Why can't we find and study Bigfoot?

[Arvedis]

Topo mapping is what geologists do. They have a budget for that. Bigfootery needs a cheaper method of mapping the area faster, without the need for outside expertise to map the data. Unless someone knows about lasers with a LIDAR system to loan out.

 

Also, you are going to get an absurd amount of data back so there is a need to plan as lean overhead as you can. You want the area mapped so subsequent scans pick up anomalies. That's the part that is so time consuming. If you are using machine learning then it's going to be a lot more flybys. This way your tech understands, I already know that rock formation, it looks exactly the same as what we already mapped. No flag. If the sensors say, the rock formation is different from the last time I scanned these coordinates, I want to see the diffs. That's a good flag to get back. That means the system is working. Otherwise, you are going to just get back an unspectacular topo map.

 

LIDAR is cool for discovering lost civilizations. It is not cost effective for bigfootery Just use the 3D, mapping software that is equipped by default with the drone or invest in it.

[SWWASAS]

State LIDAR data is free for use by anyone with a computer and internet.   How much more cost effective can you get?   If you can read a map you can use the data.    The data files are huge and take hours to download, so time is your only investment.    How many lava tube openings or BF trails are in the data just waiting to be found?   Find the anomalies,  determine the GPS coordinates, and scout it out by foot.   As far as lost civilizations,  are you aware that one of our own forum members has discovered a 10,000 year old wall in the Mt Hood National Forest.    Who is to say that it was not built by the ancestors of BF?    Native Americans on the PNW have never been known to build rock walls, but someone did.  

[Arvedis]

Took a quick peek at the WA DNR pages. That is too cool. Free LIDAR. With a plane, that adds a different dimension. It seems the project is now drifting outside Bigfootery. Still cool to do but I'm not sure Bigfoot will reveal his habitats and patterns this way.

[wiiawiwb]

I'm a believer in technology. I have a thermal imager that allows me to help equalize the playing field at night. I'm looking to maximize technology by using that, trail cams, a sound recorder, a video recorder, and more.

 

All that said, I'm not convinced that LIDAR will provide me with "game trails".  Correct me if I'm wrong, didn't Expedition Bigfoot start out with their LIDAR maps that told us where a sasquatch might be traveling? Hey, if LIDAR can help to narrow down our research area, I'm all for it. Just not convinced, yet.

[SWWASAS]

I use Google earth to look at areas that are hard to get into with vehicles.    Sometimes they areheaviliy forested so I really do not know the lay of the terraine.      I take a look at the LIDAR date and see if that area has been imaged.  If so the LIDAR ground level image gives good idea of what the surface is like under the trees.    Before COVOD sidelined me, I was on the track of a lost gold mine in Skamania County.   Still hoping that LIDAR might lead me there.   The location of the mine was only known to a man and his son.   Both were killed by local First Peoples who did not want them there.   FIrst the father then the son who came after his father was killed.    For years the NA were buying stuff with gold nuggets.   This is not a legend and was reported in Newpapers at the time.    Be my luck if the mine is now occupied by a BF family and they kill me for finding it.    If you are going to stomp around in the woods looking for BF, you might was well look for gold too.   

 

One thing that really jumped out at me when I started flying over Clark and Skamania County, looking for BF, was that you can see trails all over the place that are not on any map.   The first thing I did was compare USGS maps with what I was seeing.  Some are likely old logging roads.  But comparing them to grown over logging roads I know from boots on the ground,  they are too narrow.    Some might be just well used game trails.    I suppose that some may be old NA trails.   There is evidence of NA activity in some areas, that modern day tribal members have no knowledge of their use.   Silver Star Mountain in Skamania has rocky pits that are attributed to NA by the Forest Service but the NA have no tribal memory of using them and no idea of their purpose.   Before Westerners showed up the NA had well used trail systems that approached small roads connecting various areas that they visited in the different seasons harvesting various thing.   I suppose they might still be evident in some places.    If BF migrate,  then they likely have trail systems, or use old NA ones.  All I know is there is are vast areas out there, that seem to have things that no one know about.     

Edited January 20, 2021 by SWWASAS

[wiiawiwb]

I poked around and found LIDAR tiles in the areas I go. Sadly, they are in a ".las" file format and after watching a 15-minute YT video of how to open them up, I decided to forego the attempt. Too many hoops to jump through, as near as I can tell.

