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There is little likelihood that BF populations in the Appalachians and PWN have intersected since the European settlers surged Westward. They probably did not before that either because of the distances involved and isolation by the great American plains. In other words there are now pockets of diverse populations of BF that have several and perhaps hundreds of generations of genetic isolation. One can expect increasing genetic diversity and differences in appearance between distantly isolated groups. Perhaps the ones in Florida were isolated first because of the flow of settlement in the East Coast? The last to be isolated would be the ones in the PNW since that is were European settlement happened last. Just that might explain why those in the PNW may be more genetically healthy because interchange of individuals could still be conducted between various BF tribes. Genetic health would promote less genetic deviation and differences in appearance.

Steve Streurfert provided me with a link to a podcast interviewing the man who owns the film and talks about it. https://www.spreaker.com/user/forkermedia/supernrml-special-edition-with-john-john One thing to consider is he described the edge latent image markings, and felt such markings indicated he likely had the original. However, I have the exact same markings on one of my copies, as shown here. On the top row, you can see how bold and obvious the original Kodachrome film type and related edge markings are. But then go to the second row, along the bottom, and see how subtle the markings are for a copy. It would be easy for someone to see only the bold obvious Kodachrome markings and miss the copy markings. So the man most likely just has a copy, like mine. Added: He also said the date code symbols repeat every 10 years, but the Kodak chart states quite clearly that the codes repeat every 20 years. So while the man may be of good intention, his facts are not quite on the mark.

Bought a smittybuilt roof top tent. Could not find a Silverado bed rack anywhere so I had one built. Go to the cardiologist tomorrow. And then to Post Falls Idaho to 4 wheel drive parts to get the tent installed.... Driving down to New Mexico to see new grand baby and wanna spend some time in the Colorado Rockies along the way!

While I don't necessarily disagree on this particular point, if everything is a conspiracy, it's just as easy to say that nothing is. No. Just no. Another PGF would be great. I'm a believer. I want someone to shoot one so they can be proven to be real (or see if myself to become a knower and then I don't care what everyone else thinks). What was posted was pure BS of something moving in the woods. Ahhhhh, he has more. Ahhhhh, he has a BF festival coming up! Ahhhhh, he has BF shit in his yard. Get out of here with that crap. These people are in it for clicks which lead to money. If he was serious, he'd know he didn't have Jack squat and he'd keep trying until he did. A credible story, is testimony, ala what's been provided here by some of my favorite posters does more for BF than this bologna. / End rant.

Late to this, but here's my two cents. 8-9 million years ago, dryopithecines in Africa split into two lines - one that led to gorillas and the other to humans, chimpanzees, and bonobos. At 7 million years ago, another split happened between chimpanzees and bonobos from early ancestral hominins that became humans. I've heard during the Miocene epoch, there were at least 50 types of great apes. I think bigfoot originated somewhere back around there, probably interbred with early humans (it seems we slept around a lot, since we also have Neanderthal and Denisovan DNA), and became a new species. It self-selected to become nocturnal and gigantic size, which is our opposite. They and us are similar, but we share this world by occupying opposite niches - we are tool users, hairless and live our lives in communities, being out and about primarily in the daytime. They don't need tools, rely upon their strength and speed, are hirsute and are primarily nocturnal, living singly or in small family groupings. They are also very intelligent, but in different ways. So, yes, in the great ape family, but similar to how we are great apes, but more.

I remain unsure about this topic, which is not a problem for me. Did you know that orcas are the most widely distributed mammal in the sea and without predators besides humans? It occurs to me that the BFs fill a similar niche in nature, as contrary to what some think, they are found in nearly every habitat. I remember an old forum member describing activity in an urban area in central Oklahoma, for one example. I later visited there myself and found some interesting evidence. That's just one place where BF activity is underestimated, but dedicated investigators know differently. They're often present in close proximity to human populations. Back on the topic, I sort of agree with something I heard elsewhere, what they are not. Not apes, not monkeys, not human, yet a kind of people. That's all I've got.

Care to go into detail? I have become fascinated with Bigfoot of late and would love to know if anyone has actually gone out searching for Bigfoot with success? I am in Mass which isnt the best BF sighting territory, but ive been hiking a lot lately hoping in the back of my mind something happens. I am excited to be apart of this community and reading all these posts have only help confirm what I already believe.

I do believe we are looking at individual variation and maybe differing genus like trout populations in the east and west for instance based on possibly regional influences/barriers, but many of these guys may be trim like the most athletic NFL linebackers; I suspect you could call many of them massive. The way sasquatch have been viewed hauling away white-tails, razorbacks and elk I would say they have muscle mass above and beyond for sure in many cases. I was more talking height here than anything. My night-time education involved a 4 1/2 to 5 1/2 footer and I did not get the impression it was a juvenile sent on a counting coup adventure to directly approach me. It was not alone that night though and two others may have been on a counting coup mission. Aging in sasquatch is a little too far out there for me and others to probably speak to however. Based on some TN sightings they do suffer from bone infections or strokes, probably dental problems just like humans. I'm primarily in the southern appalachians now and have given thought as to how a wide body, tall sasquatch fits nicely in the North Cascades but maybe not so much in the Blue Ridge, having spent some time on both coasts now.

If it evolved in North America rather than traveling here more or less in the form we know it, it's not an ape, it's a monkey. There are examples in zoology of similar-ish creatures filling similar niches that come from different roots ... essentially if a niche is open, something will evolve to fill it. An example is the mara or patagonian hare which is a rodent whose ancestors adapted to fill the niche since there are no true hares there as would be found in similar niches in Europe. There are a couple things seemingly wrong with the true monkey idea. First, no true monkeys that we know of have grown anywhere that large, second, none are bipedal, third, there's not a single hint in the fossil record from North America for either current or previous species of that size. For it to be correct we'd have to be breaking new ground in several areas at once ... seems less probable than an immigrant from Asia (or even Europe). Everything seems to point towards something from genus Homo sharing a close common ancestor with us, the question is ... what, which ancestor, and how far back? H. erectus is a serious possibility but far from the only one we should consider. IMHO, we should not take any cards off the table. None. We simply don't have enough information to support doing so, all we have are belief systems. Filtering what you will look at because if you find it, it won't fit your belief system, is about the surest way I can think of to be wrong. It's dogma, no more, no less. MIB

I’m not so sure Bigfoot is concerned about it’s hairdo. But maybe Indians copied the Bigfoot “look”?

