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Some from this year blacktail deer hunting More IMG_20251101_142002.heic IMG_20251101_203359.heic

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A local young family contacted me recently, after seeing the latest episode (#3) of Small Town Monsters - Sasquatch Quest, about getting to some of the sighting locations, so Thomas, MagniAesir, and I are taking them on a road trip to several of the sites along the west side of Harrison Lake tomorrow. They seem pretty excited about getting out there, so I hope we don't dissapoint them. Bill (MagniAseir) and I are in the planning stages of an epic late summer road trip from our homes near the southern border of BC all the way to the Arctic Ocean, at Tuktoyaktuk, NWT. We don't expect to encounter Sasquatch there, but we should see just about every other type of northern critter, moose, caribou, grizzly, maybe even muskox or polar bear. It's a bucket list trip for Bill, and I'm excited to come along!

Chest did not heal…again. Go see surgeon tomorrow. So I have taken myself off of light duty. And I went for a Wolf hunt in Idaho. Went over Gisborne ridge. Lots of fog down low, finally broke out up high. I saw lots of deer and elk. Whitetail and elk on the way out down low. Mule deer up high. No wolves. There was about 4 inches of snow up top in the shade.

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.

Happy New Year, Bigfoot family! I hope every one gets a chance to answer their questions about Bigfoot/Sasquatch this year, whether it's with a sighting, physical evidence, or online research. I'm still very much enjoying the adventure, even as I turn 81 today. Cheers!

This thought about tracks and encountering other critters .. I still think the most likely to be dangerous is other humans. There are a lot of good people out there. It only takes one problem person, though sometimes those travel in packs. Watch out around campgrounds and trailheads, they present a predatory person with an ideal opportunity .. people with their guard down, possibly few witnesses, and a ready way to escape / fade into the crowd (traffic). Maintain situational awareness .. ear buds out, cell phones pocketed / put away, hands free, and keys handy. You want to be able to walk to your car, open the door, throw in your pack, climb in, and drive away with no searching for keys etc while you are at your maximum exposure to risk. Probably all will be cool, but it is better to be over prepared than under prepared.

I don't think sasquatchery is dying. SERIOUS, science-based sasquatchery is dying, pop-culture and wootard sasquatchery seems to be taking off .. unfortunately. It's become the equivalent of pink flamingos and lawn gnomes. It is very difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff. It has driven most of the serious researchers .. the ones not dead yet .. underground to get away from the "noise." There is nothing this forum can do about it. The world has moved "forward" in a not very appealing direction.

Do you believe chimpanzees really do exist? If yes, did you believe that chimpanzees really existed before 2004? If yes again, that would impossible to believe if fossilized remains are the benchmark by which existence is measured. The first fossilized remains of a chimpanzee was not found until September 2004 by Dr. Nina Jablonski in the Rift Valley of Africa. Let's compare the two "creatures". It's estimated that ~250,000 chimpanzees live in Africa, their average lifespan is about 35 years, and they have been in existence ~5-8 million years. Let's be conservative, use 5 million years, and if these estimates are correct, let's do the math. (5,000,000yrs x 250,000 chimps)/40 yr lifespan= 31,250,000,000 billion chimps. So, ~31 billion chimpanzees have lived in Africa yet not one fossilized remain was found until late 2004. Moreover, we all suspect that sasquatches are far more rare than chimpanzees don't we? Armed with this information, in my opinion, that leaves us with the real question which is, "What clear-thinking person would ever expect fossilized remains of a sasquatch to be found?"

https://abcnews.go.com/International/jane-goodall-famed-primatologist-anthropologist-conservationist-dead-91/story?id=109868347 Back doc brought this to my attention. Rest in peace Jane!🙏🏻

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.

502 was definitely a bad gateway. Glad to see it was not our pathway

We'll never know the truth unless a Mothershop lands on the whitehouse lawn and an alien steps out wanting to talk to the President. UFOs are used as cover for black projects, doesn't mean all UFO cases are fabricated by the government, but a lot are.

