Poll: Do You Think BF has a Viable Population?

[gigantor]

54 minutes ago, BobbyO said:

But these things ? We don't know abut these things, anything.

We don't know if they bury their dead, and we don't know if they do, where they do it.

We don't know where they sleep, where they feed, what they eat, where they breed, how they breed (don't think about that actually), how they protect the little ones, where they protect the little ones etc etc etc.
 

 

So we don't know anything about them, but we know they are doing very well?

 

[norseman]

Also sightings reports and cluster maps..... I do not want to come off as kicking the SSR in the hoo hoo.....

 

But obviously when dealing with witness reports we have to take things with a grain of salt. But I understand when and where to apply that salt is a slippery slope.

 

But we must remember we are not dealing with hard data like real biology. Such as a radio collared cougar, or scat or hair samples. Undeniable data facts that a creature stood there... No matter how implausible such as a cougar in New Jersey.

 

A viable breeding population of 800 lbs ape men in Illinois should be putting a visible dent in the fauna and flora of that state. And without any other large predators around we should not be confusing predation remnants with any other species. So where is the hard evidence? BTW should be getting boxes of whitetail bones from researchers there....

[Twist]

I want to contribute to this conversation but Norse is doing a better job expressing my concerns and thoughts better than I can.   I believe it is out there but that's about the best I got regarding the subject. 

[hiflier]

1 hour ago, norseman said:

In the pacnw Indian legends tell us about sasquatch who live in the mountains in small numbers that occasionally dropped out of the mountains to steal from them, or cannibalize on them. 

 

Today we are to believe that Sasquatch resides in 49 states and all Canadian provinces IN viable breeding populations? Even evidently right outside Chicago....but we cannot find one? Evidently because of their extreme bushcraft in the corn rows and cottonwood bottoms of Illinois!??? Come on man!!! Not happening...

 

I'll stick with option two or three. They are absent in much of the landscape....and rare were they are found...as the legends proclaim.

 

The popularity of this subject is outstripping common sense.

 

 

 

 

^^ PLUSSED!! Thank you, Norseman, for asking the tough questions. What you say is something I myself have held and spoke of often. I've no reason to doubt the experiences of some of our members here but regardless of that, and even though many hold to the creature's widespread presence, I think they are RARE. Extremely rare. So where does that leave things in order to address the issue? The only thing I can come up with is travel. Travel over great distances. And only for the purposes of breeding. Food to prey on is everywhere it seems so moving across great distances wouldn't be an issue IMO. What that says is that this creature is one tough son-of-gun.

 

Also in my mind it calls into question the number of reports in the last ten years at least. Something I've been a bit suspicious of for a while now. What we need is the truth of it. How we get that truth though is not something one, two, or several people can do. It's going to take a large contingent to press for this truth. Is the subject finally t that stage yet? Probably not but I don't think it will be long before folks decide to GET at that truth and I will be a part of that effort the minute it gets off the ground. The largest Sasquatch investigative body, the BFRO, will not be initiating that push though just you and everyone else knows. I've often wondered why that is

Edited February 16, 2017 by hiflier

[JKH]

Maybe they're not quite everywhere, but anywhere they want to be. IMO, the population is large and generally robust.

[BigTreeWalker]

The BFRO isn't the answer. When many of their outings in the PNW are run by people that are not qualified outdoors people and they are mostly done so people with little familiarity with the outdoors can have a bigfoot experience. At least if you want a good outdoor learning experience look to the Olympic Project and I'm sure there may be others where you can actually learn something. That sounds harsh but it is what I have seen recently in the PNW. 

