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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.

My view is there are not many of these things out there ( less in your area, maybe 3 from border to Newport ) and I am convinced they come down right to a place they find " tolerable " and skirt along river corridors just above normal human access or use. The cycle they likely follow in the colder climates must be large and in thick timber so the ice plate deposits from melt and refreezing cover a lot of their recognizable prints and destroy details that give it away. I believe Grassman58 on youtube has found a few suggestive trackways over the years. Being close to edge habitat for deer, elk and remote valleys with running waterways would be priority. My only guess would be they reduce activity massively, perhaps have some caches and operate at on deficit until snow breaks up. I would not be surprised to find out one day they can reduce their metabolic rate in the colder months, some form of torpor but not true hibernation. I have heard some far north native tribes are reported to have this ability to a degree. I could see them taking advantage of shafts and shallow cave systems but I want to know why we don't find preserved tracks in the cave floor if that is the case. There are a variety of snow trackways from nearby your area and they tend to occur around periods of bad weather, one I remember was about a guy found a set of prints that crossed his property near the Priest River area and they led up hill to a mangled deer completely disemboweled and meat pulled from the body, he noted bloody butt marks, hand prints and knee prints in the snow around the carcass. This was back around 2008 or something, the tracks went up hill into timber through some nasty thick regrowth and the guys could not follow as the snow was bucketing down and night was falling. I met the guy and heard his story first hand at the Klondike Tavern in Laclede, WA just before he moved to Alaska ( Thorn Bay ). I heard a similar story about someone finding snow prints up Dry Canyon Rd in 2014, tracks crossed the road and went up hill toward the north to south ledge above the river, I tried to get in touch with the witness but he was native and did not want people to think he was crazy so he would not get in touch with me. I also got a report of a snow trackway behind Freeman Lake in February of 2017, guys brother told me a little about it but said that he would not talk to anyone as he was a totally recluse. The other factor is that people out in these more harsh environments and remote properties are generally tight lipped and don't like to share. They know stuff and you don't and they want to keep it that way. To just touch on the coast for a second, I have loads of data here that seems to indicate they are still moving through their core habitats and visit throughout the year, as noted in another thread. They seem to drop below the holding snowline and hang out in wet thick crap on the edge of big timbered slopes that border a variety of habitat types and resources, they then cycle through a kind of loop along preferred paths over the course of a couple weeks and return to the starting point. Outside of the coastal states, your guess is as good as mine honestly but we still get the occasional snow trackway in the dead of winter so my question would be, how is it happening if they go coastal? This where I am with the question and that is what I have come across in my 4 years investigating the Selkirk area and it did not add up to much. I 100% agree, if you can solve the winter strategy in snow holding areas then you can really move the ball forward.

Yeah, that is why the herbivore and even a plant dominant omnivore modeling is a tough pill to swallow for Sasquatch. I am of the mind that protein and fat are dominant in the diet. That would alleviate many of the problems regarding area devastation and energy expenditure. 1 pound of animal fat/ plant fat is around 3500. 1 pound of animal protein ranges from 500 to 900. 1 pound of huckle berries is about 170. If a Sasquatch wanted to eat well I think it would be fair to suggest that if they managed 2.5 pounds of fat, 5 pounds of protein and 3 pounds of fruit/leaves they would likely be in a surplus. That would indicate that you could meet the needs of one individual with just over 10 pounds of mass.

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 ...

We should be able to select more than one category. I visit the tar pit to see what humor Inc has dredged up.

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'm sure a lot of you already know about Lazy Cowboy's Bigfoot YouTube videos. If not, they are a MUST SEE. Lazy Cowboy does an excellent job taking the data from the PGF and creating a CGI recreations better than anything I have ever seen. Specifically, I recommend: 1) Bigfoot- Recreating Bluff Creek 2) Bigfoot- Recreating Bluff Creek Part 2 The Patteson Gimlin Film Route. <--- This is the best one. Outstanding. We can see points of view from any angle, through Roger's camera, through Patty's POV and so on. The terrain comes to life. For some already aware of the Lazy Cowboy videos, this is not news. Still, I would like to hear your thoughts on it and anywhere you might think Lazy Cowboy might get it wrong here or there. If you haven't seen these, don't walk, RUN to your computer and watch these Especially . Bigfoot- Recreating Bluff Creek Part 2 The Patteson Gimlin Film Route. They are amazing. The PGF site makes sense so much more sense to me now. One area I am uncertain about is his use of the shadows indicating the PGF was filmed at 3pm timeline not the 1 or 1:30pm. Give these a view.

