Leaderboard

In 1994 or 95, I was still living in Minnesota. The eastern portion of the state is thickly forested, and where I grew up was no exception. The underbrush can be very difficult to get through, let alone see into. The summer leaves make for ideal cover. I went bear hunting with a friend of mine that late summer/ early fall. Bear baiting is legal and an accepted practice there, at least it was. You could go to most grocery stores and bakeries and get a pickup load of food for free. You had to check back almost everyday, most hunters would be looking also. Sweets made for the best bait pile. We would just throw it on the ground at likely places. Some scouting beforehand would be ideal, of course. We had one bait pile hit out of three, I believe. A bear will absolutely destroy the bait. It looks like a small tornado has gone through, lol. My friend was going to sit in his tree stand above the bait pile, and we decided to set out “honey burners” to attempt to attract the bear. To make a honey burner, we took two coffe cans. A 5lb and a 1lb sounds right, but I don’t drink coffee, so my memory may be fuzzy. (It’s actually quite fuzzy from time to time.) we drilled 4 holes in the 5lb can to put a couple metal rods through to hold the 1lb can up from the bottom of the other can far enough to put a can of lit sterno under it. We then poured honey into the 1lb and wired the contraption to a tree. We each had a burner set up and we were about 200 yards apart. The smell of the honey was thick, as there was only a slight breeze. I only had a burner going. No bait pile. We could not see each other at all. I sat in my portable tree stand for a few hours, and along about dusk, something in the brush behind the burner started to growl at me. Deep, guttural grows. The growls were loud. I thought there was a bear back there, naturally, I was bear hunting, what else could it be? Lol. Those growls were quickly turning into a underwear changing moment for me. Then a tree in the background started to shake. Like, whip back and forth like nothing I had ever saw before. The top of the quaking aspen, (pople in Minnesotan) was somewhere around 15 feet off the ground, and the very top was shaking so fast. I don’t even know how to describe it. The growls intensified dramatically. I switched the safety of my .270 off. Then it just quit. The silence was deafening. The 200 yard walk to my friend was long, I tell ya. When I got there, we walked out together. It was almost completely dark by then. I never returned to that spot after I retrieved my stand the next day. I never considered this a Sasquatch encounter. I hadn’t even heard of tree shakes being a thing until about 8 years ago. When I heard about Sasquatch shaking trees, I instantly remembered this experience. At that time, I thought the PNW was the only place Bigfoot lived. Had I known then, I could’ve looked for tracks. I could’ve looked for bear tracks too, but those growls made me not want to know. So, I have no clue if this was an encounter or not. And I’m still just as happy to not know.

Nothing new in the video, but something he said that I've thought about before was the auburn or red hair Zana was covered with. Red hair in a "100% sub-Saharan African"? Very rare. When it does occur, it tends to be caused by a form of albinism. So let's review: 1) Zana was a homo sapien who had hypertrichosis, which occurs in one of @ 5 billion people 2) Zana was a 6'6" tall woman, which is so off the charts that I can't even find the odds in a Google search 3) Zana could run as fast or faster than a horse........that's at least 30 mph or more 4) Zana slept outside in sub-freezing temperatures, without clothing, for nearly 20 winters.........more, counting the years before her capture 5) Two DNA studies have concluded that Zana was "100% sub-Saharan Homo sapien"; the first allowing the possibility of a genetic line of antiquity, and the second ruling that possibility out. 6) Yet, the auburn color of the hair covering her body is so rare among African genetics that it is also some sort of albinism. The authors of the second DNA analysis say that Zana was descended from African slaves imported during the Ottoman slave trade period. Mystery over. I say that whether she was an almasty or a homo sapien, the story of Zana is absolutely fantastic, and the more people say that she was homo sapien, the more fantastic it's getting...........

Olympic Project Nest Area, myself Mr Norseman and Mr Hunster, two weeks, with someone dropping us in sausages and steaks to BBQ each night and we'd get the job done, no doubt in my mind. Oh ok, i'll add Corson, Hale and Spencer in there too for the crack !

