Ep. 244 - Aleks Petakov of Small Town Monsters!

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Big Food and On with Cliff andBobo. These guys are a favorites,
so like say subscribe and raid it. I'm star and me Grates on USh
today and listening a watching limb alwayskeep its watching. And now your hosts

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Cliff Barrickman and James Bobo Fay.Hey, kids is Cliff, and you're
listening to Bigfoot and Beyond with Cliff, and every once in a while Bobo.
Actually I'm just heckling him. Heis not here today. Bobo is
out at a witness's house. Ifyou remember a few weeks ago we had
a witness on the show. It'sfrom southern California. Bobo is in southern
California visiting family and stuff kind ofleft over from the holidays, and he

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has made a trip out to thatproperty to see what's going on and check
it out for himself. So heis without his computer, without a way
for him to record his voice withus. So we're just poop out of
luck. No Bobo this week.But anyway, instead of Bobs, we
have Matt Prut So he's gonna stepin and be more verbose than he often
is because he's always lurking in thebackground. Somewhere. But now he's gonna

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be talking to me and talking toour guest today. But before we get
to our guest, Matt, welcomeas a co host, co pilot.
Thanks for having me officially once again. Once again, this is becoming more
regular than either of us anticipated.So end of the year. What you
do for New Years? What's upwith all that? Man? Because I
had crazy stuff happened for New Year's. Oh we we were still hanging out

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there at a key west southernmost point. We walked around, you know,
big crowds and did the countdown andall that stuff. It was really cool,
really fun. A little chili forbeing that far south, but it
was beautiful. Drove back the scenicroute so we went through, went across
Alligator Alley and went near like BigCypress and some of those other areas.
Visited Dave Sheeley's skuncape headquarters. Thatwas pretty cool to see. My wife

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and I we do a lot oflike sasquatch tourism on the road, so
I had to go see that spot. So we probably saw twenty something alligators,
but no skunkcapes. Oh really,you think at a headquarters you would
have probably seen a few. Yeah, well it was New Year's Day and
they probably had the day off.Oh that's right, that's right. What
did they have in there? Becauseyou know it's a skunk Cape headquarters,

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it sounds kind of like a museum, gift shop sort of tourism thing,
and I happen to have one ofthose myself. What's his like, I've
never been down there. Yeah,we got to go into like the gift
shop portion. So I know thatthey do these sort of safaris. There's
hiking trails, there's a campground.I think they do guided either kayak or
canoe or some kind of boat trips, and so there's a lot to do

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there. But since we were onthe road with sort of a timeline trying
to get home, we just poppedin and of course I grabbed a T
shirt and sticker or something like that, you know. But it was really
cool. So we didn't get tosee the whole property or anything like that,
but it was definitely really cool.Cool. Well, my New Year's
Eve was spent over at a friend'shouse down the road, playing music,
which is cool, great, greatpeople and stuff like that. But that

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hey, that day I already spoketo you a little bit about this.
So, you know what, wegot some footprints this past month in one
certain spot kind of as off thebeaten road sort of that not not our
usual spot, but not too faraway either. On the eighth Keith and
I went out and we got someprints, and then like on the eighteenth,
I heard about another possible print,so I went with Dave. I

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remember I told you all about this. I don't want to rehash it all,
but I got a couple of footprintsand a big ass handprint, like
a really really big handprint, whichwhich is you know, pretty interesting,
pretty cool stuff. So I toldwhat a buddy of mine. So,
because you know what, we workedthis spot, and there's another couple of
folks that also work this spot,you know, like that there's basically the
NABC team, the North American BigFoot Center folks that we all kind of

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go out together and stuff whenever wecan. We try to get out a
lot, at least once a weekor so. But there's another couple of
people that know about this spot,and they go out and we share information
for the most part, and whenthey get something, they tell us.
When we get something, we tellthem because it's good to have local contacts,
you know, people who you trustwho also don't want the location known,
and they're going out and checking itout even when you're not there,

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because the more ies out there thebetter. To a certain degree, if
the spot gets out, it's likea fish in spot. You know,
people are going to come and fishfish your spot, and then you're not
going to have fish there when yougo there. So we don't want to
scare the bigfoots away. But inthis case, we share some information with
a small group of people, andthese two individuals they wanted to see where
we cast those prints in the eighteenthSo they went out in this area and

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I got a call and I said, Cliff, you missed a print,
and they go, really I did, so, yeah, I was right
on the side. I could seewhere you cast the thing in the puddle,
but it was on the side.Okay. Cool. So on last
Friday, which was what the twentyninth, the day after my wife's birthday,
by the way, the twenty ninth, Keith and I went out there
and just to see, like,what did we miss. So we go
out there and we look as oh, that was the print that brought that

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day. You know. Dave wentout earlier, and Dave found that particular
print, the one that we missed, so to speak. Then and Dave
and I went back and cast theother stuff. Right, So anyway,
okay, well we're here, let'sgo ahead and cast this. So we
cast it. While we're waiting forthe dry, Keith and I went walking
around down in the creek bed,beautiful area. He'd never been there before,
didn't find anything else, came back, pulled the cast, went home.
That was on Friday. Saturday,I get a call from the same

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researcher and his partner out there whotold me about the print I missed.
You know, I said, Cliff, there are prints everywhere out there.
I went out there. There's atwelve inch individual, which is the size
of the foot we've been casting,by the way, twelve inch individuals all
over the place. Blah blah blah. We cast this mini prince and stuff.
And I go and I'm thinking tomyself, Dude, you cast my
footprints, because Keith and I wereout there and boots are about twelve inches

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long or so, twelve thirteen incheslong. You cast my footprints. So
I'm thinking, Man, how doI tell him? He said, Hey,
are you sure? He didn't castmine. He goes, well,
I mean I don't think I did. I mean, well, are there
toes in any of these footprints?He goes, well, yeah, a
couple of them had toes. AndI said, okay, well maybe maybe,
maybe not. And he sent meand I said, send me a
picture of one of these things.And he sent me a picture of the

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two casts that he got sure enoughtoes, like really nice toes, and
he was saying, yeah, Idon't think they're yours, Cliff, because
they were stepping on top of yoursand thinking no kidding. So basically what
that and what I saw were sasquatchprints, you know, like this guy
sent me pictures of sasquatch prints inthe ground or not, I mean,
not in the ground casts rather thatdid he just pulled from the ground,

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not thinking Holy smokes. This isreally significant and important because I was there
Friday and I left the area atnine am to go to another area to
walk around, and this guy gotthere at nine am on Saturday and found
all these footprints. So we havea window that a sasquatch was in that
area during those twenty four hours.So anyway, we went out there and

