How NOT To Publish Bigfoot Track Casts
Posted by: Loren Coleman on June 22nd, 2012
What was the photo editor thinking?
The Bonner County Daily Bee published a short news item on a newly revealed alleged Bigfoot track find, along with a photo of the “cast.”
Mysterious impression
A plaster casting of a mysterious print found by Bonnie Thompson 30 years ago. (Courtesy photo)
Unfortunately, the local newspaper merely shows us how to not publish a track photo. They have posted the back of the cast, not the front where we all could make our own assessments of what the track shows.
Supposedly, the track was found 30 years ago, and this plaster of Paris cast was made then.
One wonders about why Ms. Thompson waited so long to show the track to anyone. Perhaps the answer lies in what Jeff Meldrum saw when he looked at the cast.
The newspaper writes:
Several years later, the Spokane Chronicle published a story featuring Grover Krantz, a Washington State University professor who was regarded as a leading authority on bigfoot. Krantz is pictured in the story holding up plaster casts of purported Bigfoot tracks found in the Umatilla National Forest.
Thompson was struck by the similarity of the casts, leading her to believe the same type of creature left them. She said she was compelled to reach out to Krantz, but procrastinated until 2002.
But when Thompson phoned the university, she was advised that Krantz had passed away only hours before she called.
“That was a big lesson in procrastination,” she said.
Thompson turned to Jeffrey Meldrum, an associate professor of anatomy and anthropology at Idaho State University who is also considered an expert on Bigfoot.
But she said Meldrum dismissed them as overlapping elk tracks after he reviewed photos of Thompson’s casts. Thompson counters that the elk would have to do some fancy footwork to leave such tracks.
If anyone has an image of the front of the cast that they can share, let us know at Cryptomundo.
Bonner County is a county located in the northern part of the State of Idaho.
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.
If Meldrum says it’s Elk, then it’s Elk.
Just to add some oblivious facts, Though Bonner’s Ferry is in the far north end of Idaho, near the Canadian border, Umatilla National Forest, where this cast is supposed to be from, is at the south end, and includes a large chunk of Washington and Oregon. Alien Canadian Bigfoots are thusly ruled out. You may consider this a back-casted comment
Jeff Meldrum is an authority in this field.
If he says it’s overlapping elk tracks….
Look, people. Here’s what makes the evidence compelling: it’s both consistent and there is a lot of it.
One can toss any one piece – including the Patterson/Gimlin film – and lose nothing. (Krantz says and I agree that the footprints would be compelling if none of the other evidence existed.)
And there’s no sighting report I have read that I would toss to keep this, just from what I know.
So toss. Sometimes, science offers easy choices.