Went out again today to try and find morels. New spot was 30 miles away from the last spot, and my pastor said he found some in the area earlier this week. He would not tell me where he found his, lol. Morel spots are closely guarded secrets out here. I hiked for hours and found tons of mushrooms. But, only one tiny morel. Could not believe all of the elk sign in the area. This was from a monster elk and from earlier in the day. Found one "squatchy" anomaly about 100 yards from the only morel I found. Looked like a bunch of downed pine boughs from a bad storm a couple of weeks ago were gathered to a specific spot and made into a crude nest. The pictures really don't do it justice as it is in a definite bowl shape in a depression and the boughs were all pushed down and formed. Despite the unproductive day, it was mostly nice and I got to wander in the woods again.

Hello! I am looking forward to learning more about Bigfoot from these forums. I hope to learn more about the process of conducting research so that maybe I can try it myself someday! Regardless, I'm very interested to participate in the discussions here

It's most likely a bipedal primate, in my opinion at least. Probably an ancestor of Gigantopithicus. I'm guessing (assuming) that the species crossed the land bridge around the same time that humans first came to the Americas. I think that also helps explain similar creatures being seen in Eurasia. It's fun to explain away the creatures' elusiveness by attributing mystical, magical powers to them, I don't think this is the case however.

Nice, I love to see knives that get used. I just picked up my first Ontario knife, and I am really liking it so far. I use it as a daily beater because I felt guilty putting my Benchmade 710 through what I put it through. Here's my Ontario Rat 1, in D2 steel, set up for lefty carry. Pardon the smudges.

They do Black bears do shake trees back and forth . It's mostly done for a purpose in mind . We had an apple orchard we use to deer hunt and black bears would get on their hind legs and rock the smaller trees . You could always tell that a bear did it . It's a lot easier than climbing and trying to swat or grab them with their mouths .

Today, I did some morel mushroom hunting and bigfoot searching and just carried one of my larger folders. It's a Camillus Titanium and the quick open action is garbage, but the blade is Aus 8, big, and a design I like, so I bought it on clearance for $28 last year. My everyday folder is one of those cheap Ozark Trail $4 folders from Walmart. I have around 6 of them and found a couple that I really like for every day duties. My other outdoor activity folder is a Benchmade Griptillian. But, my main serious outdoor exploration/survival combo is my Ontario Rat 5 fixed blade in a custom kydex sheath and a Springfield Armory XDM OSP Elite 3.8" 10mm. I found a gem of a knife that is a Chinese copy of an Esee 3 for $20 on Amazon a few years ago. Great little knife and I loaned it to my dad when we were skinning a deer and his Gerber dulled too quickly. He was extremely impressed with it, so I bought him one. I have mine attached to my survival pack as a backup knife.

I'm assuming you're writing this in jest, but I know some of the folks actually working on this with extinct species. The technology is very interesting, but quite different than Jurassic Park!

Celtic, I hear what you're saying about the show remaining grounded, however it seems a lot of people encounter this weird side of experiences with these creatures, so that to ignore it completely would be nearly dishonest in way. Sure, it's a lot easier to normalize a flesh and blood group of "manimals" that it would be to get a cloaking, telepathic, shape shifting uberhuman accepted into the mainstream, but something is going on with some of these, and that's fairly apparent. But the show doesn't seem to lean too heavily on these aspects. It's like one of the guys will bring up some woo-point early on, then later in the show someone's like "I have no explanation for this X or Z" leaving the audience to conclude "cloaking" or whatever. This may well be a clever technique verging on indoctrination, planting a seed and then the viewer waters its, and the roots start growing. Next show to come out will be "portal hopping with sasquatch"....well.....maybe..... One thing I like about the show is how they do acknowledge the potential dangers inherent in looking for giant unknown 8-10'+ primates in the forest at night.."Our Gentle Forest Friends" may well apply to some, but if the reports are true, there's some that don't show up with a casserole dish, and view our intrusions as just that. I could imagine some take "No Dwarves Allowed" quite seriously, and no amount of Aunt Trish's brownies will help get you outta there. "That one sure screamed a lot!" " Ha! Yeah he did! And these brownies are great! " "Yeah, they are......"

