Search for Bigfoot a tall order
Documentary filmmaker getting scientific in quest for Sasquatch

Associated Press

BOISE -- The hunt for Sasquatch, aka Bigfoot, in the gloomy rainforests of the Pacific Northwest has always involved a little bit of science and a great deal of bluster about supposed encounters with a North American ape.

A producer of films for the Discovery Channel and Animal Planet has consulted with Idaho State University anatomy professor Jeff Meldrum and other experts on a documentary that hammers the myth with a lot of science.

''I just want some darn answers that at least come from a position of research and knowledge,'' said Douglas Hajicek of Whitewolf Entertainment in Minnesota.

Hajicek is filming ''Sasquatch: Legend Meets Science,'' which is scheduled to air on Discovery in November.

Sasquatch has been part of Indian legends for centuries. The name is the English version of the Salish Tribe's word for wild man, or hairy man.

Like other people who have taken up the hunt, Hajicek's journey started when he glimpsed some tracks. He was at Selwynn Lake in Canada's Northwest Territories filming giant trout. But he spotted some giant footprints, about 18 inches long.

''They went through gravel, beach sand, dirt, moss,'' he said. ''It was incredible the depth of them, even in the gravel. I was told by the guides there were no grizzlies there, no polar bears -- and I know bear tracks.''

Meldrum also documented a trail of more than 40 footprints he encountered along a muddy road adjacent to the Umatilla National Forest near Walla Walla.

An expert in primate locomotion, Meldrum said those tracks and others appeared to have been left by a biped whose feet are much more flexible than the human foot, with a high arch and better adapted for mountain terrain. They would be as tall as 10 feet and weigh 1,000 pounds.

Hajicek examines several supposed close encounters with the hairy humanoid over the last 40 years.

In October 1967, Roger Patterson claimed to have captured on film a female Bigfoot retreating across a sandbar in northern California. Skeptics have passed off the fuzzy film as a man in a monkey suit.

Hajicek took the footage and ran it through highresolution equipment to highlight the limbs as the subject walks. The resulting computerized anatomical model is seen from several angles, including from above.

''The film shows tons of muscles expanding and contracting,'' he said. ''If it's a guy in a suit, he had to be attached to the skin.''

In 1996, campers at a northern Washington lake filmed a subject racing over boulder-strewn ground. Meldrum said it appears to pick up a young Bigfoot and set it on its shoulder.

Hajicek will employ high-resolution scanners on the same site, contrasting his footage with the original one. He also will employ a track star to run across the same route to compare the speed.

In 2000, a group of Bigfoot hunters near Mount Adams in Washington set out apples as bait and played recordings of the creature.They said Bigfoot called back to them and left an indentation in the mud at the bait which seems to show the hindquarters, forearm and Achilles' tendon of a large primate.

They made a plaster cast of the indentation, and Hajicek is having hairs that were embedded in the cast and saliva on the fruit analyzed for DNA. Sound recordings made at the site also are under study.

May 23, 2002

Team 2: Tracking Bigfoot

MT. ST. HELENS - These footprints (left) could be proof that the creature known as "Bigfoot" existed.

A California man says this giant, fossilized footprint suggests the legend is true. He discovered it among rocky terrain while he was looking for gold.

And more evidence suggests the creature known as Sasquatch could still be alive today.

In the past month there have been two Bigfoot sightings near Mt. St. Helens.

KATU's Ed Teachout set out to investigate what one man says he not only saw, but attempted to catch.

"I get down here and he's peeking through the trees," Jerry Kelso told KATU.

Kelso couldn't believe what he saw with his family last Saturday near Mt. St. Helens.

While his wife and 2-year-old waited in the car, Kelso chased after what he originally thought was a man in a suit pulling a stunt.

"And he's standing about 40 yards over there, and when I broke through I went, 'Wow' and my wife starts screaming," said Kelso.

But as Kelso got closer he says began to believe he was face to face with the real thing--Bigfoot.

"He was about six foot, six foot one, very dark brown almost a black and hairy all over," said Kelso.

That didn't stop Kelso. He says he continued to chase the thing until he says he saw he was carrying a club.

"That," said Kelso, is when he knew, "it was a Sasquatch, what else?"

Not believing his story, we followed the trail the beast allegedly took. We found signs of elk and maybe bear.

"It's been eating grass whatever it is," said Kelso.

Then Kelso and KATU's Ed Teachout found a track that looked like nothing we've seen in the woods before.

"That looks like a track there. That's not a human foot," said Teachout.

Kelso, who's an aerospace consultant, says he wouldn't have told a soul, but after hearing another man had sighted a Bigfoot 10 days before, a mile from where he sighted his, he decided to speak up.

Though his creature looked similar to what others say they've seen before, this creature reportedly was smaller and didn't smell at all.

After getting back into the car, Kelso wanted to chase the thing, he said, but his wife forbade him.

"She was very scared," said Kelso. "I guess I think I'm tough or something you know. I've been hurt too many times to worry about some little guy with a club," Kelso said.

So the elusive Bigfoot gets away again leaving only his footprint and legend behind.

The Bigfoot Field Researchers' Organization is making castings of the footprints and interviewing people who live in the area.

More Information: The Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization

ON THE TRAIL OF CHINA'S BIGFOOT (7/30/2002):
By Rosanne Lin
Shanghai Star
July 25, 2002

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/star/2002/0725/vo2-2.html

North American skeptics take note -- in 1976-77, the Chinese Government sponsored a yeren (wildman) -- commonly known to the West as Bigfoot -- expedition to Shennongjia Mountain Forest in central Hubei Province consisting of 100 people, including army personnel.

That trip and others have produced numerous samples of what Yuan Zhenxin, a well-known paleoanthropologist from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, claims are the hair, footprints and feces of an undiscovered species, possibly the missing link between man and ape -- the wildman.

Eye-witness reports describe the wildman as about 9 feet tall, with five-toed feet measuring some 40 centimetres in length, red hair and terrible body odour. He is apparently a vegetarian who prefers corn-on-the-cob.

Since the 1970s, government sponsored expeditions have managed to detail scores of wildman sightings among local residents, although the wildman himself continues to shy away from both outsiders and cameras, complicating independent verification.

However, scientists remain resolute in their investigations. According to a August 2, 1988 report in Shanghai's Wenhui Bao, an analysis of hair samples allegedly taken from the wildman prove he exists.

And wildman is not alone.

Yuan believes some 1,000 to 2,000 of these Chinese Bigfoot creatures are currently roaming the dense forests of Hubei's mountain area -- interactions with locals have ranged from crude attempts at communication to encounters of a more personal nature. Yuan notes that he has personally investigated stories of abduction, including two cases where farmers were kidnapped by
the creature but managed to escape. Yuan fails to elaborate on the nature of these abductions, but according to victims of wildman's American cousin, Bigfoot, the creature has a voracious sexual appetite.

Some critics will inevitably attribute these sightings to poisonous Western influences, however they would be wrong. Reported sightings of the wildman date back thousands of years before China had any contact with the West.

A statesman-poet named Qu Yuan who lived in the third century BC in the Shennongjia area referred to "mountain ogres" in his verses. While a seventh century historian described a tribe of "hairy men" living in the same region, and an 18th century poet spoke of a creature "monkey-like yet not monkey" in adjoining Shaanxi province.

Liu Minzhuang, a biology lecturer in Shanghai who has been researching wildman for more than 20 years, notes the convincing testimony of one old peasant. According to the elderly witness, he accompanied Kuomintang soldiers as they tracked eight wildmen through thick forests for 10 days in 1947. One wildman was eventually killed and dismembered by the soldiers, the
peasant said, but records of the incident were lost in the chaos of the civil war.

Such violent encounters may explain the wildman's reluctance to mix socially with the human species. Perhaps the wildman is a distant hominid cousin of homo sapiens from some lost prehistoric era who has already survived tough lessons. Should it surprise us that the wildman would go to extremes to avoid contact? Considering recent events -- from the September 11 attacks to
the bombing of innocent civilians in Afghanistan -- how can we feign surprise.

