It’s Right Behind You! - Bigfoot Eyewitness Episode 505

Dusty Ruth is the leader of BFRO expeditions in Ohio. He’s also an investigator for the Northern Kentucky Bigfoot Research Group. As you can imagine, Dusty has spent untold hours in the field, on Sasquatch investigations. Of all the experiences he’s had, in the field, the 3 sightings he’s had are, understandably, the most memorable ones. Dusty had his first sighting in 2019, while he was on an outing with the BFRO, in Ohio. That sighting was the first of two sightings he’s had through a thermal vision device, at night. After he had those two sightings, he had a daytime sighting. When he had that daytime sighting, he saw the Sasquatch without the help of any technology. He saw it with his unaided eyes. We hope you’ll tune into tonight’s show and listen to Dusty share the details behind all 3 of those sightings he’s had.

If you’d like to report a Sasquatch sighting you had in Ohio or Northern Kentucky to Dusty or go out on an expedition with him, please send Dusty an email at [e-mail]

If you’d like to help support the show, by buying your own Bigfoot Eyewitness t-shirt or sweatshirt, please visit the Bigfoot Eyewitness Show Store, by going to https://Dogman-Encounters.MyShopify.com

I produce 4 other shows that are available on your favorite podcast app. If you haven't checked them out, here are links to all 4 channels on the Spreaker App...

My Bigfoot Sighting https://www.spreaker.com/show/my-bigfoot-sighting 

Dogman Tales https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/dogman-tales--6640134

Dogman Encounters https://www.spreaker.com/show/dogman-encounters-radio_2 

My Paranormal Experience https://www.spreaker.com/show/my-paranormal-experience 

Thanks, as always, for listening!

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
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Speaker 2 (00:14):
Hi there, my name is Dusty Ruth and I am
the leader of the BFRO Expeditions in Ohio. I have
been in the big footing for a number of years now.
I was looking for a hobby. I'd just gone through
a divorce and so I had extra time on my hands,

(00:35):
and I was kind of looking for a hobby that
I could do both while still being employed and after
I retired. Well, for twenty five years I had been
an investigator, and during that time I had to be
certified by the state and also had to receive a

(00:57):
number of hours in training for the job I was in,
and so I always signed up for the most interesting
training that I could that pertained to investigations, and so
I was able to get a lot of great training

(01:20):
concerning both interviewing and doing investigations. So I had always
been interested in bigfoot encryptids in general, and so I
had contacted a group who said that they were looking
for another investigator, particularly in the area that I lived,

(01:42):
which is southern Ohio, and so I contacted the head
of that organization and he wanted to speak to me
in person. So we arranged the time to meet and
I went and spoke or met with him and his wife.
That was a group at the time, it was called
a or American Primate Expeditions or Exploration or something like that. Anyway,

(02:08):
after being with them for a while, the group kind
of folded because of some health problems of Dan Baker,
who was the head of the group, and so he
archived all the information that was on Facebook. And as
soon as that happened, then I was contacted by the

(02:29):
BFRO and asked if I would like to be an
investigator for them. So I readily took them up on
that because of needing someone to go out and go
squatching with, you know, in the forest and things like that,
so I took them up on that opportunity. It was

(02:52):
in twenty nineteen that I had my first sighting, and
that was an actual expedition that the BFRO was doing.
I was a team leader of night ops. You know,
we split up into groups sometimes five seven or so
people and they're all led by a BFRO investigator well,

(03:17):
I was the leader of this particular group and we
were in a heavily forested area in southern Ohio and
one of the things that I do, i'd actually gotten
this idea from Robert Morgan, who was heavily involved with investigations,
especially in Ohio back in the day, and that was

(03:42):
when you go out to kind of sit in a
circle so that you're facing someone straight across from you,
and then what you do is you're sitting there, you
can talk, you know, in kind of low voices and stuff,
and while looking at the person across from you, and
it appears that you're sitting there talking to each other,

(04:03):
but actually what you're doing is you're looking over the
shoulders and past that person and basically watching their back
and while they're doing the same for you, and the
same way all around that circle. So that's what we
were doing. And there was seven members in the group

(04:23):
at that time, and one of the youngest people it
was their first expedition, and they started hollering that something
was throwing acorns or actually it was acorns and small
walnuts adam, and they had been hit. So this went

(04:43):
on for a little while off and on, and then
all of a sudden, he yeld out that he saw
one and he was looking through a thermal, and so
I asked him. You know, I cautioned to everyone just
be quiet, be calm, you know, don't to do anything
to frighten Nick, because I wanted everybody in the group

(05:04):
to possibly have a chance to see it, so I said,
So I asked him, I said, where's that at and
he said it's right behind you, and I thought, oh great.
You know, because I had never seen one before. He
didn't happen to say how far it was behind me,
and so I didn't know whether it was four feet

