The Wallace Line in Bigfoot Studies
Posted by: Loren Coleman on February 21st, 2007
A Startling New Discovery
Sometimes proof is so definitive, so compelling, it is difficult to ignore. Let me tell you today about the Wallace Line within Bigfoot studies. For those of us that consider Bigfoot a fact, I feel it is something we can no longer brush aside as unimportant in future discussions.
I have purposely coined and am using a phrase that can have many meanings as we look at this situation. But the bottomline is this: some Bigfooters, many of whom routinely say to scientists, “If only you would look at the evidence with an open-mind, you would see what we are talking about.” I say to all Bigfooters, do the same thing regarding the Wallace Line. Look and you will easily see.
Dale Wallace displays Ray Wallace’s Bigfoot wooden fake feet. (David Rubert Photography – used with permission)
In zoology, the Wallace Line is a boundary that separates the zoogeographical regions of Asia and Australasia. West of the line are found organisms related to Asiatic species; to the east, mostly organisms are related to Australian species.
Within Bigfoot studies in North America (or more formally, hominology as it is noted by the Russians, Euroasians in general, and academics globally), there is also another Wallace Line. This Wallace Line has come to be recognized as a reality since Ray Wallace died in December 2002.
Within serious intellectual Bigfoot examinations among those that consider Bigfoot worthy of searching and researching, in others words a real primate versus a folkloric element in our culture, there has developed two separate camps divided by a new Wallace Line. The Bigfoot-linked Wallace Line is a boundary that separates those Bigfooters who consider Ray Wallace did leave some prank footprints at some Bigfoot track sites versus those Bigfooters on the other side of the Wallace Line that think the claims made by Wallace’s family are bogus and have not shown up in the record.
Misinformed individuals in the media do exist who don’t understand the Wallace Line exists between these factions. To harsh and skeptic reporters who have understudied the Wallace fakes, these media writers have swallowed, hook, line, and sinker, that “Wallace was Bigfoot” and have overlooked the glaring differences between, for example, the Wallace fakes presented as being used in 1958 and the Jerry Crew cast from Bluff Creek, 1958. Moving on from this agreement within both pro-Bigfoot camps on each side of the Wallace Line, the media has missed that there are these two camps within the field that see the role of Ray Wallace quite differently.
Within Bigfoot studies, on the one hand, the pro-Bigfoot, totally anti-Wallace people on one side of the Wallace Line have dominated most of the discourse through forum discussions and books by John Green, Rick Noll, Chris Murphy, and Jeff Meldrum.
Matt Crowley
On the other side of the Wallace Line, through essays, books, and presentations, Mark A. Hall, Matt Crowley, and I have spoken of the “bad data” in the database. Hall and I have especially called for throwing out the Wallace fakes shown in the print photos in books. Our position is that what will be left is stronger evidence in support of Bigfoot.
Please note, once again, most of the people on both sides of this Wallace Line consider Bigfoot real primates to be discovered.
As far as my position, as I have indicated here before, there is the obvious match-up between the wooden carved fake Wallace foot and the track it has left behind (as shown directly above).
What if I said there is a real and tangible Wallace Line that separates the camps, as well.
Now comes more firm evidence that has been right there in those photographs showing that some Bigfoot track photos are clearly footprints made by Ray Wallace and his associates. The images I am talking about are the ones from Blue Creek Mountain – Onion Mountain for 1967.
First look, in the image above, at the Wallace wooden fake foot on the right, at that line in the wood on the bottom left; click on the image to make it bigger. (David Rubert Photography – used with permission.)
Matt Crowley has pointed out an interesting reflective artifact in certain photographs that only goes to further reinforce the case that the Wallace fakes are right there in front of us.
Study what Crowley has to say about what can be seen remarkably well in the photographs found below:
We can clearly see in [John] Green’s and [Doreen] Hooker’s own photographs that the putative Sasquatch tracks on Blue Creek Mountain – Onion Mountain are not much more deeply impressed than the men’s own shoe prints! Green’s own testimony, plus the obviousness of the dusty conditions seen in the published photographs, shows that the substrate was fine and easily impressed….
Doreen Hooker photograph.
