Tree Manipulation/ Wood Structures: What Is The Evidence?

[WSA]

Seatco...welcome to the Forum!  You'll find numerous posts in this thread from WesT on this idea, beginning, it appears, on page 2.  You'll probably want to read a lot of the posts since then, and it will be an excellent primer on the evidence. After that, I'm sure any would be glad to answer your questions. 

Edited January 31, 2017 by WSA

[Guest Busker]

On 31/10/2016 at 6:45 PM, zman1967 said:

Has anyone taken the time or tried to plot their tree manipulations/structures findings on a map?  

 

 

 

I'd be interested in seeing that if anyone has.

[Guest Seatco]

6 hours ago, WSA said:

Seatco...welcome to the Forum!  You'll find numerous posts in this thread from WesT on this idea, beginning, it appears, on page 2.  You'll probably want to read a lot of the posts since then, and it will be an excellent primer on the evidence. After that, I'm sure any would be glad to answer your questions. 

Appreciate comment.Digesting all i can the past month or so.Forgive me if my statements are from a inexperienced stand point.

 

If even half of structures/tree manipulation are BF indicated in this thread.Ive been asleep in the woods.While i see them often.Never put 2 and 2 together.

 

 

[Guest WesT]

On 1/30/2017 at 3:30 PM, Seatco said:

 

Please enlighten me.I am all ears.

 

Since a young boy i noticed these so called structures/blinds.There in almost every woods i have been in of this tri state area.

 

Very few could not be directly related to humans in my mind.Like wise tree manipulation naturally encoring.Ill give you the large trees with root balls in the air. 

 

 

 

 

 

Well I don't know about the enlightening part but it's my belief there might be something to learn from these manipulations.

[ioyza]

I want to run a few of my structure finds and ideas about them by you guys. A caveat - I haven't had a chance to read through all 66 pages of this thread, maybe just the first 10 or so, so if contributors know of a page range that's particularly relevant, please point me to it. None of these are new ideas per se, but insofar as it's extremely difficult to get clear evidence of these things being Sasquatch-made, let alone evidence of their purpose, I think accumulating quantity and consistency in terms of found structures' appearance alongside a careful consideration of their potential purpose based on context clues can be our best tool for beginning to understand them. 

 

Teepees - temporary shelter marker

 

This one was at my near-suburban Colorado area. I tended to have seasonal activity there (May-July, September-November), and had the sense that it was just one stop along an annual circuit, probably following the Platte for a lot of it. I found this teepee structure in early June, just before a period of uncharacteristically heavy rain. 

 

I felt very uneasy while taking those photos. No overt activity that day, but a strong feeling that I was being invasive. I hiked the trail again the following morning, less than 24 hours later. This is not a well-known or frequently-hiked trail, it's unlikely anyone else was there between my two hikes. At the bottom of the trail, just inside the treeline, was a fresh deer skeleton, busted into pieces - skull with spine snapped off a few vertebrae down, broken legs, etc. The sense of foreboding was palpable, I took this as a strong message sent directly at me and resolved that these would be the last Sasquatch-related pictures I took - which they have been. Anyway, this is not relevant to the topic at hand, just to explain why there are no pictures of the next structure.

 

A couple weeks later, during the period of heavy rain, the teepee structure is gone but replaced by a shelter directly across the trail. The backbone of this lean-to style shelter is visible in the second picture above - the arch in the upper left. Along the back of this arch were a series of branches perpendicular to the backbone planted in the ground above the hill, creating a roof and weighing the arch down to maybe half the height pictured there. These branches were completely covered by 4"x8" strips of aspen bark, perpendicular to the branches. In another couple of weeks, all traces of the shelter were gone, the arch pushed over. 

 

In this case, it seemed like the teepee was a marker for a very specific plan for a shelter. I doubt it's always that specific, it may just mark a general area as a 'Sasquatch Motel' along a travel route. Anyone else have teepee finds that support or refute this?

 

Traps - fish and deer

 

I got through enough of this thread to follow the potential trap documented by WesT, and I find these types of structures totally fascinating. The potential traps I've found would be far less elaborate, but extremely elegant in their design, and they share the use of a type of funneling technique. Here's the first structure I found (Lost Creek Wilderness):

 

We believe we found this structure in mid-construction - when we arrived in the area, we noticed a couple of twisted off aspens:

 

 

We also found a little stockpile of 4 or 5 of these broken off aspens hidden behind some rocks on our side of the river, maybe 8-10' tall, about the same as the tallest tree in the structure.

 

Now, this was kind of baffling for us, as it would have been a huge pain for humans to build, and would serve little purpose as a shelter - there's not really a cave in there, just a little alcove. Days later, a BFRO forum member suggested the idea that has stuck for me: a fish trap. As a fish swims into the inlet that flows behind the rock, it has to pass through these bars, where it's momentarily surprised, confused, or just slowed - and grabbed:

 

Years later, at the near-suburban site, I found a structure that I believe uses a nearly identical design for ambush-hunting deer. This find was after the shelter find, hence no photos. At the end of a deer trail through thick growth, just after a blind corner in the path, are a series of sticks placed in parallel over a slight dip in the ground. Imagine a deer spooked down this trail, running for its life in the dark, turning this corner and having to step across what is essentially a cattle guard. Now the second sasquatch, with plenty of cover to hide in, has an easy ambush.

