Where are the Sasquatch Snow Tracks?
Posted by: Craig Woolheater on June 9th, 2013
Cryptomundian NMRNG asked the following question:
Since there’s no message board or forum on this site, I’ve been unable to post this inquiry in general, but I would appreciate it if someone who is attending this expedition could pose the following question to Dr. Meldrum (and feel to jump in below with your own opinions) and then follow up here with his answer:
Why are there virtually no sasquatch prints found in winter and for that matter, why has no one ever been able to track a sasquatch in the winter time, in the snow, and capture it on film, or capture it physically?
A decade ago, Loren Coleman opined that there are 2000 sasquatch in North America and more recent publications would suggest the figure is larger than that, potentially much larger. Figuring that most sasquatches live in a portion of the country where there is some significant snowfall in the winter (say at least 1500 of them live where there is snow on the ground 30 days a year), we have the following, figuring a 50″ stride length and a daily range of 8 miles per sasquatch (reasonable guesses): 1,267 footprints per mile x 8 miles/sasquatch day x 30 days of snow on the ground per year x 1500 sasquatches living in a location receiving snow = 456 million sasquatch prints in the snow every winter. Nearly half a billion sasquatch prints should be out there every winter. Even taking into consideration the short shelf life of a footprint in the snow from a variety of climatic factors, surely some of the millions of hunters out in the snow every November to January should have seen lots of footprints? Or any of the lesser numbers of snowshoe trekkers and backwoods skiers or snowmobilers? But very few people are reporting seeing these millions of footprints in the snow – why is that?
The easiest explanation I can think of is that hoaxsters are lazy and don’t get out of their comfy warm homes in the winter. And additionally, the most likely source of misidentification – bears – are laid up for the winter out of sight in their dens. But it really seems that the quantify of evidence proving the existence of sasquatch is too great to be explained adequately by the combination of hoaxes and misidentification, so there really should be large numbers of tracks found in the winter. When there’s no snow on the ground, a great number of tracks through rocky terrain, leaves, dry hard soil, etc… will never be seen and recognized, but that won’t be the case when there’s snow cover, where nearly all footprints will be visible.
No primate enters into anything close to a state of hibernation – unless most sasquatches have stockpiled a four-month supply of food in a hidden cave, they must be out and about every day to forage and hunt. Of course, no other primate has as nocturnal of habits as bigfoot is reputed to have, either. To me, this issue of lack of evidence of sasquatch in the wintertime is as much an argument against the existence of this cryptid as the lack of a body or skeleton.
So I would really appreciate it if someone who is going on this expedition or is otherwise in touch with Dr. Meldrum would pose this inquiry to him and post his response back here. I think his Sasquatch: Legend Meets Science was highly convincing and is the seminal book in this field, and I’d greatly like to learn his opinions on this quandary.
Co-founder of Cryptomundo in 2005.
I have appeared in or contributed to the following TV programs, documentaries and films:
OLN's Mysterious Encounters: "Caddo Critter", Southern Fried Bigfoot, Travel Channel's Weird Travels: "Bigfoot", History Channel's MonsterQuest: "Swamp Stalker", The Wild Man of the Navidad, Destination America's Monsters and Mysteries in America: Texas Terror - Lake Worth Monster, Animal Planet's Finding Bigfoot: Return to Boggy Creek and Beast of the Bayou.
NMRNG is mistaken that no other primates are either nocturnal or hibernate. The discovery of the fat-tailed dwarf lemur also shown that hibernation is not necessarily coupled to lower temperatures but more likely to availability of food.
A few lemur species are known to hibernate for a few to several months of the year; The fat-tailed dwarf lemur, Crossley’s dwarf lemur, and Sibree’s dwarf lemur.
There are several species of primates that are primarily nocturnal;
Night monkeys from the family Aotidae, all eight species are found in Central and South America.
Tarsiers have seven species, found in southeast Asia.
The Aye Ayes from Madagascar.
Dwarf and Mouse lemurs have five genera and twenty-one species.
Bushbabies and Galagos from Africa have three genera and eleven species.
Lorises and Pottos from Africa and Asia have six species.
While not apes, the order Primates does seem to have the capacity for either being nocturnal and/or hibernating.
It’s not a “quandary”, there are lots of bigfoot in snow track finds & photos. Look around the interenet, youtube etc…
BUT, melting and snow filling in tracks are reasons that not many are found…plus; people don’t go off trail or away from the ski slope too often in winter.
Summer, spring, fall have more hunters, hikers, fishermen, campers etc. traipsing around the woods…spring and fall can have snow but quickly melting is a problem for tracks.
A few points:
1) 1500 Bigfoot is an exaggeration, they are probably a lot more scarce than you think, maybe 200 or 300 at most;
2) They live in extremely remote areas, places where no hunters go regularly, and there could be hundreds of thousands of Sasquatch tracks there every winter, but no one to see them;
3) There are Sasquatch snow track in the record. The Bossburg tracks, for instance, they are not as plentiful as you hoped they’d be, however;
4) Hibernation? Is this some sort of joke? Who said Bigfoot hibernates? You shouldn’t even consider this possibility.
I hope I helped you, @NMRNG.
They migrate most sightings occur during months where other anjmals migrate.and high elevation sightings occur only in warmer months. Primates however will purposely hide their tracks especially if you start to pay particular attention to them. This is seen in the wild with chimps and in captivity. A lot is unknown for distance how is it that when a specific trait is learned and passed on to a hundred or so individuals all primates no matter where there found suddenly know and use this new trait .is it possible some will travel around the glob to teach this.
Well having not seen one and the incredible amount of whackos out there, I suppose a good reason is maybe they don’t exist? I’m not saying they do or don’t, but I’ve never seen one and there’s no amount of people who can tell me they’ve seen one will make me believe it. People, plain and simple, are not trustworthy. I may sound cynical but it’s the truth.
Found these. Not comprehensive, but something. I would speculate that Bigfoots could migrate to warmer climes in the winter, or that there are far fewer visitors to the remote places they inhabit during cold snowy weather because accessibility issues.
Bigfoot in snow:
Track way:
@NMRNG: Greetings, brother. Excellent question. However, some of the best footprint evidence has indeed been found in snow. To me, the most compelling of these are the Bossburg, Washington tracks, which actually seem to have been made by a crippled individual. That is, the right foot of this creature clearly shows signs of an extreme malformation. The great Dr Grover Krantz himself believed these casts to be on par with the Patterson/Gimlin film as definitive evidence of the creatures existence. Another episode leaps to mind: 1987, Dawson Creek, BC. A seasoned crew of oil riggers saw a huge sasquatch, and afterward marveled at the enormous tracks it made in the snow. My personal favorite snow story: 1950, Mt. St. Helens, near Ape Canyon, no less: a very well known skier named Jim Carter was participating in a climbing event along with about twenty other members. Carter said he would ski ahead and photograph the others as they skied down. That was the last anyone ever saw Carter alive. It was said afterwards that they found an empty film box where he loaded his camera, then, according to his ski tracks, he raced down the mountain haphazardly, “taking chances that no skier of his calibre would take unless something was terribly wrong or he was being pursued”, apparently jumping several gaping crevices before zooming of a sheer rock face. Nearly a hundred people searched for Carter; several said(off the record) that they felt they were being watched or experienced feelings of dread. But to the locals, there was no mystery; they felt “the apes got him”.
Not sure where this post is going as a cursory search on Google has many entries on Bigfoot tracks left in the snow…from all over the country. Surely, some of these are fabrications but just as in the rational that all Bigfoot tracks cannot be hoaxes, the same theorem applies here. As for winter time tracking, Bigfoot – if it exists, does not usually stroll exposed across the tundra so tracking one in a forested area in the winter has the same set of issues and obstacles as in the other seasons. A forest in winter is as much a hiding place as in any other season for animals that remain active in the cold months.