Do y'all remember the old saying, " If you keep doing the same thing over and over, you'll keep getting the same outcome"? I think that's a lot of the problem. People assume or believe they know what bigfoot is so they keep looking for physical evidence, which at this point, will have to be a body. I don't think that will work either and I'll tell you why. I've kept this opinion under wraps for years but I'm dying of metastatic breast cancer that has now spread to major organs, so I don't have much time left to tell the tale. Many years ago, I went to Selma, Alabama to investigate a giant skeleton on display in a restaurant that was supposedly Cheif Tuscaloosa. For those who aren't familiar, Cheif Tuscaloosa was documented by the Spanish to be over 8 feet tall. I suspected that this skeleton wasn't human or some historic Indian Chief, so I went on down to Selma to check it out. The owner of the restaurant provided the documentation from the US government that the skeleton was over 7 feet tall. They took that skeleton for further study, but what they returned was obviously a human skeleton typical of what you would find in an anatomy class in school. I measured the skeleton and it was only slightly taller than me. These medical school skeletons can sometimes be a conglomeration of bones from different people. I took a toe bone for DNA analysis but after talking to a well-known geneticist we decided it wasn't worth the effort to do DNA testing based on what I found. The point I'm getting at is that no matter what you believe bigfoot to be it is a real phenomenon. I say that because the government obviously swapped out those skeletons and sent a regular human skeleton back to the owners instead of the original skeleton. I'm pretty sure the documents that she showed me were legitimate, she did not realize the skeleton was swapped out until I examined it and it didn't fit the measurements on the documentation. The government wanted that original skeleton for a reason, now what they found out is anyone's guess. The same will happen if someone manages to obtain a type specimen. All I can say is when you look down into the abyss, it certainly looks back at you. Keep that in mind as you continue your quest for truth. I think the government knows what they are and it is probably nothing that we assume it to be. I think people that are interested in bigfoot get bored with the same results, or lack of results, that happens over and over again when you simply look for physical evidence, keeping the focus and assumptions about a being so narrow.

Got back from the woods and was skunked by Bigfoot and morels. Didn't find either one, lol. I was in one area up on a ridge and there was a ton of elk sign. Found one spot where something big and heavy lay down about 4' in diameter. I assume it was an elk. Then I came across a couple of young healthy trees that were just pushed over. The first one I thought was odd. Then another 100yds or so, I found another one. Same species, same size. Same damage just above the roots. Very odd. The third one, on the same ridge, and about another 100yds down the ridge from the last one caused me to take a photo of it to study later. Then this in the same area... Ironic since my first and last names start with "T". Other than that, nothing "squatchy". No prints, no wood knocks, no whoops, tree structures, or anything else. But, I did find a couple of great camping spots for my ambulance later this summer, and saw some beautiful country. Carried my latest 10mm to see how I liked it...

Out again today up the Pack River. Cut deer and moose tracks. Hiked 2 miles into a clear cut. Did a few call sets. Nothing. The clouds rolled in early after noon. Pea soup. On the way out but still on National Forest I come around the corner and what appears to be a Wolf standing on the road. I grab the binos and look at it and it finally turns and it has a harness on.🙄 I never saw the owner. The chick in Montana that shows up to the bar with a skinned Husky was playing in my head.🤣 I got back on the main FS road and continued up river until I hit a mudslide that wiped the road out. A 4 wheeler with tracks had cut a trail out and had made it through. I had to turn around. But it did remind me to stop at the DMV in Idaho and buy my 2026 sticker for my Yamaha Grizzly on tracks. It’s getting to the point that I need to be taking it to reach the good spots. My birthday gift of the Ray Ban smart glasses is working out well. I can just take a picture with a button on the frame instead of digging for my cell phone. And I think the picture quality looks good. What do you guys think?

Looks like 37 members voted. Top 5 1) Latest Bigfoot News 2) Researcher Discussions 3) Researcher Media 4) PGF Discussion 5) Historical Archive Library If you combine 2 and 3? You can see that researchers are truly our most valuable resource on this forum! 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻 Thank you to all of our “boots on the ground” members who share their findings, pictures, audio, etc! I also want to thank Trogluddite for expanding the Historical Archive! 👍

