Do Sasquatch Use Clubs?
Posted by: Loren Coleman on July 19th, 2010
Do Bigfoot ever carry clubs? Certainly, in 2006, there were reports that the club-carrying Johor Hominid, illustrated below used a club, was around, but weren’t those faked accounts based upon clubless sightings?
Yes, they were, but the creature above is a variety of the Malaysian Bigfoot, perhaps a typical True Giant with a club, shown in a Harry Trumbore drawing from The Field Guide to Bigfoot and Other Mystery Primates, 2006.
But what about more classic Bigfoot encounters? Have hand-held “clubs” been reported?
In one 2006 incident (details below) from California it appeared a possible Bigfoot-with-club was seen.
Historically, there is further evidence of such sightings, as well.
The accounts of “Bushman” with clubs from the Nahanni River Valley of Northwest Territories, Canada, are not infrequent – see pages 52-53, in my field guide.
There are old reports from the West too. In the 1860s, in northern Nevada, a large party saw something, which we would call a Bigfoot today, carrying a rabbit and a club. While the hunters pursued it, their bloodhounds refused to chase. The tables were turned on January 14, 1902, when several young skaters in Chesterfield, Idaho, were chased by an 8-ft hairy creature with a club. The creature gave forth with loud yells.
In the Bigfoot history from the East, too, you can find hints of clubs. In January, 1894, near Dover, New Jersey, eyewitnesses Bertha Heatig, Lizzie Guscott, Katie Griffin, Mike Dean, Bill Dean, William Mullen and others sighted a bearded 6-ft tall “Wildman” with a club, in the nearby woods. But this might have only been a hermit, a feral human, of course.
What about a modern report from the West?
How would someone report such an event today? How about as a “chimpanzee” with a club?
A chimpanzee in Africa displays its aggressive attack display, which in chimps is often carried out with physical contact, and is not merely a bluff. Sometimes they do use clubs? But are there wild chimpanzees in California?
Cryptozoologist Chad Arment in 2006 passed along this intriguing news item:
Club-wielding chimp disappears after sighting
Star staff
July 24, 2006
Authorities have not been able to locate a chimpanzee seen with a club in its hand in the backyard of a Thousand Oaks home Monday morning.
At 9:30 a.m., a resident in the 1500 block of Via Bajada saw a chimpanzee with some type of club, the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department said. By the time California Department of Fish and Game workers arrived, the animal had disappeared.
Officials suspect that it belongs to a neighbor, and the Department of Fish and Game was searching for people who have permits to own such animals, the Sheriff’s Department said.
Source: Ventura County Star, California, Tuesday, July 25, 2006.
This “chimp” was never captured.
Do Bigfoot carry clubs and what do they do with them?
= Misidentified Bigfoot?
About Loren Coleman
Loren Coleman is one of the world’s leading cryptozoologists, some say “the” leading living cryptozoologist. Certainly, he is acknowledged as the current living American researcher and writer who has most popularized cryptozoology in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
Starting his fieldwork and investigations in 1960, after traveling and trekking extensively in pursuit of cryptozoological mysteries, Coleman began writing to share his experiences in 1969. An honorary member of Ivan T. Sanderson’s Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained in the 1970s, Coleman has been bestowed with similar honorary memberships of the North Idaho College Cryptozoology Club in 1983, and in subsequent years, that of the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club, CryptoSafari International, and other international organizations. He was also a Life Member and Benefactor of the International Society of Cryptozoology (now-defunct).
Loren Coleman’s daily blog, as a member of the Cryptomundo Team, served as an ongoing avenue of communication for the ever-growing body of cryptozoo news from 2005 through 2013. He returned as an infrequent contributor beginning Halloween week of 2015.
Coleman is the founder in 2003, and current director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.
Well, wood-knocking involves the use of a club, I would say.
(A recent report on the BFRO site appears to provide the first eyewitness account of a sasquatch actually doing this.)
If indeed that’s what these anomalous knocks are – and they are frequently reported under compelling circumstances involving other oft-noted characteristics of encounter – then I’m sure this isn’t the only use a sasquatch might find for a club.