(05:25):
behind me or whether it was twenty or thirty yards
behind me. So I just again told everyone, I said,
just stay calm, and I said, one at a time,
I said, everybody, take an opportunity to look back behind me.
I think there was probably about four or five thermals
in the group of seven people at the time, and

(05:46):
so everybody did, and then pretty much everybody was saying, oh,
I see it, I see it too well. I finally,
I calmly got up and walked to the other side
of the circle, and I started looking, and no matter
what I tried, I couldn't see anything. And so then
I kept thinking, well, you know, maybe these guys are

(06:08):
playing a trick or a joke on me, and there's
really nothing there. And so I'd go back and sit down.
And this kept going on for a while. I see it,
you know, a different one in the group. Oh, I
see it, And so I thought, yeah, sure, you know,
and I probably got up, I don't know, maybe at
least three times and walked across the circle and took

(06:29):
a look and never could see anything. And so I,
you know, I went back and sat down again. And
then so finally about the fourth time or so, I
got up and I walked across, you know, not excited
or anything. I didn't run, didn't do anything to try
to scare the individual off. And I'd already told everybody

(06:51):
ahead time, you know, don't point at it or anything.
If we see something, you know, use clock directions. And
so I had walked across the circle, and I started
looking with my thermal again, and lo and behold, I
did see it. And so I watched for a period
of time. It appeared to be standing up, looking around,

(07:17):
be peeking from behind a tree, and then it would
drop down low to the ground and continue peeking from
behind the tree. I never did see it come out
from behind the tree where I could see it full
body or anything. Just that I could see the head,
the arms, and the hands where it was like holding

(07:38):
onto the tree and reaching around the tree. And then
you know, I could see that the ears were on
the side of the head. They were not on top
of the head like a bear. They were on the
side of the head. I could see the eyes, and
of course, because I'm looking through a thermal, I can't,
you know, begin to see what color it is or

(07:59):
anything like that. And it was hard to with when
you're looking for a thermal. It's hard to tell exactly
how far away something is and how tall it may
be because it's smaller when you look to a thermal,
and it can appear to be farther away than what

(08:19):
it actually is. So anyway, five of the members of
the group ended up seeing it. Out of the seven
people that was in the group, those in the group
that saw it, there was besides me, there was my
youngest son, Wes. There was also John Darazovich, there was

(08:41):
Lori Russell, there was of the ones that saw it,
there was Wyatt ar Mint Chad ar Mint was in
the group but didn't see it. Ben his brother, did
see it. And Ben was the father of Wyatt see
two three, and so that might have been it anyway.

(09:06):
H those were the members of the group and the
ones that saw it. And so when we got ready
to leave, you know, this thing kept throwing h you know,
small walnuts and acorns at us for a while, was
just messing with us. Wasn't throwing anything large, wasn't throwing
anything particularly hard, you know, just hard enough to kind

(09:30):
of get it from where it was at to hit
us and mess with us. Then as we got up
to gather our stuff and finally leave after we'd been
there for a while, we stayed for a while, you know,
probably an hour and a half or something after that.
And then finally when we got up to go it through.

(09:53):
I don't want to say it larger. It wasn't a
large rock too. It was rock probably two to three
inches across and about about the same size, you know,
if he was going from with the heth and I
had been driving Kabwasaki mule up there, and it threw it.

(10:16):
The top was off the mule and it threw it,
and it landed right in the kawasaki and rattled around
in there, so it was quite loud. It actually actually
sounded like somebody was carrying an armload of boards that
was stacked and they just dropped them. That's kind of
what the similar sound to that, And so it took

(10:39):
us a little while to figure out what had made
that noise. But through some experimentation and stuff with taking
rocks the similar size, throwing the men's side beside that
was similar to the kawasaki, we were able to determine
that's what it was. And so anyway, we rode back

(11:01):
to our base camp where it was all excited, telling
our story and everything. Well, the next day we went
up back up there, several members of the BFRO went
we started doing an investigation during the sunlight hours. We
majored with a rangefinder from where I was sitting to

(11:24):
the tree where it was standing behind. It was about
it was twenty nine yards, maybe just a touch longer,
but about twenty nine yards for me was where the
tree was at. We were able to find several footprints
their tracks, and so we cast those and took them back.