Conditions that preserve fossils are extremely rare. It is commonly agreed by professional and academic biologists that less than 1% of the species which have ever lived have left fossils that we have found. Never mind individuals, we're talking about 99% of all species did not leave fossils for us to discover. Contemplate that. Contemplate the implications. Many of those fossils we do have which were land-based lived in flash flood country, they did not live in forests. Flash floods occur in dry climates with infrequent but catastrophic rainfall and cover dead animals then dry them, maybe for decades, in soil that absorbs the deal animal's moisture when the flood ends. Forests have regular rainfall so that fallen dead things don't dry adequately for preservation and have acidic soils that dissolve bones rather than preserving them. The main exception would be in volcanic ash beds .. we can see that in the John Day / Clarno fossil beds in eastern Oregon for instance. So while we might find recent bigfoot remains, given what we know about where bigfoot reports come from, few are in places that are likely to create fossils to discover later. Edit to add .. so if I were looking for fossils, I'd look in the ash beds near the Cascade volcanoes or in the dry washes on the east slope of the Cascades, maybe east slope of the Rockies. I think most other places in the continental US get too much rainfall for preservation needed to produce fossils. MIB

For anyone interested in this idea of a Bigfoot metapopulation, I go deeper into the subject on Substack this week. I think this idea offers an answer to a few Bigfoot mysteries and debunker arguments. And, it may explain differences in Bigfoot morphology reported in different parts of North America (e.g., PNW vs east Texas region). https://thesocialbigfoot.substack.com/p/bigfoot-are-meta

I would suggest a home range model with a nomadic cycle of following resources completely every 2 to 3 weeks ( obviously deviating enough down from lasting snow ) along box-canyons and or benches that follow streams and smaller river pathways. This area would be chosen based on the ability to remain hidden, thermoregulation and browsing/hunting along the way. My data indicates constant movement cycle within a territory, they seem to hang in an area for not much longer than 3 or 4 days ( there have been certain months in certain areas that are exception ) and they basically travel for a day to another resource area along a known routine and hang out for a few days and so on, eventually they follow this general path all the way back around to the starting line and repeat but constantly flexing the path ( within 1 or 2 miles of bandwidth outside of direction of intended travel ) according to need or human activity. This model prevents patterning by prey and humans, prevents over browsing and resource devastation, explains the indifference and frequency of road crossing reports and provides a schedule that allows for gauging future resources to avoid scarcity periods. I plan on doing a thread thoroughly explaining it all in-depth in the near future.

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.

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

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.

After reading through this thread, it strikes me that if sasquatch were "but a mere wood ape" and the government knew of it, as seems to be the concensus, it would have been acknowledged long ago. There would be no big deal if there was a large American forest gorilla species. Which then compels one to reason there must be considerably more to it. The foot morphology certainly seems to point to a far more human creature, as does the bipedal walking, and apparently opposable thumbs. And then there's its apparent cognitive abilities, as seen in their knack for stealth and existing on the periphery of our towns and cities. Then there's the evidence of language development, another indicator of a higher sentience. And that's not even touching on the elements of woo... But in light of the silence, its difficult to presume just how the feds view these creatures, but I'd hazard the guess that they know a good deal more about them than most of us do.....

Giant squid are huge, the size of a school bus. They're extinct or nearly so, right? Impossible to film. Never before seen in their natural habitat? Turns out, there are tens of millions of giant squid in the oceans, plenty enough to support the current Sperm Whale population. Only a few years ago (literally, like 2024) we thought them near extinction, and had never filmed a live one except under extremely unusual accidental conditions or the few washed up on beaches or caught stuck to the mouth of a whale mid-meal. Now we can film them any time we want. The secret? Changing the light used to film the deep. This is an analogous situation to sasquatch, just in case you were wondering why I'm talking about giant squid.

It was Bob Heironimus.

I went out Friday after work to meet a buddy camping in the Silver-Skagit valley for the weekend. The logging road in was in the best condition I've seen it in years, with the damage from the '21 floods all rebuilt, with just a few small edge washouts from recent storms, and virtually no washboarding, making for a smooth trip at decent speed. About a km from the turnoff to his campsite, I spotted a small doe on the left side of the road, facing the clearcut to the left. I slowed, expecting her to bolt to the left, but as I got very close, she spun right and jumped in front of me. Had I not slowed first, I would have hit her; as it was I missed by about 1/2 a meter. My buddy had been there all week, and had several deer within a few meters of his camp, both does and bucks, as well as a visit with a skunk, which he was very careful not to spook! We saw no bear sign at all, lots of birds, and even a marmot, which haven't been common in that area in the past. This was my first overnight use of the roof top tent I bought last fall. I had no problem climbing in or out of it, but found the thin mattress very uncomfortable to sleep on. The issue that surprised me was trying to get out of bed in the morning. I found it very difficult to get my 81 year old body to sit up, I had to roll onto my stomach, pull my knees and elbows under me to rise off the floor, then get into a position to unzip the door to climb out. I think I'll have to sell it and look for some other solution for camp nights. In spite of that issue, I really enjoyed getting out with a fellow 'Squatcher for the weekend, and solve the world's problems over a drink around a campfire in the silence of the big timber.

