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What I find odd is that while you apparently have an opinion on everything (leading poster of all time on BFF) yet, a working knowledge of anything BF related appears nonexistent. In looking up the definition of busy body.....

Just wanted to add my congrats to the ones you've gotten so far, hiflier! I, too, am soooooo impressed by your determination, and by your refusal to be swayed by offhand comments from 1) people whose intent might be questionable, and 2) people who may be perfectly honorable, honest people, but don't have the skills to make judgments about this. From my point of view, all the goal-post moving you mentioned in the other thread (and that Yuchi1 and Sasfooty remind us of here) is sufficient evidence that Melba Ketchum's discoveries are right on; because, as you said in that other thread (and as others have said), why would there be such vigorous goal-post moving if those discoveries were not right on? But for people who think scientific verification of the hard science is important, it's great that you have the willingness to attempt that verification. And forgive me if this is already known to you, but I believe that MK Davis said, in a recent-ish (?) interview, that he had seen email correspondence from George Lucas indicating that Lucas had had multiple encounters with BF as a child; so the fact that "Matilda" looks like Chewbaca is because Chewbaca's appearance is based on the appearance of one or more actual BF. (There are many species of BF, and they do not all look alike.) I can't find the link to that interview, but I'll keep looking. So anyway, anyone who presumes that Matilda's resemblance to Chewbaca is evidence of a hoax (and I'm not referring to you, because you are working so hard NOT to make presumptions, and have already said you don't accept that "hoax" verdict -- good for you!) doesn't have all the facts at their fingertips. I know that this has been known for a while, by many people (that Lucas is an experiencer/knower, I mean); but I thought this bore repeating. I know it's just a small piece of information in that big pile you're going through, but it's something.... Good luck to you, hiflier! And I hope you and your wife have a GREAT trip!

JDL, Your post(s) indicate that "habituation" may be more accurately supplanted with "interaction" in that these entities remained in the area, engaged in surveillance and opportunity to snipe food items. The fact these people wish to remain anonymous speaks to the truthfulness of their situation.

I've written about an elderly couple I know in Stone County, Missouri who have had activity on their property for two decades. This wasn't an habituation situation. It was a matter of the clan making regular stopovers on their property and an adjacent lot. They've had relatively few actual sightings, but plenty of activity around the house, including the movement of heavy objects in the night to gain access to food. In recent years the couple's health has declined, and the wife was actually menaced by more than one bigfoot as she prepared to leave one predawn morning to visit her husband in the hospital. They moved in on her between her first trip out to the jeep to load items and her second trip out to leave. Of note, the elderly widow from whom they purchased the property was considered batty because more than once she drove recklessly down the ridge into town in the middle of the night in a panic over things from the woods trying to get into her house. One of the consistent behaviors when the bigfoot were around was what the wife considered to be constant surveillance during the day. Their house is at the top of a ridge overlooking Table Rock Lake with a woodpile near the edge of the slope going down to the lake. I've walked the slope to get a sense of it. To me, it seems younger members of the clan climbed trees downslope to view their activity around the house, and larger members approached within twenty feet of the house using the heavy vegetation just downslope of the woodpile to provide concealment. The jeep is usually parked between the front door and the woodpile. The wife tells me that their cats, during times when there was other activity, would get up on the furniture and stare, in an alert stance, for hours at specific trees on the slope. During these periods the cats refused to go outside unless accompanied by one of the couple, and stayed close to the house. On one occasion about five years ago the husband went to the woodpile to restack it, and a large black animal that he at first thought was a massive dog, broke cover and ran from behind the woodpile, not downhill, but along the level crest of the slope to the adjacent property in full view. It ran rapidly and powerfully on four legs until it approached the low fence at the property line, then transitioned into running on its back legs for about sixty feet as it approached and vaulted the low fence. Then it cut to the left into the tree line, changing it's direction, like a "halfback avoiding a tackler" without using its forelimbs to execute the cut. Up until that point, though he acknowledged that there was "something" in the woods, he had refused to consider that it might be one or more bigfoot. Though he's now privately convinced, he still will not mention the words bigfoot or mo-mo. About two years ago the adjacent property was purchased and the new owners built a house on the lot, clearing the level wooded area into which the large animal had run, and building a house there. Since that time activity levels have dramatically declined. The wife says that there no longer appear to be periods of prolonged surveillance, and believes that prior to the new construction the itinerant group had been staying in the level wooded area on the adjacent property when visiting, just 100 yards from their house. Occasionally something does happen to indicate that they still come through, though there isn't enough sustained activity to indicate that the group stays nearby anymore. Earlier this summer, the husband bought a live trap to catch a squirrel that was raiding the bird feeders on their upper deck and successfully caught the squirrel not long before sunset. Because it was late, he decided to leave the squirrel in the trap overnight. During the night while his wife was upstairs, something heavy walked onto the deck and she could hear it rattling, and then banging, the trap (somewhere between five and ten pounds) against the deck furniture, then leave. She chose not to look out the window (she'd seen them a few times before). The next morning, the trap was gone "as if carried off like a lunchbox". I've offered to put the couple in touch with investigators. They've consistently declined. The wife reads this forum, though she is not a member, and I've provided her with Branco's book about encounters in Alabama. They simply don't want to upset the balance of things, and the fact that there's a certain mystery associated with their retirement property is something they accept and apparently value.

After much time spent I've come to the realization that I'm in no way better to debate this than the historical record. I have run across much that I was unaware of but the things is all it has done, believe it or not, is show the alignment against peer review and its dialogue. A dialogue that IMHO had constantly moved the goal post for acceptance of the paper. Goal posts that when confronted and met with compliance were yet moved again and again. There were unethical actions taken by the peer reviewers and strong attempts to undermine Ketchum's study as time after time criteria for acceptance was issued and met by the Sasquatch Genome Projects team- only to have publishing the paper thwarted by yet more and more demands in the face expert support of the process and technology used and the results obtained. In other words folks, there was NO WAY this paper was going to be published no matter what hoops the team jumped through or what suggestions and criteria they satisfied. Period. Sure, call me a conspiracy crackpot or whatever you like, the fact of the matter is that study was NEVER going to be allowed to be published. NEVER. And there is no possibility that I could ever cite everything and every example in just this one post. Tomorrow I'm hitting the road for a two month trip cross country; something I and my spouse have never done. I will have WI-FI most of the time so will try my darnedest to stay with this. Suffice it to say for the moment, I will stick with the mtDNA results and the procedures used to gain those results which will include everything regarding the quality of the samples. I will attempt to stay as far away from opinion as possible and try to stay with only the science. The science and how it was obtained via standard operation procedures will speak for itself. And since I am not an expert I will have to rely on source arguments pro and con to arrive at a consensus beyond what I or any of you may think regarding this topic. I will do my objective best to present the arguments and counter arguments that have surrounded this study. In the end it may change my own mind about things and I say this because I want the truth of it all for myself gained from my own research and not just through rumor, hearsay, or the opinion of others. Personally, I do not think there is a better way for me to approach this. Your opinions are welcome of course but until I research and review every inch of this they will probably matter little. Taking a hiatus to delve deeper into this may even be the avenue I should take but for now I'm here and so will at least try to get a scientific pros and cons from you members. This is going to be interesting.