(11:47):
I think there was total seven tracks that we were
able to cast didn't find any hair or anything like that,
but we did have the tracks in the cast as evidence.
We also were able to record Wyatt was actually the
one that did it. He recorded on his thermal that

(12:10):
he was looking through this thing, peeking from behind the
tree at us. And so anyway, we were happy that
we had that, and we had had the cast that
we had tried cast and so forth. So that was
the first get the sighting that I had was through

(12:30):
that thermal, and then the next one would have been
shortly thereafter. I'm also besides being with the BFRO, I
belonged to another group that's led by Tom Shay out
of Kentucky, and it's called the Northern Kentucky Bigfoot Research Group. Well,
I was with that group a little while later, same summer,

(12:54):
and we go out and we kind of set up
we don't really care camp intents. We set up some
campies and we'll just stay up all night and set
out in a lot of times gravity recliner chairs and
we'll set in those and just kind of watch and listen,
and once in a while people will take their chair

(13:16):
and go over sit around the campfire and talk and
chat over there. Well, on this particular night, my chair
was sitting up at the edge of base camp and
I was kind of keeping watch at that time while
some were asleep, some were over sitting around the campfire talking.

(13:38):
Tom happened to be with that group over at the
at the campfire. So I was setting up and watch
and setting watching in my chair, and it started to
get a little cool, so I thought, well, I'll grab
my sleeping bag and just use it kind of like
a quiller or blanket and throw it over top of myself.

(14:00):
But I was afraid at the same time that if
I did that, I thought I'm going to start getting
warm and then I'm going to get sleepy and fall asleep.
So I didn't want to fall asleep. But I thought, well,
I'll go ahead and I'll cover up with this sleeping bag.
But before I do, I'm going to use my thermal
and I'm going to start scanning the perimeter one more time.

(14:21):
So that's what I did, and I started to my
right as far right as I could turn, and I
started scanning slowly around in like a half circle in
front of me. And when I got around to about
the ten o'clock position, I saw something that was in
the typical shape as most people describe a big foot being.

(14:44):
He was large at the shoulders, he had a appeared
to have a wide chest, a kind of a block
here a colomical shaped head with kind of a point
on top. And I could only see it from a
the chest or midwaist up. So I thought it was

(15:04):
sitting like in a bunch of boushes or weeds and
grass or something like that. But with a thermal, I
couldn't tell, you know, really how big he was or
how far away he was. So I actually scanned past him,
then came back to him again, and I sit there

(15:25):
and I watched for a half hour, and this thing
never moved, and so I began to think, well, you know,
maybe it's my imagination, you know, maybe I'm really not
seeing what I thought I was seeing. And I had
the thermal set on what we call white hot. There
is white hot, there's black hot. There's also a color
palette that you can use. But for me, I tend

(15:51):
to be able to see better heat signature that's being
given off in white hot. It seems to catch my
eye quicker and better than what either black hat does
or the collar palette. So I sit there Anyway, I
was watching for about a half hour and this thing
never moved, didn't move an inch, you know, just perfectly still.

(16:16):
And so I began to think about, this thing is
not what I thought it was, you know, because it
hasn't moved. And so I thought, maybe it's just my imagination,
you know, that I'm wanting to see a big foot,
and maybe my mind is leading me there and it's
not really a bigfoot. So I thought, I've got to

(16:37):
get somebody else, you know, to see this thing to
get verification. So I started hollering at Tom, who again
was sitting over a to campfire, and I said, Tom, Tom,
I said, come here a minute. So Tom come over
and sat down in the chair closest to me, and
he said, what is it? And I said, I said,
it looks like there's a bigfoot out there. At about

(16:59):
my ten o'clock, so Tom got out his night vision
equipment and he started looking. And as he starts scanning
around also he gets to about that final he said, oh,
I see it. Said I see it too, and I said,
weird thing. Tom. I said, I've been watching this thing
for a half hour, and I said it hasn't moved.

(17:21):
I said that hasn't moved at all. Well, right about
the time that I said that, it started moving, kind
of doing the swaying thing back and forth from side
to side, which a lot of people do describe Bigfoot's
doing when they know that they've been seen. Some people
think just conjecture, but some people think that they do

(17:44):
that when they're under stress and they're trying to make
up their mind what they're going to do next. But
you know, of course, we really don't know why they
do that, but they do tend to do that a lot,
and that's what this one started doing. Well, immediately after
he started crawling and he crawled up and crawled behind.

(18:07):
When he started this stuff, then we could see all
loving you know, it wasn't just the top half. So
he crawls up and he gets behind two trees, and
he's hiding behind these trees. Well, then at that point
we couldn't see him any longer, and so we continue watching. Well,
because of all the excitement that was taking place in

(18:29):
us seeing this thing, some other members of our group
happened to hear us talking and they came over to
and that again was John Jiazovich, who again is part
of this group, and there was Ben Taylor and his father,
Rich Taylor, and so there's five of us, and of
course they're grabbing their thermals and night vision and so forth,

(18:51):
and they go to watching. Well, he came out from
behind those two trees, and he crawled up behind two
more trees, and he got behind them and he stayed
behind them for a while. And through all this, you
know it's taking some time because he staying behind these
trees for a little bit of time. And then he

