Why Has No Hunter Ever Shot A Bigfoot?

[Guest parnassus]

I'm not aware of a lot of them. Even the quick research I did suggested that there weren't a whole lot of sightings before Wallace. There are old Native American boogeyman stories, occasional (mostly dubious) newspaper reports, and a few sightings, but nothing along the lines of what was reported from the late fifties onward. Plenty of people (like Albert Ostman) reported stuff later on that took place during that time, but I wasn't counting them. Wikipedia even has bigfoot history organized into "Before 1958" and "After 1958." I could be wrong, of course (I'm hardly a bigfoot historian), but that's my understanding of the history of sightings.

There were no " Bigfoot" reports before 1958 . That is a fact.

Put up or be quiet. Show us a report that uses the term Bigfoot before 1958.

Since that time believers like Meldrum, Strain, Green and others have tried to make all kinds of earlier historic reports, legends, myths, talll tales, totem pole images, crazy hermits, tribal enemies, mistaken identifications, pictographs and "what have you" all fiit into some catchall fuzzy category which is given the 1958 name "Bigfoot".

Of course it goes without saying that in no case before or after 1958 was any proof found of any actual Bigfoot (Meaning some sort of gigantic hair covered non homo sapiens primate as usually described in this forum and elsewhere) .

Edited May 17, 2011 by parnassus

[Guest]

Oh..............perhaps there were bigfoot reports. Or maybe sasquatch reports, or ape reports, or booger reports, or monster reports. Thanks for that picky add nothing post...........skeptic pile on time since their faith has been questioned!!!

Edited May 17, 2011 by John T

[MagniAesir]

Oh..............perhaps there were bigfoot reports. Or maybe sasquatch reports, or ape reports, or booger reports, or monster reports. Thanks for that picky add nothing post...........skeptic pile on time since their faith has been questioned!!!

This skeptic has not piled on nor has my faith been questioned.

You have a problem with the poster fine, personally I think playing the dictionary game gets old fast.

Almost as fast as insulting skeptics as a group

[masterbarber]

What part of "Let's get back on topic" was unclear?

[Guest]

There were no " Bigfoot" reports before 1958 . That is a fact.

Put up or be quiet. Show us a report that uses the term Bigfoot before 1958.

Since that time believers like Meldrum, Strain, Green and others have tried to make all kinds of earlier historic reports, legends, myths, talll tales, totem pole images, crazy hermits, tribal enemies, mistaken identifications, pictographs and "what have you" all fiit into some catchall fuzzy category which is given the 1958 name "Bigfoot".

Of course it goes without saying that in no case before or after 1958 was any proof found of any actual Bigfoot (Meaning some sort of gigantic hair covered non homo sapiens primate as usually described in this forum and elsewhere) .

That's sheer buncome!!

The name Bigfoot was only "popularized" in 1958.....It was used locally before that. Aside from that using semantics is just petty....whatever the thing is called does not negate all the newspaper and other reports pre-1958.

http://www.alabamabigfoot.com/bigfoot/reports/RFPreport65.html

Edited May 17, 2011 by grayjay

[Guest]

Man, this routine of a skeptic starting the "they don't exist, no proof" bit on every thread irregardless of the topic is so predictable it's pathetic. It's also getting very, very old...

[Guest ajciani]

So we have quite a few stories about bigfoots being shot, and most of them have one coherent aspect: the bigfoot was either shot in "self defense" or the hunter mistook his target. In not a single one of those stories, did the hunter go out looking to bag a biggie.

I have heard other reports from hunters who saw, but did not shoot the bigfoot. All of these have them either being totally surprised and struck dumb (or scared poopless), or the hunter thought the bigfoot was a person, when he first saw it. Tagging something as a person, even if by mistake, sucks away all the desire to shoot it.

