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Or maybe not: ”Hey, any of youse guys ever see a bear build a nest in a tree?”

Went for a jaunt into a new area of the Uintas today, up a canyon to about 7,500'. Most of it a bushwhack or following game trails. UT has had record snows/rains thus far so the mountains are lush, the deserts are blooming and the streams and rivers are still flowing strongly. Nothing anomalous but did see 3 Mule deer and a bull moose with a plush velvet rack that passed about 25' from me and didn't notice, though we were in a dense thicket of gambel oak, canyon maple and a few giant unidentified spruce. I was tucked beneath one of the latter waiting out a passing shower when he went by. Looks to be good habitat.

^^ On Utah, I have read that the area around the headwaters of the Weber River is a BF hot spot. I always wanted to visit the lakes above the area and then head down into Weber canyon, but had not had the time. Have you ever visited that area? I did have an encounter with an unknown creature by Butterfly Lake campground over 10 years ago (an area close to that Weber drainage). Can't call it BF, but whatever it was, it was making loud guttural sounds (that woke me up) and throwing little sticks, pebbles or nuts at my tent in the middle of the night (so many that I thought it was light rain). The creature woke up a dog that was with other campers down below us (~60-80 ft away) but my friend camping in a tent next to me slept thru it (despite the guttural sounds, dog barking, and me yelling to wake up). I never got the courage to get out of my tent. In retrospect, I don't know why I just did not check what was making those sounds and throwing little pebbles/sticks at my tent. Instead, I went back to bed and ignored it. I have friends who had an encounter in one of the southern canyons into the High Uintas and on the eastern edge of the range by Flaming Gorge. So the place has presence.

No. No research. Just enough firepower to tip over a T. rex.

The pro kill groups tend to function in intervals. They will get it into gear again at some point. No one has time to dedicate their life to the hunt unless they are retired and financially set without other obligations. Organizing themselves is hard work. Plus, they lose people for whatever reason and go through the usual churn of leadership squabbles and so forth. Personally, I like the pro kill groups activity because they are ready for engagement. When they document something, their level of detail is thorough. I thought the killing Bigfoot reality show to be the most interesting of the bunch. I'm not pro kill anything but like watching good Bigfoot chasing as opposed to wheel spinning with dumb discussion.

Modern human? Most modern humans are hanging out in the basement playing video games. Or stuck in traffic. I guess it could be a prank? But huckleberry bushes? Berry pickers pick huckleberries and try not to damage the plants. So they can come back next year. Feral humans? Why build something without a roof? We know ancient hominids built and lived in nests. We also know we shared them with Gorillas. Why? Because human head lice is a very different species from human pubic lice. What species is human pubic lice most closely related too? Gorilla lice. https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11330-pubic-lice-leapt-from-gorillas-to-early-humans/ But all archeological evidence of the Homo genus points to the fact that our genus hangs out in caves. Or constructs shelter with roofs. We evidently do not like getting rained on. And the Olympics recieve 100 plus inches per year. Wet clothes on wet skin is a good recipe for hypothermia. What do other great apes do? Gorillas? Orangs? Chimps? What about North America? Is there any known large animals that make nests? Black bears? What about on the ground?

Here are a couple of photos I took in 2006 while visiting the New Orleans Zoo. I thought of these immediately when I first saw this video on the Sasquatch Chronicles site.

South fork of Sherman creek off of hwy 20 (Sherman pass) Found what looked like Black bear hair. Found where he was scratching up a post at the USFS corral. I usually park here when I bring the horse trailer. Someone cut the head and buttons off of a rattle snake ahead of me on the FS rd. Saw some deer is all. Pretty uneventful. I didn’t crash....that was a plus.

