Brooding About Bigfooters
Posted by: Loren Coleman on April 4th, 2007
Sometimes I allow my thoughts to drift to trying to understand the “people” part of the Bigfoot quest.
In my Bigfoot! The True Story of Apes in America (NY: Paraview Pocket – Simon and Schuster, 2003), I wrote Chapter 15, “The Bigfooters” to detail my thoughts on the matter of the why and the what of the searchers. I added historical and people-specific notes to this matter in my more casual analysis of the folks “looking” for Bigfoot in The Field Guide of Bigfoot and Other Mystery Primates and Tom Slick: True Life Encounters in Cryptozoology.
In Bigfoot!, I decided to continue with a delineation of the differences in the various types of people involved in the research and search, which has been noted by the late Grover Krantz and John Green. I did this so the general public would stop thinking there is just one kind of “seeker” out there.
Frankly, although I didn’t write much then about this point, I think one of the large public misconceptions is a single type. Reinforced by the media, the thought is that the majority of seekers are of “one kind” of individual out there looking for Bigfoot – an amateur who has little or no training in science but is driven by passion and obsession to find the forest giants. Definitely the movies strengthened this myth, as demonstrated by the various “Bigfoot hunters” in Harry and the Hendersons.
In terms of field investigators, yes, most are what I lightheartedly and with all due respect call “weekend warriors.” These are mostly guys (males do dominate the field) who get their gear together (from nightscope vision to plaster of Paris) for what they consider serious searching from two days to two weeks. A few of these are outright jokers who only take a sleeping bag and beer, and say they are “Bigfoot hunting.” Thus, the newspapers love to have fun with “six-pack Joe” quotes from those kind of “Bigfooters.” Some of these “weekend warriors” are in local clubs who feel they will make a discovery which will assist the “search.”
Whether any of these people have any short-term or long-term impact is doubtful. There may be accidental discoveries by these folks of footprints or sightings, but will these people collect the material in a matter that will be acknowledged and recognized by science, by the zoologists and anthropologists who will “judge” the evidence? Will it be useful for pushing forward our knowledge of Bigfoot? Or will it end up in a pile of blobsquatch photos, shaky plaster casts, and dubious ear-witness evidence?
Certainly, for the real researchers and the more scientifically-based regional Bigfoot groups, lack of funding may be a factor, but context is another problem. How many of these group members are extending their passion without any grounding in zoology, anthropology, background research, or techniques in woodcraft? How many are able to acknowledge that Bigfoot ecotourism is foremost a social activity?
Ray Crowe was one of the first people whom I recall being totally honest with me that the Bigfoot groups serve the purpose as a new form of social interaction.
Indeed, if Bigfoot people would acknowledge the social and ecotourism dimensions of Bigfoot searching, the coming explosion in interest, funding, and potential to use this to the advantage of science could be more openly realized.
In a whole other collection of “Bigfooters,” there does appear to be more and more who are academically-oriented, but that does not mean they have more time for field investigations. This is not a criticism, but the pseudo-attempts to act as if they are field investigators by the media should probably end. There is nothing wrong with being an academic. Some filmmakers, nevertheless, stage the “professors” to show up in documentaries as if they spend their lives in the bush. They have a place in their labs and offices, doing the analysis, and there’s nothing wrong with that role. As far as I know, in a very Jane Goodall-like fashion, only Debbie Martyr in Sumatra (in search of the Orang Pendek) has spent the last decade directly in the jungle for most of her time out there. She continues to be one of the unsung heroes of the field – and no “weekend warrior” or “academic” will dethrone her.
The general public often forget the simple facts and history of animal collecting. Most new animals are found by local peoples, who serve as scouts and animal collectors for those that venture less frequently into the jungles and wild areas. Gone are the days of Victorian funding by zoos and museums to find new species. Most straightforward funding for cryptozoology is via documentary films and reality television programming today. That is a truth that few wish to confront. Smaller sources of cryptozoology funding come from writing.
John Green (right) interviews Albert Ostman about Ostman’s 1924 Sasquatch abduction incident in British Columbia.
Meanwhile, some “Bigfooters” are “chroniclers,” those that write the books, articles, and today, the blogs, to keep the information flowing. It has something to do with a combination of background and age, I think. Some people start out doing fieldwork, and move into more chronicling. On the part of John Green, it was the reverse. He was a journalist who got interested in examining Sasquatch evidence in the field, secondary to his writing.
