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Norse, can you give a general area (again, I know) as to where you saw those tracks? Nothing that would dox yourself, but some major landmark in the area? Any idea of what would be drawing a Bigfoot (or other large animal) south - farmland, elk migrating in that direction, getting to lower elevation? Just curious. Also, love your driveway (and the fact that I'm not the one who has to clear it in the winter!). Norse and Huntster, Is it safe to infer behavior from a limited number of trackways, no matter how long? Someone upthread mentioned meta-populations of animals that are well spread out and have wide home ranges (for lack of a better word). So even a long trackway of over a mile could be just a day trip to the grocery store for Bigfoot. It's not necessarily an indication that Bigfoot populations are making like snowbirds and heading south. In the northeast US and Canada, there are 51 reports from December, January, and February where the report either stated direction of travel or was detailed enough to allow a reasonable approximation of direction of travel.* Only 14 of those were traveling in some southerly direction; 25 were heading in a northerly direction. However, that doesn't tell the whole story. I crunched numbers that I had in 2017 and there was a visible southward movement (between 160 and 200 miles) in the number of reported encounters. * Normal disclaimers apply - small sample size, room for witness error, room for error in analysis, &c., &c., &c.

People who argue that are arguing from "religion", not report data. The report data, taken as a whole, is very clear. Taking the next step, the body shape reports are indicative of something that is primarily a predator. BF seldom if ever is described as having a big sloppy gorilla style gut needed for digesting masses of vegetation, they're described as having ripped abs .. ripped abs are not an herbivore characteristic. I think that just as black bears are omnivores that are primarily herbivorous but will opportunistically scavenge or even prey, bigfoot is technically an omnivore but primarily a predator, one that will not pass up a berry crop if handy. I suspect this is consistent .. maybe necessary .. for the large distances reportedly traveled. If you spend 16 hours a day chowing on weeds that's not much time left for walking, but if you can meet your nutritional needs in 15-30 minutes catching and consuming meat, there are many more hours available for travel .. or whatever else is available. Moreover, that reduced time spent foraging also means reduced time distracted and at risk of being seen. So we don't KNOW .. but like linear approximations in math, we can get within almost any distance from exact that we want to. And .. from those approximations we can devise tests, devise questions for study. Like .. science .. at least in a sort of loose hinged way. I think loose-hinged is fine, we have to remember we're still in discovery mode, not study mode.

You're probably going to start thinking I'm picking on you .. I'm not trying to. a) you have to ask "useless to whom?" b) who gets to define "encounter"? I absolutely look at food availability, location, season, type, effort to extract, etc. when I think about looking for bigfoot. It's far from the only factor but it does have to be consistent with the rest. Where there isn't food enough, then we're looking at travel rather than occupancy.

I believe that the limited like evidence can be safe food for inference, but not solid enough to establish behavior. In the two examples I used above (Sunnyslope and Bossburg), both were in mid-winter, both were in central or east Washington (on the east side of the Cascades, and thus not in the coast range), and both left a long trackway (miles). As Nathan correctly clarified about my post on sasquatches in the Coast Range moving towards beaches to utilize beach foods, this is not likely at all of sasquatches in mountain ranges east of the Coast Range, like the Rockies, Blues, Cascades (south of the Columbia River), Sierra Nevada, etc (although sightings and trackways found in California's Central Valley in winter even infers that they might migrate to the Coast Range from the Sierras, or vice versa, on occasion). Peter Byrne once found a trackway in snow. I forget where regionally. He followed them through difficult terrain for miles. I don't think he theorized a general direction or motivation for the travel. The most notable thing I remember about his account was, at one point, the tracks walked atop a large fallen log covered in snow, and then the track maker jumped several feet to another snow covered fallen log. He was impressed, writing that such a jump was not possible by a hoaxer. What I find disappointing about his account is that his report on it, from his personal experience, is recorded in one of his books, but otherwise is lost to a queryable database search so that it might be available to help alleviate one of your recognized disclaimers (small sample size).....................

Unless the “Bigfoot Calorie intake “ issue is used to capture (in body or film) bigfoot the issue is useless. It only matters if it leads to an encounter. Otherwise it doesn’t matter.