Rudimentary Tool Use?

[JKH]

This topic reminded me of this account of a series of interactions, in which a tool belt with tools was taken and the belt, minus tools, was returned days later.

http://www.bigfootencounters.com/stories/picnic-table.htm

[the parkie]

Coonbo

A BFRO report where someone saw them mating...

http://www.bfro.net/GDB/show_report.asp?id=1408

By the way, who is O'Neal Sockwell?

Edited March 27, 2014 by the parkie

[Guest keninsc]

Does using a big oak tree to brain bash a deer count as rudimentary tool use?

 

Yes, it's elemental but it counts as tool usage. Let's face it, if you saw a tiger using stick to club it's prey it'd freak you out.

 

I recall reading some reports of people reporting Bigfoots using rocks to break open mussels, both fresh and salt water. Then one can argue that throwing rocks is tool usage, but I can see both sides of the argument on that debate.

Coonbo

A BFRO report where someone saw them mating...

http://www.bfro.net/GDB/show_report.asp?id=1408

By the way, who is O'Neal Sockwell?

 

Oh great, just what we need, Bigfoot porn.

This topic reminded me of this account of a series of interactions, in which a tool belt with tools was taken and the belt, minus tools, was returned days later.

http://www.bigfootencounters.com/stories/picnic-table.htm

 

Oddly enough, I have experienced a loss of tools when I've been out hiking and camping myself. Granted most of what I lost was most likely due to my own failure to secure my gear properly. However, I have lost things I couldn't just blow off. For instance a small hand ax, I'd used to split up some wood for a fire and to cut up some fallen wood. Left it in the top of a dead log. When I got up that next morning it was gone. No sign of anything, I looked very thoroughly, but it was gone. Never knew what happened to it I figured some like a bear of something had come and gotten it, but why didn't it come after the food I had up a tree? Or me for that matter?

Now Bigfoot isn't the only answer, but why take a tool then later return it? Seems that once they realized what a great item a tool like that was they would want to keep it. Hey, finder's keeper's to a Bigfoot. 

Edited March 27, 2014 by keninsc

[Guest lightheart]

In the report mentioned by JKH the tool belt was returned but not the tools themselves. 

[JKH]

 

However, I have lost things I couldn't just blow off. For instance a small hand ax, I'd used to split up some wood for a fire and to cut up some fallen wood. Left it in the top of a dead log. When I got up that next morning it was gone. No sign of anything, I looked very thoroughly, but it was gone. Never knew what happened to it I figured some like a bear of something had come and gotten it, but why didn't it come after the food I had up a tree? Or me for that matter?

That's awesome. You said "things" plural, anything else? You know a bear didn't take your ax, right?

Edited March 27, 2014 by JKH

[Guest keninsc]

That's the thing. A bear might have smelled me on the ax and took it as a toy or a smelly play thing, it could have been any number of things. Like I said, most people who hike or spend time in the woods try to keep all their stuff safe, but sometimes we screw up and loose things. However, there are times when something just disappears. That hand ax is the one thing I know where I put it and it wasn't just fallen down in the leaves it was gone.

 

I've had para-cord bundles disappear. I usually keep several in 25 yard bundles, but they are so small and light they are easy to simply loose and you'll never know they're gone.

In the report mentioned by JKH the tool belt was returned but not the tools themselves. 

 

So the tool belt was returned but not the tools? That's odd?

[Guest lightheart]

Yes that is the odd thing. Almost (weird i know) like they were following some sort of code of conduct but really wanted or needed the tools themselves.

[Guest keninsc]

On the other hand, I almost forgot this. I'm sorry but I'm getting over a stomach virus and I'm not really myself. I recall on several instances hiking out along some trails and finding things like a hand ax, oddly enough, planted in a tree and apparently abandoned.  On another time I found a large fixed blade knife the same way. Now, I recall that many will often mark a place where something significant happened this way. I didn't remove either since one, they weren't mine to remove and two, I had no idea what they'd been put there for.

 

I have found hammers in very odd locations. It's funny I once almost tripped over a small ax while I was looking for a good place to take a number two. It was all rusted and the handle was partially rotted, so it had been there a good while and it was off the beaten path. Like I said the only reason I found it was because I was in need of the pause that refreshes.

[JKH]

Very interesting. Did all these finds and losses happen in the same general area?

[Guest keninsc]

No, they happened in different areas at different times. I've always assumed they were from my own carelessness, except for the hand ax. That one still has me rubbing my chin on, but here again "Bigfoot" isn't the only answer. 

[Guest Coonbo]

Coonbo

A BFRO report where someone saw them mating...

http://www.bfro.net/GDB/show_report.asp?id=1408

By the way, who is O'Neal Sockwell?

 

LOL!  Like keninsc said "Bigfoot porn..... 

 

 

O'neal Sockwell was the longtime operator of our farm in northwest Alabama for 30 years or more.  He had a very life-changing encounter with a booger (or boogers) on the back of our farm in the late 60's or early 70's.  It traumatized him so badly that he never again got out of his truck in or near the woods after dark.  Supposedly he came home from our farm one night as white as a ghost and shaking in his boots, pretty much in shock.  But he wouldn't tell anyone, not even his wife and sons, what had happened.