Now, there is one incident I heard, about 10 years old, where a hunter did shoot a bigfoot, and wounded it, probably in the gut. Others were called in with dogs and such to track it down, their intention being to kill it, for different motives. This was a group of men dedicated to hunting down and killing a bigfoot. They eventually tracked it to a tree on the edge of a river, where it jumped down into the river. It was shot at a second time (the person who told me the story was the one who took the second shot), but probably missed. Meanwhile, the men were certain that the thing's friends were coming in, so it being dark, and them being tired (and scared), they left. Supposedly, some blood and vomitus were collected and sent for analysis, but when that analysis came back, the person who had the samples promptly destroyed them. Actually, I should rephrase that: at about the same time that the analysis came back, the wife removed the samples from the freezer, and tossed them out, not knowing what they were. That the samples were intentionally destroyed, was only speculation. The person who related this story to me, is now against killing a bigfoot.

BTW, about the only detail the person could remember concerning the evidence, is that the vomitus contained little bits of what looked like rice, or little white round balls. I'm thinking these may have been grape seeds. It was October or November, in the deep south. The vomitus also appear very red, as though it might have contained blood.

[Guest]

I grew up (and still live) in the Pacific Northwest, and I have plenty of experience with NAs here, having known them and been around their traditions since childhood. I don't think any of them ever told me about seeing a bigfoot, and to say that most of them have would be wrong. Most have told me that they don't believe in bigfoot. In fact, I've only really heard bigfoot stories from white people in the area, especially the ones that live in rural areas or in the mountains.

I also grew up and still live in the NW and have a very different experience with the local Indian tribes. Grew up in the Kitsap area, between the Suqamish and S'klallam tribes and the Sas stories were rampant with the older tribe members and affected how the younger tribal members acted. As high schoolers back in the '80s, we would often meet up with friends and go out to secluded areas to drink beer, have a bonfire etc. and some of the tribal kids would be freaked out a little being in the woods at night, due to the stories told to them by the elders about the "wildmen". Some of the kids didn't believe in the wildmen, thought they were just old stories, but many of them did.

20 years ago I moved down to the South Sound area (Olympia, Centralia, Oakville) and was shocked at how much more rampant the stories were with the local tribes than the ones I grew up with. Then I got a job at a Semi-truck supply place for 6 years and talked with many loggers that had seen them and/or footprints and met some of the descendants of the early pioneers and they had plenty of stories of what they called the "stick Indians".

My aunt (now in her 70s) grew up out in the Morton area (out towards Mt. Rainier), their house was out away from town and around the house they had a small yard that was fenced in with a small white picket fence, with the fields and barns etc outside that fenced yard. As young kids, they were not allowed outside the fenced yard especially in the evening due to the stick indians. She never saw one, but had heard the stories as a young child many times. I didn't hear this story until about 5-6 years ago when my grandmother passed away. I told my aunt that my grandmother had believed in existence of Sasquatch and had got me interested, my aunt didn't know that and was very surprised (she is related by marriage to my father's brother) and told me the white fence story.

Sorry to go off topic on the thread.

Why no hunter has shot a bigfoot, Sasquatch, North American Ape, Stick Indian, whatever you want to call it could be due to the sheer size of the animal and surprise of seeing one. I know a couple of deer hunters that decided to go elk hunting and the first time they ran into a big bull elk, they were too awe struck to get a good shot off. One was an old co-worker and he kept saying that it was just incredible the size of the elk and it surprised him and threw him off his shot. And these are people that were mentally prepared to shoot what they were looking for.

Now take a hunter who is looking for a deer, elk or bear and is surprised by a very massive man looking creature. He will only have a few seconds to gather his thoughts and get a shot off and that is if he thinks his rifle is a big enough caliber.

There will be one of two types to bring a shot Sasquatch in. Either a redneck country boy that will shoot at anything or a big game hunter that has shot everything and is loaded with the right caliber.

My wife's cousin-in-law fits the latter, lives in western Montana, is an avid hunter and has taken big elk, bear and mountain lions. He told me he stepped up to a .300 Win mag about 15 years ago just in case he ever ran across a Sasquatch. He had heard stories and wanted to be take one down if the opportunity ever presented itself. I haven't seen him in 6 or 7 years, but he was just as serious then as he was when he first told me. As a note, he is not a Sasquatch hunter or searcher and doesn't even necessarily believe the stories, he is a big game hunter and just wants to be ready if it is.

