June 27, 2007

Krantz Is Dead: Comment to Anthropologist Hawks

Grover Krantz

John Hawks, (Ph.D., 1999) an anthropologist in the Department of Anthropology, University of Wisconsin-Madison, writes a popular blog on all subjects he feels impact on anthropology. His contributions are usually intelligent and look at various sides of anthropological debates.

However, once in a blue moon, usually with tongue-in-cheek, Hawks writes about Bigfoot-related items, such as his take on the 2005 Texas conference. Intriguingly, the way most cryptozoologically-oriented students find their way to Hawks is when they search for information on Gigantopithecus, as he noted in 2006, here.

Now his newest assault on hominology is about how Bigfooters have brought back Grover Krantz from the death, or, at least, if you read his blog uncritically that’s what you might think has happened. But why should we put up with this without a reply? We shouldn’t, so please see below my email response to Hawk’s June 26, 2007 “strawman” ridicule of the BFRO’s over-publicized “expedition” to Michigan.

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Dear John

Regarding your John Hawks Anthropology Weblog on the comments about the Michigan Bigfoot hunt, I understand you are trying to be funny. A sense of humor is important, but as your “raising the dead” comment is directed to the Bigfoot ecotourists or the Bigfoot Field Researcher Organization (BFRO) organizers, it appears to be slightly misdirected.

What you are pointing to is not a quote from any Bigfooter. A closer reading demonstrates it is the reporters, via specifically the Daily Press of Escanaba, Michigan, with enhancements by the Associated Press, who are making the mistake of paraphrasing Grover Krantz as being still alive enough to make a comment on Sasquatch and Gigantopithecus. Anyone that would say Krantz used the words “believes” or “primitive man,” obviously never knew Grover.

Grover Krantz

The BFRO folks are well-aware that Grover died on Valentine’s Day 2002, as his death was widely reported in the Bigfoot community (see obituary here) and, for example, on National Public Radio on February 18, 2002.

Let me be clear. I don’t support the BFRO and their “Bigfoot expeditions.” They seem little more than charging a large fee for taking people camping. However, one can say these “canned adventures” are not much different than “summer seminars” in archaeology where non-academic “anthropology tourists” are allowed to pay for the experience to go on a “dig.” There’s nothing wrong with either, basically, if we are honest about their ultimate worth, beyond funding sources, to each field of study.

But the folks at the BFRO know that Grover Krantz is dead, and it is merely to make points about what you like to label as “pseudoscience” that you would write your sarcastic blog.

Serious cryptozoology, however, is not about making fun of its critics, but concerned with gathering evidence, searching for unknown animals and clarifying facts misrepresented in blogs and news articles.

Best wishes
Loren Coleman
Cryptomundo.com
Author, Bigfoot! The True Story of Apes in America (NY: Simon and Schuster, 2003).

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An update to this selection can be found here: “The AP and Dr. Hawks Respond.”.

Loren Coleman 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.

Filed under Bigfoot, Books, Breaking News, Cryptomundo Exclusive, Cryptotourism, CryptoZoo News, Cryptozoologists, Cryptozoology, Expedition Reports, Fossil Finds, Men in Cryptozoology, Obituaries, Public Forum, Reviews, Sasquatch, Yeti