Moorhead man has been hunting bigfoot for 16 years

11-3-2002

MOORHEAD, MINN. -- If a bigfoot is living in the dense, wooded areas of Minnesota, Mike Quast hopes to be the one who finds it.

Quast, 34, who lives in Moorhead and works for a custodial company, has his work cut out for him.

First of all, most people scoff at the existence of such a creature. And second, most of the people who believe in the existence of a bigfoot-like creature are searching for it in the Pacific Northwest.

Quast's belief stems from his own sighting. It happened in 1976, when Quast was 8 years old. He was in a car with his parents when he saw what he believes was a bigfoot. or sasquatch. They were driving near Strawberry Lake, on the White Earth Indian Reservation north of Detroit Lakes.

"I was kind of stunned and didn't say anything for a while," Quast said. "I told my parents later, and they didn't take it too seriously."

His mission began when he graduated from high school in 1986. Since then, he's collected stories from people who claim to have seen a bigfoot, and he's hunted for the creature. He's collected his observations and reports in a book called "The Sasquatch in Minnesota."

"When I first started looking into it and reading all the books, there were nine reports of sightings in Minnesota, but the official records were really incomplete," he said.

Car attacked

The first story he ever investigated was about a creature that was seen in the Vergas, Minn., area.

"There was an urban legend story going around there about the hairy man that I heard about from my brother-in-law," Quast said. "He said he knew someone who had seen it."

Quast tracked down a mechanic who told him that when he was a teenager in 1968 he and his brother and his brother's girlfriend were driving around in a wooded area near Vergas and that a creature leaped out at them. When they turned the car around to get another look at it, it attacked their car.

They later found a large dent in the trunk lid. They described the creature as weighing about 300 pounds and standing 7 or 8 feet tall.

"He said it had a face like a gorilla and an upright body like a man, and it was covered with hair, a standard bigfoot description," Quast said.

The townspeople built a story around it, saying that it was some crazy hermit who lived in the woods.

"They started to hunt for the thing over the next few months, and they saw it a couple of more times, running at night," he said.

They never saw the creature in the winter, so they figured it was hibernating. Then one spring, they found a shack with a hole dug under it. It smelled like a dead animal so they burned the shack down.

"I heard about other stories, and I started searching the area," Quast said.

Different sizes

Quast spent much time searching the Vergas area.

"In August of 1989 I found what I believe were bigfoot tracks."

The tracks were 16 inches long with three toes. He made plaster casts of the tracks. In August 1970 he found a set that was 20 inches long, and, over time, he's found three different sets of tracks, one only 12 inches long.

"I thought it might have been a small family group that passed through the area once in a while," he said.

"I haven't found anything there in recent years because there's been a lot of development out there," he said. "It's still a woods, but it isn't as wild as it used to be."

Then, in the early 1990s, Quast met a trapper who lived near Zerkel, east of Mahnomen in Clearwater County.

"He found some tracks on his property that he couldn't explain," Quast said.

The tracks were of a two-legged creature, but they weren't typical bigfoot or human tracks. The tracks were circular with two large toes and, where the three other toes should have been, there was an impression of hair growing under the toes. Tracks were found of slightly different sizes, and Quast speculates the tracks were from a subspecies of bigfoot.

"The DNR suggested he get in touch with me," Quast said. "It became a fascination with him too."

The trapper found the first set of tracks in December 1990 and more tracks in March 1991.

"The tracks turned up again, and there were a lot more of them the second time," Quast said. "He thought he saw close to 2,000 tracks that day."

The trapper put up notices around town and started asking people in the area if they had seen anything.

"Other people had seen tracks, and there were sightings over the years," Quast said.

Scream in the night

The trapper became the best source of information Quast ever had, and Quast spent a lot of time searching on the trapper's property, even after he died more than a year ago.

"During the time I knew him, there were occasional reports, and he found more tracks," Quast said. "After a while, he started finding the more common type of tracks with the more human type of foot. Many of the tracks were smaller, indicating they were from a young bigfoot."

Since then Quast has concentrated his bigfoot hunt in the White Earth State Forest in Clearwater County in a heavily forested area the locals call the Buckboard Hills.

One night when Quast was camping on the trapper's property he heard what he believes was a bigfoot.

"If you study the bigfoot literature, they describe the sound as a scream, and I think that I heard it one night when I was camping there," he said. "At about 10 at night, this noise just came out of nowhere. It was so loud, the woods just shook with it, and I remember feeling very alone and very vulnerable out there, at that time. I think there were two of them calling back and forth to each other, because I heard it come from two different areas."

Quast said he will keep searching until he has proof that bigfoot exists.

"I think one of the main reasons why science doesn't take this animal seriously is because we have labeled it a monster, and nobody is supposed to believe in monsters," he said. "If it had just been thought of as a new species of wildlife, there would have been scientists out there looking for it."

http://www.startribune.com/stories/462/3404980.html

SEARCH FOR BIGFOOT OUTLIVES THE MAN WHO CREATED HIM
By Timothy Egan
New York Times
January 3, 2003

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/03/national/03FOOT.html?pagewanted=print&position=top

SEATTLE, Jan. 2 ‹ No region in the country has a lower percentage of churchgoers than the Pacific Northwest. But ask people here about the existence of a camera-resistant, grooming-challenged, upright biped known as Bigfoot or Sasquatch and the true believers shout to the misty heavens in affirmation.

So it came as a considerable blow when the children of Ray L. Wallace announced that their prank-loving pop had created the modern myth of Bigfoot when he used a pair of carved wooden feet to stomp a track of oversized footprints in a Northern California logging camp in 1958. Mr. Wallace, 84, died on Nov. 26 at a nursing home in Centralia, Wash.

"This wasn't a well-planned plot or anything," said Michael Wallace, one of Ray's sons. "It's weird because it was just a joke, and then it took on such a life of its own that even now, we can't stop it."

Bigfoot defenders, including at least two scientists and a clinical psychologist who says he ran into the Big Guy two years ago in southern
Oregon, are undeterred.

They give Mr. Wallace credit for the hoax, which led to news stories around the world and began thousands of campfire debates. But, they say, other evidence is too strong to let a prank kill something that has become ingrained in the culture.

And, curiously, the death of the original Bigfoot comes at a time when he has been making more appearances than Elvis.

In the Northwest, the hirsute hominid, who dates to American Indian lore as Sasquatch, is a minor industry. A publisher -- Sasquatch Books -- and an N.B.A. team mascot -- Squatch of the Seattle Supersonics -- are both named for the ape-like primate. Several organizations host regular conferences on the subject. There are field guides for tracking Bigfoot, music tapes and CD's with his sounds (a low, heavy-breathing moan, not unlike a winded Homer Simpson), and innumerable works of art inspired by his shaggy essence.

To say that Bigfoot is dead, and existed only as a set of wooden feet, is like saying there is no serpent in the depths of Loch Ness, or that Babe Ruth did not lay a curse on the Red Sox after being sold to the Yankees.

"All it means is that Ray Wallace is dead, not Bigfoot," said Dr. Wolf Henner Fahrenbach, a zoologist in the Portland area who is retired from the Oregon Regional Primate Research Center.

Mr. Wallace loved to play jokes, and no prank was bigger than the one he put together in 1958 outside a logging camp in Humboldt County, Calif. Though some Bigfoot believers had long suspected that Mr. Wallace created the tracks, he kept his secret, and his family never confirmed it until his death.

Michael Wallace said his father had a friend carve the feet. Then he had a truck drive him slowly, to create a large gait, as he stomped the prints in the ground. It created a sensation in the press and made Humboldt County prime habitat and ground zero for hunters and hoaxers alike.

Dr. Fahrenbach has tried to prove -- by DNA analysis of hair samples -- that Bigfoot is a species heretofore unknown to science. To date, he has come up empty, which he attributes to fragmented DNA.