@Madison5716 I don't get here very often, so just seeing that I was tagged now. To answer your question, my study is the place to send any potential physical samples. Jeff was sending samples to me before he passed, and every biological sample he still had in his lab that folks had previously sent to him is coming to me at NC State. The link to offer samples is the first button/link on this page: https://sites.google.com/ncsu.edu/darbyorcutt/home Unfortunately, Henner passed very soon after Jeff. He was a big supporter of my work too, and both he and Jeff were eager to see what my findings would be.

Just got back from a 3200-mile road trip from Washington to the AZ/Mexico border and back. I won an auction for a 2009 IH ambulance in Marysville, WA so had to take a sidetrack to there and pick it up. Plan is to convert it into an RV for exploring the Idaho woods. I would have loved to find one in 4x4, but realized most of my weekend trips didn't really need 4wd. The new rig is very beefy and not in too bad of shape. Going to strip the interior and build a log cabin-themed interior complete with little wood stove.

One of the questions regarding the PGF is how was it that Patty could leave a deeper impression in the sandbar than Roger's and Bob's horses. There was well-known poster here on BFF who did an experiment on a sandy beach and posted his results (and video or pictures I think). It turned out that his foot impression was deeper than a horse whose rider had it walk near his tracks. I was flummoxed how a heavy horse on small hooves would not be deeper that a much lighter person with larger feet. The moral of that story is that the mechanics of a foot's movement are far more important than the weight of the person/animal making the impression. I wish I could remember the BBF poster's name but cannot. It was a while ago.

BP is "before present". (a quick edit: for "BP" time, year 0 is 1950, so 200BP would be 1750.) The earliest Clovis points date to about 13,000 years ago. Having sites in North America 10,000 years before Clovis nullifies the whole "Clovis first" paradigm. Along with that idea was populating North America through an ice free corridor in the Cordilleran ice sheet. There was no ice free corridor 23,000 years ago. This more or less forces the populating of N.A. to have been by boat along the coast following the "kelp highway" rather than overland. Most of the artifacts from that route are under hundreds of feet of seawater today since the melting of the continental glaciers has pushed sea levels up that much. There were at least 4 periods in the pleistocene where there was a Bering land bridge rather than open water but we don't have any generally accepted evidence of human occupation going back to those earlier 3 periods. For now, the suggested, speculative very early "stuff" (100K years BP) seems to stand alone with no supporting evidence and most likely is wishful thinking, not evidence of human occupation. Possibility of 30K years could be inferred though. The important part is that Clovis technology was NOT the earliest in North America, people were here before Clovis technology was developed. Most likely, also, since there were already people here, Clovis, despite having strong similarity to Solutrean technology, is probably a North American development. With people already here, there should be strong genetic connection if the technology were imported.

From a pure story telling perspective? I like Bob Gymlan. His real name is Bryan Gagne, stage name of Bob Gymlan. The illustrations are what does it for me. Compelling stories well told. Not strictly BF related, of course, but entertaining nonetheless. Some of the others will just relay any zany story that some troll or prankster sends in, zero vetting, which turns me off immediately to the rest of their content. Other than that, there's a hundred small channels with no subscribers who go out and film in the woods, same or not they put time in. Western New York Bigfoot is an example. Just a guy going into the woods.

Merry Christmas BFF!

Yes, at least at times. I'm not too concerned when I'm in my "research area" or in other parts of this general area. I know I'm watched, followed, occasionally on the losing end of what seem to be practical jokes / pranks. I think if I were in danger there I'd have turned up missing long ago. They're only there when safe food is plentiful. Other places I'd be more calculatingly cautious at least until I learned the vibe / ground rules of the place. I don't care for finding cougar or bear tracks in my tracks when I return. That puts my hackles up much more than BF does. And now we have wolves in increasing number / increasing distribution, some that have learned to overcome / ignore human hazing. Bigfoot is the least of those worries.