 

Both these potential traps would take advantage of the same design principle - impeding the natural movement of prey with an unexpected obstacle in order to ambush.

 

(sorry for the image-laden post, I don't mind replacing images with links, just unsure of etiquette)

[WSA]

Ioyza...welcome to the Forum. Your post is right smack on-topic and very much appreciated. Thanks for putting the images up with the narrative. That really helps.

 

There is a lot of compelling stuff there. That tepee structure...one of the most uniform ones I've seen. No confusing that with anything that would occur naturally. So, it leaves us with only two possibilities, right? What argues for it being on non-human origin is the fact it disappeared. This is a pretty common outcome.  Would a kid building a "fort" or a hunter making a temporary blind come back for the specific purpose of dismantling it? I really don't think so. If somebody were a LNT builder, you would have never seen it in the first place. If it as a non-human construct, why was it then removed? Why have many of them been removed?  

[Twist]

WSA, your assumption is that the builder returned to dismantle the teepee.  Supposing kids did it, it could be just as simple that other kids came and removed it and built a bigger and better version, the one that appears 2nd.  Same goes for a hunter, a small crappy teepee/blind could be 50% of the next one.  

[Guest WesT]

23 hours ago, ioyza said:

I got through enough of this thread to follow the potential trap documented by WesT, and I find these types of structures totally fascinating. The potential traps I've found would be far less elaborate, but extremely elegant in their design, and they share the use of a type of funneling technique.

 

 

There was actually 2 different traps and they were different from each other and unlike anything I've ever heard of. The first one was elaborate because of the planning, construction methods used, and the number of components involved. But unless you were right on top of it, then happen to notice it, and then got curious and had a look around, you'd never know it was there. The second one was in the wide open but the common theme was the funneling of the prey into a trap.

 

In the first pic you posted, I didn't see anything remarkable or beyond something a person could do, but the X off to left was cool. In the second pic the tree bow in the background is interesting. Can't see how it's pinned down though. That big piece of wood in the foreground has an odd wear spot in it. Looks old.

 

If you see an ambush site that uses the cattle guard technique you should see evidence of that use in hoof marks and wear on the objects (wood) used to make it. Careful inspection of the surrounding area may reveal other manipulations/components and or simple wood tools that would help subdue their prey. The tool set that they would use would be barely recognizable to us due to our own physical restraints in using them ourselves.

[BigTreeWalker]

This is just my two cents, but I don't think the 1st type of teepee structure is weather related. Unless bigfoot carries a tarp around with him. I have seen ones with the branches close enough to be effective snow shelters. The second one ioyza mentioned sounds like it would be an effective rain shelter with the bark "shingles". 

 

I have to wonder about the decision to not take pictures though. In my own experience I felt very uncomfortable placing a trailcam next to a fresh killed elk a few months ago. I found out that I had every right to be because a bear came into the kill about a half hour after I left. I guess the point is whatever sense warned me of that big bear in the area, how could I tell what I felt was because of a bear, a cougar or a bigfoot? I think it's just a matter of our intruding into an area and not the fact that we are taking pictures. We all know that they avoid cameras anyway.

[ioyza]

In regards to human vs. bigfoot origin of these structures - I understand this is an important question, and a difficult one to answer definitively. The first thing I'd say in support of these being sasquatch structures is that each of these two sites yielded a lot of activity. I think structures in the context of clear BF activity are much more likely to be BF-made, and I'm happy to share that context:

 

Site 1 (Lost Creek Wilderness, CO): https://www.reddit.com/r/bigfoot/comments/2aaqsf/have_you_ever_had_an_encounter_with_bigfoot_share/cit9wir/

Site 2 (Deer Creek Canyon, CO): https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/comments/24gg93/cmv_theres_not_a_chance_in_hell_that_bigfoot/ch752fu/

 

The other line of reasoning I use with regards to structures is a sort of informal "human purpose vs. effort expended" test. Take the "fish trap" structure; there's no dry way across that creek; in early May when we found it, the water was moving quite quickly and was probably extremely cold; and the building materials were aspen trees that were broken/twisted off at the trunk, which we found evidence of in both the trunks and the stockpile of trees. That's a tremendous amount of effort for a human. What would the purpose be? A shelter? Just across the creek from the campground, just downstream from the parking lot, in a tiny alcove with not enough room to lay? Boyscouts having some fun? None of that adds up to me. The impression I was left with was that we were some of the first campers of the season, and "they" thought they had a little more time to use the area without the worry of avoiding campers.

