Bigfoot Musings
Posted by: Rick Noll on December 18th, 2005
(Pink Floyd – Small Furry Animals Gathered in a Cave Grooving with a Pick)
Quite a few people have asked to go out with me when I Bigfoot Hunt. Sometimes I will accept and take them out if I get the right feeling from them. You don’t want someone freaking out on you out there. That’s happened to me before and it isn’t fun. Sometimes it really is more trouble than it’s worth.
I have had a few women asking to go out as well… but you know, some of the questions I ask them leave pretty strange looks on their faces, telling me that they’re about to bolt. Remember I am all about capturing things on film and so I use people that go with me… for scale. You come upon some tracks and one of the first things you do is see if you can match the stride… so I have asked up front… how far can you spread your legs?
Obvious hoaxed tracks constructed for the enjoyment of a passing tourist train, Elbe, Wa.
Maybe I should think about rephrasing that one.
Did you know that there is a difference in some of the basic terms used by animal trackers and those for humans? You would think that a Step and Stride would be something they would want to standardize… but no. They are opposites.
Human trackers call a step the distance between (3) three tracks. A stride is between two tracks of opposite feet.
Animal trackers rarely have to content with a bipedal trackway so of course the definitions need to incorporate front and rear as well as left and right.
…
And now the question we have all been waiting for –
Unknown scat pile found by Owen Caddy on remote forest road. Contained small rodent bones, seeds and grasses.
Where is all the Bigfoot poop?
You would think that an animal that might require up to 5000 calories a day to survive would have pressure in developing an out of the way toilet area.
Dr. Leroy Fish built this toliet facility on the Skookum Expedition. Do only humans feel the need to isolate such biological functions?
While working on Sasquatch: Legend Meets Science we were visited by a DNR official. He admitted to a couple of his people having found a track imbedded in a scat pile… think it is being used as a paper weight on the supervisor’s desk still… course it was pretty much dried up and the scat was most likely from range cattle, not actually that of Bigfoot.
Another Bigfoot chronicler, Chris Murphy, has come across some historical Native American lore that has Bigfoot sheltering up in tall trees and that their scat just falls down to the ground, around the tree’s trunk, at least the stuff that makes it through the branches. I haven’t found anything like this before but I have found areas I would consider latrines. Piles and piles of the stuff everywhere, as if a whole herd (?) of Bigfoot used the area. Kind of reminds me of a “D” grade movie I saw on the subject – think it was called “Ape Canyon”. There though they had Bigfoot using the facilities with a magazine spread of a famous female pop singer. It was kind of funny in a way.
My son, Kyle, kneeling next to fresh Black Bear scat at Roy, Wa. This area was held in high regard from other Bigfoot researchers as a hot spot of activity and demonstrating superhuman abilities of these animals.
Anyway, back to the topic here. On the last expedition, we came across something pretty interesting. We found some fresh scat piles and took samples of it. The very next day though, looking for it again on our way to a specific area we had an experiment running, we couldn’t find it again. So what happened to it?
I know that birds will come down and pick at any seeds that may have been ingested, digested and expunged and that other small mammals dig through the stuff occasionally. There are also many insects that will scatter the stuff… then just plain weather can dissolve scat piles… if the diet is the right type. But I also find scat on dirt roads from wolf, coyote, cougar and bear but rarely from Bigfoot. This comes back to the animal’s population numbers I guess. 38,000 black bear are going to obviously leave more of the stuff lying around then say 50 Bigfoot, for the same given area.
We finally found some fresher scat that day and discovered that the common slugs in the Pacific Northwest were feasting on the stuff. It was literally gone by the time I passed back by it. So, maybe slugs are eating the scat. Care to guess as to how many slugs there are up here?
What about just throwing their feces, scattering them all over the forest so there isn’t an actual large mass of it left behind. Other primates throw theirs for some reason. They also eat it.
Maybe they eat such a high energy diet that there really isn’t that much scat left. You can see the difference in your pets (mostly with dogs though) that if you feed them dried store bought dog food there will be tons of the remains left in your yard… feed them some high energy stuff and there won’t be as much, their bodies absorb significantly more of the food. They would also eat less when it is of high energy.
So I guess the bottom line here is that no one knows for sure why we don’t find more scat than we do.
…
(Radiohead – Go to Sleep [Little man Being Erased])
Have I mentioned using a BB gun for Bigfoot research yet?
About Rick Noll
Rick Noll has been actively searching for the Sasquatch since 1969 and continues his pursuit with extended field trips into the Pacific Northwest's most remote regions. Rick has worked with Peter Byrne, René Dahinden, Grover Krantz, John Green, Jeff Meldrum and the BFRO during all this. He helped with many documentaries on the subject including Animal X: The Skookum Expedition and Sasquatch: Legend Meets Science.
I have only found what i thought to be bigfoot scat once and it was a five pound pile of it. We bagged it up and put it on the scale when we got home. Looked alot like horse dung full of grass and round short logs. In fact this is found where i shot the video of the bear or bigfoot, we went up the next day to look for tracks and only the scat. It looked so much like horse but no tracks of any animal at all and a horse would have torn up the area. I have noticed that when i eat a lousy diet i have alot more waste but when im eating right i produce less and when im in the wood for long periods of time i produce even less. Stinky subject but it needs to be flushed out.
OK , you got me interested. How do you use the BB gun?
Let me guess….you think you see something in the bushes. It won’t come out, so, you shoot it with the BB gun (knowing this won’t injure it, as a real gun would, but may cause it to run.) Sounds like a good way to royally piss one off to me, though… C’mon, Rick, fill us in on the BB gun.
Bigfoot recycling his scat by eating it would help explain the scarcity of it to me. That would also be consistent with the “smelly” reports of skunk-apes. I think they will need more than a breath-saver if that really is the case.
Also, maybe they prefer to bury it like a cat if the soil at the site permits it?
What exactly are the characteristics of Bigfoot scat which makes you think it is from a Bigfoot? Is it just the volume of it in an area with no cattle or bears, or does it contain certain food remnants?
i was under the impression that captive gorillas and monkeys ate their scat due to a vitamin and mineral deficiency and that this did not happen in the wild?
Yea snails eat my dog’s poop (both gastropods). By the way it is grooving with a “pict”, whatever that is.
To answer the question, “What is a pict?” If you were to go back in time to roman rulled Britany, and traveled north of Hadrians Wall the tribal people you would meet there would have been picts.
Makes me wonder, what do primative people do with their “scat”…I don’t know. What did the indians do. Don’t think they all went to the same spot. Maybe they buried it, Maybe bigfoot does too…Oh you know what, this thing always seems to be around creek and river bottoms right? Maybe they just take a dump in the river. Thats what I do when out camping or in the ocean. I’ll bet some of you do too.
Who knows, but possible.