiculous, I admit, but the tracks are there for sure, found all over the western mountains, quite consistent in shape and detail from all the hundreds of sources, and man are they real looking, with toe movements, soft portions evident and even dermal ridges in those made in soft mud that the FBI experts say could not have been faked.
I’ve personally only found one set of bigfoot tracks (summer 1993) in 25 years of hunting, fishing and backpacking all over the Southern San Juan Wilderness. I would have never found those, except I was investigating the source of a strange loud scream we had heard the evening before. Guess you can tell I am a curious dude. I have also only seen one set of bear tracks that I thought were grizzly tracks there (1975 or 76). Another set of bigfoot tracks was found there and photographed in 1988, about 4 miles from where I found mine. Those photos only came to my attention about a month ago, and had been gathering dust in the photo album of an outfitter/hunting guide who lives in that area.
Anybody else know of any possible bigfoot track photos from Colorado, let me know who has them, so I can investigate them. Or, if you don’t want to contact me, send them to Dr. Jeff Meldrum at Idaho State University. He is “the” pro on hominid tracks. He was chosen by the Leaky Foundation to make final assessment of the fossil hominid tracks (species source) found at Laetoli Africa by the Leaky’s, so you know he is good with tracks. He has come to the conclusion that many, in fact most, bigfoot tracks submitted to him are real. A few are faked of course.
Few hairs or feces are ever collected, because who is going to just go out collecting hair off things to determine source or know the difference between a bear poop or a bigfoot poop? We do have quite a few hairs collected from all over the west that match no known species yet, yet match each other (repository for these hairs is Dr. Henner Fahrenbach at the Oregon Primate Research Center, a medical facility). I wouldn’t know the difference between bear hair and bigfoot hair, so never wasted my time collecting any hairs from anything. Bones have never been collected, which is not surprising considering bones don’t last long in the wild, and that only 1 in a million hikers might know the difference between an elk bone and a bigfoot bone anyway and pick it up. Nobody is looking for bigfoot bones, as odds are too great against finding any, even if bigfoot was fairly numerous. There could be a bigfoot bone laying beside a trail in Yellowstone National Park for years and no one would know the difference. There could also be a bigfoot poop squarely on the same trail being stepped in by tourists who think they got buffalo poo on the shoe.
Could you hide in Yellowstone Park and never be seen by any human for 100 years. I could, and it wouldn’t be too hard even in that overrun place. How about in the San Juan Wilderness of Colorado. Could you and your family hide there if you wanted to? I think bigfoot try to hide from humans out of natural fear, but I don’t think they even have to try very hard to stay hidden for the most part. A bigfoot could be moving around all day in the black timber with all that downed old growth and never have to worry about running into a person. During hunting seasons few even go into that stuff very far, and when they do they could walk right by a bigfoot sitting beside the trail in his chocolate brown bark colored fur and never see the bugger. If bigfoot is a predator, which I think it is, then it is also probably good at remaining motionless beside a trail waiting for an elk to pass by. You yourself might have been within feet of one of them and never known it. But, bigfoot are evidently seen every once in awhile evidently if any of the thousands of eye witnesses are to be believed. You will have to decide if they are “all” lieing through their teeth.
Only the large and unusual tracks are very noticable, so that is what we have to study most often. I just happened to be fortunate enough or unfortunate enough, to have found a set myself in a wilderness area in Colorado, and got caught up in this mess. You all can decide for yourself if the tracks documented are real or fake, but don’t make the decision until you have studied 50 or more examples. Hopefully some of the new technologies will help us get better documentation of the creatures themselves, instead of just track signs, feces and hair. Thermal image cameras still cost about $10,000 or more, and no one has given me one yet, so the cost of technology will have to go down before I can use much of it. My first generation night vision stuff is about useless too, so I’ll just have to look at tracks every once in awhile whenever someone accidently finds some and listen to tales from other bowhunters. Generally, I trust other bowhunters as far as eyewitness accounts go, as most experienced bowhunters know wildlife pretty good. Bowhunters are a rare lot themselves, and may be getting rarer now. Glad to be able to visit with you other bowhunters on this very unusual wildlife subject.
Sorry if I go so long in these posts, but I try to anticipate questions that you guys might have and answer them. This odd subject takes lots of explaining, because the evidence is rather large and details important to establish facts vs fiction. I can provide names and phone numbers to all officials involved in all track cases and such if anyone is really interested to the point of contacting these people to confirm what I am telling you.
Is bigfoot impossible? Well, I would have certainly thought so, and did. Now I would just have to say, I think these tracks I have investigated are as real as any other tracks out there, whatever that means. The nice thing is that you can look at them too, and if you know much about tracks, can decide for yourself. But like I said, look at quite a few cases before finalizing the decision.
Date:08-Dec-00
A Colorado bowhunting guide claims to have seen a bigfoot this fall while guiding hunters and elk hunting himself. Many of you probably know him, as he is a fairly well known guide and bowhunter. They saw it first as it crossed their path while going out of the hunting area on horseback with 6 clients in tow. The guide returned to the area and found tracks the next morning after getting his clients to their airline flights. The guide saw it again under better conditions in September of this year, and watched it through binoculars for 5 or 10 minutes as it sat in the open beside a small beaver pond. It was sitting watching his campsite while he was out bugling for elk, and he saw it on his return to camp. It eventually saw him on an outcrop watching it, but seemed fairly unconcerned. He was not completely sure it saw him, as he was in camo, but it kept looking in his direction and stared, but also stared at his tent several times. He described in detail its body, color, its facial structure and hands. I think the BFRO is going to post his sighting, which occurred in Teller County, and so will be posted on the Teller County database on the BFRO website. I investigated the sighting, and if nothing else, at least I have made a new bowhunting friend and we plan to do some turkey hunting next spring with our longbows and some whitetail rattling and decoy hunting next fall. You might get to see some of those hunts on TNN in the near future, which will be fun for me. Hopefully we are both good enough hunters to eventually get some bigfoot footage for you to watch too, if the bigfoot stays in the area involved.
The other two Colorado hunting guides who have reported bigfoot sightings to me in the past also said that the bigfoot they saw seemed fairly unafraid of them, but afraid enough to move off when encountered. One of those guides said he bugled in the bigfoot he saw, it evidently thinking him an elk to prey on. He said it came to within 30 yards before discovering its mistake and just turned around and walked out of the small meadow the guide was hunting after it saw the guide. After visiting with all three of these guides, I know they are not pulling our strings, but just giving an accurate account of what they encountered. This non-chalant reaction to a human close encounter by a bigfoot always seems to surprise the witnesses, especially people familiar with wildlife reaction to hunters. Bigfoot seem to act like they are boss of the woods, but have never hurt anyone and seem to be mostly afraid of people and stay hidden most of the time. Female bigfoot with their young and big mature adult males are hardly ever seen by people. Sightings are usually of smaller males with tracks left of about 15 to 17 inches in length. Kind of like we see more raghorn elk and forkhorn mule deer than we do the well matured bulls and bucks. The younger males are a little more stupid, or maybe just brazen. We find bigfoot tracks up to around 20 inches long, so we know they get bigger than the 8 foot tallish ones with tracks around 16 to 17 inches long. Three of the better documented track events in Colorado, those found or documented by law enforcement, were of tracks from 19 to 21 inches in length. We have video and good photos of all those tracks and statements from law and wildlife officials as to authenticity.
I know it is hard to believe, and I wouldn’t believe it myself if I had not been so involved in the investigations and had some personal experience. So, if you don’t think bigfoot is possible, thats fine, and that “is” a logical conclusion. The only problem with coming to that conclusion though is that you are calling three or four very good and experienced Colorado hunting guides and quite a few fellow Colorado bowhunters liars, or at the least poor wildlife observors in spite of the close proximity of the daytime sightings and their wildlife experience that likely eclipses your own experience by quite a bit. I think we should at least give these 4 Colorado hunting guides the benefit of the doubt and keep an open mind and study and document the tracks left behind after their encounters. Also keep in mind that more than 4 hunting guides are involved if you also consider track finds by outfitters and guides, as I have more of them too. I have track find reports from three other outfitters/guides who saw the tracks themselves and some track photos from one of those events. A bear and cougar hunting guide who has cut bigfoot tracks twice while following hounds after cats in snow. These are not little tracks involved, and way too big to be bear tracks. Most are from 8 to 10 inches wide across the 5 toes and pretty dang clear and not just melted out tracks. Most occur in mud or soil, and it is kind of hard to melt bigger in mud and dirt. The sightings and tracks are usually found in particular areas where elk numbers are higher than other locations at the time. These same elk areas are usually fairly remote from lots of human activity. In fact, if you look at the more recent BFRO Colorado Database of bigfoot sightings, you will find that they show us bowhunters where the best elk hunting in Colorado is. Wonder why that is? I think bigfoot males would make dang good elk hunting guides and do if you consider sighting locations. They are so big, hairy and stinky though, that they would be hard to tolerate in camp or on the trail. ): I bet they know what direction the wind is blowing though, as an elk would be able to smell them a mile away. I would certainly sit upwind of my bigfoot elk guide to talk over an evening campfire, and not just to keep the smoke out of my eyes. (:
Date:08-Dec-00
I don’t know why bigfoot eat elk and not people. Why do cougars eat deer and rarely bother people? People are much slower and smaller. I do have a couple of cases of bigfoot possibly abducting a hunter for culinary purposes, but they consist of accounts of bigfoot tracks, blood on the snow, parts of the hunters clothing, and a missing hunter, so who knows what really happened in those cases. I only know of two of these kind of cases, one of which did occur in Colorado and involved a soldier on training from Camp Hale during WWII, south of Vail. Blood, clothing, bigfoot tracks and a missing soldier. Official records list the soldier just as missing, and all the rest of the story is rumor from long time residents in the area. And, it may be only rumor, but enough of them say it that it might have some basis in some facts. I don’t know why official records do not list the soldier as “eaten by a local bigfoot on Pearl Creek during snow manuvers”, do you? (:
I don’t know how many cougars out of 10,000 might attack and eat a person, but the numbers are pretty low. Same with black bears. Coastal grizzlies almost never attack people, but inland grizzlies do it fairly often. Cougars on Vancouver Island British Columbia attack people fairly often, but attacts on the mainland are rare. Figure that one out. Black bear boars are known to kill people for food, while black bear sows just attack out of defense of cubs and rarely if ever eat people. Some areas have higher rates of black bear attacks, and other areas with just as many bears very rarely ever have any incidents.
If bigfoot eats elk, like any other predator, it does not need to eat people very often. Elk are pretty good eating. I’ve never eaten human flesh and don’t plan to, so I’ll never know how the two compare as far as palatibility.
If bigfoot does not exist, then it will never eat anyone either. I wouldn’t lose sleep in bigfoot country, even if they do exist, as attacks are as rare or rarer than any other predator per bigfoot, if records are to be trusted. Who knows though, as many law officials would be very reticent to list cause of death as “bigfoot attack” for anyone found beheaded in the woods, even if tracks at the scene indicated bigfoot. You would be greatly surprised what “does not” go down on paper in some investigations for fear of ridicule. There could be ten or twenty missing person reports in the western mountain states where bigfoot tracks were found, and you wouldn’t hear about it in any newspaper, because it wouldn’t make it into the official investigative reports. The report might say “large tracks at the scene” but not “bigfoot tracks”.
Check Camp Hale Colorado records and go talk to old local residents if you want a gory story concerning bigfoot. Even to this day the Forest Service personel in that area will not go into the Pearl Creek area at night. At least those that know the story. Talk to Bob Poole, if he still heads the U.S. Forest Service in the Holy Cross Wilderness area, as I think he knows about some of that stuff. More goes on as far as bigfoot goes than the public knows about, alot more.
I’m serious, call some of these people if you want the scoop from somebody but me.
Date:10-Dec-00
Bear tracks are also hard to find. Soft footed animal tracks, especially the larger ones, don’t impact much and can rarely be seen in grass or in pine needles. Tracks of bigfoot are found, and by some pretty reliable and experienced guides and outfitters. If bigfoot is real, it must be very rare. I’m concerned too about how many tracks “aren’t” found, but always remember all the official searches for grizzly tracks in the S.San Juan Wilderness. They searched and searched and searched, but came up empty handed and proclaimed the grizzly extinct, and then the get proof positive of the grizzlies again there in 1979. They also have some very convincing photos of a grizzly sow and two cubs from 1998 from southeast of Pagosa Springs that is in CDOW possession. Where are their tracks if they live there? We do find quite a few bigfoot tracks in snow, but everytime they are found, the official answer to the mystery is that the tracks are hoaxed. Everytime. This might be a mistake.
Roadkills might not apply if the bigfoot is intelligent enough to avoid such contact.
My main negative about bigfoot is “why wasn’t one ever killed by hunters who shot everything that moved in the period from 1850 to 1925?” There was a 75 year period of wildlife slaughter in the western states, no permits needed and nobody worrying about who shot what. Why didn’t anyone bring in a bigfoot carcass? I can see why in this day and age that someone might not shoot a bigfoot or not report it if they did, but not during that 75 year period of “shoot everything that moves”. Sure, we have lots of “stories” of bigfoot shootings from that period, but no one brought the bugger home for all to see.
If bigfoot is real, it is likely to be a predator that is naturally very rare because it has to be to survive, because it needs lots of meat. Too many of them in any one area would effect prey numbers too much. It would be kind of like a cougar with the brain of a chimpanzee or even smarter. A cougar with the brain of a chimp would be an almost impossible animal to hunt, wouldn’t it?
I hardly ever carry a camera with me when I’m actually hunting, but always have one in camp. I don’t want my camera banged around while I hunt, and don’t want to carry the extra weight around all day. The hunting guide who claimed to see the bigfoot in Colorado in September was not after any attention from anyone, but rather is concerned about it having a negative influence on his potential customers. Exactly the opposite of any noteriety as a good hunter and guide. He came forward because he saw it and wanted to share it with someone. I felt kind of the same way when I found tracks. I didn’t want to tell anyone really, for fear of ridicule, but there they were and what was I supposed to do? I seriously thought about keeping it quiet, but eventually just had to let others know about it. I guess I felt like it was an amazing mystery that needed some answers put to it. I’m very curious about it I guess. I wanted to hear about other Colorado hunters experiences with the bigfoot and thus my search. I would guess about half the people who contact me with sightings or track finds in Colorado don’t care if their names are shared. The other half has the sightings to share, but want complete anonimity because of fear of ridicule. These are the smarter ones, as I have been ridiculed to no end, simply because I shared my own find of tracks and started the chase of the animal that could have made them.