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sure enough there were footprints. Therewere kind of a lot of footprints all
over really, but most of themwere vague in the right size I didn't
find I found one with decent toes. It was a half cast, but
I ended up coming home with fourcasts that day on New Year's Eve,
So yeah, I had a veryvery good end to my year. Then
I went to my buddy's house andplayed music. So yeah, what a

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great end of the year. Thatis a great way to end the year
and a great way to start theyear. I know technically our Year in
Review was the first episode of theyear that would have come out on Monday
the first, but this will beour true first guest of twenty twenty four,
and it's actually pretty overdue. Ithink we probably should have had Alex
on a lot earlier. But I'mvery excited about this one because I'm a

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huge fan of Alex's work and gottento spend some time with him and have
conversations with him and hang out inperson a couple of times, and so
I think this is a great wayto start the year in terms of the
guests here on the podcast. Yeah, absolutely, I'm super happy that he
said yes, because you never knowwho's going to say yes and who's going
to say no. But yeah,I reached out to him a couple of
days ago and he was open andwilling and happy to come on. So

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yeah, everybody, welcome Alex Petakoff. Super happy to have you on the
podcast here. Alex, thanks somuch for setting us out a little bit
of time for Cliff and Bobo andMatt. No, that's fine, thank
you guys for having me on.Awesome to be with you. Obviously wish
Bobes was here too. But wasthis heck club later for it? Right?
I just hecklum now, I meanwe got an hour, you know.

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That's kind of why we're here ina way. So so Alex,
I understand you have a new thingout, because you always have a new
thing out, Like every time Iturn on the computer or you know,
there's your smiling face and your adventurehat that are doing something or other on
a screen. So the new thingis is it a BC thing or an
Alaska thing? I get them mixedup. Yeah, there's a little bit

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of both. It's it's hard tokeep track of even myself, honestly,
but the last video I released,so it's part of my Bigfoot Beyond the
Trail or we just call it Beyondthe Trail series on the Small Town Monsters
channel, and that last episode cameout just right before actually I think it
was technically Christmas Day, or maybeit was a day before, I don't
know. Not important, but itwas about British Columbia and it was called

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Valley of the Hairy Giants, andit was actually about my trip to the
beautiful, stunning Bella Coola Valley,which is about mid coast up British Columbia,
about halfway up to the Alaskan Panhandle. And I was inspired to go
there off of the book by ratherthe transcribed stories of Clayton Mack, who
was a member of the New Hulkfirst nation up there, who had incredible

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stories. I believe even back inthe day Renee to Hinden and some of
the original kind of four Horsemen wereaware of Clayton as well. So that
inspired me to go there. Butthat film, my goal was to go
and talk to the New Hulk people. They have obviously a very interesting history
with sasquatch like creatures being in asort of prime habitat in my opinion,
and their story of a kind ofmystery hominid type creature is called the Sninic,

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and so the film is about myjourney to that region talking to some
of the people from that culture.I don't want to, of course,
go there and assume I know abouttheir stories. I'm just some guy traveling
there, right, I'm not importantin the grand scheme of things about their
focal or their stories. So it'sreally cool to talk to them and hear
about their Even we got to seetwelve thousand year old petroglyphs site that had

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these little et looking petroglyphs that theycalled the cosmic Sninic, and in that
in their worldview, that's where theworld was actually born out of was from
this kind of sasquatch like creature.So it's super interesting. Didn't get to
film the petroglyphs, but I gotto share my thoughts on it on film
and just kind of taking in thestunning scene, right. I mean,

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it's part of that temperate coastal rainforestrange that goes from the Pacific northwest up
to Alaska. So you point acamera in any direction out there and it's
stunning. So that's the last,like I said, film released so far
of the Beyond the Trail series.Yeah, it's very good, Emily,
and I watched it when we weredown in Florida, and I absolutely loved
it. And I really love,you know, I love all the small

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town monster stuff. I try tofollow all of it. And you know,
you guys are so prolific, andyou produce so many films on such
a you know, frequent basis,it's kind of hard to always stay on
top of things. But I definitelyalways watched them Beyond the Trails, and
I watch ELI stuff too, anda lot of the bigger films, you
know, when I get a chanceto watch them, the sort of the

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larger standalone productions, but yours asa series, I've just always really loved.
I think the first one I sawwas the Colorado based one. Yeah,
I remember you tell me about that. Yeah, yeah, I think
that was one of the first thingsthat we discussed when we first talked.
But what I love about it isthat you're such a sort of level headed,
calm narrator that's sort of guiding usthrough this world and through your experience.

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And so the scenery is beautiful,obviously, You're in these incredible places,
and you do such a fantastic jobof capturing that and presenting it.
But it's also like totally devoid ofsensationalism. You know, it's not like,
oh my god, did you hearthat? What's over there on the
other side of the hill and runningback and forth? You know, it's
really there's a calm pace that Ifind like very relaxing, and I think

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that's where where so many people drawentertainment from that and kind of feel at
home, like, yeah, Ican hang out with this guy, so
to speak, by sitting on thecouch or watching on the phone or however
you consume it that. You know, you do such a good job of
just easing people into those environments,and then when exciting things do happen,
they there are exciting moments, Soget me wrong, but it's the antithesis

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of like the terrible network television thatyou see in the sort of esoteric or
fringe or paranormal space. Like it'sit's a lot more akin to the sort
of nature documentaries of old. Sokudos to you for that, Yeah,
thank you. I mean, oneof the good things about small town Monsters
and kind of what it's become isnot a network of sorts but a collection

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of individuals that do their own projectsin their own ways. So I've been
blessed enough to have had Seth intrust me for quite a while with creative
control over some of these projects.So there's myself, there's Eli, there's
Seth, there's multiple people creating theirown sort of products. But when we
were coming up with the idea forBeyond the Trail, I wanted to merge

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three of my big passions, whichwas filmmaking of course for the sasquatch topic
mysterious stuff, and then love ofnature. I've been a big backpacker and
hiker here in the Northern Appalachians.I'm from New Hampshire, so spend a
lot of time in the outdoors growingup out here. So getting to combine
those three things was awesome, andit also gave me a chance to say,

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well, there's all these cases thatI've been interested in for years,
and this gives me a chance togo look at those. We can go
out in the woods. If somethinghappens, we'll tell you. If not,
we're not going to sugarcoat or orkind of try to trick you and
say, oh, there's definitely somethinggoing on. No, what you see
is what you get, and wetry to talk to local researchers and other
people in those areas, Like whenwe did one of the first ones we

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did actually Bigfoot Mountain, which waswhen we came and interviewed Cliff and Melissa
at the NABC. We got tospend some time in the woods with the
NABC crew. That was actually theone we had that sort of weird run
in with some kind of satanic group. I don't it was very strange,
was that when the dude wearing thevest came out of the woods. Yes,
yeah, yeah, you've probably heardthe story. It was very weird.

