Leaderboard

I am a long time poster and visited for several hours a week and that was at the height of the Finding Bigfoot show so volume of interest is drastically lower today as most other shows are completely faked and fabricated. I personally checked in to see what field research methods, techniques and ideas are being tossed around out in the woods. Couple other points to note. 1 - Forums are dying as human attention spans decrease due to overstimulation by social media. 2 - Video media as a format ( youtube, patreon, tiktok, live streaming ) is eating forums for breakfast, direct commentary and long format video scape covers most of the discussion points and theories. 3 - Field research efforts these days are ultra weak sauce compared to how " the community " use to address the subject, most now sit around and slip into " cant get them on camera, must be paranormal " or they simply do nothing of effort to get out and search for evidence. Bigfoot is a campfire hobby with very little actual pursuit these days. We do have a couple die-hard guys still here but the volume of activity has always been around PGF debate and field research and now post the lockdowns, people are preoccupied and distracted by seahawks games, vacations and what ever other primary hobbies people engage in these days. The vigor and thrill of walking around in the dark and looking for prints is gone for most or waved away by the embrace of weak minded woo " experiences " that are create insulated FaceBook groups for self worship. No red circles required to figure that out if you check in on all these media sites. I now check in like once every other month to see if anything is going on research related and it seems that the spring has dried up and personally, this drives me nuts because we have more tools today than any point in history. This concludes my rant, lol.

Hopefully, given some time to process, that change won't be a bad change, just awareness. It was a similar concern .. what's my risk level here? .. that got me into research in the first place some years before I ever heard of BFF. Proving / disproving existence, validating / invalidating the PGF, blah blah blah .. means nothing to me. What matters is living vs dying and from what I've learned, dying is more likely on the highway driving to the trailhead than it is from hairy bipeds in the woods. Good enough. I hope she'll come to a similar conclusion, find peace with sharing the woods, and not be deterred from her regular activities.

One of my best friends lives in the La Grande, OR area and has for many years. He's a former USFS employee and his wife is an emergency room RN. They are prolific outdoorsy people who have spent most of their lives camping, hiking, hunting, horseback riding, and working in the mountains of Oregon, Idaho, and Washington. Super great folks. My friend and his wife have been skeptics of Bigfoot and whenever the subject came up, we would joke and laugh about it. They were both respectful, but just didn't believe. They had spent decades in the woods with no encounters, so couldn't wrap their heads around the concept. That all changed for the wife on Sunday. Her husband and his Navy buddy were with me at my family cabin in Idaho for the weekend, while she stayed in Oregon to take care of their horses. On Sunday, she decided to go on a hike/run in the mountains. What happened and what she saw/experienced is not exactly clear. She messaged me and asked if a firearm was a deterrent to BF. I said it depends. In most cases, a person having one means they are more likely to avoid you, but not in all cases. She then said that something happened and she wasn't sure what, but she is terrified and traumatized, and very confused. I was at work, so couldn't call her, but we messaged back and forth and she left an audio recording explaining why she was being vague about what she saw/heard. This is the location she gave me of the incident: I'll try to share what happened, but it's still unclear. Her husband returned home while we were discussing it and she understandably unloaded everything on him. Hopefully I can get more details after she recovers from the incident. Basically, she was in a pretty remote area doing a hike/jog as she is a fitness fiend and very active. She was wearing brightly colored athletic shorts, and a bright athletic top. She said she suddenly became aware of something large in the nearby trees/brush due to a vocalization that she described as both far away and at the same time, also nearby. She also indicated that there was some brush/trees being disturbed; something large was crashing through the trees. Her first thought was that she had surprised an elk. Whatever it was, it was very large and moved very quickly. Her words... "I think it was an elk crashing and then wolves but everything happened at once and I've been scared before, but never shaking head to toe... I heard grunting/growling but it was a ways away. At first I thought it was an elk, then crashing, then two howls or something. I realized by the second one it wasn't an elk." "I thought it was wolves but knew something wasn't good and I've had cats stalk me and other weird stuff but the fear I felt was weird." She indicated that she got into a stranger's pickup that came along, which she said she would never do unless she was terrified. Then she added this... "The weird part is its all confusing, I just remember crashing, grunting, and 2 howls and total body shaking lol like I don't remember it all which is also weird... all of the noises close and far... the guy that picked me up said I looked not OK." She then left an audio message that went into more detail about the strangeness of the incident due to the emotions she felt and a weird "connection" to whatever was in the woods. She was much more articulate and intelligent sounding in the recording than in the texts. I've known her for 15 years and she is extremely intelligent, rational, calm, and afraid of nothing. Current ER nurse and former rodeo queen who does horseback trips into the wilderness. In the audio file, she describes feeling like whatever was out there knew exactly where she was and what she was thinking. She stated that the sounds she heard were felt in her body, and she felt completely exposed and helpless. She also reiterated that she has had numerous encounters with predators over the years in the woods and has never felt anything as terrifying as this. She also says she may have seen something, but so much of the encounter is "missing" in her mind. Her reaction to anything disturbing in life is to research it. She does a deep dive on a subject until she feels properly educated about it. She was in the middle of this while we were messaging. I told her about infrasound and the effects it has. She said she found references to it and confirmed that's what she felt, but at a deeper and more psychic level. She said she was on the BFRO website and looking for encounters in her area. I encouraged her to make a report. She wanted to be sure it was anonymous. I assured her it was. I showed her pics of the tree I discovered the day before her encounter and she said she had seen the same thing. And she had seen the weird tree stacking and trees shoved into the ground with the roots sticking up. We ended our conversation with her apologizing for not believing me before. She said she believed deep down, but didn't want to acknowledge it because she didn't want to be afraid to run in the woods alone. Now she is. I hope she filed a report and I am planning on going down to visit soon and check out the site. It's great that now I have another friend that also believes, but I feel bad for her and her husband. Her love of the woods and her perception of the wild has been completely changed for the rest of her life.