Look carefully at the putative Sasquatch track in the [Doreen] Hooker photo above. It represents a right foot. Note that there appears to be a very straight, light colored ridge very close to the lateral (outside) margin of the track in the heel area. Now take another look at the wooden right-footed Wallace prosthetic, and you will see a corresponding crack or furrow in the same area. Another clear photo [below] taken by René Dahinden shows a similar longitudinal feature in the heel area.Matt Crowley
René Dahinden photograph, according to Chris Murphy.
Now guess what I found? Look at the following photograph of John Green with a trackway of these same footprints from 1967, at Blue Creek Mountain – Onion Mountain below. Focus in on that footprint closest to the photographer, at the bottom of the frame. See what is visible there? You can clearly observe the imprint of the groove or line found to the right side of the footprint, which is visible as a split in the wood of the Wallace fake.
The Wallace Line is real, in more ways than one. Fake footprints only mean that those footprints are fake, not that Bigfoot does not exist. But to ignore the Wallace Line is not real now is just foolishness.
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.
From what I’ve observed about these fake footprints are that they are too perfect to belong to any living being. Everything that is alive and leaving footprints have abnormal and irregular prints. It is hard for me to believe that people would be taken in by these fakes. There isn’t even any evidence of wrinkles in the footprints that would indicate something walking barefooted in the dust, and that was mighty fine dust. Every aspect of the foot would have been left to be seen. So, now all we need to do is to take a close look at any prints he could have had a hand in making. There will always be somebody trying to make us believers look like fools for one reason or another.
Hey, Loren,
Wow — that crack seems awfully, awfully compelling!
Your position that the bad data should be identified and removed from the database (which you and I have talked about before) remains an admirable stance. I think you should be commended for sticking to this Wallace business. It’s really the elephant in the living room at this point.
The weeding out process you advocate is a basic first step in hashing out anything like a science from traditional informal sasquatch research; your fellow travelers should be helping you do it. Truth is, cryptozoologists should enthusiastically want exactly the same thing that skeptics want: to aggressively interrogate claims in an ongoing effort to keep only the good data, and get rid of everything else. Keep at ‘er.
A couple years back, I asked you if you thought it was the case that cryptozoology had inadequate error-correction mechanisms. You felt that cryptozoology was completely up to the challenge of weeding out the bad data — given enough time. Since then, you’ve taken a lot of heat for trying to do that work. Has this experience changed your view, or do you still feel the same way about the ability of cryptozoology to self-correct?
Great article and right to the point!
I think in the future this Wallace business will be just a foot note in Crypto studies pun intended.
But of course Ray could not have been everywhere making tracks. I think he was just a prankster having some fun and his fifteen minutes are over.
Sorry Loren, you are a few years behind the curve.
Jeff Meldrum and I both noted and studied that line when the Wallace wooden foot photos first showed up. Like everything else you are so fond of pointing out, superficially there seems to be a match, studied and measured in detail there isn’t.
Also, if such lines were made by the fake foot they should show up in photos and casts of all the tracks made by that foot, not just a few, and they would always be in exactly the same place. They would also have showed, of course, in the other prints of that foot that weren’t photographed or cast. Rene and I spent more than a day studying hundreds of those tracks. Do you really think we were such fools as to fail to note something as obvious as that?
I don’t know what made the lines in the photos, it may have been something someone did while examining the tracks, but they are too wide to have been made by the slit in the carving as well as not being quite in the right place.
There is no such line in the 1958 and 1959 Titmus casts of that same foot either.
When a carved object seems to match an anomaly that showed in a widely-published photo the logical inference, of course, is that the carving was created to imitate the photo, not the other way around.
As to the comment that the tracks are too good to be natural, they were photographed in the days when we used to try to record tracks showing the shape of the foot. It was a couple of months later, at the viewing of the Patterson movie at the University of B.C., that we encountered the criticism that our track casts were too good to be natural, and Bob Titmus then went and cast 10 consecutive tracks at the film site, showing the enormous variation and distortion that the living foot can produce.