(19:13):
leaves those two trees and he crawls up what appears
to be behind another large tree, which we actually found
out next day wasn't that far from us, and I'll
explain that and the investigation that we did as part
of this sight. So he crawls up behind appears to
crawl up behind this large tree, and we watch and

(19:36):
watch and watch, and it never came out during this
whole time. I had first seen the thing that right
about two o'clock in the morning, and at this point
we lost sight of him behind that tree about three
thirty and then I actually quit watching about four o'clock

(19:58):
because we didn't see him in more So, the next
morning we get up and once it becomes starts becoming daylight.
We go out in the area and we start our investigations,
started looking for tracks, first of all, and I will
say that we didn't never saw any tracks during the

(20:18):
time that this creature was doing all the crime. Here's
the really weird thing about this whole thing was that
he never made a sound. He was perfectly quiet. There
was no rustling of leaves, there was no breaking the sticks,
just complete silence. And that kind of amazed us. How

(20:39):
he was able to move across the grass, the weeds,
the sticks, and so forth and never make any noise whatsoever.
It was just amazing. And so next morning we were
out and we went to the area where I first
saw him and saw why we weren't able to see
the bottom half. There was a dried creek bed there

(21:02):
which had water in spots, but mostly dry, and he
was actually in this dry creek bed and was well,
I don't know whether he was leaning against the bank
or whether he was just standing behind the bank or what,
but this bottom half of the bank or the bank
was covering the bottom half of him. And there was

(21:26):
a rotted trunk of a tree there and he was
behind that also, so that all the bank in the
rotted stump was covering his bottom half, and that's why
we weren't able to see him. Well, we could tell
about where he came up out of the creek bank

(21:48):
and then started crawling through the leaves and stuff. We
were able to determine the trees that he had gotten behind,
the first two trees, then the next two trees, and
then what happened when he came up to that last tree,
and we measured that that ended up being about forty
feet from where I was actually sitting in the gravity

(22:10):
recliner that last tree. And while I think, and this
is supposition on my part, but I think what happened
was there was a branch of that dry creek bed
that ran directly behind that tree, and so I don't
think he ever actually came up behind the tree. I

(22:31):
think he just came up in line with that tree,
got down in that dry creek bed, and then was
able to crawl out of there without us seeing him
or actually knowing which direction he went. And we looked
around that dry creek bed tried to find tracks and
things like that, and we weren't able to find any.

(22:52):
So we really don't know which way he went, whether
he came back the direction from which he came, or
whether he was able to get on around us farther
to my left and get out that way. You could
have went out that way and sat up in there
and watched us from there and without us knowing it,
because we didn't know where he went anymore. And at

(23:14):
this time, our base camp was kind of in a hollow,
and there was a kind of a steep ridge to
I guess it would be the east of us, and
then there was a ridge to the west of us,
and so he could have got up to either one
of those or even in behind us and watched us

(23:37):
and we wouldn't have known it. So anyway, that was
that sighting. We were able to record part of that.
We do have a still photo that we took from that.
You can see in the still photo this individual being

(23:58):
on all fours. Some people describe as like belly crowing
things like that. He wasn't. This one wasn't really. I
wouldn't say it was on his belly although he was low.
Some people talk about kind of a spider crawl. I
wouldn't even call it that. You can see his legs

(24:21):
are kind of splayed out in the back almost like
a frog, you know, and you can see his feet
and actually on his feet, the picture was good enough
that you could actually count the toes and you could
see the little bit of separation in the toes and
the and his hands I would describe the left hand

(24:43):
being out front, was kind of open, just opened palm
on the ground. And you can count his five digits
on his on his hands, four fingers and his thumb,
so you can see it that well. Now, the weird
thing was in the right hand. It wasn't spread out

(25:03):
flat on the ground. It was curled up in a fist.
And this is what's odd because in that fist he
had something in the fist that was pointed on the end.
Now I can't say that it was sharp or anything.
I can say it was pointed. So whether he took

(25:24):
like a stick, whether he took a bone like a
rib bone or something like that and kind of ground
it down to where it was pointed on the end,
you know, I don't know, but I can say that
to his inside was the longest part of this object.