Also, snow is a very fickle weather phenomena and except for the very Northern latitudes of North America, where there would be less people looking as well, doesn’t last all that long. Snow tracks tend to not last very long and are quickly eroded by changing conditions. In effect – here today and gone tomorrow. The animal and human tracks left in fields near my area do not last long and after a single day can be unrecognizable. I would suggest that the best of tracks would be left in heavy snowfall areas in which less people would be wandering around hunting, hiking and investigating to actually come across them. Yet, Google search shows that Bigfoot snow tracks do indeed exist…since one cannot preserve a snow track to any reasonable degree, photographs are going to be the evidence here.
Some of the most compelling sasquatch evidence I have seen is snow tracks. Sometimes I think I am the only one reading here. No, I am not paid to do your research. I got where I am on this by reading.
READ! Many reports…despite many fewer people abroad in the woods to see them.
@ NMRNG: Some of the questions you raised were previously touched upon, at least tangentially, a couple years ago (See “The Survival of Sasquatch” and review the Comments section for a full discussion).
At that time I questioned how Sasquatch, at least in its northern range, could get through the caloric bottleneck imposed by winter. Bears, a seemingly good caloric/dietary/physiological analogue to Sasquatch, rely on hibernation; something, we both note, not known for great apes/hominids and so, presumably, Bigfoot.
Of the various solutions proposed, the only one resulting in fewer wintertime footprints was that of Sasquatch migrating to warmer climes to ensure its year-round dietary needs were met. Obviously, a lack of subjects in a given area will result in a corresponding lack of footprints, scat, etc. Then again, a population of large animals on a twice-yearly move are much more likely to be noticed as they are forced to pass by/through more populated areas – not to mention being more susceptible to run-ins with autos, trucks, trains, etc. Never got a real good answer to that…
However, assuming that Bigfoot stays-put for the winter, the apparent lack of footprints WAS mentioned, at least in passing, as being the result of fewer people, overall, getting out into the back country at that time of year. Of course, your argument would seem to – if not refute – then, at least, question that theory…
You raise an interesting conundrum and I, too, am interested in hearing what greater minds than mine have to say about the matter.
NMRNG–Your questions are very similar to those we hear here from militant sceptics. From having read your previous posts, I thought you were more objective. But maybe you are just having a bad day? Or perhaps you are a sarcastic sceptic following the religion or belief in scepticism. I’ll just take your questions at face value instead of ignoring them.
The questions you ask do not require a scientist to answer them, that is if you have an open and objective enough mind to accept the most simple and logical answers. And by that, I mean questions that infer that Sasquatch footprints and sightings are all hoaxes and that is why we do not see them in the winter, in the snow.
You asked: “Why are there virtually no sasquatch prints found in winter and for that matter, why has no one ever been able to track a sasquatch in the winter time, in the snow, and capture it on film, or capture it physically?”
If Bigfoot exists, there would be many reasons we do not see foot prints in the snow or winter time. First of all, perhaps Bigfoot is a migratory creature, a wanderer if you will, following the food sources where they occur. This would mean they were nomadic. Perhaps like many other hominid creatures, they prefer a warmer climate and hence, migrate to regions where there is no snow. And we have precedence of that fact. Almost all animals follow food sources. Even lesser intelligent species such as birds migrate south for the winter. Heck, many of my friends have summer homes and winter homes because they detest the cold. The reason you see no tracks may be for that reason. How many people visit Yosemite National Park in the summer as compared to the winter? Therein lies your answer!
Seriously, how many humans as a percentage, track Bigfoot in the easy weather summer months? Now how many of those are going to track them in the snow covered winter months? It’s a matter of statistics and percentages. The answer is very few. So even if BFs stay put in the 8 mile range which you propose, what human is going to be out there to see or hear them? Now multiply that by the area covered where tracks could be laid. You are talking about tens of thousands of acres per witness to look for prints. Good luck with that! Add to that, if Bigfoot are migratory, then the possibility of finding tracks in the winter months by a handful of human witnesses that have the skill, physical ability, and knowledge to perform winter snow tracking is next to nill. Hence, no one is out looking for tracks during that time.
Next you suggest that there are all these snowmobilers and skiers out there. So why are tracks not seen. Well, think about it a bit. Those that say that Bigfoot exists, say that Bigfoot avoids human contact. If that is true, they would not be out on a snowy hill with skiers. Nor would they be in an open snow covered field, making tracks to be found. They would avoid that at all costs. Even more true, is that they would avoid open fields and open ski hills. Not much cover or a ski slope or open field. And animal wanting to avoid detection would not be found there. And you would not find a Bigfoot there in winter time or summer time for the same reason. They are supposed tree huggers and tree peekers. How many snowmobilers do you see navigating through a forest laden with trees? You don’t! It’s not wise or safe! The same area where you would find skiers and snowmobilers is not the same terrain you would find a supposed Bigfoot. It’s just fact and common sense! In the Amazon, I did not look for monkeys on open plains. That is where they would not be. So it is with Bigfoot, even though he is not a monkey but a great ape, supposedly.
But let’s say that 10 trackers, or skiers or snowmobilers did see odd tracks in the snow. How many of those would come forward to report it? Probably none to maybe 1 in 10 people if that. The reasons may vary but some do not report tracks if discovered either to protect Bigfoot or for self protection from being made fun of. Thank you militant sceptics for those missing reports!
But let me give you the benefit of the doubt. Many of the areas which Bigfoot may inhabit if they exist, would be areas of land, the public is not privy to. That could be closed off areas of National Parks or Native American lands which you could not access. So even tracks existed, they would be areas which very few are privy to. Simple really! Where they would live is not a place you or I, or most humans have legal access to. Just the facts!
But what if Bigfoots live in caves, or have a quasi-type of hibernation system? Well, you would not see tracks would you? I mean if they hunker down in a cave when it snows, good luck with finding those tracks! Common sense really!
But let’s take your scenario that they are stationary creatures with a limited range of 8 miles or so. Let’s for the sake of argument that they are concentrated in snow covered areas where food is scarce and would be against the nature of many animals. And let’s also give you the benefit of the doubt, that some nutjob is out in freezing conditions in snow and actually actively looking for tracks. How much area do you think one person could cover doing that and take into account the thousands of acres they would need to cover. Really, you think you are going to find tracks? I know of hunters that track abundant game species and have difficulty finding a track in the snow. And they stay out for a couple of days. You think a couch potato could do that with more success and less time spent in the field with limited skills? Wow! Your questions seem a bit illogical and go against all common sense.
Then you make reference to no Bigfoot skeletons being found. Oh, I don’t know, let me give it a shot here–perhaps they bury their dead like Neandethals. No, that was too easy and sounded like a Bigfoot believer. I am objective. So even though that would be a true statement for a believer and dismissed by a militant sceptic, let me try more common ground. Did you read Loren Coleman’s articles or any of his books that answer this question? Most likely you did not, or you would not have asked such a ridiculous question. With that being said, I can not help you any further. You need to read and do some more research, if you are truly an objective type person.
But the inferences you made here and your questioning leads me to believe you are a militant sceptic or at least a provocative one. I could be wrong. Maybe you just woke up on the wrong side of the bed and were fuzzy. You asked those simple questions that can be answered by logic and common sense before your brain actually awoke. If so, I am sorry for pointing out the obvious to you. Maybe you are objective. However, your frame of reference seems very subjective to me today. Normally, I would put you in the camp of objectivity from reading your previous posts. I think I may have included you in that camp prematurely. You sound more like a passive-aggressive militant sceptic to me today.
Well, there are your multitude of answers based on common sense, empirical data and logic. See, you don’t need to bother Dr, Meldrum and waste his valuable time answering the obvious.
Pssst, by the way, there is this thing called “Google” if you want to do the homework yourself next time before asking ludicrous questions. Just a thought!
I always appreciate PhotoExpert’s learned, intelligent and well thought-out replies, even from far off Australia.
Photo Expert – well, it is something how people think you would “just have to have” evidence of something by now when no one believes anyone who finds it or follows up to investigate. The very situation so obvious to see on its face puts the lie to the presumption.
Insanity – exactly. When primates have it, ANY primate can have it, and evidence that it does should be taken seriously when it’s voluminous and consistent.
