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Some day in the future there will be a map of sasquatch range, and I bet it will be very similar to that map.

He goes out of his way to NOT nudge anyone in any direction, least of all Bigfoot. He mentions that part of the Martin story because.... it's part of the story. He knows that people expect him to put a Bigfoot spin on the 411 cases because of his previous work in the Bigfoot field. That's why he goes out of his way to avoid making the slightest connection. Pay attention to his interviews. He won't even say that he was researching Bigfoot when the original park rangers approached him. He always says that he was researching a "peripheral subject". Paulides does get a bit arrogant at times. I can kind of see why after witnessing the way people interact with him at events. People who have read maybe one book or heard a couple of interviews will begin to lecture him on the Missing 411 cases. Like him or not, the guy has spent countless hours researching this topic. I could see where that would begin to grate on your nerves after awhile. However, I believe that he has allowed that annoyance to trickle down into his every day dealings with people sometimes. Another member here had some legitimate complaints on how Paulides responded to him during a simple email exchange. However, that arrogance doesn't take away from his encyclopedic knowledge of these missing persons cases. He himself will say that his impressions of the cause of these disappearances have evolved over time. I just don't see the evidence to back up that he is insinuating Bigfoot as the culprit.

I have a bunch of friends who do that sort of thing around Mt Hood, in the coast range west of Portland, and in SW Washington, but they do not go alone. I used to ride with a spin-off from that group 15-20 years ago. The "buddy system" and a couple winches in the group has saved the day more than once. MIB

They cost a great deal actually, think about it. Investigators spend sometimes months ( even years ) going out investigating eye witness reports, scouting/surveying areas, conducting internal BFRO trips, clearing out old logging roads for additional access, driving hundreds of miles of back-country, purchasing gear/ equipment, putting together presentations and of course taxes. This does not touch all of time we invest in emails, forum management/QA, legal paperwork, individual communications and accommodations. I don't want to post the same thing a million times in other threads but I encourage you to read my previous related comments here. https://bigfootforums.com/topic/65278-implications-of-apparent-consistency-of-evidence/page/10/?tab=comments#comment-1041825 Also from the website. I can agree that there is plenty of room for criticism of the group and some of those associated but it is not accurate to say that the group is a big suckers parade, I have personally co-organized 2 of these such outings and I came away with very little for it with the exception of good conversation around a campfire.

Paulides is best viewed as a late night spooky story teller. I got one of his books for Christmas last year, and quickly came to believe that he's a sensationalist. As I read I would inevitably get curious and look up some of the cases, and he has a bad habit of leaving out details that make the cases a lot less "mysterious". If you look in to the cases, many of them are solved, or at least have strong theories of what happened, most of them being suicides, abductions, and murders. Despite what he says, I definitely got the feeling that he was often putting a Bigfoot slant on things. He repeatedly brings up people who were abducted by hairy creatures and people going missing around berry patches. The one cases that did genuinely creep me out and as far as I know is completely unsolved is the case of Dennis Martin, and it strangely enough has a possible Bigfoot slant to it, since a family saw a "wildman" running up a hill with something draped over its shoulder at approximately the same time Dennis went missing.

Hi Forum, I'm a older middle aged.... younger man from Snohomish County Wa., as a 10 year old kid my older brother got me hooked by having the John Green case files, read everyone, I've never seen or heard any bigfoot in my adventures but been a want to be believer since...45 years, later still hooked.... Good Day Jon Fenton

Whoa. I wish.

Not gonna lie.... I had this in mind. Maybe. A diesel is a step in the right direction.

Lol. Old ones. Nothing new. My better half has a thing for the old ZR2s. She is fitting this one up for her off road vehicle for those hard to reach places. Just upgraded the tires and shocks and putting on new fender flares. Getting the brush guard, winch, and cb next. Not as swanky as a brand new vehicle, but it has character.

Thank you, but I don't have any questions. Like I said before, we agree to disagree. The only reason that the BFRO even came up in this thread is because of the negative responses two of the main members made online about the show that we are discussing. To me, that and other elements of the organization are indefensible...even if there are perhaps better parts of it that do not reflect the negativity of the whole. This field is not the private domain of the BFRO, and their online comments are distasteful. I would like to thank you for taking the time to respond to me, especially in such a polite manner. I appreciate it, and am glad that you are able to share some of your knowledge and passion for the subject with others just starting out... regardless of the vehicle of delivery. Let's steer this thread back to EB now.

