Lost In The Woods: BFRO

John Marshall, who is the Daily Breeze / asap’s sports writer based in Denver, trekked along with a recent BFRO excursion or “expedition” in Oregon. From Wednesday, June 14, through Friday, June 16, he filed news stories of his experiences with the asap.

Marshall also snapped photographs, including the above photo of Matt Moneymaker calling out a Bigfoot. The story was picked up individually by various newspapers, such as in "Surviving in Bigfoot’s backyard" on Friday, June 16, 2005.

To read all three parts of Marshall’s field reports, however, with audio and video, please click here.

It all begins, for Marshall, with “dogs on a bus, a little howling and lots of driving.” Could anything be more scary than Matt Moneymaker personally trying to use his own voice to sound blast Bigfoot in the woods? Perhaps only the fact, Marshall thinks, that Matt believes this will call out Bigfoot.

The famous Bigfoot pose – and the closest John Marshall said his group got to seeing one.

Mostly the article is about how the BFRO got lost in the woods, as for example in this extract from Marshall’s piece.

What started off as a Bigfoot expedition turned into a march of attrition, a group of eight hikers wading through waist-deep water, hacking through claustrophobically thick foliage and over slimy, I-bet-you-can’t-keep-your-balance rocks. Nearly nine hours, roughly 15 miles and dozens of plunges into the creek later, we finally made it to our destination, trudging in water-logged boots.

Associated Press photos
Thick vegetation and bad weather conditions in the woods slowed the expedition on the second day of the search for Sasquatch.

The entire experience for Marshall was not a good one. He ends his series by noting:

When Moneymaker got a response to his whooping call the first day, he switched tones and knocked on trees to see if they’d answer. They never did, leaving Gruber and I wondering why he never went back to the initial noise. In the Bigfoot recordings CD, the narrator describes how the creatures came to their camp one night, but they didn’t want to shine a light to see them because it would scare them away.

Now, Moneymaker says they’ve heard Bigfoot, come across their footprints and seen the creatures in previous expeditions. We never had anything that came close to proving its existence, which only added to our skepticism.

Of course, I could be way off on this. Bigfoot could be out there. And if he does show up, I’ll be the first to apologize to the people who hunt for him and admit I made a mistake.

Indeed, it appears to be the sad end to a sad tale about a sad search for Sasquatch. Is the story a canvas for Marshall’s bias, an expose’ of the BFRO, a little bit of both, or something else? Whatever it is, it is a wet blanket on an eventful beginning to the summer of 2006.

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.

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