But Dr. Fahrenbach has done an extensive analysis of 706 footprints, and has concluded that the average length of the animal's foot is 15.6 inches and that an adult Sasquatch can weigh up to 2,000 pounds.

"Sasquatch feet grow in substantial excess of general body dimensions," Dr. Fahrenbach wrote in one study. "Hence the justifiable moniker Bigfoot."

It may seem remarkable that Ray Wallace's staged footprints, which appear to have launched the term "Bigfoot" into popular idiom, were within an inch or so of the other prints, but Dr. Fahrenbach is unfazed.

"I've gotten close enough to smell him," said Dr. Fahrenbach, recounting a backpacking trip to a remote valley in the North Cascades of Washington.

How did he know precisely what eau de Sasquatch smelled like? "I didn't at the time," he said, "but I was later able to match the smell with other descriptions."

Nor has the Wallace family's revelation altered the views of Dr. Jeffrey Meldrum, a professor of anatomy and anthropology at Idaho State University in Pocatello. Dr. Meldrum is perhaps the only active academic supporter of Bigfoot, a position that he said had brought everything from open ridicule to curious sympathy from his colleagues.

Dr. Meldrum said he was a skeptic until he saw Bigfoot prints, then began collecting and analyzing them. Some are easily identified as hoaxes, he said, but other defy explanation.

"What concerns me about the Ray Wallace story is that it puts a damper on legitimate researchers," Dr. Meldrum said. "They're seen as kooks or cranks. But what it actually does is steel them all the more."

Dr. Meldrum and Dr. Fahrenbach may have some academic investment in Bigfoot, but Dr. Matthew Johnson, a clinical psychologist from Grants Pass, Ore., said his conviction could not be dismissed as scholarly bias.

Dr. Johnson said he was too big -- 6 feet 9 inches tall -- too educated, and too familiar with the outdoors after living in Alaska for years to be fooled by some guy in an ape suit, or a logger with wooden feet.

"I've never had a U.F.O. encounter and have not seen the Loch Ness monster," he said. "I was just a husband and father out for a hike."

Two years ago, while hiking with his family in the Oregon Caves National Monument, Dr. Johnson said, he ventured off to the side of a trail, looked up to some trees and stared, eye to eye with Bigfoot. He reported his find to the National Park Service.

"Ray Wallace may have indeed hoaxed his own tracks," Dr. Johnson said. "But I can guarantee you that Ray Wallace was not walking around in a nine-foot Bigfoot suit in the Oregon Caves at the age of 82. What I saw was real."

Since the encounter, Dr. Johnson, now president of the Southern Oregon Bigfoot Society, has led numerous outings to feed and track Bigfoot. He leaves bananas and husked corn for the animal.

What nearly all Bigfoot stories lack is proof: a skeleton or a body, or a picture or film beyond dispute. Bigfoot is among the most camera-elusive of beings.

Supporters note that it is rare to find a carcass or skeleton of a grizzly bear in the wild. True. But grizzlies have never escaped photographic documentation.

What remains as the Holy Grail for believers is a home movie made in 1967 by an amateur Bigfoot hunter, Roger Patterson, who has since taken his secret to the grave. Filmed in the Six Rivers National Forest in Northern California, not far from where Ray Wallace laid his tracks, the short film shows a bewildered-looking apeman walking upright, while glancing at the camera.

The film has its believers, Dr. Meldrum and Dr. Fahrenbach among them. And it has its detractors, including Cliff Crook, who has sought the mythic beast for 45 years.

"I get beat up for saying this, but the Patterson film is a fake," Mr. Crook, who heads a group of like-minded enthusiasts called Bigfoot Central from his home near Seattle.

He is not moved by the Ray Wallace family confession. "Most of us knew he had faked those tracks," Mr. Crook said.

So they soldier on, tramping through the woods, spreading bananas and taking plaster casts of tracks, sniffing the air for a telltale stench of something that has gone a long time without bathing.

"We're feeling pretty confident we're going to have irrefutable scientific proof," Dr. Johnson said. "It's just a matter of time."

To all the searchers, the Wallaces say Godspeed. "As long as Dad was alive, he was Bigfoot," Michael Wallace said. "He may be gone, but I still think people should keep looking."

Bigfoot believers

Legitimate scientific study of legend gains backing of top primate experts

By Theo Stein

Denver Post Environment Writer

Sunday, January 05, 2003 - EDMONDS, Wash. - After enduring decades of ridicule, Bigfoot researchers are enjoying support from some of the world's most respected scientists in their efforts to prove the hulking creatures of legend are no myth.

Post / John Epperson

Richard Noll of the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization photographs a site in the North Cascades, northeast of Seattle, last month. Noll and colleagues discovered an imprint near a mudhole where the Skookum Cast was recorded two years ago.

The persistence of reported sightings of Bigfoot-type creatures in North America and elsewhere has convinced leading researchers on primates - including Jane Goodall, made famous by her studies of chimpanzees in Tanzania - to call for something never seriously considered before: a legitimate scientific study to determine whether the greatest apes that ever lived persist in the world's moist mountainous regions.
(GRAPHIC: Myth or mammal?)

Skeptics, who include those in the scientific mainstream, scoff at such ideas. They say reported Bigfoot encounters, tracks and other evidence are either hoaxes or mistakes, and that people who believe such nonsense are soft-headed.

But dedicated amateurs and a smattering of professionals are trying to change that attitude. Using accepted scientific methods, they believe they can show at least some of the claimed evidence for Bigfoot - footprints, hair, voice recordings and a 400-pound block of plaster known as the Skookum Cast - are authentic traces of a rare giant primate.

Recently they have received support from a handful of the field's top experts.

Daris Swindler, for example, is not the typical Bigfoot believer.

When he retired in 1991 after more than 30 years at the University of Washington, Swindler was an acclaimed expert in the arcane study of fossilized primate teeth.

His book, "An Atlas of Primate Gross Anatomy," went through several printings and was among the standard references in the field.

So it comes as a surprise to some of his peers that Swindler believes that the Skookum Cast, discovered by amateur Bigfoot researchers in 2000, is a genuine record of a hairy giant that sat down by a mudhole to eat some fruit.

"Daris said that?" asked Russell Ciochon, a prominent paleoanthropologist and professor at the University of Iowa. "He's an important figure. But I still don't think Bigfoot exists in any form."

Mythical giant apes lurk in the traditions of nearly every Native American linguistic group and in legends handed down through the ages from Europe and Asia. Each year, Bigfoot or similar creatures are reported by hundreds of hunters, hikers, motorists and others from central Asia to the central Rockies. But no one has provided the minimum proof required by science: a type specimen or remains that researchers can pick up, measure and argue over.

Nevertheless, Goodall is intrigued.

"People from very different backgrounds and different parts of the world have described very similar creatures behaving in similar ways and uttering some strikingly similar sounds," she said. "As far as I am concerned, the existence of hominids of this sort is a very real probability."

George Schaller, director of science at the Wildlife Conservation Society, has spent 40 years studying rare animals in remote places, including pioneering studies of Central Africa's mountain gorilla, which Western scientists first discovered in 1903.

THE SCIENTISTS

JANE GOODALL

A world-famous primate researcher and author, she revealed, in studies of chimpanzees in Tanzania's Gombe National Park, surprising behaviors in humanity's closest living relative. Goodall has won numerous international awards for her contributions to conservation, anthropology and animal welfare. Currently affiliated with Cornell University, she serves as the National Geographic Society's explorer-in-residence.

GEORGE SCHALLER

International science director for the Wildlife Conservation Society. His pioneering field studies of mountain gorillas set the research standard later adopted by Goodall and gorilla researcher Dian Fosse. Schaller's 1963 book, "The Year of the Gorilla," debunked popular perceptions of the great ape and reintroduced "King Kong" as a shy, social vegetarian.

Schaller's studies of tigers, lions, snow leopards and pandas also advanced the knowledge of those endangered mammals.