Neanderthal is man, after all.

Old Mort: The box shown in the image I received is the store package box for a 50' load in a magazine format, ready to be put into a camera to film. It has a "expiration date" (a sell by date for the store stocking it) Nov. 1969, and an emulsion number 726518670 V , which is of no consequence to analysis of processed film. I'm pretty sure the 7265 part is the film type, because I remember commercial ektachrome as 7255, and eastman color negative stock as 7251 (later 7254). I shot a lot of these last three in film school. There is also a picture of a metal film can such as what Kodak would return the processed 50' roll in to the customer, but no box. As a general impression based on what I know and see in the images sent to me, the ANE can likely holds either a release print of a 30 minute program reel, or maybe the edit master from which release print are printed from. The edit master would be one generation up in finer quality. The 50' roll is not likely anything from Roger, as he is not known to have ever used 50' magazine cameras and film. John Green however, is proven to have used a 50' magazine camera to film McClarin. That's as much as I know right now.

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/08/first-people-americas-came-sea-ancient-tools-unearthed-idaho-river-suggest Ancient people apparently followed rivers more than 500 kilometers inland to Cooper's Ferry in western Idaho. LOREN DAVIS First people in the Americas came by sea, ancient tools unearthed by Idaho river suggest By Lizzie WadeAug. 29, 2019 , 2:00 PM About 16,000 years ago, on the banks of a river in western Idaho, people kindled fires, shaped stone blades and spearpoints, and butchered large mammals. All were routine activities in prehistory, but their legacy today is anything but. The charcoal and bone left at that ancient site, now called Cooper’s Ferry, are some 16,000 years old—the oldest radiocarbon-dated record of human presence in North America, according to work reported this week in Science. The findings do more than add a few centuries to the timeline of people in the Americas. They also shore up a new picture of how humans first arrived, by showing that people lived at Cooper’s Ferry more than 1 millennium before melting glaciers opened an ice-free corridor through Canada about 14,800 years ago. That implies the first people in the Americas must have come by sea, moving rapidly down the Pacific coast and up rivers. The dates from Cooper’s Ferry “fit really nicely with the [coastal] model that we’re increasingly getting a consensus on from genetics and archaeology,” says Jennifer Raff, a geneticist at the University of Kansas in Lawrence who studies the peopling of the Americas. The Clovis people, big game hunters who made characteristic stone tools dated to about 13,000 years ago, were once thought to have been the first to reach the Americas, presumably through the ice-free corridor. But a handful of earlier sites have persuaded many researchers that the coastal route is more likely. Archaeologists have questioned the signs of occupation at some putative pre-Clovis sites, but the stone tools and dating at Cooper’s Ferry pass the test with flying colors, says David Meltzer, an archaeologist at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas. “It’s pre-Clovis. I’m convinced.”

I'm not seeing what your referring to, but that could be true. It's not "way out in the woods" for sure. Just a structure I found curious, 95% certain people made it. But really cool nonetheless. What I do find curious about our Oregon bigfoot, is how subtle they are 99% of the time. I follow on YouTube and know personally of a half dozen other researchers/experiencers, and no one ever finds big structures like folks find in Colorado or Ontario etc. We find footprints, small and sparse teepees, and the encounters, which are also subtle (as in, not aggressive usually). Personally, I'm beginning to think that Oregon sasquatches are very used to all our outdoorsy residents being in the woods all year round, and are very good at avoiding us. And yes, Kiwakwi, it is a beautiful, diverse state. It's very forested where I am, yet North of here at the other end of the Willamette Valley, it's wine country, and looks similar to parts of France. East is all high mountain desert and far East are some of the wildest, most isolated mountains imaginable. We also have a few hundred miles of Pacific Northwest coastal rain forest and beaches. Desert, mountains and the beach are all within 100 miles of me. I'm very fortunate to live here, even with all the rednecks, crackheads and tweekers.

I watched the sequence trying to see more details of the baby. What has not been mentioned is that the first part of the video Mom does not seem to be carrying anything. She makes a beeline for some large rocks then raises up holding the baby after a few seconds staring at the person doing the video. Then the baby is visible most of the time. She does not withdraw away from the camera but at about 90 degrees to the camera holder. Most likely because of the huge boulders directly away from the camera. Which she could not navigate holding a baby. I have always contended that Patty was on a mission. She could have withdrawn directly away from Roger and Bob but proceeded along the creek in the direction Roger and Bob were traveling. That and her prominent breasts suggests to me Patty was lactating and had a baby stashed someplace. Her mission was to get to baby before Roger and Bob did. Just like this Mom single mindedly proceeded to her baby, and retrieved it, when it could have just gone into a crouch and not been seen at all. In both cases getting to baby first was priority.

They may have been nighthawks in the recording. Then again, who knows? I slept in the back of my pickup. It has a hard canopy. I also had a 10x10 pop-up over the back part of the truck, so I would have a dry place to get out in the middle of the night. I lost my entire colon fifteen years or so ago to ulcerative colitis and I have to get up several times a night to take care of business, so I need it to be as easy as possible. TMI, I know. The funny part is that the rain would collect on the roof part of the pop up. Of course, while I was lying in the back of the truck listening, and imagining a 9 foot tall creature outside, it decided to dump that water load on top of the canopy in one large whoosh! Scared the bejeepers out of me. LOL Then it would wait until I was almost asleep and do it again, and again. I have had better nights' sleep, believe me. Still, it was fun, and always nice to get out in the woods.