For myself, with an budding Yeti and Bigfoot interest long ago, and seeing that funding was always going to be low, I stayed in full-time social science and university jobs from 1967 until 1996, to support my cryptozoology research. Also, I decided since I lived in the USA, I should concentrate on North America. So, since 1960, I traveled to 49 states (not Alaska yet), to investigate sites, sightings, and situations regarding Sasquatch and Bigfoot. Naturally, slowly I became a more prolific writer as I was doing the field investigations, and thus I find myself today labeled a “chronicler” of such matters. But for me, of course, it felt like it was something I slowly drifted into, from fieldwork into writing (even though I did start writing in 1967). More authoring of books in the last decade seemed logical for me after I left the university sphere following my rock-climbing accident.
A few good men and women are doing “cryptozoology,” and struggle to do it. But there is a darker side too, which has impacted the search in North America and, for example, in Malaysia.
There is a growing subculture of fake “Bigfooters” who want people to fund their “search” and what I think are their alleged scams. The most obvious are those who often get run out of town after people learn a little about them, but who are infrequently trying to sell people “views” of captured Bigfoot that never turn up and/or “memberships” in “expeditions” to the “subscribers.” The “expeditions” are nothing more than a day or two out in the local wooded lots or even well-known camping areas, but the general participants get to think they’ve been on a Bigfoot trek.
It is a shame and perhaps worse, but it really is a minority situation.
Actually, the variety of fringe people who get more publicity than the mainstream Bigfooters is quite vast. There’s the “Bigfoot contactees,” “pranksters,” “debunkers,” “paranormal seekers,” and “skeptics,” who all may call themselves “Bigfooters” at one time or another. The press is more than happy to interview any of this vocal minority about the “real” state of Bigfoot affairs. But back to the darkside for a moment…those who seem to have the most dangerous influence with the media.
In Malaysia, I’m not sure what some of the people there are exactly thinking and doing – except at a distance – but the recent episodes to “discover” a ‘hominid,” via what turned out to be hoaxed evidence, was a terrible set-back to Malaysia’s actual unknown hairy hominoid (or Bigfoot, to some) research. Those events wiped away much of the feeling that “Bigfoot” was in Malaysia in the public’s eye, even though I understand there is a good basis of data that goes back historically for hairy hominoids in the jungles in South Asia. The folklore, reality, and good cases from treks of Harold Stephens in the 1970s to the locals’ 2004-2007 sightings are in danger of being forgotten due to the shady events that recently muddled the waters.
In a parallel of what happens in America, there’s a feud going on in Malaysia between the API and SPI, the Charles Goh camp vs the Ang-Chow camp. Some of this appears to have an ethnic undertone to it but, more importantly, this fight is not allowing the public to see through the trees to look clearly at the evidence that is a good foundation for the Malaysian Orang Dalam, Bigfoot, or whatever you want to call them. That’s the downside of having humans involved in any search for Bigfoot. Unfortunately we act so “human,” after a time, in the search and things get bogged down in personalities.
The upside is that most Bigfooters are decent people pursuing a mystery that we all are trying to solve together. Most Bigfooters, from “weekend warriors,” to “academics,” to “chroniclers,” are great people to know and are sincere in their quests, despite how they are portrayed in the press.
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.
Just my two cents on the topic, but while I absolutely agree we need, in fact, must have scientific researchers, I wonder if bigfoot is most likely to be discovered by a seasoned hunter. It seems the academics often get bogged down on a single footprint or arguing the “man or ape” hypothesis and so forth, while a hunter would be more likely to go track the darned thing and find it. Scientists definitely have a major role here, but somebody who can go out and capture a bigfoot is what is needed. I know, maybe it sounds like an old “great white hunter” movie but I still wonder if that isn’t what it’s going to take to get the job done.
The way I see it, no one involved in this, not the searchers nor the media, is going to cease and desist – or even change what they’re doing much – simply because It’s The Right Thing To Do.
Well, some might (but not enough to make a difference). And the media treatment seems to be getting better. But don’t hold your breath about the Bad Apples, or should I say, those you perceive to be.
When it comes to The Unknown, people who are convinced that what they’re doing is right simply are. If science isn’t paying attention, that’s all the more spur to them. I think folks who posit a paranormal Bigfoot are hurting the chances for scientific involvement, as are hoaxers. I don’t even think the name Bigfoot is helping. But I don’t think any of that’s going to change. As long as doing what you’re doing brings you attention, Biscardi, and particularly buckage, you’re going to keep doing it. Dollars comoing from the naive aren’t worth any less. And as long as you are convinced you are right, or that you are making people happy, or giving them hope, or that you must continue to press the message home until the blind finally see…well, this is how we are.
