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Thank you! Meeting with the therapy folks this week to get a plan together. He's made me the Executor of his estate, which will be daunting. He's somewhat of a celebrity in the big-game hunting world and rubbed shoulders with legends. We talked earlier today about plans for his Jack O'Connor shotgun and rifle and whether to donate them to a museum or keep them in the family. Ironically, he's hunted on nearly every continent, flown bush planes over millions of acres of wilderness, hunted Brown bears in Siberia, spent years in the Idaho/Montana/Alaska bush, and insists that Bigfoot doesn't exist. He's never seen one or experienced one. Then I drive a propane truck to the Idaho/Montana border in a blizzard and have an encounter that convinced me they exist. Strange world.

I’ve shot more deer and elk because I was watching my horse or mules ears than I ever did with boots on the ground.

You've got me thinking, SWWASAS. I have several 2 meter E-gliders, and just recently got a GoPro for Christmas. Handlaunching from a logging road and landing back on it would work. The E-motor climbs them out very quickly, and makes much less noise than a quad drone, and once you're aloft and gliding with the motor off, duration is as long as the wind and your skill allows. I'll see if I can modify one of the gliders to safely carry the GoPro mounted where it gets a good view.

Very true. Many years ago I was riding a quarter horse that a kind French Canadian woman had loaned me for the day. She lived way out in the northern BC woods, working as a logging camp watchman in the off season. During my ride, the horse refused to go down a cut line that I wanted to hunt. When I mentioned it to Yvette when I got bake to the camp, she said " Ah, 'e smell da bear down der, 'e won't go". She called me from the camp a few months later to tell me she'd been riding in the same area, and a bear charged out of the woods towards her, but the horse was able to outrun it down the trail.

I am registered, tested and licensed as a UAV hobbiest. Mostly because I started flying RC models again. If you avoid any sort of money making, I see no reason to get licensed commercially, unless you want to sell your services. I do intend to develop some sort of powered glider with camera. I have some large gliders nearly complete to fly. I just need to modify them to carry cameras. The quadcopter drone systems are very noisy and I think BF would hide from them. The RC glider can operate nearly silently or silently using slope soaring methods and would have many times the flight duration of a quad drone because of the wings carrying the weight of the vehicle. I feel that typle of drone has some chance of imaging a BF in an active area. One would have to captapult launch and do some sort of net recovery in a forested area. Lost model detectors are commercially available and would help should one go down. But getting a drone out of a 130 + tall Doug Fir would not be an easy task. Who knows perhaps someone will get lucky and get some imaging.

I would do just that if I could figure out where they moved to. I suspect East, deeper into the Gifford Pinchott. It really surprised me that my research area was that close in to begin with. I started looking there because of decades old reports of vocalizations in the area and one close sighting by a paper carrier. . Not really populated with humans but a scattering of rural cabins here and there nearby. I keep watch of media reports of sightings, hoping that what worked the first time will work again if some area is active. I think part of the problem in Skamania County WA is that there are sightings and people just accept them as being there all along and don't say anything to anyone, which is the common response anyway.

I hear you. I sold my mules two years ago. It was traumatic. I’ve been riding since I was a kid. My daughters still have 2 horses on the ranch. But that ebike doesn’t paw the ground or girdle a tree when I park it. Doesn’t need hay or water either. It’s pretty easy. Battery up…..gravity down.

The weather was good, with lots of daylight - it was late May and about 400 miles due north of the 49th parallel. It was reasonably likely that nobody would be on that road for a week or more. I always have a gun in the bush - a Remington 870 12 gauge that time. I had a week old baby at home and didn’t want my wife to worry and call the RCMP/SAR. I knew I was capable of getting out without burdening those resources. But also because, even though I had a mapbook and knew roughly where I was, I grossly underestimated the distance! The only real bad part was the work boots I was wearing had a hard insole. The soles of my feet were so sore I could barely walk for a couple of days after.