 

Has anyone found a quick and easy to open and access an ".las" file to view?

 

By the way, on the first season of Expedition Bigfoot they touted the use LIDAR-produced map which showed potential trails that may be sasquatch related.  Did they simply access the same maps we have available to us or did they pay to have that particular area LIDAR scanned?

[Arvedis]

Who needs expedition Bigfoot when SWWASAS has a plane and is doing recon missions for clues. That should be the reality show and then getting boots on the ground to investigate. Tired of the cranks and fools just selling the idea of BF pursuit as a tv cliffhanger. 

[SWWASAS]

10 hours ago, wiiawiwb said:

I poked around and found LIDAR tiles in the areas I go. Sadly, they are in a ".las" file format and after watching a 15-minute YT video of how to open them up, I decided to forego the attempt. Too many hoops to jump through, as near as I can tell.

 

Has anyone found a quick and easy to open and access an ".las" file to view?

 

By the way, on the first season of Expedition Bigfoot they touted the use LIDAR-produced map which showed potential trails that may be sasquatch related.  Did they simply access the same maps we have available to us or did they pay to have that particular area LIDAR scanned?

In all likelyhood you did not give the file enough time to download before trying to open it.    The files are huge.    My internet connection is barely fast enough to stream a movie and it takes a very long time to download the LIDAR data files.  

 

Arvedis;   if  you or anyone wants to mount an expediton in the PNR I am all in.    I would furnish the airplane and my skills for whatever support the expedition deems necessary.    My airplane has a removeable cargo compartment door that lends itself to mounting cameras directed at the ground.     Should someone want to develop a camera package for the airplane let me know.  You could put your money into camera gear without having to spend any money on a drone.      The only thing I will not do is do night mountain flying.    That is basically a deathwish.   If everyone pays their own way,  we could have a hell of an expedition for what one would pay for a baby sitted BFRO expedition.     Another use of an airplane is airdropping supplies to someone in the remote backcountry.    Should anyone need that kind of support let me know.   I would do it without cost just to support the BF research cause.     As a side note,  I volunteered to provide air support to the Olympic Project and they ingnored the offer.  Too many egos in that outfit.     I could even use my videographer skills to document the expedtion.     Who knows, it something happens it might even be something Animal Planet or Travel network might want to air.   As we have seen from Expediton Bigfoot it does not take much happening to get air time.     Just don't try to impress me with an angorithm because I have enough math skills to know when I am being fed a line of bull.  

[Arvedis]

I'm not into math. I just rely on the tech to be correct. It will probably be my undoing!

 

The size of those data files should be an indication, any kind of recon is going to require an entire system and workflow of tech to make it all useful. These is no way anyone is going to take scans from the air, get it all sync'd, metatagged so you know what each frame is, feed the data to cloud, painstakingly download the scans, open them and make sense of it. That is why there is machine learning in the conversation. Sounds like expedition Bigfoot wants to pretend they are taking scans and making immediate use of it. My guess is they are outsourcing it since they have a budget, probably a small subset so they can show they "found" a research location.

 

It's a big operation but sounds like fun if there is enough nerdiness to work out the tech complexities.

[SWWASAS]

The Oregon Lidar Viewer is a lot easier to use.    You can just move up into WA and look at existing WA data.   Here is a link to the Oregon Lidar viewer.    You normally want bare earth surface data with hill shading  to see details.   

 

https://gis.dogami.oregon.gov/maps/lidarviewer/

Edited January 20, 2021 by SWWASAS

[Explorer]

With regard to the original post question, "Why can't we find and study BF?", I think some groups have found it and are trying to study it.

 

Per NAWAC's monograph on the Ouachita Project, they had at least 49 visual sightings within a small research area (see extract below from their monograph).

https://www.woodape.org/index.php/opmonograph/

 

It is baffling that they have failed capturing the creature on video or game cameras.

They tried that in their Forest Vigil project and failed, and are now implementing a different strategy to capture the creature on film (Hadrian Wall project).

I am looking forward to see if they have better and fruitful results with the new techniques and strategy.

 

Nonetheless, the failure of camera traps and video is a problem that the community has not been able to crack.

There are lots of speculation and hypotheses being offered on reasons for the failure but few actual experiments and testing.