 

Norseman, I would be glad to take a look at anything someone wants to send me. Or at least good pictures. But the more time I spend working in this field the more I find there are a lot of people out there that still really aren't looking at what they do find or as you've said, not finding anything. I talked to Derek Randles about it, I guess he finds quite a bit of bones, but that isn't where his focus is. But if science wants to continue ignoring good forensic evidence, then it doesn't really matter. Reading research papers about various apex predator and prey relationships reveals that there are many times when the researchers admit they don't know what feed on an animal. I have to ask why, unless there is nothing left to look at. Each predator has a distinctive way of feeding and you don't need teeth marks to figure that out. You can at least figure out feline, ursid or canid. You just have to look closer to separate feline from bigfoot; a lot of which probably gets attributed to cougars. 

[Squatchy McSquatch]

I chose the first option.

 

My interest in Bigfoot is modern folklore and nothing else.

 

I love that the internet, and technology in general, has brought us all globally together in search of a legend. I adore that several people in this thread claim to be in regular contact with Bigfoot. 

 

Bigfoot can live on forever at this rate.

 

 

[Yuchi1]

Bigfoot is making a living and doing fine.....adapt, improvise and overcome.

 

The business of Bigfootery is doing a land office busine$$.

Edited February 16, 2017 by Yuchi1
grammatical

[BobbyO]

G i can't quote through this proxy i'm using (i'm in Asia) for some reason but i'm trying to quote you from a few above.

We don't know nothing about them, right.

We know they're doing very well, wrong.

We don't know that, this is a poll that asks a question and one has to give an answer and a reason based on a personal opinion.

My opinion and vote for that focuses on habitat and the mass availability of it in lots of places across North America.

I'm 100% sure that both you and Norseman's opinions and probable vote would be completely different had you seen one and yet of course, had you seen one, it wouldn't make any difference to the poll and the answers we've been asked to give whatsoever.

[BobbyO]

Norse i have my extreme reservations about this Chicagoland thing too you know that but i saw my one in South Florida for crying out loud, South Florida, so even though i have my extreme reservations strictly because of what i perceive to be "common sense" where Chicagoland is concerned, i'd be a complete fool to rule it out becauuse i know they are/were in South Florida and if they are/were in South Florida then yes they could be in Chicagoland.

One thing i will say about Chicagoland is that there is habitat there, whether that's sustainable i just don't know, but there is habitat there for the, especially if they swim.

I agree with the viable breeding population stuff too, i don't see how it could be but you know what, maybe it actually isn't, maybe in the last say 40 years, there isn't a viable breeding population any more and they are now dying out in Illinois.

The SSR would support that too as we don't have an actual visual report of one of these things for the past 3 years.

[norseman]

If I saw one tomorrow my opinion would not change a bit.

 

And my common sense statement wasn't directed at you, because I know you! I'm sorry for that. 

 

Your sighting was in the Everglades.....the only tropical place in North America. I'd say that's a much more likely place than Illinois.

[BobbyO]

Norseman "But obviously when dealing with witness reports we have to take things with a grain of salt. But I understand when and where to apply that salt is a slippery slope."

Absolutely but i'll tell you this. At work with the soccer, we look for KPI's (key performance indicators) within virtually every aspect of a game, all recorded ok. If certain numbers appear that we want and what the coaches want in order for them to make tactical decisions, our "alarm bells" go off on our computers and those "alarm bells" aren't even based on human interpretation, they're based on numerical assurances, to a degree of course, but a very high level of assurance.

What us as humans then do is attempt to interpret those numbers and why those "alarm bells" did actually go off, and then implement that decision in order to make it affect a game to our benefit.

The SSR in my eyes in no different whatsoever.

I say this as in the now 5 years (can you believe that G ?) of us working on this SSR, every now and then i come across numbers that i know damn well would set my "alarm bells" off if i were at work, 100%.

For example, i split WA State up as you know in to 5 different Geographical Zones as i believe it was/is valid to do so given the different topography, terrain, flora and fauna and certain features of the State. The Olympics, the North Cascades, the South Cascades, Eastern WA and the Wilappa Hills in the South East part of the State.