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Keith actually, I guess says hekind of blurted out to him,
Hey, are you going for anevening stroll? And you know that location
was one of the places in JoeBelart's book Oregon Bigfoot Highway. That of
course, that's one of the reasonswe went. There was a pretty interesting
encounter that you're probably familiar with,Cliff with the fishing rod and the guy
who was kind of chased out ofthe area by this creature. I think
he was with his kids at thetime. Yeah, And this guy circled

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our camp and he came out ofthe woods wearing this weird golden vest,
and Keith had a dash cam frontand back on his truck, so we
were able to film him. ButI figured out later on he was trying
to circle our camp. Because you'restanding on the road, you can look
down into that camp, but ifyou're in camp, you can't see the
road from above, so he wastrying to be sneaky. He didn't realize
we'd be on the road. Hewas as shocked as we were. But

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it was a weird encounter. Butmy point about that is that that's the
kind of thing we do is wetry to go out with people who hit
these areas up. Obviously, youguys are going into the mountain Hood National
Forest Area, so I'm not goingto go there and assume I know.
And what's so cool about having kindof grown up a little bit with social
media is that you have contacts allover North America and the world really that

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are into these things. So it'snot that hard to make a kind of
friendship with somebody online and then beable to meet them and see how they
do things. So we just tryto really keep things on the level.
And I think one of the otheraspects of it is just showcasing the environments.
As you said, Matt, that'sone of my biggest passions, and
hearing stories of people telling me,well, I was inspired to go to

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this location or go out in thewoods because of this or that. I
mean, I think that's awesome.Especially in this day and age where tech
is just everywhere and it seems likeeverything is getting more congested. It's important
to remind people, hey, youcan still go outdoors. It's a great
thing. So I think it's beenan awesome journey so far and I've enjoyed

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every minute of it. Stay tunedfor more Bigfoot and Beyond with Cliff and
Bogo. We'll be right back afterthese messages. Yeah, I was so
disappointed that well, for two reasons. Number one that I didn't get to
join you when you're in North Georgiawhere I grew up. And then number
two that when you were there,the weather didn't treat you guys very well,

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that it rained on you the wholetime, So that was brutal.
We'll have to do a North Georgiatrip at some point. But yeah,
to your earlier point about the Ithink that's part of the beauty of small
Town Monsters is that every creator canbasically speak figuratively, speaking in their own
voice, and that it's not Hey, here's the small Town Monsters formula.
We're going to apply this to everysingle film and every single installment. It's

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like, no, there's Eli's methodand your method and Set's method and a
lot of creative freedom. It seemslike and just awesome to see. And
every time I see one of yourfilms, like I'm always so, it's
heartwarming to see how many other peopleare viewing those things, like that's just
awesome. It's really great content.I'm glad that it's doing so well.
Thank you, Yeah, you know, I appreciate it. It's just been
awesome. Like I said, Ican't speak highly enough of kind of the

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situation. We have been so blessedto be in with this and to have
a receptive audience and to be ableto do so many different projects. And
I'm Cliff, I'm sure you knowthe feeling of being able to go to
some of those bucket list dream squatchinglocations and to be able to do that,
it's really it's something special, andlike I said, I don't take
it for granted. At all.I am thoroughly enjoying it. And there's

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a lot of kind of fun stuffin the works as well. Yeah.
So which Matt brought up something thatspurred a question in my head here because
I also make films for the museum. I mean they're not They're not polished
and well produced or anything, don'tget me wrong. And they're just like
little things I throw together for ourmuseum members you know, for the museum
membership here at the NABC. Theyget two of those a month that we

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kind of put together. And again, they're not polished by any means.
I'm not a filmmaker, you know. I can play guitar proficiently and that's
my skill level, and I likebigfoot stuff, but I'm not a filmmaker
by any stretchy imagination. So butI have my toe to that pool a
little bit. So when you setout to make something like, you know,
what are these beyond the trails whereveryou eat a big Foot of Bluff

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Creek or whatever Bigfoot mountain, asyou mentioned, what is the process?
Because I'm familiar with what the networkprocess was from Animal Planet, you know,
I know how they did it,and I know how Bobo, Matt
and Renee and I threw them offthe rails several times and kind of threw
their plans out the window. Andyou know, but what what is the
process of you making trying to piecetogether an hour's worth of good content for

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the channel, for the beyond thetrail stuff. Yeah, it's a great
question. It's honestly, there isn'ta set formula. It's kind of a
chaotic madness. I tend to operatebest in that sort of chaos, where
I typically I set out. Let'ssay I have somebody who's like, hey,
you know, I'm in Colorado.I've had some stuff happening. I'll
do some research. If somebody Iknow is out there, you know,

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maybe we'll look into it. Wego out, Let's say we film for
three or four days or a week. So I just I'm always just filming.
But halfway through the process, yousaid, well, this guy over
here says he's got this going onat his house. Do you want to
go check that out. That's notsomething you can really plan on, so
we just kind of let it happen. A lot of times you find that
you make a plan and things willradically change on the ground, as Matt

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alluded to with our North Georgia misadventurethree days of straight rain, torrential downpour
after like two weeks in Florida.So it's a bit of a contrast.
So things don't go as planned,but you just got to kind of roll
with it with the risk of soundingpretentious. The filmmaking side, to me,
kind of comes naturally, So that'snot something I'm as concerned about.

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I guess where I kind of comeup with the actual films is the editing
process. It's sort of also it'sa journey on too itself. How is
this going to turn out? Oh? Is this piece going to work?
But generally we try to take,you know, let's say it's a week
and condense it into something digestible whilealso being entertaining and interesting and not needing

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any sensationalism, as is also alludedto. So yeah, it's a chaotic
process, but there's differences between youget contact by somebody and you start looking
in Okay, it's as credible ifit is, what are the steps moving
forward? You know, such asthe case in Alaska with the so called
area A up there in the KenaiPeninsula. I had been in contact with
the property owner for every year beforethat, so that was quite a big,

(20:15):
big weight and anticipation to kind ofget out there. But that's just
the way things worked out. Youknow, traveling to a place like Alaska
is not as easy as it isto go to the Everglades, right for
me on the East Coast at least. So yeah, it's creative madness.
I absolutely love it though, andsometimes things just they come out differently than
you expect it in the editing room. A lot of stuff in film,

(20:36):
there's a term killing your darlings whereyou think, oh my god, I
got this awesome footage, it's sogreat, but then I have twenty minutes
of it. How do I condensethis into a five minute segment? Right,
So you have to kill your darlingscreatively, which means getting rid of
those great shots. Or you canjust have a twenty minute sequence of scenic
shots and people will probably get boredby that. So there's a bit of
a balance between finding something that's entertainingalso try to be educational and just level