I think that what will happen – if anything does to get us off the dime on this animal – is that a person here and a person there will chip away, and produce a theory here and a sighting there and a hair and a footprint and…a scientist or two will put things together and exchange emails and…
In other words, it’s a snowball, rolling downhill, very very slowly. And there ain’t much snow. But it’s a big hill, and sooner or later we may, some of us, live to see that snowball hit critical mass.
But until then…the way it’s being done, all of it, is the only game in town, and we’ll have to keep picking grains of wheat out of the mountain of chaff until we’re there. If we ever get “there.”
Currently, the shotgun approach to solving the mystery, is in effect. Most pellets will miss the indefinite target. Some quite wildly. Only a couple pellets will actually hit the bulls eye. However, the disappointed majority will vote that the pellets that in fact were accurate, did not come close so that the shooting match can continue. Even though already over with.
Wow, the media coverage is getting greater? There maybe more of it but quantity never is better than quality. For every minute of serious reporting there is 10 minutes with some clown making grunting noises in his favorite swamp, or a Russian “scientist” tackling a plastic deer to show how the local bigfoot clan does it.
Worst of all are all the people who know who was in what suit or made what prints after the fact. They are probably getting more appearance $$$ than the serious researcher and they add nothing.
If bigfoot is going to be solved it will have to be by mistake at this point. If someone hits one with a truck, then maybe everyone can or will agree on it.
I am the same age as Loren, and I can only imagine the frustration he and other real researchers, who have done the work and paid their dues, must feel at the influx of phonies and wanabees.
The whole cryptid issue is being overrun by people looking for instant fame, bucks, or personal stature.Real investigation is a long serious process, with few quick answers, few material gains, and a lot of headaches and frustration.
What is going on now mirrors what happened in UFO investigations as it progressed from the 70’s into the 80’s etc. Any serious research got buried in the media blitz of phony films and pictures (thank god there was no photo shop then) and the rash of contactees and finally the over indulgance of millions of wanna be abductees. hey I enjoyed the x-files like everyone else but you cant believe its all real because its fun. If its 99% bugus we need to concentrate on the other 1%. The part thats not fun but serious work.
Right now cryptozoology is like the flavor of the month, it wont last. When the money runs out for the almost documentaries we wont get to see almost stars like Boston Rob fall down a hill in a suit. We need to spend the time on the film he was mimicking. The media attention may be nice, but it doesnt make the visual foolishness any more real than the flood of reality T.V.
The Cryptid Community needs a Frank Buck.
I would be considered a weekend warrior. I love getting out there and staying in areas where sightings have occured. Sure, I’m no scientist… (my major was Japanese…) But I would like to think that anyone who actually cares about finding evidence of Bigfoot is of some little help. I wont be running around with a 6 pack and a gun, but, will be out there looking…. Hoping to photograph or run into one of these great creatures.
Loren
Good points made. So what do you call guys like me that have witnessed one of these creatures and have found that most of the info out there is totally BS. Science has its merits; but, most of them follow a line and don’t appear to want to rock the boat. As I’ve said before seeing is believing; especially, when the hair on the back of your neck straightens and fear engulfs your being. Science will not prove that spirit exists let alone the existance of the ground burrower, what ever people want to call them. They are alive and well til they are caught caged and treated like the animal most believe them to be. My hat is off to these creatures; which, have a spirit, compassion and a brain of sense to stay away from humans if they can.
I think Rillo777 raises a good point with the remark,
Bigfooters and skeptics often express opinions about the North American wilderness from a personal background that is essentially urban. This can lead to errors of a kind that folks with somewhat greater outdoors experience would be unlikely to make. (For example, you don’t need to go any further than myself or John Bindernagel to put to rest that old chestnut about how “bear skeletons are never found in the wild.” Both he and I have personally found bear skulls or carcasses.)
Countless thousands of loggers, construction workers, silviculture workers, trappers, prospectors, hunters, and many others spend months (or more) of every year living in and penetrating all the way through sasquatch habitat. Many of them are armed. If there’s ever to be a hit on the long search for Bigfoot, numbers alone dictate that it’s those people who are most likely to make it.
This is what John Green quite reasonably expected from the beginning. He wrote, way back in 1970,
The biggest problem with the deer hunter theory is that most who hunt deer do so in each other’s backyards. Even individuals who hunt the more ” wild game ” will venture an outstanding 3 or 4 mi. into the woods. As I watch the bigfoot documentaries that are aired, I’m depressed because I see freeways in the background and can see the lights of the local city in the background.