A round of boxing is 3 min long. When you watch the round, a lot of things happen in just 3 min. I think we do need to consider all Bob and Roger claimed to do post- PGF event and see if they could fit them in. Maybe they could and maybe they couldn't. I'm open to both. I think people can accomplish a lot of things in a short period of time though. It's not like Patterson said, "If we ever see a bigfoot I want to do a stomp test" It would be more like Roger reloading the camera while Bob is doing something else such as mixing and pouring plaster. Then, as Roger walks over to the trackway with a newly loaded camera he starts filming the trackway. Then just seconds later he might say to Gimlin, "Bob claim up and jump off the stump for me. Let's see how deep you go. Wait, OK I'm Ready." That again just takes seconds. That activity alone is just one off the list which doesn't take long. They can do other activity while the plaster dries. Now the distances of travel, that is another thing all togather. We can only go by Gimlin's claim here but that all did occur after the PGF events occurred. Time is not so much an issue on that point but maybe others things are. We do know from Al at the store Gimlin got the boxes from Al at the store so Al can confirm that. It doesn't tell us if Patty is real or fake only that Al or someone said it might rain so, "Hey take these cardboard boxes" Gimlin did not use them but did claim to use some bark early in the AM when the rain came to try to cover the tracks. If there was no cardboard at the site the next day; that jives with the facts since Gimlin did not used the ruined/ wet boxes. Gimlin claimed to cover a couple tracks with bark. I don't know if others claimed to have seen this bark.

What stood out for me in this article: https://www.sciencealert.com/there-s-a-bunch-of-eel-dna-in-loch-ness-raising-questions-about-nessie-s-identity is the fact that soooo much DNA was found that belonged to land mammals. Needless to say, no Nessie: "There was - and this may or may not be a surprise, depending on your feelings about the Loch Ness Monster - absolutely no evidence of any Jurassic-era animal DNA, including plesiosaurs, in any of the samples tested.......We find a large amount of eel DNA. Eels are very plentiful in Loch Ness, with eel DNA found at pretty much every location sampled - there are a lot of them," the researchers wrote on the project's website. "Researchers had earlier suggested that a giant eel might explain some sightings. That idea then lost popularity as theories about extinct reptiles became more common. But there have been ongoing reports of very large eels by a number of witnesses." Specifically, the DNA is from European eels (Anguilla anguilla), which does present another problem. As far as biologists know, these fish don't grow any larger than about 1.5 metres (4 feet, 11 inches). To be consistent with Nessie reports, an eel would have to be quite a bit bigger. The data doesn't reveal the size of the eels shedding their DNA into the loch, but the whole idea is not without precedent. Another strange beast sighted in a highland loch could have been an eel. In 1865, a huge "sea serpent" was reported in a loch in Leurbost, eel-like in appearance - leading to the conclusion that it was, probably, an eel. More research will need to be undertaken to understand how an eel fits in with Monster sightings, if it does at all, but the team's findings revealed more about the loch than just ruling out Nessie candidates." What this really means for us Sasquatch researchers is that soil samples needn't be the ONLY place to search for Sasquatch DNA: "One of the more intriguing findings was the large amount of DNA from land-based species in the Loch system," the researchers wrote. "These included high levels of DNA from humans and a variety of species associated with us, such as dogs, sheep and cattle. We also detected wild species local to the area e.g. deer, badgers, foxes, rabbits, voles and multiple bird species. These findings show eDNA surveys of major waterways may be useful for rapidly surveying the biological diversity at a regional level." There has been a lot of water sampling done everywhere at minimum in the last five years. I think some deeper research needs to be done by folks here into just what F&W and academia is finding for land mammal DNA in their local ponds and lakes. It's something we never really hear about. Just stick with the science and all will be well. https://labs.wsu.edu/edna/documents/2015/05/field-protocol.pdf/

I fully believe there are bodies that have been found, they just get swept away by government agencies whom, for a variety of reasons, feel the need to keep the existence of Sasquatch a joke to the vast majority of the public and even the vast majority of themselves. I'm sure some of those bodies are hidden away in secret government storage areas or laboratories. There almost certainly bones that have been found buried deep in the bowels of the Smithsonian's archives, purposefully not labeled and "lost" so as they never see the light of day. You'd also have to factor in that there simply isn't anyone really out there looking for Bigfoot, alive or dead. I mean, sure, it might seem like Sasquatch is a big deal and super important to discover here on the bigfootforums. But the reality is that most people don't believe they're real. Most of the people that do believe aren't out in the woods looking for them. Most of the people that do venture into the woods looking for them don't have a clue what they're really looking for or how to really look for it (I'd venture to say that almost all the people who go out into the woods looking for Bigfoot do so because they watched a few episodes of Finding Bigfoot and thought it'd be fun to try it themselves). Basically, the number of researchers who are actively out in the forests of North America seriously looking for proof of Sasquatch's existence is so tiny compared to the area they'd need to cover it's harder than finding a needle in a haystack. I'm also willing to bet that at least half those serious researchers have techniques that are far more likely to drive a Sasquatch away than to attract them. I'm guessing that given the obvious intelligence and purported family groups of Bigfoot, they also have some sort of death ritual that involves disposal of the body in some manner. Sasquatch are NOT just any ole animals. They're far closer to people than they are animals. As far as hunting or shooting one goes. There just aren't many people out there trying to do that and the odd hunter than happens to get one in the crosshairs probably can't bring themselves to pull the trigger. As previously mentioned, most hunters are looking for food, hides, or trophies. They're after animals, not giant hairy people. It's real easy to sit in front of a computer screen or around a campfire and boast how you would never pass up the chance to bag yourself a Bigfoot. It's an entirely different thing to be in the moment, starring down the barrel of your gun at something that's "not supposed to exist" and looks far more human than animal. 99.9% of people wouldn't be able to take a shot like that. To expect that you'd find anyone from that 0.1% of the population that could take a deliberate kill shot in a situation like that to actually have the chance to do so... Well, you've got better odds when buying a Powerball ticket. I'm sure there, indeed, has been some hunters to happened upon a Sasquatch and blasted a hurried or panicked shot or two at the big guy. Maybe even hit them, but panicked or excited shots rarely land well enough to bring down a being the size of a Bigfoot. And who's to say they don't have much thicker skin that any known animals? It's entirely possible that a bullet simply wouldn't do as much damage to them as it would to a human. Bottom line is that there are a number of reasons why we "don't have" a body. At least not one known to the general public.