I’m willing to bet that the vast majority of people seeing sasquatch tracks don’t ever report them, snow or otherwise, if that is they recognize what they’re seeing. Given how winter light can obscure things on the snow surface, and the long stride length recorded for sasquatch tracks, most casual observers may have a chance to see no more than one or two tracks in a trackway…and miss those.
A BFRO team once reported finding an SUV sitting right on a trackway they’d found the previous day, with people playing…wait for it…right in the tracks.
Yes, the vigiliant masses of America should be turning these in by the boatload.
(I’m not gonna Google. I don’t like embarrassing people.)
Looks like I’ve been beaten to it. I was about to say the same as everyone else.
1. There are a number of alleged sasquatch snow tracks.
2. There are far fewer people out there in winter.
3. Even those hunters and snowshoe trekkers etc out there are less likely to go off the beaten track in winter.
That about covers it in a nutshell.
No sooner than that, one strikes me right upside da head!
Reading Is Fundamental.
The following has been just recently published by BFRO:
Reports posted since June 1, 2013
January 2013; Michigan, Cheboygan County (Class B) – Hunters come across an unknown track line with an incredible stride near Tower.
There’s also plenty of photos in the report.
Would that be a sample answer?
Seek and ye shall find…
Loren, bless him, has already addressed this, as has Craig. They believe, as do I, that the reason is BECA– USE THEY ARE MADE OF SNOW.
Stop yelling in my ear! KIDDING! But seriously, Loren… 2000 IN NORTH AMERICA? in TEN MILLION SQUARE MILES? There’s more than 2000 seemingly-human individuals selling GRIT MAGAZINE door-to-door in NA than that! 2000 hardly qualifies as a “sustainable population”; it’s about the number of Shona-speaking people in North America, and I bet they see grandma more often than 2000 Bigfoots in ten million square miles do!
My own number, which assumes a thriving population in many areas – and IMO there are signs of thrivation – is a minimum of 60,000 in North America, but in truth it could be 40,000 and it could be 200,000.
We don’t have enough information yet. We need proof of existence first. And, in my belief, there is already proof for those who will but see it.
And the rest? I hope they NEVER see it.
Photo-E:
“If Bigfoot exists, there would be many reasons we do not see foot prints in the snow or winter time.”
DUDE; you are SO SWEET to this guy, and HE’S DONE NOTHING TO EARN IT! The reason his ilk has never seen any Bigfoot tracks in snow is the distance between real-world creatures and his ivory-towered redoubt! He didn’t even OFFER to buy you a drink, much less so do…
“Militant skeptics” is good; I’ve always referred to them as “professional debunkers”, but perhaps this one is an unpaid intern, who knows? Is the Amazing Randi a ROLE MODEL to such people? My god.
NMRNG
Thank you for bringing up such a pertinent question and kudos for presenting it such an objective manner.
Yes, there are reports and photographs of alleged bigfoot prints in snow. And even if it existed, 1500 is an extremely high population guesstimate. Still your question remains a valid one. Given the difference between snow and soil the difference between the number alleged bigfoot prints in snow and in soil is perplexing.
And disturbing.
Insanity wrote: “While not apes, the order Primates does seem to have the capacity for either being nocturnal and/or hibernating.”
Apes separated from all the monkey lineages at least 28 million years ago. ‘Nuff said. That bigfoot is alleged to be nocturnal is definitely a zoological red flag.
Again, thanks NMRNG for a thought provoking piece.
DWA–Exactly! Exactly my friend! I know we both have been advocates of “eyewitnesses and their testimony” being important. Of course you led the charge on that subject and I just followed like a good soldier. But we both continually bring up that subject. You would think people would appreciate that. Militant sceptics always bash eyewitness testimony but on certain occassions, they ask where are the eyewitnesses? They can’t have it both ways. But that is the way they are because of their religion–their belief in scepticism at all costs. They want it both ways but they are not going to get it both ways. Because there are always people here to put them in their place. Like me, you, mystery_man, hoodoorocket, Goodfoot, springheeledjack and so many other intelligent and objective individuals. Sorry if I left someone out. There are so many now!
Goodfoot–Hey buddy! Good to see you posting regularly! I am enjoying your posts. Was I? Was I sweet to this guy? Sorry about that! I must be getting soft in my old age. LOL You are correct sir! Goodfoot, I have definitely come to respect you. You are right. At times, I am hard on people. I think I gave you a hard time once. But seriously, it was the way you handled the criticism and your gentlemanly reply, that earned you my respect. I can tell you, there are only a couple of people at this board that have my true and utmost respect. And you sir, are one of those people. I reread my post. Yes, I was gentle with him. I am getting soft. I started out easy, kind of baiting him into a debate and giving him the benefit of the doubt. But I picked up the intensity later in my post. I gave him backhanded complements. And I ended up my post by inferring he was a militant sceptic. It is not how you start but how you finish. I should have just gone for the jugular as I usually do and as you implied. What is wrong with me! Yep, I think I am getting soft. LOL
Anyway, Goodfoot, I will try to toughen up a bit, back to my old standards. I just think he would have cracked if he got the all out PhotoExpert reply. So I kind of took it easy on him, in hopes that he would come back and post. But he is not as big a man as you were. I kind of hit you with both barrels one time and you came back. You are tough! And for that, I respect you. And your posting lately has been great! Nix that! Your posting lately has been outstanding!!! Goodfoot, thanks man for the witty post and complement. I am glad you liked the “militant sceptic” tag. Feel free to use it. And I like the “professional debunkers” terminology you use. May I use it occassionally? Feel free to use militant sceptic as long as I can use professional debunker. They are two different names to describe the same individuals.
Goodfoot, we are on the same page buddy. Keep up the outstanding work! Between you and DWA, maybe I can take a break and relax a bit.See you brother!
David-Australia–Thank you so much! I really appreciate that. First let me say, G-day friend! LOL Yes, I am a fan of Australia. In fact, I even owned sugar gliders, here in the states. But thank you for the complement. It is greatly appreciated!
The only problem is, with many posters giving me a thumbs up on my posting, I feel like I am held to a higher standard. I don’t want to disappoint people, especially those in other countries, with a sub-par post. So I am always cognizant of that when I am posting. But it brings me joy to know that you and others enjoy reading them. I recently had one fan, hoodoorocket, post about how much they enjoyed my posting. And he or she, upped my game a bit. You have now done the same.
Can you do me a favor though? If you really enjoyed my postings, please post more frequently! I would love to read some of yours. It’s like getting to know someone from another country through their postings. So please, post more often! And don’t worry about someone coming in and giving you a hard time. I have your back my Australian friend! Feel free to post without hesitation. If they get smart with you or start crap with you, I will be all over them! Because if they start crap with you, they just started crap with me! Even if I disagree with your post, I will still back you up. They will wish they never started with you. Oh, believe me, I have had a few try me a couple of times. But after I get done with them, they stop posting altogether. Some are too stupid, and continue to take me on. It gets to a point where I even feel bad for beating them up verbally and stop myself, for the sake of my fellow man. LOL
Anyway David-Australia, good to see you here at Cryptomundo and I look forward to your future postings here. I will be watching and ready to help if you need me!
corrick, I believe you are thinking of the divergence between the Old World monkeys and apes, which was about 25mya, but there were many divergences in the primate line.
Primates are split into two suborders; Strepsirrhini which contains the lemurs, aye-ayes, lorisids, and galagos. The suborder Haplorhini contains the tarsirs, New World and Old World monkeys and apes. The split between the Stepsirrhini and Haplorhini is thought to have occurred some 63mya.
The parvorder Platyrrhini (New World monkeys) split off some 40 mya from the rest of the primates, leaving the parvorder Catarrhini in the Old World, which then split into monkeys and apes some 25 mya. Within the Platyrrhini there are night monkeys or Aotidae.
As there are nocturnal species in both suborders, either they evolved the capacity independently or it was a common trait already within the primate line some 63mya and they just retained it.