A couple of years ago, our group was putting on a conference in north western Wisconsin. We had Dr. Meldrum lined up as the keynote speaker, and I weaseled my way into picking him up from the Minneapolis airport and was to drive him to the venue. I was so excited because I would have him entirely to myself for several hours. I had so many things I wanted to talk about, but alas, Covid hit and the conference was canceled. I never got the opportunity to delve deep into my favorite topic with him. Fast forward to 2023, I got a call 2 weeks ahead of the Minnesota Bigfoot conference asking me if I could be a presenter, as Dr. Meldrum was scheduled to appear, but had the health episode TD-40 mentioned. I said yes, and made sure everyone at the conference knew how much I admired the man and honored him during my presentation. Sad day, all around.

I have. That ain't it. Seems to me it would be useful to move away from Standing's already-demonstrated hoaxes. Find something new to beat each other up over. Hoaxers CAN potentially see / report something real, what he says is not automatically null and void, it is merely that he's dug a hole and whatever he produces has to be of greater verifiability than what a person with a clean reputation has to produce.

Todd Standing =Red Flag.

I agree. I'm thinking the good doctor is truly a "knower" at this point .

I can’t help but imagine him enthusiastically questioning Roger Patterson right now.

I watched it. There is way less “con” going on with the 411 books…. Than trying to convince the Canadian government THIS is a real animal.

Yep. Unless of course one is forgiving the many hoaxes. I believe that is called naive. The Muppets is the most laughable. Of course if one takes the subject serious probably best to move on from any and everything Standing.

I find it interesting to scroll to the bottom of the published report to see who did the investigation. A surprising (to me) number of the recent reports were done by Matt M. himself rather than his investigators. That probably says something though I'm not sure what it is.

Hey Bipedalist, how fortunate that you got to take the course with Jim Halfpenny and Jeff Meldrum. I received the flyer for it, and couldn’t make it— but how I wish I could have. We’ve had dinner with Jim when we were visiting Yellowstone,at an Asian place outside of Gardiner MT. He showed us his museum, which includes lots of track casts including Bigfoot. Anyway, message me if you want to chat about the class.

Totally shocked. Had the honor to eat supper with him in Gardner, Montana one night during a tracking course he presented with Jim Halfpenny. He was such a gracious and humble man. May he rest in peace.

