Ep. 284 - Q&A - October, 2024

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Big Food and Beyond.

Speaker 2 (00:06):
With Cliff and Bobo. These guys, are you fav It's
so like say subscribe and rade it five star and
me greatest on Quesh today listening watching limb always keep
it's watching.

Speaker 1 (00:26):
And now you're hosts Cliff Berrickman and James Bobo Fay.

Speaker 2 (00:31):
Hey, everybody, welcome back to another episode of Bigfoot and
Beyond with Cliff and usually Bobo. Bobo is not in today.
The doctor is not here, so anyway, Yeah, he's got
some other more pressing issues at the moment, including flat
tires and I don't know this crazy Bobo stuff. You'll
have to hear it directly from him when he gets back.

(00:52):
So this is another opportunity for us to do an
episode with Matt Pruitt. The lovely and talented Matt Prue
will be subbing. Hi, Matt, how you doing today?

Speaker 1 (00:59):
I'm great because this marks a historic first because I'm
looking at the clock and this is the first time
that we've ever hit record in the minute that we
were scheduled to start in five and a half years,
So congratulations to us. Yeah, I had a lot of
great updates for Bobo, so I will miss him a
lot because I was really looking forward to reading some
sentiments that were sent in for him to him, so

(01:20):
we'll save that for next time. So, Bobo, you'll be
missed and you'll be pleasantly surprised when you rejoin.

Speaker 2 (01:27):
Yeah. Yeah, I understand a lot of people wrote in
condolences about his trailer. Is that correct? Is that why
he's getting condolences?

Speaker 1 (01:34):
Yeah? I think he got more sympathy for losing the
trailer than maybe he did for either his dog or
his bird.

Speaker 2 (01:40):
So, oh my gosh, Monkey and Sergio didn't get as
much love as the trailer did.

Speaker 1 (01:45):
Yeah. When Sergio transitioned to the other side, you know,
Bobo was talking about I love that bird so much, dude,
he was so great. So I went back through a
bunch of our old raw files to try to find
instances of him talking to the bird to sort of
support that everyone, and was like, Sergio shut up. So
Bobo's he's got a very particular way of showing love.

Speaker 2 (02:08):
Yeah. Yeah, and it makes me think he must really
like me for all the cliff that I get from him.

Speaker 1 (02:14):
So yeah, he's told me to shut up many times,
so he must adore us. He's probably doing it right.
Now because I know he's listening to.

Speaker 2 (02:22):
This probably probably, yeah, he does listen to every single
episode and as a member, a member, and of course
if you want to become a member, you can always
go to Bigfoot and Beyond podcast dot com and it
hit that member link and I'll tell you all about it.
You get good stuff for an extra hour of Cliff,
Bobo and Matt. Every single week, you get this episode
with zero commercials at all. Matt Proud goes in and

(02:42):
edits out even the ones that we do live reads
on to make sure that your listening experience is what
you pay for. And what else do you get? Matt? Oh?
You know, Matt, you know, you and I were talking
earlier in the week and there's a couple of things
that we've noticed from our audience. You know that we
wanted to bring attention to number one, One of our
most ihard fans ever was completely unaware that every once

(03:03):
in a while we put out little snippets and things
that you'll only get if you subscribe to the RSS feed. Matt,
can you tell us a little bit more about that,
because one of our most diehard fans was surprised that
she's missing out on various things here, So we don't
want anybody to be missing out. What can our listening
audience do to make sure they don't miss anything, even
the little five minute things that we put out every

(03:24):
blue moon.

Speaker 1 (03:24):
So yeah, so when you join our Patreon account, Patreon
is just an amazing platform. I can't say enough good
things about They're just an amazing company and they provide
a lot of tools to us as podcasters that just
aren't offered on most of the platforms. And so when
you join as a member, you're going to have access
to our Patreon page, and so there is a feed there,

(03:46):
and that feed is going to be essentially like a
rolling blog that are updated posts. And so every Monday
and every Thursday, I post whether there's supplemental images, supplemental videos,
you know, whatever goes along with the episode you're hearing
on that release. Because the main show comes out every
Monday and the bonus show comes out every Thursday. And
so some people will sign up for the app and

(04:08):
only subscribe to the bonus podcast feed and not realize that,
oh well, if you if you use the Patreon app,
you're actually going to see all the images and or
videos or you know, additional written text, written content that
goes along with that discussion that you're hearing on the podcast.
And then I think there's a number of people that
tend to log into Patreon via a web browser, whether

(04:31):
that's on a desktop or a laptop, or their you know,
mobile browser on their smartphone or tablet. But Patreon does
have a free app that in my experience, has a
much better sort of user interface and offers a better
user experience. And then it's easier through the app to
send direct messages, you know, to communicate whether you want
to submit questions for the members only Q and A episodes,

(04:51):
And we also have community chats where you can chat
with other members of the Bigfoot and beyond membership community.
So there's always cool conversations going on there and people
asking each other questions about books or documentaries or asking
us questions. So it's a super cool experience and it
really does generate a great sense of community.

Speaker 2 (05:09):
And Bobo logs in everyone, believe or not, Bobo is
a member of our own podcast, so he logs in
every once in a while and you know, shoots the
poop with people and makes comments and all that sort
of stuff too.

Speaker 1 (05:20):
So Bobo's better about interacting there, although he does that
on our Facebook and Instagram accounts and things like that occasionally,
but yeah, he's good about it on Patreon. So it
makes it easy too. So if you are thinking about
becoming a member, you can get the Patreon app for free. Again,
it's really great, really easy to use and interact with.
It just makes the whole experience a lot better than

(05:41):
logging in when you get to your computer, because when
we do video drops and things like that, those things
play natively in the app, so you'll get a notification
and you could watch whatever video we've posted. Cliff is
kind enough to share a number of the ABC videos
with us, So if an event happens that gets captured
on video while close film and stuff for the ABC,

(06:03):
after it goes out to NABC members through their Patreon
account for a while, we'll put it out on the
podcast side so people can see the visuals that went
along with the podcast discussion we had, and you can
do all that right through the app rather than having
to wait till you get home and log in on
your computer or whatever.

Speaker 2 (06:18):
Yeah, and just be clear that the North American Bigfoot
Center the museum, I'm always talking about has a separate
Patreon account. A lot of people think that they sign
in for one, it's g get both, and I'm afraid
that's just not the case. It's a separate entity, it's
a separate job, it's a separate everything. So it just
just heads up on that one. Although there is a
lot of crossover obviously, because you know, I want to
share whatever I can with people, so yeah, sometimes if

(06:42):
it's pertinent or whatever, the NABC videos end up on
the Bigfoot and Beyond video feed as well. But again,
the NABC members they get two a month, and the
podcast folks get won every blue moon. So but anyway,
enough about all that stuff. But we're going to plow
ahead anyway with our Q and A episode, which is
what we had planned. We're just gonna kind of take
out those questions that are more Bobo centric and kind

(07:04):
of focus on the ones that are more Cliff and
Matt centric. So so Bobo will still have a lot
to talk about it our next Q and A, but
in the meantime, we hop on and take the first voicemail.

Speaker 1 (07:14):
We got two voicemails that came in recently, so we'll
get through those first and then move on to the
written questions.

Speaker 3 (07:20):
Hey, Cliff and Bobo, this is Kyle coming at you
from Bozeman, Montana. I was just wondering. You guys talk
a lot about wildlife habitat. How much do you think
a sasquatch, an omnivore would consume on a daily basis
for vegetation and meat combined?