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headed. And one of my favoritethings to do is showcase some of the
natural aspects that of the areas we'rein, So whether it be scenery or
talking about different types of plants,or one of the kind of running jokes
I have is moose scat. Ialways like to show moose scat whenever we're
an environment that supports moose, andit's kind of We've had people complain about
it, and I say, well, you know, that's just going to
make me put more moose scat inthe videos, just to kind of spite

(21:26):
those people. But you know,I see moose personally as kind of a
biological metric to say, well,if seven hundred to twelve hundred pound animals
are thriving in this area in abundance, I'm sure it could probably support a
few hominid hominoid type creatures. Sothat's kind of something I like to throw
in there. But yeah, soI guess the long the short answer to

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is that it's a creative process.It's just kind of all over the place.
There's no set formula. Yeah,it sounds like you go out and
get footage and you film everything,you can, spray things down, and
then see what story you can piecetogether from it. Exactly. Yeah,
there's definitely an element of that.I mean, I have a general idea
of what i'd like to do,but I think I do narration, so
I narrate my own films when I'mnot kind of on camera. So the

(22:11):
narration is actually where a lot ofthe storyline comes out, and that's obviously
something I write after the fact.So that's something where I can include information
about the natural environment. Let's talkabout temperate rainforest, and will include a
segment on the different types of spruceand fir trees and everything that's found in
that environment, and that may thenintegrate with some footage we got when we're

(22:32):
out there talking about Devil's Club,right, which is something that if you're
in the Pacific Northwest you're probably familiarwith and how much of a nuisance it
is. So yeah, just kindof the afterwards, I think is the
bigger part of the formation. WhatI love about the actual journey, as
I mentioned earlier, is just thefact that it can go many ways.
I mean that Colorado episode you referenced, Matt, which I remember I was

(22:52):
talking about that the property we wentto and went horseback riding. That was
something that kind of came up randomlywhen we're visiting the Sasquatch Outpost and owner
Jim Meyer said, well, hey, I know this lady and you want
to go check out her property,and basically set us up to go down
there, and that's not something weplanned on. So that was really neat.
But yeah, it's kind of thejourney is more about letting it happen

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and seeing where you end up.Even if you do have a set plan,
just realize things can change. Well, it's just great as a viewer
to get to see all these placesthat you know I've read about, or
i mean most of the places thatI know about I only know about because
I've read so many Sasquatch reports.So you know, I've been fortunate to
visit a handful of super cool places. But the way that you film,
like, you know, I've neverbeen to Bellakula and so seeing that was

(23:37):
like, God, this is amazing, and it just creates that wanderlust,
like I want to go there sobadly. So what an opportunity to get
to go to as many places asyou've been to, because just in that
series alone, I mean, I'mscrolling through the playlist now and for listeners,
I'll put a link to the playlistin the show notes of all the
Beyond the Trails. But it's allover the content. I mean, it's

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You've been a lot of places justfor this one series alone. Yeah,
it's been. It's been amazing.And I made a map of all the
locations that I looked at. Isaid, wow, that really is I
mean almost all of North America ofcourse now of course, with a few
of those Canada locations too, andjust some of the films are different.
Each film is standalone in a way. But I mean it's not like a

(24:18):
series where you have a one,two, three and they're sort of repetitive.
It's every episode can be watched individually. There's even good there are some
follow ups where you know, Iwill be going back to the location of
some episodes, stuff like that.But some films are more of a road
trip film, like My Drive.This one actually didn't even plan on it,
but when I was going, Iwent up to Alaska this summer.

(24:38):
I spent a month up there,and it was right after Monsterfest. I
remember seeing you there, Cliff.Literally the day after Monsterfest, I started
driving for Alaska, and an entirefilm came out of the journey on the
Alaska Highway from Dawson Creek, BritishColumbia to Alaska. It's that fourteen hundred
mile highway that cuts through some ofthe most rugged wilderness in North America.

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And I heard about all these storiesalong the way of Bigfoot, and then
afterwards as well, I thought thatwas just going to be a little montage
within a film about Bigfoot in Alaska. Oh, here's the journey from the
Lower forty eight to Alaska. No, that ended up being a film onto
itself because of all the places wegot to explore. And again, that
was a class of kind of aroad trip film. I've had tons of
people who have driven the Alaska Highway, whether they're just going up to Alaska

(25:23):
for vacation or moving back and forthand saying, wow, this brought back
so many memories. And that's alittle that's a lot different than say an
episode where we're looking we're investigating atrack find in New Hampshire that's wholly dedicated
to the research. Some people mightlike the more kind of travelog sort of
stuff. Other people might like themore boots on the ground investigative side.

(25:45):
So we try out different formats anddifferent types of films, because again,
each is sort of a film untoitself. Yeah, I think It's kind
of funny, like ironic that you'rein New Hampshire because the White Mountains have
always been a bucket list place forme. You know, I grew up
in the southern Appalatch and so toget to that northern portion would be fantastic.
But even like one of the bestClass A reports I've ever taken was

(26:08):
in the White Mountains there, andso I've always wanted to go up there.
So you're You've got all this,you know, amazing travel under your
belt, but you also have agreat backyard, so to speak. To.
Cliff's in the same position where youknow, he's been all over the
country, but you know, allover the world, but he's got this
amazing area. Like my favorite spotsto go quote unquote squatching are you know,

(26:29):
a minimum of like six hour drivefor me pretty much, So I'm
envious of that. But yeah,New Hampshire, I mean so much great
habitat and especially the White Mountains there. I remember you telling me about that
Class A report and it's it's aguy who is basically just kind of sleeping
at the trailhead, right, AndI've done that so many times when I've
done these four thousand footer hikes.So in New Hampshire, you know we
are we have some of the morerugged mountains, I guess in on the

(26:52):
East Coast we have an alpine zonethat starts around four thousand feet, but
the Appalachian Mountain Club has a fortyeight four thousand footers list. So these
are mountains that are four thousand feetor higher and you have to hike them
all. So I spent a numberof years hiking at all and I would
sleep at these trailheads and I wouldoften imagined, you know what, if
I have a report like this onethat kind of matt is really interested in.
But yeah, it's a beautiful area. I think it's extremely underrated for

(27:15):
sasquatch. I've done quite a bitof stuff here, even prior to working
with small town monsters. A lotof reports I've gathered here in New Hampshire.
The habitat is pretty remarkable, connectsto millions of acres of very dense
forest in neighboring Maine as well asVermont. We have Quebec right above us,
which is absolutely nothing up there,and I think the lack of reports

(27:37):
in Quebec is primarily due to thelanguage barrier. If you know some of
the older Keebequoss people, they didn'tlike speaking English, especially thirty forty years
ago. And I've talked to someresearchers in Quebec who kind of concur with
that. So you have millions ofacres of habitat here in New Hampshire that
stretches into other states and even inthe places like Massachusetts. I mean,
you guys obviously know Jonathan Wilkin,the Squat of Chusetts Crew. They're fantastic