I did a day long Jeep trip over the Freezeout pass in Idaho last week. Dang close to grizzly country on the Montana border. I took a picture of the two guns I brought with me... A Marlin 1894 carbine and a S&W Model 686. Both in .357 Magnum. I did not feel under-gunned at all. I have spent nearly 50 years in the Idaho wilderness camping, fishing, hunting, shooting, exploring, hiking, ATV riding, off-roading, and just plain relaxing and enjoying nature. All of those activities were done while being armed. In all those years, I was threatened with violence, or felt threatened maybe 4-5 times. Twice was by animals/Bigfoot and the others by people. The worst was a few years ago when me and my dog Rowdy camped at a remote spot on Bonami Creek in a pop-up camper, and a pack of wolves came in and surrounded our camp at night. I was blissfully unaware of the threat having downed a couple or a few 7&7s while listening to satellite radio by the fire. Rowdy was a 105lb Lab/Great Dane mix who was afraid of fire and nothing else. He normally stayed away from it and would lay down behind me as I sat near the fire and drank. But that night, he decided to lay very close to the fire and my rifle... The next day, I awoke with the worst hangover I have ever experienced. I thought I had been shot in the head with a .22. I poured out the remaining Seagrams 7. After I drank a bottle of water and downed a few aspirin, I stumbled outside to the camp and observed Rowdy diligently walking the perimeter of camp, sniffing and marking his territory. I got dressed, grabbed my rifle, and headed up the crude trail behind our campsite. Rowdy was busy peeing on everything and sniffing furiously... I followed him about 25yds from camp and suddenly realized why he had acted so strangely the night before by staying close to the fire, and why he was so obsessed the next day with marking his territory. I found a piece of wolf scat that was very fresh and left while the wolf was in motion and moving away from our camp. It had to have been left within the past 8 hours. I began doing a search of the area around our camp and found sign that a pack of wolves had come in the night before and walked around the perimeter of our camp. No wonder Rowdy was acting so strange the night before! The rifle I had was a Marlin 1894 in .45 Colt, with a Surefire weapon light attached, 6 extra rounds in the butt stock pouch, a green dot optic, and smoothed action. Pretty much the perfect weapon to be holding when a pack of wolves comes in.

I've been remiss in not reporting my field trips for the last couple of months, so I'll try to get back into it. I've made a number of outings, but had some problems with making my phone upload photos to the computer and got frustrated with trying to make it work. This evening i made a run up one of our local research areas that had been gated for active logging for almost a year, and took Thomas along for the ride. I'd heard that the gate was now open, since the logging had ended for the season, and we found the gate was indeed open. However, the contractor had obviously just completed cutting drainage cross ditches on the road, and did it very thoroughly! The new trenches were aggressively steep and very frequent, slowing progress to a crawl to avoid suspension damage or noggin bonking on the roof! We only got about 2/3 of the way to the summit before we decided that the effort to reach the top wasn't worth it. Here's a video that Thomas shot on the trip back down: https://www.facebook.com/share/v/1WbkQxebhb/

I also did a one day 185-mileJeep trip through some very remote Idaho backcountry. No BF sign, but some beautiful country...

Todd Standing's Bigfoot heads are full blown fakes. They even show progression, with later ones being better than the muppet heads in the beginning. But Todd Standing is in a great area along the BC and Alberta border. Did Jeff Meldrum bump something genuine in that area? Who knows. Its my understanding that his sighting was at night with a NV or FLIR scope. I cannot remember which. Its entirely possible that Standing pulled some shenanigans. But its also possible if you believe the creature to be out there that Meldrum may have had a genuine encounter. Either way it doesn't move the goal posts regardless.

The article bot caught this story from a number of news outlets. https://www.syracuse.com/statefair/2025/08/searching-for-bigfoot-at-the-2025-nys-fair.html It caught my eye when perusing the list of vendors, considering entering our car club next year to raise interest in classic cars of the little British variety. Charles "Snake" Stuart has an exhibit at the state fair featuring a preserved "Bigfoot corpse" behind plexiglass. Includes a paid appearance by William Shatner on an old TV. Charles certainly sounds like my kind of weirdo and I hope to meet him and his clearly fake body of a Bigfoot. (Sorry, Charles.) I haven't visited yet. But I'll certainly report back if I do. The fair runs through to Labor Day, Monday the first of September in Syracuse, NY. If you do attend, grab some local delicacies, salt potatos, speedies, garbage plates, chicken riggies, etc.

Yeah, don't get used to that from me... Healthy skepticism is warranted and needed in this field or else people will be thinking that we'd all buy that bridge in Brooklyn they want to sell us.

I'm a follower of Stefan, but he gives short shrift to the Cerutti mastodon evidence. I appreciate his skeptical nature. I'm not knowledgeable enough to render a decision on the Cerutti mastodon evidence, but lean towards its authenticity.