What really amazed me about bigfoot in Colorado was all the history of it that I have found. Such as the stuff from the 1500’s in northern New Mexico, the stories from 1800’s era government predator hunters, and the stories from 1800’s era Colorado miners. I have miner stories from around Crestone, another in the Holy Cross Wilderness area, and some from the Tarryall area. I had no idea that bigfoot was even supposed to have been in Colorado, let alone have a history. The Pueblo and also the Southern Utes have many stories of such animals in Colorado that date way back. I don’t think anyone has ever put all this historical data together, but it is interesting to me. Seems the hoaxers involved have been laying down fake bigfoot tracks in Colorado for at least 450 years, and continue full bore today. The consistency of the tracks is amazing, as they are not just big human looking tracks, but have many anatomical characteristics all their own.
Put everything together, the history, the current consistent and unique tracks being found in backcountry areas, the hunters and hunting guide eyewitness testimony, the consistent descriptions of the size and shape of the animal itself, the law enforcement investigations to the fact that some of the tracks could not have been faked, and it starts to look very interesting. It starts to look like the impossible is possible. I too think it is impossible for this animal to have remained unofficial up to this point in time. At least until I start looking at the evidence myself and listening to the eyewitnesses myself.
I remind everyone that in 1935, Florida biologist stated in unison that it was impossible for the Florida cougar to have survived in their state. They were absolutely, positively, uncatagorically sure that the cougar was extinct there. 1935 was the year a frustrated sportsman named Dave Newell decided to take the matter into his own hands after giving up on the biologists, and hired the Lee brothers to come from Arizona to try to prove that cougars lived in Florida. They treed and killed three cougars on the first day of hunting with hounds, and ended up with 7 cougars killed. This occurred in a state where the states own biologists were sure there were no cougars living. What if those Florida cougars were as smart as a chimpanzee, and much rarer? After 1935, they finally determined there were not only cougars in Florida, there were hundreds of them. This is absolutely the true story of how the Florida cougar was discovered. An “impossible” animal became “official” there in 1935, thanks to a sportsman that braved the ridicule of the educated Florida biologists, and went on a “wild goose chase”. I don’t know how to prove bigfoot exists, as dogs evidently fear them and won’t tree them. The Colorado hunting guide who claims to have cut bigfoot tracks twice while hunting behind his hounds stated that his dogs showed great aggitation and fear at the smell of the tracks and quit hunting for the day.
Some things that appear impossible, have become possible in the field of biology. It is not that there is little physical evidence or eyewitness testimony concerning bigfoot, it is that bigfoot is ignorred as “impossible”, just like the Florida cougar. Florida biologists should have kept their minds open a little bit, and done a little investigations themselves. Then they wouldn’t have had their pants pulled down and had to suffer such astounding embarressment. Some day maybe I will get to pull some pants down too. Have you seen a Colorado wolverine, or a Colorado grizzly, or a Colorado lynx? I haven’t, but that does not mean they don’t exist, just because I have not seen one or found their tracks. I did find what I thought were grizzly tracks in the South San Juan Wilderness in 1975 or 1976, but was laughed at by officials then too. I have spent over 300 days and nights in that area, and only found grizzly tracks once and only found bigfoot tracks once. The grizzly did exist there in 1976, as proven by the Ed Wiseman attack in 1979, and I think there is a good chance they are still there. Why can’t our biologists find tracks of them? Why can’t I find any more bigfoot tracks there, in spite of looking and looking and looking? Why do officials ignor the bigfoot tracks being found every year in Colorado? I will tell you that some in Colorado official wildlife management have recieved some pretty good evidence of what they call “the other big mammal”. Not all CDOW officials are completely close minded about grizzlies or bigfoot. Utah also has an employee named Rudy Drobnick that officially investigates bigfoot sightings and track finds out of his Salt Lake City offices of the wildlife department. Wyoming has an official that is nearing retirement and is going to release some very interesting studies upon his retirement. Why wait until retirement? Because “bigfoot” is a subject of ridicule, even though the evidences are pretty strong. Florida cougars were also a subject of ridicule. Peer pressure does funny things to scientists, including keeping the “impossible”, “impossible”.
Just remember the Florida cougar and the story of it’s discovery, when thinking about how “impossible” things are not always as impossible as they might appear. I’m just keeping my mind open and collecting sightings and physical evidences to hand over to officials in the event that some impossible animal is officially discovered some day. You can ridicule me all you want, but perhaps someday my files will be relevant, and I will be glad I did the study. For now though, I wish I had never found the tracks, I wish I had not told anyone, and I wish I had not started this ridiculous search for the impossible. Somebody had to do it though.
Date:11-Dec-00
Actually, I like to listen to logical alternatives to bigfoot. I also have to remember that 10 years ago I myself would have said “no way” to any thought that bigfoot could be real. At that time I guess I thought that all tracks were either faked or the result of bear tracks overlapping and misidentified. Then when I ran across those tracks on that dirt slide on the north edge of the S.San Juan Wilderness where I just can’t imagine anyone would fake them, it just blew me away. When I close my files on physical evidence, forget all the testimony from hunting guides and such, and forget the tracks I found, I drift back to unbelief myself.
As for my opinion on poaching a bigfoot to prove they exist. I am going out of my way in time and expense to get professional video of one of them by using a professional wildlife videographer with $30,000 camera equipment, and buying weeks of time, to hopefully get definitive proof eventually. A rifle cartridge would be much cheaper, but I have elected the other route.
If any of you come across bigfoot tracks or see a bigfoot yourself, let me know about it. I’ll file it and keep your name a secret until definitive proof is had. If bigfoot is proven, only then will I turn my files over to wildlife authorities, to maintain your anonimity on such a controversial subject. I have recieved 4 sightings from bowhunters in Colorado and one from Utah from response to threads on bigfoot on this forum, so I guess the ridicule suffered is worth it. I also recieved info from an official in the Wyoming wildlife department, which you will all know about eventually, as he is going to make a public statement upon his nearing retirement. So all this has been worth it. Thanks again to you bowhunters who have forwarded your own sightings to me.
Date:12-Dec-00
If you shot a bigfoot, you would be crucified in the media, but I doubt any court could make any conviction stick, such as murder or poaching of an endangered species. There is no priori reason for conviction, as bigfoot does not exist as an endangered species or a form of man. I think there are three small locations now where bigfoot is officially listed as an endangered species or protected animal, and you would not want to shoot one in those areas as fines are specified already. There was even a meeting on “Sasquatch Habitat” in Idaho last year, attended by many of the wests most prominent biologists. Figure that out! Why have a meeting of biologists on an animal that does not exist? I didn’t attend, but heard of the meeting from the people that are doing the grizzly bear study in Glacier National Park. One of their biologists attended and said it was a very interesting presentation. I think Colorado is one of the few western mountain states that does not have someone in official wildlife management capacity that does not have someone studying sasquatch/bigfoot. There are three biologists/professors in Colorado that ask me to forward everything in my files to them as they are collected, but nothing official.
If you shot a man in a monkey suit, you would likely face charges of reckless endangerment and second degree homicide. The man in the suit would get a “Darwin Award” for one of the stupidest deaths. If bigfoot is real and as big as witnesses say it is, then you would likely know if it was a guy in a suit because people don’t come that big. If it was a female bigfoot of about 6 to 7 foot tall, it could be a guy in a suit, such as in the Patterson film of what is supposed to be a female bigfoot.
I will state here that I have some college training in anatomy and lean toward thinking the Patterson film is genuine. My reasons are that 1. I have seen films at the exact location and distances of a man that is 6 foot 5 inches tall, and the creature in the film is a little taller but almost twice as wide through the shoulders, which would make it much, much heavier. 2. If it is a fur suit, there should be some bunching of material at the arm rotation locations as the arms are swung fore and aft. (stretchy fun fur material was not to be had in the 1960’s, and animal hide that not stretchy enough to not bunch up) 3. The film is clear enough to see most of the correct muscle masses in correct movements, stretching and tightening during walking motion. 4. No suit joints can be seen. 5. The arm rotation location when measured is too near the top of the head (no neck) for a man to have room for his head in the suit. 6. The film was made in the 1960’s, when even Disney Studios (statements on record) said that they did not have the technology to make such a good monkey suit. 7. You can not see any muscle movement on any of the “Planet of the Apes” characters or on “Chewbaca” in “Star Wars, or any other film since then, while you can see almost all the muscle movement in the Patterson film creature. 8. You can see areas of hair wear on the creature in the film in locations where the hair appears thinner or worn. 9. Some said that makeup artist “Chambers”, of “Planet of the Apes” fame, made the suit, as he was the only one in the 1960’s that might have been able to make the suit, but he has denied this publicly. 10. Records of income from the film show that no one was paid for making a suit for Patterson to use, and someone of such high standards of makeup art would demand pretty good money for their services in suit construction. 11. The man with Patterson the day the film was made “Gimlin”, recieved no compensation from the film, yet still states that the creature Patterson filmed was very real to him the day of filming, and he held a 30-06 rifle on it the whole time Patterson filmed it (why would he continue to say the film is real when he recieved no money for it?).
Here is a link that has some photos from the Patterson film, http://members.aol.com/sabertop/pictures.html and you can see all the back, leg, buttock, and arm muscles and also measure the arm rotation locations and compare to where the top of the head and mouth is. As you can see, the mouth is pretty much below the shoulder rotation joint, and if you look in the mirror at a person, you will see how odd this is. Even our chins are way above our shoulder tops, let alone above our rotation joints. On first examination, the creature appears to look kind of like a person in a suit, but upon precise objective measurements, it goes way outside known human anatomical measurements in skeletal rotation locations. You could wear shoulder pads to get the shoulder tops up high, but you can’t move rotation points higher in a person. It is also obvious when making precise measurements on the creature in the film and comparing them to a large man in the same location and distance that the hips are rotating at a point about twice as wide as a large man. The creatures shoulder and chest width is also way outside known human measurements in comparison to height. A person could put pads on the outside of the arms to increase shoulder width, but increasing chest width to known width in the film is impossible. Also, if you watch the film frame by frame as I have, you can see that the hands open and close a couple of times, so there is definitely a hand moving naturally looking there, but the distance from the shoulder rotation point is also way outside human parameters.
It is easy to just reject the film as a man in a monkey suit, until you start making objective measurements. Then it becomes harder to disqualify the film as genuine. In fact, the more the film is studied through objective measurements, the more convinced any anatomist becomes of the films authenticity, which is exactly the opposite of what one would expect if the film were of a man in a suit. If it is a man in a suit, I would sure like to know how it could be done. This is sure a case where one can just say “it simply has to be a man in a fur suit, as bigfoot does not exist”, but I encourage you to make precise measurements and come up with objective answers to how the film was faked, rather than just stating that the film is faked. Most scientists feel no reason to study the film, as bigfoot can not exist, so why study and measure the creature in the film. If they did objectively measure and study the film in depth, they might come to a different conclusion, and we can’t have that, can we? The film is still interesting to me, and I have watched it forward, backward, slow motion, frame by frame, computer enhanced, in black and white, in color, and done measurements of the creature on most every frame. I have drawn stadia lines on the frames, measured and marked rotation points, measured the feet, measured arm and leg lengths in relationships to each other, identified most major surface muscle masses, measured muscle movement, identified ankle tendons and ankle skeletal surface indicators. I have measured all the tracks cast at the scene and collected by several persons besides Patterson, making comparisons to the feet seen in the footage. After all this, I lean more toward accepting the film as genuine than I did when I started the study. As a professional wildlife artist myself, I have to pay attention to muscle locations and anatomy, skeletal anatomy, and such detail as hair attitude and density with a critical eye to other details. In the anatomical detail of the Patterson film, I am amazed and impressed. In the measurements that fall so far outside human anatomy, I am flabbergasted that all science has not accepted the film as genuine, simply because no man could fit inside that monkey suit when all measurements are taken and all is said and done.
Sorry this also went to long, but I could not just say “I think the Patterson film may be real”, but rather had to explains a little about why I think it may be real. You can take your own critical measurements and come to your own conclusions, but do it thoroughly and objectively before making conclusions. One of the worlds leading anthropologists/primate anatomist measured the Patterson film subject and stated that “if it is a man in a suit, he had to have put his elbows out to where the shoulders are in order to rotate at the shoulder joint as shoulder and chest width can be objectively measured by anyone in the world, and it is way outside any human standards”. How was the film done if it was a fake?
Date:12-Dec-00
Patterson rented the 16mm film camera to make a documentary on bigfoot, hoping to get footage of one of them eventually. About 2 or 3 years into his documentary he got the infamous footage. In other words, it took him several years of efforts of tracking bigfoot, figuring out where they were living, and spending weeks on end in the areas involved in hopes of getting footage of one of them. They claim to have finally succeeded, but did they? That is what each person has to decide for themselves. I’m at about 90% convinced of the film authenticity I guess. I reserve 10% just in case there was some makeup wizard that we don’t know about or a genius taxidermist involved. Taxidermists can’t figure out how they got the skin to stretch with the moving muscles and stay so firm in all the movements. I have done a little taxidermy myself, and can’t see how they could do it so effectively.
Here is a link to an interview with Bob Gimlin, the man with Patterson. Patterson himself died of non-hodgkins lymphoma a few years after the film was taken. The link to the Gimlin interview is http://www.n2.net/prey/bigfoot/interviews/john.htm
I am more convinced by physical measurements of the subject in the film itself, the way the muscles move and the way the skin seems to stretch and contract with the muscles without any fabric or hide bunching usually apparent in animal suits on people, than any of the events surrounding the filming. But, when you know the whole story about the filming, it looks pretty convincing too.
With today’s fabric fun furs and stretchy nylon and polyesters and adhesives, you might be able to repeat the event fairly convincingly. I have seen one professional makeup studio try to recreate the film, and theirs was laughable and not at all convincing. Didn’t even look close to real, and there was zero muscle movement in their professional try at the suit. Their suit also looked right for a man in a suit as far as measurements go.