In 1973, he won the National Book Award for "The Serengeti Lion: A Study of Predator-Prey Relations," and in 1980 was awarded the World Wildlife Fund Gold Medal for his contributions to the understanding and conservation of endangered species. During the past decade, he has focused on the little-known wildlife of Mongolia, Laos and the Tibetan Plateau.

RUSSELL MITTERMEIER

A trained primatologist, herpetologist and biological anthropologist, he has discovered five new species of monkey, including two last year. Mittermeier has conducted fieldwork in more than 20 countries around the tropical world, with special emphasis on Brazil, Guyana and Madagascar.

Since 1989, Mittermeier has served as president of Conservation International, which has become one of the most aggressive and effective conservation organizations in the world during the last decade. His publications include 10 books and more than 300 scientific papers and popular articles.

DARIS SWINDLER

Emeritus professor of anthropology at the University of Washington, Swindler is a leading expert on living and fossil primate teeth and one of the top primate anatomists in general. His book, "An Atlas of Primate Gross Anatomy," has become a standard reference in the field. A forensic anthropologist, Swindler worked on the Ted Bundy and Green River murder cases along with hundreds of others.

ESTEBAN SARMIENTO

A functional anatomist affiliated with the American Museum of Natural History, Sarmiento focuses on the skeletons of hominids. In 2001, he participated with George Schaller in a search for Congo's Bili ape, a possible species super-chimp reported by natives but unknown to Western science. Sarmiento has also studied the Cross River gorilla, a critically endangered subspecies on the Nigeria-Cameroon border whose population is thought to be numbered in the hundreds. He has taught in the U.S., South Africa and Uganda.

Schaller remains troubled by the fact no Bigfoot remains have been produced, nor have any samples of feces whose DNA can be chemically poked and prodded to unlock the identity of their maker. And he is mindful of hoaxing.

But he, too, considers Bigfoot an open question.

"There have been so many sightings over the years," he said. "Even if you throw out 95 percent of them, there ought to be some explanation for the rest. The same goes for some of these tracks."

"I think a hard-eyed look is absolutely essential," he concludes.

The most common evidence allegedly left by these animals are the footprints: big prints in remote locations, some deeply pressed in sand or gravel firm enough for a grown man to pass without leaving a trace. Some footprints, like those Ray Wallace's family claim he left near Bluff Creek, Calif., in the late 1950s, are hoaxed. Many more are too vague to be conclusive. But a few are so detailed and anatomically accurate that they baffle the experts.

"Either the forgers are spending an awful lot of time on this, or there is reason to give this evidence another look," said primate researcher Esteban Sarmiento of the American Museum of Natural History. "I think a serious scientific inquiry is definitely warranted."

Skeptics argue that large mammals, particularly great apes, simply aren't discovered anymore. Not true, says Russell Mittermeier, vice president of Conservation International, who has co-authored scientific papers describing five new primates.

Since the 1990s there have been several spectacular finds, he said, including the antelope-like spindlehorn from Vietnam and a South American peccary thought to have gone extinct thousands of years ago.

"I'm not one to pooh-pooh the potential that these large apes may exist," Mittermeier said. "I guess you could say I'm mildly skeptical but guardedly optimistic. Whoever does find it will have the discovery of the century."

Words of encouragement like these are music to Bigfoot researchers' ears.

"My whole motivation has not been to convince anybody of the existence of the animal, but to convince them that there's a body of evidence begging for further consideration," said Idaho State University professor Jeff Meldrum, whose expertise in primate locomotion led him to become one of the few academics openly researching Bigfoot tracks.

"This is immense," said author John Green, who has tracked Bigfoot reports for almost half a century from British Columbia and investigated some of the most famous sightings and track finds. "The possibility that there could be a real animal behind it just didn't occur to scientists 20 years ago."

The flap over recent claims of Bigfoot hoaxing has not deterred Swindler. But the lack of a body plus the acknowledgment of at least some hoaxing adds up to too many questions for Ciochon.

Like that of Swindler, Ciochon's work focuses on fossilized primate teeth, but of a very special species: Gigantopithecus blacki, the giant Asian ape of the Miocene epoch, which lasted from about 24 million to 5 million years ago.

Most Bigfoot supporters advance Gigantopithecus, or Giganto for short, as the likely ancestor of Bigfoot, if not the hairy beast itself. It's a tantalizing but entirely unproven link that drives Ciochon to distraction.

Ciochon thinks his study subject, which co-existed with the human ancestor Homo erectus for hundreds of thousands of years, may well be the archetypal inspiration for the "boogeyman" and other nocturnal monsters that populate the traditions of aboriginal cultures from Nepal to North America.

But he vigorously rejects any suggestion that Giganto, which he thinks was a specialized, bamboo-eating vegetarian, could persist today.

And he worries that the hotly contested grants that fund his work overseas may go elsewhere if the stigma of the shambling sasquatch of Native American lore attaches to his study subject.

"My biggest problem is there's no evidence, other than conjectural hair and these footprints, some of which we know are faked," Ciochon said.

"If someone finds a skeleton, I'll be there in a nanosecond," he said. "But that's what it's going to take to get me to change my mind."

"There are so many problems," agrees Swindler, who six years ago told a USA Today reporter to count him among the skeptics.

But as he examines the Skookum Cast on a rainy December afternoon in this Seattle suburb, Swindler points out landmarks in the lumpy landscape: a hairy forearm the size of a small ham, an enormous hairy thigh, an outsized buttock, and a striking impression he feels confident was made by the Achilles tendon and heel of a creature that is not supposed to exist.

"Whatever made this was very well adapted to walking on two feet," he said. "It's not conclusive, but it's consistent with what you'd expect to see if a giant biped sat down in the mud."

Swindler hopes that his assessment of the Skookum Cast, and a Discovery Channel documentary set to air Thursday, will generate support for further research.

The key, Schaller said, will be finding dedicated amateurs willing to spend months or years in the field with cameras. "So far, no one has done that," he said.

It was a group of dedicated amateurs that discovered the Skookum Cast. A team of volunteers from the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization had spent two days in Washington state's Gifford Pinchot National Forest, putting out pheromone-basted plastic chips during the day and blasting sasquatch calls at night in an attempt to attract an animal.

On the second night, researchers heard a powerful reply to their broadcasts, said Richard Noll, an aerospace toolmaker who has spent 30 years researching the mystery. The next morning, Noll was stunned to realize that an unusual impression of a large animal on the edge of a mudhole near their camp could have been left by their elusive quarry.

"An elk will gather their feet under them when they get up," he said. "But there are no elk hoofprints in the center of the cast."

Meldrum and Swindler concur there are only two logical explanations for the cast: Bigfoot and elk. And they have also ruled out elk.

John Mionczynski, a wildlife researcher who has spent 30 summers studying bighorn herds in Wyoming's Wind River Mountains, has his own reasons for believing in Bigfoot.

On a moonlit summer night in 1972, he backhanded an animal he thought was a bear as it sniffed at a bacon stain in his tent, then watched as the silhouette of a giant, shaggy arm with a broad hand at the end swept toward his tent, collapsing it on him.

"That hand was three times as wide as mine and had an opposed thumb that stuck out as plain as day," Mionczynski said.

He spent the rest of the night huddled by the fire with a revolver in his hand as the creature lobbed pine cones at him from the dark woods behind his tent.

"That pretty much eliminated bears," Mionczynski said.

Mionczynski is working on a contraption of tiny hooks and barbed wire that he intends to place near seasonal foods he thinks sasquatch depend on. He hopes the snare will let him get a DNA sample.

North of Seattle, Noll is collaborating with Owen Caddy, a former Ugandan park ranger who studied chimpanzees in the mid-1990s.

For the last 18 months, they've scoured certain sandbars on a north Cascades river, documenting more than 30 suspected sasquatch footprints they believe were made by a mother and two young. They hope to identify the animals' food sources and travel corridors, then set out a picket line of infrared camera traps.