Speaker 2 (07:39):
We got I don't know. You know, that's a really
good question because I don't know, But I'm not sure
how good of an answer I can give on this one.
Maybe Mattel had more insight, but you know, I've heard
the number five thousand calories a day tossed around, but
that's probably just based on mass or whatever. And of course,
if we're basing that on maybe a two thousand or
twenty five hundred calorie a day thing for human like

(08:00):
an adult, say male, and I'm saying male just because
males tend to be larger than females. There's a sexual
dimorphism in humans, just like all the rape species. I
think they're just basing it on just mass. But what
they don't take into consideration is physiology. I think, like
in general, because the apes seem to have a rather
slow metabolism from what I understand, I could be wrong
about that. There's a lot of things I'm wrong about,

(08:21):
but from I understand, they have just generally slower metabolism.
Maybe they don't need as many calories as people think.
Maybe that that's kind of a human cage we're putting
over the bigfoot as far as speculating how many calories
a day they would need. And also when you think
about how many calories a day, you got to think
of that on average, I imagine there's plenty of days

(08:42):
where sasquatches perhaps don't eat at all, or eat very
very little, or really really low quality foods. There has
been a lot of speculation about what kinds of foods
sasquatches might be able to use on a regular basis.
And you've probably heard me speaking before about deer versus elk.
You know, you always see where the sunlight hits the
forest floor, like road sides and meadows and power line

(09:04):
cuts and railways and all that sort of stuff. Because
deer need higher quality foods than say elk. Do elk
can actually feed under the forest canopy in the shade
where there's lower quality foods because they have an elongated
intestinal track, so more time and more opportunity for the
food product potential food product to have the nutrients extracted

(09:26):
from it by retaining contact with the intestinal walls, right,
and sasquatches very likely have that as well. In fact,
I think it's a very very high probability that sasquatches
can utilize very low quality foods, so that that would
stop them from having to go out in the meadows
and stuff all the time, which it might might be
another small contributing factor about how or why they're seen rarely.

(09:52):
And also I've talked about this before as well. When
you look at the cranium that the skull of a sasquatch,
and of course we don't have a skull, but if
you look at the good pictures, like say that beautiful
composite picture I think Bill Muns made, and there's a
wonderful composite page photograph of all the different frames of
Patty turning her head when she turned the head move

(10:12):
and looked at Roger and Bob and then turned back.
So you get this, I don't know, there's probably forty
or fifty photographs in that one mosaic composite photograph, and
you get a real, general good idea, generally good idea
of what her head looks like and what you see
there are chewing apparatz, you know. You see a big
thick jaw, You see zygomatic arches, you see the sagital crest.

(10:34):
You see that the majority of her head structure is
for chewing, which also strongly points to her eating fibrous,
low quality foods. But as far as calories per day,
I imagine those low quality foods don't produce a lot
of calorie but a lot of but rather a lot
of bulk, you know, a lot of stuff the poop,
but not a lot of calories. So I imagine, Hey, Matt,

(10:55):
do you have to know how many like deer a
week or a month mountain lions take down? Isn't it
like one deer every week or two that they take
down and that satisfies them?

Speaker 1 (11:06):
You know, I don't know what the averages. I'm sure
you could look that up, and I'm sure it would
depend on a number of other factors too, like the
smaller game that they're taking in. If those are in abundance,
it's probably fewer large game, you know, if there's more
rabbits or you know, things have roughly that size for
them to eat, then it's probably a lower number of
deer versus in other areas where they're more reliant on

(11:26):
the larger animals, et cetera. So it's a long winded
way of saying I don't know, well.

Speaker 2 (11:34):
Long winded, and this is okay here because that's just
because a little bit more informational, it's a little bit
more thought process. But you know, like much is made
about the sasquatch deer connection, of course, and I think
that deer are probably a preferred food for saasquatches, but
you know, deer can't be that easy to get, no
matter how slinky and fast and strong you probably are.
They're probably one of the more challenging prey items that

(11:54):
are on the menu recent that are with any regularity. So,
say that a sasquatch takes down a deer a week
or every two weeks and supplements their their diet with
all the other stuff that the stuff that not only
the deer are eating, but maybe the stuff that the
elk are eating as well, like the low, low quality foods.
And then of course I find I have found, and
I am aware of other people finding several sites where

(12:16):
they sasquatches are feeding on rodents of various sorts, you know,
mountain beavers or rats or you know, ground squirrels or
any of these pikas or all that sort of stuff
is on the menu. And I've also found were a
juvenile and I say a juvenile with this is based
on an eleven and a half inch footprint that was found,
actually several trackway of eleven and a half inch footprints.

(12:36):
These things are also tearing apart cedar stumps, you know,
presumably going after grubs or termites or you know, whatever
is living inside there. So those are probably the higher
quality foods that are available readily, you know, more or
less pretty much every day. They probably they can probably
get insects, They can probably get all sorts of vegetation.

(12:57):
I think rodents wouldn't be that big of a deal.
You know, maybe not every day, but every couple days.
Are probably snacking on some rats and stuff like that.
And then deer are probably the more rare food items,
is what I'm guessing. Deer and maybe small bear or
small elk or something like that. You know, there's a
woman on the kidsat Peninsula that wrote me years ago

(13:19):
that has been living on the same property all of
her life, and she has seen sasquatches on that property
on a number of occasions, and she says, yeah, they're
gone for a while, then they come back, and she says,
one of the big indicators that they're back at all
is that all the raccoons and skunks and possums go missing,
and then she starts hearing them like a week or
two later, so she can generally tell by the other
animals that are not there that she usually sees. So

(13:41):
I think when you're a sasquatch, anything is on the menu,
because the calorie caloric needs of these animals must be
pretty high, no matter how slow their metabolism is. So
those are my general thoughts. And I know that's a
you think your answer was long winded for I don't know.

Speaker 1 (13:59):
I just topped. So I don't know that we'd ever
be able to accurately calculate or guestimate even a sasquatch's
caloric requirements in the absence of observing living individuals feeding
over a long period of time or without a specimen.
But there is a general rule for mammalian body size
and its coloric requirements, and it's called a Cliber's law
basically states that an animal's metabolic rate scales twero point

(14:22):
seventy five, or like three quarters of its three quarters
of the power of its body mass, So meaning that
basically larger animals have a higher overall energy need, but
they actually generate lower energy expenditures per unit of body
mass compared to smaller animals. So you can factor something
like that in and come up with some rough number,

(14:43):
you know, if you guestimated the weight of a sasquatch.
But it depends on what you're comparing it to. I
think comparing to humans in some regards is reasonable because
we're bipedal and they're bipedal, and bipedalism is a much
more energy efficient form of locomotion than quadrupedalism. But then
and we have very large brains per our body mass,

(15:03):
and the brain is a very resource intensive organ It
uses up a lot of energy and a lot of
metabolism requires a lot of energy, and so there's going
to be trade offs there whether you're comparing the sasquatch
to a gorilla and scaling it up or a human
and scaling it up. So I just don't think we'll know,
but I agree with you that in general would probably
be pretty high, but certainly not any higher than the

(15:26):
amount of energy that it would require animals of similar
size or weight, So we might look towards things like
elk or buffalo, or grizzly bears, or I mean, even
some black bears in some regions have attained sizes of
eight hundred pounds. Like the coastal North Carolina black bears
tend to be significantly larger. I think the largest one

(15:46):
there is well over eight hundred pounds. So there's comparisons
to be made within the animal kingdom and even within
North America. But I don't think any answer would be
anything better than a gas, no matter how reasonable the
gas might be.

Speaker 2 (16:01):
Stay tuned for more Bigfoot and beyond with Cliff and Bobo.
We'll be right back after these messages. I think it's
perhaps important or something at least keep in mind, is
that when we think of five thousand calories a day
or something like that, well you got to average that out.

(16:21):
If they get two thousand one day, they're going to
be hungry and they can get some more later. You
know there's going to be an average of that amount.
Don't get stuck in the human habit of very rigid thinking,
where if they don't get that, then they're failing somehow.
And that kind of goes back to the mountain lion
and the deer an elk. Thing I was rambling about
earlier is that if they bring down a deer, that's
probably a couple of days worth of food, you know,

(16:43):
until it starts going ran sid or something like that.
Or you know, they could even be employing strategies like
the grizzly bear it uses. Grizzly bears sometimes kill the
deer or elk, they eat a little bit of it,
perhaps some of the organs, because that's highly nutritious and
that vitamins and all that jazz, and then they leave it.
And then the grizzly bear continues to come back to
the kill site to eat the maggots that are growing

(17:06):
and breeding on the on the on the corpse. Maggots
are very very high in protein and calori like everything
good about it. You know, Maggots are a fantastic food.
And grizzly bears figured it out somehow, you know, so
they actually do that. They leave the corpse for flies
to lay eggs, and then the larva to grow on

(17:26):
them and then they eat the larva. So sasquatches are
likely doing something like that as well. So anything's on
the table as far as sasquatch diet goes, and I
think that they have They're clever. Animals are really really smart,
so they have probably figured out quite a few different
ways to get the necessary nutrients that they need, you know,
or that's redundant, but then the nutrients that they need.