I guess if bigfoot is a real animal, that eye witness descriptions would all be pretty much the same except for differences in morphology due to gender and age. Actually, most of the larger bigfoot described are thought to be males and longer body hair is described than that in the Patterson film. Descriptions have been pretty much the same for the last 120 years, and fit well into the Patterson footage. If Patterson faked the film, he made his suit design after public descriptions, rather than vice versa. Patterson was a fair wildlife artist himself, but the film subject is genius, not just art, because of all the complexities involved. Could he have done it? Maybe so, but if he did, it was pure genius in construction. The film is also not doctored in any way, and was shown to an assembly of biologists/anthropologists the day after it was made. Patterson sent the film to Yakima WA to be developed and went straight from there to the scientists without even viewing the film himself first. Several other investigators and scientists were on the site of the film location the following day to take their own track measurements and track casts. I would think that if Patterson had faked the film, he would have kept the location to himself to avoid others going in and finding tracks that indicated the hoax. Exactly the opposite happened. Most people don’t know the incredible story of exactly the sequence of events of that 3 or 4 day period during and after the film was taken and all the people who were involved that makes it all even less likely to be a hoax. It is amazing. This is yet another reason I lean toward total acceptance of the film.
If bigfoot is proven to exist, the film will likely be hailed as the first true film of the creature and accepted by all scientists. If bigfoot is never proven, it will always be ignored as a hoax by most scientists who have never felt they needed to watch it or study it.
The Colorado hunting guide I mentioned said that the bigfoot he watched for quite awhile looked like its nose was down closer to it’s mouth than in a human face and flatter, but that the face looked kind of human, except for being all hairy. Eyes more sunk in, forward brow, slight prognostication of the mouth area, and head right on the shoulders instead of up on a visible neck. The hunting guide was more impressed with the hands than anything else, as he said they seemed pretty long and big. He saw no indication of the gender of the bigfoot he saw, but kept referring to it as “he”, so it must not have had any obvious signs of being female, such as breasts. I didn’t ask the hunting guide if he had ever seen the Patterson film to make comparisons, because most eyewitnesses I have interviewed have never paid much attention to bigfoot stuff prior to their own sightings and have no idea what I am talking about when I mention “the Patterson film”. So I don’t mention it anymore in interviews. Now that you mention association and possible influence of the film on possible lies or hallucination, I will start asking witnesses if they have ever seen the Patterson film. I usually only value eyewitness testimony and do interviews of sightings that occur in broad daylight with more than one person seeing the same thing at the same time. I make exceptions for people who have much outdoor experience if they were alone when they saw one, but close range and can give good descriptions. The two hunting guides in Colorado who have been close enough to see face and body details gave pretty much the same exact description, if that means anything. One was from 30 yards in broad daylight, and the other was from about 100 to 150 yards but through good binoculars. They either both lied about the same creature or hallucinated the same creature, or saw exactly what they described. One of those choices is correct. Was it a Lie from both of them? Was it a mutual Hallucination? Or did they both have a sighting of an unofficial but real animal? Neither were seeing a bear or some other animal and mistaking identity, as their descriptions are precise, down to the nose and hands clearly seen. It is pretty easy to discount their sightings until you visit with them yourself, and realize they are probably not lying to you and saw exactly what they claim to have seen. They also have families, jobs, no history of mental illness and are apparently as intelligent as the next guy. I have come to the conclusion that they are just telling it how they saw it. This is why it is awful to see one and then try to convince anyone else you saw it. Especially when you see one so clear, for a long period of time, and in broad daylight like the hunting guide did this fall in Colorado. No one will believe you, and you will receive nothing but ridicule. Poor guy. Kind of like seeing a car accident, phoning it in to emergency persons, and the police telling you that they don’t believe you and will not send any help. It is frustrating for the eyewitnesses, because they know what they saw. Theo Stein, the Denver Post’s environmental writer, just recently started interviewing eyewitnesses to bigfoot in Colorado and did an interview of the recent hunting guides sighting. Stein is not only convinced, he is absolutely convinced of the guides sincerity and also the guides knowledge of wildlife. Stein told me, “this hunting guide saw exactly what he is described to me, no matter how incredible that seems”. I think so too. If you are interested enough to call the guide yourself and visit with him, I will provide his name and phone number, but I hate to put it here on this thread without his permission. If you would like, maybe I can convince him to come to this forum and tell it in his own words and have him answer questions for you all. Maybe I can get the other guide to also come online and answer your questions about their individual sightings. They are probably about sick of ridicule by this point though, and I’m sure they would get plenty here unfortunately. One of the Colorado hunting guides has already agreed to a filmed interview, so maybe I will eventually have that to share at least.
Hoax does happen, fake tracks are made, people do lie and make up stories, but in Colorado the cases are pretty straight forward and the eyewitnesses are not only experienced, but more than one person is involved in many of the sightings. The tracks we have documented in Colorado are also pretty convincing when all is known about the events surrounding their discovery, knowing the discoverers themselves, and getting statements from law and wildlife officials who also saw the tracks themselves and recorded them. It is really easy to just say or think they are all fakes or lies, until you look in depth at all the circumstances and really get to know the people involved. It is really quite amazing, even if you discount every single sighting and only focus on the physical evidence left behind for law/science/wildlife investigators to look at. I don’t know if bigfoot lives in the Pacific Northwest, as we are told, but I am pretty dang sure they live in Colorado. There is just no other logical answer when you put everything together into one big case file. The native American references here, the historical newspaper accounts in Colorado, the memoirs of a government predator hunter from the 1870’s Colorado, the stories of miners in 1800’s era Colorado, the current multiple witness daytime sightings in Colorado, and the tracks left behind that are so fantastically naturally looking that even Colorado wildlife and law officials say they could not have been faked. Put this all together and it is amazing to say the least. To debunk bigfoot in Colorado, you would have to find logical and scientifically reasonable alternatives to every case. I have genuinely tried to find other alternatives, but can’t.
I am also only talking on this thread about a few of the sightings and track finds. If I could share it all, you would be blown away. I have 8 sighting reports from one area in just a two month period that involves over 30 honest citizens in Colorado and they have banded together to keep it quiet because they want no media attention in their area. These people all report the same creatures, more than one, and they are certainly too big to be some local in a gorilla suit pulling their strings. This case also involves two area law enforcement men and documented tracks that will amaze you. I have another case that involves 12 people who got to see a bigfoot from a few feet away, but since I don’t have permission from all 12 to share the sighting, there is nothing I can do with it. I also have second hand accounts by the hundreds for Colorado, but second hand accounts are not much evidence. Even the wildlife videographer I work with knows 5 persons who have seen bigfoot themselves in Colorado, and those sightings occurred in the 1960’s and 1970’s, long before I ever got to know the videographer, and certainly long before I started investigating bigfoot here. Another Colorado researcher has some 35 to 40 first person eyewitness accounts that I have not even started to investigate and know very little about. Some of his files might be more hunting guides and outfitters with accounts. I have only scratched the surface I think. Then there are probably hundreds if not thousands of Colorado persons who have told no one outside their families or kept it quiet completely. I know that we told no one of our own family’s experience until almost 10 years after the sightings and track finds we had. None of these Colorado eyewitnesses have profited from their sightings, and quite to the contrary, they have had to bear much ridicule. Most wish they had never said anything to anyone, but since more than themselves were often involved, the story gets out and then they have to answer too. This is why many of the cases are multiple witness cases. It is hard to keep everybody in the group quiet about such an amazing thing as a bigfoot sighting. John, Mary, Phil and Sue all see a bigfoot, John says something about it to somebody, then Mary, Phil and Sue have to answer for it too. Pretty soon quite a few people know about it and I might get word about it. I then call them and they tell me the story. They each one know that they have to tell the story, because they can’t just say “John made the whole thing up and is lying”. Once the scoop is out, they fess up and give their descriptions, tell it like it is, and bear ridicule of skeptics. If you put them on the sworn eyewitness stand in court, they would all say the same thing and claim they saw a bigfoot. I guess you could say that rejecting some bigfoot sightings is like rejecting the eyewitness testimony of 4 or more credible law abiding citizens that said they saw who murdered someone else and having all their testimony rejected for no reason. This would have to happen time and again and thousands of witness’s testimony rejected for no reason. Many of these rejected witnesses are law enforcement agents, who describe the same thing seen by the thousands of others. Pretty soon, the judge’s rejection of the same testimony would get pretty tiresome.
Camcorders have come down in price and size to carry around, so maybe we will eventually get some more film by somebody. Problem is that bigfoot don’t stand around and let people take pictures in most cases, but get the h*** out of there whenever they encounter people. Too bad our hunting guide did not have a camcorder with him, as he might have been able to zoom in and get some 5 minutes of fairly clear footage of a creature that is not supposed to exist. Camcorders don’t make very good film though, so it would likely be thought of as hoax, no matter how genuine it was though. The Patterson film is not taken seriously by mainstream science, because they have never studied it, so no video is going to be studied either most probably. Even 10 minutes of video of a bigfoot munching on an elk leg beside a tree of known dimensions is not going to be any kind of proof of anything. Wait and see, because somebody will probably get just such a video as this before long. I predict that within 5 or 10 years we will at least have a few amazing Camtrakker type accidental pictures of bigfoot or bigfoot legs or something like that. They will be called fakes, no matter how convincing they look. Anyone that shares the photos his Camtrakker captured of a bigfoot will be called a charlatan and a hoaxer and that will be that. Skeptics will claim he paid a Hollywood makeup artist to build him a suit to use to walk in front of the camera. Sad thing is, there may be some fakes done by using a camtrakker type camera trap and anything genuine will be thrown out with the others. This happens with tracks too, as some tracks are fakes, but that does not mean all tracks are fakes. I have seen fake films, but that does not mean all films are fakes. I have seen bad bowhunters, but that does not mean all bowhunters are bad.
Deernelk, Our files on sightings in Colorado could almost be used by wildlife authorities to show when and where elk migrate in Colorado. The overlap of the two is amazing. Check out the www.bfro.net Colorado database of a map of sightings from my files. The map is broken down into summer and winter sightings, and elevational change and elk locations is an apparent factor in where the sightings are located. If you want to look for bigfoot tracks yourself, I would go look in the snow in as remote an area as you can find where elk are wintering in good numbers and look all around the edges of the more dense forest areas on the edges where the elk feed in winter. If we get a real harsh winter, like that of 93/94, you can go down to the south end of the San Luis Valley and maybe even see a bigfoot yourself if you spend enough time with the elk, instead of just finding tracks. Bigfoot were out in the daytime and in the open quite a bit in December 93 and January of 94 during the roughest weather trying to get close to the elk, apparently to kill one of them. About 30 persons reported sightings down there that two month period and tracks were documented by law officials. Huge tracks, and lots of them, from more than one bigfoot. Check with officer Joe Taylor in the Alamosa area if you don’t believe me. I think he works for the Alamosa police department now, instead of for the sheriff department. He might even show you the track videos and stuff. You have a good chance of seeing your own bigfoot down there in winter, if you know where to go. Don’t expect location help from the locals though, as they hate bigfoot chasers coming into their home ground and also hate media attention to the facts. They are very tight lipped now for some reason.
Date:04-Jan-01
Cougars, badgers, wolverines, and other soft footed animals run around without fur on the bottom of their feet all winter, so I suppose if bigfoot is real it does the same thing. I have also seen large grizzly tracks in snow on the Bacon Creek just off the Gros Ventre River in the late fall in the early 1970’s. Lynx, snowshoe hares and polar bears have some fur under the pads, but I am told it is for traction on ice rather than much insulation. Thickness of the pad seems to be the better insulator, but the fur can’t hurt. I’d want the addition of fur. The bigfoot tracks found by law enforcement in Colorado in deep winter all appeared bare footed, no fur underside. I have walked through cold snow barefooted and it takes only a few seconds to start stinging, so bigfoot must have a lot more pad than I have, or less nerves in the bottom of the feet. I don’t see any problems here though, as nature is adaptable. Some peoples like those living in the Himalayas go barefoot in snow often, but I don’t know how they do it. Tough I guess. Actually they go barefoot most all the time and a thick callous pad is built up after awhile. Must be as good an insulator as a boot sole. Thick leather is a pretty good shoe bottom. Thick moose hide moccasins are pretty good in snow, even if no other insulation is between the foot and the snow. What really surprises me is a goose that is wading or swimming in icy water with no insulation at all on the foot. Man that water is cold and when you feel their feet, they feel the same temperature. I don’t know how they don’t freeze their feet. I don’t know how cougars and bigfoot don’t freeze their feet either. Adapted I guess. What about bare penguin feet!! Brrrrr!!!
Dr. Meldrum and Dr. Krantz both say that in bigfoot tracks made in gooey type mud that there is often indications on the side of the tracks that the pad on bigfoot feet is up to 1 inch thick and squishes outward when weight is applied, leaving tracks that you can’t pull a cast out of without pulling up the ground all around the track, because of the overhangs. I’ve seen track casts with this overhang on all sides where the foot edges squished outward and then unsquished as the foot was lifted. If you push your hands hard together, you will see how the flesh pushes outward when pressure is applied. Guess bigfoot have a good thick insulator sole from the cold, hard ground and sharp rocks. I’d hate to be barefoot out there this winter or any winter.
Mountainman, I have been in the Chromo area, but don’t know it all that well. I know the Conejos River area real well and the adjacent South San Juan Wilderness.
Date:04-Jan-01
For those interested, the sighting by a Colorado hunting guide that was made this last fall is now posted on the BFRO database at http://www.bfro.net/GDB/show_report.asp?id=819
There is also another new sighting from that Colorado area posted on the database by a rockhound with some training in anthropology. You can see it and a few other recent sightings from Colorado in the “Recent Additions” portion of the www.bfro.net website.
I’m not with the bfro anymore, so I only get to see the sightings come in as they are posted, like everybody else. Denver Post’s Environmental Writer Theo Stein is now the Colorado BFRO Official Curator. I resigned because it took too much of my time and every call and interview was pretty much the same and the same animals described and in the same places, so it got boring too. Same old thing each time.
Date:09-Jan-01
Bill in SD. There are so many sightings in the western states that mapping all of them would be very time consuming. I don’t think anyone has done it for all the states. I did it for Colorado, but I only used sightings I had personally investigated or interviewed and so it is not all inclusive. I think I only used about 50 sightings on the map, but there are probably a couple hundred more sightings that could be included eventually. I didn’t want to include sightings that I really didn’t know much about. Most of those other sightings are in the same areas though, so the map I did tells most of the story. I may do a map for Wyoming when the biologist up there retires and releases his information on bigfoot in that state, to see how his files might tie into my Colorado files. A Utah map would also interest me, but since they have an official bigfoot researcher on staff in Salt Lake City, I should think he has done a map already. You can check out the Colorado map I made on the www.bfro.net database for Colorado.