Many animals do not fit into the traditional definitions of being strictly diurnal, nocturnal or crepuscular (dusk and dawn activity). In fact particularly among primates, species are classified as cathemeral, in which their activity is sporadic between day and/or night depending on the availability of food, predation pressure, and temperature. Cathemeral has been defined as: The activity of an organism may be regarded as cathemeral when it is distributed approximately evenly throughout the 24 hour of the daily cycle, or when significant amounts of activity, particularly feeding and/or traveling, occur within both, the light and dark portions of that cycle.
Corrick,
Its not perplexing. I’m guessing you haven’t read the answers given to NMRNG’s ponderings.
By the way, bigfoot can’t be nocturnal. There are way too many day sightings for this to be the case.
corrick:
“Apes separated from all the monkey lineages at least 28 million years ago. ‘Nuff said. That bigfoot is alleged to be nocturnal is definitely a zoological red flag.”
Nope, not even close.
(A brief note here. “Red flag” is one of the most misused terms I have ever seen, and that is saying much. “Red flag” means STOP! This can’t be taken seriously.” No way are we talking about that here; many witnesses of these animals operating at night say so. Them over anyone who disagrees and can show only belief, and no evidence, as the basis.)
We don’t know anywhere near enough about the fossil record for primates to make such a presumption. “All the monkey lineages” includes, well, dorocoulis, also called – for good reason – NIGHT MONKEYS.
And anyone who knows anything about convergent evolution (bats and birds, fish and dolphins, anyone?) knows that things like this evolve when they evolve. It is believed that the eye itself evolved – separately – as many as 40, that is for-TY, times. Lots of NA animals have effective night vision. How many of them are close relatives of primates?
Hmmmmmmmmmmmmm….?
The trouble with trying to predict the behaviour of any unclassified species is, well, you are totally limited to what you can glean from fleeting observation, and without the hard data that comes from dissection or controlled study.
I feel fairly certain a Sasquatch can’t fly or do long division, but other than that, I really don’t know too much about what they prefer to do with their time.
I agree though, it seems fairly obvious to anyone who spends more than a minute researching the point that they do walk in snow at times. Jeez. Do the work.
Quite the opposite, there’s a lot of this kind of evidence out there witnessed by people who are highly unlikely to be fooled by hoaxsters. In “Abominable Snowmen”, Ivan Sanderson mentions Sherpas following a trackway and marveling at the mountaineering skill of whatever created it. He also reports Sherpas finding dwellings, excrement and other physical signs in areas frequented by the “meh teh”. Also in that vein, one of my favorites, DWA brought this sighting report to my attention sometime back.
Evso:
“They migrate most sightings occur during months where other anjmals migrate.and high elevation sightings occur only in warmer months.”
You are SO full of misinformation. I mean crap. There are actually MORE high-altitude sightings in winter months, despite an (assumed) lower number of humans there to see ’em.
They seem to actually LIKE cold weather.
Which is why I’m assigning YOU to go look for some this next winter. Above 8000 feet. Don’t forget the trail cams!
Thing is as well, tracks in snow are ever changing. One minute they might be there, the next minute a snow flurry might come along and cover them or alter them and you can’t even see what they once were. Perhaps there ARE a lot more snow tracks than we think but that they don’t stay around looking like bigfoot tracks for very long and so any passer by might not find them of too much interest and write them off as human or other animal?
Alamo: SHAME ON ME. I’d utterly forgotten that one!
If nothing those guys said is worth a thing, our national defense is pretty much nonexistent, money notwithstanding, bet on that.
Then there is this one.
I just want somebody to tell me what left those. And no, your guess isn’t good enough.
Kopite:
This “argument” being presented by NMRNG doesn’t take into account either your point or anything else about snow, and tracks.
Many steps will not leave a track; many steps will not leave one a passerby, usually hours to days later, will recognize, or think much about; not many steps will even be seen by a human until the trackway is filled in or melts; the vast majority of humans, count on it, won’t report their finds because they can’t make sense of it; don’t think they will be believed; or don’t know where to report…
Bear tend to sleep away the winter. Still, I have encountered bear tracks on only one occasion that weren’t in snow. And total track finds, hiking through bear country in the vast majority of hikes of my life, barely touch double figures if that. I didn’t bother to count but if I had it would have been easy; one page of a notebook would do it.
My most recent find? Missed it on the way up. Caught it, by chance, on the way down.
Now how many did I miss and never see again either because I missed them both ways or never retraced my steps?
The implications for anyone who wants to jump to conclusions on this matter should be quite clear.
Yep, totally with you DWA.
Not that anyone will ever read this, but it’s a pleasure to reply.
Responding to Insanity’s post about primate nocturnal activity
I wrote: “Apes separated from all the monkey lineages at least 28 million years ago. ‘Nuff said. That bigfoot is alleged to be nocturnal is definitely a zoological red flag.”
Insanity responded: corrick, I believe you are thinking of the divergence between the Old World monkeys and apes, which was about 25mya, but there were many divergences in the primate line.
Excuse me Insanity, but EVERY example you cited concerning nocturnal primate activity involves animal lineages that split from apes at least 25 mya. Have you no concept of time? Additionally, no ape species from that last ape/monkey split has been thought to be diurnal, nocturnal, crepuscular or “cathemeral.”
Ergo anyone who believes bigfoot is related to the ape lineage has not one shred of proven scientific evidence to support any argument for bigfoot having nocturnal behavior. Zero. And eyewitness testimony does not constitute proof in science, btw. Naturally, all bets are off, Insanity, if you believe bigfoot is a gigantic tarsier, monkey or lemur.
I’m late in on this one but two things:
1) most people out in the wilderness are not keeping an eye out for Bigfoot or tracks. Despite shows like Finding Bigfoot and a host of others, Bigfoot is not at the forefront in people’s minds when they’re hiking, snowmobiling or hunting.
2) most people are not overly observant. 🙂
To Photo Expert.
I’m not sure why you referred to the poster as a possible militant skeptic. When I read the post I read it as a healthy exercise in deduction and inference and he/she wanted to know what others thought. Perhaps the poster has a casual interest and is not going to spend several hours researching. He did come here asking for information and opinions, and that sparked a very interesting read for me. There were several things I didn’t consider too. Having a wide range of insights/perspectives is always a learning experience.
There was nothing I found in the original post that was derogatory or insulting to the subject matter to suggest a “militant skeptic” view.
Just an observation.
Please don’t decimate me with your sardonic wit, as my fragile ego will surely crack and shatter into irreparable shards. 😛
So it all boils down to:
If Bigfoot walks in the forest, and nobody is there to see it, does it make a print?
😛
corrick:
“Excuse me Insanity, but EVERY example you cited concerning nocturnal primate activity involves animal lineages that split from apes at least 25 mya. Have you no concept of time? Additionally, no ape species from that last ape/monkey split has been thought to be diurnal, nocturnal, crepuscular or “cathemeral.” ”
Well, actually, he has plenty. What science doesn’t have are two things (at least):
1. Evidence for approximately 95% of extinct primates;
2. Any evidence at all that it accepts regarding sasquatch, and thus no way to make judgments on alleged attributes reported by witnesses.
There is no logical reason this animal can’t have night adaptations. That’s like saying whales can’t have teeth because baleen whales don’t. One may not be able to assume it. But when many people are reporting it – one reason for nocturnal allegations is many sightings at night when people tend to be thinner on the ground – one can make a putative presumption that it can be expected if this is real. Which is, of course, up to science to determine.
“Ergo anyone who believes bigfoot is related to the ape lineage has not one shred of proven scientific evidence to support any argument for bigfoot having nocturnal behavior. Zero. And eyewitness testimony does not constitute proof in science, btw. Naturally, all bets are off, Insanity, if you believe bigfoot is a gigantic tarsier, monkey or lemur.”
There wasn’t one shred of proven scientific evidence for saola or coelacanth either. Then they were confirmed.
Were they not real before?
Scientific progress requires eyewitness testimony. Unless alll scientists are blind, a difficult case, I believe, to make. That it can’t be regarded as proof is, really, irrelevant. It’s essential to proof, period.
Joxman2k–Don’t worry, I will not bury you with my sardonic wit. Psst, what is sardonic wit? LOL I will let you be as I have become soft in my old age. But I will attempt to answer your question because I feel it is an honest one and that you were truly just making an observation.