(25:45):
So pointing actually like toward the other hand, that was
the longest part sticking out was on that side. On
the other side, the outer part of him, pointing away
from his other hand was what appeared to be something
sticking out like that. So, in other words, his hand
wasn't at the end of this object. On one side

(26:07):
there was several inches sticking out. On the other side,
there was perhaps one or two inches sticking out, so
looked like in the photo that it possibly even could
have been a knife that he had found somewhere. You know,
just don't know. My guess is that he was probably

(26:28):
using whatever that object was in his hand to dig with,
perhaps dig roots and things of that nature. I think that,
you know, there's been other times that there's been reports
made of them carrying different tools that they would use
to dig with, and so that's perhaps what he was doing. Also,

(26:49):
we just don't know. At no time did this thing
ever throw anything at us. He never appeared to be
aggressive in any way, never number any kind of violence.
As I said, he didn't make any sounds, no vocalizations,
no stick popping, cracking, any anything like that. It was

(27:11):
completely silent. It seemed like he was just interested in
trying to get as close to us as it could.
Whether that was just in an effort to see us
better and see what we were doing, or whether it
was like playing some kind of a game and you know,
playing with another big foot that we didn't see and

(27:32):
was just trying to, you know, on a dare, you know,
try to see if it could get as close to
it as it could. So anyway, that was my second sighting,
both of those first two being with thermals. My third
sighting actually took place a few years later, which would

(27:52):
have been two years ago. I think it was two
years ago this month, we were back at the same locate.
I was with the Northern Kentucky group, only this time
it was during the daytime and we were sitting around
a fire. It wasn't really a cold day. It was
a kind of a warm day, I would say, maybe

(28:15):
high sixties something of that nature, and so we had
a fire going and we were sitting around this fire
again in a circle. We were talking as we were
sitting there. The person sitting across from me was a
lady by the name of jan l who is part
of the group. I was actually talking to her at

(28:37):
the same time looking behind her, and there was other
members of the group I can't remember who all was there.
That day. There was Tom Shay, I think Keith Lofton
might have been there, maybe John Gerizovich. I know Ben
Taylor was there. Rich Taylor was there, and my son
Wes was there. My son had where we're sitting now.

(29:03):
We are still in base camp, but we had moved
our base camp and the owner of the property is
I'm not going to name who that is, but a
real nice guy that lets us use the property whenever
we want to. He knows there's big boots that come
on to his property, and he'd cleared up or cleared
off a spot for us on the ridge that would

(29:27):
have been to kind of our west northwest from where
our base camp had been down in this hollow. So
now we're on top of the ridge, so it gives
us a better vantage point from which to see. Is
a little harder for the bigfoots to get up on
there now and to watch us below them, so it

(29:50):
kind of gave us the advantage being up on there.
So that's where we're sitting. We're sitting around this fire,
and my son had decided he was kind of a
little board at the time. He decides to take off
take a walk, so there is a trail that goes
out of one side of this base camp and it

(30:11):
kind of circles around through the woods and comes back
in the other side. So he had taken out of
the trail that was mostly to our east northeast and
went walking. And as I was sitting there looking behind
Jan and talking, I happened to see if there was

(30:33):
a canopy of trees. And there was an opening in
this canopy of trees, not really large. I can't say
how long the opening was, but in that opening there
are sunlights coming in. There's no trees in the opening.
And I saw this bigfootstep out of the canopy of

(30:56):
trees through that opening and back into a canopy of
trees on the other side. Okay, so I right away
I said something to the group. I said, hey, I
said I just saw bigfoot, And so of course they
all get excited and where you know, and so I
described about where it was at, and so right away
Tom said, he said he looked around the camp to

(31:18):
see who all was there. He said, well, who's missing?
And we determined that the only one missing from base
camp at that time was my son Wes. Wes is
about six foot tall something like that, and he had
left the camp going out of the east side east

(31:38):
to the northeast side. He left the camp going out
that trail that way. So immediately Tom had said, well,
you know which way to go at that point, I said,
he went this way, and he said what was he wearing?
And I couldn't remember. I couldn't remember what he had
on when he had left, because I didn't pay that

(31:59):
much attention to it, actually, And so anyway, Tom jumps
in the side beside that we had it out there
with us, and I think Ben Taylor got in with him,
and they took off down the trail. They went looking
for Wes. Well, they circled around the trail that again
ran in kind of a semi circle around the camp,

(32:22):
out through the woods and back on the other side,
and they found Wes. And if I'm sitting let's say
again at clock positions, and I'm sitting there and facing
like the twelve o'clock position, six o'clocks behind me, I

(32:42):
would say they found Wes that probably maybe about the
nine o'clock position, at nine o'clock maybe ten o'clock position,
and they had brought him back to base camp. Well,
when Wes got back to base camp. We noticed right
away Wes had on a light gray pair of shorts

(33:04):
and a sleeveless light gray t shirt to kind of
match the shorts. So this individual that I had seen
was it was just solid pitch, almost a shiny black collar,
and so there's no way that it was Wes, and
we could tell that right away. And so this thing

(33:27):
that I saw, once it had stepped out from the
canopy of trees and crossed through the open space over
to the other canopy of trees, took off of maybe
about three seconds. And so a lot of people asked me, well,
you know, did you get a photo? And I said, well, no,
there's no way I got a photo. I had my

(33:47):
phone in my pocket. I wear usually wear cargo shorts,
cargo pant long pants, and it was in the bottom
pocket with the flap sealed, and so it took all
of the three seconds for me to actually see this
creature and realize what I was looking at. So I

