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

To quote Ripley, "has everyone's IQ's dropped while I've been in a cryogenic sleep the last 40 years?" Or something like that. And the answer is that IQs and attention spans have both dropped, phenomenally. Someone on Facebook posted an 8th grade civics test from circa 1880. I'm pretty sure I'd fail if I took it cold turkey. You can find numerous articles on colleges complaining that incoming classes need remedial math and instruction on how to read and analyze literature. So, it's not shocking that a forum like this one which doesn't have glitzy AI-generated recreations of "How Bigfoot interrupted our basketball game, dunked, and left" or 15-minute videos of "The Top 10 Most Horrific Bigfoot Attacks in Manhattan" can't compete for an audience used to getting their information in 60 second Tik-Toks. If that's what's askew with this Forum, I'm okay with keeping the recipe the same. Cliff & Bobo and Greg Pruitt mentioned on one of the last Bigfoot n' Beyond podcasts that at one time, the BFF was the place to go for Bigfoot information as it was an improvement over message boards and relatively open (i.e., no gatekeepers who "owned" the forums and ruled them with an iron fist, like some field research organizations). But now, to get visibility in a monetized world, you need people willing (and capable) of pounding out blog posts in 15 minute increments or video shorts on 18 different platforms. I just don't think that's what the Forums are (and I'm okay with that). As to Reddit, never has so much been said with so few words; well done, Beachfoot. (Okay, technically, the Commander, American Forces in and around Bastogne did better, but you still win the day here.) Even for the non-cesspool aspects of Reddit, it's just not an easy system to use and information in it gets lost faster than virtue in a ... in a place where virtue is lost quickly. I had a baseball site that was like a local bar. When Vox took it over, the regulars looked for a new place where everybody knew your name and Reddit was not it. It was difficult to find even basic threads on the topic there. Rant over. I"ll go back outside to shake my fist at some clouds now.

They found artifacts from where the cabin was standing and a short distance away is a gold mine. This is stunning news.

I enjoy the people that are here and there is more content across this boards history than one could ever get through. Nothing needs to change, I was simply pointing out that forums are not dying but smaller communities are. You are doing just fine.

you have your mind made up and new data doesn't get through because you are anti science and closed minded.

Reddit is a cesspool.

You must be an old guy.

But they are dying. I mentioned three right off the top of my head. The BFRO has moved their forum to Facebook specifically. We are not a social media platform like Reddit or Facebook. I personally do not like social media platforms. But it would seem people like me are a minority.

Except lead isn't magnetic.

Ron Morehead seems like a really nice guy. But he is not a physicist. Neither am I. But I do have a basic foundation of knowledge. Converting matter into energy. Yes. Thats true. E=mc2 We have fission. Thats a nuclear bomb. Or a nuclear power plant. Highly radioactive. Atoms are split and energy is released. We have fusion. Thats our sun. Under intense gravitational forces it combines hydrogen atoms to produce photons aka sunlight. We have never recreated it on earth. And at Cern they are accelerating matter and antimatter particles at ridiculous speeds and colliding them which releases energy and new particles. None of this is particularly healthy to biology up close and personal. But at a distance like say from the sun to the earth? Its a key element in life. In fact a flower converts photons into sugars that builds matter. It’s called photosynthesis. This is how plants grow on earth. Absolutely none of this is revolutionary. But it’s also not applicable to a biological creature cloaking itself at will. I.e. Hiroshima’s “little boy” bomb was 141 lbs of enriched uranium. An 800 lbs Sasquatch would destroy 5 large cities every time it converted itself from matter to energy. And of course vaporizing itself in the process. And irradiating a very large area as well. This idea of converting mass to energy and back to mass again sounds conspicuously like the transporter room on the Star Ship Enterprise. Its science fiction. And even then Capt Kirk needs the star ship and crew to complete the task. I have no idea where a 800 lbs Sasquatch would be hiding such advanced technology assuming that its even possible. Which by our current understanding of physics it is not. So I think this theory is dead on arrival.

Nope :( Gorgeous photos, @norseman

🤣

My point is that forums are not dying. Just this one.

I think we should be comparing apples to apples. The first Bigfoot forum I ever joined was the BFRO “blue room”. I was basically ran out of there for my pro kill stance, but whatever. It’s not the point. The point is that several years ago the BFRO shut down the blue room and opened up a Facebook page. They have 111 k members. Good for them. The hound hunting forum I belonged to? Gone. The jet boat forum called mean chicken…..gone. Along with the massive repository of knowledge. How does a very specific old school PHPBB board compete with Reddit or FB or the next great social platform? Good question.

Reddit Bigfoot has grown from 100K follows 2 years ago to 250K followers today. That isn't insignificant. Forums are as popular as ever, but something is askew with the recipe on this specific site. How many people actually post here in a month?

This fall! His is a hog!

Thanks all for very beautiful sharing. I wish I could hunt, this guy was napping in my backyard awhile ago.

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

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

Very good learning tool but I disagree with his approach toward declination. "East is least and west is best" sounds simple but it adds an element of work in the field that, in my opinion, is totally unnecessary. Moreover, if a person is trouble, because they are injured or suffering from hypothermia, and not thinking correctly, they may add the declination rather than subtract it. Now, they will be far off course and that error may needlessly cost them their life. I always draw declination lines on my map in the confort of my home and before I ever go into the woods. That way, I can take readings on the fly without ever having to orient the map. The declination lines drawn in advance cure that problem. A few other issues can rear their ugly head in the field that cause taking a reading a challenge. How do you easily orient the map so when there is a torrential downpour? When you took a reading, were you sure there wasn't metallic substance in a rock just below the surface you laid the map that could affect the magnetic needle? With my approach, I can lay the map on an electromagnet and it doesn't matter. I'm no longer using the magnetic needle to take a reading. My approach allows you to take a reading the fly, in rain or snow. It doesn't matter, it is quick, and there is no stopping to orient the map. Here is the best information I've ever found that talks about navigation skills and terrain association and it demonstrates the map-marking technique I mentioned above: https://www.adkhighpeaksfoundation.org/adkhpf/navagation.php Here are two video that show the technique of drawing magnetic north lines on a map. The bottom one discsusses declination at length if you are so inclined: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpXibF_yK2c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=peu7uMp0cVU Edited because I wanted to link a 2nd video by the same individual

I don't have a smartphone; I think it would be harder to use this format on a phone. Does anyone even learn to type anymore? I agree, oldies like us used to like to have discussions at length, for days or more. I mostly blame social media, which has damaged attention spans and increased sources of information. Another reason could be progression of knowledge; people learn answers to personal questions and move on.

I asked for your opinion. What is your opinion on the question I posed?