The Hadrian Wall project is a good test with new ideas to experiment with.

 

I am not as familiar with the Olympic Project (since they don't publish monographs as NAWAC), but am curious on how many of their field researchers have had visual sightings while in the research area and how they have changed their camera trap strategies/techniques over time.

 

I really wish there was more and better sharing of methods, practices, and results (with data and papers that document what was done and proposed hypotheses on why they failed).

 

The few good thermal image videos that I have seen, have all been by people who were intentionally in hot-spots and were lucky to get the shot.  Not too much science there - just perseverance and being at the right place and time.

 

Makes you wonder if you need to have people present for the creature to show up and allow the lucky camera capture, as opposed to leaving cameras on all the time.

Why would BF not approach a game camera trap on a tree but approach a guy with a thermal imager?  I have no idea.

 

 

[ShadowBorn]

6 hours ago, Explorer said:

Why would BF not approach a game camera trap on a tree but approach a guy with a thermal imager?  I have no idea.

 

@Explorer

I am not sure that the creature is approaching the guy with the thermal imager. It is much more the guy with the thermal imager is actually finding the creature. So the notion that the creature is tracking us humans is null and void . It is the same way a deer can come right up to a game cam and have it's picture taken that these creatures understand what they are.

 

I have come up with ideas like using distractions using game cams hat flash. By placing a game camera that flashes on a tree and having a infra game camera across , one might be able to get a photo of one. I say this since i once had a flashing game camera that had pictures on it of nothing. The thing was that each picture was one after the other. Like some thing was behind the camera and just messing with the camera due to the flashing. On that camera I did pick up a creature twice and on the second picture you can see the eye's of the creature.  Which showed up glowing blue and at around 7' to 8' tall. The bad part is i can not find the negatives which would have been great.

 

But still feel like distraction will work with these creatures. But you have to get very creative in order to get their attention so that they do not pay attention to the cams. 

[Explorer]

9 hours ago, ShadowBorn said:

I am not sure that the creature is approaching the guy with the thermal imager. It is much more the guy with the thermal imager is actually finding the creature. So the notion that the creature is tracking us humans is null and void .

 

I never said that the creature is tracking humans.  What I meant was that the creature is curious about humans and is intentionally approaching.

 

I based that comment on limited evidence but mainly based on the FLIR video captured by Stacy Brown's (father) in Florida and Bart Cutino's in California.

Both researchers were in hotspot locations intentionally and were looking for BF (granted using different strategies).

 

The creature in Florida made some noises (that is what draw the Browns' attention) and was sneaking behind a tree.  I am assuming that the Browns did not surprise the creature, the creature was aware of their presence, and that the creature was curious and approached them.

In the Sierra video, Bart was positioned away from campsite and hiding with the expectation that activity will occur, and the creature(s) approached the camp (and again sneaking behind trees at night).

 

So based on these 2 cases, I am assuming that the creatures knew there were people in the Florida forest and the CA Sierra camp but decided to get closer and investigate (curiosity?).

People give these creatures all sorts of special attributes, like better ability to see, smell, and hear than humans.

Thus, I don't think these researchers fooled the BFs and surprised them.

Would be good to check and ask Bart Curtino if he thought that the creatures were aware of him or if they were totally distracted by the folks in the campfire location. I don't know for sure, but suspect they knew he was there.

 

What the creatures thought about the thermal imagers held by the researchers would be a guess.

Some people claim that BFs can detect EM signals and/or sounds from electronics, and I can tell you that Thermal Imagers do emit both EM signals and sound.  They are like computers with video.

 

Another recent (2020) thermal image capture by BFRO in the Sierras, also involved a known hotspot and a group of researchers intentionally looking for the creature at night.

It appears (based on accounts of the event) that the creature was also making some noises (that led to detection) but was sneaking behind trees on their perimeter.

I suspect that this creature also knew that humans were present and was not surprised or caught off-guard by the humans (specially when this BFRO group had over 5 people walking and talking at night with red head-lights!).

Why did the creature hang around instead of stealthily leave?  I think it was curious.

 

This curiosity towards humans, might be their weakness and why we get more thermal image videos than game camera traps.

 

BTW, just to summarize the two different strategies used by researchers with thermal imagers:

Both go to known hot-spots with repeat presence detected.