Speaker 1 (17:48):
So I think the best answer would just be.

Speaker 2 (17:51):
A lot, a lot, yeah, well the best the easiest
answer is, like I don't know, probably a lot. Yeah,
But you know, we have a podcast to do, so
they're thinking and talking and doing, you know. Well before
we go to the next question, you know, I was
thinking while we were talking here that I want to
point out a couple of things and maybe clarify something before.
We have some pretty interesting listeners out there. I mean,

(18:12):
all of our listeners are special, of course, and there's
probably a lot of listeners that I know nothing about
and know nothing about their qualifications. But I know that
two of our listeners at least have have like advanced degrees,
and they've both been guests on the show before. A
doctor Hogan Chero, of course is a PhD in primatology.
He listens all the time, so shout out to him

(18:33):
and he I bring him up because a few weeks back,
or maybe two months ago now, he was kind enough
to send me a bunch of articles about the foot
structure of paranthropists and and like, because I was speaking
at the time about how not a lot is known
about these things, and he sent me a lot of articles,
and very little is known about paranthropist foot structure. I
think there's I think of the articles he sent, he noted,

(18:55):
I noted that one there was one partial foot fossil,
if I remember right. And I don't need to call
Hogan and talk to him about that. He invited me to.
And of course, if God, if I have a PhD
in primatology that wants to speak to me, I need
to take advantage of that, of course, because I always
learned so much. And this was brought to mind, of course,
because just this past week I was corresponding with Darren

(19:17):
Nashe who of course has been an on another episode
and maybe Matt you can link these two episodes for
our listeners in the show notes below. Yeah, but Darren
nashe wrote to me, and he liked our conversation what
we're having a few weeks ago about Homo fleuriesiensis, and
he brought up some interesting articles about homofleuresiensis about how

(19:38):
they seem to be more of an astrola pithesene than
an early Homo as a lot of the paleoanthropologists are
talking about now, and he sent him he brought up
a recent paper that was presented at a conference about
how Homo nalidi some are arguing that they belong in
the paranthropists camp as opposed to Homo at all. Really

(20:00):
really interesting stuff, but one of the He also noted
that he pointed out that I was incorrect about something,
and I think that it was just a miss I
must have misspoke or something like that, because what he
corrected me on isn't something that I even think it
is true, so I don't think I would have said it.
So I want to clarify that his takeaway when listening
to our podcast, his takeaway of what I said was

(20:20):
that bonobos are more closely related to humans than they
are to chimpanzees. And if that was the idea that
I communicated, I apologize because what I was trying to
say is that bonobos are more closely related to humans
than chimpanzees are related to humans.

Speaker 1 (20:44):
That is what you said. I mean, I was on
the call, and you know, when I edit it, I
listened to it basically three times, and then when I'm
done with the edit, I put it in my headphones
to walk around and listen to the final product to
see if there's anything that distracts me. So I heard
that four times that you said the right thing.

Speaker 2 (21:04):
So well, yeah, just for whatever it's worth, that's what
I intended to say, and if there is anything if
I so, I apologize if I wasn't clear with my language,
but I wanted to make sure that that I don't
think bonobos are more closely related to humans than they
are to chimps, all right, So anyway, I just want
to make sure that my intent, what I intended to communicate,
is actually out there, just in case there's any other misunderstandings.

(21:26):
I'm wrong a lot, but occasionally when I am right,
I want to make sure that I say the right things.
Because even if I am right and I say it incorrectly,
you know, it doesn't help anybody. So but anyway, why
don't we hop onto the next question.

Speaker 4 (21:37):
Hi Cliff and Bobo. This is Robert, currently living in Pittsburgh,
originally from Scotland. You've always said you should read a
lot about Bigfoot, and I've done exactly that, And in
one of the books I was reading, it mentioned that
people used to use seismic detectors to see if any
big Foot were passing. Has this happened or been forgotten

(22:00):
or is this something we should be doing maybe to
triangulate movement. Look forward to hearing her answer.

Speaker 2 (22:06):
Thank you all right, Robert, thank you for that question,
and I hope you're enjoying Pittsburgh. My wife is there
right now, although she's actually driving to Virginia. Our niece
is getting married this coming weekend, so I am in
a bachelor situation right now, which means not a lot.
Really my life doesn't change very much, but anyway, so Robert,

(22:26):
thank you for that question. Yes, seismic detectors have reportedly
been used before, most notably by the peter Burn Projects,
a big Foot research project. I think back in the
nineties they were using something to that effect. I know
a few other people kind of in the peter Burn
camp that love that sort of technology. But I've often

(22:46):
thought like, even if we did use it, what is
to differentiate a sasquatch from say an elk or an
animal of similar body weight? And the way I mean,
I've been around sasquatch is a fair amount. You know,
I've heard them walking around and doing stufft least I
think I have. That's why I interpret, and they're pretty
light footed in a lot of ways. But even if
you get a hit on one of these things, and

(23:09):
you have reason to believe it's a sasquatch, how is
that much better than a siding report When a siding
report will also tell you that a sasquatch was at
a certain place at a certain time, you know what
I mean? And I guess one is real time and
you have to be out in that particular area to
get the information and the data and stuff. But I

(23:30):
don't know, I don't know. That technology is not something
that has really appealed to me because I don't see
that I don't see it as being a very high
value technology for the information that you get out of it.
But having said that, you know, in bull Run Watershed,
which I'm always talking about, which is a few ridges
over from my house here, it's an off limits watershed

(23:53):
gives Portland it's water supply. It's also, from what I understand,
where Peter and and the gang, Peter Burn and the
gang for the Bigfoot Research Project put these sensors in.
I understand that they deploy those at various obvious entrance
points into the water shed, so the cops and the

(24:14):
securities and folks and all that stuff can intercept people
who are going into the watershed. I don't know if
that's true or if that's just some sort of rumor,
you know how rumors are. Yeah, the seismic thing was
actually on my radar recently because just a few weeks
ago I went to the memorial service, the celebration of
life for Henry Franzoni. I was one of the only

(24:35):
bigfooters there. Suzanne Fahrenjack was there, she flew all the
way from Ohio, being a dear friend of Henry's. And
also Tom Powell and his wife were there. But other
than that, we're the only bigfooters there. And Tom Powell
went had the microphone for a minute or two and
talked about some of Henry's contributions to the Bigfoot thing,
which is probably a little mind blowing for a lot

(24:55):
of people there, and they knew Henry was into bigfoot,
but Henry was best known as musician, an eccentric thinker.
I think that's what I gathered from his friends there.
But he brought up the seismic thing. He brought up
the seismic study. So that's kind of funny that Robert
asked this question today because it was just recently on
my radar because of Henry friend Zoni.

Speaker 1 (25:15):
But I don't know.

Speaker 2 (25:15):
I mean, Matt, what are your thoughts on seismic detectors
and their deployment and what good if any, could come
from them.

Speaker 1 (25:23):
I personally don't think it would make a whole lot
of sense to employ those because to me, the only
context within which they would make sense is as a
predictive measure to lead to more evidence. So, for example,
if you had enough seismic sensors to cover a significant
portion of an animal's home range, and let's say for
the sake of argument, that we could put a sasquatch
within a home range of somewhere between like fifty or

(25:46):
eighty square miles, which is pretty large, but for an
animal of that size would be small ish. You'd need
a lot of seismic sensors, and I think the utility
of something like that is that if you were watching
a map with a grid real time, and then you
knew that something was moving through an area in real time,
that you could respond to either to deploy personnel with

(26:08):
cameras or you know, at least respond to rapidly enough
to hopefully find or document tracks if you're not trying
to document the animal itself. The expenditure of resources that
you would need to have that many seismic sensors and
to install those in the ground in a way that's
not going to disturb the environment such that it actually

(26:28):
hinders the animal from moving the way it would normally
move through the environment, because you can imagine it would
take either one person a very long time or a
lot of personnel moving through an area to plant these
things in the ground. So to me, it just seems
like a tremendous amount of work and time and energy
and resources for very little gain unless you had enough

(26:49):
coverage and the ability to watch it in real time
so that you could respond in real time. So I
think there's much better ways to go about aiming for
photographic or video graphic evidence and or trying to find
tracks then to employ something like that. So even if
I had unlimited resources, I wouldn't put them into seismic
sensors personally.

