Byrne's Bigfoot Part 2:
High-Tech Pursuit
by Greg Long — March 18, 1996
There is lately arrived in France from America, a wild man, who was caught in the woods, 200 miles back from the Lake of The Woods, by a party of Indians; they had seen him several times, but he was so swift of foot that they could by no means get up with him. He is near seven feet high, covered with hair, but has little appearance of understanding and is remarkably sullen and untractable. When he was taken, half a bear was found lying by him, which he had just killed. - January 4, 1785, London Times
It is this type of historical datum that keeps Peter Byrne, director of the Bigfoot Research Project, in pursuit of one of the world's most popular mysteries. Bigfoot. Is there an as-yet unfound, large, hair-covered hominid roaming the Pacific Northwest?
Not only would Byrne like to know, but so would the supporters of the Academy of Applied Science, which is funding the search. The Academy is partly funded by such notables as Francis Davis, the inventor of power steering, who left the Academy $10 million; or Harold Edgerton, the creator of strobe lighting who held 50 patents on same.
"Lately, the phone at the Bigfoot Research Project has been ringing 3,000 times a month."
Byrne freshened our coffee cups as we sat in the dining room of the combination house/offices of the Bigfoot Research Project near Mount Hood, Oregon. It's clear that Byrne has plenty of resources to pursue the quarry. The best way (Byrne concluded after years of fruitless trekking through the woods) is to use high-tech methods. The front line component is data gathering. With the phone number 1-800-BIGFOOT in place, Byrne has a pipeline to the public. Lately, the phone at the Bigfoot Research Project has been ringing 3,000 times a month. Many of these calls have been crank calls, mostly from children who just before 8:00 a.m. before going to school, or at midday break, decide to bark, yap, howl, and scream into the phone. "It's got me! It's got me! It's eating my dog! It's got my grandmother" These calls are instantly rejected.
Ads running continuously in small weekly newspapers up and down the Cascade Mountains, northern California, and British Columbia — all the way up the coast to the southern border of Alaska — generate the phone activity. "The pattern that is producing evidence is the mountain chain," Byrne said, and so the ads are concentrated along the chain.
The reports that make it through are screened. "We discount people who've had 10 sightings. We thank them nicely. People just don't see Bigfoot 10 times. If it's running, we get suspicious. No one has ever seen one run; or appearing in the window — these things don't come and appear in windows anymore than would a mountain lion come up and put its paws up. Someone has seen something on a ridge 400 yards away. 'What color was its eyes?' 'Blue.' Well, you can't see the color of eyes 400 yards away. If it's 13 feet tall — that's it. We don't want to talk to them."
Some witnesses simply misidentify objects or animals. "People driving at night," Byrne mused. "They're thinking about Bigfoot. They've just seen Unsolved Mysteries, and a stump flashes by. And they say, 'Oh, my God, what was that?' By the time they get home, it was Bigfoot. Or people see a shadow in the forest and begin thinking, 'What did I see? My goodness! That was seven feet tall!'"
Or people misidentify bears, or — Byrne chuckled — cows. There was the couple who misidentified a cow in broad daylight. Byrne rushed to the scene across the Columbia River. "There were its brown, huge eyes staring at them," he smiled.
"Witnesses are asked about 100 questions."
Seventy-five per cent of all raw reports are rejected; of those, 25% are misidentifications. If the report passes the screening, and it's a good report, Byrne or one of his four associates, will interview the witness in person. The interviewer takes along three questionnaires: sighting; footprint find; and sounds, smells, and object throwing. Witnesses are put through about 100 questions.
"We sit with the witness across the table. We go through the questions. What, where, when, what were you doing there? How much reading have you done? Have you ever seen one before? What are the plants in the area? The temperature? When we're finished, we thank them. We do our own assessment based on what we see and they've told us. If it's credible, it goes into the computer. We have about 105 sightings [as of February 1996]. It's very little considering three and a half years of searching. But the sightings that are in there, we're satisfied they're credible. We're satisfied people did see something."
Human resources are another component in the search. The Project has associates who are ready to spring into action and travel to the scene of a sighting if its a few hours old. If the sighting is far from the Project, Byrne can turn to a 62-person volunteer team on call day or night. The volunteers are outdoors people — men and women — who are fascinated with the subject. "We may call them at 2:00 in the morning, and if you have 62 volunteers, and you call them, 30 will be working, 10 are going to be sick, so we might get 15. "
In addition, Byrne has two helicopters on standby to work with the team. One is a personnel helicopter, the other carries an infrared detection system on board. Byrne also has a team of six professional trackers, who are ex-policemen and ex-border patrolmen. "One of them," said Byrne, "is probably the best man in America right now."
A board of advisers composed of 10 professionals rounds out the team. The advisers include two anthropologists, a surgeon, an expert in forensic imaging, a senior policeman. Byrne is prepared to hop on a plane and travel if necessary. But the computer remains his best tool for uncovering Bigfoot.
Unfortunately, the most recent legitimate sighting the Project has in its computer is 31 days old. "It's a real problem," said Byrne. "After 31 days, footprints are gone, signs are gone." In addition, of the 105 sightings in the computer, only 14 have been collected since the inception of the project in 1992. All the other cases are 10 to 50 years old.
"Sightings are extremely rare," Byrne said matter of factly. "I'm three and a half years into this project, and none of my staff has seen a single thing, a single footprint. And I haven't seen a single footprint for five years myself. I saw something five years ago."
So Byrne relies on the "geotime" patterns that analysis of the computerized data reveals. Patterns of time and place that might show where Bigfoot potentially will be at a certain time of the year. The sighting belt that runs down the Cascades is the focus.
"But we don't see Bigfoot yet in relation to seasons," Byrne cautions. "We've had sightings in northern Washington, the coldest state in the winter at 20 below; and sightings in California, the hottest day of the summer. It would be great if they went south in the winter and north in the summer. We don't see that. But the movement is up and down, north and south, and that's because of the shape of the mountains, the shape of the Cascades."
Byrne went on: "Bigfoot don't come out in the open. Like many creatures, they need cover, so they use this covered passage [the Cascades], north and south. They're in this area because it provides them with food, water, cover, and space."
Byrne remains optimistic, despite the three-and-a-half- year passage of time as director of the Bigfoot Research Project. No photographs, no blood and tissue samples. Not yet; the computer hasn't produced the definitive geotime pattern. "But we think by the middle of the year," Byrne's eyes brighten, "they may, and we have some electronic surveillance gear which we're going to put out at that time."
Somewhere in the dense forests, out in the trackless wilds, Bigfoot moves.
To report a Bigfoot sighting, write or call:
The Bigfoot Research Project
Box 126
Mount Hood, Oregon
800/244-3668 or 503/352-7000
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