New Mt. Hood Bigfoot Photograph?

Posted by: Loren Coleman on May 3rd, 2006

There’s a new “possible” Bigfoot photograph that has been submitted to Cryptomundo. We are making no claims about it, but thought our readers might be interested in looking at this one. And pondering what it might be.

It was taken by a scouting camera on April 30, 2006, in the Mt. Hood National Forest, near The Dalles, Oregon. The camera is a Cuddeback digital scouting camera, which was attached to a tree about three feet off the ground. It has a motion/heat detector.

Could it be someone going by in a poncho? I asked the people who placed the camera, Klindt Kendall and Dianna Martin, what they thought. As far as they can tell, this is “not someone in raingear,” they told me. Photograph is used with their permission here and copyrighted by them.

Oregon Game Camera Photo

Click image for full-size version

This photograph could be a Bigfoot or could not. And if it is, what kind of Sasquatch would it be?

What do you think?

UPDATE

To see the photographs taken immediately before and after the above photo, please see the images here, at “More From Mt. Hood”.

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.


77 Responses to “New Mt. Hood Bigfoot Photograph?”

  1. youcantryreachingme responds:

    Thank you captain kirk (48). Spot on.

    Loren – it’s a shame you can’t put up a poll: “What do you think it is?” a) bigfoot, b) deer, c) horse or pony, d) bear, e) dog, f) something else… (or can you? 😉 )

    DirtMonkey (49) – the last photo was only 5 minutes after the cryptid photo; not “many hours”. Those two were taken the morning after the first photo (which was an evening shot as you note).

    Perhaps the camera should take more photos – as long as you’ve got the film/storage capacity for them.

    Loren – do you think you can source the original photo from the camera (which hasn’t been renamed on a PC)? That would at least validate that the cryptid photo was taken between the other two, and that it also had a 1 second exposure. I know we have no reason to doubt, but presenting it puts it beyond argument.

    I would hazard a guess that those who think the cryptid has long hair, don’t often take photographs themselves (exept perhaps happy snaps); but those who argue for the deer are actually familiar with thinking about the process of taking photos. No offense intended if that generalises someone into a camp they’re not in, but I suspect that would explain the different opinions somewhat.

    Likewise for all the different “shades of colour” discussions.

    Chris.

  2. DirtMonkey responds:

    [DirtMonkey (49) – the last photo was only 5 minutes after the cryptid photo; not “many hours”.]

    I know, I corrected myself in the next post because I didn’t notice the date on the first picture. Regardless all 3 photos show the same view and my comments regarding the tree in the top left have still been unanswered by anyone. Blow up all 3 photos using Firefox or Photoshop and explain to me how the tree in all three photos slopes from right to left (on the right edge of the tree) and the “Bigfoot” is obviously behind the leaves at the bottom left of the picture but in front of that tree. Why does the fur or mass of the creature disappear when it reaches the right edge of that tree so that you can see the right edge of said tree? It’s a pretty simple question and I would love someone to explain it to me so I can understand.

    p.s. I am a semi-professional photographer with my own darkroom so that’s not an issue. I understand how photography and all that it includes works. What I don’t understand is how a real photograph taken from an automated camera can have this issue without a proper explanation. Maybe I’m explaining the discrepancy in a way people don’t understand but it’s a difficult thing to do with text.

  3. Felinda responds:

    Someone mentioned the length of horse hair being too long, but it looks like the bulk of it is tail…that is exactly the way horse tails look….especially a bay. As for length of horse hair, they are shedding out now, but some lengths would surprise you. A horse or pony with Cushings can potentially have very long hair – I have a Welsh cross that who is extremely shaggy from her winter coat yet.

  4. DirtMonkey responds:

    [that is exactly the way horse tails look]

    Not at 3 ft off the ground, unless it’s a shetland, and even then it’s questionable. You all have to drop the horse theory based on camera height alone. A horses butt simply wouldn’t show at a camera 3ft off the ground.

  5. youcantryreachingme responds:

    DirtMonkey (52) – I answer the tree question in the other thread.

    The other thing to remember is that exposure time is 1 second (taken from the EXIF information attached to the “before” and “after” photos.

  6. shovethenos responds:

    Re: long hair

    Just a couple observations:

    – I’m not saying the image definitely is of an actual cryptid – some of the wookie suits, etc. have long, groomed hair.

    – Wild orangutans have long hair that is often very straight.

    – Primate socialization often involves grooming, so it isn’t out of the realm of possibility to have individual cryptids with very long, groomed coats, especially if they are members of a family group. There have been sightings of long-haired cryptids with very matted, messy, overgrown coats as well. This is all speculation, but possibly these are solitary juvenile males or other isolated individuals.