I agree with Rillo, at the top of this thread, that, the ” great white hunter ” needs to be the next great resource in the bigfoot tracking. Let him, or even a group of people, venture 30 or 40 mi. into the wilderness off of trails. Every year I camp in the Gifford Pinchot and wilderness in the state of Washington and enjoy vistas of over 100 mi. of unadulterated land. Men regularly look through and hike around less than 1/5 of this area, and there’s no telling me all things that are out there have been discovered.
Great article Loren. However, as I think this through am convinced that the “Big Find” will be made by the Washington State Highway Department – road kill crew – alongside Interstate 90 about 100 miles southeast of Seattle.
Fools rush in where angels fear to tread. Substitute the traditional scientific community for angels and the analogy is apt. Science waits for evidentiary data to be handed to it on a silver platter. In the interim, someone is going to be injured or murdered on the other side of this coin. It is one thing to be an armchair theorist and another to be in the field at 3 am. There is something happening of high strangeness, no doubt. There is enough collaborated information to determine that whatever may be covertly lurking behind that stand of trees is not going to give up it’s cover and shake our hand in brotherly greeting. Curiousity killed the cat. This is not a game of paintball tag. Unless you have knowledgable field personel armed with non lethal defensive weapontry..someone is looking for a confrontation that is going to be as inevitable as the mathematical odds tick by as if in a clock, with each encounter. The hunted should not be the subject of false expectations and half baked expedititions, rather it is the hunters who should measure three times and cut once.
SharkFisher writes,
Humans have a much greater presence far, far off the highways than many people realize. But there is a more important point in regards to hunters.
Let’s assume that hunters do stick pretty close to home. It is also the case that eyewitness accounts of Bigfoot encounters often come from relatively high-traffic locations close to population centers—roads, trails, farms, parks, and so on.
This is a real catch-22 for Bigfooters. Either the eyewitness accounts are accurate, in which case we know that Bigfoot shares range with human hunters; or, the eyewitnesses accounts are inaccurate, in which case there is far less reason to suppose the creatures exist.
I don’t see any real way around it. If people can see them, people can shoot them.
This one’s worth parsing.
@@@@@Look for these.
“SharkFisher writes,
The biggest problem with the deer hunter theory is that most who hunt deer do so in each other’s backyards. Even individuals who hunt the more ” wild game ” will venture an outstanding 3 or 4 mi. into the woods.”
@@@@He’s right. I’ve hiked and backpacked for over a quarter-century, with loads of time well away from maintained trails. In all that time off trail, I have seen a grand total of three people – at one campsite, together. The great majority of this time has been in Shenandoah National Park, one of the busiest in the whole park system, where it’s almost impossible, in most places, to get one linear mile away from the nearest trail. People almost never leave trails; and those that do, don’t go far. (I have never seen a hunter away from a maintained trail in all the time I’ve spent in places where people hunt.) And I hope I don’t have to say it’s logical to presume my experience isn’t some kind of fluke, but closer to what the average person could expect if he did what I did.
“Let’s assume that hunters do stick pretty close to home. It is also the case that eyewitness accounts of Bigfoot encounters often come from relatively high-traffic locations close to population centers—roads, trails, farms, parks, and so on.”
@@@@@Just as often, actually much more often, the encounters come in remote places, many about as remote as a human can be and still be on a road or trail. As one who’s spent much much time walking roads and trails I can tell you that most of them do not qualify as either high-traffic or close to population centers. The Texas Bigfoot Research Center’s analysis of sighting reports in Texas – one of the places with the most of them – shows that the lower the human population density, the greater the number of sightings – not at all what one would intuitively expect to be the case were these reports of people seeing things. I have read many reports, and they are overwhelmingly in quite remote places. Where they are near habitations, the habitations are on the edge of extensive wild areas. Very rarely – I have read less than ten such reports, and again I’ve read many – is the sighting near what anyone would term a “population center,” for which in North America read “city.” (And “near” is a VERY relative term, even in these reports.) Sightings are overwhelmingly in rural and wild areas in, or at the edge of, extensive swatches of what evidence indicates to be excellent habitat.
“This is a real catch-22 for Bigfooters. Either the eyewitness accounts are accurate, in which case we know that Bigfoot shares range with human hunters; or, the eyewitnesses accounts are inaccurate, in which case there is far less reason to suppose the creatures exist.”