 

The teepee falls a lot more ambiguous on that test. I'd still argue there's not much human purpose for it, but it wouldn't take tremendous effort either. Still, there's a lot of activity in conjunction with it; a much more elaborate shelter appeared directly across the trail from it; a fresh deer skeleton was left in plain sight at the bottom of the trail the morning after I photographed it; and this is a ubiquitous structure in sasquatch research. And to clarify - I don't think the teepee is a shelter itself by any means, I think it is a marker for shelter; in this case, a specifically-planned shelter. It's even possible that the branches that composed the first layer of the roof of the shelter were literally the same branches that made up the teepee.

 

I think as a general philosophy, we can rarely achieve "absolute certainty" about observations in this field, and most progress is made when we arrive at some level of "reasonable certainty." We can be reasonably certain about a conclusion, while still not becoming dogmatic or unwilling to reconsider conclusions in the light of new information or ideas. I am reasonably certain the structures I showed and described above were made by sasquatch.

 

Wes, I need to go back and read more of this thread clearly, that sounds interesting. I was impressed by your find of the worn spot on the structure where the bow would be held down. Unfortunately I didn't think to look for such signs of wear at the time, but there's always the chance that it was recently built and not yet used, or even had been attempted to be used, just not successfully. Or that I'm completely wrong about its purpose.

 

BigTreeWalker, I understand my decision to hang up the camera may be extreme and can prove irksome to folks; it's irksome to me at times, e.g. when I try to explain especially the shelter, which was frankly incredibly impressive. Still, I felt very strongly that the deer skeleton was a warning aimed specifically at me. Even if it wasn't a threat per se, I feel like it was a way of expressing disapproval at my actions. Respect for the sasquatch people is paramount to me, I really want to approach them on their terms, and I try to err on the side of caution in this regard. This is not just a matter of research ethics, but of strategy, as I think allowing interaction to be on their terms as much as possible is the best approach for results in the long-term.

[hiflier]

My only thoughts would be that Humans won't bother to cover their tracks or ground impressions. A careful look around might reveal much. Also BF's are heavy so there should be depressions around especially along creek edges. One other thing regarding the teepees, check carefully for hair lodged in the barks of the sticks and around the site where any trees were twisted off. Approach arches the same way being careful to observe the ground around and leading up to the crown. Even a tall Sasquatch needs to be close to the tree to grab it and walk in a fairly straight line in order to work it down and then pin it with something. Look for hair on the arch's wood surface as well as body weight or pressure from a knee or an underarm hold may have been applied until the object pinning it to the ground was applied.

Edited February 5, 2017 by hiflier

[Twist]

I've heard it mentioned ( a few thousand times ) that BF will leave tracks 5X deeper than a normal man can.  There should be footprints if BF all around these structures.

[ioyza]

I don't tend to expect tracks in Colorado because of the dry climate, the ground is usually hard. At least, if they're conscious about trying not to leave footprints, it wouldn't take too much effort.

 

I forgot to mention, the arch wasn't pinned down, the tree was partially uprooted and tilted, and held its shape like that. It dipped to a lower height from the weight of the roof when it was used for a shelter.

[hiflier]

Not saying there would be any tracks. Just saying watch for and look for them which you probably do. And hair on the bark surfaces. Sometimes slowing down like that can be revealing though I know it can be stressful as you spoke about.

[WSA]

Context is everything, of course.  I note the BFRO has 5 Class A sightings(and multiples more Class B ones) in Jefferson and Park Counties. I am going to review them to see if any tree structures are mentioned. 

 

In ruling out natural causes, beaver activity has to be considered. I see a gnawed beaver staub in one of the photos. A pile of branches laid up for the winter, and which weather down to sticks over the years might fool you. That said, I've never heard of beaver stacking logs in a teepee formation, but they certainly are all about cutting and pulling wood about. I'm assuming there was no tooth-chiseled ends to any of the wood used in these constructs.  

 

As you say Twist, humans COULD have made all of these, took them down, moved them, etc. Reaching for the explanation, always, is a thought stopper though. I prefer to think along the lines of WHY a human would do that? In all my time in backcountry areas, I've never found what is described here without some other human remnant.  Kids like to build "forts", we all know. They also like to tie things to trees, hang up tarps, hack the bark off a tree, pound in stakes, dig out the floor, and  "improve" the area. No kid goes into the woods to do something like this without a saw, knife or hatchet...maybe even an entrenching tool to boot.  That is the point to a child...to get to use a cool, sharp tool to build something. (Boy did I) And, once they do, they don't just knock it down and build it somewhere else.  If they come back, they just add stuff onto it, to make it even cooler.  Spend some time in the woods with any group of boys, and you'll have this proven to you time and again.  By product of trail maintenance? Again, I'm doubting it. As somebody who has cleared more than my share of tread way, I can tell you I've never thought to pile it up into a teepee formation, nor have I ever seen a trail crew do that. You get it off the trail and move one. Spending the calories to drag it to one location and tip it up into a teepee makes no sense whatsoever.       

The ONLY human motivation I can think of to do this is a camper tipping up logs for a firewood stash, to get it up off the snow. There would necessarily be evidence of a fire pit nearby though, and one is not mentioned.

http://www.bfro.net/GDB/show_report.asp?id=2493

 

This one makes mention of broken trees.

Edited February 6, 2017 by WSA