Unfortunately, Bob Gimlin is an unreliable witness (which does not mean I think he's lying). With regards to this issue, he has said that the film site was: two miles from the campsite - see Webster's interview of Roger & Bob in 1967 four miles from the campsite - see John Green's interview of Bob in 1992 and a CBS47 2019 interview of Bob Roger Patterson gave both those estimates and added 3 miles in an interview by Stan Peters Interview of Roger Patterson As to the time they left camp, Bob has said: midday (which could be 1:30 during the summer, I suppose, but not in October) - see Robert Morgan's interview of Bob "right after lunch" (which could be anywhere from 11:00 AM if they were up early to 1:00ish) - Les Stroud's interview with Bob and this 1:30 time, which I believe came from a CBS47 2019 interview of Bob - If I understand correctly, The Lazy Cowboy is using other people's interviews, not his own. And leaving camp about 1:30 contradicts times Bob Gimlin has given for the encounter itself, which include: “about midday, perhaps a little bit after noon time” - again from John Green's interview of Bob in 1992 "Early afternoon" - attributed to John Green's questionnaire in Bigfoot at Bluff Creek by Danny (Daniel) Perez (2003) about 2:00 PM - Finding Bigfoot Legend (2018) All of this because early interviewers asked both Roger and Bob to tell them a story, but did not conduct the kind of interview necessary to determine as precisely as possible the facts. Also, I don't believe that The Lazy Cowboy (or anyone else) cherry-picked a certain interview because it better fits a narrative; instead, it seems a lot of of people are unfamiliar with (or unwilling to admit) the inconsistencies surrounding the P-G film.

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.

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.

Yes, stream pathways that branch off are harder to access and have restrictions but I think equally important is the overwhelming record of sasquatch doing this activity at night. This reduces exposure and therefore sightings, what few are by the river are majority at night by campers or night fisherman on reservations. I do have several dusk vocalization events close to salmon pathways at dawn and dusk and one very up close sighting ( 20 feet under a high powered flashlight ) in the parking lot of salmon fishing area.

^Good example, and yes lots of reports from pickers of all kinds. BTW, there's plenty to learn about behaviors from select podcasts. I recently listened to an interesting report from a mushroom picker who was picking to make money, and had hired a whole crew to help. They got an aggressive confrontation in which the man's dog tried to attack and was killed by the big guy. I got the impression that the people had really messed up by overharvesting. That one starts about 50:00 in the first video. The second one I haven't entirely listened to but the title is on-topic.

You talked about Bigfoot needing to leave cover and be out in the open to forage. That’s a false assumption. I have picked huckleberries under a lodgepole pine canopy in Ferry county. Stuff grows IN the forest. That’s my statement. And yes? There are plenty of reports of berry pickers encountering Bigfoot. And yes there is a seasonality to it. https://www.bfro.net/GDB/show_report.asp?id=20802

They do. Just not as often as we'd like. This is partially because there are very few sasquatches and the sasquatches have taken up nocturnal or other behaviors to minimize contact. For example, bear encounters in berry patches occur in Alaska, but not nearly as often as they could, considering there are @ 140K bears, less than 1 million people, and an area over twice the size of Texas involved..............as well as the fact that people don't pick berries for a good 16 hours of the day.

They hypothesis that we began burying our dead because it attracted predators. So it began as pragmatic and may have evolved into more of a ritual. Homo Naledi at Rising Star Cave just unceremoniously dumped their dead down a chute in the back of the cave. Whereas Neanderthals buried their dead with grave goods, ochre, flowers, etc. Interestingly enough? There are no stone tools associated with Homo Naledi. So I find it odd that they are included in the genus Homo. Which just shows that science has a very gray area defining what is included in our genus and what is not. So Sasquatch may be included in our genus or it may be excluded upon discovery. But I flat reject that they are apart of our species. Based on morphology alone. Great apes are exceptionally smart (excluding humans or Homo Sapiens), so our ancestors like Homo Erectus must of been terrifying. I would not want a pack of them hunting me in the forest with spears. (L-R) Australopithecus Afarensis, Homo Erectus, Homo Naledi