I can tell you that based on the reports we have locked and loaded in the database, if you were to go camping in the Mt Baker area (North Cascades) you'd have a 9% chance (3/33 reports) of having an actual visual sighting of a Sasquatch if you thought you had any Sasquatch activity whatsoever anyway. That number is disproportionately low as if we're honest, like i would have done before i saw this number, i'd bet a lot of us would say that camping would yield a high % of actual visual sightings of these things, but it doesn't in this specific area of WA State and that if i was working is one that my system, for want of a better term, would put *** asteriks *** next to due to it being such a low number with a decent enough sized data set.

So what do you do there then as basically you've found something that would be deemed interesting but nothing else.

Well if i was at work i'd look to find numbers that can support this find which would then give us a correlation which would then set the "alarm bells" off.

So where the SSR is concerned, the natural step would be to look at a Geographical Zone that borders the North Cascades and see what numbers we can yield from there and if they correlate or not as the case may be in which case then we'd be left with interesting numbers from the North Cascades Geographical Zone but unfortunately, nothing that really correlates anywhere else and therefore, not setting the "alarm bells" off.

I can tell you that based on the reports we have locked and loaded from the Mt St Helens area (South Cascades), you'd have a 3% chance (2/39) of an actual visual sighting of a Sasquatch if you thought you had any Sasquatch activity whatsoever anyway.

** DING DING DING ** the "alarm bells" are now going off as we have another disproportionately low percentage that is even lower than previously, and with a larger data set.

That is a correlation.

So yes we do have to take things with a pinch of salt, absolutely, and highly likely the majority of things, but sometimes we will find correlations within these numbers that are most definitely worthy of attempting to interpret and then action on in a tactical sense, just like we would in work.

I can't interpret what/why those numbers are what they are, i can jut tell you that there is a reason for them and that reason would highly likely be to do with the subject as opposed to the people that are making those reports who quite simply could not engage in a hoax type mass report submission in the hope that somebody like me would find those specific numbers and then share them on here.

I'd personally prefer it if we banged heads regarding the interpretation of numbers like these, and these are not the only numbers where the "alarm bells" have gone off and i'm sure won't be the last by the way.

I'm past the stage of debating these animals existing, that part is a closed shop for me and i won't waste any energy in debating it any more as i truly believe that time and energy is much, much better spent getting my head in to the database and finding certain numbers where as a community on here, we can attempt to interpret and ultimately then action in the field to benefit our objectives which in my eyes is the sole reason why we started the SSR all those years ago now anyway.

[MIB]

42 minutes ago, BobbyO said:

One thing i will say about Chicagoland is that there is habitat there, whether that's sustainable i just don't know, but there is habitat there for the, especially if they swim.

 

It doesn't necessarily have to be sustainable for long term occupation, sustainable for intermediate, shorter duration stop-overs may be enough to account for the reports.   A place to hide for a few days, rest up a little bit, then move on.

 

It some ways it's not unlike what I ponder regarding the basin and range country of SE Oregon into Nevada: there are scattered water troughs out in the high desert powered by propane pumps and windmills for watering herds of cattle that may present a traveling bigfoot with enough water, not to survive in situ, but as stops along the way .. sort of like hopping across a creek rock to rock to keep your shoes dry.

 

MIB

 

 

[BobbyO]

In which case MIB i think you'd be looking at an animal there that is constantly moving.

And this is key to me.

We fall in to a trap so much within this subject IMO of talking about this subject on the whole.

I think that's a massive mistake.

Behavoural (sp?) habits would surely differ across the continent as the continent itself differs so much.

So if we are to say that it's possible that Sasquatches can inhabit Chicagoland where habitat is concerned (the breeding conundrum is a different argument) by keeping moving and utilizing different areas then yeah i can understand that as i know that the habitat is there to utilize, i have no problem with that.

That wouldn't mean that a group of these things in British Columbia didn't stay put in a 10m radius year round though of course, as the circumstances change dramatically.

[Squatchy McSquatch]

There are no Bigfoot in Chicago. 

 

C'mon...