So, last summer I had some personal business in NW Ohio and used Cambridge, OH as a stopover point, which is the closest town to Salt Fork State Park. I summarized my field trip findings and posted some interesting pics in a prior post linked here: Salt Fork Summer '22 Trip Summary . I made the same trip a few weeks ago in mid-January. Originally was going to do an dusk/evening hike but arrived later than expected and it was pitch black, freezing, and wet. I geared up appropriately and put on a headlamp, but decided the better part of valor was discretion and just tooled around a bit at the beginning of the Morgan's Knob Trail (the pine forest part, if anyone's been to it before). I then left the trail and drove off the beaten path on some of the gravel roads in the park to see if I might get lucky with a sighting, but no dice. Absolutely beautiful stargazing, though. The next day in the late morning I made it out for some hiking. I went to check out the area where I'd seen what I suspected was a tree structure on my prior trip and was pleased to see it was still there, unchanged (pics 2 and 3 below). More interesting than that, though, was the trio of pushed-over trees I noticed on my hike out to the tree structure (pic 1 below). They looked a bit odd b/c no other trees around them were pushed over or had fallen over, and it seemed the three were intentionally pushed over in the same direction. Not sure it's significant, but it did look interesting, and I'm curious to know what others think. Anyway, after my hike, I did a few more short walks, and then drove in a loop on some of the gravel roads in the park. Came upon a pickup truck with some bigfoot stickers on it, and stopped to have a nice chat with a fellow 'squatcher named Wayne who had driven down from PA. I gave him some tips on the known hotspots in the park, and we showed each other photos of tree structures we both had come across. His was from North Georgia and wasn't too different in appearance (kind of an asterisk shape) in the one I'd found at Salt Fork. I'd heard on a recent Bigfoot Eyewitness Radio podcast that the asterisk-shaped structures supposedly commemorate a birth.

Using a thermal imager at night helps us in our attempt to level the playing field. I think adding a drone into the equation changes that dynamic a bit. I have a sasquatching friend who is masterful at things mechanical. I was with him during the day when he had a momentary lapse and his drone disappeared. We scoured the forest at the last known address and it couldn't find it even with three people searching. I'd hate to invest a substantial amount of money into something that could get lost. I understand that sophisticated drones have anti-collision software that is designed to avoid a problem. Even considering that, I'm not going to sink a large sum of money on a wing and a prayer (so to speak) when operator error could deep six my investment. The licensing process along with the cost and noise made it something I'll defer to some point in the future. In the meantime, a hand-held thermal is an amazing tool. I find myself scouring the treeline even during the day as inside a thick forest can be eternally dark.

For those interested in using drones for BF research, I recommend that you listen to this podcast interview of Robert (Rob) Evans by Cliff Barackman. I found it interesting and learned a few things about what BFRO was and is doing with drones. I did not know who Rob Evans was before I listened to this interview. He is one of the folks who operated and supported the drones used during the Finding Bigfoot TV show and has been a long time supporter of BFRO and its drone research program. He worked for Microsoft for 22 years and while he lived in WA he conducted his own private BF research. He is now retired from MS, lives in Florida, and has his own drone company to support wildlife research. https://bigfoot-and-beyond-with-cliff-and-bobo.simplecast.com/episodes/ep-167-rob-evans-drone-squatching-0mk9sVHF While not drone related, he mentioned at ~ 35 min, that while providing software support to Universities that where doing wildlife research with a network of game cameras (software that he developed privately for identifying the type of wildlife captured by the camera using AI), that the universities had captured photographs of BF taken during animal monitoring research. However, these universities where not willing to share these photographs to avoid controversy and ridicule. I find it strange that wildlife biologists would hide photographic evidence, unless the photos were ambiguous and blobsquatches that had no evidentiary value. He provided some guidance for folks who want to enter into the drone research. His recommendations for Drones are as follows: Low Range: < $2,000 Parrot Bebop Yuneec H520 Nonetheless, Rob does not recommend the low price drones because they are too low end on performance and thermal imager is low resolution. Instead, he recommends that research teams pool their funds and go for the mid range. Mid Range: $6,500 to $10,000 depending on accessories and extra batteries purchased DJI Mavic 2 Enterprise Advance (has 640 x 512 px thermal camera) High Range: $20 to $30 K DJI Matrice 300 RTK This is the one he owns. At the end of the show, Cliff says that he does not use drones and mentions some of the negatives. - it is very stressful (safety issues and the required attention to controls, drone location, and situational awareness) - it is complex (you need FAA drone pilot license). Although some folks might get by with a non-commercial permit if their intent is just recreational and then just have to take the UAS Safety Test and register their drone. But any YouTube video posted that is using drones and is generating revenue is considered non-recreational (and thus commercial) and needs the FAA drone pilot license. (I could be wrong on this, but that was my interpretation after reading the FAA guidelines in https://www.faa.gov/uas/recreational_flyers ) - it is expensive and you need insurance (if you lose the unit or if you hurt people with it) I lean towards Cliff's position on avoiding more technology in the field. I rather investigate the night close to camp with a thermal imager. But, I fully understand that this technology offers great opportunities to wildlife capture. Maybe best to wait for less noisy, longer battery life, and cheaper units in 5 years.