I am assuming you are relatively new to Cryptomundo. So just to let you know, I have been here a long time. And I do read every single post here. Over time, I get to know the posters by what they post and how they post. I can spot a militant sceptic a mile away, after reading several of their posts over time. A pattern always imerges that I can identify. I’m not going to tell you each and every detail as they will become weary. And I enjoy calling them out as they try to hide their true beliefs. But I will give you some of my indicators that helps me identify them.
I took note of the poster NMRNG after a couple of his or her posts. You have to have a nose for this kind of stuff. His first couple of posts were harmless enough. In fact, they were objective. No harm, no foul! Almost every new poster has harmless first posts as they test the waters. But a militant sceptic, as soon as they get use to the temperature of the water, they will start posting with this passive-aggressive style. Quickly it escalates to acting like they want to be a believer but just have a few more innocent questions. When I see those questions, following the pattern I previously laid out for you, I can identify that poster as a probable militant sceptic. NMRNG began to follow that pattern. I immediately call them out when I see them, to alert others, as not to be fooled by this charade. There is this sarcasm that militant sceptics can not control and it eeks out from their pores, unintentionally. Just enough for me to get a whiff and identify them as a probable militant sceptic. Then I take that same water that they have gotten use to and a hold their heads under it for a while as I call them out. I guess you can tell from all the others in various threads, agreeing and rooting me on for doing so, that it is second nature for me and appreciated by most posters here. Well, appreciated by most posters just not the militant sceptics I drown in what they thought was comfortable waters to proceed with their game.
So that is what I did. To the layman, or newbie, such as yourself, it looks like I came out of left field and starting verbally berating the poster. I assure you that is not the case. See, unlike you or others, you never noticed NMRNG’s first posts. You were not following him as I have followed him. And since you are probably a newbie or at least a newbie to posting here, you would not know that. That is why I led off easy with him, copying his passive aggressive behavior and giving him a dose of his own medicine until I could decide if I needed to hold his head under the water. But I am not totally convinced at this point that he is a militant sceptic. As I stated in my post, he could just be having a bad day and deviated from his normal posting style. A few more indicators need to pop up for me before I actually declare him a militant sceptic.
But I catch them all the time. And when I do, I call them out immediately. I have not got one incorrectly pegged yet! How’s that for a track record? I let that speak for itself.
Now, let me make a prediction, based on the past behavior of militant sceptics. They will do one of several things. The smart ones will never reply to my post. They realize the gig is up and they can not hide their religion and belief in scepticism. And you can see that NMRNG never replied directly to my post. The dumber ones, will act as if they did not read my post and come back innocently in another thread on a new topic and post some benign crap, as not to draw attention to themselves. I will engage them even though the post is benign because I know their modus operandi. And the really smart ones, will never post again because they know I will remember their name and call them out for what they are. The most stubborn and stupid ones will engage me and then it is time for me to drown them and put them out of their misery.
So the poster was not asking innocent questions in my honest assessment. The pattern of behavior followed the normal course I would expect it to follow for a militant sceptic. And I wasted no time in calling him out immediately and pointing out his deviation in posting style and the questions he asked. That is why you see Goodfoot and DWA agreeing with my posting and Goodfoot making the comment about how I was SWEET to this guy. Because regular posters here know, I was calling him out for what they saw him as too–as a probable militant sceptic.
Granted, I did not call him a militant sceptic. I simply implied that he might be having a bad day and from his earlier posts, he seemed to be objective. Time will ultimately tell. I will be here to witness that pattern or if he returns to the camp of objectivity where he began his posting.
But do not worry Joxman2k, as you see, I did not decimate you. I could tell you were just making an observation from a more naive frame of reference. Not a problem! Hopefully, I explained myself well enough to see where I am coming from. Welcome to Cryptomundo! Thank you for questioning me directly and speaking your mind. I definitely respect that and admire that in a person. And I look forward to seeing your future postings here!
corrick,
I am well aware that the species mentioned diverged prior to the Old World monkey and ape divergence.
The point behind it is that with those nocturnal species that diverged early in primate evolution, such as the prosimians, either independently evolved nocturnality or that this trait was retained from the earlier nocturnal primate species. It was not to suggest that Sasquatch could be a descendent from any of them.
While a nocturnal lifestyle is associated with the ‘primitive’ primates like prosimians, with the night monkeys, being the only nocturnal New World monkey, they are thought to have re-evolved nocturnality from diurnal ancestors. We really do not know which lifestyle evolved first among primates, diurnality or nocturnality, and more recent thought is that the earliest primates may have been diurnal and later evolved nocturnality.
The only real evolutionary changes needed to adopt a nocturnal lifestyle are the eyes. How long did it take for night monkeys to evolve these changes? We really do not know as South America has an extremely short primate fossil record with only 10 species described, and none of the current living species have any representation in the South American fossil record.
It seems certain that nocturnality evolved several times in primate history, and either had re-evolved independently throughout history or was retained from previous nocturnal ancestors. I don’t think we really know what the case is with the known living nocturnal species with a possible exception of the night monkeys.
As night monkeys seem certainly capable of re-evolving nocturnality from diurnal ancestors, what is there to prevent the same occurring for an ape species? Can we eliminate the possibility of an ape species evolving a nocturnal lifestyle just simply on the basis that it would be a contrast from the other living apes, while such a contrast already exists with the night monkeys and New World monkeys? If Sasquatch does exist, and turns out to be the only primarily nocturnal ape, would it really be greater contrast than the only nocturnal New World monkey?
“Additionally, no ape species from that last ape/monkey split has been thought to be diurnal, nocturnal, crepuscular or “cathemeral.””
I think this shows that either you are unfamiliar with the terms, didn’t bother to look them up or simply made a mistake as diurnal describes activity during the day, which is the primary lifestyle of many apes. Even so, as I mentioned previously regarding animals being strictly diurnal or nocturnal, gorillas and chimpanzees are known to have some activity at night.
Insanity:
Um, pardon me. What was that again?
“How long did it take for night monkeys to evolve these changes? We really do not know as South America has an extremely short primate fossil record with only 10 species described, and none of the current living species have any representation in the South American fossil record.”
Oh.
Behold the perils of using fossil evidence as one’s argument against living species being reported by current people. If people are saying that something is alive, and nocturnal, and oh by the way making scads of reported – and that’s just reported – tracks in snow, did we mention that?, then it’s irrelevant whether we have fossil evidence of this alleged animal, for two reasons: (1) dammit, if it’s real it’s as real as any SA monkey, and we see the case with them, right? and (2) how can you use fossil evidence as your case when no specimen of the alleged animal has been examined yet to ascertain the very characters that allow that determination?
I keep asking bigfoot skeptics to be logical. But it’s an uphill slog.
I don’t believe I was using fossil evidence in any way against a living species.
Really I was pondering how long it may take a nocturnal primate species to evolve from a diurnal species.
If the night monkeys did evolve from diurnal ancestors as thought, I was asking the question as to how long it may have taken them to do so. Unfortunately we do not know the answer as the Aotus genus does not appear in South America’s fossil record. They may have evolved 5mya, 10mya or 20mya or more, we don’t know. The New World monkey divergence occurred some 40mya, and if we had some fossils of Aotus that were dated to 30mya, then we could reasonably say it took, for at least the Aotus genus, ~10million years to evolve to a nocturnality lifestyle. However, as there is no current fossil record of them, we do not know.
I was not stating in any fashion that the lack of fossil evidence discredits the possible existence of Sasquatch or any living species. The fossil record is fickle and many living species do not appear in the record, and it in reality it contains such a small fraction of a percent of all the species throughout history. Using the fossil record in any way to predict or state what species could be alive today is flawed.
My apologies. I forgot to delete diurnal when I cut and pasted from your previous comment.
Insanity, last comment. Your prime example of a nocturnal primate is a New World monkey. That primate line split not just from apes but also from all the Old World monkeys like baboons over 40mya which was when grasses first appeared on earth. Again, do you have no concept of time? Or of probability?