  7. sigil_paranormal responds:

    I made a comparison of grazing deer to this photo and found the culprit.

  8. Craig Woolheater responds:

    youcantryreachingme, re: comment #51. I resized the original photos. The original photo file is CDY_0007. I resized them from their original resolution of 2048 X 1536 as they were 1 MB in size. So the photos are all consecutive. I renamed the first photo when I resized it, but left the file names as they were for the one prior and the one following.

  9. Loren Coleman responds:

    All the photos are in sequence, from one source, set off by motion and heat, thus they are not “snapshots” as if they were taken during a Hollywood photo op. 🙂

    I am in direct and open communication with the camera folks.

    Craig does my uploads at Cryptomundo due to my older software on my computer. Nothing sinister to that. So the photos are passed along, and you can read above Craig’s comments about the downsizing and relabeling that sometimes occurs.

    Needless to say, I have all the forwarded originals and there appears to have been absolutely no manipulation.

    BTW, the people who sent these to me were purely and innocently asking the question “What do you think this is?” They made no claims, they made no wild statements like “this is Bigfoot, look at my pictures.”

    I asked their permission to share it here to have the community mind work on solving the mystery.

  10. Melissa responds:

    Well my personal opinion is, it looks like the tail of a horse, walking away.. 🙂

    JMO 🙂

  11. shovethenos responds:

    sigil_paranormal-

    Interesting analysis, but the color still seems off. Maybe a horse’s face grazing, with the striations coming from the horse’s bangs.

    It seems odd though that a horse would be grazing in a wooded area right at the base of a tree. And why can you still see the tree trunk in the background in the top left corner? I guess the horse could be dead on facing the camera, but you usually would expect it to be blocked on that side by the animal’s body. And one would expect to see a foreleg on the right side of the frame.

    Interesting theory, but I’m not entirely convinced. I guess now I’m in the “wookie-suit – horse’s face – possibly a cryptid” camp.

  12. lenny responds:

    Something is not right about that photo.

    1. it is blurred when it should be in focus. should this camera have the ability to focus on all objects in its field.

    2. You will notice the leaves that are on the left field of camera view are blurred as is the object. also in the pic of the deer standing around, the branch and leaves are clear.

    3. why is the time stamp chopped off and out of focus. the other photos don’t have this defect.

    4. without other images of measured distance to compare a similar depth view I would say this is totaly bogus.

  13. lenny responds:

    I enhanced the image and found artifacts around the time stamp?.

    The original smaller photo gives the illusion of a horse head covered with horse hair over a left eye swinging its head up from its right sided position in front of the left view of the camera. that is just an interpretation produced in the mind of the image.

    The image was brightened and increased in size with photoshop7 giving the following new interpretation.

    There appears to be a reddish brown hair covered left arm. looks like upper arm muscle on the upper left protruding from under the long hair as if something is reaching down in front of the camera with the left arm.

    I would really like to know the distance of the brush on the left to the camera lense to come to a more revised interpretation of the image.

  14. KRB responds:

    After looking at all 3 pictures, and comparing them, I came up with the following…
    1. In the 2 pictures the deer have moved about the same distance (away from/to) from the camera, before the picture was taken. Keeping the same thought in mind, that means the creature (bigfoot) has moved towards the camera from another area of the picture. It may have been attracted to the camera itself. Anyone else see this idea?

  15. harrybiped responds:

    Reminds me of Penn and Teller video… and is in keeping with their show. It’s the rear end of a horse… aka a horse’s ass.

  16. youcantryreachingme responds:

    sigil_paranormal (57) – thanks for doing some comparison images; they’re fantastic.

    Loren / Craig – thanks for the info. I
    had no doubt about the authenticity of
    the photos; thanks for checking though!

    To the people who asked you “What do you think this is?” – you can certainly give them a range of answers now! 🙂

    Lenny (62) – it’s probably blurred because the exposure was 1 second.

  17. youcantryreachingme responds:

    shovethenos (61) – about the colour being off; remember sigil_paranormal’s comparison used enlargements of deer grazing in full sun. Our cryptid is (well, I think it is) a deer right up against the lens; that would give it much less light. Also, in the “after” photo five minutes later you can see that the deer in the background are lit, but the foreground is darker, as if still in early morning shade.

    And lenny – the timestamp may appear to have artefacts because Craig resized the image. Jpegs generally lose information each time they’re saved.

  18. Mnynames responds:

    My first thought was a squirrel close to the camera, but after reading the comments, the back end of a horse argument seems pretty persuasive. I have to ask though, are we really just looking at clouds here, and telling each other what we think we see?