"I feel the animal is out there, and I don't hedge on that," Caddy said. "I've found physical evidence myself, and I'm confident in my analysis of it.

"Something is making these tracks, and it's not people."

September, 26 , 2003

Yeti's 'non-existence' hard to bear

Daniel Lak

BBC correspondent in Kathmandu

Dr Nabuka breached "yetiquette" with his claims of non-existence

A row has erupted in Nepal after a Japanese expert on Himalayan languages insisted the yeti was nothing more than a case of linguistic mistaken identity.

Dr Matako Nabuka is a researcher and mountaineer who spent 12 years in Nepal, Tibet and Bhutan conducting, he says, research into the elusive abominable snowman.

Hackles began to rise in Kathmandu earlier this month when Dr Nabuka told a press conference in Tokyo yetis were not mysterious apes or hairy hominids living in the High Himalaya.

They were, quite simply, Himalayan brown bear, known in a regional Tibetan dialect as "meti", he said.

"This has spread too far," said Dr Nabuka, referring to belief in the yeti.

Many claim to have seen it, he said, but no one has proof.

The tribes of the Himalayas worship the brown bear as a deity, Dr Nabuka pointed out, and have endowed it with supernatural powers.

He said he had pictures of bear paws and other artefacts from the animal being venerated by mountain tribes people.

Linguistic dispute

But no sooner had the story hit the Nepali press than local opinion chimed in.

A letter to the editor of the Kathmandu Post headlined "Yetiquette" took Dr Nabuka to task for linguistic carelessness.

A "yeti" from contested footage shot in California in 1967

Signed by Bha Dawa, the letter says the Japanese researcher may have spent too long in the wrong mountains and had himself mixed up his words.

Both "yeti" and "meti" mean a near-mythical beast, said Mr Dawa.

Dr Nabuka has other opponents.

Dr Raj Kumar Pandey, who like the Japanese scientist researches both yetis and mountain languages, says it is not enough to blame tales of the mysterious beast of the Himalayas on words that rhyme but mean different things.

"Look at all the foreign expeditions that have seen [the yeti]," says Dr Pandey, naming British mountaineering legend, Eric Shipton, Italian super-mountaineer Reinhold Messner and the British Everest expedition leader from 1953, John Hunt.

"We have much more research to do on language and in zoology before we believe statements like this [from Dr Nabuka]."

Japanese rivalry

A very informal straw poll of mountaineers in Kathmandu carried out for BBC News Online at the city's legendary Rum Doodle Bar, a favourite hangout of climbers, found at least three people who claimed to have seen the yeti.

We'll get a picture this time and then all disbelievers will learn their lessons

Yoshiteru Takahashi,

rival to Dr Nabuka

None wanted their names used but all denied vehemently that their claims had anything to do with the amount of locally brewed Everest beer they were drinking.

In the end, it all probably comes down to rivalry between Japanese mountain-climbers.

Dr Nabuka's press conference came just weeks after Japan's most celebrated yeti-hunter, Yoshiteru Takahashi, left his country to make "the definitive attempt" to photograph the beast.

Mr Takahashi claims to have found a yeti cave on the slopes of Dhaulagiri, the world's fifth highest mountain, in western Nepal.

His camera froze in 1994 when he tried to photograph the denizens of the cave, he said in Tokyo before leaving.

This year, he is using nine infrared cameras with motion sensitive shutters, and wrapping them up well against the Himalayan chill.

"We'll get a picture this time," he said, "and then all disbelievers will learn their lessons."

MANY REPORT SEEING BIGFOOT IN VIRGINIA. ONE MAN IS TRYING TO PROVE IT
By Joanne Kimberlin
The Virginian-Pilot
February 21, 2005

http://home.hamptonroads.com/stories/story.cfm?story=82385&ran=127779

MANASSAS - Those who know 46-year-old William Dranginis say he's a levelheaded guy.

He has a sharp mind, an easy smile, an attractive family, a nice home and a trustworthy job designing surveillance equipment for the government.

But 10 years ago, Dranginis says he crossed paths with something in the deep, dark woods of Culpeper County.

Snicker if you want, but his life has never been the same.

March 11, 1995. Dranginis recites the day with unwavering detail.

Blue skies. The hint of spring. A perfect Saturday to mess around with his latest passion: hunting for artifacts with his new metal detector.

Today had a special destination: a string of old gold mines from the early 1800s that still stab deep into the rolling earth of Virginia's Piedmont. He headed out early with an old friend, an FBI agent named Frank, who shared his itch for hidden treasures. About an hour southwest of home, near Richardsville, they picked up another agent, a man Dranginis was meeting for the first time.

The day slipped by peacefully. The three hiked along dirt roads and forested paths, poked into old mine shafts and scoured the soil. Around mid afternoon, they turned back toward the car, tired and empty-handed.

On a logging road, about a half-mile from the pavement, Frank abruptly shot his arms outward in a silent signal to halt.

"Behind that tree," he whispered. "There's a man."

The three stood stock-still, staring at a cluster of slender pines just ahead on the right. Why would a man duck out of sight unless he was up to no good? Frank drew the 9 mm handgun he wore holstered on his side. The other agent produced one as well. Both trained their barrels at the shadows behind the trees.

Suddenly, Dranginis says, a dark, shaggy head peered out at them from behind a pine, then jerked back. Seconds later, he says, a creature like none he'd ever seen darted out and began running, following the edge of the road.

"It ran for about 75 feet, moving from our left to our right, before it took a sharp turn that took it deeper into the woods," Dranginis said. "We watched the top of its head bobbing as it disappeared down into a ravine."

During that 10 or 12 seconds, Dranginis says, he was shocked into a kind of tunnel vision.

"I don't remember hearing anything, and I can't tell you what its face looked like," he said. "I was just stunned by how tall it was, like 7 feet. And it was so quick and agile. It moved on two legs like a man, but so much more powerfully. I remember watching the muscles work as it ran. And the hair flowing, back and forth, every time it pumped its arms."

The creature was gone, but the men didn't move. The agents stood frozen in their firing stances. A minute passed. Maybe another. No one spoke. Finally, the agent from Richardsville found his voice.

"That was a bear," he said quietly. "Let's get out of here."

They double-timed it to the car, looking over their shoulder the whole way. They drove in silence, dropped off the Richardsville agent, then stopped for a bite.

Over a burger, Dranginis finally looked Frank in the eye. "That was no bear," Dranginis said.

"I know."

Until then, Dranginis says, he had not entertained a single serious thought about Bigfoot. A big hairy creature, hiding out in North America, that no one had ever managed to capture?

Come on. That stuff was for supermarket tabloids.

Actually, the legend of an elusive, upright, ape-like animal spans centuries and cultures. The towering Yeti of ancient Asia. Abominable snowmen of the Himalayas. Sasquatch of Native American lore.

The term "Bigfoot" took hold in the 1960s during a rash of footprint finds and creature sightings in Northern California. "Bigfoot fever" hit a high point in 1967, when a Sasquatch-type animal was supposedly filmed on a few grainy frames of now famous -­ and much disputed ­- footage.

Real or not, the film became the cornerstone of a subculture of Bigfoot believers. They flourished in the Pacific Northwest -­ an untamed place where it seemed possible for a giant to hide.

But here? In long-settled, heavily trod Virginia?

John Green, 78, is considered by many to be "Mr. Sasquatch." He lives in remote British Columbia, an epicenter of Bigfoot lore. Green has spent much of his life probing the mystery.

In 1976, he crossed the U.S. to document sightings. Green says he found reports in every state except Hawaii.

"Maryland was absolutely loaded with sightings," Green said. "And Virginia is right next door."

If Bigfoot does dwell in the Old Dominion, state wildlife experts say, it's news to them.

"I checked around with our long time game wardens," said Julia Dickson-Smith of Virginia's Department of Game and Inland Fisheries. "None of them remembers ever getting a report about Bigfoot -­ not from the public and not from anyone on staff."