[Guest]

Perhaps for this one thread, we should put the "They don't exist, you have no convincing evidence" mantra aside and try to think outside the box. Assuming sasquatch/bigfoot exist, what mechanism or trait would allow them to occasionally interact with humans without getting shot and killed and then taken to a lab, country store, or tavern?

Maybe psychic abilities to determine human intent, and then taking action to avoid a meeting. Or the ability to sense visual scrutiny, could be employed. I suspect a sasquatch noticing a human intent on harming it would subject said human to a strong dose of infrasound, ending the possibility of human action against the sasquatch or others.

Whatever is happening, it is different from deer or bears regarding the lack of a taken specimen. My thoughts could be way off base, but something seems to be working for them. What do others here think?

[Guest]

I think the quality that BF (if they exist) possess (and what even the most intelligent known non-human animals do not) is what is called 'a theory of mind'.

There's a very interesting and long wiki on it as it applies to humans and animals though as far as other non-human primates are concerned, the primatologist Robert Sapolsky of Stanford has explored it and his explanations and examples of it are quite interesting.

A good presentation on it, and a good place to start, is his TED talk from a year or so ago

http://www.ted.com/talks/robert_sapolsky_the_uniqueness_of_humans.html

He's also appeared in a couple of other programs exploring human and animal intelligence.

He doesn't specifically talk about BF, but if after listening to some of his explanations you don't see where a non-social hominin desiring (for whatever reason) to elude human contact wouldn't be able to especially when equipped with a cognitive capacity that included a 'theory of mind' as all known humans do, you'd have to admit it would be very very difficult to find them if you were thinking of them as just some other animal. Cheers

Just wanted to add that he recently gave an hour + long presentation at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park (a superb institution, by the way), in which he asks the question "are humans just another primate?" It seems that answering that might give us insight into what other non-modern social hominins were capable of in the vast bulk of our natural history from a couple of million years ago once our crania started to enlarge in significant and interesting ways. d4

Here's a link:

http://fora.tv/2011/02/15/Robert_Sapolsky_Are_Humans_Just_Another_Primate#fullprogram

Edited May 20, 2011 by dogu4

[Guest]

There were no " Bigfoot" reports before 1958 . That is a fact.

Put up or be quiet. Show us a report that uses the term Bigfoot before 1958.

Parnassus I think Blurry was agreeing with you, he was just responding to Grayjay who said there were reports. Do you count family stories as reports? I have several before 1958. Or are you just counting official documented sightings? If you are, exactly who were these citizens supposed to call and report these sightings too? Before 1930 nobody had telephones in my area of the country. Maybe they notified the sheriff by horseback or by car if they had a sheriff in riding/driving distance.... What do you suppose the sheriff did with that report? At any rate, I think the reason you didn't have more before 1958 is because there was no one to report to or any expedient way to make a report. So with that said, most people handled there own problems. The same taboo existed then, even more so than now, for seeing an overgrown hairy bipedal thing in the woods that people didn't think existed. Shooting one that might be a deformed human if you had no frame of reference for bigfoot was probably even a bigger problem, I doubt you will ever hear of a historic bigfoot shooting from my area.

Edited May 20, 2011 by Jodie

[Guest]

Jodie, that is Parnassus being cute and saying Bigfoot was a term coined in 1958 and therefore no reports could predate that. Another skeptic point without which we would be lacking so much understanding!!! LOL, naturally In my MOST HUMBLE Opinion.

[Guest]

Oh you may be right.....I don't know what anybody means anymore.

[Guest parnassus]

Jodie, that is Parnassus being cute and saying Bigfoot was a term coined in 1958 and therefore no reports could predate that. Another skeptic point without which we would be lacking so much understanding!!! LOL, naturally In my MOST HUMBLE Opinion.

Well you read the actual old newspaper accounts and the source tribal legends ( not the distorted Strain or Green or Meldrum versions) and form your own opinions. I have and I think they are describing humans as I outlined in my prior post.

[Guest 8footer]

Man, this routine of a skeptic starting the "they don't exist, no proof" bit on every thread irregardless of the topic is so predictable it's pathetic. It's also getting very, very old...

Because he's never seen one.

If you've seen one...and I mean "really see one"...no type specimen on a slab is necessary.