  19. ejsaunders responds:

    AFAICT copying the picture out to something like Irfranview (free image editor) and upping the contrast, brightness and saturation it comes out as a seemingly very fake orange colour – as one of the others said, it also looks combed. From the angle, it could be someone’s head (with red hair colorant), it could be a ‘wookie/yeti suit’ from a costume shop. It seems too ‘in focus’ compared to the bush to be a bigfoot if you take the furthest right point in the image to be where his right arm would probably be (I can’t see what else, bodily wise it could be).

    Fake? Probably going by this photo at least.

  20. DWA responds:

    Well, ejsaunders, gotta watch what yer doin’ when you “[copy] the picture out to something like Irfranview (free image editor) and [up] the contrast, brightness and saturation…”

    A fake-looking color is just one thing you should expect. Let’s look at the color the camera records…which has been reported in numerous sas sightings: a very prosaic reddish-brown.

    Bottom line: these things will be confirmed in the field, not behind our computers. In the age of digital film-photo manipulation, don’t look for an image on the Internet to do it.

    What is this? Can’t tell. Was thinking horse. No more. It would have to be a totally head-on or tail-on shot. Given the position of the tree in the photos — long story short, a sudden appearance from the left, up close, by a big quadruped should obscure that tree — a horse couldn’t register an image like this. Unless of course the camera shot at predetermined intervals and not when something ‘broke the beam’.

    But something hairy and upright, i.e., bipedal, suddenly passing right in front of the camera — or, say, a woman (obviously crouching, if not obviously a dwarf) trying to see what the camera’s aiming at…that might happen.

    Bottom line # 2: I’d want to know more based on this. Especially what other types of evidence could be gleaned from the site. (That’s the camera site, not the website. 😉 )

  21. DWA responds:

    Oh, one more thing.

    As to the apparent debunking comments that the hair “looks combed”: if it’s a sasquatch, oh, it’s combed all right.

    All primates — I can’t think of an exception — are social groomers. They’re going through each other’s hair — to say nothing of their own — all the time. A logical conclusion after watching this activity is that it IS social — it has as much to do with bonding and making each other feel good as it does with the prosaic explanation of parasite removal. Can’t see how unkempt hair would feel better on Bigfoot than it would on you or me. They don’t just pick through each other’s hair. They smooth it out, arrange it, COMB it. (I actually rarely use a comb; my fingers are generally adequate. And though there’s a small helipad up there, I am far from bald.)

    Come to think of it: I’ve never seen a photo of a primate — even an orangutan — with “unkempt hair.”

    Unless you count, well, us.

    In fact, if the hair looked unkempt, that would have me thinking “ape suit.” You don’t think those get combed….do you….?

  22. ecronin77 responds:

    in my opinion, this is the head of a bear. you can see the placement of where the ears would be and what looks like it’s nose @ the bottom of the picture??…..

  23. DWA responds:

    Nope, no bear.

    There is one bear species, the sloth bear (Melursus ursinus), that has hair this long. Unfortunately, it’s confined to India and Sri Lanka. And not even that bear has this much hair on its head.

    There seems a lot of opinion that this is an animal whose image has been altered by motion blurring. In my opinion, motion blurring almost always leaves a “father image” of the item creating the blur, somewhere along the blur track — that usually permits a pretty close ID. There may be exceptions. But this isn’t one of them.

    I think what we have here is a critter that simply didn’t put enough of itself in the frame. And I’d be more than intrigued enough to put another camera or two out here, based on that shot.

  24. bccryptid responds:

    I agree with gridbug, definitely Wookie.

    Completely inconclusive. The fact that the next image shows deer, which do not look panicked, even though we have ample evidence that the sasquatch is a primary predator of deer, leaves me to conclude that this is some part of a deer, that feel over the camera as it walked past.

  25. blahhfoot responds:

    Was there any bigfoot footprints nearby? Could it be a bear climbing the tree? Looking at the photo 5 minutes later is that a footprint on the ground near those logs/sticks?

  26. blahhfoot responds:

    HEY!

    ITS A DEER. Its the neckline hair while the deer turning down /side licking itself. Which happens to be right up to the camera since these creatures can listen to things that humans can’t. Probably heard some kind of whirring or a timing noise due to the equipment which was gearing itself to take a picture.

    Also enlarge all three pictures and set a slide show on your computer to do the frame by frame starting with the picture that started a day ago, the 8:31am, and the 8:36am.

    If you still think it could be a “sasquatch” then maybe he is leading the herd as a sheepherder!

    Anyways it probably is a deer. A deer grooming or licking itself. Ears were a dead giveaway.

  27. DARHOP responds:

    It’s a Horse. In no way do I see anything but a Horse.

Sorry. Comments have been closed.

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