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Perhaps we need to find some object (BF stuffed toy?) that is interesting enough that if found, BF would carry it back to its den or camp. I know they do it because of this one in the attached picture. The story behind it is that I was setting up on a ridge with a spotting scope for several days looking at the valley below, trying to pick up movement in the valley below. One day when I got there to set up, this had been placed at the exact location where I normally set up. It was not thrown out of a car (the road was too far away) and it is impaled to the ground with that stick. Notice how the little guys hand is attached to the stick. (There is a back story about that fact that I cannot discuss on open forum that I would put in the Woo category unless it is pure coincidence.) Anyway some BF seem to have interest in our stuff, and carry it around. Have one pick up something like this, that has a transmitter, and we should be able to track it. When it stops moving, it has either been abandoned or is in some den or camp location. But they might be very careful too. This one appears to have been opened up and most of the stuffing was gone. Would they inspect and find a transmitter?

I bet you would have done it too. Not me in the A-10. Have scared of few truckers and people in cars flying low level in the B-52. That thing is loud flying over you at 500 feet. If they knew how many parts it sheds flying they would not be driving there. One of the most interesting buzz jobs I did was officially sanctioned. There was a Russian Cruiser out in the middle of the Atlantic. The powers at be decided the US military should let them know we can find them anywhere on the planet. My crew was Harpoon qualified. So we went out to the last known position of the cruiser, located it on radar 100 miles away, and made a flyby at 200 feet above the water just off its beam. Our ECM gear all lighted up, with fire control radars, and when we were abeam we opened the bomb bay doors. We had no weapons to drop, but some nervous kid on missile launch or gun trigger could have made a bad day for us. I always wondered how many pants we soiled when the bomb bay doors opened.

The yahoos told me they needed two hoops to make they tent mount up.... I gave them three. Nada. I came home with one end unsupported. Went back to fab shop and popped tent up and they welded another hoop to bolt other end on. Brought it home and set it up and wet it down per instructions. Suppose to “cure” seams and activate water proofing. We shall see. It’s not a wall tent. But sets up super easy.

I vividly recall the 1967 television reporting of the Patterson/Gimlin sighting. I was 13, with my parents at my aunt and uncle's. The adults paid the report no mind, but it fascinated me. I remember photos in a magazine (Life, Look, I don't know) a few years previous, of footprints taken in the Himalayas, said to have been left by the abominable snowman. I'd checked out books written by Ivan T Sanderson from the library. I was ripe for lifelong interest at 13 when Patty burst onto the scene.

I apologize for my tardy response Hiflier. I have been thinking about how I might answer your questions (and whether or not I could). 1st a disclaimer: I was educated as a paleobiologist. I have studied fossil invertebrate populations with regard to their specific variations (variations within a species due to ontogeny - that is growth from infant to adolescent to adult), parasitism by competing organisms, and evolutionary considerations as they impact our understanding of the genus, family, and order classifications in a particular class of invertebrates. I have taken graduate level courses in genetics and evolution (but a long time ago - invertebrate zoology was one of my two minor subjects), BUT I AM NOT A GENETICIST! So take what I might say with some healthy skepticism - and I welcome discussion from real geneticists (and I am guessing from your questions that you already know most, if not all, of what I am going to say). Some good news: With regard to DNA, hair is amazingly stable in a variety of environments that would be considered risky in other respects. That is mainly due to the presence of cuticle, the outermost hard layer of a three-layered hair shaft (inner medulla, medial cortex, outer cuticle). The cuticle protects the medulla, and the medulla contains a lot of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA). Some bad news: Nuclear DNA (nDNA or nuDNA) is lost in the process of cornification - in which protein cells become hair. Although many people think that a follicle needs to be attached to a hair shaft for extraction of nDNA, nDNA has occasionally been extracted from the medulla of a hair shaft - sometimes months or even years after the hair has been pulled/shed from a human body - I guess this should be included under the "good news". In most cases the best that one can expect from hair in terms of DNA is mtDNA. mtDNA is not pertinent for ID'ing individuals, but works for ID'ing species (if that species' genome is included in an existing gene bank - and it should be useful as a match for higher classifications as well, such as genus, subfamily, and family). According to at least two hair experts, Sasquatch hair commonly lacks a medulla, and, when present, the Sasquatch medulla is discontinuous and not prominent. A number of mtDNA studies of purported Sasquatch hair have suggested Homo sapiens, and the natural conclusion is human contamination. There are a variety of methods for decontaminating DNA samples, and actually hair, again because of the protective cuticle, is especially prone to successful decontamination. As I have said in other threads, there exist in all know human DNA (ALL HUMAN DNA) genetic markers that are unique to Homo sapiens, so any DNA researcher looking to verify human contamination or to suggest the existence of other than human DNA, must look for one, or a few, of those markers, else he/she is falling short of performing adequate study (trying to be kind here to past researchers - I would rather say #*&@&%$*!). I think study of suspected Sasquatch hair is worth study, without regard to external environmental challenges and without regard to time in environment. I am not like the body of posters on this site (mainly inductive reasoners - some brilliant, some notsomuch) that can run through a myriad of explanations and possibilities addressing a single data point. I am admittedly not brilliant - I am a plodder. I try to gather a lot of data and methodically work through that data to try to understand it (that's a tough thing in this Sasquatch world containing a fair bit of purely anecdotal data). If I were confronted with testing old hair for DNA or making the determination no to do so because conclusive results might be unlikely, I would say do the analysis - one never knows what might turn up (my experience has been the more one learns, the more one realizes there is more to learn). I had planned to address your questions more directly, but I am running out of gas. The subject does interest me, however, and I look forward to more communication with you.