Strolling along on a deep layer of dust over a hard surface the Blue Creek Mountain track makers did make more uniform sets of tracks than most, but some tracks were not on the road and there were plenty of shapes that no single fake foot could produce.
John Green
I have had a faked bigfoot-track board from Indiana for years, so I know what they are. I also never saw the tracks that were made by the board in question actually in Indiana: the Tracks I know about do not match it.
What these Wallace tracks represent are the “Double-ball-of-the-foot” prints. I have seen some casts of the type from the West coast and some of those casts appear to be genuine. The tracks in this article are pretty definitely faked.
Who’s to say that Ray Wallace had only these fake feet and not others as well? That does not mean that all the tracks are fake. I agree, anything that is obviously phony should be eliminated from the database (except as an example of what a fake looks like).
As to treading deeply or treading lightly, possibly Bigfoot feet are structured in such a way that their weight is so well distributed that they don’t necessarily leave really deep footprints all the time. Elephants are the largest of land animals and yet are surprisingly light on their feet, largely because of the way that their feet are structured. The structure of the fibrous cushions within elephant feet are more like those of humans than those of horses. Of course since Bigfoot is bipedal the structure of their feet could not be identical to those of elephants which are quadrupeds. But possibly Bigfoot, being giant biped primates and presumably fairly closely related to people, have similar fibrous cushions with their feet that cause their weight to be distributed in such a way as not to leave extremely deep prints.
Good work loren. Nobody can argue with that. Contrary to what some cryptos seem to think, disproving this kind of claimed evidence can only be a positive move.
It is also interesting in showing that if all footprints and tracks are being faked then people are getting a whole lot more sophisticated and putting a lot more effort in than Wallace did. And the more effort it takes to fake these things, the less sense there seems to be in doing it (where is the return for all the effort?)
“But possibly Bigfoot, being giant biped primates and presumably fairly closely related to people, have similar fibrous cushions with their feet that cause their weight to be distributed in such a way as not to leave extremely deep prints.”
Should have said within their feet not with their feet.
Wallace Line? I wish I cared.
I won’t spend much time on this (haha, for me); I know this is a footprint thread. 🙂 But who cares about anyone named Wallace, or any line, when there is no such thing as a real sasquatch track?
How can you remove bad data when the possibility has not been ruled out that it is ALL bad data?
Here’s how. Hate to sound like a broken record on this. But you LOOK FOR THE ANIMAL.
More than enough data has been collected to make it evident that a search for conclusive evidence is in order. This can only be gained in the field, with compelling photographic evidence to back up the other evidence, and eventually a body to study.
There’s no reason to wait on this, because there is no way that the data now on hand – or any other data gathered in the absence of a holotype – can be made more compelling. No analysis of any piece of Bigfoot evidence presented so far can ever, in the absence of a body, amount to anything but: inconclusive.
I know it’s gonna be a Slow News Day on the sas until somebody manages to scrape up the money (when that happens, the interest will follow, count on that) for a serious field effort. Just wanted to remind folks that until it happens, there’s no way of resolving what’s real and what isn’t.
We have his feet. Let’s find him and see if they’re real.
I do feel compelled to add that giving this kind of recognition to a guy like Wallace is doing nothing good for serious sas studies.
DWA writes: “How can you remove bad data when the possibility has not been ruled out that it is ALL bad data?”
You have to start somewhere.
Loren: true, you do have to start somewhere.
But then you talk to John Green and …omigod, here we go again…
That seems to be the problem for me. There are some obvious, tossable fakes. Then there are the ones everybody talks about. And no end to a discussion that’s been going on since 1958. We catch some fakes. Then there’s the photo in Murphy’s “Meet the Sasquatch,” which is supposed to be one of the best photos ever taken of a bigfoot track. Yeah. If it’s real. (It’s the one at the top of this thread for those who don’t know.)
Guess the whole track thing boils down to this for me. There’s more than enough evidence – from the volume of haggling over the topic alone, to say nothing of the sheer number of trackways found, and the research done by such as Meldrum – that a bipedal primate is a PLAUSIBLE maker of the tracks.
To me, that says: Enough evidence to devote more time and money to pursue the gamut of evidence – including sighting reports – to find out what made the tracks.
