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Good thing you didn't see a zipper. That has been debunked along time ago. Even me a non believer thought that was ridiculous.

While I do not share Scott Carpenter's belief system, he presented two really good reasons not to trust the sasquatch people and it makes a whole lot of sense. Also, at the end of the video, you see his use of backwards facing cameras. He kind of pioneered that means of gathering information and it's really paid off for him. He's captured some sasquatches that felt safe taking a peek after he'd passed by. So, an interesting video. https://youtu.be/aeNjRyl42ao

Oy. I’m sorry, bringing your religion to help you form (what should be) a scientific conclusion leaves me at the gate. I almost spit out my sandwich when he started talking about the “astigmatism” of BF. Wait. That explains a lot. They just need glasses! Done and out.

First, thank you for everyone's responses. Since we hit page 2 I thought it was worthwhile to try to put a little effort in to solving this problem so here goes. According to the internet the body size (no tail) of a fully grown Average adult male cat is 24 inches. While it differs from breed to breed, domestic black cats (Bombay for instance) seem to fit within the average range. I have a Maine Coon which is considered the largest domestic breed and my girl is about 28 inches but I will admit she was not happy about being measured so I could be off by a couple of inches. An adult male black panther (melanistic variant of the leopard) body is roughly 48 inches and a US cougar is a little shorter at 40 inches. I had a hard time getting these facts so please feel free to come up with something better. My street sign i 40 inches in length. I am assuming this sign is the same length. The street sign is not parallel to the photographer. I estimate it at about 15 degrees from parallel. I paced of what I thought to be a similar length from the photographer to the street post and come up with 80 feet. I recognize this is very subjective but probably within 10%. My estimate of the angle from the photographer to the street sign and photographer to the center of the cat to be roughly 40 degrees. Using these estimates and applying basic trig and ratios I get the creature's body length to be roughly 48 inches but could vary considerably if any of my assumptions are significantly incorrect. Hmm, ignore my previous estimate. I need to go back to the drawing board. I will update later with better math than my first attempt.

Kiviat is obviously a fool.

A good reminder to be prepared for a calamity that all of us hopes never happens. Thanks for sharing.