No, times have changed. Photographic evidence isn't going to cut it.............

I represent that remark!

I was just listening to episode 180 of Bigfoot & Beyond. Can't give you a time mark as I was otherwise engaged, but the guest, Joe Perdue, discusses being an employee of a West Virginia government agency (probably state parks or DEC) and discusses his supervisors' reaction too, and limitations on, Bigfooting on the job. Basically, he could not initiate any Bigfoot discussions and if sightings were reported to him, he could take the reports for his own personal use, but they didn't want them as official records, such as injury reports at the park, bear sightings, etc.

Norseman is correct. We do not know what laws apply until (or unless? :)) we have one, have DNA to test and retest. Like many here I've pondered this quite a bit. I don't think they are descended from new world monkeys or anything else that originated here. There's simply no fossil record. I think we are left with two families / themes of possibilities. First, they are a very close cousin to us, a recent split, with rapid evolution such that there are no older fossils because they didn't exist yet and the DNA is so close to ours as to appear merely contamination rather than distinct. Second, they are from a very old, very remote split and have never existed in large numbers, not for possibly hundreds of thousands of years, and they exist only in temperate forests with highly acidic soils that destroy bones / remains rather than producing fossils. I lean toward the first of those though I can't disprove the second. My best guess is, since we know there were at least 4 periods with land bridges from east Asia in the Pleistocene, that they likely crossed in one of the earlier 3, in small numbers, and somehow survived despite extreme environmental pressure. We know that small population and extreme forces of natural selection can push evolution much more quickly than it happens in a larger population. It seems the simplest solution working within the things we've already studied scientifically. I think having irrefutable DNA (which means a body .. I think) would allow us to answer a lot of questions.

Good morning Georgerm......thanks for the reply! I had an experience at my grandpa's place near Dallas in 1959 when I was 6, extremely close encounter and it could have grabbed me if it wanted, but I did get a nice smile from him, so my journey began then. My main hiking areas the last 25 years are very close to my small town, which has almost doubled in the last 5 years to 8,800, we are on the edge of the Texas Hill Country, and I have been researching what I term 'Urbanfoot's' that come into town nightly for food source, there are Cougar's and other predictors too that hunt in town, as the numerous Whitetail Deer are everywhere and quite tame, easy pickens. There are only a few ways the Hairyman can get into town undetected, and they follow the main creeks in deep ravines. Over the years I have bushwhacked my own trails and the Hairyman seems to like my work and uses them, lol. I never put any game cameras or other electronic devices out there, they are well aware of our tech so I never disrespect them with such things and guess they sort of trust me. The Urbanfoots are quite stealthy, no noise, howling or aggression in the city at night. I've been all over the country and off-shore in my research over the years, and is extremely hard to find signs going out to wild places, but the Urbanfoot's are quite predictable in their travels in and out of town, so I can really zero in on their movements. Finding tracks or sign in wild places is hard, but out here the exception is NOT finding any, every time I head out there, something cool awaits me:) There's an area with caves, pretty sure they hang there but not me, I never go to these places. WOW, great artwork! Here are some pics of the area.

I've always found that the number of reports coming from an area is more contingent on the number of investigators than the actual number of reports. In other words, if no one is there to investigate, sightings go unreported. If an investigator is found for that area, a bunch of reports surface. I wish there was something like I-Naturalist where people could report without going through a middleman. I fully realize the flaws, it's just a pie in the sky dream...

I admired the man. He seemed like a good person, who did some very good work. He will be missed by many on this forum. Condolences to his family.

We sure are. Veteran BFF troopers. I'm thoroughly fascinated by the subject, but as a Plainsman, have had no personal experiences. Thus, I don't really have much of value to add. I commented on your posting because in this day of the internet, it's generally understood that all caps posting denotes "shouting." 😉

I have.

Government silence: There was an old skit from Saturday Night Live back in the 1970s where President Carter becomes giant from a Pepsi spill on the control panel at a nuclear energy factory. Once President Carter becomes nearly 100Ft tall (from radiation poisoning) reporters ask the government questions. Here is the governments answer: Female Reporter #1: Yes, is it true that the president is 100 feet tall? Ross Denton: Nooooo! Absolutely not! Male reporter #3: Is the president 90 feet tall? Ross Denton: No comment. OK, maybe a non- answer IS an answer after all. :-)

Conjecture works well in a world of conjecture.