Guys like Matt Crowley keep the track pot boiling. But I’m still looking forward to field studies.
Don’t MAKE me get a zoology degree….:-D
I said I wouldn’t say much here. And for me, I’m still correct. 😉
I appreciate John Green showing up so his side of the situation can be heard.
Obviously, variation would occur in the tracks left, discovered, and photographed due to the fact that variation in placing the fake prints is part of a normal hoaxing process involving changes in motion, pressure, angle, and substrata. Just as the foot of an animal would be recorded differently for more reasons than due to the mobility of an animate foot, so too would the variety of variables also impact the leaving of fake tracks.
All tracks left would not necessarily show the crack in the wood, so that some of the tracks don’t show this abnormality does not surprise me. As far as the crack not showing up in 1958 and 1959, that makes total sense too. Cracks naturally develop as wood dries, and so a fake foot used in the 1950s, reused years later probably split as it grew old and then starting showing up in 1967 fake tracks.
The finding of the raised line as a response to the groove found due to the split in the wood is one of many points of note that call these 1967 tracks into question. As mentioned often, they include the matching contours, the squaring of the toes generally in evidence in Wallace fakes, and other factors I will be discussing in coming blogs.
As John knows, I am not criticizing and saying anything about the Patterson-Gimlin filmsite tracks or trackway, of which he mentions Titmus cast ten prints.
As John himself admits, it was not until after October 1967 that people looking, photographing, and casting tracks began to understand the importance of looking for animate, varied tracks.
I think John or René were looking at tracks before the film to find the best examples as that was thought to be the most appropriate way to present the best evidence to doubters and skeptics. Any notice of lines, dermals, and other minute details within the tracks would have been secondary to the primary goal of finding the “best track.”
Well done, Loren! Daniel Loxton is right about the (overall) lack of error-correcting mechanisms in crypto research, and this is definitely a step in the right direction. Kudos to Loren for taking the extra step to look critically at this evidence. Too few here are open-minded enough to actually read any skeptical analyses…
I totally agree with Ben, and think it’s long past time to stop dealing with tracks, as they have already demonstrated the plausibility of the animal.
Let’s move on to the sighting reports, the really good stuff.
I would flag the info in the database and move it into a section about fakes, but not remove it altogether. Otherwise you’d have no pictures of fakes to judge new tracks against. Someone could use the same wooden cut-outs and fool an entirely new generation.
Well, hoaxes like this have a way of muddying the waters for anyone looking into possibly real prints. I am gald that at least these fakes were recognized. I do not in the slightest think that this explains all tracks out there. I feel, like Loren, that a hoax is not evidence of anything other than that a hoax was commited and that these particular tracks are fake. It does not nullify the possible importance of every other track there is. There are quite possibly more fakes out there, but it seems that the ability to investigate the mobility, weight distribution, and so on involved in a given footprint will start to weed these out a bit more efficiently. As a fairly open minded skeptic, I think it is imperative that this kind of faulty evidence gets identified and properly dealt with. The very interesting thing for me about Bigfoot tracks is the tendency for some people to want to fake them. When studying known animals, it is more likely that one will be able to accept the evidence they see before their eyes wheras with Bigfoot, one has to sift out the bogus tracks and be on the lookout for possible fakes. It adds an extra element for sure.
i am one who believes that every suspect print track and cast should be discarded from the record. of course i dont mean trash but they should not be included in the evidence but in a separate record of hoaxes.
we have to publicise ALL HOAXES JUST AS WE DO REAL ENCOUNTERS. only then can our integrity be beyond reproach. if its real then say so. if its fake then say so.
as soon as the Wallace family made public the antics of this yahoo the bigfoot community should have made a big deal out of throwing out all casts photo and person experiences that have to do with Wallace. they should have said we still have this huge amount of evidence.
the world thinks bob the idiot in Yakima and Wallace were responsible for every sighting print and track find all around north America. this is our fault. we are responsible for exposing hoaxes and thoroughly investigating every sighting and find.
if the bfro did this they wouldn’t have been penn and tellers punk. because certain people are so arrogant they hurt the community as a whole.
just as Mary green destroyed the reputation of all who were associated with her MM is doing the same with the bfro. we have to separate our selves from people like this and do so as loudly as possible then move on.
hoaxes will always be with us. the sooner we as a community realise it is our responsibility to deal with them the better off we will be.