Again, if you believe bigfoot is real and that it is part of the ape lineage, all anecdotes and eyewitness testimony should be taken with a huge caveat emptor.
“gorillas and chimpanzees are known to have some activity at night.”
Well I get up in the middle of the night to piss. So do I also count as a nocturnal animal?
Insanity:
The point I was making was a general point about a skeptical tendency I find objectionable, for which you highlighted a handy riposte. Maybe I should have explicitly stated that, but dealing with bigfoot skeptics has made me a bit of a smart aleck.
I agree with you. There is no logical reason to believe that sasquatch aren’t nocturnal if first, a high percentage of sightings are at night and second, many if not most of those witnesses are noting an adaptation of nocturnal animals that some primates share. (And of course many many people see them, period; their descriptions are ridiculously consistent for something that isn’t real; they leave tracks for which no other natural or artificial agent can be reasonably postulated, etc. etc. etc. etc.)
Too many people base assumptions about primates on a fossil record that is 5 percent complete. The dates at which we estimate divergence of primate lineage are what smart bookmakers call, correctly, “guesses.”
corrick,
I am not sure as to your focus on my ‘concept of time’, could you elaborate?
DWA,
No worries, for a moment thought you were being a smart aleck at me.
Some figures I’ve seen suggest there are a total of about 250,000 species represented in the fossil record, or less than 5% of the number of known living species and far less than 1% of all the species that have likely lived throughout history.
Last time I counted, the South American monkeys has 5 families, 19 genera and some 140 species plus another 70 subspecies. Of those, only 2 of the living families are represented in the fossil record and while none of the living genera or species are represented.
Wow. I guess I picked a bad time to take a 5-week break from visiting this site – I’ve had a very busy summer and have had little time for this website. I also had no clue that my inquiry would get posted here as a topic for discussion, otherwise I would have participated when it first came out. Sorry to say this PhotoExpert, but your exceedingly sharp and perceptive wit and intellect did not drive me from the site – having a very full work, family, and personal life, with two lengthy vacations away from the internet thus far this summer, were what kept me from returning to this website and becoming aware of this comment thread (also, I confess, Finding Bigfoot is in the off-season, so out of sight, out of mind). Those factors are what prevented me from responding. In fact, ignorant of this thread’s existence at that time, I posted something about the lack of winter evidence in the Where’s the Poop!? article earlier today.
Let me assure every person who got up in arms about my inquiry, as well as my participation in this website, that I am not a troll, have never trolled on any website, and I’m terribly sorry to say this, but I’m not even the skeptic, militant or otherwise, that I have been characterized to be. I think that the combination of Native American traditions, the several reports from the late 18th and 19th centuries newspapers of sightings and even shootings of a “Wildman” like monster, the thousands of eyewitness sightings, the hundreds of footprint sightings, plus the recent scientific analysis of the PG film concluding the technology did not exist in 1967 to do such a hoaxed film, all leave me much more convinced than not that there is a large bipedal ape running around North America. I do not believe that all of the evidence can be adequately explained by either misidentification or hoaxers – the quantity of the former seems to exceed the numbers of the latter. Did all of you scoffing at me notice the following sentence in my initial inquiry: “But it really seems that the quantify of evidence proving the existence of sasquatch is too great to be explained adequately by the combination of hoaxes and misidentification”? Sorry, but I really hate it when people do a lazy, half-*ssed job of reading what I wrote and then misinterpret and mischaracterize my words.
So I wouldn’t call myself a skeptic, but I’m no gullible “true believer” either. I do not accept blindly that which is not adequately substantiated. I like to see a theory defended with proof and I like to see both the pros and the cons candidly addressed. Unfortunately, I would have to say that the majority of those who are involved in the study of bigfoot (as careers out in the field or from the amateur’s armchair or something in between) are vocal about the positive proof and tend to silently avoid addressing questions about the non-existence of the beast. Evidence should be questioned. Lack of evidence should be addressed – that is the process of proving anything in the scientific and legal communities. Evidence should be set forth with supporting citations. Unfortunately we don’t have that anywhere that I’ve seen in my readings in the bigfoot community. Even Meldrum’s excellent Sasquatch: Legend Meets Science does not contain a single footnote or endnote providing a source for his assertions and that lowers Dr. Jeff’s credibility somewhat in my eyes; the book is clearly intended for those outside of the scientific community. Other books, such as Loren Coleman’s Bigfoot! are much worse and I found that Coleman takes serious efforts to avoid addressing any issues that call into question his assertions or that cast a doubtful light on any of the various stories and accounts he included in that book. Not to mention Bobo Fay, who will believe virtually any story whatsoever and pronounce, “Yep, I have no doubt in my mind – he saw a squatch!”
So I’m an exacting person who wants to see proof and I want to see both the pros and the cons addressed for whatever proof of a cryptid’s existence is submitted. I suppose I am also less tolerant than most of the questionable accounts and the shoddy I’ll-report-anything-no-matter-how-implausible style of investigating and writing about cryptids that one too frequently finds in this field. When wackos and crackpots are featured and given some credence, it has a negative impact on the study as a whole, because those who are not knowledgeable or who are inclined to doubt will make snap judgments that the entire field of cryptozoology is nothing but frauds, fools, and fairy tales. That is why I have come down harshly on this site and elsewhere against known hoaxers such as Rick Dyer and against gullible individuals like Christopher Noel who believe in Dyer and in catlady hermits who claim to talk telepathically with her neighboring sasquatch friend or anyone talking about a bigfoot-UFO connection. Giving any weight or attention to the weak and farfetched accounts has a negative impact on the study as a whole. In one of the television specials on bigfoot, the producers interviewed a crusty old graybearded anthropology professor from the University of Chicago who commented vaguely about how the PG film was an obvious hoax but had no specifics to support his sneers of contempt. Giving credence to the implausible claims only feeds fuel to the fires of such skeptical old goats.
So the reason I posted the inquiry about wintertime bigfoot proof isn’t to be a horse’s *ss or make fun of anyone, it was to address a serious lack of proof in the written literature (or at least from what I’ve so far read) about the issue of what happens to sasquatch in the winter and why aren’t we seeing more proof of it then, when most footsteps will leave a visible record, rather than the minority of them we occasionally find in the non-snowy ground. If I recall correctly, both Meldrum and Coleman do discuss the “crippled” Bossburg tracks in the snow, but neither of them mention any other proof of footprints in the snow and neither of them discuss what exactly they believe our secretive primate cousins do during the period between fall and springtime. Nor have any of the Finding Bigfoot episodes or any of the other television shows of greater or lesser scientific or entertainment focuses shown proof of sasquatch in the winter, and I’ve seen most of those shows.
I am not familiar with specifics of reports on the websites of the BFRO or other similar organizations, so I do appreciate the link to the prints this winter in Michigan. As for videos on Youtube, well, one could spend a lifetime looking at nothing other than hoaxed videos on that site – it’s too hard to separate out the wheat from the much more numerous chaff produced by the attention-seeking dolts who unfortunately seem to have large populations on that website. So when I say that there’s little proof of bigfoot in the winter, I’m talking primarily about the printed media on the topic.
A number of the people who have addressed my questions have done little other than repeat the points I already conceded in my initial inquiry. I’ll address some other points and issues, though.
– I believe I spoke erroneously when referring to nocturnal and hibernating primates – I really meant to say apes, not just all primates.
– It seems that most people who are talking about diminished numbers of people in the outdoors during the wintertime really don’t understand that there are two categories of outdoors people: sporty naturalists (i.e. those who like to hike, bike, canoe, backpack, etc…) and hunters. When I lived on the East Coast I had no good idea of how big of a sport hunting was and how many millions of people are outside hunting every late fall and winter in the less densely populates states, until I moved to the upper Midwest nearly two decades ago. So while the numbers in the remote areas of sporty naturalists wearing their latest North Face and Marmot gear from REI are down in the colder months, the numbers of hunters wearing RealTree camo from Cabelas is up very high. Hunters do like to get out beyond the close, local areas. And unlike a typical hiker/backpacker, for the 95+% of hunters who are serious about their sport and who aren’t nipping from a hip flask, they ARE looking at tracks on the ground, looking very carefully at them, trying to spot those larger ones that might indicate a big buck, or multiple human tracks that might indicate that an area has already been hunted and the game spooked.