(34:08):
had no time to your reach down and snap my
the pocket and my pants, get the phone out, get it,
you know, pointed at and get it in view and
hold the phone steady to get a picture. I just well,
it wasn't going to happen. So but the net we
did the next best thing we could. Uh. West got

(34:29):
a stick and we tied an orange shirt to the
top of it, and uh he and Jan we each
had walkie talk I had a walkie talking, West had one.
So I got Wes and Jan positioned out where I
actually saw this thing come into the daylight, and uh,

(34:50):
you know till I move up, move back, you know,
a little bit to your right, a little bit to
your left. Got him positioned exactly where I saw this thing.
They looked around a little bit and and they saw
some impressions in the grass where you could see something
probably large had had walked through there and smashed the
grass down, but nothing no intentions in the earth that

(35:12):
could be cast. Using the stick with the orange shirt
tied to it, I would tell Wes to via the
walkie talkie to raise the stick, you know, higher and higher,
And I actually was able to get him to direct
the stick up to about where I saw this thing's
head and its head was we figured about two to

(35:36):
three foot above my son's head. So we figured the
thing think was about eight to nine feet tall, like
I said, and it was just it was so black
that was actually glistening in the in the sunlight. With
the sun shining off of this thing's hair, it was

(35:56):
just kind of amazing both how dark it was and
at the same time just very shiny. It wasn't all
the hair didn't appear matted or anything like that, just
I would say sleek, although it was large. I mean,
it wasn't slender, I'm not saying that, but just the

(36:19):
hair was kind of sleek and just almost as if
it had brushed it or something like that. But it
was just so shiny that that sun was just glistening
off of it. So that was all that we were
able to do with that because there wasn't anything there
that we could cast or anything. My guess is, and

(36:41):
again this is a guess. I think he was probably
either sitting or standing behind some tree out there in
the woods, probably watching us around the campfire, and then
when my son started walking that trail, I think it
had gotten bored with watching them because we weren't doing anything,

(37:01):
just sitting there talking, and when my son started walking
around that circular trail that it didn't got interested in
my son because it was actually even though we at
the time didn't know where my son was at on
the trail. The direction this bigfoot walked when it was
walking from part of the woods through the opening end too.

(37:23):
The other part of the woods was toward the direction
where my son was where we found him, and so
I think that my son probably attracted his attention and
it got to be curious, which they do, and then
began walking, you know, walked through from the woods having

(37:44):
been watching us, into that clearing into the other part
of the woods over toward the direction where my son
was to see what he was up to. And that's
when we were able to find my son and get
him back to camp so we could see what he
was wearing, and quite kind of questioned him. He had
not seen this thing, He didn't hear the thing, He

(38:05):
didn't know the thing was even there. So anyway, that
was the story on that one. That was the only
daylight I guess, the only daylight sighting that I've had
was that one. It lasted, like I said, just about
three seconds. That was all again, really didn't I never

(38:29):
noticed any kind of a smell with any of the
three sightings that I had, No one in any of them,
you know, the first two being the thermal ones. No
one else noticed any kind of a smell With the
one that I saw in the daylight. No one reported

(38:50):
any kind of a smell. And now it is possible
that the wind could have been blowing the other direction
or something of that nature, but we never noticed any
kind of a smell with any of the three. I
was the only one that saw the last one. It
was exciting for me with the first one, the first

(39:13):
thermal sighting I saw. I certainly I told a lot
of people with that one because I'm so excited that
I saw one, but also because we were part of
this expedition that probably had about fifty maybe even between
fifty and sixty members as part of this expedition. And

(39:33):
the next day we always do what we call deep briefing,
where around ten and eleven o'clock in the morning, we'll
have all the teams come together. We always have a
note taker in each group, and that person takes very
copious notes. They'll write down if there's a sighting, if

(39:54):
there's some type of vocalization, anything like anything that happens
during that night ops. The note taker will write down
the time, they'll write down the direction from which say
the vocalization came that kind of thing, and then we
share it with each other next day and see if

(40:17):
there's any correlation between two groups maybe hearing the same thing,
and see if there's any kind of patterns things like that.
A lot of times we'll plot those things on a map,
like where we're at, where we heard, say, a vocalization from,
and where the other groups were that kind of thing.