It is not as simple as entertainment, this would imply that it is simply for amusement or " fun ". We put out wide range of material in the form of presentations, area history, noted behaviors, lessons on forest ecology, methods for identifying habitat, DNA collection, wildlife/man tracking, and exercises in critical thinking. We also get people hands on with new equipment, technology and introduce folks to ways of collecting information and data to get results. For instance, on my Olympics exped I gave a short lecture on spectrograms as a tool for finding and identifying species presence within a selected habitat, I also gave visual demos on how to use them and what to look for when going through collected data. . . . Does that sound like good ole' Joel Olsteen practice to you ? LOL The expeds can be as much or as little as the organizer makes them to be, the western chapter puts a great deal of their time and money into making the expeditions engaging and worth attending. I am aware of several organizers in OR and CA who feed the participants several nights also. I suppose if you just suck as a person you could do almost nothing and walk a couple groups down a few forest roads during the night to keep most of the organizers portion of the funds. We have had years ( the Finding Bigfoot era ) that we had loads of people want to attend, many these people wanted to treat it like an Alaskan cruise or fishing trip where anything goes. This did not serve the purpose of what the BFRO was looking to do, we are more angled to a form of education and awareness on the subject. You are correct that Matt gives the price hike as to dissuade the nuts, weirdos and less than serious. This is half true, you have to understand that the BFRO is trying to add technical/knowledgeable academics to the group, you have to attend a BFRO expedition before you are eligible to become a member. Smart people with a genuine interest and flexibility are what we are looking for to make ground on the topic, in my personal opinion there has been a slide back in this but I think that is about to change. Organizers come up with their own price points, are at 500$ and some are at 300$ per adult. We also set how many participants we are willing to have and if we wish to have additional investigators involved. We pay for all of our ( we being the investigators/organizers ) emergency gear, backup equipment, batteries, external hardware, presentation displays, audio equipment, media storage, gas and bathroom facilities. I probably made ( net ) around 750$ after all of my expenses related to the expeds, this does not account for my invested time. The BFRO pays for ZERO of what happens on the ground, the organization provides us with access to reports, some thermal imaging equipment and social media presence/platform. If you have more particular questions that are related I would be glad to respond over PM or by email nathanbronis@gmail.com , I am not looking to hijack the thread further.

@Redbone Just found spare batteries for the Sport on eBay. I ordered a pack of 4 along with a charger. They look to be OEM, but I guess that I won't know if they are good until I test them. If they turn out ok, I will forward you a link.

We are good to add winches to our Blazers for that exact reason.

I used to haul wood chips for Puget Sound TL with my old Kenworth pulling a set of doubles over forth of July and Lookout passes everyday. Kettle Falls Boise Cascade plant over to Louisiana Pacific in Missoula. They made chip board. 105,500 lbs max gross loaded over and EMPTY back. I would chain up including drag chains of the pup trailer and say a little prayer at the top of Lookout pass which is also the ID/MT line. The Idaho side was always crummy. If you touched yer brakes going off the pass or turned yer jake on? The pup would swing out and try to pass the lead trailer. The only thing you could do was step on the accelerator. And pray that yer steer tires held going around the corners. It was a race to the bottom IF you could stay on the road. Essentially I wasn’t an 18 wheeler..... I was a 30 wheeler. And 30 wheels with no load on snow and ice sucks badly. There was always holes in the guard rail were some poor truck driver lost the battle and went in. One time it was a conex box hauler and the only thing that saved him was his tag axle on the trailer chassis. It hung up on the guard rail. You couldn’t see the tractor at all. The poor guy was probably hanging by his lap belt staring 2000 ft down into the canyon below afraid to even breath. Log truck drivers are the toughest though! I still have nightmares.... After that getting stuck in the woods with a 4x4 seemed pretty trivial.