Thermal imagers are a game changer. They revolutionize what we can do in the field. As Norse said, a sasquatch can't hide its heat signature. What the gov't has deployed is undoubtedly state of the art and much better than anything we have access to. Having said that, we can have thousands of sasquatch folks, like us, in the field at any time with our thermals. That levels the playing field in my opinion. We can be everywhere, all the time. I think the next step with thermal imagers is being able to leave them overnight in the field. Their battery drain is an issue so they can't perform like a trail cam which you can leave for months at a time. I am very optimistic about how thermals will enable us to get night-time videos that will be jam dropping.

I just got back from an exploratory trip to the Mogollon Rim in Arizona. I split my trip into 2 three day camping trips. First section of trip was not BF related, but the second portion was to explore an area that I have never visited (Mogollon Rim northeast of Payson). Based on the SSR Bigfoot reports map below, I targeted to explore the area around Bear Canyon Lake and Knoll Lake. I and a colleague spent one night near Bear Canyon Lake (first photo) and 2 nights near Knoll Lake (2nd photo). These lakes are man-made (both got dams) and are very popular for fishing. Saw lots of people camping in both places the first week of June. On the last day we swung by Woods Lake and it was a zoo of people. My guess is that these Forest Lakes are very popular for folks in Phoenix who are trying to avoid the summer heat and want to do some fishing. Protocol was to hike during the day on abandoned jeep trails and look for tracks or signs. We did limited off-trail hiking to explore some of the canyons. At night, we hiked 2-3 miles into some of these abandoned jeep trails – mainly to better listen to the wildlife and avoid noise from other campers. We heard owls, nighthawks, and other birds that I don’t have the knowledge to categorize. We did not hear any coyotes at night. We saw 2 white tail deer and the skeleton of an elk (probably left by hunters?). We also ran into a dead deer and saw the cougar that killed it (see story below). We saw plenty of deer and elk footprints and scat. We saw no bear or bear scat. We saw no BF footprints nor we heard any anomalous sounds (day or night) while we were there. My Thermal Imager paid for itself on this incident The first night near Bear Canyon Lake, we decided to walk down an abandoned jeep trail that headed north from the lake parking lot and followed Bear Canyon all the way north. This jeep trail is not shown on the topo map. See topo map below with the purple line showing approximately where the trail is. I wanted to explore it because it followed the canyon closely and I figured many animals will be going down to the canyon for water. Also, this trail passed by a power line and was close to quarry (common features of areas with BF presence). We hiked about 1.8-2.0 miles north and headed back around 9:30 PM. On the way back, at about 0.5 mile from lake parking lot (~10 PM), we both saw eye-shine to our right up the hill. (We were using regular white light flashlight and not following the BFRO rules of red-light in order to avoid tripping and falling). We clearly saw 2 eyes but they were not moving. I got my thermal imager out of the bag and set it on white hot with red hot for picking up above average thermal signature. We picked up two red hot signatures that were not moving – one medium size and one small. (The small one was a hot rock). I gave my thermal imager to my colleague and told him to scan the area while I was going to walk to the medium size target to see what it was. The target was about 30-40 ft away up the hill and I could not tell what it was with thermal or flashlight. When I got within 10 ft of it, I shined my flashlight and clearly saw a small dead deer (looked like a fawn). I told my friend that I was going to get closer to take a photo when he said there was a bigger red hot target above me that was moving. Then he said it was a cougar and to get the out of there quickly. The cougar was about 30-40 ft from me per my friend’s assessment. I quickly retreated and took back my thermal imager to see what he was seeing and indeed saw a large 4 legged creature moving sideways (not towards us). We quickly packed up our gear and left. That deer must have been killed recently because its signature was just as hot as the cougar. We did not hear any struggle of the deer (on the way north or south). Even when the cougar was moving, there was no noise. I believe that had we not had the thermal imager, I would have gotten closer to the dead deer and taken that picture and maybe the cougar would have protected its food. Lessons learned for me, when hiking at night: - Look for eye-shine (left and right of trail) as you are hiking - Keep your thermal imager ready to better detect wildlife When I camp solo, I usually do not hike at night and stay put at campsite. But in this case, my colleague and I wanted to explore at night. There are risks when hiking at night and we humans have the disadvantage.