Speaker 2 (27:10):
Now, who knows how much these things cost anyway, you know.

Speaker 1 (27:13):
And who knows? Like you said that, you might get
false positives because something is of a significant size or weight,
and then you deploy the team and you wind up
with a bear or an elk or something like that,
false alarm. But now you've just disturbed the area further
because let's say that happens at night, and you've got
to infiltrate an area with lights or get close with
vehicles or whatever the case may be. So you're fundamentally

(27:34):
changing the environment. You know, if you're trying to test
a certain hypothesis about a very rare, elusive, furtive animal
and then you inundate that animal's environment or habitat with
the stimulus of human sounds and smells and lights and
all those things, then well you might not have just
had a false positive, but you might have just ensured

(27:54):
that nothing positive is going to happen there the way
that you want it to for the next however many
hours or days, wherever the case may be, so I
don't seem much positive use for technology like that.

Speaker 2 (28:06):
Now, and even a cursory glance here, most seismic detectors
are for earthquakes sort of things. And I see price
ranges from one hundred and fifty to several thousand dollars
here by doing a quick web search, And of course
some of these are probably very high end sort of
geologic gear. But at the same time, what are you
going to get out of that? You know, game cameras
might do something similar, you know, you know, thread could

(28:30):
do something very very similar. I mean at Area X,
and they deploy thread between trees to figure out which
way animals are walking.

Speaker 1 (28:37):
Yeah, we deployed these things. You know, they did it
for years before I joined the organization. So you know,
when I say we, I was continuing a a sort
of research tradition that they had long started. So I
certainly can't take any credit for that. But you know,
areas around the base camp where activity would occur, they
were trying to sort of parse out which directions that
things might have been coming in from or heading out to,

(29:00):
coming to or from this central location, and so Alton
Higgins had put up these we colloquially called them string traps.
And you know, sewing thread is pretty hard to break,
surprisingly so and so you can fix it to one
tree and then string it across a gap and then
wrap it around another tree a time or two, and
it'll stay in place for a very very long time.

(29:21):
And then when something moves through it, rather than the
thread breaking, it'll usually just unravel the thread, and if
you have enough surplus thread, it'll unravel it in the
direction that the animal was moving. And so then you
can check those in the morning, and you want to
set those at heights that they're not going to be
moved by something smaller and lower to the ground, like
a bear or a deer. So you set those at

(29:41):
certain heights and then if there's activity and go look
in the morning and like, oh, wow, something walked through
heading in this particular direction. And you have a perimeter
of those around camp and there's you know, one that's
unraveled into camp and one that's unraveled going out of camp.
You kind of have an idea that, well, something came
in this vector and then was inside this perimeter and
then exited through this vector. So it's a really useful

(30:03):
tool that is very cheap and inexpensive and easy to deploy.

Speaker 2 (30:09):
There, and you get directionality, which is something I'm not
so sure you would get with the most seismic sensors, right.

Speaker 1 (30:15):
Yeah, I mean again, to get directionality with seismic sensors,
you would have to have so many of them evenly spaced,
which you know that's a really hard thing to do. Too,
is that when I was in the NAWAC, we had
this camera trap project called Hadrian's Wall, and one of
our brilliant members, a guy named Ed Harrison, had laid
out this excellent design to have them all sort of

(30:38):
equidistant in such a way that you know something would
move through this trap line of cameras and at any
given point, you know they should be captured by two,
sometimes three cameras at a time. And so of course
that's all great when you grid it out on paper,
but then you get boots on the ground there and
you're like, oh, well, the trees didn't conveniently grow at

(30:59):
all the right distance from each other for us to
always have a perfect overlap, so you have to make
some concessions. And the same would be true that if
you've got a host of seismic sensors that needed to
be in a grid let's say, you know, twenty by
twenty square feet apart, you know, whatever the case may be.
And then you get to the point where it needs
to be and well, now there's a rock. You can't

(31:20):
dig in the ground there and put it there. Or
there's a tree there, and so what are you going
to do? Well, you have to put it somewhere around
the tree. So there's probably gonna be places where they're
not overlapping, little gaps in your system where something can
get through. And so the number of headaches that I
could envision with seismic sensors just keeps growing and growing
the more I think about it. Yeah yeah, yeah, and

(31:40):
again for what so that you would find out that like, oh,
something heavy moved through here, and that maybe that's all
the information you get, and so it's like, well, we
did all that work for something that no one cares about.

Speaker 2 (31:52):
Yeah yeah, So, Robert, that's I guess you didn't really
ask for about our thoughts necessarily, you asked if they
actually did it and whatever, But that's what you get
from us more.

Speaker 1 (32:00):
No, he did, he asked, He asked if this is
something we should be pursuing.

Speaker 2 (32:04):
Oh, oh, very good, was very good. I thought it
was just like, had they actually done this and what
results were there? I guess you always hear the question
you wish you were asked, right, But yeah, that's our
thoughts on that. I'm not sure that as far as
bang for the buck and effort and stuff like that,
I'm not sure there's much there. I mean, a lot
of people deploy them. Well not actually almost nobody deploys them,
but I know a couple people that have deployed them

(32:26):
or have them, but I'm not sure they've gotten anything
at all from it except for just the joy of
saying I got some technological toys that I put out there,
and for a lot of people in bigfoot Land, that's enough,
you know, And that's fun. And I'm not saying don't
try it, but I think that we're both saying that
we don't. And those are the reasons why. But if

(32:48):
that tickles your fancy, you know, if that is something
that you want to pursue, by all means, do it
and maybe maybe you'll get something amazing from it, and
you know, publish something in the RhI or write some
up and you know, maybe is there something we can
learn from that? I don't know, but for me, not
worth the hassle, not worth a hassle, and not worth
the money, and not worth the time. Stay tuned for

(33:12):
more Bigfoot and Beyond with Cliff and Bogo. We'll be
right back after these messages. And you know, as far
that thread thing, I was thinking, You know, you have
to put it at a certain level to avoid deer,
and gosh, deer are pretty big and they've got to
be five feet tall or more. Oftentimes you have to

(33:34):
put it probably six and a half seven foot up
and catch the sasquatch across the face or something like
that with the thread. But that brought to mind that
a good friend of mine, the guy named Alan, saw
a sasquatch a couple of weeks ago and he saw
the most frightening kind a three footer. So, and of
course Alan's also a listener, so shout out to Alan there.
Alan was down on the coast. He saw it in

(33:55):
Cummin's Creek Wilderness area, which is a really really neat
wildernes area just north of Florence, Oregon. I went on
years and years and years ago, probably twenty thirteen or
something like that my good friend and excellent bigfoot or
Chris Minier ran an expedition for the BFRO out of Florence,
and he asked if I could come down. And I
hadn't seen Chris for a while, so I came down

(34:16):
for a night and hung out with him, and I
took a group out into the Common's Creek wilderness area
on this trail and we ran into a sasquatch out there,
banged a bunch of trees at us and ran and
heard it running off, and it was a cool It
was a cool event. So I said he was going
to be down in Florence and I said hey, or
he says to me, Hey, like, where should I go
down in Florence area? I go, well, I don't know.
I don't get down there very often, but I did

(34:38):
take a group into there and we ran across one
He goes, oh, great, we'll go there. And it's kind
of a funny story. And because he went to the
ranger station when he was down there and he says,
I want to go hiking in the Cummins Creek Wilderness
area and the rangers like, oh that's great, that's great
here blah blah blah, here's how you get in there.
And there's a trailhead and this and that, and Alan goes, non,

(34:59):
I want to go in that road the other trail
and the guy and the ranger goes, no, No, you don't.

Speaker 1 (35:04):
Want to do that.

