Conspiracy Theory And Bigfoot

[Guest Coonbo]

Drew: Do you have personal, first-hand knowledge of this, with very specific examples of areas where you yourself personally have been and then return there within weeks or four months or less and these areas have been clear cut or are in process of being logged out? And has this happened repeatedly, in fairly widespread areas around the country? I can also cite examples where even private property was clear cut under these conditions.

Now, I'm not asking you to list these areas, I'm just asking you to think about what you personally, truly know as firsthand incidents that you yourself have seen, and to think about how many times you've personally seen this happen.

Edited July 2, 2012 by Coonbo

[Drew]

Yes. In Clare County Michigan, I have a swamp that I go to count Blanding's turtles, it is a small swamp in some public woods, every spring the Blandings turtles spread out to find mates and nesting sites, I pulled over to check it out and they were clear cutting the forest. Another spot in Clare County, west of M18 north of Gladwin, I go there to hike all the time, drove over there and the entire area was clear cut. They leave a little strip of trees by the road to make those passing not know what is going on.

https://maps.google....&gl=us&t=h&z=16

Here is where 'my swamp' is https://maps.google.com/maps?q=gladwin+county&hl=en&ll=44.009315,-84.709654&spn=0.012516,0.01929&hnear=Gladwin,+Michigan&gl=us&t=h&z=16

Next Google Earth pass it will show it is clear cut.

Edited July 2, 2012 by Drew

[AaronD]

I get the feeling Drew is just playing devil's advocate, Coonbo. But if I understand you correctly, you're saying that someone in the government see's your public notifications of where you've seen squatches and/or where you'll be conducting a hunt; thereafter, a logging company is dispatched to cut the trees and therefore muster your plans. Do I have this right?

I have some wooded areas, you could publically announce a hunt there; oh yes, we have had sightings nearby too...and I guarantee no cutting will be done. But to test your theory, we'll see how many logging companies contact us to cut and how urgent their needs will seem. Just a thought...

Edited July 2, 2012 by AaronD

[Rockape]

In a state park in Texas, where we had a widely publicized encounter with multiple BF, fellow researchers who came back there a week or so later, found footprints that were left from our earlier encounter had been filled in with dirt. BUT the dirt had been brought in from somewhere else and you could easily distinguish it from the native dirt in the area.

Why would someone have to bring in dirt from another area to cover footprints? Why not just use the dirt there? Or just use a shovel to destroy the prints.

[Guest BFSleuth]

Regarding why they would need to bring in dirt, I would imagine that any effort to dig up dirt to cover the tracks would look pretty suspicious in and of itself. Coonbo, do you have any pictures of before and after of this track cover up?

[AaronD]

Well, it's likely the taxpayers' money so why not utilize the most costly method imaginable? I mean, if you till the dirt on site you can't bring in big trucks and dump dirt from them

[Cotter]

Coonbo.

I myself have experienced a clear-cut in a hot-bed area. I brushed it off as coincidence at the time....

You say you had a 'highly publicized' encounter with BF, any add'l info on the web about this?

Also, your thoughts on certain gov't agencies and an eradication program of aggressive RFP's? (Reclusive Forest Primates).

Thank you.

[Guest]

Sorry Coonbo, I ain't buyin' what your sellin'.

Loggers clearcut stands when they become marketable. In practice, they probably get into most stands well after they become marketable and a forester might consider the stand "overmature." These are the deepest, darkest, squatchiest-looking places around. It would be very difficult to demonstrate a statistical relationship between some guy saying he's seeing bigfoots somewhere and a clearcut subsequently taking place at that location because of the very high confounding correlation between stand maturity and places where people go to look for bigfoot. In other words, there are very few places where people report bigfoots that are not prime for harvest. It's almost like realizing that you get wet every time you go snorkeling.

I might've lost track in your narrative, but did you suggest that someone was clearcutting on NPS land? It's not impossible, but I bet you dollars to doughnuts that if some kind of harvest did take place on NPS land (say for fuels reduction) there'd be a paper trail of permit documents as long as your arm. (Lemme guess, those documents would be clever forgeries, right?)

Lastly, I don't see anything unusual in how you describe the treatment people gave you when you were found poking around culverts. First, you may have indeed been on private land despite your objections to the contrary. Even if on public land though, there may be restrictions to poking around off designated trails. Culverts can be dangerous places, so you could be seen as having been a public safety issue averted. Also, drug traffickers, etc. will often use culverts for their purposes, so it doesn't surprise me at all that you'd attract unwelcomed attention in such places.

As for your boss, I'd expect him to get angry with you if he keeps getting calls that you're acting suspiciously around culverts. Mine would too if I did that.

[Guest Coonbo]

Why would someone have to bring in dirt from another area to cover footprints? Why not just use the dirt there? Or just use a shovel to destroy the prints.

Rockape: I thought the same thing. They could have come in with some rakes and easily obliterated the prints. And there were certainly enough pine needles around to cover them up even further. Heck, with the somewhat off-color dirt in them, they stood out like a sore thumb. But you never know what kind of employees they had in a place like that that would be doing the actual "grunt work".

BFSleuth: I don't have any pics of them anymore. Lost the ones I had in a hard drive crash, but I'll check with some other folks involved with that outing and see if they still have some.

[AaronD]

I'm just struggling with the WHY of covering up tracks...I mean, unless the logging co. has reason to think their own employees had a drunken binge and disrobed themselves in a stupor and made the tracks with their own bare feet.....I could see them wanting to cover evidence of such an incident, but WHY cover up BF tracks???? Even a skeptic wouldn't, by principle, cover the tracks......

[Martin]

You sound like the same Coonbo who claimed to have treed one about ten years ago and got everyone in a lather then confessed that you made it all up?

Edited July 2, 2012 by Martin

[AaronD]

You sound like same Coonbo who claimed to have treed several about ten years ago and got everyone in a lather then confessed that you made it all up?

Dunno why but this post makes me laugh hysterically!!!

[salubrious]

It's not impossible, but I bet you dollars to doughnuts that if some kind of harvest did take place on NPS land (say for fuels reduction) there'd be a paper trail of permit documents as long as your arm.

I remember seeing clear cuts in the Bighorn Mountains, which was National Forest land. They would level things for miles but leave just enough trees so that when you were driving by it looked normal. But I was flying gliders in the area and the clear cuts were easy to see. This was back in the 1980s. Nearest towns were Buffalo and also Sheridan, Wyoming (2 different scenic highways).

[Guest]

^Sure, and even on National Forest land those cuts were planned long before they took place. One of my jobs in the 1990s was to conduct environmental reviews of timber sales on National Forests. I would sometimes get the plans months before the saws were sharpened, and by the time they got to me, a lot of effort had already gone into the plan.

I don't know what they're using these days, but I'm pretty sure they had a 5-year plan back then. In other words, they knew at least 5 years in advance where they were planning to cut The only exception seemed to be "pre-salvage" cuts. I hated those. The point was to get in and remove the marketable timber before gypsy moths expanded into new areas and killed the trees. Of necessity, the turnaround time on those was a lot shorter, but it was still on the order of months to get it all legal.

And this was the FOREST Service, not the National PARK Service. In National Parks, anything that alters the way the land looks is a no-no, so timber harvest there is a far more complicated proposition.

[Guest]

In the Gifford Pinchot NF cuts are planned well in advance as well, and go through public comment phases that last a long time. I would guess any govt owned land goes through the same process. Privately owned land is another matter entirely.