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It's sad to hear of Peter Byrne's passing. I always watched him whenever he was on a tv show. I had a copy of his paperback "In Search of Bigfoot..." a number of years ago and it later completely fell apart. I then got another copy from ebay and chose the one that I bought for a specific reason; it had Peter Byrne's signature, along with the date, under a short message to a couple on the inside title page. It looks sort of like something that might have been done at a book signing, although it was done in 2013. But it does have Peter Byrne's signature, and that set this copy apart from the other ones that were available.

I was literally going to send away for an autographed book this weekend. He was a nice fellow who took the time to answer a letter from me some time ago, I shall have a dram of single malt scotch and toast him and his work.

Bobcats are known to kill deer by leaping on their backs and biting the neck. Thanks for sharing!

I heard a commotion about fifty yards below me in a dried out swamp when deer hunting. It sounded like a bear killing a deer. After the commotion stop I see a bobcat walk out from the criss crossing logs and brush. I wanted to see what it was doing. The bobcat laid on a log about one hundred yards away. I head down to take a look. What I found was a spike black tailed deer around eighty pounds in body weight laying half way on a log with four bloody fang marks on the wind pipe.

Not unless…..

Rest in peace Peter. I did not agree with his no kill philosophy, but I can respect his work in the BF field.

https://www.ksnt.com/news/kansas/mountain-lion-sightings-increasing-in-kansas-heres-where/ 50 sightings in KS in the last 15 years. This is a state with NO mountain lions, allegedly. Someone should tell these cats they aren't allowed to be there

Continuing.... Metabarcoding inthe lab picks up the genus of everything that visits or is currently living is an environment. Everything. Dr. Mayor's did. But she also got genus Pan troglodyte (Chimp) DNA, and, more than likely Human DNA as well. What did Dr. Melderum get. Everything also. With one exception: Human DNA that was apparently too degraded to show maybe Pan troglodyte or some other primate? Both of which are different of a different genus. But nope, same kind of environment with regards to rainfall. And again samples from soil. In Dr. Meldrums case the soils was even more protected from UV rays because the soil was under the nest structures but perfectly capable of showing an organisms genus. How do I know? Because the genus of all the animals that had visited or lived close by turned up in the results. But only ONE was apparently too degraded to show anything other than Human. But t did show genus Homo (Human), right? And the genus of everything else showed up as well. DNA sequencing at that time was very precise and since the announcements by Dr. Meldrum and Dr. Disotell came at about the same time in the Fall of 2018, only about for years ago, those announcements came soon after the lab sequencing and results were known. Science had already been using environmental DNA sequencing for a couple of decades before those announcements were made to identify an animal's genus in the wild. It was not a new science by any means by the time those soil samples were collected and tested. Dr. Mayor's in 2020 and Drs. Meldrum and Disotell's in 2017 or 2018. So, all being equal where environment, rainfall, professional collection and sequencing protocols, are in line, what gives with one getting a non-Human genus in it sample and the other not? The Human genome is the gold standard, the reference that is used in which all other DNA sequences are compared to. It is the base line and is constantly being refined as more and more Human genomes get factored in to improve it as a reference genome. The smallest DNA molecule is the mitochondrial but it can have hundreds of copies of itself inside a single cell. And though small, it STILL contains over 16,500 (16,569 to be exact) amino acid pairs. How many, out of those 16,569 amino acid pairs, are needed to determine genus match? Less than 50. Sometimes even only 20. Ideally an unbroken sequence of 150 pairs is ideal and considered a good quality sample. For determining genus that's all it would take. Good enough for Dr. Mayor Kentucky samples submitted to the lab at the University of California. But somehow Dr. Meldrum's from Mason County was too degraded for Dr. Disotell's state-of-the-art lab at the time at NYU? He was, and still is after all, an expert in evolutionary primate genetics, though he has since relocated to UMass Anherst in the fall of 2019. Now I'm no DNA expert but I AM a logician and this one loose end has never made any sense to me whatsoever. Why doesn't it make sense? Because no one knows how long Dr. Mayor's large wood structure was there in eastern Kentucky. And no one knows how long that Chimp DNA was there either. But one thing is certain, the nest structures in Mason county were fresh constructs. Vertical stems were pushed into the ground. All the material for the nests were harvested close by and woven into those nests. So regardless of the soil under the centers of them, there should have been DNA left all over the place there: Under and around these structures on the ground, on the ground in the huckleberry patches and on the stems. DNA should have been just about anywhere that could have been sampled. So what happened? No one thought of that? DNA is pretty tough stuff. It's not going to go away or completely degrade after only a few weeks or months. Everything I've said so far in these first three posts is all scientific FACT, along other information as it was reported by the parties involved in these discoveries. Fact, Sasquatch DNA won't be Homo Sapien DNA that is closer than Neanderthal or Denisovan or any other recent Human cousin. It's DNA MAY be Homo but it would be so far removed genetically that there would be no chance of mistaking it. In other words, it would have so many mutations as to be unrecognizable as Modern Human no matter how degraded. No one can tell me that out of 16,569 amino acids that none of it would show non-Human mutations. It borders on the ridiculous to think otherwise. The ONLY conclusion that one can arrive at that makes any sense is that Sasquatches did NOT build those structures. But all the manually broken stems of the huckleberry bushes suggests that it wasn't Humans. But if it wasn't Humans then someone is covering up the fact that there must have been Non-Human primate DNA at that Mason county site. The point is, there is no way, when all other animal genera were there, that only Human DNA was found to be degraded, at a site with every chance possible to have DNA fresh enough to show a non-Human primate was present. There. Done. Does anyone agree or disagree with this assessment?

Sorry, I didn't see your reply. Kinda late on this. The cost isn't a deterrent. By the time I sign up for an expedition and actually attend, a number of months will have passed. Plenty of time to save up / divert funds as needed for the cost of the trip, food, etc. The motivations .. mostly as you suggest. Time in the field with like-minded people. New contacts. A chance to see new places that I might not make the effort to see otherwise. Also most expeditions are held in areas with a history of activity .. published or not .. and present an opportunity to look into the reports of activity there that I might not make time to look into otherwise. There can be things other than bigfoot to look into as well .. the BFRO trip I went on was held in a place I've often wanted to visit to fish but hadn't gotten around to it. Mostly .. though .. just time to hang out in the woods with folks. Most of my time out there is solo. My peeps are either not available, not physically able, not interested, or can't afford to do what I want to do. So I go solo or don't go at all. The expeditions are a break from that.