(28:00):
guys, some of the first peopleI got involved with when I got into
this topic about a decade ago.And you know, you couldn't go wrong
with a crew like that. Sothis area is definitely underrated. I know.
I think Cliff, when you wereup here, you guys were pretty
amazed by the terrain, at leastfrom what I remember you guys telling me,
Yeah, yeah, once you getup into your neck of the woods
there, like it turns into whatI'm kind of used to, you know,

(28:22):
because I'm a Western guy, youknow, I mean, I mean,
the mountains aren't quite as large,but they're they're like it's like the
Pacific Northwest on a three quarter scale, you know, like they're's like legit
mountains and not not the rolling foothillsyou know of say, like you know
Kentucky or something like that. Likethey're like legit peaks and legit mountains and

(28:44):
snow and crazy weather in the wholeline. Man, it looks a lot
like the Pacific Northwest. To me. Yeah, people get really surprised.
I've had people from out west comeout here, and even a lot of
the people in the hiking community say, oh, man, there's no mountains
on the East coast, even peoplethat do the Appalation Trail, I think
the rest of the Appalachians and nooffense matt But some of those areas down
there you have wooded summits, Soyou can get up to Mount Mitchell or

(29:04):
somewhere in the Smokies or elsewhere,and you're surrounded by trees, Whereas,
again, up here, we havean alpine zone that starts at four thousand
feet. Mount Washington, which isover six thousand feet, has claimed hundreds
of lives over the few centuries becauseof how brutal the conditions are, so
people get surprised at the ruggedness.And I think that has something to do

(29:25):
with kind of just the amount ofterrain, and as opposed to in Appalachia,
down south, you have a lotof you don't have towns that are
right near the mountains, so you'llhave the towns up here in the valley.
So you take drive out to someof these locations to start a hike.
Even in the White Mountain National Forestis you're in a very remote area
to begin with, whereas if youwere in say West Virginia or Tennessee,

(29:47):
there's a hauler right there with abunch of people living in it. So
I think that's why there's also perhapsless reports in some of these prime habitat
kind of areas. Even the northWoods of New Hampshire and Cohahs County,
it's sparsely populated. There is astory there of the wood devils that goes
back quite a bit, and I'vetried to track that story down, and
that's kind of a logging story fromthe late eighteen hundreds. Very interesting,

(30:10):
tall, hairy manlike creatures sort ofseen that could hide, you would blend
in before you could kind of youwould almost walk into them before you saw
them. There's stories of the bearsthat howl in the mountains at night,
and there was a debate as towhether bears are not could do that.
So there's a lot of stories fromthis part of the country that are very
fascinating, and I think, asI mentioned, I just think they're underrated.
But places like Maine in New Hampshireare just so sparsely populated that there's

(30:34):
just not a lot of people uphere. Stay tuned for more Bigfoot and
Beyond with Cliff and Bobo. We'llbe right back after these messages. Yeah,
that's one of the reasons I wasso happy that the Bigfoot in Maine
book was written, was that wasn'tthat green? Is that the guy who

(30:56):
wrote that? So there's Bigfoot inMaine, which is a couple of years
ago, came out by a friendof mine named Michelle Soulier. She's a
friend of Lauren Coleman's there at theKryptosology Museum, and it's a fantastic book
and she spent like a decade workingon it. There was another book previously
in Maine. I think I alsohave it. I might also it's not
Bigfoot in Maine, but it wassomething shadow in the woods. Maybe that's

(31:17):
what I'm thinking of. Yeah,the newer one is I recommend absolutely.
Michelle did a fantastic job with justa lot of the reports, because again
here it's difficult people also, it'sgetting reports is like pulling teeth. I've
had the best luck in terms ofgetting reports. I used to do some
of these library talks where they inviteme to just talk about Grant State,
bigfoot or whatever, some kind ofcase in New Hampshire, and then I'll

(31:40):
get some interesting reports afterwards because peoplerealize, oh, it's okay to talk
about it here. Otherwise the Yankeekind of spirit up here, people don't
really they don't divulge that kind ofinformation easily unless you know them. There's
a lot of stigma still associated withthe topic, so I think it's unfortunate.
But it's not like in the Pacific, northwester or even other parts of
the country where that sort of mellowedout a little bit, you know.

(32:02):
Yeah. I'm looking at the Shadowsin the Woods, a chronicle of Bigfoot
in Maine by Daniel Green, andI guess I was unaware of Bigfoot in
Maine by your friend Michelle what's yourname? I'm looking at the Michelle Soulier
and I believe Lauren actually wrote theforward. I believe to the book.
I have it on my bookshelf.Fantastic book, like I said, And
Maine also underrated, and it's justit's a continuous habitat between Maine, New

(32:27):
Hampshire, and Vermont. I thinkthe misconception of New England is that,
oh, it's all Boston, it'sall urban. I mean, I remember
even the first time Eli came overhere, who's thinking, oh, man,
you know, this place can't bethat great. And then you go
to a place like northern Maine orNew Hampshire and you see just the amount
of woods in the mountains, andit's the Adirondacks is not that far away
upstate New York. I mean Ilive two and a half hours from Whitehall.

(32:47):
Whitehall, New York, of course, which is famous for the Abere
Road incident and that so many otherresearchers like Paul Bartholomew and Steve Coles and
a lot of other people have focusedon. So it's there's corridors and we
see the same orders that go fromthe areas that John wilk and his guys
go to in western Massachusetts, goingto southern Vermont, that then go into
upstate New York and near Whitehall thatthen combine into areas of New Hampshire.

(33:10):
We know that animals are moving throughthese areas. There's moose that are seen
all throughout these kinds of areas,bear all the sort of woodland critters you
would expect. There's supposedly wolves aswell, coming down from Canada in certain
areas. There was one I believein Massachusetts that was killed a few years
ago. Supposedly mountain lions and kindof mystery big cats, but that's another
topic. But yeah, I don'tsee why these things wouldn't be moving around

(33:34):
here. There's plenty of habitat.There's also in some areas that have higher
sightings, there's people living very ruralis It may not be a big wilderness
area, Like I live in themiddle of the woods. I can't see
my neighbors, but there's I stilllive in a sort of town, right,
But we have moose and bear andall these kinds of creatures regularly on
the property, and there's a chancethat maybe something might move through as well,

(33:58):
something sasquatch. Like, yeah,you only own your property during the
day, right, So I foundmaking finding Bigfoot very frustrating in a couple
of different ways because of the inherentchallenges that are always present when you're trying
to make this kind of media,this kind of television or movies or whatever
you want to call it, right, And like a very obvious one is

(34:19):
like the challenges of light. Youknow, because you're out of the woods
at nights, for example, youdon't want to be lit up and you
want to be kind of quiet,as quiet as you can. But you
know, literally literally if you haveno light, you have no image.
You know, literally, that's whatcameras do, is they record light.
So what are some of the challengesthat you regularly run across because you don't
have the network or production company pressuresthat we did. So what are some