Speaker 2 (35:05):
The trees are down, it's a terrible road, the road's
blown out, there's flooding damage, blah blah blah, hard to get,
hard to get anywhere in there. You don't want to
go in there. And he goes, it's exactly where I
want to go. And the ranger goes, well, why do
you want to go there? And he goes, well, I
want I'm going to go squatch it. I'm want to
go look for sasquatches. And the guy laughed, and then
Alan goes, no, No, they're real, they're really, you know. And
the guy kind of stopped laughing and said, well, I

(35:27):
guess if they're going to be anywhere, that's where they're
going to be, because no one goes in there, you know.
And so he Alan went in there with his wife.
But he was walking in there and he said, on
the side of the road there were thirteen inch impressions,
but they weren't very clear or anything like that, but
there are space forty two inches apart, which is spot on.
That's textbook right there, you know, from you know, heel

(35:47):
to heels forty two inches, that's textbook bigfoot there. And
of course thirteen inch impressions right in there as well,
no big deal thirteen fourteen inches. And you can think, well,
but he says, I didn't know. I didn't didn't think
that much of him, and not really sure.

Speaker 1 (36:00):
Yea.

Speaker 2 (36:00):
I think he also heard a mountain lion yowl at
the trailhead. I think that may or may not be
important as well, And I'll get to that in a second.
So he's going in there, and about a mile and
a half in he's ahead of his wife, and then
he sees something black in color upright on two legs
and about three feet tall or so, just rush across

(36:21):
the road and then drop over the precipice the edge
on the side, and like he was startled. He took
a couple of steps back and he goes, oh my god,
what the the His wife says, what's wrong, honey, you know,
you know, I think I just saw this, and you know,
and they went and looked over the edge and they
didn't see anything. And of course the thing was probably
just hunker down waiting for him to leave. They did

(36:42):
a recreation photograph and that sort of stuff, and he
was very, very bugged out. I spoke to him that
night when he got back to the hotel room in Florence.
I spoke to him, and he kept going, I don't
know what I saw. I just don't know what I saw.
I mean, I said, well, dude, it was it was
upright and black in color. You know, that's probably a sasquatch.
You probably saw a sasquatch, a three footer. And he said, so,

(37:03):
I don't know. I maybe I just don't know what
else it could have been. It's like, I'm not going
to try to convince you saw one only you know,
of course, but but you know, so I thought that
was pretty interesting. And then the next day they went
to the other trailhead, the more easily accessible one, and
they got there at pretty much at daybreak, you know,
right at dust or dawn, rather the opposite of dusk.

(37:24):
And the second they got out of their car from
one direction, they heard another mountain lion yell. And by
the way, this trailhead, I guess is basically at the
base of the ridge that he saw the thing on
the day before. You know, we're very very close, not
far away. So he heard another mountain lion yell and
it was that's odd, And then he heard one from
the opposite direction. He goes, well, what's even odder, you know,

(37:45):
And then then he heard a power knock from in
between the two, and he goes home, and they actually
were so scared they got back in the car, and
I believe it was his wife who basically said, we
got to not be whimps about this.

Speaker 1 (37:57):
We got to go.

Speaker 2 (37:58):
And then they went for a long, grueling high mostly uphill,
et cetera, and whatever had to day. But now I'm wondering,
of course, I'm like thinking back to one of our
witnesses we had on the podcast a long time ago,
who went by the name of Lance. He actually observed
a sasquatch like he had his eyes on it when

(38:18):
it made a mountain lion call, which is really interesting
as far as like mimicking and all that stuff goes.
But I'm wondering where those mountain lions at all.

Speaker 1 (38:26):
That's a good question. And I would say if there's
any sasquatch researchers in that area, that's exactly where you
want to go, because if you take any lessons from
analogous mammals, you would know that an animal occupies a
home range. Within that home range, it has a territory,
and within that territory, it will have a core area.
And the best way to identify core areas of most

(38:48):
species that are analogous would be to figure out where
the females and especially the juveniles are. And so if
you needed like a codex for finding sasquatch core areas,
you would pay attention to where sightings of females occur,
and especially of juveniles. So if I was in an orgon,
that's exactly where I'd be spending my time. Of recent

(39:08):
juvenile siding is a very good sign, especially from a
source that you know, you trust and find reliable.

Speaker 2 (39:14):
Yeah, yeah, Allen's a good guy and he certainly wouldn't
be making anything up. Worst case scenario and misidentified something.
But he kept saying it was on two legs, and like,
what else do you have? What else? He said? I said, Well,
you have grandchildren. I mean, how old would this kid be?
You know, if it was a I don't know, maybe seven,
I think is what he said, seven years old and

(39:36):
just running across a trail mile and a half up
in a desolate sort of a wilderness area. I don't know.
I think he saw one. I think he saw one,
and again I ran into one there, and he went
there on my recommendation and saw one. How cool is that?
And then heard other weird things. Yeah, if I lived
in the Florence area, that's where I would be spending
a lot of my time, a lot of my time
because it's public land, easily accessible, and you know, co

(39:59):
strange people here in I love the Coast Range, and
I love the people that live there, but they're kind
of like people in Maine. They don't want anybody around.
They live in a very isolated area to kind of
keep people away. A lot of the area's private lands,
so no one's allowed to be on it except in
the sayas Law National forests and places like the wilderness
areas and that sort of thing. So that to me

(40:19):
just shouts go there, go there frequently. Because looking back
on his first day, not only did he see that
three footer, he found thirteen or so inch footprints. I
mean he didn't say footprints, he said impressions, but they
were probably footprints. They were spaced appropriately. Yeah, that's probably
mom and the kid right there. So go there. And

(40:41):
of course if you do find anything cool, let me know.
Let us know. Emailed the podcast. You Know the count
be on podcasts at gmail dot com. Let us know
what you're finding them there. And of course all the
bigfooters who actually are working that area are probably really
pissed at me right now. But sorry, as far as
I know, no one's working it.

Speaker 1 (40:57):
You know, what's really funny is that people will reach
out to me, very often, people I've only interacted with
online or total strangers, and they'll be like, Hey, I
live in this particular area. Where do you think I
should go? And I'll give them places that I'm comfortable
talking about. You know, hey, I think you should check
out this area. And then we'll get a question like
that on the podcast and I'll recommend the same area.

(41:19):
And then those people will reach out to me the
initial question askers and they'll be like, hey, why are
you telling people about my spot? I'm like yours spot. Like,
first of all, I had no qualms telling you, and
so I have no qualms telling someone else. And second
of all, like you don't go out to those places.
So it's a funny thing that happened. So I guess

(41:41):
I can't fault people for that, but it is just
a funny observation to have that happen so many times
over the years. It's that they'll ask me for input
and then get upset that I gave the same input
to someone else.

Speaker 2 (41:56):
Yeah. Well, here's a news flash for everybody listening. Every
every single official designated wilderness area in the United States
is perfect bigfoot habitat. Go there, Okay, there you go.
If you live anywhere near a wilderness area, go there.
It's as simple as that. I'm not giving anything away.

Speaker 1 (42:17):
And most public lands, and you know, if you were
to look at a map, don't even worry about sasquatch reports.
I mean, it's helpful to have, but you know, there's
a lot of great places to where very few people go,
and so you should not expect there to be sasquatch reports.
But look at a map, what's close to you and
what looks like good habitat, And especially if you research
other animal populations, like what's the bare density and what's

(42:40):
the ungulate density, et cetera, et cetera, And you know,
but if you're asking for input, I'll give it to you.
And if someone else asked me for input and they're
in the same general area, I'm going to give it
to them too. And my favorite spots I'm not going
to tell you about.

Speaker 2 (42:53):
So yeah, I don't give away my fishing spots. You know.
That's how I found one of my best spots is
I just I was looking at apps and stuff like,
oh wow, wow, that looks like it they should be there,
And I started going there and shure up they were.
We're getting Knox, we're getting calls. There's been a couple
of sidings, there's been a couple of footprint finds there.
I found a footprint there just a few weeks ago. Actually,

(43:14):
So yeah, one of my favorite spots had no sidings,
no reports from it whatsoever. It just looked like they
should be there. Which is a wilderness areas by the way,
Cumm's Creek Wilderness Area. It doesn't really matter. Yeah, bull
the woods down there on the Cala Wash. Of course
they're in there. Of course they are. You know, you
just look at a Forest Service map, any designated wilderness

(43:34):
area or any area a big chunk of land with
suitable habitat that there are no roads into. Yeah, that's
where they are. Go there, it's not a secret. If
you didn't know that by now, then you don't. You
don't deserve the specific locations. So exactly, stay tuned for

(43:56):
more Bigfoot and Beyond with Cliff and Bogo will be
right back after these messages. All right, well, anyway, should
we go onto the written questions?