(40:38):
So I certainly we reported it at that debriefing. The
next day, we also had two experienced members of the
BFRO interviewed each of us that were part of my
night Offs group. They interviewed its separately so that we
all didn't have the opportunity to hear what the other

(40:58):
people said, and basically, well all of us that saw
it said the same thing, you know what we knew
what it to be, and described the same thing. You know,
acorns and small walnuts being thrown at us, this thing
peaking and us from behind a tree. You know, all that,
you know matched up together, and they determined that it

(41:21):
was a big foot, especially after we had gone out
there and cast these tracks and stuff at the at
the location. So yes, I certainly did tell a lot
of people about that one the next one that I
saw with the thermal, which was with the Northern Kentucky
group we had. We didn't immediately go out of there

(41:43):
and announce it to the world. Now now Tom the
next day, once it was daylight and we'd been out
looking for tracks and things like that, he did record
me via video and I think that he put that
on the Northern Kentucky UH website that they were running
at that time. It maybe even be on YouTube. I'm

(42:04):
not certain, but we told people kind of via that
that way. Also, I talked about it at different times
that I've given talks at conferences and things like that.
I've described that situation, the last one the daylight, citing

(42:26):
that I had by this time. You know, I don't
want to sound like, you know, this is getting to
be old hat and not exciting for me, because it
is exciting every time I do I am able to
see one, and especially with the last one being an

(42:46):
actually being able to see it with my naked eye,
it was exciting, but it perhaps lost a little bit
from the first one or two, because by this time
it was the third I had seen one. But this
one was different in that it would did take place
during the daylight, and it was with the naked eye.

(43:07):
Said that that too was exciting, but I didn't go
out of there and broadcast it to a bunch of people. Again,
I have told the story at conferences and different times
that the people have had me out to speak, podcasts
that I've done, things like that. I have told this
story and a lot of times, you know, when I

(43:31):
am speaking and things like that, people will ask me it's,
you know, always allowed time for questions and answers. And
one of the things that I always do is allowed
time for questions and answers, and they'll want to know
if I haven't mentioned it, whether I've ever seen one,
and what the circumstances were and so forth, and so

(43:52):
then if I haven't brought it up because of my
subject matter being a little different, then you know, they
ask me that, and I always tell them the story
about how that took place and stuff.

Speaker 1 (44:06):
Unfortunately, you're never going to see a sasquatch with your
un needed eyes for the first time ever again, Dusty,
And with that in mind, I'm not sure if that's
even something that you thought about before. But with that
in mind, do you find that fact a little disappointing?

Speaker 2 (44:26):
That I'm never gonna see one for the first time again. Wow,
I would have to say no, because I'm hoping that
maybe the next time it'll be for a longer period
of time. Uh, the one that we the second, Well,
both of the first two with the thermal were for

(44:48):
quite a long period of time, I'd say a couple
of hours each one, you know, with them dodging behind
the trees and so on and so forth. But both
of those were for quite a bit longer. The third
one was only for about three seconds. I would like
to see one with the naked eye for a longer
period of time. Not so much really. Oh, that's one

(45:12):
thing I left out. Once we measured this, we measured
it to be about seventy yards from where I was
sitting to where the sasquatch was that I saw with
the naked eye. I would like to see one for
a longer period of time, maybe about the same distance.
Not really up closed, you know, but I always look

(45:36):
forward to that. I'm also very fascinated with the sounds
that they make. I put out what we call long
duration recorders or ld rs, and make up me and
my son West make up ourselves. They have stereo microphones.
They're encased in PVC pipe. They're sealed, so the proof.

(46:01):
We have a recorder in there that I can program
to come on at any time that I want, go
off at anytime I want. I usually set it to
go come on at night at nine o'clock, to go
off the next morning about seven o'clock. I can leave
it out because we use a battery bypass. I set

(46:22):
it so that operates off of two D cell batteries
instead of two triple A batteries, and I can leave
it out in the woods. I've got as many as
fifty two nights on there before before having to change
the batteries in the micro SD cards, and so I'm
fascinated with that aspect of bigfoot research. I love to

(46:43):
record big pots, whether they're making vocalizations or throwing rocks,
breaking sticks near my recorder, that kind of thing. And
then of course I have to take the change the batteries,
put in a new SD card, set it to go again,
bring the SD card back home. I uploaded to my laptop,

(47:05):
and through using a software program called Audacity, I'm able
then to not only hear whatever sounds are being made,
but I can actually see a big visual signature within
the Audacity program and watch a spectrogram of because each

(47:28):
of these sounds are assigned a visual signature in this program.
So I can see what a knock looks like. I
can see what a whoop looks like. I can see
what how looks like a scream, and all these look
no matter what bigfoots or whatever whatever they're coming from,

(47:52):
the whoops all look you know, I won't say exactly
the same, but very similar. So I can tell what
a hoop or what a whoop is. I can tell
what a scream one of HOW is without having to
listen to it, and I can look at it and
see and review it much quicker than I can if

(48:12):
I sit there and I'm listening to each one, and
then if I'm going through it visually and looking at
these signatures on this spectrogram, I can if I see
something that looks like a whoop, I will stop it,
I will rewind it back, and I'll start listening to
it shortly before I see the signature, and I can