Are you angry?

I was down at the family cabin and came across this broken tree. This is the third such tree I have come across in the Idaho mountains that had no rational explanation for why it was twisted and broken off at 8' above the ground. Grass around it was clearly crushed. No prints since super dry this time of year. I know these tree breaks have been attributed to Bigfoot, but can't remember the reason, or theory.

I think we have discussed the Dennis Martin case enough in this thread. Go back and reread the OP and go from there. 👍

I tried to be clear on this but maybe I wasn't clear enough - it is entirely reasonable and expected for Bill Martin to de everything he possibly could to find his son and to get as many people and organisations as possible involved in helping him do that, in particular the FBI given their resources and their investigative powers and expertise involved, just as he did. I have a son of about the same age and would certainly do everything I could think of in those circumstances. Doug Martin (not the brother, the friend who was playing with Dennis just prior to his disappearance) said that his family had gone back some 3 years later and bumped into the grandfather Clyde, who said that he had been walking those trails every weekend for those years just because he couldn't give up. I suspect I would be the same. The pain must be unimaginable, made all the worse for not knowing. That's what makes distorting the facts to generate conspiracy in order to in turn profiteer off that pain and the almost certain death of a small boy all the worse. You seem to be still stuck in the false narrative of M411. The FBI didn't 'dismiss' the report. They met with Harold Key and Park officials on site to follow up. They accepted the Rangers' assessment that the scream was too far away to be relevant given the timeline. Harold Key, as far as I can find in newspaper reports and the NPS and FBI files, never called the man he saw 'mangy', 'hairy', 'dishevelled', 'unkempt' or anything else of that nature, just 'a man'. And no one was seen 'packing something through the woods'. This came out in Paulides' account some 50 years later. As I mentioned in my previous post, and as above, clearly Bill Martin was doing everything he could to get the FBI involved as was his right and duty. It's therefore all the more striking that he wasn't shouting from the rooftops to the FBI, the governor he wrote to and the newspapers about this man, if he was indeed carrying something. The only logical explanation is that Harold Key never actually said that that's what he saw. As much as Bill Martin (indeed anyone in that situation) might want to believe that their child was kidnapped so as to hold on to the hope that he might still be alive, and as much as he might wish to persuade the FBI that this was the kidnapper, the actual facts were that: Harold Key reported hearing a scream and seeing a man. This was most likely at the same time as Dennis went missing, possibly up to 60 minutes before, and no later than 60 minutes after. This was 90 minutes (fast hike, not carrying a struggling child) away. There's nothing odd about concluding that it wasn't relevant or credible evidence of any kidnapping of Dennis. In fact, by placing this man a minimum 90 minutes away within a max 60 mins of disappearance, it actually constitutes an alibi! I didn't say that the man was 'mangy' (see above for my thoughts on that) or that he was necessarily operating a still or picking ginseng. I offered those as examples given Harold Key's initial thought and the fact that there was an admitted illegal ginseng harvester in the area some years later, so that could be plausible. What I said was that he was probably up to no good, which was based on his making his way away from the Keys asap. it could be something else as I said, and it doesn't necessarily have to be illegal either. But it does seem that he didn't want to be approached. The one thing I do know beyond all reasonable doubt that he wasn't kidnapping Dennis Martin. If the Park Service believed there were unscrupulous bad actors in the Park, I'm quite sure they wouldn't immediately jump to 'I know this guy brews moonshine/picks ginseng, so with absolutely no evidence whatsoever, I'm going to assume he's also a child abductor'. I'm also pretty sure that the FBI wouldn't go along with it, assume authority and open up an investigation despite the fact that the timeline makes it impossible for this man to be involved anyway. I'm not sure what exactly you mean by 'feral people'. I'm assuming the 'more animal than man', cannibalistic, never touched by civilisation, type rumoured without verifiable evidence to live in the smoky mountains. But the video you posted doesn't show that kind of person - the first home shown belonged to a Mr Patterson who was Sheriff of the County, and a Mr Rust, a Warden, with a picture shown of him and his perfectly clean and well dressed children. A far cry from 'feral'. The Kari Swenson and Claude Dallas cases you previously mentioned dealt with people who wanted to live off grid in isolation but certainly not 'feral'. If dealing with the off grid isolation type person, why jump straight to the conclusion that they are child abductors and send the Green Berets after them without any evidence of wrongdoing? Note that as previously stated the Key testimony came over a month after the Green Berets had been deployed so it can't be that they were deployed because of that testimony, it would have to be a practically instant conclusion that it was abduction from within the Park. If dealing with the 'feral humans' why conduct a Green Beret take out mission in the middle of the most public, best attended SAR mission ever? The picture you give of a draconian Park Service that would certainly know of a single moonshining operation and who would never allow it to stand, also doesn't really tally for me with the idea of 'who and the heck knows what is inside that park' and the existence of people (whether feral or off grid types) who the park would instantly suspect in a child disappearance but who would also be either unknown or tolerated within the park. I'd also again make the point that if the NPS/FBI/Military had such a strong and instant belief that there were people living within the Park snatching children, they wouldn't be likely to send boy scout out looking for them. Not to mention the point I made about someone out of the thousands that took part in the SAR surely coming across some evidence of a dwelling for such Park dwellers if it existed. The Green Beret presence has been explained - nearby on training, able to continue the same type of training as would be necessary whilst also assisting in the search for a missing child in a case that caught the public attention, and at the request of the NPS. I know they don't get involved in SAR routinely, but how often would they be training for similar terrain in Vietnam, at the same time and next to an SAR mission that required exactly the skills they had and were training? On the flip side, if sending the Green Berets in is what the military does when it suspects foul play, does it follow that no other case could be considered as involving foul play given that the Green Berets weren't sent in? As I said, it's impossible to completely rule out kidnapping given that we don't know for certain what happened. But the obvious, probable answer is getting turned around, and some natural (weather or animal based) death befalling him. One of the SAR volunteers actually fell off a bridge and broke his arm and might well have been done for were he not surrounded by other SAR individuals, so the idea that it wouldn't be likely for a small boy in the dark, pouring rain and high winds doesn't stack. The case just doesn't need unfounded conspiracy heaped upon unfounded conspiracy to explain (unless of course there are books to sell).