I want to thank Forums management for the opportunity to expand the historical archives. I've had a Newspapers.com subscription for awhile but was using it for other reasons. I really didn't think of its use for Bigfoot-related research until I was fact-checking a book of historical sightings and I discovered more newspaper articles than I could possibly make use of. It would have been a shame just to stuff that research into a closet and force others to re-invent the wheel.

Lightning Crick to Trestle crick Cabinet Mountains Idaho 12 degrees and about 1 foot of snow up top. Bullwinkle would not yield the road for awhile.

Here is a video chronicling our investigation into an area that we recently located using report data and terrain analysis. There is some interesting stuff happening up there and we will be going back and monitoring the lower elevation edges throughout the winter.

This fall! His is a hog!

I know many here are hunters based in the PNW and so I figured this section needed a black tailed deer thread as they are the grey ghost of the cascade range. The mature blacktail buck is truly the toughest ungulate to locate and hunt in North America Please feel free to share stories, strategies and photos of the pursuit. I will start off with my own experience and strategies. In my few years of learning mature black tail buck behavior and patterns I have found that these guys like to be up along benches, plateaus and saddles that are difficult to approach, they routinely move between these kind of bedding areas and a series of feeding zones such as 5 to 8 year regrowth of clearcut or select cut stretched over terrain that has relief points and staging areas. If there are springs and marshes nearby the chances are even better that you are on a great spot, they are edge habitat creatures and like irregular pockets of different forest types and feed heavily on general browse in the summer favoring red huckleberry leaves, alder, vine maple and cottonwood. In the fall and winter they shift to hitting lichen, mushrooms, alder, salal and huckleberry tips. The older mature deer become very nocturnal and move to a very heavy lichen diet and hold up in old growth timber, these older deer will tolerate a little more snow to remain in higher areas that predator pressure is lower. The also seem to move less overall and don't run until later in the rut but rather wait for does to get pushed into their core areas as they escape the younger bucks and human created pressure. At 4+ years they essentially build a knowledge of what areas do not get pressured that also have and retain resources late into the year. As far as basic behavior they will use the wind and stand perfectly still for well over 15 minutes watching and listening before entering into a new environment to try and pick out predators and movement. I have had them catch me move just an inch and they will circle the detected disturbance until they can catch a scent before dropping their guard to feed or approach, they will also stay in their bed in the brush until you get almost on top of them if they feel you do not know they are there.. Younger bucks make more mistakes and will lean hard into the rut and take chances if there are hot does nearby. My goals for getting close are to identify remote transitional habitat pockets, locate feeding zones and then key in on old rub routes within 60 yards of primary game trails that take me to knobs, benches and flat top ridges. I then will set cameras up along staging areas and try to plan still hunt routes based on dominant wind and barometric pressure changes around wet nasty weather. I also E-scout often to try and understand how the does are using the area and how the bachelor groups settle in around fall as they break up. I often find higher deer density in areas that have some south east exposure for warmth in winter as well as some wrap around benches to face north east as this is an escape from the wind in winter and some shade and cool in summer. Hope this is helpful to some of you guys out there and feel free to add any tips you have.

Something like that crossed my mind briefly back in Aug 2011 when "he" came into camp. The first thought was ... "Ishi?" Yep, Native Americans wearing moccasins .. and using night vision goggles. Surrrrre, just like bears, "they do that all the time." Then the speed of travel vs speed of steps .. thus length of steps .. became obvious and such foolishness went out the window. And so ... we follow the evidence ...