^^^ In my opinion these Hollywood creations all have the same basic look to them. In other words, they look like they were made in Hollywood. Are they meant to look realistic? To actually fool anyone? To be kid friendly? It is important to consider the intent of the creator. What are they attempting to convey? Patty looks nothing like these slick L.A. movie industry offerings.

Just an update: I have had several exchanges of emails with the original poster, and he did clarify some things as much as he knew about the film owner and efforts to get it analyzed. He apparently made an assumption I was involved with the analysis, but it was a flawed assumption. I have still not had any direct contact with whomever owns the film in question. The most likely determination is that the film in question is simply a print copy of the ANE documentary, exactly the same as my Copy 14 in my inventory. So it would be equal to Copy 14, which is a good and useful copy, but nothing spectacular. I have no idea who might be doing an analysis for the owner (the number of qualified people in the world to do this properly, you can count on one hand and have a few fingers left over), and don't have much confidence this unknown analyst can do a truly comprehensive appraisal of the film, but the owner is well within his rights to select whomever he wants to do it. But the prospects of this find being something remarkable in the PGF research world are getting less by the day.

Good point about how to buy it. When I was looking, Pulsar required dealers to advertise at a required price. If you called them, they could offer a lower price, they just couldn't advertise it. I got a heck of a deal and would suggest to those looking for a thermal to actually call a dealer to see what they'll offer it for. The small dealers who have an internet-based thermal business are the ones I found who were willing to negotiate a price.

Welcome, Watcher333. You might want to check out the Sightings area and then go to the Midwest section. You're most likely to find what you're looking for over there.

As I posted in another thread, I have the Scout TK arriving tomorrow. I was going to go with either a Leupold or drop some coin on the Scout II. I went with the TK due to its ability to record images and video. Down the road I may upgrade to a better thermal unit that can record video out to a separate piece of equipment. However, for now I want to keep it simple. We are in the Smokeys a lot at night, and I think that a thermal scope will be worth the expense.

I am in SE Alaska for the first time in about 25 years. Last time here I was not into BF. Looking at the Geology of Alaska today I think like someone mentioned, it does not point to a vegetarian being able to make the Bearing Bridge transit. Giganto is not a good candidate. .. For anything to make the transit, they had to hug the ice sheet or top it to make the passage. As those who have been here, most of SE Alaska is dozens of islands. Hugging coastal ice sheets would not get you very far unless you had boats to go island to island. Topping the glaciers is a difficult transit because the ice is very rough and goes around all the higher terrain that even to this day is not scarred by the passage of the glaciers. The peaks sticking above the glaciers are very sharp and rugged because the glaciers went around them. What ever made that transit had to eat fish or meat. I question the ability to make the transit without boats. BF is not a boat builder. Humans have for a very long time. Perhaps BF came from South America? Recent discoveries have make it likely that mankind was there long before travelers made the Bearing Bridge crossing. Certainly there is history of apes in SA. Key fossils may not have been discovered yet to give us the BF migration vector. After all the camel originated in NA and migrated the other way.

Thanks guys! Yes the 'Local' sassyman that I saw was real freaky looking, but no doubt was something in the human family tree, not even close to an ape. We starred at each other what seemed like a long time about 25' apart, but was 10 seconds or less, then it made 3 unbelievably powerful and skilled moves to get away without hardly a sound......jumped 25'-30' feet down in a ravine and hid, because by the short time I got to the edge of where it jumped, there was no sound of it running off, and there surely would have been plenty of noise if it did. The dogs and I did not go down there either, it would still have to be real close by hidden.....the dogs and wolf were on high alert with hair bristled up and sniffing the air. We circled back around from the back side, about a half mile loop, but nothing further. Here are a couple of pics that I took, my 13 year old son standing where it was, indentations/tracks where it was crouched down, and the mark it made after jumping down in the ravine. The blue cross in one of the pics is where I was standing, and a huge water source to the right where it was standing. This happened around 10:30am a few days before New Years.

I am sure there will be plenty of room the day of. Advanced tix looks like it is through the casino. 2 Day Pass Friday night meet and greet buffet Saturday speakers I'm kind of wavering on the buffet but you never know. Sometimes casinos have really good grub.

I've not seen this before and haven't heard of Shealy, but there are certainly problems with this video. The first thing I noticed is the poor quality; if the year displayed is correct (2000) this isn't some digitally zoomed cell phone video. I own two decent quality consumer camcorders, an Olympus Hi-8 from 1990 and a Sony digital from 2005, both with 20 X optical zoom and both will shoot much better quality footage than this. The subject's arms are too short and skinny, the posture too straight and the head much too upright as can be seen in this screen capture processed through PhotoZoom Pro 6 where "it" turns towards the camera. The second, smaller picture is the original image capture before heavy artifact reduction. It almost appears as if it was shot through a soft focus or other special effect filter. Since the legs aren't seen, perhaps the subject is wearing snake boots and/or Kevlar leggings. The video quality is so poor the suit may not be terribly heavy, it doesn't appear bulky and if worn by a trim, fairly athletic individual that would account for the short burst of running. It certainly does not reflect the smooth, flowing locomotion described by so many witnesses.

Honestly I just see a gap in foliage there with lots of darker, shadowed leaves further back. Did you actually see this creature move in front of the branches and leaves at all?

