Larry Lund, Sasquatch Sleuth
by Greg Long — February 1, 1997
I'm a tall person, so I had to bend slightly as I entered Larry Lund's basement office in his house in Vancouver, Washington. It wasn't just the low ceiling; it was also the hundreds of different colored caps Lund has collected over the years. They hang down from the ceiling in rows. I was more comfortable sitting down in a chair behind one of Lund's two desks that face his television, VCR and glass case holding Bigfoot casts and popular art works depicting Bigfoot. It was a cozy Saturday afternoon down there in the basement. I wouldn't breathe the chilly winter air outside for four hours.
Lund is not just a collector of caps. He is known more for the Bigfoot information he has collected over the past 34 years. His 
office is crammed with Bigfoot books, files, video documentaries, posters, drawings, photographs, and plaster casts of the big feet. Since he was 16, Lund has passionately pursued Bigfoot. Along the way, he has kept his head about him. Perhaps that is his most fascinating feature: a stable, cool head. No mean feat in a field that is often volatile, acrimonious, and controversial. Lund is known by his peers as the "Sasquatch Sleuth." His grasp of Bigfoot facts is formidable; and Lund is respected for his level-headed and conservative approach to evaluating Bigfoot evidence. He also re-investigates old cases, and goes behind the scenes of the public exterior of the Bigfoot field to expose fakery and misinformation. Peter Byrne, Director of the Bigfoot Research Project near Mount Hood, finds Lund a trustworthy and hard-working lieutenant.
"How can you be an expert in something you can't prove exists?"
"I don't ever think of tracks as proof," Lund says quickly. (Talkative and open, Lund rattles off information like a rushing mountain stream.) "There's no way of proving that it [Bigfoot] is real [from a track]. I've read the reports, examined tracks and hair. I've done the research. I never say that there is a Bigfoot out there, and this is what he looks like, and this is what his footprint looks like. I don't know. I'm not an expert. I am an authority. How can you be an expert in something you can't prove exists?"
Perhaps Lund is too humble. He has found what certainly appear to be Bigfoot tracks. But he emphasizes that there is always the possibility that the tracks aren't genuine; that they could be hoaxes or mistakes. His first find was in 1974. He had been pursuing evidence for 11 years. He was with a friend in the Windy Ridge area near the Ape Caves and Mount St. Helens, a place known for Bigfoot reports. On a bare game trail he found an hour-glass-shaped footprint. The single track was 14-1/2 inches long and five inches wide at the heel. The print was lightly pressed into the soil. Twenty feet behind the track in the middle of the trail was a mark in the ground as if made by a heel; or could the hole be from a rock that had dislodged?
For four and a half hours, Lund looked for more tracks. He found none. In reflecting back, Lund regretted not taking a photo (his camera was in his vehicle). He explained his odd behavior as that of a novice; he wouldn't make the mistake twice. In any event, the photo may have shown little or nothing; the print wasn't pressed deep into the ground. That wouldn't be the case four years later.
In 1978 Lund received a lead on Bigfoot tracks above Yacolt near Battle Ground. Lund followed instructions and at the site found a series of deep marks running 52 inches apart in the soft, dirt slope at the bottom of a natural landing where loggers stack cut trees for hauling. The otherwise smooth slope was torn up and suggested that something had walked along the slope at an angle and up onto the landing. Lund counted 38 tracks, but there were no signs of toe "push-off" to persuade him the tracks were from Bigfoot.
But on the landing above, he found a line of seven clear Bigfoot-appearing prints. The prints were 11 inches long and five inches wide at the heel and bore a close resemblance to the classic Bigfoot tracks he had seen in the literature and in plaster casts. Lund pored over the area around the tracks and could find no broken grass or other signs of disturbance in the soil that might have suggested a hoax. Yet Lund had doubts. The find had been reported in the papers earlier; a man had phoned Lund giving Lund what seemed too-precise instructions of how to find the tracks.
If the toes had been in the same position in each track, he would have suspected a hoax.
Then, in 1985 he felt better about a third find. Near the Swift Reservoir near Mount Adams, he discovered three tracks on a dirt trail amid moss-covered boulders. Two of the tracks weren't clear; the third was "pristine." In studying all three tracks, he noted that the toes on each foot were in a slightly different position. If the toes had been in the same position in each track, he would have suspected a hoax. (Hoaxers use wood or plastic cut-outs and press them into the ground; the results are tracks that are precisely the same.) This third find was convincing and strengthened Lund's belief that there very well could be something called Bigfoot.
In 1991 Lund was impressed even more. Two loggers (one named Pat Kelly) found tracks near their logging job near Astoria, Oregon. Lund got to the tracks two days after they had been discovered. He saw approximately 300 tracks over 1,500 feet of a steep, rocky ravine. Luckily, loggers had protected several with cardboard. Two of them were on the side of a road. Lund made casts of them. The tracks were impressive: 17-1/2 inches long. Lund found it difficult to believe that hoaxers would have gone to all the trouble to make 300 tracks over rugged, "nasty" terrain.
Lund dropped two immense basketball shoes on the desk in front of me.
Lund dropped two immense basketball shoes on the desk in front of me. "These are Shaquille O'Neill's shoes," Lund said. Nike had given the shoes to Lund. I stared at the 20 triple-E shoes. O'Neill now wears size 23, Lund said. Lund nodded at the shoes. "Sure, there could be a creature seven feet tall," he said. O'Neill was a human giant, so why not a creature reportedly as big as Bigfoot? But a creature standing eight to 10 feet tall? Lund had heard such reports. If Bigfoot was that tall, surely there would be more reports of such a towering animal; an observer couldn't miss him. But real sightings of Bigfoot are rare. No, Lund said, reports of a gigantic Bigfoot were untrue or exaggerations.