Bigfoot's needs and abilities are always stretched into whatever shape is needed to fit the narrative. <--- This almost always makes the narrative wrong. -Say Bigfoot is sick, suddenly there are more fellow Bigfeet out there bringing him food. -Say we can't find a body, Bigfoot bury their dead -Don't have sightings in decades of looking, Bigfoot has the ability to teleport. When Questions about Bigfoot arise, we need to look at the most likely scenario. Sure, shows like Finding Bigfoot seems to know what Bigfoot's favorite baseball team is, or his favorite color. Not bad considering they have never found Bigfoot let alone studied the actual issue in Queston. Yes, we can imagine various scenarios for Bigfoot. But if bigfoot is old or injured is just more likely to die or get eaten by another predator. Nothing extreme needs to explain it. If the food supply dries up for Bigfoot in one area, like most animals (or people) it would move on to an area where it needs are available. Billy the Kidd (of whomever) robbed banks because, "That is where the money is" Simplicity rules. Simplicity is the marketplace of nature. Brody: Now this guy, he... he keeps swimmin' around in a place where the feeding is good until the food supply is gone, right? Hooper: It's called "territoriality". It's just a theory that I happen to... agree with. It is easy to imagine elaborate scenarios to explain all things Bigfoot. When Bigfoot is not able to meet its needs, it dies. It will live so long as it can. We don't have to imagine much beyond that

Yes, would be helpful to list, say, your top three reasons, and add a few more.

That notion seems to lack imagination. Chasing down dinner is only one option. Ambush is another .. and doesn't take speed or endurance. Yet another is .. if you're somewhat nocturnal .. to wait for dinner to go to sleep, then sneak up on it. You should, if you want to get at the crux of the thing, think about all of the options, not just the stereotypical and obvious.

You are 100% correct. The NPS knew of his games over 13 years (not 8) in Kaflia Bay and allowed it to continue. So did the air taxi operator, who should have faced charges, AFAIC.

I'll add another layer of complexity to this. If Bigfoot are a real species, they could exist as a meta-population. As a meta-population they live in small, mostly isolated groups distributed over patches of forest areas. These groups are highly mobile, moving among these forest patches (across hundreds of miles) and occasionally running into other groups for breeding. In the case of Bigfoot, they may even exchange information in some way — for example, avoid that forest to the south because deer are sick or the water is bad or the BFRO is there or whatever. This isn't a new theory. I got the idea from a 2006 article on the Indian Gray Wolf, but the concept is frequently employed in ecology. Meta-population view of Bigfoot would explain: Sightings in non-remote places and roadsides Low inbreeding despite living in small groups Sightings in areas that may lack sufficient resources to survive over long periods Bigfoot sometimes reported taking farm animals (as they move between habitats) Overestimation of pop size, as the same animal is witnessed in widely different places near the same time Not seeing a Bigfoot when visiting a place where one or more were recently witnessed A meta-population of Bigfoot will likely be affected by the USDA removing 112 million acres of forests… which is equivalent to 175,000 sq miles, which is more than the size of California. Certainly this would not happen in one place, but it's likely that each forest management area will be reduced significantly enough to affect wildlife cover and food sources. I doubt this would be a thinning out of a forest, because that’s just not cost effective. It’ll be large swaths of biodiverse forest areas, and replanting will either not happen or will lack in plant diversity and become dead spots for wildlife. I’m not a hunter or camper but this is my main concern about this USDA initiative. Maybe someone with forest experience on BFF has a more optimistic assessment and can relieve my anxiety (or link me to a post in that other thread). Oh, and for any conspiracy theorists, perhaps the national forest system was created originally to support a meta-population of Bigfoot. An argument could be made, actually.

Served with borscht?🤣

If I ever heal up? I think a snow bike would be an amazing research tool. We obviously cannot keep up on foot. But a snow trackway being followed on a snow bike is sure to produce results. You cannot go straight up the mountain like a sled, but you can finesse your way through almost anything. They are dropping into creek bottoms I would never consider with a sled. Throw a drone in a backpack? I don’t think Sasquatch escapes without being seen, filmed, whatever. These things go any where.