Green says he's not surprised.

"Your wife doesn't believe you. Your best friend doesn't believe you," Green said. "It doesn't take long to realize that the smartest thing to do is shut up."

But what folks might hesitate to tell a uniform, they will tell cyberspace. Bigfoot Web sites have ample reports from Virginia, with encounters from the Blue Ridge to the Dismal Swamp.

The experiences range in intensity ­- from no more than other worldly howls in the night heard at Surry's Chippokes Plantation State Park in 1998 to a 1981 report of a Bigfoot sprinting through the middle of a campground in Chesapeake's Northwest River Park.

All that chatter from Virginia -­ as well as other Eastern states -­ has won the attention of seasoned researchers, who once thought the West Coast had a corner on the phenomenon.

"No, we don't think Bigfoot is sitting in downtown D.C.," said D.B. Donlon of the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization. Based in California, the group bills itself as the oldest and largest of its kind.

"But we have good reason now," Donlon said, "to believe that the same creature being seen in the West is also being seen in the East."

Even among believers, theories about the creature's identity ramble widely. On the far fringes: Bigfoot is an alien, or a ghost, or even the ghost of an alien.

Most students of Sasquatchery, however ­- including a handful of reputable scientists -­ think Bigfoot may be a remnant relative of Gigantopithecus, a large primate found in fossils in Asia, but thought to be long extinct. A nocturnal, skittish lifestyle, they say, coupled with thin numbers and more brainpower than most animals, has helped the creatures avoid mankind.

Still, after decades of searching, doesn't it seem someone would have collared a Bigfoot by now, dead or alive -­ or at least found some
verifiable remains?

"I can't explain that," said Jeff Meldrum, an anthropologist and associate professor at Idaho State University. "I only know that just because you lack a body doesn't mean you're justified in offhandedly dismissing all evidence."

Meldrum specializes in primate studies, with a focus on how two-legged species walk. Fake Bigfoot prints abound, Meldrum says, but scattered among the pranks have been a few he considered genuine.

"Details ­- like toe dynamics, flexibility and weight shift ­- all pointed to a real animal," Meldrum said. "That's when the hair stands up on the back of your neck."

Dranginis' friend, Frank, does not want his last name used in a newspaper story about Bigfoot. He's retired from federal law enforcement now, but says he still works a job that requires a security clearance.

"I can't have people thinking I'm a nut," he said. "I never told anybody about what we saw. I figured they wouldn't believe me anyway."

Dranginis told anyone who would listen, even his co-workers at Windermere Group, an Annapolis, Md.-based private contractor specializing in government security. A gadget geek by nature, Dranginis has spent 14 years designing spy stuff for the company ­- hidden eyes, bug detectors and the like.

His job also requires a security clearance, but no one at work seemed too worried about his state of mind. Most just raised an eyebrow, then asked what he'd been drinking or smoking. Others tried to suggest some reasonable explanation: Man in a monkey suit? An old hermit? Kids playing a joke?

Few took him seriously, except his wife, Carol.

"I've known my husband since high school," she said. "He came out of those woods a different man."

Over and over, Dranginis returned to Culpeper, hoping for another glimpse. When that proved fruitless, he began building camera systems to show the world, once and for all, that Bigfoot was real ­- and that he, Dranginis, wasn't crazy.

He tried motion-triggered setups. Heat-triggered. Cameras mounted in trees. Wrapped in camouflage. Buried in the ground.

None found a Bigfoot. Dranginis suspected the equipment was emitting tiny, ultrasonic noises that were alerting the cagey creature.

He kept trying, trolling online auctions and supply houses, spending just about every spare dollar he had on ever-more sophisticated components.

After a while, Bigfoot became his full-time hobby. Maps of sightings papered his garage. Electronic gizmos took over the shelves. Late-night hours found him red-eyed, but still in his workshop.

By early 2001, Dranginis had given his mission an official name: the Virginia Bigfoot Research Organization <http://www.virginiabigfootresearch.org/>. He placed an ad in a rural magazine: "Have you seen a Bigfoot or Sasquatch-type creature here in Virginia?"

More than 60 people responded. Dranginis wrote down their stories and checked out still-hot trails.

Two years ago, he turned the key on the Bigfoot Primate Research Lab ­- a 24-foot Ford camper once used as a mobile veterinary clinic. Now outfitted with an arsenal of high-tech spy gear, the camper has cemented his status as the state's go-to guy for Sasquatch.

In all, Dranginis figures, those few seconds in the woods of Culpeper have cost him around $55,000.

"At first, I just wanted to look this creature in the eye, to see what it was, then get back to my life," he said. "But after a while, it became
something I had to prove ­- not just for me, but for everyone else who's seen it."

So far, Bigfoot hasn't cooperated. After a decade of trying, Dranginis has managed to land little more than a couple of fuzzy photos and an intriguing clump or two of hair.

His family, however, still supports him.

"My friends think it's cool," said Katie, 18, the younger of his two daughters. "They come over here, and they're all into my dad. They're really impressed with his toys."

Dranginis found what might be his best evidence on an old farm in Chesterfield County, south of Richmond.

The couple who own the property don't want their names or the location of their home revealed. Word has already leaked out, drawing gun-toting trespassers with a thirst to be the first to bag Bigfoot.

The couple are working with Dranginis because they like his no-kill approach.

"He doesn't want to hurt these creatures and neither do we," said the husband, a country preacher. "We're just curious about their origins."

Neither he nor his wife claim to have seen one.

"It's all from people who come to visit us or work on the place," the husband said. "They've asked me, 'What kind of animals are you raising here? Orangutans?'"

They have noticed huge prints in the snow shaped like a human's bare foot. They've heard chilling sounds from the 2,500 acres of woods hemming their property. They've wrinkled their noses at an overpowering, sewer-like smell ­- a scent often reported by people who say they have gotten close to Sasquatch.

"For the longest time, we thought it was a bear," the wife said. "But wild bears don't walk on two legs."

Dranginis mounted one of his cameras on the couple's barn. The few images it captured were too dim to prove anything. Then, the hair turned up, a few wads of reddish-brown mats fluttering on the ground nearby.

Dranginis sent a portion of it to a specialist at the Smithsonian's natural history museum. A copy of the results he received says the sample "most closely matches the characteristics of human hair."

He sent the same hair to a lab for a chemical profile. Janet Starr Hull, a Texas nutritionist well-known on lecture and radio talk-show circuits, reviewed the readings. Hull said she's puzzled by the low level of toxins in the hair.

"I've studied hair analysis for many, many years," Hull said. "I've never seen test results like this. Humans are exposed to all kinds of pollutions and chemicals that show up in their hair. This is not a human profile. At least not a modern one."

Dranginis wants to have DNA analysis done on the hair, but the going rate at a private lab -­ around $5,000 ­- is too steep. He has tried to persuade a number of university labs to do the work for free, but so far, there have been no takers.

"The most hurtful ridicule comes from science," Dranginis said, "the people I expected to at least be anxious to disprove me. I can't even get them to take me seriously enough to look at it."

Every now and then, though, Dranginis gets a little backup when a respected expert steps a toe onto his side ­- like Jane Goodall, the famed primate researcher.

"Jane has heard similar stories from indigenous people all over the world," said Nona Gandelman, a Goodall spokeswoman. "She is open to the possibility that there may be a primate out there we haven't met yet."

But -­ once again -­ here? In Virginia?

Some long time believers still aren't buying it.

Bob George, a Portsmouth native and long time Bigfoot researcher, teaches biology at Florida International University in Miami.

"Look," George said, "when you start talking Virginia, it's getting to be a little preposterous. I mean, what's next? New Jersey?"

Well perhaps. According to the Sasquatch Information Society <http://www.bigfootinfo.org/>, folks say they've bumped into Bigfoot at
least four times in the state better known for its turnpike than its green space.

Bigfoot could not be reached for comment.