(34:45):
of the challenges that you have encounteredand what are your workarounds for them?
Yeah, it's a great question obviously, as you mentioned, no light,
no image. Sometimes we'll just runaudio, I mean, if we aren't
filming in a moment. But we'vekind of had to figure out our own
way to do things. So Itypically when I'm out in the woods,
the one of the cameras that's sortof a kind of a go to point

(35:06):
and shoot is a sony handicam andwe'll equip that with infrared kind of flashlight
on there, so it intensifies theonboard infrared that's available on those cameras.
I'm a huge proponent of thermal imagers, so I'm at night in the woods,
ninety nine percent of the time Ihave a thermal in my hand.
If I'm filming alone, I'll oftenhave an audio recorder actually rolling on me

(35:30):
and then the thermal maybe on abipod or something like that, so I'm
able to kind of get some stabilization, but then the handcam will be something
we use to record if anything's goingon. So I found that keeping the
camera closed and just having it runningwithout the screen actually being open, and
kind of having that pointed towards myselfor if I'm with a group of people,

(35:50):
instead of trying to, hey,film in the woods with the camera,
because you're not going to see tenfeet in even with that infrared on,
so we're just kind of capturing ourown reactions. Whereas my priorities with
the thermal, because if we havesome kind of activity going on, I
like to be able to establish whatit is we're dealing with out there in
the woods, and with a thermalimager, it's obviously a lot easier to
do that, So that's a littlebit of a challenge, but it's not

(36:13):
too bad. When it used tobe, Eli and I filmed a lot
together, so we kind of hada tag team situation. But now if
I'm out with a different research groupor other researchers or friends, or even
solo, when I do go aloneis probably the most challenging. I've tried
at times to rig up a GoProand use my red headlamp to kind of
illuminate myself, but it didn't reallyend up working that well. So there

(36:35):
are there are quite a bit ofchallenges, but honestly not that bad.
And I think when we are doingthese kind of night investigations, I try
not to stick on them too longunless something really interesting happens, because otherwise
it's just you're out there for afew hours filming yourself at night, and
condensing that into a ten minute sequenceit can get a little boring. So
unless something really interesting happens, wetypically don't highlight that much of those,

(36:58):
and I think people understand that that, you know, if something happened,
we would have of course shown them. But yeah, that's one of the
challenges. The other challenges are,I think logistics just sometimes what happens is
you'll be out in an area oryou're getting ready to go somewhere. Oh,
we got to drive two hours toget to this guy's house, and
then at the last minute, somethinghappens and the witness either backs out for

(37:19):
a variety of reasons or they're justnot available, so you kind of have
to pick up the pieces from thereand then say, well, okay,
what are we going to do now? All right? Well, or forgets
his computer at home when he goesto a witnessess house or something like that,
right, can't let that one go, right now, That's what this
whole podcast is dedicated to you,Eckling Bobo oh Man. But no,
yeah, I think the challenges arepart of it, though, because that's

(37:43):
part of the experience. You learnfrom your mistakes and remember to turn the
audio recorder always on. I cannottell you the amount of times that something
goes wrong with audio and you don'tget the sounds that you think you did,
whether it be an interview or overnightaudio. But yeah, yeah,
there's challenges, but I don't thinkit's anything to this point that I haven't

(38:04):
been able to handle, so tospeak, in terms of because we're dealing
with a lot of stuff. Soyou're not only you're going out there.
Let's say we're backpacking into an area. So we did an episode where we
hiked into the Uinta Mountains in northernUtah to a really interesting kind of alpine
lake, and we're hiking in there. So you're worried about multiple other factors
you're backpacking in. You've got toworry about the safety aspect of it.

(38:25):
Of course, you're out in themiddle of nowhere. What are my plans,
contingency plans, How do we getout of here? How do I
contact people? Satellite phone kind ofstuff. That's one aspect. You've got
the gear aspect. So we're carryingall that backpacking camping gear on top of
the camera gear, and then youthrow the squatching gear into it. You
know, maybe we'll have a jarof the pheromone chips or something else,

(38:49):
some audio recorders that are more relatedto the research side. So we're trying
to juggle all that stuff at thesame time while also filming and trying to
create a product that people are goingto enjoy and be able to kind of
not just have a bunch of shakyfootage on screen, but actually enjoy it.
Now, what about batteries, Youknow, because batteries were a plague
on our existence all the time outin the field. And you know,
because people say, how Cliff,how come we didn't just sit in a

(39:12):
tree for four hours in Bubboh?So well, first of all, it's
crappy TV, No one's going towatch that. Second of all, what
about batteries. You got to changethose out every forty five minutes or more,
and to forty five minutes to anhour the most. Plus the U
S D cards and there's there's filemanagement issues when you're out in the woods.
It sounds so easy, you know, Oh, just put this card.
No, it's not easy, man. You have at the end of
the night you have like five sixcards that are all full and they're in
a certain order, and then youhave the how do you deal with all

(39:36):
that stuff? It just going tostrive you mad, it is. That's
probably one of the most challenging aspectsactually, now that you bring it up,
the amount of batteries. I actuallygot a little case that I'm looking
at over here on my desk,and it has all these batteries and I
think I've got twelve different chargers inthere, extra chargers just for everything.
Oh, this is for the theA seven batteries versus the handicap batteries.
This is the charger for the AGMthermal drone. This is the charger for

(39:59):
the SAR thermal drone, because ofcourse they're different, right, And then
power banks, little mini power bankswill have a big one. When we're
car camping or road trip traveling,that's honestly the easiest because you can just
load everything into your ride and notworry about it. It's a lot of
times when I'm flying to a place, of course, I'm also worried about
my suitcase weight and all the othergear I have to bring for the camping

(40:21):
and the hiking aspect of it,on top of the camera gear and of
course a lot of that camera gearyou have to have as a carry on
or in your backpack. So mybackpack ends up being like thirty pounds.
And I hope any airlines aren't listeningwhen I say that, but that's you
know, kind of what you dealwith, And you're right, the battery
situation I just have a lot ofbatteries and I've gotten used to at this
point. It doesn't really. Itwas challenging at first, especially learning what

(40:44):
works and what doesn't. But youknow now, things like GoPros are great,
just some of a lot of thedifferent equipment we've used. Drones,
of course, are really big onethat's also an added weight, and drones
are limited because you only get acertain amount of flight out of these drones
if you have three batteries. Buthaving a backup, having a way to
charge it always good. And thefile management side of things too. I