Many, many critters growl. All predators that I can think of. Fox, raccoon, bear, coyote, cougar, yada yada yada. It would help to know the nature .. volume, pitch, etc .. of the growl but in the end, a written description is going to fall flat, it's one of those "ya had to be there" situations. Whatever it was, I'm glad you came back unscathed. MIB

Most humans are not interested in killing them. So many reports of hunters not making the shot because of how human they look. We certainly are the most dangerous thing they face if the reports of bear avoiding them are true. Did you feel like you are adequately armed when you had your sightings? I sure didn't when I had my first encounter and still don't. I guess I count on getting a pass from them like I have.

you knowers are pretty lucky

worth looking into but my recollection is the giganto fossils had zero salvageable DNA.

To me, Bigfoot is a hominin species, a member of genus homo, with speech ability. A great ape like us and others but a brute in human form.

I agree on the day sighting photo. The artists renditions are all over the place on what an adult BF looks like. I would feel more comfortable if another good day photo or video corroborated the P/G film. If two pictures taken 50 years apart show basically the same thing we are looking at the same species or the same master costume maker. The longer the interval between pictures the less likely it is a talented costume maker still making them. 30 year old costume maker in 1967 would be over 80 now. If we can believe the artists renditions are accurate, we must have more than one species. I disagree about the withdrawal of a BF being quieter than human. I based that on my encounter in which two adult BF were unaware that I was present. The best representation of how one of them sounded approaching me through the woods was the scene in the original Jurassic Park movie in which the T Rex was approaching in the woods. They do not slip into the quiet mode unless they know a human is present and they want to move with stealth. If discovered or if they think a human is not present they have no reason to be quiet. If you try to flush one, by approaching they make noise, moving. In another encounter when I was trying to get one to break cover, I not only heard it moving away, but it finally growled when it got tired of the game. They are a very large biped moving through the down wood and make an incredible amount of noise breaking things and producing heavy thuds at each footfall. I wish to heavens that my recorder got into record mode and you all would know what I am saying. Numerous reports of BF trying to escort humans out of an area or paralleling humans on a trail mention they produce a lot of noise when they choose to.

I have to assume that with the few Tom Slicks, Wally Hersoms, Adrian Ericksons .. and others .. who can afford the testing without so much as blinking an eye, that it has been done by someone at some time. The question, then, is why the results aren't public. I would say someone found something that makes them uncomfortable, something they think we are better off not knowing. Maybe some of our "crazy" ideas are crazy but are also truth? I dunno. A puzzle. Also a hint to move forward in our field research carefully because there may be more to the puzzle than we imagine, maybe something more dangerous than a mere man-ape-thingy in the woods. MIB

Nice looking set up! Congratulations on the new grandbaby!

You want to know why it was closed . It was closed because the folks who rule the debate want it close to the fact that they do not want this creature to have any part of it to be Human. To have it be Human does not fit into their well fitted agenda of what ever it may be. They wanted it to be an ape/ chimp since they do not want some thing that can match up to what we as Humans are. Sure we as Human do not live in the wild since us Humans build shelters . We as Humans are not savages where we eat our prey with our hands and teeth and rip the flesh off the bone. Us Humans do not give off the fear of God to other apex animals like these creatures do what ever roams in our forest. ( I am sure that Zana never had this ) . Where you can actually feel that fear in your bones as a Human.( Where is the paranormal in that) This is pure apex in a species not felt anywhere else . It is only felt when we encounter these creatures. So what ever DnA they have it must be some thing that is truly undiscovered. True there must be some human in them but what ever other part that is in their strand is what should leave us with at a remarkable amazement. That is even if there are two strands of DnA which we are not even sure off. There could be more then two strands of DnA which would make them remarkable.

I've been hiking, hunting, camping, prospecting, and just hangin' out in the mountains of B.C for more than 60 years, and had 3 experiences in that time. My teenage son had a sighting about 40 years ago on a camping trip, but I only got a fleeting glimpse of what he saw. I found a trackway in snow a year or so later, and then had a sighting the year after that. Nothing since, and I get out in the woods every chance I can, probably 30 days per year nowadays. I still go hunting and prospecting, and get out a few times each year with other local researchers specifically looking for Sasquatch, but our best efforts so far have been a rock throwing incident, and follow ups to a number of local reports, only one of which produced a castable track.

My first encounter the two adult BF were whooping at each other as they moved through the woods. That whoop could be construed as a bark I suppose but it was more like what a human could produce by vocalizing "whooop". The "P" was definitely pronounced.

Science states that BF does not exist. BF enthusiasts say that it does. The same enthusiasts point to report sightings throughout almost the entire US. There are ones that claim to have evidence but withhold it for various reasons. Some claim that in “inner circles” there are multiple clear and convincing photos. Maybe as a BF community we need to like within as to why this mystery is not solved. We can and should point fingers at the government on the issue but we also need to realize fingers need to be pointed at us as well. We keep yelling there is smoke that should lead to a fire but we can’t reliably produce said smoke and get upset that they won’t acknowledge the fire.

It's a younger generation lass, like 80 or 90 years younger than you, different values, different angle, different everything.

Catmandoo... thanks for that. I didn’t know that was a thing with apes. I would just say to those who hypothesize how this could have been a tag on some other animal.....take the time to read this, in full. Many of the alternative explanations are discussed, in detail. No matter what your pet theory is about what the nature of BF might be, or how it will ultimately be confirmed or refuted, science needs to lead. This is field research in the best tradition...bold, clever, well documented and freely shared, and with a potential to move the needle just a little, or even a lot. If it can be done once, it is plausible it can be done again. Each time it is, if it is, it puts the confirmation bias explanation further off the table. We shall see, I guess. I for one give these folks huge props for dreaming this technique up, seeing it through and (especially) publishing it with this degree of thoroughness..

Is there any way to confirm it was on a Bigfoot and not a Bear or a Squirrel, etc.

Anyone going? Does anyone know how to get in touch with Keith Bearden? He's a hoot. Maybe he still checks in here or at least receives notification of a message received? Easier than social media to communicate. Please PM me if you know. Edit: found him on here. Thanks.