Lund only considers a fraction of the stories he has heard as being evidential. He has nearly always found that when called to the scene of alleged Bigfoot tracks, the tracks are either those of known animals are too poorly defined to be recognizable. The potentially good reports are few. Once screened by Peter Byrne or famed investigator Rene Dahinden, or by Lund, the number of potentially useful cases dwindles to two or three a month. Nine out of 10 field investigations turn up nothing. At times, Lund experiences "Bigfoot burn-out." But when he receives a call, how can he ignore it? "I have to go to the scene," he said.
And what about reports of Bigfoot and UFOs? What about the theory that Bigfoot is an interdimensional creature, even a spirit? Lund granted that most of the tracks he finds begin and end in a confined area; or investigators have found only a single print, as Lund did in 1974, making tracking of the creature difficult if not impossible. Tracks start, then stop. "I run into this all the time," he said. There are two explanations, he said. Either the tracks are fakes (tired, the hoaxer made only one or a few prints). Or, more tracks can't be found because Bigfoot enters brush or rocky terrain, leaving no tracks behind. The fewer the tracks, the less convinced Lund is that the track is of a real Bigfoot. Lund will always check for fakery when he finds only five tracks in a row.
What about dermal ridges? Grover Krantz, Bigfoot researcher at Washington State University, has claimed that the dermal ridges (the tell-tale whorls and patterns on toes and fingers) on a print from an alleged Bigfoot in the Blue Mountains is positive evidence that the track on which it appeared is authentic. Lund disputed this. Joel Hardin, a professional tracker associated with Byrne's Bigfoot Research Project, looked at the ridges and declared them fake.
"He wasn't a police officer as he claimed," Lund smiled.
Lund popped a video into his VCR. He played segments of documentaries, of which he has participated in several. He had little praise for the statements of some alleged Bigfoot investigators who spoke on camera. He declared one Bigfoot investigator a liar. "He wasn't a police officer as he claimed," Lund smiled. "This man is an academic. He has studied Bigfoot for only one year, and he claims he knows everything about the subject." He slipped in another cassette. We watched part of a Sightings feature on Bigfoot. Lund pointed out how the Sightings producers purposely blurred telephoto footage of two hikers in a snow field on the side of Mount Hood and selectively edited Byrne's on-camera narration that he was looking at two "primates." "Sure," Lund told me, "two human primates, but not Bigfoot." Byrne was outraged at the distortion. Byrne and Lund conferred. They swore they would never participate in a Sightings show again. Byrne phoned the Sightings producers and lambasted them.
If there was so little good, reliable information in the Bigfoot field, why does Lund continue on? He popped in a video and ran part of a story on the recent discovery of the vu quang ox in Thailand. The strange deer exhales through gills in its head. I stared entranced at the strange vibrating flaps on the side of the Bambi-like face. Lund told me that the panda bear was only discovered in 1936; that 50 to 60 new insect species are discovered each day. "Ridiculous," he said, "not all the animals of the world have been found."
"Have you ever seen God's tracks?"
But how could Lund put as much time and effort as he did into believing in something he has never seen? "I say to people," Lund said, "'Excuse me, are you religious?' 'Well, of course.' 'Have you ever seen God? Have you ever seen God's tracks?' 'What?' 'Have you ever seen God's or Jesus's tracks?' 'No.' 'But you read a book, and you believe, because that book tells you this. By God, he's there!' Well, I've read a lot of books, seen a lot of casts, a lot of droppings, a lot of hairs. I think he's there."
Lund's belief was acceptable to me. Perhaps because he has also had a UFO sighting. In 1977, while living out in the country near Vancouver, he, his family, and his neighbors watched three dark triangular objects with a bluish-white light on the front of each pass silently from the north over their houses. Two of the triangles peeled off toward the southwest and the southeast leaving the third triangle to head south toward Portland. A phone call to the Clark County sheriff's office routed Lund via an 800 number to a lieutenant colonel with the Air Force in Seattle. The official said that two-and-a-half hours before Lund's call, the objects had been sighted above Vancouver, British Columbia, and were tracked on radar as they moved south. The UFOs disappeared over Portland. "We just don't know what they are," the officer said. "It was odd," Lund said. "Why would the county sheriff reroute me to the Air Force? How would the sheriff know in advance? The officer talked freely and down to earth."
 | "Could Bigfoot be from outer space? Could Bigfoot float off the ground?" Lund asks. "I don't completely discount it. Inside I feel anything's possible. But when it comes to that supernatural stuff, I cut it off consciously. We need a carcass. Nothing is going to prove it [that Bigfoot is real or what Bigfoot is] without a body, or a body part." |
So, Lund simply keeps on. "If you don't go, the witness could be the person who really had the evidence." Larry Lund smiled. He has to keep searching; he has to respond to the next phone call. "In the end, you have done what you could. You've done everything possible. You've looked at every piece of thing there is. You've done what your friends and peers expect out of you."
And the search continues.
For information on Bigfoot and to discuss Bigfoot videos, Larry Lund can be reached at:
Larry Lund
4019 N.E. 54th Avenue
Vancouver, Washington 98661
Phone: 360/695-5609
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