(41:07):
mean, we regularly fill up harddrives with the amount of footage because we're
filming in four K, so it'spretty high quality stuff, so those files
are not small. I mean,I think we spent in twenty twenty two
the first time we went up toAlaska, and span of a week we
filled up terabyte or more of justfootage from one kind of investigation, let
alone a second one. So yeah, there's a lot of that, but

(41:30):
it's all part of the journey.I don't mind it as much. I've
learned to kind of create a systemwithin my creative madness how to manage it
all. And I really do enjoygetting out there and just being able to
be in these locations and use theequipment I have and try to learn because
it's another great way to learn aboutwhat works and what doesn't in terms of
equipment field testing it. It's greatif it's sitting at home you've never opened

(41:52):
it, but you should learn howto use it and practice with it before
you're in the field. But ultimately, when you get out there, you'll
learn a lot more about your gearyourself. Yeah, by making mistakes,
That's exactly itways, always learning fromthe mistakes. Yeah. Yeah, That's
the only reason I know so muchis because I screw up all the time.
Stay tuned for more Bigfoot and Beyondwith Cliff and Bobo. We'll be

(42:15):
right back after these messages. You'reobviously very passionate about filmmaking, and I'm
not. I just piece together littledudeads, but you're very passionate about the
the art I think of filmmaking.Who do you look for? What kinds
of things do you look for?Look at for an influence, like what

(42:36):
really pushed you along this way?Like as far as like influencing you along
these lines. Yeah, I meanI don't know. I've always just always
I was a kid of the nineties, so I grew up watching a lot
of stuff like The X Files andall these there's paranormal shows, Jurassic Park,
whatever. But I always liked thatdocumentary format. I kind of knew.
Even when I was in school studyingcommunications, I was learning about journalism

(42:59):
and digital media and advertising and allthis stuff that I ultimately find kind of
boring. I said, well,documentary filmmaking, that's where my interest is.
So a big influence honestly personally tome, just in stylistically, in
the way I do this series inparticular, where I'm kind of present on
camera, whereas other films I've doneI'm less present. It's more about the

(43:19):
subject. But a big influence hasbeen a survivor man less Stroud of course,
pre Bigfoot stuff that he did.Of course, as many kids grown
up during that time period, lovedwatching him on all his adventures and kind
of that idea of the one manband or small group of people. Because
as I'm sure you're all too familiarwith Cliff dealing with network TV, you've

(43:42):
got a lot of people around,it's kind of impossible to be super quiet.
I guess in certain situations whereas ifit's just me and a couple other
people in the woods or me alone, we don't have to deal with the
challenges that we would with a kindof a bigger group of folks. So
stylistically, Survivor Man has been abig influence, and just I'm a huge
fan of bushcrafting and just getting outin the woods, and I try to

(44:04):
incorporate a little bit of that.You know, a lot of people don't
like it when we show ourselves cookingin camp, but a lot of people
do like it too. I thinkit's just showing the reality what it's like
being out there. Hey, we'respending four days in this location. You're
going to see all the aspects ofwhat life is like in camp and all
this sort of stuff, And Ithink it just creates the holistic view of
that entire kind of investigation. Right. So, now, because you've had

(44:25):
that level of freedom that you're talkingabout, do you can you do you
see yourself even being able to workin a network like situation or has that
just come down to the dollar signs, like if they're going to pay you
the appropriately see? I don't know. I think it's once you've tasted the
freedom right, it's hard to gohard to go back to something like that.
I mean, I know people thatI went to school with that are

(44:45):
in that world, and I talkto some of them, and I'm just
thinking to myself, oh my god, that sounds terrible. You're not to
be mean or anything, but Ijust am really just blessed to have that
level of creative freedom. I've neverhad somebody tell me, hey, you
can't include this. It's like,hey, yeah, do whatever you want.
I mean, once you've especially onceyou've earned that kind of trust,

(45:07):
I think it's easy to get thatsort of leeway and keep it on the
level. But I can't imagine.I've had one kind of bad TV experience
when I was first getting started inthis stuff left a bad taste in my
mouth, and I just said,you know, I don't want to really
do this stuff anymore. And weget stuff almost every month. We'll get

(45:27):
especially after some of our Alaska contentover the past couple of years, had
tons of TV offers, and Ijust kind of once you've dealt with one
of them or a few of them, you kind of know the gigs.
So it doesn't really entice me becauseI don't need somebody looking over my shoulder
in terms of this kind of stuff, and the greatest asset is being able
to tell these stories truthfully. Imean a lot of these are cases again

(45:49):
that I'm personally really invested in,whether they be in my home state in
New Hampshire or as we talked aboutwith Bella Coola. I read the book
by Clayton mack that and he talksabout his many grizzly bear hunting stories and
other wildlife encounters in that area.But then he's also got those three sasquatch
sightings, and that influenced me towant to go to this area that's a
twelve hour drive from Vancouver. It'snot an easy place to get to.

(46:12):
So being able to share those storiesaccurately, truthfully, and especially respectfully of
the witnesses, I think that's areally big aspect of it. A lot
of people I've talked in the pastthat have maybe been on TV or have
had some sort of production experience onthe witness side, have felt burnt or
disrespected in the way they were treated. And I really strive to at least

(46:34):
not be like that and be betterabout it and We don't have to condense
a twenty minute encounter into a thirtysecond tidbit in a show, right,
we get to I can tell alot of that encounter. I have a
free reign. Oh this is goingto be an hour and a half long,
I'll let this guy talk for twentyminutes, doesn't matter. I can
put that in there. That canbe part of the film. So that
is a true freedom that I reallyreally do cherish. Yeah, it just

(46:57):
seems like a network or cable TVor whatever be stifling you and making just
ensuring that your product is of lesserquality. Yeah, I think in some
of those kind of cheesy gimmicks andtropes that are present in a lot of
other productions that you see and showsand that kind of thing, I'm glad
we get to avoid that. Soit's just been awesome and it's so cool

(47:19):
being able to work with guys likeyou as well. Obviously we featured both
of you guys in some of ourvideos in the past, and hopefully we'll
do much more of that in thefuture as well. Yeah, I was
just I literally wrote in an emailtoday someone's commented about one of the small
town monsters he or she had justseen or whatever, and they said,
oh yeah, you were in ittoo, And I wrote back, I
said, it's amazing how much mileagethey squeezed out of that twenty minute in

(47:44):
Ohio two years ago. Right,And then I think I used your interview
we did in Oregon for at leasttwo films. I know ELI has used
a bunch of your interviews. Soyeah. I mean, what's cool too,
is we get somebody like yourself orMatt in the room for twenty minutes
or however long. And I mayhave ideas for a project that I'm doing
down the line, Well I haveCliff right now. I might as well

(48:05):
get them to talk about it.So that's really cool to be able to
kind of plan out in your mindfor different projects. And we're using stuff.
Well, I may be working onsomething that says, oh man,
that thing that Cliff said two yearsago is actually really applicable to this case
that I'm doing. I can actuallyinclude that in here as well. So
it's really cool to be able todo that. I only laugh because I
can barely remember even doing the interview. I remember what I said, right,