I apologize for my tardy response Hiflier. I have been thinking about how I might answer your questions (and whether or not I could). 1st a disclaimer: I was educated as a paleobiologist. I have studied fossil invertebrate populations with regard to their specific variations (variations within a species due to ontogeny - that is growth from infant to adolescent to adult), parasitism by competing organisms, and evolutionary considerations as they impact our understanding of the genus, family, and order classifications in a particular class of invertebrates. I have taken graduate level courses in genetics and evolution (but a long time ago - invertebrate zoology was one of my two minor subjects), BUT I AM NOT A GENETICIST! So take what I might say with some healthy skepticism - and I welcome discussion from real geneticists (and I am guessing from your questions that you already know most, if not all, of what I am going to say). Some good news: With regard to DNA, hair is amazingly stable in a variety of environments that would be considered risky in other respects. That is mainly due to the presence of cuticle, the outermost hard layer of a three-layered hair shaft (inner medulla, medial cortex, outer cuticle). The cuticle protects the medulla, and the medulla contains a lot of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA). Some bad news: Nuclear DNA (nDNA or nuDNA) is lost in the process of cornification - in which protein cells become hair. Although many people think that a follicle needs to be attached to a hair shaft for extraction of nDNA, nDNA has occasionally been extracted from the medulla of a hair shaft - sometimes months or even years after the hair has been pulled/shed from a human body - I guess this should be included under the "good news". In most cases the best that one can expect from hair in terms of DNA is mtDNA. mtDNA is not pertinent for ID'ing individuals, but works for ID'ing species (if that species' genome is included in an existing gene bank - and it should be useful as a match for higher classifications as well, such as genus, subfamily, and family). According to at least two hair experts, Sasquatch hair commonly lacks a medulla, and, when present, the Sasquatch medulla is discontinuous and not prominent. A number of mtDNA studies of purported Sasquatch hair have suggested Homo sapiens, and the natural conclusion is human contamination. There are a variety of methods for decontaminating DNA samples, and actually hair, again because of the protective cuticle, is especially prone to successful decontamination. As I have said in other threads, there exist in all know human DNA (ALL HUMAN DNA) genetic markers that are unique to Homo sapiens, so any DNA researcher looking to verify human contamination or to suggest the existence of other than human DNA, must look for one, or a few, of those markers, else he/she is falling short of performing adequate study (trying to be kind here to past researchers - I would rather say #*&@&%$*!). I think study of suspected Sasquatch hair is worth study, without regard to external environmental challenges and without regard to time in environment. I am not like the body of posters on this site (mainly inductive reasoners - some brilliant, some notsomuch) that can run through a myriad of explanations and possibilities addressing a single data point. I am admittedly not brilliant - I am a plodder. I try to gather a lot of data and methodically work through that data to try to understand it (that's a tough thing in this Sasquatch world containing a fair bit of purely anecdotal data). If I were confronted with testing old hair for DNA or making the determination no to do so because conclusive results might be unlikely, I would say do the analysis - one never knows what might turn up (my experience has been the more one learns, the more one realizes there is more to learn). I had planned to address your questions more directly, but I am running out of gas. The subject does interest me, however, and I look forward to more communication with you.

I think it would be fair to say he is in denial about most truthful aspects of the PGF.

Perhaps one of the best and most informed opinions is someone that is mostly forgotten in intelligent discussion about the P-G film. His name is Robert "Bob" Merle Titmus, who met with both Roger Patterson and Bob Gimlin right after the film was shot (in Canada) and was on the P-G filmsite late October 1967, not only to inspect the trackway that was left behind, but to make castings of the footprints as well. He told me by telephone when I was preparing my Bigfoot At Bluff Creek, "that is a genuine film." Bob was equipped to give a very informed opinion. Having researched the film myself for decades I am 100% confident the P-G film depicts what we have come to know as Bigfoot, not a man in a costume.

Thanks Wag, but we kinda already heard there were stories about giants in America, ThePhaige even posted a bunch of pics of tall people. What we haven't seen is proof that the stories are real.

