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I have changed my mind as to how easy contact is, since starting research. When I first started field work, I had blundered (with some educated guesses) into a very active area. Thinking as the result that establishing contact would be easy and in a couple of years we would be sitting on a log and sharing peanut butter sandwiches. That did not happen and contacts actually got more and more adversarial. Then that and clear cut logging caused the group to move off someplace. I expanded the search area tremendously but have not found another active area. While once I thought them fairly common, now I know how really rare they are. I think the best indicators of numbers in an area are footprint finds. When my area was hot I would find them every few months. That is no longer happening and other surrounding areas rarely yield a footprint. I am back to square one. Not only are they very rare but I think they might be on the verge of extinction. All it would take is some idiot parent take his measles infected kid into the woods and that might be the end of them. My county in Washington is in the middle of a measles epidemic because novaxer parents are afraid to vaccinate their kids.

I found this.

Q 1: The investigator can either be assigned a report or assign it to themselves. Q 2 & 3: We have access to reports as they come in and can sift through them to evaluate their likelihood of credibility. It for the most part is first come first serve but we try to alert a more local investigator before assigning the report to ourselves. Q 4: Yes, an investigator that is closer can reach out to be involved if they can commit to investing their time to assist. You can refuse but it makes for bad blood. Q 5 & 6: In the WA chapter there is not a real set guideline for this but some just understand that certain areas are within another investigators jurisdiction and so they do not take the report for a week or so ( this situation can change based on the potential loss of site evidence such as print or DNA ). Q 6: Yes, you can followup on a report in another state but you are expected to actually respond and work the report. Sitting on info is frowned upon or worse.

That is exactly what happened with this group, although I have no idea if leadership was the cause of the breakaway. https://www.lowlandsbigfoot.org/ These guys are all BFRO investigators (former?) and have been the Iowa BFRO expedition organizers up to this point. Now they are doing their own thing and there is no BFRO Iowa expedition this year. I've been told they have no plans for their own sightings database. Luckily, my close group of friends will organize our own private outings in Iowa locations so we no longer need the BFRO. There's also this group, where former BFRO investigator Andy Pieper is one of the leaders. http://sasquatchresearchers.org/ It's my feeling that the BFRO is slowly dying. I make a point to preserve all new reports in the web archive wayback machine in case the BFRO website disappears one day like their forum did. My own Rez Squatching group has discussed creating our own database, so we can control it.

I'm not going to complain about it being cold & rainy......it's been near golfing weather for my northern buddies, so don't wanna make you laugh with excuses for not hiking, I'll chalk it up to pure lazzzzy, lol. Hear are a few recent print picks, one is a repeat but from a different angle, sorry if any of the others are.......this post has inspired me to get off my lazy rear and indulge my Wolf, 2 weeks of no hikey make her a dull wolf, more like crazy!

To be honest, many have suffered from a lack of success and as result gone Woo ( a free ticket out for the brain when you have done everything and still come out with nothing ), they no longer not see the need to chase reports or data. They think they can have a habituation site in the side yard next to the bird feeder. If they have not gone Woo then they simply drop the subject out of frustration, doing anything for 8 to 10 years with no direct success can eat at a person. They come in with preconceived notions about how things are going to happen and become disappointed. Failure is the biggest blow in this subject and eventually wipes away almost every name under the title of researcher. The truth is these are not creatures you can just go find and film. They are likely very rare, fear human contact and just plain don't hold a position in any given place long enough to be advanced upon. People have a hard time grasping that something is better at the game then they are. The fear of failure or being wrong is the only thing that keeps money and time from this subject.

Natfoot, many here are independent, solo researchers. We share jack most of the time. Perhaps you have not considered the crazy factor and the bullet factor. If one were to post about a private land sighting, I would expect crazy people and persons with large caliber firearms to show up. The property owner/property may receive damage from trespassing. National Parks and National Forest. Factor in the crazies too. I am mostly in National Forest areas. I work alone. I think in terms of a safety factor. I do not give up locations. I have had lead blow by me. The ricochets are very unnerving. Those people were removed from the NF and I have not seen their vehicle since. Lack of reports is not lack of encounters. We are just trying to keep hairy and not so hairy types safe.

We have to draw a line somewhere and with the location of these specific reports, i had no issue in lumping them in the Olympic Peninsula Geographical Zone as opposed to the North/South Cascades. Admittedly i could have added a "Puget Sound" Zone but honestly, i have no issue with Gig Harbor(which i know is a Pierce County sighting specifically here) being grouped in the OP Zone, irrespective of what county it falls under, from a purely geographic perspective. Kitsap County, again geographically, no issue with it being part of the OP Zone. Regarding reports dropping off, they're not, they're just not in the SSR as they're not in the public domain with database x or y, and therefore we don't/can't add them. I can assure you there's no slow down of sightings, if not reports, in the Olympics though.

To assume that sightings and other signs of Bf are dropping off in the OP is a bad assumption. Perhaps turned in "reports" of them are dropping off, but the instances are still happening. I live generally in the OP, and specifically in Ocean Shores, and we still get word of sightings and evidence ( sounds and prints) quite a bit. Not many will hear of sightings or occurrences on tribal lands, as the First Nation people tend to keep those to themselves and only share them with those they really trust. Also, some areas of tribal lands are only accessible by permit from the tribal elders. As far as Ocean Shores specifically, some of those reports are of a family of bears that have made a home on our little peninsula. It would take a very stealthy BF to get through town to the areas that we get reports from. Not saying it's impossible, but more than likely they are misidentification. An area that is fairly hot at the moment is around Lake Quinault, Grave's Creek areas. Also some reports coming out of the Mt. Carrie and Whiskey Bend areas. I'm not absolutely sure as to why there seems to be a drop off in formal reports, but I suspect it has to do with reports being turned in and nothing being followed up on by whatever agency or group the reports are being turned in to. At least that is what I've gotten from a couple of folks that have gotten hold of me to talk about it. So if you are doing any research in the OP, stick with it. Or if you are thinking about coming here to take a look, come ahead. Bring your thermals!