Clubs are, as noted above, well within the tool-use capability of chimps. So there’s no reason to think they’re too sophisticated an idea for sasquatch.
If anyone finds an atlatl next to a huge footprint, now, all bets are off.
Also of interest to this collection is the BFRO report from CO, here.
Club-wielding Bigfoot? Well, Bigfoot, or Sasquatch, “Ralph,” as I know him (mostly because he said “Call me Ralph”) told me once that his people DO occasionally carry clubs.
“But why?” I demanded. “I thought Bigfoots…Bigfeet…ah…Sasaquatches…sasquatchi???
ANYWAY I thought YOUR people were non-violent!”
“We are, ” he said. “But haven’t you noticed that every once in awhile some idiot will come along–who could BENEFIT from a really good clump on the head?”
“Well…yes,” I said. “Now that you mention it…there was this TV Preacher who….”
“Say no more,” Ralph replied. “Now, what with laws and things YOU can’t clump him on the head. But WE can. Because we don’t exist, you see.”
“Well of COURSE you exist!” I shouted. “I wouldn’t be out here in the woods talking to MYSELF, now, would I?”
Ralph looked at me.
“Okay,” I said. “Maybe I would. But still you exist!”
“Not according to the authorities. And since they say we don’t exist how could they prosecute us?”
“This is extremely cool,” I said.
Ralph nodded and offered me a pine cone.
“No thanks,” I said, pulling out a Mars Bar. “I brought my own.”
“Those things’ll be the death of you,” Ralph said.
“‘O Death, where is thy sting!’”
“Do Sasquatch Use Clubs?”
An excellent question. As low as they keep the lights in some clubs, ANYBODY could be at the next table!!!
So Sasquatches could be the perfect hitmen for the Mafia, eh Cass? And they accept pine cones as payment, too! 😛
Nothing too surprising. A chimp will grab a stick (club) to smack a rival with. It’s only a short step to having a favorite stick of the right heft and keeping it with you. Actually shaping a club (by rubbing it on rocks to make a smaller handle, etc.) is another level of sophistication, toolmaking. But known apes make tools. It’s surely not too big a leap for an unknown species.
I see no reason whatsoever why Sasquatch should not have the capability to use clubs. As already noted, chimps do this and I think we have reason enough to at least reasonably assume that Sasquatch are at least as cognitively inclined as chimps. I cannot see way we could discount the notion of a large, bipedal ape using tools to at least some extent.
They could use these clubs for a wide array of purposes, from hunting to clearing brush, to scaring off threats to the wood knocking already mentioned. If the Sasquatch is as intelligent as we give it credit for, then they may be quite resourceful in the manner in which they use clubs of various sizes.
Chimps may be quite different from Sasquatch, but we can use them as sort of a yardstick by which to measure the potential intelligence and tool using capabilities of our more mysterious friends. Let us also remember that chimps use a wide range of tools besides clubs. They are even known to fashion spears of sorts, using sharp or broken off sticks in order to hunt small animals hiding within logs. Why should Sasquatch not be within the realm of exhibiting similar behavior?
Also, chimps are known to exhibit a sort of “cultural transfer” of technology within their groups, with some groups using tools that other groups do not. So you may have one groups using clubs, which they in turn teach their offspring to use, while another group of chimps may not use clubs at all. So this tool use is a learned behavior and these chimps are developing ways to use tools that they in turn are teaching to members of their own group. It is quite fascinating really.
This raises the interesting possibility that Sasquatch in different areas or even within different family groups (if indeed they have a social structure like that) may use tools in different ways or to different degrees. So perhaps Sasquatch in one area are using clubs where other Ssquatch may not. It would be interesting to see whether sightings of Sasquatch displaying tool use show any correlation to the areas in which they were sighted.
I would add in closing that it is becoming increasingly clear that tool use among animals is not such an isolated phenomenon. Not only large primates but also dolphins, some types of birds, even fish and octopuses, among others, are all documented to display tool using to varying degrees. The ability to use tools is increasingly less a unique human attribute. We would do well to keep this in mind when speculating on just how able Sasquatch might be able to use tools such as clubs.
If Sasquatch are using clubs or other tools, it would not surprise me in the least.