kitakaze Posted May 2, 2011 Posted May 2, 2011 I'd rather not distract from the thread looking for squatching locations in Washington State, so I will move these posts here for discussion... Welcome to the BF whatthe. I think Bigfoot is a social construct similar to the alien abduction phenomenon, so I can'treally suggest where to look for actual Bigfoots, but Gifford Pinchot National Forest where you're going is certainly supposed to be a hot spot. Interesting thing about the GPNF, check this out... This wolverine was recently photographed in southern Washington after fifteen months of persistent camera work in the region.The individual was photographed on the northwest side of Mount Adams and may or may not be the individual photographed by the Yakama Nation over a year ago. Remote camera locations have been set up in the Mount Adams area over the last year to accurately record carnivores in the region and provide a base of data from which wildlife biologist could work. Click here to see the first images captured by the Task Force's own wildlife camera program. The Gifford Pinchot Task Force is working on our own camera efforts in other areas on the Gifford Pinchot National Forest and is actively working on a tracking project for large carnivores on the GPNF. http://www.gptaskforce.org/conservation/wolverine-photographed-on-mount-adams The GP Task Force tracking and recording carnivores in the park has their own channel on Youtube... They've had great results getting park carnivores on camera. Bobcat... http://www.gptaskforce.org/conservation/wildlife-camera-images/bobcat Cougar... http://www.gptaskforce.org/conservation/wildlife-camera-images/cougar Coyote... http://www.gptaskforce.org/conservation/wildlife-camera-images/coyote-day Unfortunately, with all the Bigfoots that are supposed to be there, they aren't showing up on park cameras. This is strange if giant apes are there considering higher primates appear on game cameras no different from any other animal... Good luck, but be prepared to have no better luck than the GPNF wildlife biologists. If you like, you can try calling the GF Task Force and see if they've had any Bigfoot reports. I think it's great for people like Jon to be able to get out into some of the most beautiful country America has to offer. If you can spot a Bigfoot, excellent. Don't forget your camera and be mindful of animals we know exist and are there. And yes, shock and horror, people on Internet forums will offer opinions even when others may not agree or care. This may be a question for another thread, but I would wonder if Mt. St. Helens and the GPNF is such Sasquatch heaven, why do all the efforts of wildlife biologists and other professionals labouring long and hard to detect and survey rare and elusive carnivores in the Cascade and Olympic mountain ranges fail to turn up an evidence at all of what would be one of the largest and certainly most important species there? Cascades Carnivore ProjectThe Cascades Carnivore Project is a collaborative conservation initiative to identify habitat crucial to the preservation of forest carnivores in the Cascade Range. Our objectives are to determine the presence and map the distribution of threatened, rare, and elusive carnivores and understand their genetic affinities. We have initiated a long-term study to survey forest carnivores with remote photographic stations and a winter tracking program. Our study area comprises the Mount Adams and Goat Rocks Wildernesses and Mount Saint Helens National Volcanic Monument. Target species are the wolverine (Gulo gulo) and the Cascade red fox (Vulpes vulpes cascadensis). The wolverine is an excellent focal species for large-scale conservation because it appears to require expanses of intact wilderness to thrive. Given a lack of information on its current conservation status, information on distribution, habitat requirements, and threats to its persistence needs to be gathered. Our research is aimed at shedding light on wolverine presence in the South Cascades. A solitary wolverine was photographed at a remote camera station on Mount Adams in 2006 and more recently, there have been anecdotal sightings within the Gifford Pinchot National Forest. In June 2009, we detected an individual at a high-elevation station on Mount Adams. This sighting is the second confirmed wolverine detection in the South Cascades. We seek to investigate whether these sightings represent dispersing individuals or a resident population. The Cascade red fox is a mountain subspecies of red fox, endemic to Washington and representing a unique genetic lineage, physiologically adapted to the demands of high elevation life. Our efforts have identified an unstudied population on Mount Adams and we are working with the United States Forest Service to develop a standardized protocol to survey mountain foxes. As well we are mapping their distribution across the South Cascades and investigating their genetics in partnership with the University of California at Davis. The Cascade Mountains have long been a contiguous corridor of suitable wildlife habitat. Today they connect stable carnivore populations in the North to those fragmented at the southernmost reaches of