– Although people aren’t going into the really high country in the winter, it makes sense that there aren’t any sasquatches there, either, since there are no food sources for them. There’s little or no vegetation under the deep mountain snow, most of the smaller animals will be under the snow as well, and their larger prey have all gone down to the lower elevations where they can find more vegetation, bark, etc… to eat. In any event, if one takes seriously the claims of the habituator element of sasquatch believers, there are plenty of sasquatches roaming around the not-so-remote countryside.
– When I was talking about skiers, I obviously wasn’t talking about downhill skiers. What an asinine suggestion – I clearly was not referring to the lack of bigfoot sightings at Aspen or Sun Valley. I was talking about cross country and back country skiers (and snowshoers, too). In fact, if whoever came up with that comment about ski resorts had bothered to read what I wrote, he/she would have seen that I expressly said “backwoods skiers.”
– As to the figures I used in my guestimate, well, I took the population of 2,000 from Coleman’s book Bigfoot! and that seemed to me, as a layperson at least, to be the very smallest possible number that would sustain a breeding population of a large mammal that has such a widespread range. No one has any clue of how many sasquatches there may or may not be out there in the wild – we’ve had people responding to my numbers here as both significantly too low and significantly too high. If that 2,000 figure is low by even a factor of 50%, well, that just means that there probably a billion footprints out there every winter, not half a billion. So even with all of the winds shifting, warm days melting, subsequent snowstorms, etc…, there still should be a very large quantity of footprints out and about in the woods.
– I can see a large, intelligent primate sticking to harder ground and hopping from rock to rock to avoid leaving tracks during the warmer months. But if there’s a foot of snow on the ground, what then? Sorry, but I don’t buy the idea of bigfoot walking backwards all winter long wiping out his tracks with a pine bough.
So to conclude, my inquiry was a serious one addressing a topic that I’ve not seen mentioned here or elsewhere. I thank Craig for posting it here and I only wish he had sent me a PM or e-mail letting me know about it, so that I didn’t end up showing up weeks late, seemingly a troll who abandoned the website after stirring up the pot a bit. I also thank Joxman and the several others who took me seriously rather than do that thing that website old-timers seem to like to do, disparage and pound on the newbie. I’m no authority on all the sasquatch materials available online (and I haven’t read all the books, either) and I do appreciate the links and suggestions. I did end up sending Jeff Meldrum an e-mail to his ISU e-mail address setting forth almost verbatim all of the points I made above and he never responded. Perhaps that can be explained by the fact that he certainly receives more e-mails than he can respond to and address. Or maybe he just didn’t have an answer.
It seems to me, though, that the best time of year to obtain proof of sasquatch would be the winter time, when the potential exists to track a bigfoot all the way back to its lair or den – a repeat sleeping spot should have plentiful hair samples available to obtain that credible DNA proof that so far seems to have escaped researchers. And it seems to me that this idea hasn’t occurred to those who actually are involved out in the field or if it has, they aren’t saying much about it.
P.S. PhotoExpert, I suggest you find your local EENT specialist and get that highly adapted nose of yours, the one you boasted about in so many paragraphs above, checked out, as its vaunted sensitivity and skills seem to be completely on the fritz. Quite frankly, I don’t think I’ve ever been as wrong about anything before as your lengthy diatribe was about me. Perhaps someone out there can suggest a suitable poultry sauce for you to have to accompany the big dish of crow upon which you will be feasting.
Interesting. After nearly two weeks, no one has bothered to respond. Surely at least a few people subscribed to this thread? It’s hard to believe that everyone who participated at length here was following the thread only as long as it was on the website’s front or second page.
I checked out the three videos posted above. The first two were essentially worthless because of lack of resolution and clarity – the first looked to me to be a guy-in-a-gorilla-suit hoax and the second likely showed a person goofing around in the snow on top of the hill. Most of the bigfoot in the snow videos have to be hoaxes because there’s no follow-up. Every genuine bigfoot captured on video would be followed up by the videographer walking up to the site of the video capture and getting close-ups of the footprints. None of those videos do that. The third video, that of the bigfoot trackway in the deep snow of northern Minnesota was much more convincing. The “I can’t walk without dragging my feet through this deep snow” commentary and demonstration could have been exaggerated and it’s possible the tracks were by someone wearing smaller snowshoes, but the stride length did appear to be longer than what a person could typically produce in deep snow, without drag marks through the snow from one footprint to the next.
Speaking of what was shown in that video, PhotoExpert, did you happen to watch that bigfoot trackway video? What did you see in the background? Two things: woods, and snowmobiles. The people in the video saw the tracks while out snowmobiling through the woods. I don’t have the specific figures for what portion of snowmobile trails are in the open versus through the woods, but I would hazard a conservative guess that at least 30% of snowmobile trails are in the woods or immediately alongside wooded areas and it could easily be double that figure based on the hundreds of miles of snowmobile trails I’ve seen from roads or highways in Wisconsin and in Minnesota or that I’ve hiked in the summer and fall that are marked with snowmobile signs for the winter. There are over 25,000 miles of snowmobile trails in my state of Wisconsin alone, so you’ve got to figure that with the other northern states and pretty much all of Canada combined, there has to be more than a HUNDRED THOUSAND miles of snowmobile trails through the woods of North America. So yes, snowmobilers are out in bigfoot habitat.
Also, while I’ve never been to Yosemite in the winter, I have been to Yellowstone in late December and there were hundreds of tourists there, skiing, snowmobiling, taking snow cat tours, etc… and I imagine it would be the same at many other large parks. So PE, your ignorance is starting to show, rather badly. Looking back, I see it was you who made the ridiculous comments about the ski hills as well. I couldn’t tell from a comment above, but are you from Australia or someplace like Florida, where there isn’t much if any snow? That at least would partially excuse your ignorance. You’re an odd duck – you’re quick to point out the obvious when there’s a too frequent implausible account here of some alleged cryptic sighting, but when I raise a questions about a genuine issue, you immediately reject it as the work of a troll, citing spurious and erroneous reasons for jumping to that conclusion.
As for your statement that one finds sasquatch only in wooded, remote habitat, well, there is plenty of that in Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine, particularly in the mountainous regions that cover most of those three states, yet there are more sasquatch sightings reported in flat, relatively featureless farm-and-ranchland prevalent Nebraska than in those three states, double the number of sightings in Iowa compared to those three states combined, and nearly triple the number of sightings in Oklahoma as one finds in Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine combined. (source: BFRO.net). Why? Clearly trees and remote hills alone do not provide the answer.
Are there photos and videos of alleged tracks in the snow posted online? Sure. And like the bulk of them taken during the other three seasons of the year, they are generally at best inconclusive and much more typically, hoaxes. Other than the Bossburg prints and the example from the 1980s someone cited above, where else has any bigfoot author mentioned any bigfoot tracks in the snow in more recent times, let alone over the last two decades? Has there even been a single mention in the written literature of bigfoot tracks in the snow since 2000? I’m not aware of any, but I haven’t read that many books. OK, so let’s put together a list of all of the television episodes of people studying bigfoot who thought to cover tracks in the snow – I’ll list all of the episodes of Finding Bigfoot, Monsterquest, Animal X, Destination Truth (maybe – I stopped watching it after the second season because it was so awful), Nat Geo specials, etc.. that cover Bigfoot in the winter:
That’s right, zero. There was one episode of Finding Bigfoot where they fly in a helicopter to the top of a snow-covered mountain where someone shot a distant photo of a skier who hiked to the top of the next peak over and they misidentified this figure as a bigfoot, but they did not mention tracks or address the topic of sasquatch in the winter. None of the shows about this cryptid have ever covered sasquatch in the wintertime (to the best of my knowledge – please correct me if I’m wrong). I would say that between the written and televised media (i.e. the most credible portion of the recordings of the study of sasquatch), that’s a significant gap in coverage, one worthy of my original inquiry.