That became a huge issue here. Young thugs would steal SUVs and pickups in Anchorage, drive them around collecting party materials, then drive them out to the Knik River valley, outside the jurisdiction of the Anchorage Police Dept. and where there was no police coverage outside of the overstretched Alaska State Troopers. They would then get drunk, shoot the vehicle up, then set it on fire. This was happening to the tune of 150-180 vehicles per year......nearly one every two days. In the political backlash, it was revealed that Troopers feared confronting armed, drunken teen thugs because they feared shooting them and facing being sacrificed by the Department of Public Safety in an angry, emotional revenge pushback by parents seeking a lawsuit, which has occurred before. The Department uses any such event to pressure local government (the borough, or "county") to stand up and fund its own regional police department (or "sheriff's department, but unelected by the people). In short, it's a mess. Intensity of the problem ebbs and flows. The public remains in jeopardy.

I hope he gets to feeling better soon!

I'd like to answer for myself on that one. The specifics of the situation leave little alternative. I awoke to a situation with a number of components. 1) There were strange pressure points inside of my eye sockets and they were moving. Not painful or even uncomfortable, just .. weird. Never before, never since. It was too dark to see, 9:45 pm guestimate under heavy timber in a deep mountain basin, 50/50 cloud cover, before moonrise. Black as the inside of a boot except for a few stars between clouds. I suspect even with light I would have been blind because the vibrations and pressure were mostly in the general area of the optic nerve around the back of the eye. 2) Hyperventilating. I heard very fast, very very deep breathing. 3) The muscles in my face were spasming uncontrollably. Like they were firing randomly without any input from my brain to control / coordinate them. 4) Intense "congestion" .. could not breath through my nose and struggled to breath through my mouth. I thought I was dying. I thought the hard hike from 2000 feet to 6000 feet had done me in. 5 miles from the road, more from cell service. I did not expect to live. 5) Mid-panic I began to notice that the rhythm of the breathing I could hear felt out of sync with my own chest. I managed an experiment .. I crossed my arms over my chest to be sure it was not rising and falling, then held my breath. The sound continued unchanged. I started figuring and concluded the source of the breathing was not past my feet, that was too far. It was not beyond my head because there was another tent there. It wasn't the guy in that tent 'cause I could hear him move occasionally and the location was wrong. It was, by my best guess, 18-24 inches from my face. I still don't know if it was to my left, my right, or standing directly over me. I was in a low bivy .. would have been possible. 6) I lay there struggling to breath .. I could, with labor, mouth breath .. and trying to figure out just what the [expletive deleted] was happening to me. After a few minutes, there was a soggy thud 25-30 yards outside of camp, then shortly after that, a clean power-knock from about 75 yards away and off maybe 45 degrees uphill and past my feet. The breathing did not change. This means there were <at least> 2, probably 3, "whatevers", not just 1. 7) It was difficult to move but possible. I was thirsty, forced my hand to move to open the tent, get my water bottle, drank about half of it, re-capped it, and put it back. 8) I have low back problems. Eventually as this "event" continued (breathing unabated), I had to roll over to ease the pain. I did this twice. Some time after that, I think about 45 minutes after I initially woke up, I fell asleep. I woke up about 12:30 or so. The moon was up. The breathing, etc were gone. I had not noticed in the moment how quiet it had been when all that was going on but when I woke up it was very bright, there were bugs and birds making noise in the trees around camp and fish splashing in the lake. There was zero congestion, neither sinus nor chest. No weakness. Nothing amiss at all. The next morning the canteen was exactly where remembered putting it, half full, capped. It was not imagined. That removes sleep paralysis and false wakening from any further consideration. The only source I'm aware of which is clinically consistent with all of the symptoms simultaneously is infrasound. (I am open to other intelligent suggestions but not to being insulted by attempts to sweep the uncomfortable back under the carpet, which is about all I've experienced so far .. so I apologize if I get a bit prickly.) .. but that still doesn't account for glowing red eyes. That's something else. MIB

By the 5th, 6th, or 7th time wouldn’t you think maybe you get a camera ? This guy seems to be a Bigfoot magnet. Why no PGF level film to match these frequent flyer Bigfoot encounter claims?