Speaker 1 (44:09):
Let's do?

Speaker 2 (44:10):
Okay? The first written question comes from Neil and Marnie.
Shout out to them, by the way, a long time listeners.
They realterally enjoy the podcast, and thank you so much
Neil and specifically to Marnie for listening. We really really
do appreciate your ears on the podcast every single week,
and then we're happy that we can give you some
sort of some sort of smile on a weekly basis. Anyway,

(44:32):
the question is what do you three think about coastal
environments as they relate to Sasquatch habitat and activity. Oh, well,
you know, Bobo's not here obviously, so it's what do
we too think? But Bubo lives on the coast, and
I think that says a lot right there. He lives
in the Arcada area of northern California and Humboldt County,

(44:54):
and he moved there from southern California because it is
bigfoot habitat. His best spot, or some of his best
spots are like right on the coast up in the
Redwood National Park and at Redwind National or State Forest.
I think it's called our state park up there. Some
of his best spots are virtually hugging the ocean, and

(45:14):
I think that says a lot about coastal habitat.

Speaker 1 (45:17):
Wouldn't it be funny if we just lamited not giving
away our best spots, But we just decided to give
away all of Bobo's best spots since he's done here.
I mean, no, we're not saying specifics, but we could
you hear that, Bobo?

Speaker 2 (45:28):
We could tell him, well, he said, yeah, we could. Yeah,
you don't show up to a podcast and it's our rules,
not yours, sorry Bobs. Yeah, but Bobo said several times
in the podcast that he goes up to the Redwoods
to go big footing. So I don't think I'm giving
too much away here, but yeah, but I think that
says a lot. So even though Bobo is not here
to give his two cents about coastal habitat here. But

(45:50):
I think that that says a lot. He specifically moved
there to see sasquatches because he he took logging jobs
on the coast to do that. He started taking fishing
jobs as how. He became a crab fisherman because he
was hearing that these people were seeing him from the
boats sometimes like on shore. That's why he did all
these things. So that says a lot from Bobo, even

(46:12):
though his voice is not on the air today. But
as far as I'm concerned, I mean, that's where the
food was, you know. I mean, if things went sideways,
and I mean for humanity, the coast would be the
place to be because the ocean is just an abundant
resource of food. I know, years and years and years ago,
I went I met I flew down to Baja California, Mexico,

(46:35):
and met some of my friends who were down there.
They were down there for six months doing research for
a sea kayak guide to book. You know, these are
like outdoors, these sort of folks. Obviously they're writing books
about various sea kayak routes to take and stuff in Baja.
And I met him down there, and you know, and
We camped on the beach for a week, and virtually
every day we kind of went swimming for lunch and dinner. Yeah,

(46:59):
we went to the store and got carrots and some
vegetables and that sort of stuff. But and some beers,
of course, But for the most part, the meat that
we ate that week we got from the ocean that day,
you know, whether we were fishing, or we were clamming,
or you know, picking scallops and whatever off the rock,
we went in the water and pulled the food out.

(47:20):
So Baja is, of course exceptional, but in northern California
or you know, Oregon and Washington, there is so much
food on the beach. I remember one time I was
fishing in Redwood National Park, I think it is, and
it was a gold Bluff beach, great little campsite on
the ocean there. It's generally too crowded and you know,

(47:43):
popular to get in most of the year, but I was.
I was there in the winter or something like that,
you know, so I got a spot in there. And
I don't usually pay for camping anyway, but back then
I did at that this night, because it's such a
great campsite. There's elk everywhere pushed up against the cliffs
would be a lot easier to catch and kill if
I didn't, you know, if I were a sasquat to
that sort of thing. But I remember I was fishing.

(48:03):
I was fishing for a barred surf perch. No, no, no,
for a redtail surf perch at the time. And you know,
so I was fishing in the ocean in the waves,
you know, like probably kneedy water, that sort of stuff
coming in and out. And I was casting or whatever.
A big wave came in and I stepped back, and
that wave literally deposited a dungeness crab on the beach,

(48:25):
not fifteen feet from me. And I just thought to myself,
as I'm looking up and down this coast where there's
absolutely zero people as far as the I could see
except for me, but in beautiful redwoods and dense forests,
like right there on the cliffs above me. Yeah, and
somebody the ocean literally deposited a dungeness crab virtually at

(48:46):
my feet as I was standing there. And think, think
how many times a day that happens within ten miles
of that spot, you know, or up and down the
coast in general. But like the ocean gives. I didn't
need it a course, but I wasn't into it, you
know at the time, and I didn't want to it
and deal with it and get pinged and everything. But still, like,
think about a sasquatch just roaming up and down the
beach looking for things that the ocean deposited on the shoreline.

(49:09):
There's there's kelp. Most kelp is edible, of course, there's
you know, uh dungeon is crab. There's various crabs of
various source. You know, if you know where to look,
you can put you can scoop your hand under the
sand and come up with thirty or forty mole crabs.
That's what I was doing as using those for bait
at the time. You know, occasionally a dead seal or

(49:30):
a dead whale gets deposited on the shore and of
course all the other animals take advantage of that, and
human beings did as well for many, many long years.
So yeah, the ocean is where it's at as far
as easy food goes, So of course sasquatches utilize that.
And of course we've also heard the stories of them
digging clams and whatever else on you know, on those

(49:51):
low tides, especially up in PC. I know that doctor
Bindernoggle was really interested in that aspect of it, as
well as doctor Rob Allley. So, yeah, ocean, the ocean
environment where the land meets the ocean is just a
bountiful resource of food of virtually every kind you can imagine.
So they would be a fantastic habitat for them. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (50:12):
The BC Sunshine Coast and all that Pacific Coast is
just incredible and obviously has a very long, very rich
history of encounter and observation reports and incredible habitat. I
would love to go up there if people are interested
in reading about that region specifically. We had John Zada
on a little while back in his book in The
Valleys of the Note Beyond. It's all focused on that

(50:35):
particular region of British Columbia and it's amazing, and so
once again I would highly recommend that or Rob Alley's
Raincoast Sasquatch.

Speaker 2 (50:44):
Oh yeah, yeah, Like all that stuff was around Ketcha
Can and the islands offshore. So the Sasquatch is on islands.
It tells you a lot. You know, there's a lot
of food there and they take advantage of everything from
the inland stuff like the deer and elk and I
just mentioned elk are on the beach. They're on the beach,
you know, so there's food of plenty. So yeah, any

(51:05):
of these resources would be great. The Rob Alley book
or the is that a book? All these things I
really like this next question, All right, well you want
to read it?

Speaker 1 (51:12):
Sure, I can read it. So this comes from our
listener Nathan Craig, and he asks what things have been
made easier and or more difficult when it comes to
squatching in the last fifteen to twenty years or more.

Speaker 2 (51:23):
You want to go first? Yes, I know you're chomping
at the bid here.