Date:09-Jan-01
Bill in SD, Percentage of Hoaxes?
When I collected sightings and interviewed witnesses for the BFRO I talked to maybe around 30 eyewitnesses and of those 1 was a nutcase for sure and another one eventually claimed to have made the whole thing up. Besides those there was also a couple that I am sure saw a bear and thought it was a bigfoot (mangy bear at night). I got to where I wouldn’t even make phone calls on night time sightings, as there is too much chance of being mistaken. Some tracks I investigated were only bear tracks, but the witnesses were not trying to hoax. Of the daytime sightings, most were completely serious and sure of what they had seen. They also seemed to be just normal people who saw an unusual sight.
Of course if bigfoot is not real, they were all either mistaken, lying, or hallucinating. The multiple witness sightings are hard to dismiss as hallucination, and probably not a communal lie, so they must have all been mistaken. When you get from 4 to 12 witnesses of a daytime sighting who all say the same thing about what they saw, it is hard to dismiss it as a lie or hallucination. When the sighting happens by several witnesses in broad daylight from real close range it is hard to dismiss the sighting after interviewing all the witnesses. If bigfoot is not real, we then have to consider whether someone was dressed up in a gorilla suit and hoaxing the witnesses. The actions, speed or size of the bigfoot reportedly seen is then considered and many times that pretty much makes the guy in a gorilla suit theory seem less plausible. Some of these “group sightings” that I have interviewed were completely serious about what they had seen and the size and action of the creature involved was just too big and/or fast to be a man in a suit. Interviewing the witnesses first hand is different than reading about a sighting. If I just read about sightings, I would have no problem dismissing all bigfoot reports, like most of you probably do. I could then also put bigfoot into the “National Enquirer” catagory. Before personal experience with this stuff, I didn’t give any bigfoot sightings or tracks any credibility. In fact, I never even thought about the possiblity. Why should I? Bigfoot could not be real in my mind then. If you personally start talking to witnesses and looking at the tracks and such, pretty soon you would also start to change your mind about bigfoot I think. It is sure a mystery how this creature, if it really does exist, has eluded us for this long. If it is real, it must be pretty rare, pretty sharp witted and very stealthy at avoiding people. Kind of like a cougar with the brain of a chimpanzee or even smarter.
I’ve got to where I mostly just want to look at physical evidence such as tracks. I don’t think there is much if any hoaxing being done in Colorado in regards to tracks, as bigfoot is not really known in Colorado by the general public in most areas. I think when it becomes better known in Colorado that faking is more likely to start happening though. In the Pacific Northwest states, track hoaxing is more likely, as bigfoot is better known there and expected, so somebody might make fake tracks to get attention. I’ve seen quite a few tracks from that area of the country that I am sure are fakes. Generally I like to see a series of tracks rather than 1 track before deciding whether I think it is real or not. If the series of tracks are all perfect tracks, it is likely to be a hoax. Animals just don’t usually make perfect tracks, although when track series are found, the people usually take photos or cast the best examples. If you look at the tracks from Eagle County Colorado from last spring as posted on the bfro website, you can see that the tracks were all the same size, but the actions of the feet made them all look a little different. In one track the toes are curled more than in the other track. In the last track, only the heel print shows very well and water has pretty much erased the toe prints and washed some sticks and stuff into the toe area of the track. You can also see that the tracks were pressed into the ground rather than brushed into the ground. I have seen fake tracks that were kind of drawn into the ground and they are easy to spot as fakes. I look for actions of the foot in a track and compare to human tracks in the same conditions. A bigfoot track should not be any deeper than human tracks in the same soil because thought the bigfoot might weigh a bunch more than a human, the feet are bigger and carry about the same weight per square inch. If a track is too deep or too shallow, it could be a fake. There are a lot of things to consider when deciding. The Eagle County Sheriff Office, several local wildlife officials there, and I, all came to the same conclusion that the Eagle County tracks were indeed real tracks of something with a foot that was over 9 inches wide and 18 inches long. The tracks it made were about 10 inches wide and 19 inches long. We all interviewed the guy that found the tracks, and also the guy that went with him to help photograph them. Then we looked at the tracks ourselves and found them so natural that we really had no other choice but to be amazed at them. Water level records, a snow event, and other characteristics indicated that the tracks were about 2 weeks old when found, which also indicates that they were not faked. You can decide for yourself of course. I have the complete investigation report on file if anyone wants to see the records of that particular event. It is pretty long, so I probably shouldn’t post it here, unless there is a lot of interest.
In the eastern states we get a few bigfoot sighting reports, but they are generally much different than western state sightings and there are many indications of mistaken identity or lieing in those cases. I have also never seen tracks from the eastern states that I thought were real, while I have seen at least 50 examples of tracks from the west that I think are probably real. Surprisingly, we don’t even get too many fake tracks from the eastern states, maybe one or two per year. While in the western states we get perhaps a hundred track reports per year. In the east, people report seeing bigfoot, but they never leave tracks for some reason. In the west, people find tracks at least as often as they see bigfoots, and when there are sightings, there are also some tracks left behind often. Why do we have tracks found often in the west, but never in the east? Colorado has many track finds that have been reported and some of them pretty well documented by law enforcement officials. The only bigfoot tracks from the east that I have seen that I thought might be real were some that were cast by a Florida biologist/naturalist who has written two books on Florida cougars. He said he has found bigfoot tracks three times in Florida Everglades pine forest areas in the last 20 years, and the ones he cast look pretty real and pretty much the same as those found in the west. 5 toes, broad width, wide heel, lack of instep, slight hourglass shape to the foot shank and other unique bigfoot track characteristics. The three toed bigfoot tracks reported in Florida and the 4 toed tracks from Louisiana are laughable hoax. Besides the odd toe number, there are also many other indications in the tracks themselves that point very directly to hoaxing. With a little tracking experience and logic, it is easy to tell even a 5 toed hoax track of even the right size and shape from a real track.
It would be interesting to have a complete skeptic interview the two hunting guides from Colorado and let us know their conclusions. If you read the latest hunting guide report, you will see that he not only described the face of the creature seen but also the hands. He also claimed to have watched it for quite awhile through binoculars as it sat there and then eventually got up and walked around. In visiting with this man, I found that he was a complete skeptic before his own sighting. He, like me, had never even really considered that bigfoot was real or even could be real. If you visit with him yourself, you will find that he seems completely sane and is a very good hunter and hunting guide. He knows Colorado wildlife very well in fact. He has taken many animals with a bow. If anyone wants to volunteer as the interviewing skeptic, I will provide you the name and phone number of the guide and you can talk to him, listen to his story, talk of bowhunting, talk of wildlife, talk of Colorado outdoors and generally get to know the guy. Then report back here on whether you think he is lying or was mistaken in what he saw and reported. I would be really interested to hear what a complete skeptic thinks after doing a personal interview of such a quality witness as hunting guide Jeff D. Maybe they would come to a different opinion than me. I would prefer someone who is pretty skeptical of the whole thing. Any volunteers to do the interview of Jeff D? Hornhunter, you seem real civil but properly skeptical, would you mind doing the interview and reporting back here on this thread on what you think about Jeff D? Then if you want you could also interview a few more Colorado witnesses and give us a report on what you think about the witnesses. The reason I would like to see this done is that I am perhaps “too” willing to accept sightings, and would like to know how somebody that is more skeptical interprets the same sighting. It would be interesting and might reveal that I am less than objective in my interviews. If anyone lives in the Colorado Springs area, maybe a face to face interview with Jeff D. and also his family would help and reveal more about the situation. Any volunteers? It shouldn’t take too much time or expense just to visit on the phone with him, and the results might be interesting and revealing.
Date:10-Jan-01
We are planning a 7 to 10 day expedition in that area next late summer. We will have an experienced pro wildlife videographer with betacam equipment, superior telephoto lenses and third generation night vision equipment along in case we meet a BF, day or night. Jeff will be guiding and busy during the hunting seasons, but we also plan to do some hunting together there. We are also planning some plains whitetail bowhunting together for his planned television program called “Strictly Traditional” that will be coming out on TNN. I am hoping we can get me on film taking a nice whitetail buck from less than 10 yards from ground level with me shooting from my back with my longbow. Not many trees where I have to normally bowhunt whitetails, so I have had to do some unusual techniques to get the close range shots I need. Instead of going up a tree into a treestand, I have had to go down on my back to stay hidden. Works great though, and the shots are easy with a little practice from that odd position. I’m only about 12 inches tall on my back, in spite of my 6’3″ frame, and it is pretty easy to hide when you are only a foot tall. Especially if you are wearing grass colored camo (Advantage Wetlands is great out here in native grass, CRP or corn stubble)
We also hope to get on film a rattling, decoy system I use during pre-rut to bring the wide open area bucks to within a few yards. I brought more than 15 bucks to within 10 yards or less this season, so we will likely get a couple of bucks responding on film next fall. Only one of the 15 was a keeper though. Hunting was not very good here this last fall, as I usually rattle into longbow range at least 30 to 50 bucks per season.
Funny how such an odd thing as BF brought all these bowhunting plans about too. I have met several really good, real experienced, and real nice bowhunters in Colorado who had bigfoot experiences there. Elk hunters and guides especially, because BF are usually around the better herds evidently. I’ve said before, if you want to know where the best Colorado elk hunting is, look at the Colorado BF sighting map and go to the summer BF sighting areas. I think the guys just like to know that someone is actually crazy enough to believe their sightings. It takes a lot of balls to tell others that you saw a BF, as ridicule or laughter is the usual response. When you see a BF as well as Jeff D. did, down to descriptions of the face, hands, and actions, you either will think he is spinning a wild yarn or else you can take it for what it is. These days such a wild yarn is only going to make people think you are crazy or a lier, so no sane person is going to make something like that up and be laughed at by other bowhunters. Jeff is sane, and also experienced with wildlife. I believe he actually saw exactly what he described. He is far from alone, with a few other Colorado hunting guides reporting the same creature too, along with a host of other Colorado bowhunters, and even a few rifle hunters. BF are seen pretty regularly and leave tracks in Colorado, but darned if I can figure out why we have never got a body of one of them to look at. The only thing I can figure out is that they look so human in the face, body form and movements that no hunter is going to shoot one of them for fear of murdering a man. I think that there are probably not more than 50 or so BF in Colorado. There may be a couple hundred of them, but I would think they would be seen more and that their impact on the elk would be more apparent. There is supposed to be from 2 to 5 thousand cougars in Colorado, and they are not seen very often, so maybe there are more bigfoot than I think. Who knows? There are many thousands of black bears in Colorado, and one hardly ever finds their tracks or sees them, even in wilderness areas chock full of them. So, I guess a few bigfoot around don’t even really have to hide much better than a black bear to stay unseen for the most part. Think about how many bears or cougars you see while bowhunting for elk or deer in Colorado, even though Colorado has thousands of bears and cougars. I think BF about went extinct when most of the elk were killed off in the mid and late 1800’s, and because they are primates they are really slow to reproduce to bring their numbers back up. All the history of the Indians seems to indicate that their might have been more bigfoot before the white settlers arrived. I have not been able to find a single tribe of Native Americans in America’s west that did not believe completely in bigfoot as a normal part of the wilds prior to white mans coming. Of course the Native Americans at that time lived more in the wild all their lives on a daily basis, so they should have been more aware of the animals here than we are today. We only visit the wild places, not live there like they did. If we lived there, they would not be wild places anymore. All the BF sightings around Pikes Peak surprise me, as one hardly considers that a wild place, but when you realize the fairly inaccessible elk and deer herds that are doing well there, BF there becomes more likely. That area where Jeff saw the BF also holds the highest concentration of cougars in Colorado, because the mule deer there are still doing fair, though beginning to suffer from too many cougars. Where Jeff saw the BF is a 6 hour hike from the trailhead, and he never sees other hunters in there, even though it is not that far from Colorado Springs. I guess you could say it is a small wilderness, hidden and tucked away almost at the edge of a metropolis. The small size of the area makes it more likely for us to see a BF if they are there. My usual stomping ground in the San Juans is so many thousands of square miles of forest that finding a BF there is like finding a very small needle in a very large haystack. I am looking forward to looking around for the needle in a smaller haystack for once. If nothing else, I might find a good bull to hunt or get to see a cougar.
Date:13-Jan-01
Bill in SD, We’ll probably go for a week to 10 days in August of next summer, set a base camp and spread out from there, so if you want to help look for tracks you are welcome.
Still no takers on the “interview the hunting guide” request. Hornhunter, you would be perfect because your wife is a biologist, and you might know some questions to ask the hunting guide. I think some of his account is going to be in Sundays addition of the Denver Post, but not sure if they are going to post his full name there. Also ask your wife what natural predator preys on adult elk in the Rockies. I know cougars can occassionally, and bears get a few calves when they are real small, but what takes an adult elk with any regularity besides man. Ask if there is a niche for a larger predator capable of taking adult elk regularly. If there is, what would be their social habits and how many could live in any one area? Would they be territorial like the cougar? Ask “where do cougars habitually live and hunt? Is it in the deep forest areas, or is it in the edges and more open areas where mule deer frequent? What predator hunts the deep forest areas? Are bears true predators or only opportunists that eat 80% vegetation in diet? After 10 years of study of predators/prey/ecology/environment/relative distribution/relative population/ and many other facets of the Rocky Mountain ecosystem, I find no priori reason why another rare large carnivore could not exist and thrive in the Rockies besides man. I challange any biologist to tell me why bigfoot could not exist. This is not to say that it does, only that it could.
I say we can’t reject bigfoot based on a lack of niche or a lack of food source to support it, so we must reject it on lack of evidence that it exists. I have no problem rejecting it based on “lack of evidence”, as I just can’t imagine how it could have eluded being killed and brought in for study in at least one case up to this point in time. That is my main reason for thinking bigfoot is only folk myth. Then what happens is another set of tracks are found and documented and they just look so dang natural and so much like the last tracks found that it sparks my curiosity again. And we have all those detailed daytime sightings by experienced outdoorsmen that seem so sincere, so natural, and when you look in the story tellers eyes and see his expressions you know that he is telling you the truth and really believes what he is telling you. It is so hard to consider they are lieing to you when you do the interview yourself. And then I have to discount all the old Indian tales from Colorado and the tales from old government bear hunters in Colorado of this creature. I have to wonder why places were named after them clear back to the 16th Century when Spaniards first arrived in southern Colorado. The stories are old, the stories are new, and they are always the same, with descriptions always the same, and with tracks always the same type and uniquely different than human tracks and distinct from bear tracks. Though my logic screams at me that bigfoot can not be real, the evidence of continual tracks and continual quality sightings keeps screaming the opposite. Had I never seen tracks myself, I would not believe at all either, because dang it, no bigfoot has ever been killed and brought home, so they just can not exist. Or can they?