Thank you for your reply Firefighting is a noble career and I'm sure that you've made a lot of people's lives better and safer, but I don't see how that's relevant to this particular discussion. I should say, I'm from the UK and nothing in our fire service's experience would necessarily be relevant but I accept that your services are different so I may be wrong. You seem to accept that there wasn't a kidnapping ( I say "seem" because it looks like your paragraph may be a case of "even if you accept this is true, how do you explain this?" and I don't want to put words in your mouth or suggest you accept/concede something that you don't). That said, I disagree completely with your evaluation. You say 'you're telling me there is nothing strange about 1000s of people searching for a 5 year old boy that had a five minute head start and cannot find him?' but that's not what happened. He went missing at 4:30pm. His father and a few other people started searching for him within 3-5 minutes (the details are sketchy). They were searching in terrain that, outside the field and off the trail, which is the terrain he went missing, is reported as being dense forest ('so thick is the green growth of trees that a squirrel could go from Gatlinburg to Cherokee, N.C some 30 miles over the mountain, without ever having to touch ground' - The Tennessean 6.20.1969), ('[Dennis] became separated after plunging into the thick tangle of forest and underbrush, home of black bears, wild hogs, and snakes' - Kingsport Times 6.16.1969) He wasn't reported missing to the Rangers for 4 hours, at 8:28pm. Some few people (no reports I have found state a firm number) searched during the night, during which there was significant rainfall. The first actual, co-ordinated search started at 5am the next day. According to the NPS report, this consisted of somewhere between 50 and 80 people (it's not clear whether 'leaders' were included in the count of searchers or were additional). In any event, some 12+ hours after he went missing, fewer than 100 people were looking for him (assume the higher number of 80 and add in family, who let's assume weren't counted as 'searchers' by the NPS). This is a million miles away from 1000s looking for him within 5 minutes. Assume he could move a conservative 1mph, over 12 hours, that would give a potential search area of 452m2. Slightly smaller than Los Angeles City limits, but covered in dense forest, rivers, caves and crevices. It would be a minor miracle if they did find him! The number of searchers for 6.16.1969 was approx 300, 6.17.1969 was 365 etc. The only day over 1,000 was 6.21.1969, a full week after his disappearance. As for the Green Berets - from the NPS report '[Ranger Mike] Myers also contacted U.S. Forest Service District Ranger on the Nantahala, who in turn made contact with Col. Kinney, commanding the Special Forces troops in that area. Col. Kinney requested and obtained permission from the Third Army Headquarters at Ft Benning, Georgia, to transfer 40 Special Forces to the search area. - 6.15.1969 I can't see anything suggesting that the Green Berets 'kept adding to their force.' They seem to have added 22 men on 6.18.1969, although I admit the seem to have had 71 by 6.25.1969 33 left the search on 6.25.1969 with the remaining 38 leaving the next day. It is mentioned in the NPS report and news papers that they were 'in the area' and familiar with the type of terrain in the area due to having been deployed in Vietnam. I understand that Green Berets don't get involved in SAR on a regular basis, but if they're available, and if this, as was obviously the case, caught the public imagination, why not? Are you willing to suggest why you think the Green Berets were involved? Absent another, better, theory, I don't see why the logical reason put forth shouldn't be accepted.