Speaker 1 (51:28):
You know. I think there are some things that have
been made easier via the Internet, like being able to
communicate and network with other researchers and share information and
coordinate field efforts together. I mean, most of my field
research partners are they live hours and hours and hours
from me, and so you know, we're working on areas

(51:50):
together that are central to us, and so they're nowhere
close to home. And that's all facilitated by the Internet
and by the ability to you know, find information quickly
about these habitats and about the history of reports and
places to access and all of the above, and then
obviously other technological advances. So there's a lot of things

(52:11):
that have been made easier that I cannot imagine how
hard it would have been if I was a sasquatch
researcher in the fifties or sixties, in the early days
of the four Horsemen and those types. I think the
things that have made it more difficult are related to
a lot of the same issues, and specifically with the
interconnectivity of people and the Internet and the speed at
which information moves in that we're in this environment that

(52:36):
you know, there's a lot of people that are involved
in this subject that their primary focus is about their
presence online. Now they might have communities they've built by
which you know, we're no different, although you know, you
guys built a community in a different way, you know,
through years of research and networking and then through a

(52:58):
television series, and then by the time we launched this podcast,
you know, there was already an existing community around that.
But like, here's a good example. So very recently, a
friend of mine was on a field excursion and something
occurred and phone calls were made between people who were
also there and then someone who wasn't there posted about

(53:22):
it and made claims about what had happened that bore
little to no resemblance to what actually happened. And then
before anyone could correct the record, a number of people
with their own platforms, podcasts, YouTube channels, social media outlets,
et cetera, were reporting on the claims that this person

(53:42):
who wasn't there made at all, saying like that they
basically had an inside scoop and that if you wanted
to learn more and follow for updates, you know, make
sure that you like and subscribe and keep a close
eye on their channels because they would bring you the
news as it broke. And so of course I got
inundated with messages from people like, hey, do you know
anything about this? And I was having to be very

(54:04):
careful because I don't want to compromise the people that
were actually there and in this situation, because it's their
story to tell I equally was not there. But I
was saying, well, you know, I do have a friend
who was there, and what's being said is not exactly
what happened. And then I was able to review the
evidence that was collected and come to a conclusion about

(54:25):
what actually happened, so beyond just hearing the claims of
my friend who was there, I actually saw what was
collected in that case. But the news, the sensational version,
had spread so quickly and so many people had bent
it to serve their own goals in terms of entertaining, captivating,

(54:45):
or motivating their own audiences, that if I were to
go and try to correct the record, well it would
have taken, you know, one hundred times more energy than
I was willing to expend on it. And also, again
I think it's the responsibility of the people who are
actually there to lay out what happened. That's just one
example of something I see happening over and over again,

(55:07):
and that the vast majority of things I read online
in the Sasquatch space are just so wildly inaccurate, and
most of it is not malicious, The vast majority of
it is not. It's well meaning people with good intentions
reporting what they heard or what they think they heard.
And I just come from a different school of thought

(55:28):
and of action in that, you know, I've been very
fortunate I have a bit of a different life than
many of these other people in that, you know, I've
always had the energy and the time and the bandwidth
to devote serious attention and energy to all these things.
And so many times people will tell me, oh, well,

(55:48):
here's the deal with such and such, you know, pick
a case out of a hat, and I'll be like, okay, well,
why do you think that it's something that they heard
third hand on a podcast channel? And very often in
these cases it just happens to be the case that like,
oh no, well, I actually know those investigators, and I
know that witness, and I've been to that property and

(56:09):
I spent a lot of time there. Here's what actually happened.
Or nope, you know, have you ever read this book? No,
I've never read it. Okay, well, here's what actually occurred
according to the people that were there, not the sixth
hand version that you heard in you know, a forty
five second reel on a social media platform. And so
all of that makes it very difficult where the facts

(56:31):
have been so obscured or lost that you could imagine that,
you know, we're in this field of sasquatchery, you know,
and if you used an analogy like okay, this is
a territory, a geographical space, Well, we have this center
that existed for so long. That's the sort of like
established facts as the best we know them. And then

(56:54):
as you get more familiar with that center, you get
better and better at being able to go out to
the frontier into the what we don't know yet or
what we're trying to know, and encounter new things and
responsibly discern those against information that's not necessarily related to
useful and bring that back to the center. And I
feel like with the advent of social media and the Internet,
we've completely lost the center, and I spend more time

(57:17):
trying to re establish that center so that people know
where we are here in twenty twenty four. I mean,
I think we all do that, Like that's part of
why I wrote the book. I think that's part of
why Mark Marcell digs into Ape Canyon. That's part of
why you reinvestigated the Bosberg events or the Freeman evidence

(57:37):
or the Blue Mountains evidence, etc. Is that we're trying
to re establish that center because these things that were
known not that long ago now seem to be so
lost in the wind, and people don't have the same
foundation that they used to have. And I think a
lot of that is driven by this social media environment.
Where people are competing with not only each other, but

(57:58):
with these algorithm in order to drive visibility, in order
to grow their audiences, et cetera. And that has made
a lot of this endeavor so much more difficult than
it used to be. So I know that's a very
long answer, but that's what I see happening. It's very frustrating.

Speaker 2 (58:18):
Oh yeah, yeah. Social media is a plague. Yeah it is.
And it's not only social media that you're talking about,
but we now live in a world of influencers as
opposed to researchers essentially, and that's the Bigfoot community has
kind of been taken over by that, unfortunately. And I
know that people out there, but well, if you're an influencer, yeah,

(58:40):
but I don't want to be. I don't care if
anybody listens. You know, I'm doing this anyway, is what
it comes down to. I would be doing this if
nobody was watching. And I'm not sure that's true for
a lot of the people who are out there on
podcasts and websites and facebooks and things like that. You know,
so social media I read this. I think this is

(59:04):
a an approximate quote. Social media allows darkness to spread
at the speed of light, you know, and that darkness
comes in many forms like misinformation or hoaxes, or narcissism
or any variety of things, you know. And I think
that's probably the most difficult thing that has happened the

(59:24):
big footing in the last fifteen to twenty years. To
get back to Nathan's question, but also at the same time,
every curse has a blessing, and vice versa, every blessing
has a curse. John Green was commenting on the advent
of the Internet and how it would have affected his work.
Because I don't have the exact numbers or anything like that,
but I think by the time he wrote his book

(59:45):
that I think was published in seventy eight, if I
remember right, Sasquatch Apes among us, I think he has
something like seventeen hundred sightings, sixteen hundred sightings or something
like that. Well that's from nineteen, you know, fifty six,
I think is when he started to nineteen seventy eight,
you know, So that's just a few decades. That's nothing. Nowadays,

(01:00:06):
that's nothing. I mean, I accrued that many sighting reports
I think written siding reports in just like five or
ten years, just by being out there, and I'm not
the biggest platform by far, you know, so it did
get easier to find sasquatch reports, to connect with other bigfooters,
to find information networking in general, you know, and I know,

(01:00:31):
for me personally, weather reports and snow depth maps and
that sort of stuff, extremely valuable information available online. But
at the same time, the dark side of that is,
you know, the whole social media influencer folks jumping up
and down saying look at me, look at me, look
at me me, and very few people are left pointing

(01:00:54):
at the sasquatch and saying look at them. So that's
that's my biggest woe I think with bigfoot stuff is
that it's always has been that way. You know, it's
just a different form now and it's a lot faster
now and the misinformation spreads much more quickly. The gossip
essentially that bigfoot has always been a gossipy game, whether

(01:01:14):
we're talking about the hindon the Green and Peterburn era,
you know, or nowadays on Facebook, you know, that sort
of stuff. But it's always been very gossip oriented because
not a lot of bigfoot stuff goes on, you know,
there aren't footprint finds, you know every day, or their
new videos aren't being taken, new film, you know, that

(01:01:35):
sort of stuff. There's not a lot of big breakthroughs.
Scuokom cast level stuff is rather rare, and because of that,
and people love the subjects so much, they want to
talk about the other people instead of the animals. And
I think it's just better for all of us to
stay focused, stay focused on what's important. The Sasquatches are important,
not the people who look into it, you know, And

(01:01:57):
it's the evidence, it's not the people again, So that's
my answer for you, Nathan.

Speaker 1 (01:02:04):
Yeah, I agree with all that, and I don't think
it's restricted to the Sasquatch subject. I just see it
everywhere that I look, you know, with all the subjects
that I'm interested in and pursuits that I have and
subjects that I follow, And so I think it's just
a symptom of that particular environment, of the online environment.
It drives certain behaviors and you know, it comes along

(01:02:27):
with certain temptations, and you know, obviously we're in the
same space. I mean, we have a podcast and we
have an audience, and we would like for those things
to grow, and we do our very level best to
always be accurate, and so of course we're going to
make errors and faux pause. And again, when I am
speaking about the things that I see, I'm not attributing

(01:02:47):
malice to those people. I think in most of those cases,
a lot of the things that get passed around as misinformation,
it's just you've taken an oral tradition and extended it
to the internet. So it's just the spreading of folklore
and mythology. But it's just in this digital format, and
those people are not intending to mislead other people. They

(01:03:09):
are reporting on what they believe to be true. Although
the frustration is that, well, if more diligence was done,
they could have easily come to their own conclusions that no,
in fact, the story is much different than it's being reported,
or the facts are not being presented, and what's being
presented instead or counterfactual. But I think because of the

(01:03:31):
need for speed in that environment, to be first to print,
so to speak, first to publish, like they're competing with
each other, so that their episode or video on this
subject has that primacy effect and it's the first to
talk about it, and so they don't have they're not
affording themselves the luxury of doing the deep dive and
diligence and things like that, and those are all just frustrations.