I guess I’ve never seen a Rocky Mountain grizzly either, but they might exist too, as they too eluded the Colorado biologists for 50 years. No one killed a Colorado grizzly for a long, long time until that sow was killed by Wiseman in 79, because we “knew” they did not live here. We also “know” that bigfoot does not live here, don’t we? How long has Colorado had professional biologists, and have they ever looked for bigfoot? The pros looked for grizzlies and could not find them in spite of them being there all along, so what are their chances of finding something similar that they won’t spend even 5 minutes considering? Think about it. Maybe I should dig up some statements about Colorado grizzlies made by Colorados “professional” biologists in the 50’s, 60’s, and 70’s whenever somebody reported a “sighting” to them. I know that we were told how stupid we were in track identification when we found grizzly tracks in 75 in the SSJW wilderness and were stupid enough to contact CDOW. I wish I knew the name of the official we talked to, so I could talk to him again and tell the world what he told us then about how stupid we were. Because Colorado biologists know it all, so they don’t need to learn more, do they? I think I will go through some old negative statements by Colorado professional biologists regarding grizzlies, and advertise them. They sure never called us to apologize about the grizzly deal in the SSJW in 1979. They laughed at us rather than take a little 1/4 mile walk to see the grizzly tracks for themselves then, so they are not about to go out and look at the tracks of anything else either. That should tell you something about Colorado CDOW’s professionally open mind. They really did think we were idiot hunters that couldn’t tell a black bear track from a grizzly track, and didn’t mind telling us how stupid we were then.
The only real reason why bigfoot can’t exist is simply that it just can’t, that’s all. The only real reason why grizzlies can’t live in Colorado is that they just can’t, that’s all. If either were here, we would know about it. Statement from CDOW in 1975 “if grizzlies lived in Colorado since the 1950’s, we would know about it by now for dang sure because we have looked and looked and now we know we don’t need to look for something that can’t exist here”.
I’ve never seen a grizzly myself either, in spite of hundreds of days spent in the SSJW, but that does not mean they are not there. It only means that I have not seen one. Heck, I have never even seen a cougar there, and only seen a couple of black bears there through the years. If there is only one bigfoot for every 10 cougars there, I have a long wait before any chance encounter of a bigfoot. I’ll have to see at least 10 cougars first. How many days will that take considering I have put in over 300 days already and am still waiting for the first cougar sighting. Maybe cougars don’t exist there, but only a track every once in awhile.
All this is why I think bigfoot could exist. Why not? Whether bigfoot does exist, only time will tell.
I’m just a stupid bowhunter, so what could I know about tracks and tracking. Just ask CDOW, they are the professionals in regards to bigfoot and grizzlies. They ignorred us in 75 in regards to grizzly tracks found and so they are sure not going to have any trouble ignorring us in 2001 on something as ridiculous as bigfoot tracks found. No matter how many we find or who finds them. We have had two professional law officers find tracks in Colorado, and CDOW ignorred them too. The law officers did not find one track, they found tracks that went on, and on, and on, and on, and on. One was a Salida area policeman who found bigfoot tracks while elk hunting, and the other was a deputy who now works for the Alamosa police department who found hundreds and hundreds of tracks of two individual bigfoot and recorded the whole thing on video for all to see. Huge tracks, imprinted deeply in mud and snow, 5 foot apart, 19 inch long tracks almost 10 inches wide, that just went on and on and on and on along the forest edge and then on up into a valley and into the forest. Whatever made them had a bunch of stamina with that long stride for such a long ways and it was really really heavy. Whoever wore those wooden bigfoot shoes to dupe the deputy was sure an athlete to maintain such a long stride and weigh so much. He sure put the tracks in strange place way back in on private property too, where they were accidently found. Actually, since there were two sets of tracks, there had to be two big heavy athlete fakers involved in that case. Give the officer a call. His name is Joe Taylor Jr. in Alamosa. He’s in the book, or you can call the police department to contact him probably. He is not talking much about it anymore though probably, as he probably tires of skepticism. Problem is that it made itself onto television, so he can’t deny the whole thing ever happened. I’d probably deny it after awhile, just like I may someday also deny that I ever found tracks down there too.
I gave you the Alamosa policemans name, but I can’t give you the Salida policemans name because he requests anonimity. I can however give Hornhunters his name and he can call him officially to get the scoop, as long as his name is not released to anyone else. I will do that. The two hunting guides with close range daytime sighings and the two policemen with track finds would make four pretty good Colorado interviews.
Date:14-Jan-01
Thanks Hornhunter
Yes, I know lions take elk and even a horse every now and then. One tough predator. I research lions and lion predation as part of my career in wildlife damage control as a sideline of my work in invasives. I’ve looked at a few lion incidents through the years on horses and calves. They are really efficient at what they do. Cats are amazingly efficient predators. I have even got to see a Kansas leopard, believe it or not. The leopard was eventually killed by two bowhunters here, but we have no idea where it came from. It was obviously at one time a pet, but still effecient at surviving on deer as revealed in stomach content evaluation during necropsy. Neat. If it moves, is within range, and within size, a cougars eyes will see it and its predatory instincts will send it on its way post haste, no matter what the prey. People are even sometimes, though rarely, the trigger.
My apologies to CDOW biologists, I get irritable sometimes. I am still upset about the way we were treated in the 70’s in regards to our information we gave to CDOW concerning grizzly tracks in the SSJW. My official statement in the press about CDOW is “I don’t blame them for not looking for something so apparently ridiculous, but I wish they would or could eventually at least look at the track evidence involved”, which is what I hope appears beside my name in the Denver Post if Stein writes me into his articles on bigfoot. Of all days, my Sunday Denver Post has not arrived on my doorstep. There is very little interest in CDOW on bigfoot or grizzlies, but there is a little more occuring recently. I would like to see them at least start and maintain a file, just in case the future reveals something more concrete. I have also made a formal statement about CDOW saying “CDOW has done a good job building and maintaining the elk herds in Colorado, and that is what bigfoot needs if it is there, in my opinion”. You Colorado sportsmen really need to get the mule deer situation started turning around if you want to have mule deer hunting in the next 15 years though, and need to try to get CDOW to liberlize cougar hunting a little more to help out the deer some. Too many deer are not good either though, so balance is called for. Things are going imbalanced toward the cougar right now. I have also voiced concern about winter habitat reduction through urbanization for all the big game species. This winter habitat reduction is a weak link and getting weaker by the year in Colorado. People just simply want to build houses and housing additions in the game wintering areas. This is nice for the people, and I wouldn’t mind having a log home in some of those places myself, but wildlife suffers with human excess.
By all means if you can wrangle a Kansas archery deer permit or even a Colorado plains permit, we can do the whitetail thing. I’ll meet you wherever you get a permit for and we can at least educate a few old bucks. You would love the techniques I use for close range action packed whitetail buck hunting. Never a dull moment when rattling with a decoy setup.
Hornhunter, I’ll email you the names and phone numbers of the guides and policemen. Since I have not read todays paper, and Stein was planning on a series on bigfoot, you may already know the guides name there in the Springs, as he may have allowed Stein to use his name in the article(s). It may have been in todays D Post, but might not appear until a later edition of the paper.
Date:14-Jan-01
My paper came today finally.
Never mind keeping the guides name a secret, as he allowed it to be used in the D Post article today. His name is Jeff Dysinger. Please don’t think he is spinning tall tales about what he and those with him saw, as he is a good fellow bowhunter and reliable. Give him the benefit of the doubt and get to know him before casting stones. He can’t help it if a bigfoot plops down in front of him in the woods, anymore than you may someday encounter the same critter. Dysinger is far, far, from alone in seeing one of these things or finding tracks. They are not like seeing a bright planet, a meteor, or weather balloon and thinking you saw an alien spacecraft.
Stein did a good job of presenting the tip of the iceberg of evidence in todays Sunday Denver Post, but a newspaper article or two does not even begin to show the 700 examples of tracks on hand, or the detail found within them. It also didn’t mention Dr. Krantz, Dr. Bindernagal and all the other scientists researching the subject and their conclusions. It gets even more interesting than the article forwards.
Read the articles in the D Post if you haven’t.
Date:17-Jan-01
I want everyone to understand that biologist Bill Heicher did not ask to be in the wrong place at the wrong time in regards to bigfoot. He did the investigation, looked at the tracks, came to a conclusion about them, and that is all. His conclusions were proper and his logic about bigfoot is good. He is probably hating the “bigfoot expert” tag that is being put on him by peers. Poor guy, peer pressure is the main reason why few biologists even look at the plethora of evidence coming our way in regards to bigfoot.
Heichers conclusion is similar to the conclusion that I have come to on the Eagle River tracks this last spring, and many of the other tracks I have investigated. They appear natural, are found in unusual and remote locations, hoaxing is a more ridiculous assumption in the cases than bigfoot itself, and they are not bear tracks in most instances. Heicher properly and logically can not believe in bigfoot, in spite of his feelings that the tracks were genuine and natural.
Where we differ is I am intimately aware of the “missing hunting guide and houndsmen reports” that Heicher says are missing. They are not missing, they are being ignorred. Granted, I am sure that Bill Heicher is not aware of them, or even of the other tracks found by law persons in Colorado in the last few years. You guys that have read this thread are more knowledgeable of what has gone on in Colorado than anyone in CDOW.
I think I might have told you all that there
Date:19-Jan-01
I’ve never heard of a credible sighting of a bigfoot with a weapon, but rock throwing in anger or aggitation is told often. Chimps do that too. I don’t think bigfoot use rocks as hunting weapons though, and neither do chimps.
When chimps hunt, they grab a small antelope or monkey and with strong hands they wrench it to death, generally breaking bones, while also biting the neck sometimes. All the known apes are strong buggers.
I have observed human deer handlers, and usually a fawn is caught by a human as it passes by grabbing first one back leg and then the other to contain its movement. I have heard of adult elk and deer found in bigfoot country with both rear legs broken by something, but no associations can be really made objectively. One Colorado hunting guide told me that he has found game killed in some unusual ways in his area, broken rear legs, with evescration done, and covered with pine boughs. He also told of bigfoot tracks from another incident where a domestic cow had been killed and carried off, being carried fully most of the time but partially dragged at other times along the trail of tracks in the snow.
A 150 pound cougar can take down a fair size elk, so I guess a bigfoot would have no trouble if it could get ahold of one of them. I’ve had many many times while bowhunting where I could have reached out and touched living deer and elk, so I don’t see getting ahold of one as a problem. Bigfoot may also have better teeth than I give it credit for too. Most of the apes have pretty good canines, so bigfoot may also have a good set. Many reports mention longer canines, especially in the males.
Bigfoot are heavier than most people think. The tracks I have looked at looks to me like it weighs about as much as the coastal grizzlies when fully grown. The tracks look like they press into the soil about the same as a barefoot human in the same soil, so with those real big feet, they have to weigh a bunch more than a human to make the same depth of track. Bears press in about the same amount too, so bears and humans must put about the same forces per square inch on the bottoms of their feet. If bigfoot matches his feet and the descriptions, he outweighs a bull elk when grown, by a good margin. I think this is why bigfoot is so rare. They are big, have big food needs, and so no one area can support very many of them. They will always be rare naturally, if they are there in that niche as a top carnivore.
is going to be some very interesting information released from Wyoming at some point in the future in regards to two of their official biologists and some hair samples and other physical evidence recovered. That is if peer pressure does not make it end up in the trash with the rest of the collections. One of their professional biologists actually got to see one for himself and watched as it got itself hung up on a barb wire fence while escaping him. Fortunately he was knowledgable enough to know that the hairs left on the fence were going to be important. Unfortunately, any recoverable DNA on the hair roots may have degraged by this time and all we can do is put it in file with the other 11 examples of primate hair that match no other species yet. Everything I have ever told you in regards to bigfoot, the guides involved, the lawmen involved, the tracks found, feces recovered, unidentifiable hairs filed, game biologists involved, and all, is absolutely true. The info I now forward now about the Wyoming biologists is also true. All this taken together does not mean bigfoot is real “yet”, it only means that it is intiguing and worthy of some study. There are a few biologists that are glad I am doing it and not them. The rest of them think I’m nuts of course and trash everything I tell them without checking sources themselves. I’m sure they think I am lieing to them about the lawmen, the guides, the tracks, and the other physical evidence. In this way they are not obliged to look at the evidence and can blissfully believe that there is no evidence to look at. If they did look, they might start to think there is more to this than preconcieved notions, and then they would be ridiculed by their peers for studying the facts.
Hope no one thinks Heicher is a poor judge of tracks. He is not. He is experienced and logical. He is due support, not ridicule or myrth by his peers. He is due your support also. I am sure his peers will force him away from any further bigfoot study, and things can get back to status quo, and he can forget the whole thing ever happened. He was in the wrong place at the wrong time, that is all. Could have happened to any biologist.
Date:29-Jan-01
Here is a link to information on bigfoot tracks from Idaho State University, for anyone interested. http://www.isu.edu/%7Emeldd/fxnlmorph.html
Date:31-Jan-01
For those that missed the Denver Post articles on bigfoot a week ago, here is a link to the text from them.
http://www.denverpost.com/news/news0114a.htm
http://www.denverpost.com/news/bigside0114.htm
Date:01-Feb-01
I do understand skepticism, and would likely be right there skeptically with you had I not had some personal experience.
I already told you all that bowhunters have a grossly higher incidents of seeing bigfoot than any other outdoor use group, which is why this “is” relevant to bowhunters in Colorado. Check out the trophy listing for myself to see that I am a bowhunter, and not nearly all of them are listed, as I put the best ones on first and they were shoved to the bottom only allowing me to post 7 trophies. Had I known each person was limited to only 7 trophy photos, I would have picked the best 7, not just 7 at random. Healthy Skeptic, you don’t even have a name that goes with your moniker, as you are unregistered. I enjoy skeptical posts that ask me the “why not this” or “why not that” because it makes me think too, and brings me closer to understanding the same questions myself.
