Avoiding Human Contact? Or Not?

[Guest DWA]

I have a few rabbits that hang around in my yard day or night. I can get within a few feet of them without them running off. So they must not see me as a threat. The rabbits in my yard that do not look familiar are mostly around at night and day or night will run off when they see me. I cannot approach them. Not sure how all that relates to BF other than it points out that some animals who are not particularly intelligent can figure out what is a threat and what is not. Up the intelligence and the animal has to be able to read humans a lot better. I think BF can read us very well.

One thing this explains is why we get all kinds of camera trap photos of coyotes...when we have demonstrated that coyotes clearly avoid camera traps.

 

The ones avoiding know the area, like your rabbits do.  They know what is threat and what isn't.  It's the transients, who don't have the place wired, who get caught by the cameras.

[Twist]

Does the same not apply to BF? Transient BF would almost have to exist given the range of sightings IMO.

[Guest DWA]

But one cannot assume that because no one has shown us a cam trap photo that the animal doesn't exist.  There could be any number of reasons we don't have one.

[Guest]

Did I do that once, guesstimate of number of acres covered by several millions game cams vs acres to wander round in un-cammed vs highish estimate of BF population and got something like 1 pic every 7 years by random chance..... and that's any pic of BF....... not necessarily one that will identify a BF.... pick a popular blobsquatch, that was it, wait another 7 years.

 

 

Edit: Pretty much like buying a skid of dixie cups and saying "Wow, with ALL THOSE to scoop with you could drain the Mississippi"

Edited November 18, 2015 by Flashman2.0

[Trogluddite]

A "skid" of dixie cups?  Never heard that one before...  I do know that Bobby O posted somewhere on the number of game cams necessary to cover an area v. the number of game cams actually out there anywhere. 

[Guest]

skid is a pallette, meaning wrapped pallete of cases, probably 6 high, 4 per layer, point being what seems like a massive quanitity being totally inadequate to the enormity of the task.

[scottv]

So bigfoot in national parks should know that people are not a threat inside the park, right? And therefore should be much easier to document.

 

Trail camera detections are highly correlated with how much/often the animal moves. So I don't think just adding up the number cameras and the number of acres will tell you much. Animals that move more or have large home ranges are much more detectable by trail cameras. So if you have a population of moving animals and the cameras are left in place for extended periods of time then the probability of detection goes up. You can also factor in how close cameras are to the center of the animals home range which increases the detection probability. You can also increase this probability by placing cameras in areas that would have greater use, such as water sources, game trails, food resource, migration corridors etc. Oh, and then factor in the density of the population. In my opinion grizzly bear population densities would be a useful model for bigfoot (seriously large omnivore).

 

My 2 cents.

[BigTreeWalker]

When it comes to game cams and bigfoot, either BF doesn't exist or they actively avoid cameras. We can assume anything we want but that is what the evidence suggests. We can get identifiable pictures of grizzlies or wolverines; sasquatch, not so much.

[Guest]

Maybe game cams actively avoid bigfoot.

 

Reports indicate that they are seen far more often crossing roads and trails than going down them. That means that on an individual basis on a 1000ft long trail, one cam on it should catch every deer that comes along it, but it has only about a 1 in 20 chance of "seeing" a BF cross that 1000ft, and more like 1 in 100 of it being better than blobsquatch. If deer outnumber BF 1000:1, the cam will on average get 20,000 deer between blobsqatches and 100,000 between photos good enough to take notice of. Hope it's got a huge memory card and top end batteries.

 

Then also, where are BF specific cameras going? In areas that have shown high BF activity in the recent past. Researchers often don't have many cams, and they're acting like a security company that has contracts with 50 banks, and only 5 real cameras, and they move those to the ones that just got robbed for a while... until a different one is robbed... I have been gaining the impression that BF act somewhat like gorillas in that they stay in a locale until the resources there are depleted, then move on to another area. This is a relatively short period of time, and a researcher is probably going to become aware of it towards the end, then when humans seem to take "too much interest" in that area, well it was time to go anyway, if they were still there.... move across the creek, berries are ripe up there... like paparazzi trying to get shots of an actress by camping her ski lodge all summer and her beach cottage all winter... Advice, note where the activity is, investigate for what food resources have just been in season, try and get in there a couple of weeks early NEXT year.

[Guest DWA]

Again, I think there could be any number of reasons we don't have compelling game cam photos...including that we already do and were too quick to label them (e.g. the Jacobs photos).  We have compelling thermals.  (The Brown, for one; the WA incident we had a huge thread around a while back.)  But anyway, we could have them (or more than one person could have them and be considering right at this moment whether to share or not...if they hadn't already decided not to...

 

When the movement patterns of an animal on its territory are not known...no one knows where to place cameras.  The animals showing up on cams are either far more abundant than sasquatch or far more dependent on our roads or trails...and quite possibly less cognizant of cameras, although there's no way to know that for sure.

Edited November 23, 2015 by DWA

[SWWASAS]

As long as game cameras are not disguised or well hidden and are just strapped to trees I give them little chance of success. I have a wooded back yard. If some human strapped a game camera on a tree in my back yard I would notice it before it took my picture and avoid getting my picture taken before I destroyed it or stole the SD card. Assuming BF does not even know what a game camera does, it has to know it has something to do with humans and would avoid it just because of it. I am reasonably sure they are smart enough to recognize something is a human gadget.

[BigTreeWalker]

Plussed Flashman2.0, I have discussed this issue of game cams so many times on this forum than most of the issues have already been covered. One thing we can say for sure is that, as a whole, the business as usual type attitude with game cams isn't working.

In my statement above I said that one of the choices was that BF doesn't exist and it is a choice. Although I don't agree with that choice. That being said then we are definitely not doing something right when it comes to game cams and sasquatch.

[Twist]

But they are known to approach other human devices. Houses, cars, campsites etc...I could see them messing with one if observed in their territory but I have a hard time believing they'd avoid it based on the fact it's human made.

[Trogluddite]

Flashman, 

 

Good summary and thank you for enlightening me on dixie cup phraseology!

[BigTreeWalker]

But they are known to approach other human devices. Houses, cars, campsites etc...I could see them messing with one if observed in their territory but I have a hard time believing they'd avoid it based on the fact it's human made.

There is a difference between human devices (game cams) and human frequented locations (campsites, homes). A device set up near a human location fits in with the rest of the paraphernalia and noise we humans surround ourselves with. There are documented reports that BF sometimes frequent human habitations until game cams are set up. It has been discussed many times about them smelling or hearing the cameras out in the woods. However, around a human habitation how could these things be picked out as different from all the other smells and sounds in these areas. So why are they still avoided? One thing that all game cams designed for nighttime use have in common is a flash; be it white, or high or low frequency IR. So to something with night vision it might as well be a strobe when it goes off. In other words they give themselves away no matter how well concealed they are. If we switched to daytime cameras only for bigfoot we might up the odds of getting a picture. There are as many or more daytime sightings as nighttime. This does create a problem around human habitations though because these are more likely to be approached at night.