I have seen no convincing data to suggest they as a population go all the way to the coast here in the PNW, I do find good data to suggest they come down in elevation. We have had activity in December, January, February, March and April here at various locations in WA. The below video is a fair example ( I personally went to this location a few years ago based on a number of winter reports including this track find, I was able to get in touch with the investigator who was on the scene at the time. ), the tracks came from up above ( small knobs and benches on the slope side at about 2200ft on the high end ) on the west side of Shannon Lake and Baker Lake that are both loaded with miles and miles of thick/marshy timber patches that are tough to hunt and penetrate. They came from the timber uphill and both jumped off a rock ledge over 12 feet up to get down to the edge of that community, they crossed the road and went up onto someone's porch and got into a charcoal grill likely out of desperation looking for food ( fat drippings ? ). I don't remember at the moment where they retreated to but it was generally back into timber up slope. Here is a side angle photo of the terrain and direction the prints came from, everything below the blue line would all be winter habitat under my theory. This would not encompass the entire space they use but rather a section of the loop or cycle they likely run along. The Gold pin in the back end of the photo is separate encounter report from years later in late November. For full context and accuracy I will note that this trackway from what we could gather is legitimate but after the investigation, word got around the community and someone got back in touch and with another trackway soon after and that trackway was clearly hoaxed and fabricated, the prints looked nothing like the original tracks and showed no dexterity of the foot or toes, lacked any of the athleticism and started in stopped at highly questionable places. They seem to hold up in very difficult and hard to access locations and move in changing weather conditions from one low human activity area to another.

Well it certainly doesn’t bode well for the person in Illinois claiming a family of Sasquatch live on his 50 acre wood lot all year long. But I don’t think they are that populous. And also that their activities probably fall through the cracks and are attributed to something else. Lastly? If they are as smart as say an Orangutan? Orangutans pick locks, know sign language and can paddle a boat. Surely Sasquatch could be rather cunning. And they probably know that sustained contact with humans is unhealthy. So they stay nocturnal, take only what they need and keep moving.

This is what bothers me. First, FWIW, I made a chart for my own edification comparing biological facts about common animals. As I got all of this information off the web, I am certain that it is highly accurate & not subject to question. Somewhere, I found an estimate that Cro-Magnon, Neaderthals, and paleo-Indians required 4,800 calories per day and moose required 9,700 calories per day. The data I found for other large animals is just in poundage - 10-20 pounds of food per day for elk, 30 pounds per day for grizzly bears, 35 pounds for black bears(?), and 30-45 pounds for gorillas. What bothers me is that if Bigfoot is an omnivore, and if Bigfoot is as populous in the eastern US as some believe, why aren't they eating farmers out of house and home? Deer do it, groundhogs do it, foxes and coyotes prey on chickens, and such ... why wouldn't a bigfoot settle down near a nice big corn or potato or squash field and simply strip mine it for a day or two, then move on. That problem occurs with other biological animals, why doesn't it occur with Bigfoot?

The mountains and inland plateaus of BC get heavy accumulations of snow, but the coastal valleys only get a few snow days a year, usually followed by enough rain to melt it away quickly. Most sightings in BC, Wa. and Ak. occur in those coastal valleys. The only Sasquatch trackway I ever found was in late spring snow, crossing a pass over a ridge between two river valleys. I believe they stay below the snowline as much as possible, just as the majority of big game does.

My take on this is that they use very similar resources as black bears do, and we have thousands of those here in BC. The only real difference from bears' needs is having to forage in winter, which bears avoid by hibernating. Sasquatch is supposed to be pretty intelligent, so presumably plans ahead by stockpiling food for the winter needs, such as nuts and tubers, which store well.

I think that is a part of the picture, maybe all of it depending on locale. My own area is very seasonal .. main time, late summer, with a couple data points in mid July which could be outliers or could represent a second, smaller, pass-through. Behavior is pretty different up there when it is "busy" and I suspect there is something "special" going on. That area spends winter under 5-10 feet of snow with nothing to eat but snow and tree bark. They are elsewhere. A friend works on a ranch at the bottom of a deep valley in the other direction. Off and on snow but nothing seasonal .. and no downhill for food to migrate way towards. He says they have low level activity year around with occasional flurries of greater activity. His explanation is that there is a very small permanent population (seemingly akin to what you describe) which act as a "rear guard" making sure that that spot is safe for the traveling groups to temporarily occupy as they pass through. I've followed up on a number of reports there and out maybe 10 miles in each way. I can't say that the explanation is right or wrong but I can say it certainly seems to fit the observations.

