Lights! Camera? Action!
A Summer of Sightings and Sounds...and
Still, No Picture to Show the Family!
By Tom Yamarone
Summer’s gone and hunting season is starting
this weekend in my section of the Sierra
Nevada Mountains. No problem. There’s
always the Coast Range and starting in on the
local area investigation. It was a very good
series of summer outings beginning with the
BFRO Sierra Expedition in late June and
continuing on through the first week in August
as short outings with friends. No sightings were
to be reported but on two occasions we
recorded return calls to our call blasting and, on
another two occasions, we heard loud, clear
“wood knocks” in a location where we were
quite alone and isolated. It was thrilling!
We were camped at the spot of a reported
sighting in late June near the crest of the
Sierras along Hwy 108 in Tuolumne County.
When we first arrived, we hiked a quarter mile
to a nearby meadow and began circling the
meadow just within the tree line. It was 6:00
pm and hours away from sunset. My friend
grabbed a large branch and knocked it against a
large rock formation. Within 30 seconds, a loud
knock came from the direction of our camp in
response. That night we call blasted without
any return calls, but the next morning while I
was taking a walk back down towards the
meadow, another loud wood knock came from
the direction of camp again. It was 6:22 am and
I called back to camp on the radio. I got no
response. When I returned to camp, my
companion was fast asleep so I woke him to
ask if he had done a wood knock ten minutes
ago. He said he was sleeping. Wow! Something
was around camp.
We moved camp to a higher elevation meadow
for Sunday night and did some call blasting. On
our third attempt at 10:30 pm we had a return
call from a ways down the meadow. It was
barely audible but clearly a “howl” of 5 seconds
changing to a sound like the Klamath scream.
My friend recorded the event on a mini disc
system using a high quality omnidirectional
microphone. We had no further return calls and
no unusual events that night. We listened to the
playback of the call from earlier in the evening
and were lucky to hear it. It was quite dim at
our location and we probably would not have
heard it if we were moving around in camp.

There were sightings of bigfoot reported
throughout the central Sierra Nevada
Mountains and up into Siskiyou and Trinity
Counties this summer as well. These were the
ones we heard about – certainly, there were
sightings throughout the mountains most
everywhere. The BFRO database listed one up
along Hwy 108 in Mono County on August 21,
2005. It was a clear sighting in the late
afternoon by a family of four who were
returning to their vehicle on a trail out of the
back country.
I know of another that occurred on the 4th of
July in the Sierras near the Feather River. A 14-
year old girl was exiting a motor home around
midnight to get a blanket from the tent pitched
beside the vehicle. As she stepped down and
began to walk towards the tent, a figure caught
her attention at the edge of the campfire’s light.
It was squatted down watching her and when
they made eye contact, it bounded away into
the forest. She said it looked like a “gorilla” but
was “light colored with hair all over except in
the face” and it jumped on two legs to get into
the forest. She estimated it was nearly 5 feet tall
while she observed it squatting and it moved
with great agility. No unusual smell was
noticed and it made no noise. She was quite
disturbed by this encounter and its close
proximity to their camp. They stayed the night
in the motor home without any further incident.
It’s exciting to hear about these events. The
urge to get out in the woods is stoked by these
accounts. Unfortunately (or fortunately,
depend-ing on your point of view), I spent
some quality time with my extended family in
August. During this vacation, a relative
inquired about the current events in our bigfoot
world. I regaled her with the aforementioned
stories and she was excited to hear about these.
She is interested enough in the subject to watch
a documentary or two, but won’t be out
camping with me any time soon. I relate this
interaction because the first response she had
after hearing about these events was, “Did
anybody get a picture of one?” I didn’t dance
around that one. “No,” I answered, “it’s disappointing.
It’s not easy and not everyone is ready
with a camera.” But we sure wish they were.
And so into the Fall and Winter we go, and it’s
time once again to encourage everyone heading
out to search for our big, hairy friend to equip
yourself with some means of capturing an
image or documenting the event. It’s not easy.
It’s not cheap. You will certainly be annoyed to
be bothering with your camera at every stop
and having it out whenever you’re “in
country.” It’ll be getting dirty, dusty and likely
to shorten it’s operational life-time. But that’s
what you have to do if you hope to be ready
should that rare and exciting event take place –
a daylight bigfoot sighting.
I’m starting to doubt whether my Canon digital
camera would even get “into play” quick
enough to capture the moment. That several
second pause – even after it’s turned on –
before it snaps the photo might prove to be
quite frustrating. I’m starting to think that I
should be carrying a disposable camera with
400 speed film in my leg pocket for just such
an occasion. Sure, it won’t do much good
unless your sighting is under 50 yards or so,
but that could be the case. Should you happen
upon a different set of circumstances that allow
you to get the camcorder on and recording, or
to get out your digital camera, turn it on, zoom
in and snap the photo, GREAT! That’s the goal
– to come home with something to show the
family and friends. But think about it. Maybe
having that back-up point-and-shoot disposable
camera will do the trick someday. I think so.
Well, enough said. I’m off to the store to spend
$5 to $9 for what may be my most cherished
piece of field equipment! See you soon!