BISON ISN'T SASQUATCH
Globe and Mail
Thursday, July 28, 2005

http://tinyurl.com/bj2x2

It's a bison.

A hair sample that some claimed belonged to a sasquatch in the Yukon is actually the fur of the large mammal.

David Coltman, an University of Alberta geneticist who did a DNA test on a hair sample, confirmed that it was 100-per-cent bison. He said the DNA sample was not fresh.

The hair sample was taken from a bush near Teslin, Yukon earlier this month where several people said they had seen and heard a large, hairy creature.

BIGFOOT CONFERENCE IN TEXAS DRAWS HUNDREDS
By Angela K. Brown
Associated Press Writer
October 18, 2005

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory?id=1220024&CMP=OTC-RSSFeeds0312

JEFFERSON, Texas - Next to a lifelike replica of a giant ape head, the believers milled around tables Saturday covered with casts of large footprints, books about nature's mysteries and T-shirts proclaiming "Bigfoot: Often Imitated, Never Invalidated."

While they can have a sense of humor about it, the search for the legendary Sasquatch is no joke for many of the nearly 400 people who came here to discuss the latest sightings and tracking techniques at the Texas Bigfoot Conference.

"It's not a matter of believing, like faith, when you believe in something you can't see," said Daryl G. Colyer, a Lorena businessman who has investigated hundreds of reported Bigfoot sightings in Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Louisiana.

"It's a flesh-and-blood animal that just has not been discovered yet. And I think we're getting closer and closer and closer," Colyer said.

Outlandish theories about the origin of Bigfoot abound, including that it might be an extraterrestrial. Many believe that a towering, ape-like creature descended from a prehistoric 9- to 10-foot-tall gorilla called a Gigantopithecus, and that it now inhabits North American forests.

Hoaxes have been a large part of the making of the Bigfoot legend. California construction company owner Ray L. Wallace donned 16-inch wooden feet to create tracks in mud in 1958, and it led to a front-page story in a local paper that coined the term "Bigfoot."

But there have been more than 2,550 seemingly credible Bigfoot sightings reported in North America the past century, according to Christopher L. Murphy's 2004 book "Meet the Sasquatch."

Murphy believes thousands more witnesses are too afraid of ridicule to come forward.

"You see one of these things and it changes your whole perception of reality," said Craig Woolheater, the office manager of a Dallas company who co-founded the Texas Bigfoot Research Center in 1999, five years after he said he saw a hairy creature walking along a remote Louisiana road.

Colyer and others estimate that about 2,000 are in North America today, reclusive nocturnal animals living in thickly wooded areas with waterways, eating meat and plants and making nests out of trees and brush.

Pictures and film footage are often disputed, such as the 1967 footage of a creature walking near a California creek. Most evidence centers on hundreds of casts of footprints collected since the 1950s.

Jimmy Chilcutt, a retired fingerprint analysis expert for the Conroe Police Department, said many of the hundreds of prints he examined belonged to a primate, but not a human, ape, gorilla or chimpanzee.

Like Chilcutt, other well-respected professionals have come forward to say such evidence should not be dismissed.

"To me it's still an open question, but here's some evidence that warrants some serious consideration, so give it a chance," said Jeff Meldrum, associate professor of anatomy and anthropology at Idaho State University who has studied more than 150 casts of footprints. "This is not a paranormal question; it's a biological question."

After the story breaks

Bigfoot Articles

Newspaper and Magazine Articles from Bigfoot Encounters

Newspaper & Magazine Articles

Strange Animal at Knobs

Beast of Sedgemoor Returns With Mate?

Ivory-billed Woodpecker Recovery Plan Released for Public Comment

Federal Plan To Protect Ivory-Billed Woodpecker

$27m Woodpecker Habitat Plan Unveiled

http://www.poteaudailynews.com/index.php?o...1&Itemid=60

Dueling Mothmen

Observations of the Bigfoot Community:The Burden of Proof

http://en.wikipedia .org/wiki/ Critical_ thinking

Definition of Believe
Be`lieve´
v. t.1.To exercise belief in; to credit upon the authority or testimony of another; to be persuaded of the truth of, upon evidence furnished by reasons, arguments, and deductions of the mind, or by circumstances other than personal knowledge; to regard or accept as true; to place confidence in; to have an opinion; to think; to consider; as, to believe a person, a statement, or a doctrine.

::All of the following content is of my own opinion, and in no way reflects the opinions of others. I reserve the right to change my opinion at any time due to any circumstance. It's all part of the natural growth and learning experience. Opinions can be temporary, or ever lasting. They are at no time set in stone, and should not be viewed as such. If you are offended by the things I say, good. If you think I am talking about you as an individual, I'm probably not. Either way, I'm glad you read it.::

Observations of the Bigfoot Community:The Burden of Proof

by Matt Knapp

First I want to say this. There is NO SUCH THING as a "Bigfoot Scientist." There are certain fields of science that happen to overlap with not only items involving Bigfoot research, but with each other as well. In those areas of overlapping, it can be somewhat beneficial to involve scientific findings of the individual fields. Such as comparing hard evidence with known physiology traits, or using known facts involving biomechanics to study track impressions and castings. Outside of that, the facts are the actual scientists involved in Bigfoot research comprise less than 1% of the research community as a whole. Those very few individuals who are actual accredited scientists in their respected fields have absolutely no credibility in regard to Bigfoot's existence. Let me clarify that I mean no disrespect by saying that. What I simply mean is that Jeff Meldrum for instance is an accredited scientist, but even his expertise has no persuasion towards proving Bigfoot's existence to the rest of the scientific community. So claiming to be a scientist, or that the burden of proof lies on the shoulders of researchers to prove Bigfoot's existence to scientists is a moot point. No scientist in this field is anymore an expert on Bigfoot than I am, and thus far has had no more success in proving their existence than anyone else. So what difference does it make if a person is a scientist, or a tow truck driver, if the results they achieve are the same? At one time I believed if a scientist were to make the statement that they for instance found a Bigfoot track to be authentic, and belonging to an unknown species, that their voice would be heard to the rest of the scientific community. Where if I were to make the same such claim, I would go ignored due to my lack of professional credentials. History has proven that theory false however. It doesn't matter who you are, what your background is, what degree you have or don't have. The scientific community views your findings in this field no different than anyone else's. And without a specimen, all of those findings will be found irrelevant.

If you are collecting physical evidence and data in hopes of compiling information on this creature, I do believe scientific principles should be followed. This is simply for the fact that if you do so, your evidence and data will not have holes allowing it to be instantly dismissed. For instance, unless proper procedures are taken in the collection of DNA, that DNA will become contaminated and worthless. Tracks are only worth casting, if the castings are done properly as to maintain the slightest amount of detail as possible. So on and so forth. The pro-kill individuals need not worry about these procedures. If they are able to bring in a specimen, all of that work will be done by the scientists in the proper laboratory settings. Not out in the field by individuals who are not properly trained in the collection techniques. By saying that I am not trying to down play the significance of proper scientific methods used in the field. I in fact practice them myself, and believe anyone who has purposes other than bringing in an actual specimen should follow them as well. If nothing else it shows that we are serious about what we're doing, and are at least attempting to go about it in a professional and constructed method.