I believe I'm already hooked up with my dream team, in my dream location, but what we need is the time and funding for that 2 week (or more, please) expedition. It's very difficult for us to get a weekend outing together, never mind a longer trip. It would be nice if the late Bill Miller could come back and join us, though, as we all miss him.

Fish trap? Those are illegal. Did they report it to Fish and Game? That's likely the only way to get them to look for sasquatches, if they think they can write a citation for an illegal act.

It is one thing to make a nest (birds etc do that) and quite another to make a functional fish trap. The lack of evidence of stone tools use by BF is just that and considering how little contact we have with BF, I do not consider it evidence of anything other than we know little about the daily activities of BF and have very little contact with them. Clark and Skamania county were at one time heavily settled by First Peoples who used stone tools and other cultural artifacts but in spite of nearly two decades of field work, I have yet to find so much as a single arrowhead in the field. That makes it even less likely that someone would find artifacts left by BF, and if they did, how would they know the difference between that and first peoples artifacts? The rock pits near the top of Silver Star Mountain have been assigned to NA activity but local tribes have no knowledge about their use in their oral histories. Similar rock pits in the Oregon Cascades seem to have links with BF activity harvesting small animals. My guess is that at some point some gene turned on parts of the human brain that envisions constructs and making things. Causing humans to diverge from BF if they had common ancestors. Humans in some parts of the world took up agriculture fairly early and leaped ahead of hunter gatherers in developing technology and fixed settlements. Agriculture enabled a more consistent food supply, reduced the time dedicated to food gathering, and allowed humans spare time to experiment and create. Even today the most primitive humans are those that are nearly full time hunter gatherers. Perhaps BF is stuck in the hunter gatherer role and cannot break out of it. I have to think that competition with humans have just made life more difficult and primitive for BF. Perhaps even to the extent that they used to use fire but had to give it up because it attracted human attention.

I wish I could have a 10 minute talk with Dr Mayor. She still does not get it that she is not dealing with some big ape. She even mentioned on one show that it seemed they were being played with but dismissed that. Some of their experiences were nearly identical to mine when one was messing around with me. When they encountered and examined the fish trap in the river I was concerned one would get beaned with a fist sized rock. I suspect the fish trap was a valuable asset to the area BF who might be inclined to protect it. I thought the fish trap was very interesting and proof that Meldrum is wrong about his assumptions about BF lacking cultural artifacts which include tools. He has stated on more that one occasion that BF do not have cultural artifacts. How he can say that and be involved in the Olympic Peninsula nest investigations is puzzling because those nests would be cultural artifacts. I guess he is waiting for a picture of one laying in a nest.

You leave Expedition Bigfoot alone! It never did anything to you! It's trying it's best to take the subject seriously and still appeal to the uninitiated! Okay, okay..... like I said in a different thread, this show represents the next stage of normalization of the topic. Finding Bigfoot was the fun, family oriented, non-threatening mainstream introduction to taking sasquatch seriously (despite "welcome to club sasquatch") which it did. Sure, there's been mountain monsters and killing bigfoot, but those were extremist in their own directions. expedition Bigfoot doesn't have the recreations, which served the purpose of showing how normal everyday people were having these encounters, not just whack jobs, but we've been there. It shows seemingly rational, even scientific, people out in the field on longer term studies of an area. By not having it staffed by long term researchers, it shows non-crazy people(by mainstream perspective) taking the material seriously and pursuing such inquiry, which pushes the topic closer to legitimate study. Crafted and produced? Sure, of course! Comes off more rational than Ancient Aliens? I think so... Shows the sasquatch phenomena in a plausible context that furthers mainstream acceptance of the possibility? Ya sher, yoo betcha!