(01:03:54):
So again, I'm not castigating anyone as much as I'm
just lamenting the state of affairs that is brought about
by social media and all those drivers and incentives that
people have. It just makes it a difficult game.

Speaker 2 (01:04:09):
You kids, get off my lawn.

Speaker 1 (01:04:11):
Yeah, exactly. And you know, if this technology had been
around when I first got into the subject, I would
be doing the same thing. Because when I first got
into the subject and was young, you know, it took
me years to find another researcher that I could speak with. Honestly,
I mean I would reach out to people, nobody would respond,
you know, because I was some young kid from Georgia basically,

(01:04:32):
and you know, I wasn't in the Pacific Northwest, and
I didn't have experience, and I didn't have people who
could vouch for me in the field, and so you know,
if I could have built my own online thing and
talk to people about it, I would have. You know,
It's just that YouTube didn't exist back then and social
media didn't exist back then. So you know, the only
thing that separates me from those people of a younger age,

(01:04:55):
is that, like, well, they have access to a technology
that I didn't. So I'm again, I'm not making any
sort of moral judgments or value judgments as much as
I'm just trying to explain to Nathan, like that's it's
a frustrating thing to see, because man, I love details,
like I want to know anyone who knows me personally
will tell you, like the things that I love, I

(01:05:16):
will obsessively learn every single thing I can about it,
Like if I fall in love with the band, I
will get obsessed with their entire catalog and everything they've
ever done. I'm either I don't like it or I'm
obsessed with it, Like I'm not a casual fan of
many things, and so I guess part of me expects

(01:05:37):
that people who are into the Sasquatch will be as
into all the digging and searching and foraging for information
and trying to get to the bottom of things as
I am. And that's just an unrealistic expectation. I have
to keep that in mind that like, oh, well, you know,
for other people, they're just having fun and there's nothing
wrong with that, but for me, like it it tears
me up when something' is like, oh no, you were

(01:05:58):
so close, but you missed it this that or the other.
And you know, I'm trying to preserve again that center
of reliable information because we are trying to get somewhere.
You know, no one's proved that these things are real,
and no one's accurately tested these hypotheses to a conclusion,
and so it's it's frustrating to see missed opportunities like that.

(01:06:20):
But oh well, such as the nature of life, I suppose.

Speaker 2 (01:06:24):
I still struggle with the idea that there are casual
fans of Bigfoot, not that I don't realize they're there.
You know, I have, but I forget all the time
because I'm just so over the top and obsessed. And
you know, if I'm not in the woods, I have
I fear of missing out Foma pretty bad. Just yesterday,
I was like, going, gosh, darning, you know what I thought,

(01:06:44):
Uh see, I thought our podcast was yesterday. And when
I figure, oh, shoot, I could have gone to the
woods today, I didn't go, And then I wonder if
I can go tomorrow after No, I got to go
to work tomorrow after, you know, and I'm thinking, oh,
I got to go and I realized, oh, well, you
know what, this will be the first week that I
can remember that I didn't go Bigfoot at least once,
you know. I mean, i'd have to think all the
way back to like spring or fall or something, and

(01:07:06):
with my memory, that's that's kind of stretching it, you know.
But then I realized, wait, I was out on Monday.
I did go this week, So I thought I was
going to take a week off, and that didn't even
work out because I'm just so obsessed with it. So
the fact that people would like, oh, I like Bigfoot.
You know, I know Roger Patterson's name, and I know
Bob Gimlin was with them, and I watched the TV
shows and you know, and that sort of stuff. I

(01:07:28):
forget that are people like that instead of people like
you and I, who like, we're calling people to try
to find out these nitty gritty details from you know,
decades ago, and are there any photographs of this? Like
oh my god, and like when we score a photograph
or a piece of footage of a footprints in the
ground or something, I'm just over the top and like
I'm riding high for like two weeks on that, you know,

(01:07:49):
I forget that there are people out there who just
are interested in the subject. And I should know better
because I'm at the museum a lot, and when people
tell me, you know, generally speaking, most stuff I hear
is like sound events, and I'm a hunter and fishermen,
and I've never heard such a thing. And so I
and yeah, I'm thinking to myself, yeah, they're real. And
I usually said, yeah, it turns out the real animals,

(01:08:10):
and then they go on a lengthy five or eight
minute explanation about how nothing else could have made that noise.
It's like, well, yeah, yeah, so, and but that's that's
a consequence of being a casual fan, is that you're
still stuck in the are they real? Question?

Speaker 1 (01:08:25):
And that's the beauty of like when you find like
minded people. I mean, people might be shocked to find
out that because you know, we record all the time,
but like you and I, for example, speak on the
phone for at least a couple of hours a week
about sasquatch stuff, sometimes more, you know, like we're always
getting into the weeds and that stuff. So it's not
like we only talk when we're recording this show. We're

(01:08:46):
always talking squatch. And you know, it reminds me of
like there's bands that I love that they've never really
crossed into the mainstream, and so, you know, I'll do
all this searching as I've moved around the country and
people talk about music, and I'll be like, oh, what
about this band? Like ninety nine percent of the people
you encounter like I never heard of them, you know,
or oh, I remember that one song on the radio

(01:09:07):
because they might have had like one minor hit. And
then you know, they'll play like a reunion show and
you go there and you're in a room with three
thousand other people who know every single word to every song,
and this thing matters to everyone in that room as
much as it matters to you, and it's like, Oh,
you found your people there for a moment, you know.
And I feel the same way with certain researcher friends,

(01:09:29):
where it's like, like we've mentioned before, Oh, he's a lifer,
she's a life Like that's someone who really gets it,
you know, and it's so few and far between, and
so it's a it's a special thing. But yeah, I
think that's again the costs and benefits. The benefit of
all this social media and internet stuff is that it is.
It does make it easier to find your people in

(01:09:49):
that regard too. You know, there's all sorts of people
I met as a consequence of this and the online
connectivity that I wouldn't have met otherwise that I've learned
so much from, you know, So I'm equally grateful as
much as I am frustrated by this thing.

Speaker 2 (01:10:04):
Yeah, yeah, but all the goods man, that sigal noise
ratio is just off the charts as far as the
internet goes.

Speaker 1 (01:10:11):
Well, speaking of our people, I think we have some
great questions that came in from the members for the
members only Q and A, which you know for new listeners.
We always record the members episodes as soon as we're done,
we're recording me. So if you're a new member, you're
going to get this. This is Monday hopefully when you're
hearing this when it's released and the bonus episodes come
out on Thursdays. But so, I think this would be

(01:10:33):
a good time to pivot and answer some questions from
our people there.

Speaker 2 (01:10:37):
Yeah, I think so. I think so. I mean, and
you know what, we've didn't get through a lot of questions.
I think we had a lot of good discussions in
this episode, and Boba will be back with us as
soon as he's able to sin as he gets through
the quagmire, this temporary quagmire that he's stuck in. So yeah,
why don't we go on to do the members episode
right now? And of course people can be members by
going to the website, hitting that membership button and learning

(01:10:58):
all about it if they're into it, and if not,
that's cool too. We have casual listeners, I bet too,
but for the diehards, we got a membership section, so well,
I guess with that, then why don't we get out
of here? And thank you very much for listening. We
really do appreciate every single ear and every pair of
ears that is put on our podcast every single week.
And I mean otherwise we just be sitting around talking

(01:11:21):
about Bigfoot without you, by the way, which we would
be doing anyway. Again, everybody on this podcast, Bobo, Matt
and I are all lifers. We would be sitting around
having very similar conversations. The only difference is that you,
most important person on this call, would not be with us.
So thank you very much for being with us, and
until next week, keep a squatchy. Thanks for listening to

(01:11:46):
this week's episode of Bigfoot and Beyond. If you liked
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