I full believe that our government knows full well what these beings are. I don't believe for a second that has anything to do with shutting down commercial forestry or access to the forest. Biologists only know about the animals they have studied. This has more to do with religion, social upheaval and the government maintaining control.

A skeleton of a boy around the size of dennis martin was found in the 80's by ginseng poachers. The skeleton was found in the general vicinity of where he was reported missing. If i recall he disappeared in 1969. I'm not saying it was an open and closed case but if a skeleton of a boy that was around the size of dennis martin was found in the area that he went missing it kinda looks less likely that sasquatch abducted him. To be fair tho, it was never proven to be dennis martin. Heres Googles gemini overview. Again, if i recall, it was a skeleton and not just remains. No, the skeletal remains found in Tremont's Big Hollow in the Great Smoky Mountains were not those of Dennis Martin. In 1985, a ginseng hunter reported finding the remains of a small child, but a search of the area yielded nothing. The remains were never identified as Dennis Martin, and the mystery surrounding his 1969 disappearance remains unsolved.

^^ My understanding is that in most states, hunters are only allowed to take "permitted" animals - that is, animals that the state permits you to shoot, trap, or catch. Like what happened in Canada (discussed elsewhere in another thread) - hunters were permitted to take polar bears, and permitted to take brown bears (grizzlies?), but not permitted to take hybrid brown/polar bears. So, if I recall correctly, an American hunter got a huge fine for shooting a bear that was virtually indistinguishable (to the naked eye) from a bear he was permitted to take. Presuming one lives in a reasonable state - and that the shooting has been highly publicized so that it can't be swept under the rug - whomever first shoots and kills AND makes it out with the body could be reasonably safe.

I've already stated it, you quoted me, and it aligns perfectly with the statement you posted from the USFS, and I explained why I believe they have taken that position. I'm pretty confident that they don't. I don't think anybody in the agency wants to document anything about them. I didn't see a stamp or fine print footnote of official approval.

It gets worse. The California state AG's office has the authority over the return of all stolen guns statewide, and they require the gun owner to apply to get recovered guns back. Part of that application is providing the police report of both the theft and the recovery..........as if the AG's office can't just punch it up on their computer. I have the reports (two) on theft, but have been held with no info whatsoever on the recovery(s?) in one city. Frankly, I bet the evidence locker employee probably broke protocol in phoning me to inform me of the recovery.

Fifty years of lawyers have changed everything. Now police reports are like classified information. I had some firearms stolen in California a few years ago, and after recovering yet another gun, one police department is refusing to give me the police report on the recovery incident......and this after paying for the report. They say that I "have to be a victim" in order to get the report.........as if getting my firearms stolen doesn't make me a "victim".

From Outside Online, July 2016. It's a long article; the full .pdf is attached. The Outside Online website at https://www.outsideonline.com/featured offers good information on a variety of outdoor activities. Who knows, they may even have more Bigfoot articles. 2016 Outside Online Article.pdf

Maybe it wanted her for another purpose? If its goal was only to stun her and pack her off? A lone female hiker as a mate? It’s quite possible that the reason I have never seen one in all my years was simply because it didn’t want to engage me. And I rode on by. I am not Bigfoot big, but I am large and always armed. And in years past I was packing mules. And a 18 hand mule is intimidating, and I am sitting on it. Or maybe I was just lucky? It does make a person think a bump helmet may be a good investment while out there.

You have come a long way from Churchill arming citizens with Winchester .30-30 rifles.