I see a big parallel in official ignorance of eastern cougars that I do in bigfoot. For 50 years these cougars have been sighted in the east, yet no carcasses ever turned up. Now all the sudden eastern cougars are being killed all over the place. The 5th one was just confirmed in Missiouri last month, and another one in southeast Nebraska and yet another one in Illinois. All in a few weeks. The reason is that only a very few cougars survived in the wild for the last 50 years in the east, and they have finally now gotten to a point where they are numerous enough to get hit by cars, trains and be poached. I’m telling you there are always more cougars around than you think there are. Missouri may have confirmed 5, but they probably have at least 100 cougars running around in that state, if not 500. Colorado has thousands. I would be surprised if Colorado has 25 to 50 bigfoot. Actually I think there is only three loose family groups of less than one dozen apeice. I think their might be a dozen left in the San Juans and only a couple in the Holy Cross area. There might be 5 or so in the Pikes Peak area. Giving a total of around 2 dozen. Thats my best guess based on many factors to long to detail here. This gives us a genetic potential of extinction in short order, as the pool has been drawn down to far. I graphed out sightings per person in Colorado, comparing the “possiblity of sightings” due to human use frequency and Colorado human population, compared to sightings and track finds themselve and the graph shows that the highest incidence of sightings per person occurred in the 1870-1880’s, and had a quick peak in the 1960’s and 1970’s with a sharp decline since. Though they are still being seen in Colorado, there are more people to see them now, yet the frequency did not increase. If they are what I think they are, they are rare naturally and also as slow to reproduce as any other large primate. One female only has the potential to raise about 3 offspring to maturity in her long lifetime, whereas a female cougar can often raise 8 in her short lifetime. The large primates just can’t handle more than one youngster at a time until it reaches a sufficient age. What killed the bigfoot is the killing of most of their prey in the west in the 1880’s through to around 1935. This brought them down to dangerously low population levels that I don’t think they will recover from. Inbreeding has likely been occurring already and the species suffers. The bigfoot was likely doing well in Pliestocene America, with its host of megafauna, but was rare even then because of its large needs. Gigantopithicus lived in Asia for the period from 3 million years ago,up to a point around 150,000 years ago, yet we have only 3 fossil jaws of it. That means only one fossil bone for every 1 million years it lived there in Asia. If it or a similar ape has lived in North America for only 20,000 years, after crossing the Bering Land Bridge, then we might expect to find a fossil of it in about 1 million years. I actually think we may find some bigfoot fossils in less than 100 years, with a bunch of cave excavations, but I really don’t think bigfoot even use caves much if at all.
Give me a logical explanation for all 700 tracks documented, and why they are hoax, picking over each case, one by one. Then you also have to call 5 Colorado hunting guides bald face liars, right to their face, along with a couple of outfitters, many very experienced Colorado bowhunters, a couple of Colorado law officer, and a host of other hunters and general outdoors people. Then you also have to call me a liar, because I have seen their tracks and heard them scream. You have to call my parents liars as they said they saw one in the middle of the day in broad daylight and watched it run for 200 yards and claimed it was 8 foot tall as compared to the eave of our cabing and that it left 16 inch tracks by the stream that runs next to our cabin.
You may be skeptical, but you are calling a bunch of people liars, a bunch of good people, people with names and faces, people with jobs and families. Do you want to call each one and tell them they are full of crap. Call me first. My phone number is 316-277-0127 Then I will give you the names of all the hunting guides in Colorado that have got a good long close range look at bigfoot in broad daylight from 30 yards, and you can call them liars too. Or you can tell them they don’t know the difference between a stupid bears butt and an apes face. You just don’t realize these hunting guides and other bowhunters are real people with real jobs and real families. Why the heck do you want to think thay are lieing to you. They also all have drivers licenses and don’t swerve for imaginary unicorns in the road all day. Do you think all those men are crazy.
Why are bowhunters and bowhunting guides the ones seeing bigfoot in Colorado!!!???? Do I have to give you a list of names and phone numbers so you can see they are normal people like “you”? Not a single one of them asked to see a bigfoot or expected to see a bigfoot, it just fricking happened.
Give me one logical answer why bowhunters are the ones seeing bigfoot in Colorado more than others Colorado forest use groups. Why is it also that way with eastern cougars? Why is it also that way with bigfoot sightings in Utah, Oregon, Washington and Idaho? Why do their bowhunters also report seeing these bigfoot, when the general populous does not nearly as often? Why aren’t bigfoot ever reported seen in Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado, where all the nuts go?
Keith Foster 316-277-0127 Bowhunter!
Date:01-Feb-01
As far as people shooting cougars and bears and not bigfoot. Are you going to shoot at a manform, even if it is big and hairy? What makes one think that shooting a bigfoot would be easy anyway. They are pretty sharp witted about man. Sharper than a cougar even. They are like a cougar with the brain of a chimp, naturally rare, probably dangerously rare now, and nobody wants to shoot one when it comes right down to pulling the trigger because they look too human. Now that is a unique animal.
If you can go out and shoot 100 Colorado cougars without the aid of dogs or predator calls, then you are a good enough hunter to go get yourself a bigfoot. Because I think there are less than 1 Colorado bigfoot for every 100 cougars in Colorado. I’d be willing to bet it would take a lifetime of hunting to get 20 cougars without dogs or calls. You in fact, might go years without seeing a cougar, in a state with thousands of them. What makes you think you should have seen a bigfoot by now, if they are real? What makes you think everyone should be seeing them? What makes you think a bigfoot is stupid enough to get hit by a car?
Date:02-Feb-01
Nobody said you had to come to any forum at all. The titles are on them. If not interested, don’t read. There are lots of forums I don’t ever read.
I’m not being hostile, I’m just wondering why you think all these people are lieing. Or, if you don’t think they are lieing, why do you think they don’t know a bears butt from a bigfoot butt. Most of these guides not only know a bear, they can tell you whether it is a book bear or not from 200 yards. I can too. I can also tell the difference between a black bear track, a grizzly track and a bigfoot track.
I base my “opinion” on what a bigfoot is by the niche available for it, the sightings where I have got to know the people involved, and logical assumption of how it lives where it does. I have never been dogmatic about what bigfoot is, but I am getting dogmatic about calling people liers or stupid and I am a little weary of ignorance of the many track examples documented.
Stories of “heard of” released pet cougars is tiresome. I’m surprised at this one in Kansas, as most Kansans blame the Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks for releasing cougars into the wild to control deer numbers. Oklahoma has that same rumor. Neither are true. Cougars have always been here in small numbers. Kansas lists the last cougar killed as occurring in 1916. I happen to know of one that was killed and even put on display until it rotted in 1968. The last one killed and known about by some ignorant writer was in 1916, yes. I know of one cougar trapped and killed and two killed by cars and another outright poached in my county alone in Kansas in the last 10 years. There are probably a lot more I don’t know about right here in this one county. The wildlife authorities recieve so little from the public on this Kansas cougar stuff that its ridiculous. Why should Kansas bowhunters report seeing a cougar in Kansas to officials? So they can be laughed at. Kansas does not have cougars, period. Seeing a cougar in the east is like saying you saw a bigfoot. Especially a “black panther”. Now there is another critter that is seen by lots of folks, yet does not exist.
I have quite a number of “black panther” videos and photos from all over in my files, as I started to keep files on that too. Because I was getting so many reports of them. There is no doubt in the world that people are seeing these things, as they are video taped regularly in many locations. Unless of course they are all just men in a black panther suits built by the guy that made the suits for the movie “Planet of the Black Panthers”.
If black panthers exist, why don’t we have a carcass of one of them? I say they do exist, and we don’t have a carcass of them because no one is out trying to get one for the table. Too busy laughing. We are getting so many of them now that I will predict that we will have an example body to look at within 10 years. I also predict it will not be a pet black leopard, but will be a melanistic American cougar. Another animal that is not supposed to exit. I have doubts about collecting a bigfoot, as I think they will be extinct before the laughing stops long enough to apply the technology required to get definitive proof. The cougars on the other hand are on the way back. There will be fewer and fewer melanistic ones as their genitics improve, but eventually a black one will be hit by a car or something.
For a couple hundred years of British going to India, there have been reports of “black tigers” from locals. This myth stood the test of time and remained a myth. No idiot would ever believe in a “black tiger” because none has ever been seen by any credible witness for hundreds of years. “Tigers are never melanistic” says the experts. Just look at all the thousands of tigers in captivity, do you see any black ones. No! This means they don’t exist, correct. Wrong. I say melanistic tigers do exist, because many credible locals see them and have for hundreds of years. They should know their wildlife better than anyone, shouldn’t they. Not all Indians believed in “black tigers” and many joined the laughing western scientists in ridicule of the people reporting black tigers. My opinion is that black tigers do exist, but are rare, and there are logical explanations for them. Explanations having to do with genetics. Just because science did not have an example of them did not mean they did not exist for the hundreds of years they were reported to scientists. No respectable scientist would have gone to look for a “black tiger” because of the ridicule he would recieve from his peers. So they didn’t. They would rather laugh, than look for a mythological beast called the “black tiger”. The first black tiger was brought in by a young Indian lad who killed it with a bow and arrow in self defence in late 1993. The second black tiger was found in the possession of poachers in mid 1994. Want to see photos? Maybe it was just a guy in a black tiger suit, and they never really discovered the person inside. Tigers are like all the other cats, there are more of them around than you think.
Science once thought the orangutan was down to only a few wild individuals, but recent studies have shown there are thousands of them. Apes are like cats, there are more around than you think there are. Gorillas were recently discovered living in a country in Africa where they didn’t think gorillas lived. Not just a few gorillas, hundreds of them. This is the God honest truth. How could hundreds of Gorillas hide from science, over a large area. Usually the locals know about these “discoveries” well before they are “discovered”. I can show you a whole community in Colorado where the locals know bigfoot pretty dang well. Bigfoot is no secret to them.
Central America is a place where black cougars are common. In fact, the locals just laugh if a gringo scientist says that black cougars don’t exist. They say “you mean the gringos don’t know we have many black cougars here?” They know the difference between a black jaguar and a black cougar too, as they kill both regularly. The black cougars there have not hid themselves from science, it is that science never went down to look for themselves. I still get people that tell me that cougars are never black. Even Texas Wildlife and Parks has that statement on their official webpage, which is to their fine scientific credit. Their website says “a black cougar has never been documented”. It should say “a black cougar has never been seen to be documented by our ignorant biologists who have only one preschool book on cougars that was written by a guy that had never read taxonomy papers”. Black cougars may be rare, but they are easy to see, because they don’t match the grass very well. People who report seeing them, are often seeing exactly what they report. If I said I saw a deer, would you believe me? If I said I saw a black panther in Kansas, would you believe me? What if I took video of it, would you believe me then? Or would it always be a guy in a black panther suit.
King Cheetahs are myth. Black tigers are myth. Black cougars are myth. Gorillas are myth. Okapi are myth. Florida cougars are myth. Eastern cougars are all hundreds of released pets from some etheral pet realm where people hate pets and turn them out weekly. All the black panthers on all the videos and photos from the east are all only some of the hundreds of pet black leopards that are let loose by the same pet haters who send them out regularly into the wild. Or else, my favorite “scientific” theory, they are guys in black panther suits. All bigfoot sightings are lies and all tracks are hoaxes by the hundreds for 100 years, even though the tracks look like the same kind of unique feet made them.
Go back and find my link to bigfoot track anatomy and think it over again. He put a very few examples on that ISU site, but he has hundreds just the same, from all over the west, from a plethora of sources. Did all these people go to some school somewhere to learn how to make these uniquely different tracks for the last 75 years. White man has not been in the west for all that long you know. Not near as long as we were in India laughing at reports of black tigers.
Date:02-Feb-01
In retrospect, I was perhaps too harsh.
Thanks for registering Healthy Skeptic.
I should say I don’t hold much hope for most world mysteries, just because I believe that a few melanistic cougars are in the east and a few bigfoot are in the west of North America. I have studied these two extensively and find much credibility in them, and physical evidence that you can look at too.
As for other wierd stuff.
Crop circles are laughable designs by idiots who should pay for crop damages, but probably started by somebody seeing where a whirlwind laid down a crop in kind of a circle.
UFOs are exactly that “Unidentified”.
Nessie is likely a combination of waves, underwater currents raising logs, and a host of other natural phenomena.
African dinosaurs will likely be found to be some kind of Congolese crocodile or something, though that area is little explored and about anything could pop up there. Even a whole new group of undiscovered gorillas. Did you know there are some African gorilla-like skulls in a museum in Belgium that are way different than any known gorilla?
Atlantis is either a complete myth, or else you are living on it. It is real hard to find something you are standing on. Think about it. Hey, we live in a land that is in the Atlantic. Actually, I don’t think the Americas are the source for the tales of Atlantis. Atlantis is likely just a travelers story.
The Bimini Highway in the Bahamas? Natural rock formations only.
The Shroud of Turin is a piece of 14th century art.
As for the seas, anything is possible. We have video of whole pods of whales that match no known official species, so if air breathing whales can hide from us, anything can.
Giant squids, yes, there are giant squids. I believe in those. I have seen objective proof in the form of sucker claws collected off the radar dome of the USS Stein, that far eclise any giant squid that has washed ashore. So there are not only giant squids, there are some really huge giant squids or octupus out there.
Megalodon, the giant great white shark of the deep. Is it out there? Could be, because something that big and flesh eating has got to be naturally dang rare. Could eat those huge squids. Megaladon teeth have been found that were less than 10,000 years old. Pretty much all the same critters live in the ocean now as did 10,000 years ago, so why is Megalodon gone? Is it? Makes “Jaws” look like a baby. Shark expert Eugenee Clark will capture us a photo of a megaladon if she is given enough time and funding. Like bigfoot, the bigger they are, the rarer they are.
Giant snakes? Snakes can only get so big, because they would collapse and squish themselves. Maybe in the water one might get to 40 foot with water bouying its mass.
African leopardmen? Good way to kill your neighbor and blame a leopard.
Werewolves? Good way to kill your European neigbor and blame a crazy man.
Chupacabra, The Horrible Goatsucker? That one is too bizaare for even me to look into.
Huge short faced bear in Siberia? Why not? Big predators are naturally rare and hide easy when no one looks for them.
DeLoy’s Ape? The very clear photo looks like the worlds largest spider monkey.
Giant ground sloth in South America? Probably just your ordinary bigfoot running around down there. (: South America still holds many surprises for zoology. 4 new monkeys found in the last couple years. 30 some new mammals from there recently. The bigger they are, the rarer they are, so some big animals might even come from there.
