What Does Bigfoot Eat?

[hiflier]

We discussed this migration thing a while back when talking about how such creatures would get seasonally back and forth with Interstate 5 staring them in a face twice a year.

[norseman]

2 hours ago, SWWASAS said:

If they are in your area in any numbers in the summer that suggests they migrate out in the winter if are not seeing winter tracks. .The snow line here in Western WA is about 8 miles east of were I live.  I live at 300ft and much of the winter the snow level is about 2500.    There are several high ridges that connect the Western Cascades and the interior mountains like Adams.   When you examine those East West ridges,   there are defined and well used trails on them   None of them are on a USGS Map.    They are not old logging roads either.   I have wondered if rather than trudge through all the tangle and down wood of the Columbia,  Lewis River, and Toutle Drainage, if they get high on the ridges and migrate out of the interior in the fall.   Right at the snow line is bearable in the Western Cascades in the winter and in the winter there are few humans in the woods, especially at or above the snow line.  

I would not consider Mt Adams a “interior mountain”, its well within the cascade range. As you can see there is a serious trip involved in getting from the west slope of the Rockies across the Columbia plateau and then back into the Cascades and over the summit to get down into snowless areas on the west slope.

 

Im 2400 feet above sea level. I have over a foot of snow now. The valley is melting off. But the Columbia river gets feet of snow every year at 1300 ft.

[SWWASAS]

16 hours ago, norseman said:

I would not consider Mt Adams a “interior mountain”, its well within the cascade range. As you can see there is a serious trip involved in getting from the west slope of the Rockies across the Columbia plateau and then back into the Cascades and over the summit to get down into snowless areas on the west slope.

 

Im 2400 feet above sea level. I have over a foot of snow now. The valley is melting off. But the Columbia river gets feet of snow every year at 1300 ft.

My point was all they have to do is do a significant elevation change and they can get out of the heavy snow.   The Donner Party in Calfornia is a good example of that.    If they had moved 30 miles West they would have survived the winter.   In most cases it is by moving West but it can be any direction.        From where I live if I want to travel any directon in the winter  the difficulty of a road trip is the mountain passes.    That applies to any direction I want to travel.   North, South, East or West.    Quite honestly I suspect the lack of footprints in your area of Washington is related to lack of BF to make them.    There are places in my region where one would think there should be a BF presence because of cover, food sources, water, etc, but the signs of acitivity like sightings and footprints are simply not there.      It could be that regions that used to be active have gone inactive because the resident populations have died out and not been replaced with in migration.   Like the NA populations they my have traditional territorys they prefer to live in and it takes a lot of human disturbance to get them to move.  

[norseman]

54 minutes ago, SWWASAS said:

My point was all they have to do is do a significant elevation change and they can get out of the heavy snow.   The Donner Party in Calfornia is a good example of that.    If they had moved 30 miles West they would have survived the winter.   In most cases it is by moving West but it can be any direction.        From where I live if I want to travel any directon in the winter  the difficulty of a road trip is the mountain passes.    That applies to any direction I want to travel.   North, South, East or West.    Quite honestly I suspect the lack of footprints in your area of Washington is related to lack of BF to make them.    There are places in my region where one would think there should be a BF presence because of cover, food sources, water, etc, but the signs of acitivity like sightings and footprints are simply not there.      It could be that regions that used to be active have gone inactive because the resident populations have died out and not been replaced with in migration.   Like the NA populations they my have traditional territorys they prefer to live in and it takes a lot of human disturbance to get them to move.  

I understand that. I have pointed out numerous times that many coastal areas are devoid of snow.

 

Which is NOT the case with MOST of the interior Pacific NW. If you stand in our valley bottoms? Your knee deep in snow! 
 

Spokane gets snow every winter, Couer D Alene gets snow every winter, Missoula gets snow every winter. North, south, east and west you will be in snow in winter!

 

And there are no shortage of footprints in my area in SUMMER. So it wouldn’t be because of a die off. 
 

Logically speaking it has to either be 

 

1) Hoaxing

2) Migration 

3) They hunker down with food stores

[Marty]

This is the kind of data I would like to investigate. The points brought up are valid and draws concern about where these animals go when you cannot reasonably hide your presence in heavy snowfall. Sightings drop in winter, yes, but is it really because less people are out or are most individuals trekking outside the locations into warmer climates? Do the younger ones leave and the older, more experienced survivors stay put and deal with less intraspecies competition? 

[Henry Stevens]

If bigfoot were living exactly like a black bear and eating the same foods, they would be in direct competition with each other.  One species would be a little better at it than they other and replace it.  If bigfoot is eating MOSTLY what bears eat but then adds something to that diet the bear does not have, this would allow bigfoot to keep expanding his range which appears to be the case.  So shouldn't we be looking for some plant or animal which exists throughout their range (at least all of North America) with rainfall of 40 inches or more?  Bigfoot has to be falling back on something like this when other foods are not available and not available to black bears.