Greetings all,
This may be one of the most fascinating topics ever discussed on this blog. I don’t think I’ve ever been as glued to one conversation on Cryptomundo, and with such a cast of key players. Amazing…
I think that, to summarize this discussion thus far, the inevitability of being more discerning of the possible hoaxes is a necessity for the “survival” of Cryptozoology (or whatever you care to call it) and its growth as a serious science.
Just as chrisandclaudia2 said above, if we expect to be taken seriosuly at all, WE must be the ones to catch the fallacies, not the “skeptics”, who would inevitably hope to turn the evidence back on us, hence making some of the finest researchers out there appear as nothing more than “punks” for Penn and Teller to exploit.
Perhaps we should ALL become skeptics! Then, as immortalized in the words of Sir Authur Conan Doyle’s famous character, we may “eliminate all other factors, and the one which remains must be the truth”! Got it, Holmes?
Cheers,
Micah A. Hanks
I agree, Redskelter. This subject, I feel, is best approached with a healthy dose of skepticism precisely because there are so many that would try to pull hoaxes,trickery, or sensationalist tomfoolery (cough, Tom Biscardi, cough). To me that creates the need to be meticulous, observant, and above all scientific when it comes to proccessing any sort of potential evidence. For anyone interested in Bigfoot research, I think it is important to not accept every track, broken branch, or depression in the ground as evidence or jump to conclusions without doing the proper research and looking at it from the skeptical point of view. This srticle is a good example of work being done to that end. I think it shows that indeed it is possible to discard some of the fraudulent chaff from the really compelling stuff and I feel we need to maintain this sort of dedication to being mindful of what constitutes good evidence. Too many people would be willing to make fools of seriously cryptozoologists. Let’s not play into their hands. This is truly a fascinating article and shows that Bigfoot researchers are not just going to swallow everything they see in this day and age.
I have repeatedly heard the assertion that ALL Sasquatch footprints are faked just because SOME of them are. That is not an assertion that can rationally be said to follow. I have even heard about more than one individual that claimed to have made ALL the tracks himself. That also is clearly not a plausible assertion.
Incidentally, I always wondered if John Green and I were related, my father’s mother was a Green. Our published family history is “Cantwell-Greene Families of East Tennessee” (1999, 518 pgs.)
One thing that I think has gotten Bigfooters to this pass is that when the debunker shouts, FAKE! the Bigfooter shouts, REAL!
Thereby inserting foot.
It’s a shame that almost from the first (and the “first” goes back centuries), sasquatch track reports have been viewed by Europeans as potentially fake. (And the sas as a “quaint Indian legend,” despite the fact that every animal in the First Nations bestiary has gotten the exact same treatment. And then there’s the man in the ape suit.) But there it is; that’s the hand Bigfooters have been dealt, a hand that raises the bar for sas confirmation. As unfortunate as may be, there’s no sasquatch in the scientific inventory until science deems a holotype acceptable.
And this is why, as you all know, there’s no such thing as a “real” bigfoot track.
As Ben Radford has shown during his all-too-infrequent visits to this board, the assertion “no way was this faked” gets Bigfooters in hot water. Even – make that “especially” – when it’s uttered by such giants of the field as Krantz and Green, and such technical authorities as Meldrum and Chilcutt. When the only other alternative to a hoax – as with the P/G film – is a real, unlisted animal, the pronouncement is really loaded, and invites danger when somebody pulls out a pin and pricks it. (Which, with the dermal-ridge thing, has been Matt Crowley’s permanent contribution to the sas field. Man, they had ME going for a while on dermal ridges.)
Bigfooters (if we’re going to insist on debating tracks) need to do two things, and eschew any other approaches:
1. Assiduously examine track finds for potential evidence of hoaxing, and jump on it immediately when they suspect it;
2. Stop arguing that it could not have been faked!
Until there is a holotype, ANY sas evidence could have been faked. The best a proponent can do is say that there is no clear evidence of hoaxing, and cite extenuating circumstances (conditions, remoteness, length of trackway) that combine to make a hoax unlikely.