Strange South American Big Cats? Hides have been purchased from natives of large cats with swirling design like nothing else. Probably partially melanistic jaguars, which would be called a “King Jaguar” I guess. Might be completely new species of rare and large cats down there. Nobody is looking for them, and cats are nortorious about hiding from man, even when he does look for them. We have not seen the last from the world of cat discoveries I predict.
Sea Serpents? Anything is possible in the ocean, and the bigger they are, the rarer they are, of course. Everything I have ever seen washed ashore or dragged up in Japanese fishing boat nets has been decayed basking sharks or whale sharks though. Too bad.
Yeti? Few tracks ever reported, but no one is looking either.
Yeren(Chinese bigfoot)? Same tracks as here. Same species? The fossils are there for it. Have not seen enough to have an opinion.
Orang Pendek (A small Indonesian ape that walks upright)? I know and have visited extensively with two persons, Debbie Martyr and Jeremie Holden, who have seen these slightly smaller than man apes that walk upright. The worlds oldest conservation group is funding their expedition in search of it at this very moment. Apes are like cats, there are more of them around than you know about. Martyr and Holden have been setting out camera traps, and discovered one new rabbit species and one bird thought extinct in a short while there. Will wonders never cease. It think the Pendek is a little predator ape too, because of the way it walks upright. Upright walking apes are hunters. Yep, I’m a hunter, born and bred for it. If I ate plants, I would crawl along the ground on all fours or swing through the trees for my food. Ever wonder why bigfoot walks, instead of goes on all fours like a gorilla?
I also think there is a small kind of tailess ape or monkey in South America that walks upright and hunts for meat instead of foraging for fruits and leaves. Again, rare. Too many credible witnesses have seen them there, for me to disregard them. The natives fear them greatly, and don’t hunt them at all. No gringo scientists are looking for them yet, though one gringo scientist saw one a couple years ago while looking for fungus specimens. I know, I know, magic mushrooms in the gringos diet.
The greatest mystery of all is why science always thinks it knows everything and have reached a pinnicle of knowledge. Like I said, in the 1970’s, zoologists uniformly proclaimed that few new mammals would be discovered on the face of the earth. Over 400 new and distinct species of mammal have been discovered since then. We may be discovering new mammals for hundreds of years, because they were making the same statements in the 1700’s too. Science never learns about its own ignorance, because we are too busy laughing and gloating over what we think we know.
Now you know my opinion on many mysteries.
Some tracks I found opened my mind up a little to other wildlife mysteries, but I still need proof too. So I study. All mysteries enthrall me, as we learn from enigma and we gain knowledge by observation.
Date:02-Feb-01
Ignore the sightings from the Colorado hunting guides who said they had a view of bigfoot under optimal viewing conditions.
Just look at the physical facts.
Why does Jim Chilcutt, “the” worlds leading forensic primate fingerprint expert state that he has “no doubt at all” that bigfoot tracks are real?
Why do many of the worlds leading physical anthropologists feel the same way after years of study of bigfoot tracks? There are getting to be more physical anthropologists that do believe bigfoot tracks are real, than don’t. The only that don’t are the ones that have not studied the tracks. Those that have studied the tracks believe many of the tracks are real.
Why is it that CDOW biologist Bill Heicher and the Eagle County Sheriff Department believe the 19 inch long tracks from Eagle Valley this last spring are “not faked”, “not bear”, and “not human”. What conclusion can we draw from those tracks then? What conclusion can we draw from the tracks recorded on video by undersheriff Joe Taylor Jr. on the CO/NM border in 1993?
Here is a link to the tracks from Eagle this last spring. You tell me why the faker did not put them in the better faking soil 5 feet away from where the tracks were found. You can see the track photo yourself of the scene. See that nice soft faking soil in the background? Why is one track all strange looking where the maker turned to go to the left? Why is there vegetation all washed into the toe prints of the third track? Can anyone tell me how old the tracks were when photographed? Do you have river level records? Do you know when the last snow was before the tracks were found? Where these tracks snowed on after they were made? There are hundreds of questions I ask myself, the Eagle County Sheriff Department asked themselves, and CDOW’s Bill Heicher asked himself. Most of those questions we answered. I could post the complete 10 page report here if you want. A very brief overview can be found on http://www.bfro.net/GDB/show_report.asp?id=1355
Date:02-Feb-01
For those that have not seen 19 inch long tracks that are nearly 10 inches wide at the toes, they are huge!!!! There were lots of forces used pressing those big feet into the gravelly soil there. Lots of force.
I thought the 16 by 8 inch tracks I found in the San Juans were huge, even beside my size 13 hiking boots. These 19 inchers make my feet look like baby feet.
These tracks are real, I tell you!!!
But, what are they? I hope you all get to stumble onto some of these tracks some day. It will make your hair stand on end!!! Keep your eyes to the ground while bowhunting Colorado.
I and the hunting guides are not making up tall tales. Please at least give them the benefit of the doubt and look at least at the tracks from all over the west. Read Meldrums research, and read Dr. Krantz research and Dr. Napiers research, before deciding. Those men are not stupid, nor did they set out believing in bigfoot. Krantz and Napier indeed set out to disprove bigfoot through scientific analysis of the facts. Meldrum saw Krantz work and Napiers work and built upon it. Krantz is the most skeptical guy you will ever meet, and once laughed at bigfoot tales along with the rest of us. To his credit, he studied the evidence and came to conclusions that were against his prior opinion. Same with Napier. Same with forensic expert Jim Chilcutt. He was going to be the one person who could discredit all bigfoot tracks, yet he now has no doubt bigfoot is real. No doubt whatsoever.
Man those Eagle tracks are big!!!
Date:02-Feb-01
I’m pretty much done with the bigfoot thing now, thank God!!
A guy from Washington state told me on the bowsite community forum that he has ridden a horse over 1000 miles in that state and never seen a bigfoot, a bigfoot track, or a bigfoot dwelling. I could understand how he could not see a bigfoot or a track in 1000 miles of riding, but now that he mentioned never finding a bigfoot dwelling, I can see the logic of bigfoot rejection. Sorry I wasted everyones time and wasted a thread on this forum, because if there are no bigfoot cabins out there in Washington state, then how could there be bigfoot out there. I had never thought of that before now, so that pretty much wraps it up. About time.
I’m still wondering why about 2 hours ago I got an email about a sighting from an experienced hunting guide in British Columbia who claims to have watched a bigfoot from 80 yards in broad daylight as it walked away from him down a trail. That guide has seen more grizzlies in the wild than we have probably seen on television, yet he makes this claim of watching a bigfoot. Guess I’ll put it in the files with the other hunting guide sightings and wonder why I have never come across a bigfoot cabin either.
Sorry again for wasting everyones time. A guy just can’t argue against the logic of the missing bigfoot dwellings. Its pretty much cut and dried. I guess if they were there, they would pretty much be similar to elk dwellings, which we see all the time.
Have a good one.
Date:03-Feb-01
I guess I’ll stay on the Colorado forum, simply because thats my field research area.
Zinger; I can’t see any correlation between the guides sightings and their finances. Bigfoot hunting is not an industry, and most of these guides only let me know about it and didn’t want anyone else to know. Wonder why? (: I’ve tried to get them to go public, but only Dysinger had the balls to. I respect that guy, and he really is sane, a good bowhunter, a good guide, and not making any money off bigfoot. Might actually be detrimental to his guiding if people think he is looney. He got a good long look at the bigfoot up there, from close enough that he could see some face and hand details. A person either has to accept what he is telling us, or say he is lieing to us. He was not mistaken about what he saw, and it was no guy in a gorilla suit for sure. I also know of about 40-50 supporting eyewitnesses to bigfoot over a 40 year time span in that area alone. You decide.
I really don’t think anyone is out there laying down fake tracks in Colorado, and neither do the law enforcement that has investigated along with me. Guess you would have to see the evidence first hand to really know how amazing it is. For example the tracks documented by undersheriff Taylor on the CO/NM border were found by a lady trying to photograph mule deer on the far backside of a pasture on private land at the edge of dense forest. Those two sets of very large tracks had a stride of over 5 feet and continued that way along the edge and eventually went up a valley and up toward a saddle, never breaking stride. They were obviously made by something heavier than a human to press the big feet into the mud and snow like they did. The feet showed mobility in the toes and in articulation. A 5 foot stride with big wooden feet and carrying weight on your back running uphill is quite impossible physically for a human over any distance. Such an athlete would make better money for a professional sports team, and obviously didn’t make any money off the hoax in Colorado. Then, if you logically look at the tracks from Eagle County, and consider all the events surrounding them and the people that investigated them you can see how intrigueing they are. CDOW biologist Heicher and the Eagle SO did not go into that investigation with an open mind, quite to the contrary. No one is more skeptical than the area biologists and law. Yet they came away from that one with “no doubt” the tracks were “not faked”. If they are not faked, what are those 19 inch tracks? And, why have so many people been reporting seeing bigfoot in that area since at least 1880. I have one case from about 5 miles from where the Eagle River tracks were found that involves 12 mountain climbers who saw a bigfoot in the 1960’s from less than 20 yards in broad daylight. Were they all lieing or mistaken? It just gets to the point where the combination of the tracks and the eyewittness testimony point to a conclusion.
The sighting my folks had is interesting. It occurred in 1989 or 1990 at a cabin we had been renting on an annual basis at the north edge of the SSJWilderness. My dad told me about it at some point after that, saying first something like “we saw what could only have been a bigfoot by the cabin when we drove in to turn on the water system in May”. My first response put him on the extreme defensive, because I asked him after his short statement whether they were sure it was not a bear. He got very upset and said “I know a @#%# bear when I see one”, and never told me another word about it at that time. My dad was a Christian man, and for him to cuss was extremely rare, so I knew I had made a mistake. He just shut up and did not tell me one more thing about it. Why should he? He was an experienced hunter and has hunted more bears, elk, deer, and moose than 99% of all living hunters, and for me to question his game identifying skills was like slapping him in the face. I should have known better. I didn’t think any more about the incident and kept my mouth shut until 1993, when my sons and I got screamed at, and I found the tracks the next day at sunrise when I went back to investigate the source of the scream by myself and with a firearm. Interestingly, I found no tracks where the scream came from, as the ground was too covered with pine needles and rocks, but after looking around for about 3 hours, I found the tracks that were at least a couple weeks old and had been rained on several times. I apologized to my father when we got back home, and then he related the full story to me. We had never heard of such a thing in Colorado at all, and so I started researching and the amount of eyewittnesses I found and historical references I found were amazing. I guess I am paying my dues with ridicule from others, kind of like my short questioning of my fathers sighting that first time he tried to relay it to me. I quietly started my research, but told no one outside our family of the events. Then in 1997, a man and his wife were scouting for elk just about 1/2 mile upstream from where I found the tracks in 1993, and they watched a bigfoot for 5 minutes, passing the binoculars back and forth as the animal walked down and across the open valley as it was escaping from three hikers and a dog that caught it in the open. After they went public, I did too. This resulted in helping my research, as now I didn’t have to be so discrete about it. It has not helped me, as I have a profession where I have to make decisions on wildlife and am on state committees dealing with wildlife conservation and management in Kansas. I’m on one committee for invasive plants that is formed by USFWS, and I always hope they don’t catch wind of my bigfoot research. I have pretty much avoided having any repercussions. Bluntly, this bigfoot thing is not good for me, and is costing me in more ways than one. The only reason I am doing it is that I love wildlife, am very curious, and this is a wildlife subject. I did not ask to hear those screams or find those tracks. Neither did undersheriff Taylor, or any of the hunting guides in Colorado. None have faired well once they go public, but only recieve ridicule. Officer Taylor finally said “crap on everybody”, and I think he may have destroyed the video of the tracks”. The last thing he said to me was “make sure no one comes down here and bothers the witnesses in my area, we don’t want any publicity”. There are about 30 eyewitnesses in that one small area. Not just “bears at night” witnesses, but full blown accounts of watching these bigfoot trying to kill elk in the broad open in broad daylight that winter of 93/94. Weather was tough that winter and game driven into the open down there more than normal and wow did things pop. Veteranarians, ranchers, homeowners, farmers, hunters, and many others got to see one or more bigfoot down there that winter. These were not little runty guys in gorilla suits, but two big males most of the time. Huge. Big as a polar bear, believe it or not. We have three different sizes of tracks documented in that area from 1993, so there are at least 3 of them. Surely there are more than just the males. The thing is, you yourself can talk to these people and find out first hand. They are not just statistics, they are people. They are lawmen, hunting guides, hunters, and even trained biologists. Two biologists from Wyoming will be going public fairly soon we hope. With not only sightings by themselves, but hairs collected and tracks documented. Most non-biologists don’t consider documenting tracks or collecting hairs, so it is nice when a trained biologist has a sighting, as they do.
I always consider whether a sighting is of a mangy bear or other expected animal when evaluating a sighting. I work with people in wildlife damage control and have looked at many calf kills and such that were blamed on cougars, but obviously not cougar kills. Stuff like that. I don’t even file night-time sightings of bigfoot. Colorado is unique, in that no one in the past has expected to see a bigfoot in Colorado, simply because publicity of bigfoot has been rare to nonexistent. In the Pacific Northwest, you might expect someone to see a stump and think they are seeing a bigfoot, but not here. Before our own incidents, we had never heard one single thing about bigfoot in Colorado. We didn’t expect to see a bigfoot or its tracks in Colorado anymore than we expected to see a tyranosaurus rex walking around leaving tracks, if you know what I mean. I know many people are quite bad about wildlife knowledge and identification, but I have never had one single report of a bigfoot sighting come from Rocky Mountain National Park, with all its wonderfull forest habitat. Yet a hundred miles south, I have large numbers of sightings from one area that spans 50 years or more. Why don’t the neophyte campers see bigfoot in Rocky Mountain National Park? I think it is because bigfoot is not there to see it there. Please look at the map of sightings I made for the bfro, it shows distribution and it shows seasonal migrational pattern. You can double the spots on the map, because I have not updated it for a couple years, but the new spots are in the same places as the old spots. The spots represent historical data, and contemporary daytime sightings by multiple witnesses. Again, why none in Rocky Mountain National Park, if they are due to human wildlife stupidity. Actually, the people seeing bigfoot are the most knowledgable by a large slant of the graph. Hunting guides, experienced hunters, lawmen, experienced bowhunters galore. In the mountain west, it is bowhunters who report seeing bigfoot more than any other outdoor group. There has got to be a reason why this small group is the ones with the best chance of seeing a bigfoot. What is the logical reason for this? Is it that bowhunters are the least experienced in wildlife identification or are they more prone to lieing than other outdoorsmen? One of those has to be correct if bigfoot is not real. You decide whether bowhunters are the poor judges, or are they the big liers of the outdoor world? One choice is correct. Of the bowhunters, the hunting guides are the highest frequency group. I have sightings on file from 4 Colorado bowhunting guides. This means that if you want to see a bigfoot, you should become a Colorado bowhunting guide, because they have an extremely higher rate of bigfoot sightings than any other outdoor user group. Extremely higher!!!!! How many people in Colorado are bowhunting guides?????? Do you see what this means!!!!! Please tell me a logical answer why this high rate is so.