 

 

[SWWASAS]

2 hours ago, norseman said:

I understand that. I have pointed out numerous times that many coastal areas are devoid of snow.

 

Which is NOT the case with MOST of the interior Pacific NW. If you stand in our valley bottoms? Your knee deep in snow! 
 

Spokane gets snow every winter, Couer D Alene gets snow every winter, Missoula gets snow every winter. North, south, east and west you will be in snow in winter!

 

And there are no shortage of footprints in my area in SUMMER. So it wouldn’t be because of a die off. 
 

Logically speaking it has to either be 

 

1) Hoaxing

2) Migration 

3) They hunker down with food stores

All three are certainly possible.     And there may be big differences regionally.       As did the First Peoples who were hunter gatherers too, migrations were involved.    But the coastal tribes had settlements and even wood planked buildings and only moved around in short trips to gather things.  .   So there is some of that at least in some regions.     The hunker down with stores option has little evidence but then I do not recall a single instance of anyone encountering a BF inhabited lava tube or cave,  at least in this century.     Some people may have but never survived the experience.    I recall one report of a BF presenting a rodent wrapped in a grass like nest to a human as a present.     That impllies food storage, at least in the form of dried meat.  Berries could be collected and stored.   As with bears, salmon may be an important food source.  I am not sure it could be dried without salt.   Certainly hibernation or semi hibernation is not out of the question.        Above the snow line,   meat storage is not a problem,  you simply cover it with snow and keep the scavengers away.   I just do not think we know enough about their daily life to make any sure assessments.   

[norseman]

2 hours ago, Henry Stevens said:

If bigfoot were living exactly like a black bear and eating the same foods, they would be in direct competition with each other.  One species would be a little better at it than they other and replace it.  If bigfoot is eating MOSTLY what bears eat but then adds something to that diet the bear does not have, this would allow bigfoot to keep expanding his range which appears to be the case.  So shouldn't we be looking for some plant or animal which exists throughout their range (at least all of North America) with rainfall of 40 inches or more?  Bigfoot has to be falling back on something like this when other foods are not available and not available to black bears.

 

 

Except Black bears in northern climes are completely out of the picture for roughly half of the year. They go into the den in November and come out in March. So at least in winter they would have no direct competition with other omnivores. Carnivores are another story.

[hiflier]

Bears in Maine do occasionally leave their dens. I've read that the ones in the Rockies do not and that could be true elsewhere, too.

[norseman]

4 minutes ago, hiflier said:

Bears in Maine do occasionally leave their dens. I've read that the ones in the Rockies do not and that could be true elsewhere, too.

Sure. There is no hard and fast rule, why a Bear may wake up mid winter and leave the den. But it’s uncommon. Certainly not enough frequency to give another species a challenge.

[MIB]

8 minutes ago, hiflier said:

Bears in Maine do occasionally leave their dens. I've read that the ones in the Rockies do not and that could be true elsewhere, too.

 

SW Oregon .. they don't seem to truly hibernate.    They'll nap for 2-3 weeks, then get up and roam about.   If they find food, they stay up, if they don't find food, the go back for another nap.  They are generally a bit sluggish if they are up like they're not fully functional.   It is always possible to run into a bear here .. year around .. although it is much less frequent in winter.

[hiflier]

Easy to agree that bears don't pose a competitive edge on winter food in either case. And if one knows what their doing, i.e. up on their bear skills, then one won't confuse bear tracks in snow with the hairy guy's.

[Henry Stevens]

Black bears do not hibernate in California as a rule, they migrate.  They can go to lower elevation easily as do deer.  There is just no reason at all for a bear to hibernate in much of the South.

[Henry Stevens]

What about hogs?  Originally there were peccary like animals in N. America.  There are still a few in Texas, Arizona and Mexico south today.  But Europeans imported hogs and they got loose.  After two or three generations they begin looking like wild boars again.  Additionally, wild boars were brought and released on hunting preserves which naturally got out of hand.  Now we have a large population of wild pigs from at least Central California eastward through the South.

 

Does this relatively new food resource have anything to do with the spread of bigfoot?
 

[JKH]

Hogs and deer are practically nuisance animals in some areas, so yeah.

Short answer to the OP is: everything. Of course this topic, like others, has been repeatedly discussed.

 

There is a NA museum in my region with a display of traditional foods, it lists approximately 300 plants, animals, marine life, etc. BFs could likely eat all of it and more. Observations have them eating raw crops, foliage, roadkill, and other unthinkable to human stuff, digestion is apparently powerful.

 

Some say there are no BF experts, but there certainly are people who've been observing their behaviors for decades, we can learn a lot from such folks. Here are a couple examples.

 

https://bigfootforums.com/topic/54534-bigfoot-harvesting-fruits-berries-vegetables/

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QeHbHChMwVI