Creature Suits Analysis - Part One The Fur These notes are part of a series that I offer to the forum simply to help seperate fact from fiction in the ongoing debate of whether the figure in the PG film is a suit worn by a human. The same analysis can, of course, be applied to other sightings. Comments, criticisms and questions are welcomed. Bill Munns Everything starts with the fur, and the generalization that what's available today wasn't available in 1967 is true, but perhaps under-appreciated. I've never seen anyone breakdown exactly what kinds of fur and hair were around in 1967, and how they might be used for a suit. So I think the right place to start is to set up a fur/hair analysis. Forget anything about NFT's stretch-based spandix weave furcloth (the industry standard now), because they didn't get is well developed until the early 80's. In 1967, here's what you had to choose from: A. Real fur, like the bear skins used on the 1976 Kong Suit A "Maybe", in terms of being used for Patty. Price: a few hunderd per good pelt or bear skin rug, and you'd need 4-6 to make a full suit (with color matches and getting hair lay correct from piece to piece). B. High grade artificial fur, used in the garment industry for fake fur coats A "Maybe" Price: Usually $15-$20 a foot on 60" wide bolts of cloth. Need at least 10' for a suit, maybe 12' . Problem is most fabric shops usually stocked the lower grades in terms of quality, and the really good "fur coat" industry type furs (with guard and base fur components) were generally wholesale only to manufacturers of the coats, sold by the bolt or roll, and sometimes needed special order from Europe. I had a lot of trouble finding really good fur types back then, even from the biggest fabric shops serving the studios in Hollywood. So, while it was easy to get fake looking stuff, it was very hard to find highly realistic versions. And we didn't have the internet to do global or even national business searches for furcloth manufacturers. Back then, all we had a fat book called "the yellow Pages". C. "Fun Fur", a truly wretched material "No way" for Patty D. Crepe Wool, good for beards, torturous to apply on a full suit, and the amount of glue needed both glistens in a messy way and stiffens the suit horribly. "No way" E. Yak hair - pricy and hard to get, and you still gotta glue it on, not good for the density seen on film. "Not likely" F. Human hair - real pricy, and same as above, if you glue it. G. Hand tied ( or ventilated, as the process is often described) human, yak, or synthetic hair - Saves the glue, but just a toupee costs a few hundred bucks and up. Multiply that by a hundred or two, to cover a body. To do a "Patty" suit, Josephine Turner (the grand dame of wigmakers) could have paid off the mortgage on her house from that job alone, if you hired her. She was the "go to" wigmaker for any serious veltilated lace custom hair work (as Rick Baker did for the Sidney suit in "Incredible Shrinking Woman"). Doubt if Patterson could afford her. H. Wefted hair sewn into a suit - Only good for shaggy fur designs, with hair more than 6". Costly too. Forget it if you want short dense Patty fur. Realistically what's on film, if it's a suit, is either some real fur pelts or the high grade artificial fur. Nothing else gives you the consistant density shown. Now comes the bitter pill to swallow: Those two options are solid backed. They don't stretch. So forget about even trying to design a moving muscular padding under them. It won't move. It won't bulge, and it won't do anything but hold the suit fur in the form it was tailored to take. And short, dense hair laying relatively flat and smooth will bend and buckle exactly like stiff cloth, because it has no potential for compression or elongation. It is in fact so stiff and resistant to twisting or torquing motions that the head mask couldn't usually be secured to the torso section, because if it were, the actor's head couldn't turn much, or would turn inside the mask so the actor can't see out and can't breathe well, because the face mask is still facing forward but he's not. With a detached mask not fully secured to the body suit, you have better head mobility and turning range of motion, but the wardrobe assistant or makeup crew person attending a suit spends time after every film shot brushing and grooming the head/neck fur blend into the torso to try and make them blend smoothly. Real high maintainance. That's why you almost always see longer shaggy hair on fur suits. It covers the head/neck to torso transition much better, and allows some head movement, turning, etc. The long hair hides a multitude of sins caused by the underlying structure and the suit closures, and thus makes the fabrication process easier and less costly, because there's less precision in tailoring the fur and hiding closures and seams. If Patty's a suit, the fabricator's did not take the "easy way" and just use longer, shaggier hair. They chose the hardest hair medium to look good, move well, and the costliest to build (requiring the most hours from the most skilled people). An "amateur" could in fact, in 1967, have taken wefted hair from wigs, or just bought the wefted hair in 1/4 pound bundles, and easily sewn the wefts to a pair of long johns, and made a nice fur suit, with a Chewbacca sort of look. But it wouldn't match Patty's shorter, more dense fur. It would have been long and straggly. That's the 'easy way. The shorter the fur, the more critically skillful the tailoring has to be to make flat sheets or furcloth (or real fur on flat tanned hides) drape smoothly over the compound curves of a human body. With hair in the 1" range of hair shaft length, and dense, irregularities (in the joining of two sections) of 1/8th of an inch at the base (where two sections of fur meet and are joined) produce noticeable irregularities in the surface look. I've made a silverback gorilla full body (shown in my "visual resume" attached to my introduction post) that's pretty close to perfect, and used standard solid-backed furcloth for the back and rear legs, and the precision of the tailoring of the fur sections to get a flawless blend of the many curved fur segments was challenging even for me. And frankly, it's a static figure. It won't move and it would look horrible if the fur were mounted on a moving body or robot and tried to move. FUR TRANSITIONS Fur Transitions - Here's another aspect of fur suit fabrication often lost to the amateur mind. No real furred creature has the same kind of fur across it's entire body. The fur varies in density, length, color, and somewhere trickles off to bare skin. These are the transitional aspects of hair that drive every suit maker to distraction trying to perfect. Now, modern NFT custom fur can actually be woven with specified transitions of hair quality in the weave, but once again, they weren't doing it in 1967. You had the fur/hair options I already mentioned, and transitioning one into another was always one of the hardest parts of the suit. Say, for example, you go with bearskins or quality fake fur for the torso. And it's thick. You can't put that same type of hair on the neck or you'd lose the neck entirely. If you add an inch of bulk to the torso, is seems small. If you add the same inch of bulk to the neck, it fattens it way too much. If you shave or trim the fur to be shorter, you lose the natural variety of hair length allowing the hair to thin as it extends outward. It looks different. And you get closer to the base fur, which is a different color than the outer guard hairs, so cutting the guard hairs shorter allows the base fur to show more, and you get a color change you don't want. (Just to note, the high quality artificial furs do have both base fur and guard hairs of different colors and fiber textures to look more real). Transitioning hair length from long/ thick to shorter/ thick generally looks bad except in the hands of a real true master of haircutting. No amateur will pull it off. Transitioning hair from thick to thin usually requires you to switch mediums, from say furcloth to hand-laid crepe wool or human hair, or hair punched into a latex skin. Making one hair medium, like synthetic fibers in fur cloth match the color, texture, and light reactive properties of another hair medium, like anything natural like crepe wool, human hair or yak hair, is a lot harder than you may think, because you work under floresent shop lights usually, and them when you get