The Ketchum Report

[HOLDMYBEER]

The thing about obtaining food in the winter is that it takes a lot of wandering around to aquire it which means huge numbers of tracks and trailways that are just not found, right? So if they don't wander around looking for food where are they? Hibernation may be the answer but like Incorrigible1 says no other primate has aquired this ability. .......

That is what I don't get about the claims of sasquatch back east. In the Pacific Northwest there are great forests that almost never accumulate snow because of the moderating influence of the ocean. In those very rare instances when there is some accumulation, coastal California, Oregon, Washington and BC have what can be described as an impenetrable foliage that hides everything from plane crashes to large herds of Roosevelt Elk. How does a sasquatch hide in Ohio or Kentucky or Indiana as they roam for food? Are they always home and in the den before the snows come? Are they never caught out? Where do they go that snowmobiles don't? Where in those states does it not snow? In light of habituation claims coming from Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee, how is it that the snows don't give these guys up?

[georgerm]

Good point. Seems like BF would hibernate when it's below zero and there is little food to be found. BF would have to make an underground den since it would freeze to death in brush dens.

By the way, where are we with Melba's work?

[Guest UPs]

As far as available food sources available in the winter months in my area, it does not appear to be a problem of supply, but instead the energy required to get the food. As an example, white tailed deer must migrate south out of my area to reach a yarding ground and if they do not, they will starve because they have to spend too much energy getting to the food sources. On the other hand, 1200lb animals stay the whole winter in my area even with fairly deep snow levels. The moose are able find enough food to survive, but they do leave a lot of sign in the winter months. It really amazes me that an animal this large is able to survive and flourish where I see very little food sources. I would expect the size of bf has something to do with being able to survive in the more harsh environments. If a 1000lb plus known herbivore can survive, why not an animal such as bf which is probably an omnivore? UPs

[bipedalist]

....How does a sasquatch hide in Ohio or Kentucky or Indiana as they roam for food? Are they always home and in the den before the snows come? Are they never caught out? Where do they go that snowmobiles don't? Where in those states does it not snow? In light of habituation claims coming from Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee, how is it that the snows don't give these guys up?

Well can't comment about the snows, but I've always wondered the same thing. Not enough snow cover where I reside most winters to make that a huge issue. But as for forested, riparian environments..... even with significant agricultural and grassy edges (suburban edges for that matter), it is easy for me to see how Sasquatch can stay hidden in such environments. With highway ditches seeming to be one travel corridor and escape and evasion route nearly omnipresent in many sighting reports for example. Irrigation canals, creeks, feeder streams, etc. all interconnected with rivers make a great interstate. Maybe staying in the water a good part of the time and in the deeper rockier parts to cut down on tracks.

I guess yesterday was a good case in point for me. Do a lot of trail work in montane environments, and lot of that rich cove forests. Literally, there were places I was where if you could see any heat signatures 25 feet away from you, you may be exaggerating.....in the overgrowth and forest cover and density. This is the central Blue Ridge, with many other environments in Kentucky the same density and probably a few in Ohio and many in West Virginia/Virginia to be sure. Tennessee would be no different in much of the Cumberland and Great Smokies areas.

It is easy for me to see how mobile critters can remain hidden. NO black bears seen by me this year but the occasional paw print in mud is still seen and evidence of travel routes and feeding is occasionally seen. What troubles me more about Sasquatch is the lack of definitive physical evidence where I suspect there should be..... or, do they resemble the black bear so much in their feeding habits that there is considerable overlap in the impacts? Don't know but suspect that may have something to do with it. I would expect alot more impact around springs, mudholes near streams and embankments for example..... and that has always been troubling to me.... as it seems to be rare in my reading to see this evidence except for perhaps the recent Oregon lakebed trackway.

To stay on topic I read that gershake ref. that states the "study" is on schedule with where they should be apparently, just nothing new to report. The sudden quiet after the Primal People's Conference is palpable.

[Guest shoot1]

...To stay on topic I read that gershake ref. that states the "study" is on schedule with where they should be apparently, just nothing new to report. The sudden quiet after the Primal People's Conference is palpable.

I'm wondering if the report was supposed to be released prior to the Primal People's Conference but it was scuttled at the last minute so she had to back out. This would explain the Skype debacle and recent silence.

That is what I don't get about the claims of sasquatch back east. In the Pacific Northwest there are great forests that almost never accumulate snow because of the moderating influence of the ocean. In those very rare instances when there is some accumulation, coastal California, Oregon, Washington and BC have what can be described as an impenetrable foliage that hides everything from plane crashes to large herds of Roosevelt Elk. How does a sasquatch hide in Ohio or Kentucky or Indiana as they roam for food? Are they always home and in the den before the snows come? Are they never caught out? Where do they go that snowmobiles don't? Where in those states does it not snow? In light of habituation claims coming from Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee, how is it that the snows don't give these guys up?

In NC there is one temperate area that I am personally aware of - the Nantahala River (Valley) Gorge - where temperatures and precipitation are relatively stable year round. Are there similar areas in these states?

Edited May 19, 2012 by shoot1

[Guest]

How does a sasquatch hide in Ohio or Kentucky or Indiana as they roam for food? Are they always home and in the den before the snows come? Are they never caught out? Where do they go that snowmobiles don't? Where in those states does it not snow? In light of habituation claims coming from Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee, how is it that the snows don't give these guys up?

I agree. I have spend a lot of times in the woods in wv and ky. During the winter the forest is very bare and it would seem almost impossible for a bf to hide and find enough food sources. You can literally see everything. Also, you can hear every mouse that moves because the dry leaves on the forest floor are very noisy. You would need hibernation or migration.

[Guest BFSleuth]

BF, are these things we, as humans, can eat as well or would our "evooooolved" digestive systems be confounded by them?

I think you need to think exactly which geoclimatic zone you are discussing before you state such broad based "facts".

People like native indians starved to death in the area I now live in (5 miles north of the US border) due to there not being enough food of sufficient quantity or quality to allow them to survive every year. It is far worse once you get further north or further inland. In the Lower Mainland of BC and adjacent valleys which was sasquatch central until Ray Wallace did his thing there are numerous times in which bear populations suffer in areas because of drought, poor salmon runs, poor berry crops, poor acorn crops just to name a few reasons. There really seems to be some leaps of logic in so many matter of fact ways people just pull out "facts" about sasquatches that it makes me wonder if they really thought it all the way through.

I think storing "tons" of food is a bit of an exaggeration. An intelligent omnivore would do quite well in the forested area's of NA, not to mention the ability to operate on the fringe a little. During the winter some of their game, such as deer would be in a weaker state, and easier to take. Depending how much energy they conserve due to less activity, they may not have to store as much food as you think. There is still a lot of prey out there for a smart predator. We really know nothing of social structure, or their lifestyle. Perhaps the increase in sightings over the years is directly tied to our own success's. Maybe they have moved just a little closer to Humanity, to take advantage of the abundance of food it provides, from crops, to a large increase in animals such as raccoon, possums, etc.

A factor would be whether the sasquatch had adopted a hibernation survival strategy. No other primates have done such, but it's not out of possibility the bigfoot might have done so. It's a necessity for most bears, at least in the upper half of the US.

I'm not of the opinion the creatures hibernate, but thought I'd mention the possibility. They can't all live in caves.

While it is true that animal populations suffer periods of starvation due to poor food supplies, some of the population lives through that period for repopulation. Many types of animals have population cycles that may be dependent on cycles of food availability.

In the east during winter food sources for BF will include bark and twigs, roots, and predation on ungulates. I'm not aware of sighting clusters in desert regions, so don't necessarily feel that the example of starving indigenous people in the border region just north of Mexico as applicable to this discussion. As noted by others, in the PNW the coastal areas are rarely snowbound and winter food supplies are numerous, with leaves, bark, roots, seaweed, shellfish, and fish still in plentiful supply.

Regarding hibernation I doubt they do so, based on sighting reports in mid winter in some very cold environments.

If you want to know more about what they eat I would encourage anyone to google "BFRO eating" or similar searches to pull up a variety of sighting reports where witnesses have observed what they eat or what they are gathering.

It should be noted that there has been plenty of discussion of their propensity to eat the liver of deer and elk, and drinking the blood from fresh kills. Liver is a high energy food source. For this year's London Olympics athletes are being warned not to eat liver so they don't get tagged for doping:

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/wire?section=oly&id=7380018

Also, try googling the meaning of "Adirondack" to get an idea of the abundance of high energy food out in the woods.

All food for thought (pun intended).

[southernyahoo]

The thing about obtaining food in the winter is that it takes a lot of wandering around to aquire it which means huge numbers of tracks and trailways that are just not found, right? So if they don't wander around looking for food where are they? Hibernation may be the answer but like Incorrigible1 says no other primate has aquired this ability. I think one does have to consider the possibility though. And tons of food is not an exageration for an animal that size. A cow will easily eat 1and 1/2 tons of high protean (17%) hay per winter in this area and that type of high protein is not found in usual forest edibles that can be stored without refrigeration. Also cows have an incredibly specialized digestive system that gets the absolute maximum amount of value out of every thing it eats which is certainly NOT like bears or other omnivores. Omnivore digestion cannot be highly specialized because it is not digesting a specific type of food, right? Bears have a poor digestive system and leave a lot of undigested product in there scat thereby meaning that they have to eat a lot more to obtain the same amount of nutrient. We still seem to be trying to fit a lot of different conflicting types of things into one animal that just doesn't add up. That is my opinion anyway.

Try a Mesocarnivore model with an additional reduction in caloric requirements due to the efficiency of bipedal locomotion and perhaps a more resourceful and cunning apex predator utilizing it's intelligence afforded to big brained hominins.

http://www.zoology.wisc.edu/labs/hll/pdf/Steudel%201996%20limb%20morphology,%20gait%20and%20energetics.pdf

[Crittergetter]

Another thing that a lot of people don't seem to take into account(at least I didn't until a little while ago) when talking about Bigfoot's food supplies is our food supplies. We grow things like wheat, corn, potatoes, turnips, strawberries, etc., etc. all over the United States. Do you think a farmer is going to notice a dozen or so of his plants that happen to be missing an ear of corn, or a handful of strawberries? I highly doubt it.

in the eastern part of the country they could easily scavenge from various farmers fields during the summer and be just fine. I think they tend to avoid being in heavily snowy areas in the winter unless they can count on a food source of some substance in the area(like deer or elk). I think there is plenty of food for Bigfoot to find, he just has to know where to look.

[Guest]

Mulder is correct, BF size and diet correlate highly with bear size and diet. Most people that attempt to argue the position that there simply isn't enough available calories to sustain such a large creature are speaking from a wealth of ignorance regarding edible flora and fauna in the wild. I had this discussion with a friend of mine last week, and to make his point that there couldn't possibly be enough to eat out in the wild he pulled up a picture and challenged me to name anything that one could eat. I quickly identified enough edible roots, bark, tubers, and seeds to make a feast for a family in short order - with plenty left over for putting away for the winter. Most folks are unaware of wild edibles and might starve to death in the midst of plenty. I highly doubt that BF has this problem.

I would add that that was from the perspective of what a human could eat. BF's digestive system is likely more robust so as to also be able to handle lichens and such. Dr Meldrum talks about this in LMS.

I think you need to think exactly which geoclimatic zone you are discussing before you state such broad based "facts".

People like native indians starved to death in the area I now live in (5 miles north of the US border) due to there not being enough food of sufficient quantity or quality to allow them to survive every year.

It is far worse once you get further north or further inland. In the Lower Mainland of BC and adjacent valleys which was sasquatch central until Ray Wallace did his thing there are numerous times in which bear populations suffer in areas because of drought, poor salmon runs, poor berry crops, poor acorn crops just to name a few reasons. The bears do not get enough stored fat and then die in hibernation or never actually attempt to hibernate and then die from malnutrition and/or exposure.

Yet they survived there some of the time. Just as I'm sure other animals did. Famine does not equal=totally unsurvivable. And it's not like they can't get up and move to "greener pastures".

To state that sasquatches are OK because bears are OK because sasquatches are just like bears is really not factual but a guess, right? Bears compete for range because they need to find food. Too many bears also causes die-offs. Other competitors that supposedly (we must add the words "supposedly", "maybe", "guessing", when discussing sasquatches because we sure don't know what they eat, right?) compete with them would be noticed by anybody doing a animal study for any number of reasons. Wildlife Census Reports, Habititat Conservation Reports, Forestry Impact Reports, they all identify what species are in the areas and numbers and the sustainability of those numbers.

Would they? Your argument is that adding a number of sasquatches into an area would change the numbers...but those calculated numbers already reflect the presence of the sasquatches (assuming they're there to begin with).

If it exists it eats, leaves tracks and other sign and poops.

And sasquatches have done all those things.

Any extremely large omnivorous creature would impact the area and be noticed. The evidence of one grizzly bear travelling between the BC coast through the mountainous region of the area stradling the border was noticed about 10 yrs ago and became quite an event in fact because that area was expirtated of grizzlies decades before even though black bears thrive in the area.

See above.

Also, bears eat when they are not sleeping or looking for something to eat. Eat, eat, eat. When would a sasquatch be able to store the literally tons of food they would need to survive a severe winter and where would they store it that it wouldn't be found by other animals and stolen or fought for?

Where and how did primitive humans do that? Obviously they did, or we would not be here. They survived, and they were weaker than sasquatches.

That is what I don't get about the claims of sasquatch back east. In the Pacific Northwest there are great forests that almost never accumulate snow because of the moderating influence of the ocean. In those very rare instances when there is some accumulation, coastal California, Oregon, Washington and BC have what can be described as an impenetrable foliage that hides everything from plane crashes to large herds of Roosevelt Elk. How does a sasquatch hide in Ohio or Kentucky or Indiana as they roam for food? Are they always home and in the den before the snows come? Are they never caught out? Where do they go that snowmobiles don't? Where in those states does it not snow? In light of habituation claims coming from Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee, how is it that the snows don't give these guys up?

1) Since they are seen in those areas the obvious answer is sometimes they aren't very successful at hiding.

2) As has to be continuously pointed out apparently, even in those states there are remote, heavily forested areas where man seldom if ever goes available for animals (including sasquatches) to be in undetected.

[See-Te-Cah NC]

As far as there being sufficient food for bigfoot (plural), I look at it like this - There was plenty of food to sustain humans before we had grocery stores or even before we became dependant on agriculture. Was it what we wanted to eat most of the time? Probably not, but we were no different than bigfoot would have to be should it exist, it has to either go to where food is abundant or it has to have the food come to it. Obviously, seasonal migration could be the answer for many of the creatures. However, I'd like to believe that an animal like bigfoot could be very much as we used to be when we were living off of the land. Maybe bigfoot can use bait to set an ambush or to trap an animal in a simple trap, such as a hole in the ground covered with leaves or grass. I've heard reports about bigfoot throwing rocks with great accuracy, so perhaps they use them to hunt, too. Maybe they can trap fish using simplistic, but effective means... perhaps even build an actual crude trap of sorts. Early humans did many things to aquire food, so could bigfoot. I suppose that's not a probable hypothesis, but it may not be impossible.

Also, like us, bigfoot probably tends to get a little plump around the middle when it eats more than it needs. However, unlike us it could actually use the calories in additional fat stores to make it through tough winters on minimal food. it may sound harsh to us now because we're so soft, but a bigfoot doesn't know what it's like to go to the grocery store (If I see a report of it buying Zagnut bars I'm going to really freak!) and have access to numerous options. It has what it can collect, which should be nothing new to a creature living this type of existence. It has no choice but to survive on what's available because it's what it does. I would also like to think that bigfoot could also do as we did early on - Store up food. I'm not saying that it cans vegetables, but perhaps it knows what will keep long during the winter or during months when food is less likely to be available as a way to suppliment their diet. People learned how to survive when times were lean, I suppose it is possible bigfoot has, too.

I'm not saying that they all can make it, either. Nature can be very cruel to animals and humans alike. Like evolution states, "Survival of the Fittest." Maybe the young males are excluded when the lean times are tough, thus struggling moreso than a family unit with an Alpha Male. Perhaps these are the majority of the creatures sighted because they're the hungriest.

Nobody should believe for a second that a bigfoot couldn't survive in North America. They'd just live a different life than we do, and that life is what it is. I think HRPuffnstuff's signature line is a pretty good analogy:

I never saw a wild thing sorry for itself,

A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough

without ever having felt sorry for itself.

D.H. Lawrence

[Guest OntarioSquatch]

I'm normally lazy when it comes to posting this stuff, but someone claimed this is a "leaked" image from Dr. Ketchum's study.

Dr. Ketchum said it's not from what she has, but I guess it's pretty funny

[HOLDMYBEER]

1) Since they are seen in those areas the obvious answer is sometimes they aren't very successful at hiding.

2) As has to be continuously pointed out apparently, even in those states there are remote, heavily forested areas where man seldom if ever goes available for animals (including sasquatches) to be in undetected.

The point is.......where are the remote, heavily forested areas where man seldom if ever goes... and it doesn't snow? I am from back there and I can't picture the wilderness area that would allow such a creature to roam around leaving trackways in the snow without being hunted down. I suppose there is the possibility of a remote nook in Appalachia, but I am directing this question to the midwestern states, a place that gets real snow, sometimes for extended periods of time.

[Guest BFSleuth]

HMB, it seems you are thinking that BF must survive winters in areas without snow. That's not reflected in the plot data from sighting reports. They have been seen in very cold and very snowy winter environments. For example, if you load the BFRO layer for Google Earth you will see that they are seen well above the Arctic Circle. The recent report from Wyoming in the middle of winter, where the BF was seen by a tow truck driver as he dragged away a road kill elk carcass is another example (with temperatures well below freezing in deep snow). They have been observed to eat the bark off trees, one report I remember said the BF was holding a broken off branch and eating the bark like corn on the cob "with great relish". They swim distances in waters that are so cold it would kill a human in minutes. It seems they have the physical makeup to survive cold environments very well.

[JDL]

Fairly. This documentary tested the skulls.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1JL5HDRDjc

He says: "This 'may' be Zana". The narrator then says the skull "...is 'rumored' to belong to Zana."

Regardless, I'd asked what I believed was a legitimate question and got shut down by claims that Zana had been conclusively proven to be modern human. So I'll ask it again:

We have two accounts of hybrid offspring, one from the PNW in which a human woman gave birth to a male child with human hair patterns. In the second account, Zana, a female hairy hominid gives birth to hybrid children with human hair patterns. I don't know a lot about genetics, but this suggests to me that the gene providing the human hair pattern would be dominant.

If so, what are the implications of this? Might other modern human characteristics also dominate during hybridizations? How may this factor into Ketchum's findings?

Edited May 20, 2012 by JDL