I have not read all the posts up to this point but I think it is difficult to calculate pounds of material because the caloric density per gram can vary greatly. We also can't measure metabolic rate with Sasquatches necessarily as what you eat at what time can change the rate itself. In mammals the metabolic rate is effected by sun exposure, temperature, stress and sleep. Sasquatches do not seem to be pot-bellied ( fermentation gut adapted ) and seem to consume a lot of direct protein when compared to gorillas. I would say that they focus on nutrient dense food heavily in the fall and again in the spring, sources heavily would lean toward insects, small critters, nuts, tubers, salmon, ungulates, fruits, lichens, mushrooms and softer plant leaf material. Just a side note, I am very convinced that omegas are likely the most important need to the Sasquatch, big brains demand them and this would explain the continued historic references in native cultures that sasquatch can become fairly confrontational in situations such as pulling salmon nets and invading smoke houses. I have also noted that Sasquatch reports do often happen on a regular basis close to large tracts of masting nut trees. I suspect they target certain foods at certain times and try to conserve energy, the few long trackways on record seem to indicate very focused directional travel as if they have a point B in mind. If I had to guess with what little I know from reading, behavior and looking for feeding sites I would say someplace between 7500 to 1000 calories split between 30% fat, 30% carbs, and 40% protein averaged across the year cycle. That is my 2 cents and again I don't have a whole lot of confidence yet in my view here but it is where I am at, critics are welcome. It would be interesting to see what the metabolic consumption of the Chinese snub nosed monkey is throughout the year as a comparison as they have a wide range diet and endure some fairly cold conditions following the snowline.

Back to the original question. NorthWind and I once investigated a sighting location at a lake camp. A (presumably) old sasquatch with a limp was seen dumpster diving numerous times. I'd guess scavenging, eating roadkill and pets kept outside would be much easier than taking a human. I would bet they have an idea, that if one of us goes missing, multitudes more will show up searching, which bodes ill for them. And, yes, I do think they are that intelligent.

Here's one time:

Well, then, the answer is clearly NO, and that has absolutely nothing to do whith critters. I'm proof of that. My many brushes with death were primarily the elements, not aggressive animals. Partners in the field can save your life.............but they can also shoot you accidentally, which happened to me as well. In fact, my trips into the Bush went primarily solo in the early 2000's because my partners became too dangerous, needy, or just plain intolerable, and I felt safer without them............until I damned near killed myself a few times. It's just dangerous out there, and sasquatches are the very least of my worries (except Alaska has no snakes, so I don't worry about them at all, and I'm very thankful).

I'm reducing travel, even to Anchorage, to only-if-necessary. Last winter, just hours after arriving in Vegas, I was in a situation where I had my hand on my weapon and was ready to shoot. The thugs drove away. Another very strange and suspicious character loitered nearby during and after this confrontation. Later, miles away in a rural area and right after bedding down in the motorhome, "somebody" started jiggling the door knob (turned out to be a cow licking the door knob). In both cases, I can't imagine feeling better about the situations with the equivalent of a bean bag round. Times are tense. I kinda' like it here. I think I'll just stay home until Mrs. Huntster forces the issue.

Those are a lot of questions to unpack. Any wild animal that is desperately trying to survive old age or serious injury would likely be dangerous to humans as without weapons we are the most helpless critters in the forest/jungle. (Except for pandas, of course. Seriously, google panda videos and ask yourself how these animals actually survive in the wild....) In going through old newspapers, I've run across several articles where tigers, elephants, bears, and wolves were said to hunt/injure humans out of "hate." As Silverback and Huntster state, yes, a wild animal (Bigfoot) is likely to act like other wild animals. As to the questions about whether certain national parks are dangerous and what specific cases involve, there is no end of information in threads such as the missing 411 thread at As to what kind of firearm (not necessarily a pistol) to carry in the backwoods, several members of the Forums who have extensive backwoods experience have offered opinions at this thread. Between the two threads, that's over 50 pages of discussion on most of the substance asked about. As to the "should people go out and do dumb things?" question, No. They shouldn't. But that didn't stop some guy from camping out with grizzlies because "they were used to him" or a New Jersey hiker from going up in the Adirondacks in shorts and a t-shirt without adequate food, warm clothing, and other survival stuff, and they both died even without help from Bigfoot.

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.