 

1) The Cutino strategy is to hide away from camp (but within visible range) and let the multiple people stay in camp and do normal camp stuff (talk, sing, play guitar, eat drink, enjoy campfire, etc.).  Meanwhile, he looks for BFs that are approaching the camp and are curiously sneaking on the perimeter.

2) The BFRO and Brown strategy, is to hike at night into trails (game trails, regular trails, or dirt roads) trying to detect BF presence via noises heard and then to use thermal imager to locate the creature.

 

The strategy I use, is to hike during the day to let them know my presence and location, and then to let them come to my camp at night, where I have the thermal imager running.  This strategy worked in the past before I got my thermal imager and only had sound recording.  But  after I got my thermal imager, it has not worked very well.  However, just last year I started running my thermal all night long instead of just when I hear something.

[ShadowBorn]

6 hours ago, Explorer said:

The strategy I use, is to hike during the day to let them know my presence and location, and then to let them come to my camp at night, where I have the thermal imager running.  This strategy worked in the past before I got my thermal imager and only had sound recording.  But  after I got my thermal imager, it has not worked very well.  However, just last year I started running my thermal all night long instead of just when I hear something.

This is what we did when I had my very first upclose encounter. Except that we used glow sticks that was strung across a trail tied to salmon cans at about 8' off the ground. But before we did that we did exactly what you did and walked down the two track.  We made some clapping sounds and whooping sounds before the sun want down in a known hot spot. But we did not have a thermal at that time until about the third weekend. That is when we met a fellow by the name of the avatar name thermal.

 

He came from Oregon brought with him a thermal and this was before anyone was even using thermals back in 2000.He also brought with him some shock meters that could feel any movement on the ground. What he did with his thermal was use a blanket to cover him self up. This way the light source coming off the thermal would not be seen around him.

 

But now there is better tech where you can block off the EMF from the system. So if they are capable of hearing they cannot now. So if you were to blanket your self or the thermal with the faraday bag. Then place a black blanket So that they cannot see your light source from your thermal. I would be willing to bet that you would have allot better chance at getting better chance at getting them on thermal up close.   EMF Safety Store | You would be like electrical camo. Another thing to use would be to change your clothing and use this: Homepage | HECS® Wildlife (hecsllc.com) . You can rap this stuff on your cameras as well as your thermals. You ask for ideas well here they are. You want to get close and observe then you need the proper tools. It cost money but how badly does one wants it is the ? JMO

[Arvedis]

7 hours ago, ShadowBorn said:

This is what we did when I had my very first up close encounter. Except that we used glow sticks that was strung across a trail tied to salmon cans at about 8' off the ground. But before we did that we did exactly what you did and walked down the two track.  We made some clapping sounds and whooping sounds before the sun want down in a known hot spot. But we did not have a thermal at that time until about the third weekend. That is when we met a fellow by the name of the avatar name thermal.

 

He came from Oregon brought with him a thermal and this was before anyone was even using thermals back in 2000.He also brought with him some shock meters that could feel any movement on the ground. What he did with his thermal was use a blanket to cover him self up. This way the light source coming off the thermal would not be seen around him.

 

But now there is better tech where you can block off the EMF from the system. So if they are capable of hearing they cannot now. So if you were to blanket your self or the thermal with the faraday bag. Then place a black blanket So that they cannot see your light source from your thermal. I would be willing to bet that you would have allot better chance at getting better chance at getting them on thermal up close.   EMF Safety Store | You would be like electrical camo. Another thing to use would be to change your clothing and use this: Homepage | HECS® Wildlife (hecsllc.com) . You can rap this stuff on your cameras as well as your thermals. You ask for ideas well here they are. You want to get close and observe then you need the proper tools. It cost money but how badly does one wants it is the ? JMO

 

 

I like the idea of confusing them with distractions. It would be ideal to know their positions ahead of time but of course that won't work. Wondering if harmless laser pulses, randomized over an area would rile them up. That would be so much easier to pull off than LiDAR. Just equip the drone with a laser - which are illegal by the way if used to point upwards into the sky. Feds do not take kindly to laser pointers at all. Not kidding. So the suggestion is to point them to the earth in a rotating, random manner to mess with Bigfoot enough that he gives the drone camera some footage.

 

I'll add this to the list of drone recon missions I will never do.

Edited January 22, 2021 by Arvedis