Book Review: Bigfoot… It’s Complicated by Denver Riggleman

[Explorer]

This book was a disappointment and a waste of time and money.  I was expecting useful information and new insights from somebody who claims to have been a subject matter expert on data analytics for the Office of Secretary of Defense. 

 

The book is about Denver’s opinions and observations of the people who participated on a couple of BFRO expeditions back in 2004 (one to the Olympic National Forest in WA and one to the Monongahela NF in WV).  He never mentions BFRO (probably to prevent libel suits), but you can deduce that from the hints he provided on how those expeditions were organized and led.  He also covers his experiences on a private expedition to the Adirondacks in 2006 with Don Barone (ESPN writer), his friend Spinner (retired State Trooper), and others. 

 

Both Denver Riggleman and Don Barone were past members of BFF and their posts on their Adirondacks expedition are found in the BFF 1.0 Archives (see link below).

 

 

 

Most of the book is spent mocking BF enthusiasts who go to these expeditions and their leaders.  Riggleman, Spinner, and Barone are skeptics and that is the proper way to approach these expeditions and the claims made by participants.  Nonetheless, they are so cynical (probably based on their past interactions with humans) that every witness or BFRO participant/leader must be in for the money, psychological needs, or is a loser who can’t distinguish signal from noise.  Only he and his buddy Spinner, are the only observers that can be trusted.  

 

Denver is probably right, that in both of those expeditions nothing BF happened, and folks were embellishing or being irrationally exuberant about noises heard or shadows seen.  Nonetheless, I find it hard to believe that the author can draw conclusions on the merits of these organized expeditions and write a whole book based just on his bad experiences on those 2 expeditions.   I also agree with Denver in that most of these BF expeditions are more about social gatherings than serious BF research to collect evidence.  However, not all expeditions are the same and their quality depends on the expedition's leaders and their approach (all are different).

 

 

I agree with him that there are plenty of loonies, true believers, and gullible people in the BF community and some of these people go on expeditions.  Nonetheless, the value of an analyst is to discern a signal among the noise and to focus on those signals instead of writing a whole book about the noise.   Also, there are honest, diligent, and hardworking researchers in BFRO and other BF research organizations that are not cynically pursuing this research for the money, fame, or psychological needs.  These are citizen scientists who are curious and have a long term hobby.  These folks do not exist in this book except for the author who is the only guy with analytical skills. 

 

Obviously, he never had a close daylight sighting with these unknown creatures, otherwise he would be more respectful/tolerant of eyewitness testimony.  He (when he was 10-years old) and his grandfather had an encounter with some unknown animal that made loud noises while approaching them in WV, but they never saw it and thus can’t truly say it was a BF.  That early encounter is what led him to participate in a BFRO expedition and look for evidence.

 

It took him a long time to publish this book in 2020 since his BF expeditions were in 2004 and 2006.  Maybe he had to wait until he exited politics.  He was a former politician from Virginia who served one term as the United States representative for Virginia's 5th congressional district.  

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denver_Riggleman

 

There are much better books describing what goes on in BF research expeditions by more serious journalists (for example, Monster Trek by Joe Gisondi).