PhotoExpert, you flippantly dismissed my inquiry with a speculative response about migration (and someone else suggested it in a non-flippant fashion). Let’s suppose sasquatches do migrate south in the winter. Where do they go? Are they hiking hundreds or thousands of miles to the southern third of our country? How about the ones spotted in Alaska and further north in Canada? Are they going 2,000 miles or more south? Do they really need to? Virtually all reports of sasquatch close enough to see the beast’s coat report it is thick and at least medium length, tending more toward several inches in length, not the sort of thin coat that would be inadequate for colder weather. Sasquatches allegedly live in many of the same part of North America as the gray wolf. Wolves tend not to migrate during the winter – they may follow caribou herds when that is their primary local pray, but the wolves living in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan don’t flee the snow every winter and their usual prey essentially stays put when the snow falls.
If sasquatch migrates, wouldn’t the incidents of sightings of roadway crossings be greatly increased in November and late March to Early April? Is there any such statistic that would prove this? I haven’t heard of it and that seems like it would be something I would investigate if I dedicated a significant portion of my life to studying this legendary beast. But no one else seems to be asking these sorts of questions. Wildlife biologists who study caribou and wildebeests and other such migratory mammals surely study patterns of movement, but I’ve never heard of any of the handful of more serious bigfoot investigators out there considering this migratory theory.
And let’s say that sasquatch does move south – the Minnesota ones head down to the Ozarks, for instance and the Michigan ones head to Kentucky or Tennessee. One would have to assume that the number of sightings in these states would be higher in the winter than in other times of the year (when not only the population has increased from the migrations south, but there’s less leaf cover behind which an 8′ tall mammal can hide), but that’s not the case, per the state sightings reports on BFRO.net. And since there are sightings year-round in these states, that would suggest a resident population. What predatory mammalian species, man included, has ever welcomed competitors into its territory in the history of our planet? Sorry, but I don’t buy southern sasquatches welcoming their northern kin “Hey! There’s Uncle Aaaarghnnahaahooo and Auntie Neeenugnog! We’ve been expecting you for days! Make yourselves at home – we’ve got plenty of food.” As far as I know, no one’s ever reported any sasquatch fights and territorial conflicts, but there would have to be some if northern sasquatches migrated south – ALL predatory mammals defend their hunting territories. To me, the migration theory is not impossible, but it’s not very plausible, either.
PhotoExpert, you asked if I’ve read Loren Coleman. Yes, I have. It may be almost sacrilegious to say this here on a site where he was a founder (I have no knowledge of his exact role in starting and leaving this site), but I thought his Bigfoot: The True Story of Apes In America had a decent portion on the Native American traditions and legends, it had some OK original research material he conducted, but was otherwise rather poorly written, very poorly edited, and it was biased and amateurish, clearly the product of a bigfoot believer, not an objective study of the creature. For specifics, see my review on Amazon – it’s the lengthy 2/5 star review, the only one that gives specific examples and page numbers for each of the many problems with the book. Coleman’s prominence in the field over multiple decades should not give his ideas and theories any more credibility than they are worth based on their objective merits without regard to who came up with that theory.
There are some long-time regulars who posted above back in June who casually dismissed my inquiries, but they did not do much more than put casual thought into rejecting the points I made and questions I asked. Asking “What does it do and where does it go?” are not dumb questions to ask about any living species. And so far, my suspicions appear to be correct, that other than discussion of a few decades-old reports, there is virtually no mention in the most reliable portion of the sasquatch media (i.e. in books and television shows on sasquatch**) of what bigfoot does in the winter and why there aren’t more tracks. And no one has answered that rather pertinent question: when 90+% of its tracks are going to be visible on snow-covered ground (as opposed to what, 1 to maybe 10% of its tracks in non-winter months), why has no one tracked down a sasquatch in the snow? These are valid questions, ones that are intended to shed genuine light on this subject. I’m asking questions that should be addressed in books and shows about sasquatch, if those who were investigating this cryptid were doing a thorough, comprehensive, and objective job. Unfortunately, they don’t seem to be doing that.
People should be asking hard questions and addressing problems with the bigfoot theories, not sweeping them under the rug. I understand that Jeff Meldrum is himself loath to admit that he’s been conned by hoaxers in the past and he does not adequately acknowledge the role of hoaxers in tainting the quantity of sasquatch evidence out there; at least he didn’t in Sasquatch: Legend Meets Science (and I thought very highly of that book, but not so much so that I could not assess it objectively). People should be asking about seeming inconsistencies in what is reported about sasquatch. Washington and California (the mountainous northern portion of the state) lead the country in sasquatch sightings. But why is it that there are more sightings in Ohio, Illinois, and Florida, than there are in the state that sits between California and Washington – Oregon? (source: BFRO.net).
The bottom line is that I’m not trying to be some sort of obnoxious miscreant who delights in making conflict on an internet site. I’m merely asking hard questions about issues that the small handful of professional and semi-professional sasquatch researchers out there should be asking and addressing, but seem to be avoiding. That does not make me a troll.
======================
** I am, by no means, calling the television shows on sasquatch and other cryptids universally reliable sources. Destination Truth is hosted by a bombastic assclown and is as amateurish as any documentary-style show I’ve ever seen. Animal X wasn’t much better. Even Finding Bigfoot is at least as much entertainment as it attempts to portray any sort of genuine research. However, these shows often do feature people who take the subject more seriously, such as Dr. Meldrum and Loren Coleman and they have a greater overall reliability than what one finds on YouTube.
Very interesting. Three and a half years after I discovered the existence of this thread and posted several late, but detailed responses to the doubters and critics of my original inquiry, not a single person followed up and posted a response. Not a single person pointed out where I may have been wrong with cites to books, TV shows, or other webpages, not a single person responded to the points I made (or reiterated – several people did not bother to read my original comment carefully), clarifications I made or further questions I raised.
I recognize that I was alerted to the existence of this thread over a month after the flurry of responses had abated as newer articles and items pushed this comment thread down in the stack of older submissions, requiring many “Next page” clicks to access, and many people simply forgot about it and never saw my posts. However, with over 40 posts before I discovered the thread, this was one of, if not the very most frequented and posted-in threads I can recall seeing on this website during my sporadic visits and surely some of those participants in the discussion above would have clicked on the follow-up notification boxes and kept track of any new posts, including my several above, in this discussion?
FYI Dr. Meldrum never responded to my e-mail. Maybe his spam filter kept him from ever seeing it or maybe (quite possibly), he is simply overwhelmed by unsolicited e-mails about bigfoot and responds to few if any of them. However, it would have been nice to have heard a response to the rather pertinent questions I have on this topic from probably the world’s foremost authority on sasquatch, so it was disappointing not to receive any response. Perhaps he did read my e-mail but had no good response. While I have little respect for a great number of the academics I have known who are so paranoid of criticism impacting their reputations that they do little more than equivocate and present all possibilities without having the guts to take a stand with a firm opinion on a subject, it seems that Meldrum might be in the opposite group. While he does indeed have opinions (and is about as brave as any academic has been on taking a stand on such an unconventional and ill-accepted topic), it may be that as is the case with nearly all who write on the topic, Meldrum fails to use full objectivity and address adequately the contrary arguments. I recognize his Sasquatch: Legend Meets Science was based on the TV show, was put together under a limited timeframe and is not intended as academic-level research, but he really did not address hoaxers at all and certainly did not admit he had ever been fooled by one. Maybe I raised questions to which he had no good answers and what answers he had do not support his work.
I have enjoyed this website, but have been frequently frustrated by its rather limited and seemingly less-than-modern format and functionality that makes it difficult to follow discussions. I do wish it had a traditional message board/forum where one might post a response to a thread that would then rise to the top of the “most recent” list and be easier to find and follow. However, I have visited a few other cryptozoology websites and been disappointed with the large number of posts by trolls, dolts, and others not taking the subject matter seriously, who largely are scarce or non-existent in the Cryptomundo comment threads, so perhaps Craig has intentionally maintained the site’s format over the years as a means of keeping the discussions and posts from degenerating as they seem to do so frequently on other sites?