Sorry, but we will have to agree to disagree on this topic. Matt Moneymaker is quoted in the book 'Monster Trek' as saying that the cost is that high so that they can weed out the people who are 'not serious'. So, are the fees so high for the huge expense or to weed out the undesirables? I am not debating that there may not be some good people involved, but you are telling me that you walked away with no money after organizing two of these outings. So, where did the money go to? Equipment? Are they paying the expenses of their investigators? People are free to spend their money how they wish. If it doesn't break my leg or pick my pocket, they are free to do as they wish. However, let's just call it what it is. It's entertainment. If those same people were encouraged to take that money and spend it on research and equipment, then go out and actually look themselves...then there might actually be some movement on the study of this phenomenon. Grass roots and regional efforts are always going to be more effective than a for-profit group. The BFRO is an entertainment endeavor. If people want to spend money on it in order to feel like they are a part of something greater, so be it. People do that all the time with televangelists and mega-churches.

I know Dennis, we met in New Mexico last year. The footage was taken during his time working for Erickson, the intended documentary stalled out as the money dried up during the 08 market crash. Public release may happen one day should a documentary get rolling again.

I went back and re-listened to the segment where the mushroom lady (BF eyewitness) is interviewed because I wanted to better understand what she said about the grizzlies. Her reply to the question about wildlife in the area: "We have seen 3 bears this week, two grizzlies and a black bear". Later, the interviewer asks: "What do you do when you encounter a grizzly?" She replies: "You don't make eye contact and you look the other way". The interviewer does not question her statement and assumes it is 100% accurate. Later on he states that she is a brave lady to be camping around with grizzlies. IMHO, if people are encountering grizzlies in their campground in central Oregon, that is newsworthy and they should document and report to Oregon's DFW. In this case, I am dubious about the claim. Either the show producer/editor fully trusted and believed the eyewitness and decided it should not be edited out of the show or was ignorant and did not think this will reduce the credibility of the story. It is kind of absurd to nitpick a grizzly eyewitness account in a Bigfoot forum about a creature that supposedly does not exist. It is not as if we are willing to believe that she saw the BF but not the grizzly. I think it is more a question of: can we believe her BF encounter claim if she can't tell the difference between a grizzly and a black bear? I think the answer is probably yes. But, we don't have to guess. All we have to do is ask the boyfriend, and check if he can corroborate either claim. It would have been helpful to interview her boyfriend, since according to her, he also saw the BF and presumably also saw the bears.

Regarding grizzlies in Oregon, there are stories / reports. The ones I have been looking into come from the area around Crater Lake National Park and the upper Rogue River area / southern Cascade Mountains. I would not absolutely rule out the possibility of grizzly or grizzly/black bear hybrids in Oregon but if they are here, they are pretty darn rare. More likely would be one of the many color phases of black bear we see. I got this little female on my trail cameras a lot over a period of about 3 years. The 3rd season she had cubs, jet black. Her face is black, under hair is black, but the long "guard hairs" are blonde.

You are a citizen on public property. He can go spit.

Our former Director of the BFF is LEO in Georgia and two of our mods are also LEO. Our Steering Committee Chair Woman works for the Forest Service. @hiflier all they have to do is read the BFF to keep an eye on you.

That's what the people I know who have been on all of those reality shows tell me. Even the Trooper show has an element of that; the Troopers won't bring the filming crew on expected dangerous calls. Once in Wasilla Mrs. Huntster and I had stopped ay Dairy Queen and got Blizzards (with coupons, of course). It was fairly dark out, but the highway lights illuminated the area. I pulled over to a different parking lot which had a better view of Wasilla Lake. A Trooper vehicle was idling with his lights on in the parking lot to the lakeside park a couple hundred yards off, and he had a vehicle in front of him. Suddenly I noticed a guy sneaking up the passenger side of the patrol car from behind, and he had something in his hands. I got out of my car, started running down the hill, and was screaming at the guy. Turned out to be a cameraman filming a scene for the AST reality show.

If I were going out investigating a recent BF sighting, I wouldn't hesitate to have Paulides on my team. He was a career police investigator turned missing-person investigator. The first person to see a pattern, voice his concern, and call attention to people going missing in certain hotspots including experienced hikers and hunters. I think he has a nose for investigating in the same way a bloodhound has one for scent. He has undoubtedly saved lives with his warnings to people of preparation for the backcountry echoed throughout his 411 Missing series.