(48:30):
Yeah, that's funny that you've saidthat, though we've been talking a
lot about the sort of the productionside, you know, the documentarian or
you know, I really hate theword content creation or that particular term,
because it seems like, you know, you're generating out of nothing something,
whereas like, no, we're we'reall trying to document this phenomenon, either
through the lens of the people whoclaim to observe it or experience it,

(48:53):
or the things we observe or experienceit ourselves, or by trying to like
revivify some of these old stories andthis old history. And so that's come
up on the podcast a lot,especially over the last year, I think,
and on the member side too,But it just has become so abundantly
clear over and over in conversations withother whether they're authors or filmmakers or podcasters

(49:15):
or whatever, that forging your ownpath like that seems to be so much
more rewarding. And I'm in thesame boat in that, Like, if
I had a choice, like Iwould rather work ten times as hard for
a tenth of the pay on somethingI'm absolutely passionate about than to capitulate and
do something that I don't want todo, and especially then if it's successful,

(49:37):
because like if you do something youreally don't want to do and you're
successful at it. The only otheropportunities you're going to get are going to
be more things that you don't wantto do. And so I love the
fact that Small Town Monsters does whatit does and allows you and other creators
to sort of forge your own pathand speak in your own voice figuratively.
And then like I pull up theplaylist here the first granted state, Bigfoot

(49:59):
case one hundred and forty two thousandviews, Sasquatching the Pine Tree State four
hundred and fifty seven thousand views.I mean, these are lots of people
are seeing this, and so itjust goes to show you, like these
are great numbers, like this mattersto a lot of people, which is
like the ultimate litmus test. Youknow, we all pursue our passions and
put it out into the ether andhope the sort of universe responds, so

(50:22):
to speak. And so to seeyou guys doing this well and these beyond
the trails doing so well, it'slike the proofs in the pudding right there.
You know, that's amazing. SoKudo's great job, and so glad
that you're involved in this pursuit andmaking the great content that you're making so
that you know, I can sortof like live vicariously and visit Bellakula and
these other places through those films.So thank you. No, I appreciate

(50:45):
it, and I think it's uhagain, just the reception we've had shows
it disproves that kind of notion thatyou know, bigfoot stuff or anything in
these kind of speculative topics needs tobe fake or sensationalized to create interest.
I mean, I think Beyond theTrail at this point is over the whole
series and its entirety is at fourteenmillion collective views. I think maybe more.

(51:08):
I don't know, I haven't checked, but I think that just speaks
to the fact that people are interestedin the real sort of stuff. I
think a lot of people haven't burntby some of the fakery that's out there.
And I get emails all the timeand messages on Instagram and elsewhere people
saying, I'm not even a Bigfootperson. You know, I was skeptical
at Bigfoot. I washed your stuff. Now I'm genuinely curious about the topic.

(51:29):
I'm still agnostic or skeptical, andI welcome those people obviously with open
arms. We try to be asskeptical as possible because I think unfortunately,
with especially ai and all this stuffthat's coming up now, it's so easy
for someone to whip up a fakingcounter and throw up some AIAR and put
it on YouTube, and that's theirentire kind of way that they produce stuff,
whereas obviously we're taking the harder andthe longer route. But I think

(51:52):
ultimately it's more rewarding and it's it'sI don't know, I think it brings
a little bit of a balance.Because there's so much of that kind of
garbage out there, we really tryto just say, well, hey,
it doesn't have to be that way. You know, we can talk about
some of the historical cases. Youguys are big on that stuff, and
I know we're talking about stuff likewhat Mark Marcel has done and others as

(52:12):
well. Talking about some of thoseolder cases. We get to look at
that and introduce that to a wholenew audience. I mean, I did
a previous British Columbia episode Land ofthe Sasquash where we were in Harrison Hot
Springs and I got to talk aboutsome of those original reports from the nineteen
thirties. Ruby Creek, interviewing peoplelike Thomas Steinberg and others who knew some
of the Four Horsemen, introducing theFour Horsemen kind of to a newer generation

(52:36):
that just doesn't know about that stuff. That's so cool. It's really cool
to be able to do that,and people clearly are enjoying it, which
I'm obviously thankful for, and Ireally enjoy just being able to share that
kind of stuff absolutely well. You'redoing a great job. And like I
said, I'm going to put thelink to that playlist in the show notes
so people can go watch the Beyondthe Trail in Trees and then they can
subscribe to the channel, which wewould encourage them to do, and they

(52:59):
can watch some of the the filmstoo, but yours specifically is what we're
focusing on this episode. So peopleshould go watch these. And I'm just
so happy that you guys are outthere doing this because you know, in
the nineteen nineties, the Internet fundamentallychanged the music industry. For better or
worse, I don't know, butI fundamentally change it. I think probably
for the better. It kind ofput you didn't have to have a record

(53:20):
label. For example, you couldgo out and actually make money doing your
own thing, and you guys aredoing the same thing with the TV and
bigfoot media in general, and Ithink that's huge. It's a huge step
forward because I say it all thetime. You can't trust TV, you
know, you just can't. Youdon't know what the agenda is. And
again i'll plug this other movie again. Go watch Science Friction and you'll know
what I'm talking about. Science Frictionis the name of that documentary about these

(53:44):
bottom feeding production companies twisting the wordsof experts to make them see the opposite
of what they actually intended. Youjust don't know what's behind all this.
So to know, people like smalltown Monsters exist where your heart's in the
right place. You want the subjectto be represented appropriately, and you're out
there boots in the ground on verylow budgets a lot of times doing doing

(54:06):
the work, you know, becausethe subject deserves it. And at the
end of the day, a lotsome people say it's about the witnesses,
some people say it's about this whateverelse, And for me, it's always
about the animals. The animals deservebetter than the way they're portrayed. And
I'm glad that you guys have broughtit down to almost like a grassroots level
and are being very successful at it. You're and when I say success,

(54:29):
I don't measure that with dollar signs. I measure I measure that with honest
product that does the subject. Well, you know that's what I'm thinking here.
So I think it's fantastic what youguys are doing. So keep it
up. Thank you guys, appreciateit. All right, Well, let's
go over to the member section.Everybody else, get out of here.
Members only after this Thursday. Listento it. Members. We'll talk to
you then, Alex, you know, Boba's not here. You may have

(54:51):
noticed, but because he's not here, we're gonna give you the honors of
signing off. So all you haveto do is say, hey, everybody,
thanks for listening, and keep itsquatchy. But you have to do
that in your best Bobo imitation.Hey everybody, thanks for listening, keep
it squatchy. Thanks for listening tothis week's episode of Bigfoot and Beyond.

(55:17):
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