To me, the P/G film seems extraordinarily unlikely to have been faked; almost all of the circumstances – including a “costume” that many in the industry say couldn’t be done today, much less in 1967 – make it almost impossible for me to believe a hoax.
But until we have a sas in hand, I have to hold open the possibility. Not to do so invites an egg vs. face confrontation of the first order.
With the pictures provided in this blog, readers should use them as layers in a photoediting program, keeping the original aspect ratios but one more or less transparent and see if they really line up to one another. There is at least one picture set where this can be done because the cast and wooden foot are not at oblique angles to the film plane.
When doing photoshopping analyses, remember, you are seeing the wooden fake feet in reverse to the imprint they may have left in the soft dust or dirt.
Thus the photo of the wooden foot with the crack in it would have to be flipped over to be aligned with the Blue Creek Mtn-Onion Mtn photo from 1967 of the right foot track in the middle of this blog.
The wooden foot photo at the top of the blog, likewise, should be flipped to reveal its likeness to the left foot track shown.
I have been sent one such comparison already, but the individual sending it to me does not wish for it to be posted as the person does not want to upset John Green. Okay.
I look forward to others who wish to do such comparisons, and allow me to share them, whether they prove my points or not. 🙂
I probably will post them in a separate, new blog.
DWA responds:
“One thing that I think has gotten Bigfooters to this pass is that when the debunker shouts, FAKE! the Bigfooter shouts, REAL!
Thereby inserting foot.”
(italics mine)
DWA you sure come up with some great puns
BTW in my cryptozoology group there is an ongoing discussion about a footprint that Grover Krantz proclaimed to be real, and it came from Indiana. Later on, somebody came foreward and claimed to have faked it. My involvement in this came into play at that point because I had seen prior versions of bigfoot tracks from Indiana that matched Krantz’s track, and I observed that if it was a fake, it matched “real” ones from Indiana that the hoaxer would not have known about. I have a drawing of a cast of one such a cast in my group’s files section from my notes and dated November 1980. Unfortunately I checked and the original cast has been destroyed.
And saying that there could not be Bigfoots seven to nine feet tall (their usual size range) is akin to saying that human beings could not get that large. Bears of that size can get around in the woods quite well without people noticing until they begin raiding the garbage. Human beings up to nine feet tall are rare, but they exist. The range of sizes in human beings is near enough to two-to-ten feet tall, and easily covers the vast majority of “Abominable” sightings. (Please note that this is a general statement to include all such categories, not only Sasquatch.)
Leto,
Gorillas are easy to spot if they are in zoo habitats in captivity, but talk to anyone who has actually tried to find them in the wild, and you will hear differently.
Despite their size they are nearly impossible to find in their native habitat without the assistance of trained guides.
Dwa is right, I think. While making those new to the hunt for Bigfoot aware that there are fakes out there and what to watch out for is a good idea, the footprints themselves are conclusive of nothing. To an investigator they are, at best, only indications that something unusual passed this way. No good way of telling if they were made by man or animal.
Tracks themselves are essentially worthless except to show you the direction the thing went.
You know, Hollis, I’ve often wondered why no one seems to have done exactly that: track Sasquatch with dogs. Oh I’ve heard the arguments that “dogs are too afraid of Bigfoot to track them” and “they won’t track them because they don’t ‘know’ what they’re tracking”. I don’t buy that. There are trained tracking dogs that will track anything.
Some people have said that hunters, or people with SAR dogs, don’t want to risk their valuable animals by letting them chase after Bigfoot. But those dogs are usually worked on leashes, so the risk to the dogs would be minimal.
Maybe it’s just a matter of putting the two together: getting someone with a tracking dog, or better yet a brace or a pack of dogs, to the right place at the right time, when a sighting has occurred, to track the Sasquatch before the trail gets too cold.