Yeah but the details may get into "TMI". Well .. here goes .. Back somewhere around 2006-2007 I decided to move my hunting activities to a new area to avoid old family "politics" which were getting ugly. I'd puttered around up on a nearby mountain off and on for about 10 years and chose it as my new "spot." I'd had a few weird twitchy uncomfortable vibes off and on but more or less ignored them. The new spot was around the mountain a mile or two and a few hundred feet higher than where that was mostly happening. Never gave it much thought. One day I was walking along and I smelled what I identified as dog crap. I was sure I'd stepped in it so I leaned up against the sawed off end of a small log intruding into the old skid road I was walking up, picked up a small stick, lifted my foot to scrape the "poo" off and .. there was none. So I switched feet. Still none. I don't recall if this was the 2nd year I'd been up there or if I'd made multiple trips already that year, but I had a deja vu memory of having already done that same thing in that same spot in response to the same smell and also not finding "poo" on my foot. A big pause / reflect moment. I went on up the hill. Nothing happened. That event stuck in the back of my mind as odd though. The "road" (skid trail) had a long straight stretch, climbing, then a sharp bend. That smell was 20-30 feet short of the bend. The bend started sharp then continued as a long curve uphill before bending back a little, then another long stretch up the hill. Long .. 150 yards, give or take. The lower "long" straight stretch might have been 200 yards. The bend was around a sort of valley, incredibly steep, steep broken small rock with mud, "ocean spray" bushes, rushes / reeds, a little bit of willow, but too wet for firs. The bends above and below were at ridgelines where the soil was dry .. deep fir duff. The next change occurred when I started smelling that same smell by a snag by the "road" at the upper bed just above the little "valley". Oddly enough, it only occurred in mid-late afternoon, never in the morning. When it happened, I could take 2 steps forewards or backwards and be in or out of the smell so the source was right on top of me though I could never identify it. The very odd thing was it happened equally whether the wind was blowing uphill or downhill across the road suggesting the source was not stationary. That went on for a couple years. About the same time, from the curve below the lower straight part down to the flat where my truck was parked, I'd get the inexplicable heebie jeebies. Scared spitless for no visible reason. Seemed to be above me to the right as I came downhill. It only happened if I came out a couple hours before dark. Earlier in the day or after dark, no problem. Imagine being a mouse out in the middle of someone's floor. You can feel the cat poised to pounce but you don't know where it is coming from. Dread and terror of impending death and dismemberment .. and no idea of what is triggering it. Don't know where to run. It was **bad**. I contacted a prominent bigfoot researcher and got some advice. Unfortunately I was not able to bring all of the pieces together to act on it. Kind of a side story though. Finally I lost my temper. I have one. I also have a stubborn streak. Once triggered, I am both the irresistable force and the immovable object. I was [expletives deleted] DONE being chased off of **my** mountain. I'd "had it." Tired of being threatened, put up or shut up. On the next full moon I walked up there in early afternoon, hiked up the trail from the end of the road, climbed onto a big boulder out in the middle of a sea of manzanita, and waited for dark. Watched the moon come up to the east. Watched the lights of town some thousands of feet below and a few miles distant. Waited for full dark. Then climbed down, waded through manzanita to the trail. Shut off my flashlight. And I walked down the hill in the dark in the shadow of the tree canopy just feeling my way along by the groove of the trail down and around the mountain. I walked past "The Smell" and down past the scary spot, again, in dark feeling the road grooves with my feet. Across the flat where I usually parked, on down the road beyond a closed gate. Side note ... it was BLACK by that gate. I forgot about it. Somehow I could "feel" something blocking the road. Kept getting closer, knowing there was something there. Finally wimped out and turned on my flashlight. I bout jumped out of my skin. The gate was 2 feet away. Imagine I'd have "soiled myself" if I'd taken another step and walked into it. Drove home. I'd heard some rustling, etc on the mountainside to my right as I came out in the dark but nothing specific enough. After that, the terror was gone, never happened again. In 2013 I was helping a report investigator look into a report of a hunter having rocks thrown at him. It was in that exact spot. On our way back to the truck something big and black rolled out of the tall grass on the downhill side of the road and ran away upright down the hill on 2 feet. I didn't see it clearly though the hanging vines but I saw enough to know that much. It went behind a snag. I saw a broad shoulder briefly extend beyond the side of the tree at about 7 feet above ground and while I was falling on my "rear" and getting back up he saw the side of a head with the impression of an ear around the 9 foot level. No bear, that is for sure. Some time after the "I'm done running" walk in the dark, I was walking out of there at the time when usually the terror would occur. I was in the curve between the two bends and two straight sections. Downhill, on the sidehill above the lower bend, I caught motion, then a very loud crash, and more motion. A giant hunk of wood .. the "root" of a big fir branch where it went into the trunk, with a couple feet of branch and a couple feet of the side of the log, had arc-ed up out of the brush above the road, gone downhill angling somewhat toward the road 75 yards ahead of me, hit the side of a tree up maybe 30 feet (guess?), and bounced back at least 30-40 feet towards where it'd come from before disappearing below the tops of the brush between me and the sidehill above. That thing was THROWN. Things don't fall in a flat arc and they don't bounce straight out with that much force. It had to have been 60-100 pounds of wood. The general trajectory was somewhat away from me .. whatever threw it was closer to me than I was to the tree it hit. That is not suggestive of a threat or intimidation, merely a message that I had company on the mountain that day. I'm cool with that. Another time I was up there walking the soreness / stiffness out from a hard hike and caught up with a family hunting. After talking to the mom who was bringing up the rear, I turned back. A bit later the son, mid 20s, who'd gone side-hill came down just above where the log had been where I first noticed the smell. He swore a bigfoot followed him around the sidehill. We stood side by side and picked up that scent. To me it was fecal, to him it was horrid B.O. For a few years I still picked up that scent now and then, same time of year. I haven't been there in a long time, it was thinned to reduce fire danger some time back and it changed the cool vibe of the place. For years I only smelled that smell in the one spot. Since then I've detected it 3-4 other places. Something happened to make me question my characterization of "fecal." Here's the TMI. Maybe 15 years ago I went out of town for training. I was wearing cotton tube socks and a pair of nylon-ish 0 rise running shoes. After 2-3 days crossing campus to return to my hotel room I was going to change, then meet my boss for dinner, BS, and a walk down memory lane. It was the town where I went to college and where I'd gotten married some decades earlier. Thought I'd show her my past path. Well, I was in my hotel room and I bent down to change my shoes. There was that smell. I was initially horrified thinking I'd crapped my pants and didn't realize it. Humiliation!! So .. I did the obvious, "dropped trou" and checked. Nope. What the .. ? Finally figured out it was my shoes. Somehow they provided just the right combination of air / no-air to let foot "funk" ferment into the most revolting stench imaginable. So .. y' know, maybe that "kid" hunter I ran into was correct. Maybe it was never fecal at all, just the most horrendous BO of all time. Of the places I've smelled that ... one was a very steep wet canyon, one was in old growth forest duff, one was in a slightly boggy area in an older forest fire scar, and one was on a high, dry, rocky ridge, so a real variety of settings. I can't prove what it as, only that whatever it is, it seems to happen across a wide variety of locations and yet is pretty rare out there. The flip side to all of that ... during the couple of camp visits I'm sure of, there was no smell. Lot of other stuff, but no smell. So .. I think there's a context for the smell that I am missing. MIB