Read this section from the regulations, especially the highlighted part. Do you know anything at all about salmon .. salmon fishing, etc? The places most people fish for salmon are main stem rivers, water 5 feet to 30 feet deep, and often a couple hundred yards wide. As shown above we are not allowed to fish for them in the kinds of places a sasquatch might attempt to catch them .. the spawning areas. The bulk of those are in places quite inaccessible to humans. Not impossible, but difficult, and it is highly improbable that an average urban person is going there. There isn't the overlap between humans and salmon vulnerable to bigfoot predation that you seem to assume there is. The literature says they DO eat salmon. Consider the Olympic Project "nests" area. Little finger ridges in horribly dense huckleberry brush over spawning streams. Same thing occurs in the northern Oregon coast range based on reports I've taken and also in the mid and south coast areas. Or consider what David Paulides reports learning from the lower Klamath River tribal people regarding "things" stealing salmon from their nets at night.

I remember the story! Cliff has them on his website. https://cliffbarackman.com/home/projects/footprint-database/database-contents/2005-priest-river-id/ I still say a snow bike has the potential to follow a snow trackway to its conclusion. And if we don’t want to kill it? Then a crossbow with a biopsy dart is the next best thing.

Howdy all, digging the cooler weather.....here is several weeks of interesting impressions, the last one is another of the odd large tracks that I find, Dogman?.

A kidnapping by a Sasquatch is truly a fantastic story, but none of the three stories that I've mentioned had a basis of origin in a small newspaper at all, which has now become widely believed in the story of Jocko. In the Ostman story, Ostman was a known personage who did report his story to his local newspaper (The Province) in 1957, 33 years after the kidnapping, but he had no motivation to "sell more papers". He remained alive for years after he told his story and was well interviewed, unlike the persons in the Jocko story. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Ostman The Muchalat Harry story was told to Bigfoot author and investigator Peter Byrne by Father Anthony Terhaar of Mt. Angel Abbey in Oregon, who was a missionary priest who traveled the west coast of Vancouver Island for many years, and was living at Nootka at the time of the story and who knew Muchalat Harry very well. http://www.bigfootencounters.com/classics/muchalat.htm The third story has never made the newspapers. I found it posted to an Internet forum of Alaskan outdoorsmen in 2010. It has all the hallmarks of a scary campfire story, but it has some very intestine features (poop smearing) that I've never heard or read of before (but which goes quite a ways toward explaining some of the stench reports involving sasquatches), and I've come to recognize that poster from later posts, and who appears to be a pretty cogent guy. https://bigfootforums.com/topic/28150-a-coast-range-bigfoot-story/#comment-544030

many cultures burned the dead instead of burying.

My problem is that I'm a death sentence to everything I bring out there with me. An iridium satellite phone was among the gizmos that were vaporized on my moose hunt last year. No more of it. I need to transcend all that silliness and go like my old buddy Don. Just go out there and disappear in The Land of the Lost. Who knows? Maybe being kidnapped into sexual slavery by a female sasquatch might not be as bad as driving to the bottom of a frozen lake?

Might want to pin this one for a bit.

Elite body builders in the 1970's world would eat 5,000 a day. These guys trained nearly daily. The output of their 'work' to me would equal or way exceed what Bigfoot would put out in a given day in Bigfoots world. That's just my guess as a max for reasonable estimate. Yes, these guys weighed under 250lbs back in the 1970's Gold's Gym era of weightlifting. I would think Bigfoot would only be as active as Bigfoot needs to be. Bigfoot would rest often and essentially be a couch potato until food, reproductive needs, or whatever motivated Bigfoot. Skeptics are skeptics because these reasonable points about Life Support make them skeptics. We should expect if bigfoot is as common as some say, we should have more of these sightings in trash cans, and so on. Trash cans tend to exist in towns and cities vs out in the middle of nowhere. Many have security cameras and Ring doorbells. The most likely reason to explain this must be Bigfoot are few in number, live in massively remote areas, and are shy to human activity. I don't know how credible Bigfoot sightings are when all over the country. Many are just in unlikely places and unlikely regions. I am sure they see something just not bigfoot. If Bigfoot was in all these areas the trash cans would be raided, the farms would be raided, and so on. Bigfoot being near extinct is a better explanation vs attributing ninja skills to bigfoot to explain it. If you bet on finding Bigfoot, you would bet on the PNW more so than downtown NY City.

Another feature of coastal range is that the sea provides all kinds of sustenance like seaweeds, mollusks, and fish as regularly as the tide, all winter long.

