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There were some females with young ones that stayed around here at night for a few years & the kids made very little noise. They had a food fight on the front porch one night, involving a bucket of scraps from cleaning fish . There was a lot of bumping & knocking things around & fish carcasses flung everywhere, but I never heard so much as a squeak from them during the fight. Another time I saw 4 or 5 playing in the yard on a moonlight night. They looked like a bunch of big puppies rolling & tumbling around until one ran to a tree & went up it like a squirrel almost to the first limb. The rest followed it & then they went sliding back down. Sometimes they would knock on an aluminum gate in the pasture with sticks & there might be a few giggles, but a sharp "ehkkkkk" would stop it instantly. I have heard of a few people that heard a new baby crying, but it seemed that it was on purpose that they were allowed to hear it.

In reference to Norseman's comments: One of the techniques I often use when taking people up the hill is to show them a deer track. Doe, buck, yearling? But most importantly, if we are not in snow, I ask them to show me the other three tracks that match the one observed. And, after that, to show me not the next set of tracks made by the four hooves, but the third set in succession. It is rare that a new observer can make it that far along a track line. I'm just mentioning this in regards to the discussion of track rarity and repetitiveness in regards to hooved animals. With luck we'll find a bear track. In our area of interest, depending on the population cycle, in the Cascades there is about one bear per two square miles during population peaks and one bear per four - five square miles at the bottom of the cycle. So, the idea is to tell people that bears are fairly common and that we should "easily" find a track in three-four hours of wandering. Often, if there is no snow, no bear track is found, mainly because new people don't go near water much, they like to stay "up high" where they can see things and not fight brush. Then, the exercise in finding succeeding bear tracks in the track line proves much more difficult than with hooved animals. Now, let me go "wild" and estimate one Bigfoot per 10-20 square miles depending on habitat. How many track finds and how often? I feel successful if I'm up 20 plus days a year, spend a lot of time afoot and find one unmistakable Bigfoot track. Two or three in a line is a very rare treat. So, I'm just saying that a "researcher" must persevere and not go up the hill to find Bigfoot tracks. You better have something else on your alleged mind. When I had the film crew from Missouri up for several days and they stumbled on their first track -- which was obviously left as a marker of some kind -- they were astounded. It was in mud beside a creek next to a game trail crossing. I was over a little ridge so by the time I got there the fellow carrying their "black" box had slipped and ruined it, but fortunately they had photographed it. Well, enough rambling for now except for one more "thing." The story behind the photo: Managed to stay dry that night with only a tarp, but I was alone so that made it easier. This point is about 15 miles {no exaggeration} from the nearest often used road, and by often, since I often camp near it, I mean 1 truck per hour per summer day, maybe 1-2 during the night. That night, after the rain, one came around and walked around camp leaving several tracks. So the moral of the story is to go to where they are and let them come to you.

It seems to me that this type of activity started subsiding about the time that the Henry and Winchester rifles became prevalent if we consider the historical accounts. 16 rounds in rapid succession would make anything think twice, let alone something even slightly sentient. Lots of the native tribes spoke of different types of these creatures, some who were or are more predictably violent and aggressive. I lean toward this myself. I would think long and hard about taking any kind of presumptions good or bad for granted when approaching an area that is remotely suspected of being habituated. Some of the most prevalent Bigfoot related media content out there is teaching people to provoke them. My families experience with one as a kid was enough to know that just being in an area they are in can be enough for them to become pretty aggressive and intrusive. The size and physical attributes of this creature lend us as a species to be very wary of even half hearted aggressive intents on their part. Pretty smart if you ask me. I've never traveled the woods unarmed and never will. The first time you come across cloths and a backpack on a game trail in the middle of nowhere it makes you think long and hard about just how vulnerable you are out there.

OK, let me get this straight. This from the parks web site. "Located in southwest Washington State, the Gifford Pinchot National Forest encompasses 1,368,300 acres and includes the 110,000-acre Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument established by Congress in 1982." All those acres of land, and you expect that IF there is a Sasquatch running around out there that a few camera traps are going to capture an image of one. Also, the statement that in all those acres of land there exists only one Wolverine? See this is the problem I have with skeptics, their postulations are just as fantastical as the ones from the true believers. This will never be settled, and neither side will convince the other of their point, so why all the back and forth on this? I used to argue my point till I was blue in the face on the old forums, but came to realize it was all for naught. One is going to believe what they wish, and most have it so solidly fixed in their minds, both for and against, that argument is futile.