The carved wooden feet that Loren and others think were used to make the “15-inch” tracks at Bluff Creek, Blue Creek Mountain etc. in the 1950s and 60s still exist and there are plenty of photos and casts of the tracks that were supposedly made with them. There is also $100,000 waiting for the Wallaces or anyone else who can demonstrate that those wooden feet (or anything else) can successfully be used to produce the sort of tracks that those photos and casts show. Until someone does that, and so far no one has even cared to try, claiming to find proof that those tracks were faked with those feet is just armchair speculation, nothing but blowing smoke.
Should there be anyone out there who wants to put this to the test in a serious manner but is prevented by lack of financing I can be reached at and will be happy to discuss arrangements.
I will just add that my 49-year quest has been to find out what it is that makes such tracks, and it will be successfully completed if anyone can prove they are of human origin. I won’t like having my books made irrelevant of course, but I’ll be glad to have lived long enough to learn the answer.
Not to negate John Green’s position at the end, I would just like to add to the detractors who say “tracks mean nothing” that this is a message board about tracks only at this time; what we are talking about is the matter of the validity of the tracks. Other message boards can be for sightings, witness drawings, feces, hairs, skeletal remains, etc.
Yes, there are fake tracks. but that does not mean they ALL are, and tracks mean a great deal to a hunter. The mere fact that some people are not hunters does not mean that other people cannot tell a great deal from tracks. This includes the Physical Anthropologists such as Krantz.
Merely saying “(whatever) means nothing to me” means nothing to anyone else who happens to know a thing or two about the subject.
daledrinnon: I definitely wouldn’t say tracks mean nothing, and don’t think my remarks should be construed that way.
As John Hart said in the hiking guide that got me intrigued enough to visit the California Siskiyou 21 years ago (I saw what could have been tracks, but they were too old to be sure): the sasquatch could have been dismissed by scientists long ago, but “what gets in their way is the footprints.” The volume and location of these trackways means much more, in terms of my initial assessment of the animal’s viability, than the sightings do.
My point is that we’ll never suss the species of the animal – or if there even is an unknown animal making the tracks – as long as we limit ourselves to the tracks. The continued appearance of trackways still serves as a guide to the search; examining their provenance can increase the strength of the case against all this being a hoax.
It’s just that sightings need to be factored in much more than they have been in terms of deciding where research should be conducted.
Why are the tracks of this supposed non-human North American primate, even considered to be evidence of it’s existence? We don’t look at bear (or any other) prints and suggest: “Bears must exist. See, here are some prints.”
What we say is: “A bear passed this way.”
Shouldn’t we have a foot to match to the prints, before we make assumptions (or wishes) about what made them?
At least in the case of the Wallace feet, we do have a match.
Greg (ntg):
We consider the footprints as evidence of what we do for these reasons:
1. Bears make prints. Other animals do too.
2. The P/G film subject left prints that look a lot like the other ones found; and that film shows what looks, pretty clearly, like a bipedal primate.
What would be more logical? “Nothing passed this way, because we don’t have a foot?”
Having spent a lot of time outside and looked at a lot of tracks I can tell you, when it looks like footprints, it is.
For me, there is no controversy, I know pretty damn well there is “something” and I am pretty damn certain I have seen and handled actual physical evidence of it, not just the tracks. But as I said, this IS a discussion about tracks, after all, and that IS what this discussion should be limited to.
Track evidence is rare, as it should be if these creatures are intelligent enough to actively avoid detection; they would avoid leaving tell-tell signs of their direction of travel and their existence. Moreover, I avoid stepping in mud or areas where my boot gets too wet or dirty, why wouldn’t these bare-footed creatures do the same, if only to protect their feet from cold or injury.
Now these are only assumptions, but it’s makes me question tracks that are too abundant or too “perfect”. I am more impressed by the partial track found in conjunction with or near the same time of a sighting. A set of tracks, standing alone leaves too much to be debated. If I were to catalogue track data, I would give a credibility rating that gets higher marks if tracks can be related to a sighting.
The next time I set out pancakes for Patty, I’m putting them smack dab in the middle of a muddy field. Then I’ll have tracks of my green-jacketed big-headed turban-wearing bigfoot to compare with the Wallace fakes. Or not, she may be wearing Chacos.
See other images here on Cryptomundo.