A N N O U N C E M E N T
On the way in early 2006, is the Authorized
Biography of Roger C. Patterson. This book
will be chock full of many never before
published photos and documents – well over
200 in total. This book will be penned by first
time author David L. Murphy who has traveled
over 5,000 miles tracking down witnesses and
those who knew Roger as well as close to 200
hours of research directly in the home of
Patricia Patterson. Having interviewed more
than 45 individuals who had contact at some
stage in Roger's life and having recorded over
100 hours of taped testimony, David Murphy
has a unique insight into this amazing man's
life. You will learn about Roger the family
man, rodeo rider, cowboy, acrobat, and yes,
bigfoot hunter. You will read word-for-word
transcript testimony of those individuals that
Roger interviewed on tape, including Fred
Beck of the Ape Canyon incident. You will also
learn of the little known accomplishments of
the man whose life was cut short by Hodgkin’s
disease at the young age of 38.
Not to be ignored, you will read little known
facts and information in a chapter devoted
solely to Robert E. Gimlin, Roger's equal in the
P/G Film.
Those interested in getting a copy of this book
which will tell more about the life of Roger
Patterson than all previous publications
combined, should send a self-addressed,
stamped envelope to:
Roger Patterson Book 2006
9115 Gunn Ave.
Whittier, CA 90605
or Raiders85@charter.net
Those who respond before the book is released,
will be notified and offered a pre-release copy
approximately two weeks prior to the official
release date.
Above: Twilight sky by Little Grass Valley Reservoir; Below: Sierra Crest Highway 108
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C O N S E R V A T I O N
Subject: Can The great Apes Survive 
(UK, Independent)
Treaty offers world's last chance
to save great apes
Michael McCarthy, Environment Editor
The agreement sets targets for slowing the loss
of great apes and their forest habitats by 2010,
and for securing their future in the wild by 2015
They are man's closest cousins and they are
staring into the abyss. But in one of the most
important environmental treaties, hope has been
offered to stop the headlong slide towards
extinction of humankind's nearest relatives, the
great apes.
The agreement signed in Kinshasa, in the
Democratic Republic of Congo, is on a par with
the 1982 whaling moratorium and the 1997
Kyoto protocol on climate change. It offers a
real chance to halt the remorseless jungle
slaughter of gorillas, chimpanzees, bonobos
[pygmy chimpanzees] and orang-utans, which
on current trends is likely to kill them all off
within a generation.
If it succeeds - a big if - it will be the most
significant move yet to counter the greatest
environmental problem facing the world after
global warming, the mass extinction of living
species. Increasingly, the great apes are being
seen as the flagship example of species that
have become endangered. Last year, the African
conservationist Richard Leakey said their image
should replace that of the giant panda as the
international icon of threatened wildlife.
The agreement in Kinshasa between the nations
where the animals occur in the wild, the "range
states", and a group of rich donor countries, led
by Britain, publicly recognises, for the first time
at the international diplomatic level, the unique
cultural, ecological and indeed economic
importance of the four great ape species, which
share up to 98.5 per cent ofour DNA.
It commits its signatories to a comprehensive
global strategy to save them, which involves
setting up much new legal protection and
protection in the field, and widely clamping
down on the illegal hunting, logging and other
practices which are destroying their habitats and
their populations.
Furthermore, it sets two ambitious targets: the
first of significantly slowing the loss of great
apes and their forest habitats by 2010, and the
second of securing the future in the wild of all
species and subspecies by 2015.
These are enormous tasks. At present the
gorillas, chimpanzees and bonobos of Africa,
and the orang-utans of Asia, are under merciless
assault from deforestation, war, illegal logging
and mining, the captive-animal trade, hunting
(they are increasingly killed for food in some
parts of Africa and sold as "bushmeat") and now
from emerging diseases such as the Ebola virus.
As few as 350,000 of all the great apes, which
once numbered in their millions, may now exist
in the wild, and populations of some subspecies
are already down to a few hundred.
Some conservationists such as the chimpanzee
specialist Jane Goodall believe they may be
extinct in the wild outside protected areas in the
next two decades.
Certainly, if current trends continue, the
specialists who compiled the Atlas believe that,
over the next 25 years, 90 per cent of the gorilla
range will suffer medium to high impacts from
human development, as will 92 per cent of the
chimpanzee range, 96 per cent of the bonobo
range, and no less than 99 per cent of the
orang-utan range.
S P E C U L A T I O N
Giant Creatures Wiped Out by Hunters,
Not Climate
Ker Than
LiveScience Staff Writer
LiveScience.com
Weapon-wielding humans, and not warming
temperatures, killed off the sloth and other giant
mammals that roamed North America during
the last Ice Age, a new study suggests.
The arrival of humans onto the American
continent and the great thaw that occurred near
the end of the last Ice Age both occurred at
roughly the same time, about 11,000 years ago.
Until now, scientists were unable to tease apart
the two events.
To get around this problem, David Steadman, a
researcher at the University of Florida, used
radiocarbon to date fossils from the islands of
Cuba and Hispaniola, where humans didn't set
foot until more than 6,000 years after their
arrival on the American continent.
The West Indian ground sloth, a mammal that
was the size of a modern elephant, also
disappeared from the islands around this time.
"If climate were the major factor driving the
extinction of ground sloths, you would expect
the extinctions to occur at about the same time
on both the islands and the continent since
climate change is a global event," Steadman
said.
His findings are detailed in the Aug. 2 issue of
the journal for the Proceedings of the National
Academy of Sciences.
This could also explain why more than threefourths
of the large Ice Age mammal species --
including giant wooly mammoths, mastodons,
saber-toothed tigers and giant bears -- that
roamed many parts of North America became
extinct within the span of a few thousand years.
"It was as dramatic as the extinction of the
dinosaurs 65 million years ago," Steadman said.