@@@@The catch-22 doesn’t really exist. Many hunters do see these animals; in fact, if you grouped sightings by occupational category, hunters, from the many reports I’ve read, constitute one of the largest such categories. (They’re also notorious for skepticism, I might add.) Hunters overwhelmingly decide not to shoot. They have numerous reasons, every one of which makes total sense. Most of them I’ve read – quite sensibly – recognize they are under-armed to kill an animal that may be twice or more the size of a bear. Many probably recognize that their hunting regs make anything illegal to shoot that isn’t specifically allowed in the regs. Almost all of them were so utterly stunned, or in awe of what they were seeing, that the thought of really shooting never occurred to them, even if the likely result of shooting did. Most of the shootings I’ve read about involve non-hunters who went for guns. Needless to say, they tend to be bad shots (although a number of apparent woundings are reported). I think it’s a safe assumption – again from what I’ve read – that any hunter that would shoot one would be most unlikely to report it if he did. Hunters are pretty practical people; and the practical difficulties in becoming rich rich rich – rather than, say, jailed or very heavily fined – from shooting a sas become very evident once one spends any amount of time thinking about it. The BFRO website has an excellent, thoughtful treatise on why hunters don’t shoot them. It’s also worth remembering the kill/no kill thread we had here a while back. Almost all the hunters said they wouldn’t shoot one; almost all that said they would said also that self-defense would be the only reason.
That having been said, the BFRO website also has a detailed interview by a researcher with a Manitoba hunter who killed one – with one shot – in 1941. It is very worth reading. If there’s a credible encounter report in the record, and I’m chary to point to any SINGLE encounter and hold it up this way, this one would be it.
“I don’t see any real way around it. If people can see them, people can shoot them.”
@@@@Yes. But they don’t. With exceptions. 😉 What we’re dealing with here are what I call the “urban objections” to the sasquatch – the ones a suburbanite might buy, but that don’t hold water with people who really know the American outdoors. If you’ve spent the time I have in the wilder places – many of which are traversed by good solid trails and by paved roads – you’ll know that the”urban objections” are less “evidence against” than the sheer number of sightings, easily fitting within the bell curve of individual differences one would associate with a species, are “evidence for.”
The animal may or may not exist. But the arguments against it offered so far really aren’t.
I’m telling you, folks. Read sighting reports. You have to read lots; you can’t just accept a couple. But when you read them, you see what people are missing when they try to casually argue the sasquatch away. Those folks are seeing something. There are too many to argue otherwise.
Please understand that I was not advocating shooting a bigfoot. I was merely attempting to make the point that hunters are more likely to move through areas less travelled by hikers and the like. They know how to move quietly and can be extremely tenacious when tracking an animal. They learn how to spot and follow a trail and most of the ones I know are very curious about the natural world that lies beyond the well-travelled routes. That said, definitely there are those who “hunt in each other’s backyard” but those lands often contain hundreds (or more) of acres that few people except hunters ever see. Often times it’s a whole different world out there even a hundred yards off the interstate.
These are the people who I think would be a great resource if we could find any who would like to hunt the ultimate game–not for killing, but for discovery of a new species.
BTW–wouldn’t it be great if all the reputable bigfoot groups got together, pooled their resources and funded a small group of scientists, hunters and trackers to go out and really search for bigfoot? I envision it being a sort of bigfoot “Corps of Discovery” kind of like the Lewis and Clark expedition. Let the hunters search and the scientists evaluate the data. I know, I know! I’m daydreaming.
Here’s a good line, by Rillo777: “Often times it’s a whole different world out there even a hundred yards off the interstate.” I think fifty feet is more like it.
People really underestimate how much unpeopled, unvisited land there is in North America. We’ve talked about this before. And the funny thing is, the interstate highways are one of the best ways to see this. Most folks keep their eyes on the dotted lines. Me, I’m looking off the sides of the roads constantly. (I’d give you my plate numbers, but just be careful out there, OK?) It’s amazing, really, how little our actual physical footprint on the land is. No, don’t get me started on pollution or global warming. I mean where we actually, physically are. And as someone once said, roads are an intrusion in proportion to their width, not their length. How wide are most roads? In most sasquatch sightings from vehicles I’m aware of, the driver didn’t see another car anywhere near where he saw the animal.
If the sas is out there, one of our critical errors is in assuming how much room he has to operate.
lamarkable: that’s one of my favorite posts on this site.
Just how curious is mainstream science? Is their dance card really that full? Finding this animal would really open some doors to knowledge.
You’d think someone – a lot of someones, with degrees – would want to put the question to rest. But hey, we were done with the moon 35 years ago. The unknown is SO last century.
Thank you all for commenting. I find it unfortunate that one individual, offsite, has found it important to make remarks that they placed their comment on here to “quash” further discussion by others.
Actually, I think people are open to hearing all sides, and that’s what I was hoping for in speaking up against the media trying to characterize the diversity of people who are Bigfooters as merely “one kind” of seeker.
Best wishes to all….