Mud slinging, name calling, my side vs. your side, agree with me or you're wrong, your information doesn't support my opinions, and various other forms of absolute ignorance. It seems as though I've been here before. The continued chasing of our own tails as though we're caught in some sort of never-ending loop of time and space. That tail my friends is called ego. Condescending, self-absorbed, ego. There are different classes of knowledge when it comes to this field. There are those who believe it or not actually do KNOW some things about these creatures. There are also those in this field who know NOTHING about these creatures. In the case of people who do know some things, there are individuals who act as though they know it all. Then there are those willing to admit they only know some. In the group of those who know nothing, there are individuals who act or believe as though they actually do in fact know things. There are also those who openly admit they know nothing. Regardless, none of us know all of it. While some of our knowledge may be spot on, there will always be some of it that isn't. No-kill doesn't mean you are the enemy of pro-kill. It means you possibly have a different goal, and you certainly have different methods. Choosing one side or the other doesn't make you any more or any less intelligent than the other side. Whether it be the good ole boy from the south roaming the woods with a high powered rifle, or the stuffy tight collared science drove researcher who spends hours dissecting other people's evidence and reports, or even the professor at the university with several degrees sitting on top of their reference book shelf, all of them so far have produced the same results and had the same amount of bearing on the scientific community in proving this thing's existence. Absolutely none. It certainly doesn't make any group more or less intelligent than the other, and even if there was a difference in overall intelligence, none of that intelligence applies to the field of Bigfoot. How does knowing more about the skeletal structure of an upright mammal in comparison to it's weight distribution give you a leg up in the field of Bigfoot? Especially if you've never seen one. Perhaps if you had that knowledge, and then observed a Bigfoot walking, you would at least then know "Hey, I was right." or "I was completely wrong about what I thought." Perhaps if you took the time to have an open mind, and listen to people who actually have observed these creatures, you would have a better understanding, or even be able to give them knowledge they could apply in the field based on their own observations. We're too busy for that though. We're too busy trying to prove one another wrong or discredit the things each other say because they don't mesh with what we believe or what we know. Sounds like a waste of time to me.

Which brings us to our beginning. Before all of this, I gave a link to an article about critical thinking, and the definition of the word "believe."

Critical thinking is extremely crucial in solving this mystery. It provides a philosophical checks and balances system amongst our peers for the study and review of evidence brought forth. A part of that critical thinking is in fact scientific skepticism. An ability to weigh the evidence from a scientific standpoint. There's nothing wrong with being skeptical. A lot of the people in this field who make some of the boldest claims, are in fact skeptical people. I was skeptical of their existence until I saw one. Now I am skeptical of certain other people who claim to have seen one. This skepticism is based from my own observations, and my critical thinking. There are others however, who claim to be critical thinkers, and scientifically minded in their endeavors. This group of people is rapidly growing. They do not fairly and genuinely assess the evidence. Seldom do they put forth the effort to even find out for themselves if something is true or not. They are a new breed of skeptic. A skeptic that comes from within our own community. They sit atop their Mount Olympus, hurling lightning bolts at the peasants below. They view terms such as "believer" as if it's some sort of derogatory moniker. No evidence passes their scrutiny. Anyone who makes claims of a sighting or an encounter, regardless of circumstance, is met with hostility and instant disbelief by these individuals. Unless of course it comes from within their own group of colleagues. They are not the self-proclaimed experts of the past. Although one would make the observation that they do in fact believe themselves more knowledgeable than all others as a whole, they would never give you the chance to use that against them by admitting they are in fact "experts." They hide behind their pseudo-humbleness when ranks are drawn against them. However they attack with the ferocity of rabid lions when it plays to their favor. They do not dare tip toe onto one side of the fence or the other, constantly adjusting their position in accordance with the others around them. These groupings constantly manifest into new forms, as the fate of these individuals is to find themselves in constant arguments, eventually with one another. They then run to a new group of individuals, and start the process all over again. In a lot of ways they are like angry and bitter orphans, running from one orphanage to the next. Never having the integrity to form an opinion of their own, or at least to publicly state those opinions, they instead choose to agree with whomever has the popular voice at the time. They've never seen a Bigfoot, nor would they ever admit that they believe Bigfoot to be real. For to do this would be saying they believe someone other than themselves Self-righteous thinkers refuse to do that. Always displacing their reasons behind their comments onto some grand motive that represents the well being of everyone. For instance, if you were to show them a cast of a track, they would drill you with questions in an ultimate attempt of putting you on the defensive. When confronted with the question as to why they are trying to disprove your finding, they would claim that it is you who has the burden of proving the casting was in fact that of a Bigfoot. These are often the people who rely on "If you didn't see a Bigfoot do it, then you don't know a Bigfoot did it." Which is a true statement, but then if you were to claim you did in fact see a Bigfoot leave the track, then they would ask that you prove that you saw a Bigfoot do it. These people claim to be Bigfoot researchers. I repeat, these people claim to be Bigfoot researchers. If the only proof of evidence they will accept outside of their own circles is unobtainable, then why waste not only the time and energy of everyone else in the community, but of themselves as well. If they have to follow the strict guidelines they put on everyone else, as they claim they do, then what would be the point of their exercise in futility? What is it they seek? What is it they hope to gain? The feeling of superiority perhaps?

Belief. I am sick and tired of people using the word against others. A believer is not a person who is mindless and goes through life with limited blinders on due to their actual belief. I want to say this to all the people who believe in the existence of Bigfoot, even if you have never laid eyes on one or taken a step out into the woods. IT'S OKAY! Do not hold your head in shame for your beliefs just because some ignorant fool attacks you for those beliefs. There is no such thing as a non-believer. Everyone believes in something. Creationists are believers. Evolutionists are believers. Skeptics are believers. Quantum physicists are believers. Doctors, lawyers, police officers. All believers. The entire realm of science is based on various belief systems. I am a believer. I believe in what I have seen and experienced. I believe in what certain others have seen and experienced. Some people I do not believe because I believe I know something. Some people don't believe me because they believe someone else, or they believe that if I were right in what I say, they would know it. Do not discredit someone else for their beliefs or that of your own. I can take any aspect of life and show the lack of self proven fact which in turn makes it nothing more than a belief. If the same standards that are put on us in the field of Bigfoot research were applied to everyday life, we would have accomplished nothing. The burden of proof for instance. If I find a track in the woods, how do I know Bigfoot left it there? Did I see Bigfoot leave it there? If I didn't see Bigfoot leave it there, how can I prove it is in fact a Bigfoot track? Are there not other possibilities? Do I have any proof that I did see a Bigfoot leave the track if I in fact say that I did? Who is your mother? How do you know she's your mother? Have you done DNA testing to prove that she's your mother? Do you have non-stop video documentation of your life since the moment of birth, to show that she is indeed your mother, and that the infant she gave birth to grew up and became who you are at this very moment? Have you had the video analyzed to make sure it hasn't been edited or tampered with digitally? Isn't there the possibility you were lied to, or that your mother was fooled, and her actual infant was switched with another at the hospital? It almost sounds silly doesn't it? The point being, every aspect of life is based on belief. To attack someone, or use the term "believer" as a derogatory term is ignorant at best. Besides, if you truly felt that way, you would have to stop because you would believe you were right. That would make you a believer.

If we would just lower our own standards a bit. Focus on the task at hand, and not get caught up in trying to be superior to someone else. Listen to one another. Give someone the benefit of the doubt until proven otherwise. There can be checks and balances. There can be critical thinking, scientific skepticism, and scientific method and guidelines followed in the collection and presentation of evidence and data. What needs to stop is the destructive and negative criticism of our peers who are just out there trying to accomplish their own goals, or the goals commonly shared by others in this field. Express your own ideas and findings instead of attacking the ideas and findings of someone else. If you think I'm wrong about something, show me different. Don't attack me for it. If I think you're wrong, I probably won't even say anything. I don't need to. You being wrong about something isn't going to change anything for me. If I can help you out, or show you something so you can see how you are wrong I might do that. As long as you're open and willing to learn. If you aren't willing to be wrong about anything, then you aren't willing to learn. At that point I have no use for you, and you have no use for me. Either way there is no reason to attack or argue about it. In all honesty, this entire endeavor is probably pointless outside of bringing in a specimen. Anything beyond that should be done for your own self. The chances are, if a specimen is brought in, the scientific community isn't going to be interested in any evidence or data we've collected. Once they have a specimen, they will collect their own data using their own methods. I no longer feel the burden of proof lies on us. It is not up to us to prove Bigfoot exists. The only thing for us to do is present a specimen to the public and scientific communities. The specimen will prove it's own existence. All we're here for is to make sure it gets there. Or at least that's what I believe.

Matt Knapp 2007

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