their ranges. However habitat fragmentation poses potentially insurmountable barriers to wildlife. The Cascades Carnivore Project supports the preservation of this significant landscape to ensure that wildlife thrives. The project is a partnership of wildlife biologists, managers, and citizen scientists. Our partners are the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, the United States Forest Service, Yakama Nation, Gifford Pinchot Task Force, and Columbia Gorge Ecology Institute. We are supported by generous donations from the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife ALEA program, the Oregon Zoo Foundation, the Norcross Wildlife Foundation, and the United States Forest Service. We recognize the importance of creating honest, meaningful dialogue between interested stakeholders, aimed at encouraging an appreciation for local conservation issues and preserving nature’s richness. http://cascadescarnivoreproject.blogspot.com/ That's a major effort with great success at documenting the rare mammals that are there and none of it is turning up a shred of evidence for Bigfoot. Why is this? Let's assume that I am wrong and that there is an actual breeding population of Bigfoots in the Cascades and Olympics, at Mt. St. Helens, Mt. Adams and other areas. How are they failing to be detected when even the rarest animals there are being documented? And if recent Washington State reports are correct, it would seem that casing dumpsters at nursing home complexes in King County would be more likely to locating a Bigfoot than, say, checking out Ape Canyon, which is in Skamania County, which hasn't had a Class A BFRO report for about six years... http://bfro.net/GDB/show_report.asp?id=28743 For Jon, you probably have already consulted this, but here is the BFRO database page for Washington State where you can check the most recent reports such as the one pictured above... http://bfro.net/GDB/state_listing.asp?state=wa So we have scientists and forestry experts making a long-term concerted effort at documenting rare and elusive PNW mammals right smack in the middle of what is supposed to be Bigfoot Central and Bigfoot is MIA. Why is this?
Guest Posted May 2, 2011 Posted May 2, 2011 Bigfoot sees the cameras, or hears them, smells them, has intelligence enough to know what they are? Bigfoot is the most rare of all the animals in that area? They are being captured but misidentified as bear or another animal? Seems to me, unless the first part of my post is true (hear, see, etc) and if they are there, they are being captured on the digital cameras, right?
kitakaze Posted May 2, 2011 Author Posted May 2, 2011 Bigfoot sees the cameras, or hears them, smells them, has intelligence enough to know what they are? OK, let's think it through... 1) How does a Bigfoot living in the wild learn what a camera trap is? 2) Since the camera traps are harmless to them and provide them with valuable sustenance, and as you can see with that nursing home dumpster report, they don't seem to have any problem getting completely smack in the middle of human civilization, why would they care? Bigfoot is the most rare of all the animals in that area? No, that was the wolverine. There was only one, and they still got it on camera. Same thing happened with a similar project in NorCal and they got that single wolverine and its DNA... Same thing again in Oregon with the biologists of the Southern Cascade Wolverine Survey... Check this video to see the field biologists that are out there doing the painstaking searches... http://ecotrope.opb.org/2011/04/wolverines-in-oregon-the-rumors-are-true/ They are being captured but misidentified as bear or another animal? I think it's safe to say with the quality of the excellent images the GP Task Force is getting of real animals in the area, Bigfoot is not going to be confused for a bear or another animal.
Guest RioBravo Posted May 3, 2011 Posted May 3, 2011 (edited) Kit, why do you bother? The burden of proof rests with the believer. Let them prove to you it exists. Edited May 3, 2011 by RioBravo
Guest bsruther Posted May 3, 2011 Posted May 3, 2011 The lack of trail cam evidence is one of the things that make me doubt their existence, but I still try to think of reasons why an image of them hasn't been captured. Couldn't it be possible that they posess an inherant, primitive type of superstition, that causes them to avoid everything human?
Guest CaptainMorgan Posted May 3, 2011 Posted May 3, 2011 Kit, I think if you would spend some time in the forests instead of on the computer, you would see the vastness of it all. No matter how many trail cams people put out there, you will never saturate the the places where a BF could live. Besides you already posted this stuff in another thread.
kitakaze Posted May 3, 2011 Author Posted May 3, 2011 CM, this is where I grew up, the place MonsterQuest dubbed "Mysterious Ape Island"... The vastness of it all and I are old friends... I think the vastness argument goes in a dumpster, a dumpster like this... http://www.bfro.net/GDB/show_report.asp?id=28743 Also, please note I'm giving a fellow member looking for squatching locations the courtesy of not continuing an OT discussion in his thread.