 

For the next couple of decades or more, 3 or 4 nights a week, EVERY week, he would park his truck up on a ridge looking towards the back of the farm, where he could see a lot of the treeline of the forest that covers the back of the farm.  He would have a rifle in his lap or leaning against the seat beside him, and he'd have a spotlight.  About every 15 to 30 minutes or so, he would click on the spotlight and scan the treeline looking for something.  He would show up around 8 to 9:00pm and stay until 10 to 11:30pm - night after night after night, for years and years and years.  He would never tell anybody what he was looking for.

 

In late summer of 1978, we'd bought an expensive cow already carrying a calf to be born in a few weeks.  She didn't have time to integrate with the rest of the herd and when it came time for her to calve she disappeared.  Four of us were out looking for her - O'neal, two farm hands and myself.  It got dark and we broke and ate dinner and went out looking again.  He headed down one of the fire breaks that go back through the woods on the back of the farm, down towards the river.  We were in O'neal's truck with him driving, I was in the front with him and the two hands were in the back.  As we were driving down the crest of a steep ridge with the land sloping sharply down, on both sides, into deep hollows and sloughs off the river at the bottom, we faintly heard the cow bawl way off down in the deep hollow to the west of us. 

 

We stopped and the hands and I got our lariats and were making ready to head off down into the hollow after the cow.  The hands got to pestering O'neal to come with us.  He very strenuously objected and said that he'd wait in the truck for us.  One of them was laughing and joking and got ahold of O'neal's left arm and tried to pull him out of the truck.  O'neal was not joking and came out of his pocket with his right hand and drew a S&W Model 37 snubnose and thumb-cocked it and shoved it firmly up under the hand's chin and allowed as to how, if he didn't turn him loose right now, he was going to blow his brains out the top of his head.  Needless to say, the hand turned him aloose right now, and said that he was just kiddin'.  O'neal allowed as to how he was NOT just kiddin'. 

 

I was quite amazed at the seriousness O'neal's reaction, but I knew that something bad had happened to him back there somewhere.  The two hands headed off down into the hollow and I started after them.  O'neal hollered at me.  I stopped and he asked me if I had a gun,  I said no.  He said to come back up here and take his gun.  He handed me the Model 37, reached in the glove box and pulled out yet another revolver, and I asked why I needed the gun.  That's when he said to me, "Tim, there's things in these woods that only God-Almighty Himself knows what they are.  Don't ever go out on this farm and especially in these woods without a gun, day or night."  I didn't have time to ask him anything else, so I took the gun and headed off down into the dark hollow after the hands.

 

And we found the cow, chin-deep in the slough at the bottom, bawling her head off.  We had a pretty good rodeo getting her up outta there.   I thought she was gonna pop out her calf before we could get her back up the hill but we got her all the way back to the barn and she popped out the calf later that night.  I later tried to ask O'neal about what he'd seen back there and all he ever said was that I should stay outta those woods after dark.  Almost exactly one year later, I had my first close-up encounter with a booger at the edge of those woods. 

Edited March 27, 2014 by Coonbo

[clubbedfoot]

Does using a big oak tree to brain bash a deer count as rudimentary tool use?

 

 

I should have been clearer ....the big oak tree is not a club type implement but an actual living tree used to slam a deer's head against....

Edited March 27, 2014 by clubbedfoot

[the parkie]

Thanks Coonbo, interesting reading.

[Guest keninsc]

It stands to reason that any intelligent creature will make use of what is available in it's environment in order to gain an advantage, Certainly tool use is one of those things. Could be they see us using tools and wonder how they can help them, knives, axes, hammers, things like that, but then it seems they abandon them at some point. Granted, every tool I found in the forest didn't get there as a result of Bigfoot but, let's say some portion of them did just for talking purposes....why would they abandon them? Were they a problem to keep up with, were they too much trouble for the use they got out of them? Or do they simply use what they need at the time then toss it when they're done with it?

 

I do recall reading reports of Bigfoots carrying sticks and the odd rock, but that's it.

[Guest Coonbo]

Speaking of tools stolen or "borrowed" by bigfoot reminded me of some that I "lost".  Around 1972 I had driven down one of the fire break roads on the back of our farm to a ridge above a slough off the river.  There were some good places to fish along the banks of that slough and I walked down to the water and caught quite a few nice crappie and bluegill that morning.  I cleaned them all on a large chestnut oak stump near the water's edge using my Grandfather's really nice old Case #098 "Fisherman's Knife", and put them in a cooler of ice I'd brought along. 

 

The knife was at least 5 1/2" long folded and was rather uncomfortable to carry in my pocket, so I usually kept it in a nice oiled cloth bag in my tackle box.   I left the knife sticking in the stump while I carried the cooler back up to the truck.  I immediately came back to get the knife, my tackle box, cricket box, and rod & reel.  I wasn't gone more than 4 minutes.  When I got back down to the water, my knife was gone!  I looked and looked and  couldn't find it.  There was absolutely no other human back there.  I even came back with my middle brother, who is still absolutely amazing about finding things.  He struck out too. 

 

At the time, I never thought about a catamount, haint, or no-head (names we called them back then) taking it.  Based on what I know now, I think that a bigfoot probably got my knife.  In broad daylight, in the middle of the day.  And it HAD to have been there really close to me for quite a long time, and I never knew it.  Creepy.  And brazen as hell to nab it when I was never more than 50 yards from it.

 

We had a brand new Craftsman hand saw disappear off the tailgate of one of our trucks when we drove back to the house, in another truck, to eat lunch one day and left that truck sitting there in the edge of the woods.  I had a nice Klein electrician's screw driver disappear out of a well house in the edge of the woods when I went to get a new pressure switch.