your work in sunlight, discrepencies of color or texture suddenly become glaringly obvious. So using any transition of one hair medium to another in a suit requires you to test the blend of hair types under the lighting it will be eventually seen in, to check that your hair colors balance. You'd be amazed how a strong backlight or strong singular light source glare can react to hair, and synthetic reacts one way while real fur, hair, wool, etc. reacts another way. Any good suit, replicating a real living mammal, must have these transitions and almost any hair material readily available to use for a suit is consistant overall in color, density, texture, length, and proportion of base and guard hair. So the real skill that seperates the proverbial men from the boys, the professional from the amateurs, is in the mastery of transitions from one hair type to another, changing the color, density, length, or texture, or any combination of those attributes. I'm hoping to see some of the highest resolution prints from the PG film one day, to better appraise the transitions, but let me just say if you've got breasts you can clearly see the skin contour of, and fur as dense as that on the back and leg, you've got some serious hair transition work if you're the suitmaker. And for the bulk of the body, that's a real small neck, so there seems to be some transitional length and density between the fur on the torso and the fur on the neck. Better get somebody real talented and pay him well if you want to fabricate this. REWORKING AN OLD SUIT I do recall something on the various threads I read about possibly Patterson got an old suit and "re-worked" it. Well, if it's a fur suit, "re-working" generally means hair replacement and matching. And matching artificial fur of any high quality is so frustrating, just trying to find the same source hair, that most people would rather just scrap the old and build anew. If you gave me an old suit and said "match this hair/fur and change this section here", I'd probably pass on the job because finding the exact fur match would have been so much headache. Unless you want to just patch it with any old fur and rub black shoe polish into the entire suit, finding the same fur to patch somebody else's suit isn't easy, even for a pro. WHERE ARE THE SEAMS I read in a post by Chris Walas that he described a suit structured with a "pants" section, and then a "shirt" section. I did that with Swamp Thing (both suits), but they were foam latex. For fur suits, everything I've ever done was a one piece jumpsuit, zipper up the back, plus headpiece, gloves, and boots. I've done form-fitting suits patterned directly from actor's bodies (no padding) and extensively padded suits to significantly re-arrange the apparent muscle mass (making a chimpanzee into a mature male gorilla, for example). But you need to consider two types of seams. There are "closure seams" where the zippers, velcro, snaps and hook/eye devices close the suit around the person wearing it, and there are "tailoring seams", which are the seams where cloth parts are joined, sewn, glued or otherwise permanently attached. As a general rule, stretch fur cloth of today allows you to use far less tailoring seams, but that wasn't around in 1967. Non-stretch fur cloth and real fur pelts of the time required far more tailoring seams. Watch the opening of "The Tailor of Panama" and see Geoffrey Rush lay out a man's suit jacket from flat cloth, and you'll get a good idea of the complexity of tailoring a flat material into a curved form, and that's for a suit where it's allowed for you to see the finished seams. So the complexity you see there is even more sophisticated when tailoring material fur to look seamless. And the more rigid the material base, and the more varied the compound curves of the end result multiplies the complexity of the job even more. With stiff-backed furcloth, you need to use multiple smalled contoured sections around any compound curvature of the body, meaning lots of darts, wedges, and tailoring seams. The challenge humbles the best of us, when rigid furcloth (or real fur on a tanned hide) is used. Additionally, how well the tailoring seams blend again is dependent on hair length, the longer hair being forgiving and the shorter, dense hair being ruthlessly unforgiving. Sewing two edges of rigid furcloth actually doesn't give a smooth join in general, so a cloth "gusset" or joiner is glued to the underside of both joined sections, allowing them to butt up against each other, and allow the fur "lay" to consistantly shingle from one to the next. But that added gusset of glued cloth also stiffens the seamed area even more that the fur cloth was alone, making it not only impossible to stretch or compress smoothly, but even interfering with the fur's ability to bend. So it makes a beautiful smooth seam, if the fur cloth doesn't move. It gets pretty ugly if the fur cloth does move. One note of interest is that John Chambers is often quoted as saying, when first shown the footage, that he couldn't do it as well (or words to that effect). First, I can't vouch for the quote being real, but I did meet John in the 70's and he seemed to be a man of integrity and humility, the opposite of Bud Westmore who loved to take credit for all his staff's work, and inflate his importance. So while I don't know if John actually said such, I believe he did because it's true. If Patty's a suit, you must consider that of all the hair technologies of the time, creating short dense fur on a realistic animal or human anatomy, and having it move like furred skin instead of rigid furcloth, was by far the hardest challenge any suit maker could be given. Longer shaggy hair was always easier, more forgiving of hiding seams and the shaggy hair was reactive to gravity in a way that gave some sense of reality to the motion. If the suit designer has any imput in the design, he's more likely to suggest or use longer, shaggier fur materials simply because they offer a higher probability of success in producing a full furred body that you can't see any seams on, and the designer does want to show a success, not a failure. And there weren't any real R&D budgets then, not like today. So what I'd say to any director or producer who wanted a real dense and short hair (like, say, the silverback section of a real lowland gorilla), "if we go with the real short fur, it'll cost more to make, we may need to make several versions of the suit with closure seams in different places (like the Gort robot suit in Day the Earth Stood Still, where they had two suits, one with the foam seams in the back, and one with the foam seams in the front, so he could be filmed coming or going, but not both in one shot.). And the motions of the mime may be restricted by the buckling of the fur in unnatural ways. If we go with a longer, shaggier fur, you won't have those problems." Suffice to say, any time you give the producer and director those options, they always go with the shaggy fur. So would John Chambers in that era, so whatever he made would look great. So would any respectable creature guy putting his name and reputation on the suit. So if Patty's short dense fur is the very worst type to try and make a great suit with, the hardest to succeed in doing, and there's no precise anatomical stipulation of how long bigfoot's hair is, anybody trying to fake it would likely op for the easier way, longer, shaggy fur. And that's probably why John said it was beyond what he could do. He knew how maddeningly hard it is just to shape rigid-backed short dense fur into a smooth curved natural form, much less put that on a walking human mime. Some of you have apparently done a lot of research on suits from old films and even Hollywood archives. Has anybody seen pictures of a suit with short dense fur like Patty's? If so, I'd love to see it. If not, it's likely because it's so hard to do, it's a near guaranteed recipe for failure. And that would be one of the strongest arguments Patty isn't a suit. If you can't find a Hollywood suit of the time or earlier, where the fur was very short and dense as on Patty's back, form-fitting a apelike, humanoid, or even bear-like anatomy, then it speaks volumes for the fact of how hard it is, and maybe it simply couldn't be done. More to Come (and soon to be posted): Creature Suits Analysis - Part Two The Muscle Padding Creature Suits Analysis - Part Three The Mime inside Creature Suits Analysis - Part Four Rebuilding Patty