I packed spray for my cook tent in remote hunts. Weight and bulk weren't concerns (I use a off-road rig to get out there), and the thought was that it might work on a young, curious bear, negating the need to kill it. The social jury here in Alaska is that it might work on such bears, but that, too, depends on the bear. One friend has a bee hive on his deck (insanity where he lives up Eagle River valley). Sure enough, he got a bear on his deck, but instead of a thousand pound brown bear, it was a small black bear. He stepped out and shooed it away. In a few minutes it came back. He stepped out with the shotgun and fired a round into the air. It ran off, and in a few minutes it came back. He loaded a bean bag round in it and shot the bear on the fanny. It takes off............and in a half hour, is back. Finally, he puts it down with a slug. He calls the Troopers to report a DLP, and a Trooper shows up, throws it into the back of his pickup, and drives off. Didn't make my friend skin it out or even fill out the DLP report. Would spray have worked better? Dunno. Maybe the bear would have been uncomfortable enough to learn something. Since it was a young, small bear, it might have educated him and saved his life for a decade or so. But, then, maybe not. But my friend had walls between him and the bear and daylight outside, which gave him plenty of safety to decide what to do. A bear in the night while you're wrapped up in a sleeping bag inside a tent? That's a whole different scenario. Like this guy: http://www.bfro.net/GDB/show_report.asp?id=15821 Sorry. AFAIC, that guy wasted too much ammo (ie, >1 round) on warning shots. I'd have shot that sasquatch as sure as sin, then sat with my back against a rock wall until daylight and ready to shoot more of them. There is absolutely, positively no way I'm going out into the wilderness without at least two firearms: a rifle and a sidearm.

I got out for a solo run on Sunday afternoon to the Bear Creek watershed on the east side of Harrison Lake. The weather was mild and broken clouds, until I reached the summit of the east ridge of the valley, when the wind picked up and brought in cold showers. Of course, I didn't take any pictures on the way up, so all I captured was cloudy views of the lake, 4600' below. The only signs of wildlife were some deer tracks, bear scat, a few squirrels, and 1 skunk, but it was refreshing to get out in the mountains after a few weeks in town.

A narrative that is not factually true is often made up for entertainment purposes.

I was a cop for 27 years. I carried, in one flavor or another, a Glock model of some sort/caliber depending upon the whims and tides of the agency. I started with a Glock 17 in 9mm in 1990, then the department became convinced that we needed 40 cal, so we went to the Glock 22 in 1994, then for what seemed to be about five minutes in the early 2000s we went to the Glock 21 in 45ACP..........then back to the Glock 17 in 9mm again. Ugh. That said, I trust the Glock platform 100% and have carried Glock on duty, off duty, shooting in multiple competition disciplines for over 35 years and now since I am retired from LE and a practicing attorney....I still carry a Glock 19 in 9mm. That said....in the woods, mountains, or desert....I carry a Glock Model 20 in 10mm with Buffalo Bore Hard Cast 200 grain TCFP. It screams out at 1300fps, penetrates deeply, and gives me 16 rounds on tap with a pair of 15 round magazines on my belt for very little weight cost versus ballistic payload, and weight is a consideration because of two knee and a hip replacement as the result of a line-of-duty injury. But, let's be clear....I don't carry to defend myself from a Sasquatch primarily....it's probably 10th down on my list. The reality is I am convinced that they are dangerous, but not aggressive unless you push the action and so I consider the likelihood of having to engage one to be incredibly remote just based on the number of interactions I have had (1 in 1993) compared to the thousands of hours I have spent in the woods, mountains, and desert over the decades. Add to that the credible interactions that others have had where no one had to shoot one. Ape Canyon notwithstanding, but let's face it Fred Beck shot one of them, so yeah...they's be pissed. I'm not convinced Justin Smeja shot one as he claimed, so I am not going to say he did or he didn't, only that I am not convinced he did. So, the reality is that I carry my 10mm as insurance against bear, mountain lion, feral dogs, wild hogs which I consider to be the most likely threat, and of course humans with bad intent. Looking back to 1993 when I had my face to face encounter, with decades of hindsight....the thought I had back then that I was going to have to defend myself from the Sasquatch was PROBABLY initiated by ME and my body language or a scent I gve off that caused a defensive posture reaction response in the creature. I had been a cop for 5 years by this time and my thinking was "threat focused" and "threat management" and "aggression response" and the stimuli of being face to face with something I didn't believe existed back then, or at least didn't believe was a "Michigan Thing" reset my brain clock in a microsecond and my whole reality changed. I am still nine out of ten toes in the "no kill" camp, and I sure as hell don't want to ever be forced to shoot one. I'd like to see another one, not just hear wood knocks and a couple of suspected vocalizations, and see some suspected prints...but just have that moment where I could experience it again and NOT be thinking "tactically" but more like "Okay, what can I learn?". Sorry for the long post. Once I got to typing, I got too lazy to stop.

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

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.