Please, if you don’t believe the eyewitness, at least look at the tracks objectively. Think about where they have come from, and look for consistency and uniqueness of traits.
Please consider that the tracks have come from hundreds of different incidents in the west, from many different sources, and yet they are not just big human tracks. They have traits all their own. Wouldn’t hoaxers just make big human tracks? This documented track evidence spans well more than 50 years, with sightings of tracks going back to when white man first started coming to the west. Why, in at least 1450, did the Jemez name one of their pueblos “place where the giant man stepped”, which is a direct reference to bigfoot according to archeologist William Whatley. Why do the Utes and Pueblo down there in southern Colorado have so many traditions of bigfoot type creatures living in their forests of long ago.
Why do bowhunting guides see bigfoot more than any other users of Colorado forests? There has got to be a reason why Jeff Dysinger, W.E., M.W., and J.H. have seen bigfoot up close and personal in broad daylight Colorado’s backcountry.
Look again that the website of the Eagle River tracks and look hard and long at those tracks. Measure them and consider them. Look at the location photo of all the nice soft hoaxing soil in the background of the photo of the tracks.
Dysinger is not lieing to you guys, and neither are my parents, and neither am I.
Date:06-Feb-01
This thread has been downright civil in comparison to some on bigfoot. I sometimes get dogmatic about things, but really enjoy the differing opinions. I have spoken to quite a number of houndsmen in years past, andthey always gave me the impression that dogs probably couldn’t be trained to chase a bigfoot down, but maybe I am wrong. Santiams experience and logic is good about bigfoot probably not being able to get ahold of a good hunting hound. I too would think a dog would be too quick. Undersheriff Taylor (Alamosa area) told of a farm dog (german shepard I think) killed down there on the CO/NM border in the winter of 93/94, by whatever leaves these huge tracks. Another farm dog got thrown against a house and was severely injured, but not killed. Whatever grabbed it supposedly threw it over a 6 foot fence.
I have had two Colorado houndsman tell me they have cut bigfoot tracks in fresh snow while trailing their dogs. One of them gave me his name, the other didn’t. The one that did not gave the information on the very first time I asked about this on the Colorado forum a number of years ago, or on some Colorado bowhunters forum, maybe CBA, if they had a forum then. Did CBA used to have a forum, or was it always on the Bowsite regional? We could go back and retrieve it maybe and look at it again. The one who did give me his name is from southern Colorado, and said he has seen bigfoot tracks in that area, but cut tracks in Idaho while using his dogs there. He cowboys for a rancher in the San Juans and said he saw where a 600 pound calf was killed by one of the things that leaves bigfoot tracks, and that it carried it off, with only the hooves dragging every once in awhile.
The other 4 Colorado hunting guides and 2 outfitters who have reported bigfoot sightings to me, did not use dogs, but were rather elk guides and outfitters. You guys know Dysingers story, and I think I related W.E.’s sighting at one time. I think I also related a couple of the other sightings. Can’t remember. Anyway, all these guides seemed real sincere and real serious about it. You will just have to decide why they say they see bigfoot in Colorado. Actually, percentage-wise, Colorado hunting guides have the highest numbers of sightings per person of any outdoor use group. Bowhunters are second, followed by hunters in general and other such outdoor users such as hikers.
Oddly, I have had zero sightings from the places you would expect the most, such as Rocky Mountain National Park. Not one report from there ever. One would expect all the inexperienced people going there to see a mangy bear and think they are seeing a bigfoot, but they don’t. In fact, the more experienced you are in Colorado wildlife identification, such as a hunting guide, the more likely you are to have a bigfoot sighting. The less experienced in wildlife identification just rarely have a sighting report to give. I just recieved a sighting report from two of Wyomings official wildlife biologists. Figure that one out.
If bigfoot is nothing but a myth, then we have only three options for the reports from the guides and wildlife biologists I mentioned. 1.They are telling tall tales. 2.They are mistaken about the identity of what they saw. 3.They love ridicule from skeptics.
If they are telling tall tales, then that means hunting guides tell more lies than any other human group, by a very wide margin. If they are mistaken about wildlife identity in broad daylight from 30 yards to 125 yards with Zeiss binoculars, then how can they judge whether a bear is a book bear or not for their clients, which they do. It just gets to a point where listening to quite a number of not only Colorado hunting guides, but Idaho hunting guides and British Colombia hunting guides, accounts of close range bigfoot sightings becomes too hard to dismiss. I try to research mostly physical evidence left behind, but these guides accounts can’t really be ignorred. Especially if you would just get to know them a little, and realize they are not trying to pull your leg or anything else. They are dead serious. Most of these experienced guides don’t give a sh*# whether anyone believes them. They know what they saw. Just tell them to their face that they only saw a bear and “thought” it was a bigfoot. You might not come away in very good shape. My father almost decked me when I ask “are you sure it wasn’t a bear?” after he tried to tell me of his sighting. He said “I know a $#@$ bear when I see one!” And by golly, he did. He is the one that taught me the difference between black bear tracks and grizzly tracks, when I was still a snotty nosed kid. For me to question his game identification skills was like slapping him in the face. He never even told me the rest of his sighting until I found bigfoot tracks in the San Juans 3 or 4 years later, and I apologized for my “bear” remark.
You guys can believe what you want to believe. I don’t have time for you. There are plenty of books and websites on the subject. Just keep in mind that not all bigfoot sightings are bigfoot, and not all bigfoot tracks are bigfoot tracks. Also know that I have not found one single good bigfoot track from any eastern sighting event, whereas in the west, tracks are found at least as often as bigfoot is seen. Why the difference? Don’t look for bigfoot where its tracks are not seen regularly. Study the tracks to know the difference between bear tracks on top of one another and bigfoot tracks. Once you have seen hundreds of examples of bigfoot tracks like I have, it gets to be a moot point to deny the existance of these unique forms of track in our western backcountry. Also realize that in Colorado we are talking at the most a couple dozen bigfoot, not hundreds. I did a study on how many miles each bigfoot might be expected to walk each day, and how many good tracks it might lay down. In summer it is a wonder tracks are ever found. In snow, it is also a wonder anyone ever stumbles on the tracks of a few dozen individual bigfoot. It snows about every other day in many areas, erasing tracks from the day before. These tracks are found, and found more often than most people realize. Bigfoot avoid people like the plague, and avoid places where people activity is high. Bigfoot are not numerous, nor are they stupid. They may even be fairly sharp about their tracks and where they leave them. I don’t think they really worry about leaving tracks that people can see though, as I don’t think they have too. Tracking conditions for soft footed animals is lousy in almost all of Colorado’s high country. Too many rocks, grass, and pine needle duff on the ground. They don’t have to try to hide their tracks, as there tracks are hard to see anyway. Hunting guides do tell of coming across bigfoot tracks in snow while trailing cougars with their hounds, but not very often, which is some indication of the rarity of bigfooot. No one found grizzly tracks in Colorado from 1950 to 1979, but that did not mean they were not there. Many people were even organized in official groups looking for grizzly tracks in the San Juans, and could not find them, but grizzlies proved to be there anyway. Now that’s impossible, right? I have fact after fact of just such things in regards to grizzlies and cougars. A rare bigfoot is even less surprising.
Bigfoot are likely on the verge of extinction anyway, so don’t worry about it. I just wanted to see one before they are gone. I thought maybe if I applied my hunting experience to it, maybe I could get close enough to get some close up video or something, but I think they are too rare for me to have any hope. I’m not too bad a hunter, but not good enough.
If you see one up close and personal some day, don’t tell a soul, because no one gives a flying flip anyway, and all you will get is ridiculed and called a lier or a bad judge of wildlife. Don’t report cougar sightings in the eastern U.S. either, as you will get the same laughs from officials who “know” cougars are not there.
Date:07-Feb-01
deernelk, I graphed sightings of bigfoot in Colorado from my files by in 20 year catagories, starting with sightings from the 1870 and 1880’s Colorado. I have quite a few old reports from that mining era, in spite of few people really living in Colorado. The sightings/person ratio in Colorado was highest then declined to the 1960’s and 1970’s which had quite a few sightings. Since the 1970’s, people use of forests in Colorado has shot upward, while bigfoot sightings have dropped downward. When graphed in comparison to human use of forests, the sightings should have gone up too, if bigfoot numbers remained stable. Instead, bigfoot sightings remained similar to and lower than the 1960’s/70’s. One area, the Lost Creek Wilderness had quite a number of sightings in the 1960’s and early 1970’s, and none since. I have some real high quality multiple witness daytime sightings from that area then, in addition to one by an experienced hunting guide for that area and time frame. After the 1970’s no other sightings have come from that area, that I am aware of (extinct there now?). Sightings were high in the area from Leadville to Eagle, through the Holy Cross in the 1960’s to early 1970’s, but also petered almost clear out at that time. The tracks from Eagle were a surprise to me this last spring, but I am sure they are real tracks and not faked, as was CDOW and Sheriff Personel in that area. I was down to where I was expecting no tracks or sightings from that general area of Colorado, since it had been so quiet there evidently for a long period of time. The problem though is that many sightings occur that are never shared with anyone outside immediate family.
My files and graphs from them are based on daytime sightings, as I pretty much disregard night time sightings, though many night time sightings may be real, and a some daytime sightings may be false. My files are not complete either, as there are no doubt hundreds of sightings and track finds that I have never heard about. A bowhunter (Sam) who read of my bigfoot stuff on this forum went to southern Colorado bowhunting this last fall and ask around about bigfoot and found out that a local outfitter had found and photographed bigfoot tracks in 1988, and the photo had been sitting in an album at a lodge there for 12 years. I just recieved a copy of the track photo the other day. What is interesting is that this particular photo was taken less than 4 miles from where I found tracks in 1993. The bowhunter (Sam) also found another local hunting guide/houndsman/cowboy with bigfoot information. This all was just from asking a few locals. So I know there must be bunches of other stuff out there such as track photos and many more sightings than I am aware of. The evidences are already in the hands of people, but finding that stuff is tough. Witnesses are reluctant to talk, and those that would talk, don’t know who to tell. Those with track photos and such also don’t know anyone who would want the photos they have. Like the ones we just found, how many others have set in albums for years. We might be amazed at such evidences and witness numbers.
I say all this because my theory on “nearing extinction” might change, with more knowledge of more recent sightings or track finds in Colorado, making my graph lines look better on the level. For now though, the graph drops off at the end. If I get too many recent sightings though, it might skew my results and give a false upward at the end of the graph. In other words, I might only know about 10% of the 1880 sightings, but might know about 20% of the 1990 sightings, giving a false comparison.
I have not totaled the number of people who claim to have seen bigfoot in broad daylight in Colorado, but the number is in the hundreds now, just in my files alone. Quite a few hunting guides, bowhunters, rifle hunters, hikers and climbers and general local residents. I have only one professional wildlife biologist with a sighting in Colorado, but I have two from Wyoming, and one from Utah. So even the trained official wildlife persons are seeing bigfoot. But these guys are sure mute about it to the rest of the world, as it is not widely acceptable in wildlife sciences to say you saw a bigfoot. What a shame these guys can not be more open, or have to worry about their jobs just because they accidently saw a bigfoot.
Jim in Ohio, After looking at lots of tracks of bigfoot, and seeing how that unique foot works. The tracks show that the foot has a long heel that has much more leverage than the human heel, and the foot has more articulation below the talus. This means that it has an additional way to propel itself forward in running action than humans do. Kind of like a spring loaded mechanical advantage through the foot, with calf muscles and thight and buttock muscles to match. 50 miles per hour is no doubt an exaggeration on the part of witnesses, but I do think bigfoot is quite a bit faster at the sprint than a human, because of that mechanical advantage through the heel bone tendon arrangement. Really though, bigfoot does not need to be any faster than a human to catch a deer or an elk. I have bowhunted for 25 years, and have taken more than 30 deer, and have stalked to within touching distance of hundreds of deer. I have also sat on the ground down wind of trails and watched deer after deer file past at less than 10 feet away. I could have jumped forward and grabbed one anytime I wanted to, if I wanted to be kicked or gored. Bigfoot does not have to be fast to catch a deer or elk, it just has to be smart, agile and careful. I am sure it is a much better hunter than I will ever be.
Thanks for everyones input, the sightings emailed to me, and even the skeptical questions. I have already asked myself almost every question that could be asked, but it never hurts to think about the whys and why-nots.
We should probably let this thread die now. People who think bigfoot is an impossibility will never take the time to look at the physical evidences themselves anyway, and so are never going to change their minds. I’m not going to change anyones mind here in a few words about the sightings or tracks. One has got to study all the stuff in Meldrums and Krantz lab if you want objective answers. I have never thought people should decide on something until they study it though.
You know I don’t have one single unicorn sighting, or troll sighting, or any other odd animal sighting from Colorado. I think there was a kangaroo reported east of Colorado Springs in the 1970’s, but that is about it. Wonder if this lack of sightings of other mythological animals means anything, when compared to the hundreds in Colorado who report bigfoot? A few do report grizzly sighings down in the San Juans every once in a great while. Wonder if those sightings mean anything?
Look at the maps, look at the sightings, consider who is seeing these bigfoot, and who is not, consider where they are being seen, and where they are not, consider the tracks to see if they are unique and consistent as the antropologists say, and then decide for yourself. I guess it really does not matter in the scheme of things whether bigfoot is real or not. The important things in life are loving and caring for your family, being a good neighbor, giving yourself in service to others, being thankful to and loving God, and enjoying all that God has given us. Take care all. Oh, and sharp broadheads are important to, we can’t forget that. (:
