Sierra Shooting from A-Z

[Guest Thepattywagon]

Really interesting Justin. Thanks for taking the time. Can I be so bold to ask a few questions that I did'nt hear covered on he edited interview.

1. What heigh/weight would you estimate the big one was?

2. Was there any smell?

3. Did the large one look anything like the Paterson Gimlin footage, or any other 'evidence' out there

I think 1 and 3 were asked. Not sure about the smell question.

Did I hear correctly that Mike Green is involved with the book writing?

[Guest]

Apologoes, read the whole thread and most of these questions have been answered indeed.

[Guest Jodie]

Justin, I remember when we talked you said the kids looked different from the adult. I don't think that came through on the interview very well when you were trying to describe them. Some got the impression that there was a conflict in the description of a flat face versus the boxer jaw described. Do you mind listing what you remember about the features of the kids, and what you remember about the adult features?

[Guest Strick]

What's kept me from commenting earlier is especially that I'm from the Netherlands. A country where nobody knows about bigfoot (maybe amazing but true!) so I feel like I'm not in the position to talk about it because we don't have no bigfoots here.. And that's for sure.

Oh, I wouldn't let a little thing like that worry me

We Brits don't have any Bigfoots either, but we don't let it prevent us from chiming in with our 2 cents at every available opportunity! Everyone gets the benefit of our opinions whether they like it or not.....

Welcome to the forum.

[Guest]

Justin its to bad you feel the "need" to explain yourself, you really don't need to at all,you have submitted the sample etc. You certainly are under no obligation to answer the same questions over and over again.I think you have been more than patient with this. I listened to the interview, and your right, I think it answered more than enough.

[Guest]

Yes, Moneymaker is talking about a previous journal submission. According to Ketchum the paper is in peer review at a journal other than Nature.

Did Ketchum really say this? Are we dealing with rumors, or actual statements made by the scientists involved?

[Guest slimwitless]

Did Ketchum really say this? Are we dealing with rumors, or actual statements made by the scientists involved?

In November Ketchum stated on Facebook the paper "is not with the Nature group". Note the present tense. I suppose that doesn't necessarily mean it's not there now.

[Guest]

Wow...It's crazy how much different hearing it talked about is compared to reading. Sounds totally believable to me. Did I hear a little verbal judo coming from the hosts in regards to 'where on the body did you get the sample from'? If I were Justin, I'd video tape a polygraph and put it on YouTube in conjunction with the book release. I'd also try to get more exposure on the story through the mainstream media.

Justin....Have you ever talked with Jeff Meldrum?

[Guest slimwitless]

Justin....Have you ever talked with Jeff Meldrum?

I believe he has. On another blogtalk show, Meldrum admitted that he had been to the site of the shooting (probably during the "recovery" effort). He said the story might not be "all it's cracked up to be" and that there were a few "red flags". I tried to ask Justin about it but the host butchered my question. Based on the posts in the Henner Fahrenbach thread and a comment by Bart Cutino in response to my question, I think it's obvious Meldrum doesn't think the hair morphology of the sample matches what he expects. IMO.

[Guest]

In November Ketchum stated on Facebook the paper "is not with the Nature group". Note the present tense. I suppose that doesn't necessarily mean it's not there now.

It was stated that it is going to be in a different journal,not nature

[Guest]

For those who'd rather read than listen, here is a transcript of most of the interview:

The interview took place on January 1, 2012, conducted by Abe del Rio, Steve Kulls, and J.C. Johnson on blogtalkradio.com.

It was October 8th of 2010, and we’re going bear hunting up by Golden Lake. It was just another day. We’d hunted most of the day, unproductive. We found one small buck and we said it’s a young deer, let’s let this one grow up, so we passed on that deer. Then we ended up going into another area, and we’re coming around the corner. It’s probably 5 o’clock. We came around this corner…well, it’s not really a corner it’s kind of like an open field but it’s a blind corner because you can’t see past these trees. So it opens up into a field, we both look, and see this thing at the same exact time. The truck stops. I pointed my rifle at it and I could see it through the scope. I had my scope on 16 power, I could see it pretty clearly. Everybody asks me Well what was going through your head, did you think it was a bear? I thought a lot of things. It wasn’t that I was a skeptic, it was that I didn’t know that anybody believed in Bigfoot at all.

We saw this creature, it was walking on two legs, hairy. The best way I can describe it is it looked like a person in a suit. Probably 3 or 4 seconds had gone by and it started to walk towards us, between 100 and 80 yards, somewhere in there…It had its arms in the air and was waving them, almost like Don’t shoot, don’t shoot! Kind of a universal thing in any language, anybody raises his hands, sign of surrender. I didn’t know what it was. To me it was just a monster, I didn’t know what it was. I’m looking at this monster. By this time I have the bullet in the chamber, my finger on the trigger, and it’s coming towards us, slowly, it’s taking steps, waving. A lot of people are saying I shot it in the back, so if you have a deer and you shoot it behind the shoulder, then you’re going to penetrate both lungs. On a person it’s a hard area to describe but it’s basically right under the shoulder where the lungs are located.

So maybe 5 seconds had passed, and my buddy he says Don’t shoot, don’t shoot! It’s not a bear. Do not shoot. And I’m still kind of locked in on this thing. To me it was a monster, that’s all it was. You know the gun’s getting ready to go off. We’ve hunted together a lot over the years and we both knew what was going to happen. Normally when we see something the truck stops, both of us get out and we’ve got our rifles on it immediately. Well, my buddy was still using his binoculars because he didn’t know what to think. I didn’t know what to think. I’m looking at this thing and I’m pretty close to pulling the trigger, I’ve just been squeezing this whole time. And he’s getting louder and louder, he’s like Hey bro don’t shoot, don’t shoot! That is not a bear, that’s a person in a suit, that’s a person in a suit, don’t shoot! And I’m thinking Well if that’s a person in a suit then we’ve got a real problem here, ‘cause they’re walking around during bear season with a fur suit on. Something don’t add up about this. I’m halfway thinking in the back of my mind that somebody’s going to pull around the corner and it’s going to be like a film crew or something. I don’t know, my mind’s going a hundred miles an hour.

But I see this animal, this furry thing, and we’re here to hunt, we’re here to kill animals, and it was just a monster. So I pull the trigger and you could see dust shoot off the side of it, like it obviously made a really good hit, definitely got it in the lungs. And it took off running. Just then we see two…I guess you’d call ‘em kids, or cubs or something, I don’t know. The big one’s almost out of sight and these two come right out and my buddy’s like Holy ****, really? There’s more of them.

So we drive the truck into the field as far as we can, maybe 30 yards, then we take off running. We heard the thing crash, though. It crashed, it sounded like a car wreck. We knew we made a good hit. It’s very normal to shoot a deer and have it run 50, 60, 70 yards and expire. So we run up there and my buddy doesn’t even grab his gun, I mean we’re just running, trying to run over to this thing, and cubs are just out of sight. And we run over there and now we’re face to face with these kids. Probably 10 yards away or so, and we can’t find the big one. So I decide I’m going to going to shoot one of the kids, and my buddy’s like No, do not shoot, do not shoot.

Okay, okay, alright. We’ll find the big one, we’ll get it and we’ll leave. So we end up looking for 15 minutes or so.

Meanwhile the kids…they’re looking for the parent obviously. They are walking around looking for their parent. We knew we were looking in the right area then…I’ve made the mistake of shooting a sow, and then the piglets come running out and they always know right where their mom is. They take you to the body. So we knew that it was right there, we just couldn’t find it. It’s an extremely brushy area. I mean, we could have looked for 2 weeks and not found it.

So there’s blood on the ground, we’re kind of looking at the blood, we’re walking around, we split up probably 10 or 15 times, he’d go one way I’d go the other way. And the kids would do the same thing. They’d walk into the center of the open field and they’d say something to each other, it sounded like deaf chatter, they’d go Wawwa Wo! They’d say something to each other then they’d split up. Then about a minute later they’d come back, almost like,You see anything? You see anything? No, okay. Did you look by that tree, did you look by the stump? Yeah I looked by the stump, did you look by the tree? I’ll look by the other tree.

They didn’t care that we were there, they were not alarmed at all. They were just there. And so, maybe 15 minutes goes by or so, and I keep deciding that I’m going to shoot one of the little ones. It’s like, We’ll shoot one of these, throw it in the back, and we’ll figure it out. And my buddy’s like, No no that’s terrible, don’t do that, there’s no reason for that, there absolutely no reason to do this. So at the time everything’s running through my head, I’m thinking if we don’t get one of the little ones nobody’s ever going to believe us, it’s just going to be a crazy story. We just need to find the big one and we need to get out of here.

So eventually me and my buddy are split up and I’m down this hill and it’s almost like straight uphill maybe 15 yards away, maybe 20, and one of them, the little one, is starting to approach me. It’s getting closer…it’s getting closer, starting to make some noise, like the deaf chatter thing…it’s getting closer and I was thinking, I don’t know what’s going to happen here but he’s going to get too close, it’s way too close for comfort. Screw it, I’m going to shoot.

So I shoot it directly in the neck ‘cause I didn’t want to mess up the skull or the face. And it rolled down the hill and actually…it hit my feet, starts bleeding on my boots, still alive. So I pick it up and I’m sitting there looking at it and I’m starting to feel back, I’m starting to realize, What have I done, what have I done? And…that went on for a couple minutes, there was a lot of stuff that happened in there but to summarize it, make a long story short, it died.

And then my buddy walks up and he’s like, What have you done? Seriously, really? And I’m like fine, forget this, so I throw it on the ground and I start walking off, walking back to the truck. Then I look back and my buddy’s holding it, just holding it, sitting there staring at it. So…I walk back to him like Dude, we gotta get out of here. Somebody just heard a shot, you know that somebody’s going to show up, Fish and Game, we’re going to get in so much trouble, we’re going to go to jail, we need to get out of here, this is crazy, let’s go. He says, Okay, okay, let’s hide this, we’ll come back for it later. We’ll come back. So we take it into the bush, get it as deep as we can, throw a bunch of stuff on top of it, and then we leave.

Not saying a word. We actually drove out of there probably 60 miles an hour on that dirt road. It doesn’t make sense but we were just afraid we were going to get caught, get in trouble, something. So we drove down to Sierraville, and we stop there. Both of us quit smoking in like the last 6 months, gross habit, but we both walk in, get a pack of cigarettes without saying a word, and we drive all the way home without saying a word. Smoked the whole thing. Then he dropped me off.

A couple days later I get on Taxidermy.net, I’ve got a few friends on there, and I’m trying to think if there’s some way I can talk about what happened, so I make a post like, So if you saw a Bigfoot would you shoot it? That’s all I said, and everybody’s going back and forth. Taxidermists are outdoor people, they’ve got a fascination with wildlife, they’ve hunted all their life. There’s a bunch of guys one there who were like, Oh no, I seen one, I seen one, I know they’re real. And it turned into this really long topic, so maybe 20 pages goes by and I get on there and I just say, I’ll tell you what, you can call it ******** if you want, I don’t care, but I shot something that walked on two legs.

[Word soon reaches Derek Randles, long-time Pacific Northwest Sasquatch researcher and co-founder of The Olympic Project. He got in touch with Smeja.]

I end up telling Derek the whole thing, and he says, Alright, I need you to get back up there and I need you to get the body of the little one, or the big one. We’ve got to get this done. And I’m like, I don’t think so, man, I don’t think I’m going to go back there. And he’s like, You don’t understand, we’ve worked so hard for this, we need your help, we need to get up there. I’m just going to drive down there, how ‘bout I’ll drive to your house, I’ll drive you up there.

What, you’re going to drive 12 hours? And he’s like, Yeah, no, this is really important. 27 years of research and this is as big as it gets, this is the holy grail.

So eventually I end up saying, Alright, fine, I’ll drive up there, and I’ll get it, then you can drive down and pick up the body. So I put it off, maybe a week or so, I’m busy with work. And I didn’t really get what had happened, and Derek’s calling me up every day, Seriously, you’ve got to get up there, you’ve got to get up there, just call into work, this is so important. There could be money involved. But more than that, we’ve been looking for this thing for so long, and now there’s one sitting there.

So I talk to my buddy and we’re like, Well, let’s go get this thing. So we get a bunch of trash bags, black contractor bags, we get up there, and there’s freakin’ 3 feet of snow on the ground. So…we couldn’t find it. I had my bloodhound with me, she’s usually pretty good at tracking, she’s a hunting dog. So I take her out there and she’s acting like she just **** the bed or something, she’s acting so embarrassed, she’s acting very timid, she’s very bothered by the whole thing. So eventually we decided to gauge where we would dig, ‘cause we’d been digging for 5 or 6 hours…we figured out there were 2 or 3 areas she really didn’t like, she’d walk in a straight line then all of a sudden she’d turn around and walk the other way. So we based where we dug off of the dog.

We find this flesh sample. It looks like a piece of hide. Some people say there’s just no way that something like that would be there that long without the animals getting to it. I say that’s ridiculous, ‘cause if I shoot a deer, take it to my house, I sheer it, take it back to the woods, drop it off, and a month later I’ll go back up there and you’ll still see…you’ll see bones, you’ll see pieces of hair, you’ll see hide, you’ll see blood, you’ll see all that stuff.

So we find it and end up sending a small portion of it, I don’t know maybe an 8th of it, to Melba Ketchum. And here we are today.

If you were to weigh it, the whole sample, in might be 2 pounds, but that’s really pushing it. We ended up taking the rest of the sample, wrapping it in paper, freezing it in a block of ice. It’ll be exactly the same 20 years from now. No air can get to it, there’s no chance of freezer burn.

We’ve probably been back up there 20 times, maybe more, we went with a group of researchers, and we looked and we looked and we looked and we couldn’t find anything. I’ve heard about the theory, maybe they bury their young or something. I don’t know, I don’t know what to think. On one of my trips we found some tracks of a larger one and a younger one with it. I have pictures of those tracks.

The one question everybody asks me, they corner me and ask me, Why didn’t you put the little one in your truck. [Very agitated.] I don’t know! It bothers me every day. I’ve got no idea, I’m so tired of that question. If I could go back in time…you’re telling me that I had a winning lottery ticket, and I burned it. But…I lose sleep over it, it bothers me, I don’t know. I don’t know what was going through my head. I was sitting there thinking we gotta get out of here, this is nuts, this is crazy. It was like a bad dream, actually it was very much like a bad dream. We felt like once we got out of there, it was over.

There was a while where it was really, really traumatic. And then…you lose sleep enough and you kind of forget about it. But every once in a while I’ll see like a little monkey or something in a zoo and I’m like, **** man, what did I do? Recently, I saw this boxer and it had this face that was really kind of similar to the young one’s face, and I was just sitting there looking at this dog just thinking Oh my God…what happened?

The kid looked like a little black kid. Its face…human eyes, but it had the snout of a boxer, and the lips of an ape. It very closely resembled the snout of a boxer but pushed in a little bit more.

[J.C. Johnson asks if the young ones were walking on all fours or on two legs.]

50/50. They spent as much time on all 4s as they did on 2 legs. They were drastically different color than the adult. The adult was the color of a pale coyote, and the kids were cinnamon-colored, quite a bit darker.

[Abe del Rio asks if they were faster on all fours.]

They were definitely faster on all 4s, definitely. They had very long arms and they had huge heads. They basically had an adult-sized head on a kid-sized body, which is really hard to wrap your mind around. And their hands were huge. Well, they were the size of mine but you put that on a little frame, it looks oddly proportioned. And they were calloused. I’ve been saying that they have paws. They’re hands, but they’re so calloused it looks like paws. It looks like a pad, like two little pads on each finger, and a big pad. Their hands were very cushioned.

[Justin’s buddy, the driver of the truck, comes on.]

When I first looked at it [through the binoculars], the first thing I ever said, it looked like a person in a bear suit. Someone that had the bear suit on but then where’s the bear’s face would be it was not there, it looked more human. I didn’t even really think it looked ape-like at all, it looked a lot more human, but it looked a lot more hairy in the face.

[You actually lifted up the little one. How much would you say it weighed?]

35 to 40 pounds.

[And about how tall?]

I would say 3 feet. The little ones were extremely vocal while we were searching for the big one. The best way to describe it is like when a deaf person is trying to talk. They were loud, they talked a lot, they would come back to each other, they would start making noises, then they would run off in different directions. And they did that probably 5 or 6 times.

[They weren’t communicating in English, nothing you could understand, right?]

Correct, yes.

The adult looked very similar to the one in the Patterson Film because it looked like a person in a suit. I personally felt like it would have been a female because of the 2 younger ones. I can’t tell by looks whether it was a male or a female. [Compared to “Pattyâ€] it was more flat-chested, well, muscular but yeah. I felt like it was carrying a lot of weight around with it, like it was thicker more than it was what you would call “cut up†or “ripped.†I could tell by the way that the sides shook when it got shot.

I watched the shot enter the body of the big one, and I remember the way the side…it looked like Jell-O. It rocked its side, you could see like waves in the side of the body. And that picture sticks with me more than anything else, was when the bullet entered the big one.

[bipedalist]

I was confused by a couple statements. One that the hands were described in some detail re: size and callouses but questions about the feet were seemingly dismissed or not remembered. I suppose the creature could have been balled up by the time it rolled to a stop or maybe even buckled over. The question of calloused hands versus paws comes to the forefront again and it is asked were the palms and soles of the feet hairless and it was stated, yes , they were. Maybe it is just little details, but it is things like this that are odd. Also, in staring into a dying juveniles eyes I would think it unmistakable that they would be described in excruciating detail as to iris, pupil, coloration, conjunctiva, eyelashes/lids, size/shape, etc.

Again, maybe it is all known in detail and those are saved for the book.

The statement that the juveniles had heads as large as an adults was interesting. Also, that the juveniles were decidedly cinnamon-colored as opposed to the off white/dirty white adult and that the juveniles mug looked like that of a boxer more in the nose. With the impending snow you've got to wonder if the adult winter phase of hair coloration is an issue but then one would expect perhaps a similar coloration among the youngsters to take on that type of appearance too.

[Guest slimwitless]

It was stated that it is going to be in a different journal,not nature

Not to be pedantic, but here's the quote:

I will say that our paper is not with the Nature group. What we are currently doing and where the paper is/is not cannot be discussed.

For those who'd rather read than listen, here is a transcript of most of the interview:

Thank you for taking the time to transcribe the interview.

Also, in staring into a dying juveniles eyes I would think it unmistakable that they would be described in excruciating detail as to iris, pupil, coloration, conjunctiva, eyelashes/lids, size/shape, etc.

It's not in this transcript but I believe someone asked about the eyes later in the show. He said there were whites in the eyes...something you don't see in great apes.

[bipedalist]

.....whites in the eyes...something you don't see in great apes.

Yes I believe they mentioned whites and maybe even the word brown, a VERY generic description under the circumstances. My point was "detail" oriented, not trying to make an argument for genus out of eye coloration, though that is an interesting

aside.

Hope the book is "detailed" is my point.

[Guest mitchw]

Thank you, indeed, Christopher, for the transcript.