kitakaze Posted May 3, 2011 Author Posted May 3, 2011 Kit, why do you bother? The burden of proof rests with the believer. Let them prove to you it exists. Rio, proving a negative is not something I think is scientific or worth while. I am interested to know, however, what people who think Bigfoot is a living animal think about that animal's failure to be documented by long term exhaustive surveys of real animals that are there.
kitakaze Posted May 3, 2011 Author Posted May 3, 2011 The lack of trail cam evidence is one of the things that make me doubt their existence, but I still try to think of reasons why an image of them hasn't been captured. Couldn't it be possible that they posess an inherant, primitive type of superstition, that causes them to avoid everything human? Well, a sense of superstition implies a culture. Some people think Bigfoots are humans or very human-like. Some people and groups think Bigfoot talks. Whatever Bigfoot is, you have people who genuinely claim sightings that you can't just dismiss as liars. Our own Splash7 has reported two sightings, and I certainly don't think he is a liar or nuts. So assuming these animals are real, and considering all the efforts to survey rare predators in the PNW, where the heck are the Bigfoots? We should be having images akin to those below that aren't hooey...
gigantor Posted May 3, 2011 Admin Posted May 3, 2011 (edited) So we have scientists and forestry experts making a long-term concerted effort at documenting rare and elusive PNW mammals (you mean, carnivores) right smack in the middle of what is supposed to be Bigfoot Central and Bigfoot is MIA. Why is this? If BF were to exist, the most logical explanation would be that it is not a carnivore. Edited May 3, 2011 by gigantor 2
Guest Carl Posted May 3, 2011 Posted May 3, 2011 Just pondering here, but perhaps projects like the cascades carnivores come up empty-handed in regards to you-know-who because of sheer coincidence - not because these animals recognize game cameras or are superstitious of human beings. Why conjure explanations that aren't found in evidence? I lean towards it existing though. Kit has excellent points.
Guest Posted May 3, 2011 Posted May 3, 2011 No, that was the wolverine. There was only one, and they still got it on camera. Same thing happened with a similar project in NorCal and they got that single wolverine and its DNA... I'm just getting all "anecdotal" now, but I personally know of a sighting and a "lost" picture taken of a wolverines fully two years before ANY of this in the Steens Mountains. By some random to you guy named "JD". "JD" was SUPER BUMMED when "That little gal from OSU" got the shot. And the credit. He had got SHUT OUT when he tried to registered his sighting. He had a bad experience. He told me about it. There were two, probably a breeding pair. This is a dude who was invited by the tribe to a reburial ceremony of NA remains he found in a cyclical flood plain. So not saying, just saying. I speak my peace and just try to get the hunters and explorers in my area to start getting better cameras.
Guest Posted May 3, 2011 Posted May 3, 2011 OK, let's think it through... 1) How does a Bigfoot living in the wild learn what a camera trap is? Watches you put it up. 2) Since the camera traps are harmless to them and provide them with valuable sustenance, and as you can see with that nursing home dumpster report, they don't seem to have any problem getting completely smack in the middle of human civilization, why would they care? Provide them with valuable sustensance? Mark me confused. They care because they don't want to deal with the same people that exterminated the Dodo, the passenger pigeon, etc., etc. No, that was the wolverine. There was only one, and they still got it on camera. Same thing happened with a similar project in NorCal and they got that single wolverine and its DNA... ... Same thing again in Oregon with the biologists of the Southern Cascade Wolverine Survey... ... Check this video to see the field biologists that are out there doing the painstaking searches... ... How on earth would we ever know what the most endangered, least numbered animal? If there is on wolverine on film, say the number of *insert animal* isn't fewer? I think it's safe to say with the quality of the excellent images the GP Task Force is getting of real animals in the area, Bigfoot is not going to be confused for a bear or another animal. Then how do pictures of Bigfoot get confused with mangy bears or considered blogsquatches? Why is there a blogsquatch when images should be excellent?
Guest Carl Posted May 3, 2011 Posted May 3, 2011 I do think the voluminous breadth of its alleged habitat plays a role. One square mountain mile offers ample space to conceal oneself, and the pacific northwest alone has hundreds of thousands. Its a blonde needle in a haystack that can walk.
xspider1 Posted May 3, 2011 Posted May 3, 2011 (edited) No, that was the wolverine. There was only one, and they still got it on camera. Same thing happened with a similar project in NorCal and they got that single wolverine and its DNA... There was only one wolverine in each of those areas? Really?? How could anyone possibly know that? I still wonder just how many trail cams 'go missing' every year. Edited May 3, 2011 by xspider1
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