It's not so crazy. We've come to know you as a very deeply thoughtful and curious guy. In fact, you infect me with such thoughts. Now I'm wondering how our more wild and primitive homo sapien cousins did it. I occasionally keep goats and sheep on my property which is forested, not rocky. Consequently, their hooves need occasional trimming because the rocks don't do it for them like their wild cousins on cliffs.

Let’s leave the supernatural talk for the supernatural section please! Thanks! 👍

Well if one accepts the ridiculous notion that Bigfoot is a "woopernatural" space monkey....then I think one should also accept the notion that they would dematerialize/vibrate to a different frequency of matter/jump into a portal/float off on an orb, or simply allow the projectile(s) to pass through them ala Kitty Whatzername from X-Men long before a bullet, slug, or load of buckshot hit them, so the choice of caliber is moot. If, however, on the other hand, you are one who disregards the woopidity and accepts the very real possibility that they are, in fact, an apex predatory omnivore or an opportunistic omnivore with at least the ability to harvest mammal or pescatarian protein when it's convenient...then the possibility remains that they will ****** a hairless tool using ape such as a human if it is low risk high reward. As for a firearm, I carry a Glock 20 in 10mm with Buffalo Bore Big Game ammo when I am out in the field for ANY reason, whether I am hunting deer or fishing. Less because I think Bigfoot is going to prey on me, though I allow for the possibility, but more for the very real possibility that a black bear with a ****** attitude and general disposition may want to nibble on my ass. If "attacked" by a Bigfoot, the reality is that you're probably going to be dead before you knew an attack was coming because it's probably going to be from ambuscade and done by the Grand Master Gold Medalist Hide And Seek Champion of the world. BUT...the Ape Canyon account tells us that one was shot and fell into a gorge, and when the miners were allegedly attacked, they used their rifles and shotguns to drive the "Mountain Devils" away, so there is a presumption that guns DO have an effect on them and they won't "woo away on a moonbeam". Hell, even if you believe Justin Smeja killed not one, but two mind ya, TWO of them....then...the possibility that guns work on them like any other biological critter remains. Now, the bad news....the ONLY way that any firearm would be of ANY value is if you have at least a little warning, and even then, 99% of gun owners are barely competent to carry a gun and not shoot themselves in the foot on a range, let alone during an adrenaline dump facing a dangerous animal charge/attack. Over 27 years as a police officer having to review literally hundreds of videos of person to person gun fights from stores, etc....the probability of emptying your gun concurrently with your bladder and bowels are about the same while missing every shot. Sorry if the truth hurts...buuuuuut...there it is. Most people survive because they were the luckiest and least incompetent combatant. When in a dynamic critical incident, you will ALWAYS default to your level of training and as the extreme vast majority of gun owners don't get ANY training beyond MAYBE a hunter safety class, or a CCW class taught by Joe The Tactical Plumber, then the default will be "draw gun, **** pants, miss target, panic, empty magazine or cylinder, scream like a chick". Generally lifelong hunters who don't get "buck fever" are exempt from this, trained competitive shooters, or prior military with combat arms/deployment MOS are fairly stress inoculated too, but it also depends upon keeping up with training. I have been in several critical incidents during my career where other officers who were not "gun people" who placed a high value on training were next to useless in a gun fight, so I am not ******** on John Average Gun Carrier. I am ******** on other cops too. But....It's not ALL bad news even for the 99% who are a danger to their own feet in a high stress situation. Based upon not only my own face to face encounter were I am convinced that the revelation of my pistol is what caused the one I was staring at to flee, there have been other encounters where the BF/SQ took off when the presence of a firearm was discovered...so I believe, based upon this, that a visible firearm probably has a deterrent effect. So, if I were part of the 99%, I'd carry a 12 gauge shotgun or a big old hawg leg in a hip holster so it could be seen as a deterrent to a hungry, opportunistic BF/SQ.

I'm pretty egalitarian in my choice of knives. I carry the same Camillus 6" Hunter I have had since I was 12 for a fixed blade. It holds a razor edge, has a full tang, and I figure I have known that knife for 45 years, skinned a lot of game with it, used it to baton a lot of kindling, and even lance a boil on my best friend's butt one time in Montana...I don't see a need to change. For a folder, I carry a 4.2" Spyderco that I carried for the last 15 years I was a cop, and a little two blade Victorinox Swiss Army knife and that's mostly for the tweezers and the toothpick.