(48:34):
listen to it and then either verify yes, that was
a whoop or no, it was something else. That type
of thing, and the neat thing about it is a
lot of times with your ear it's hard to distinguish
sometimes between a gunshot and a knock. I won't say
all the time, but sometimes it is. Well, when you're

(48:57):
looking at the spectrogram on a desk, you can tell
a difference easily between whether it's a knock, whether it's
a gunshot, whether it may be fireworks going off that
type of thing. And so to me that's fascinating. And
then when I find something that is interesting, like a
vocalization or something like that, or sometimes even a sound

(49:22):
that I can't distinguish what it is but just doesn't
sound like it blongs in the forest, then I can
go in and I can make a clip of it,
and I'll save it. I do save all of the
audio that I've retrieved over the years. I save the
original SD cards. I don't erase them, I save them.

(49:44):
I also back them up in laptop and put them
on an external hard drive. And then I also have
the clips that I've made from each of those audio
or sounds that I've retrieved with the recorder. So I'm

(50:05):
fascinated with that part of it. And then having been
an investigator in my previous career, as I said, I
was an investigator for twenty five years. My boss then
retired and they then promoted me to his position, so
it was called an administrator, and so then I actually

(50:27):
supervised the rest of the investigators for another eleven years
before I retired. So I'm interested in the aspects of
collecting all different kinds of evidence, which includes the course,
casting tracks, gathering of hair, will lift. I've taught members
of my team, my BFRO team, how to lift fingerprints

(50:52):
because sometimes they'll leave hand prints, fingerprints and things like
that on our vehicles when we have expeditions. Of the
places that we have our expedition, usually it's the place
that we go to most often, they will actually come
into our base camp usually almost every night. They tend
to come in somewhere between three o'clock and five point thirty.

(51:14):
They've never ever done any type of damage, no type
of violence or aggressiveness whatsoever. Sometimes they get brave and
they'll go up and they may scratch a tent. The
people have heard them walk around the tents, run by
the tents, mess with the coolers, mess with campers. They've

(51:35):
left fingerprints and handprints before on vehicles. We have obtained
casts from tracks at right end base camp, we've obtained tracks,
and from just outside base camp in the woodline, we've

(51:55):
had sightings of them. One the neat thing, I think
this is really neat. I get super excited over the
small ones, the little tracks, because although large tracks are
still hard to find, the little tracks to me, are
more rare. One thing, they don't cause the indention in

(52:20):
the ground that the large, heavy ones do. And a
lot of times also we believe that they ride on
the backs of their mothers or fathers, just like small
great apes do at the zoo. You know, just see
him riding on the back or shoulders, and we believe
these things do also. But anytime we find one of those,

(52:41):
that's just super cool. We did find a set I
think it's about seven inches down in Kentucky, down the
area where Tom does his investigation Tom Shay, and that
was cool. But then this last time when we had
an expedition, we had one September, actually we were out

(53:03):
there twice in September, two different weekends, and one weekend
my son found some that were about five inches. Well
up to that point I had never seen a five
inch one in my life, not in person, but he
was able to find I think it was. He's a
cast three in that area right there where we have

(53:26):
our base campus on top of a ridge, and they'll
come up over the ridge on either side, and they
have a little path in the woods or within the
tree line where they sometimes walk, and that's where he
was able to find. Actually, besides finding the little one,

(53:49):
he found one that was about fourteen inches, which we
assume was the mother. And the mother had probably been
carrying the little one and then it either got off
or she put it down or something of that nature,
which allowed him then to cast that one. I almost
if you don't mind, there is one other tale. I'd

(54:09):
like the tale one of the other locations that we
investigate in the southern part of iiO. We did find
a track line trackway and we're able to measure and
cast tracks out of it. And I will say this,
there's there's another couple of people that that claim that

(54:33):
they cast the largest trackway ever cast in Ohio. That
may have been true at one time. I actually did
see that trackway myself was at that location, and they
got some great I won't deny this. They got some
great tracks out of there. But the trackway that we

(54:54):
found then later, which was like a couple of years ago,
is much longer. There's more tracks out of that we
were able to cast. Uh, it is longer in distance,
there's more tracks. So my son was actually the one
again that casts that one, and it is quite a

(55:16):
bit longer than the one, the other one that where
they purport that they have the longest track way ever cast.
Like I said, that may have been true at one time,
but it's no longer true. The one we have as
the longest one. Tom Shehay has seen the evidence from it.
He's seen the cast and he's verified that yes, they're

(55:39):
not human, that they are bigfoot tracks. And I'll add
this too. For the most people have probably heard of
Tom Shay. He's got the most cast of anybody's to
the Mississippi. He usually shares his cast with Cliff Berrickman
of the North American Bigfoot Center out in Oregon, and

(56:02):
so you know Cliff has seen them also all of
Tom's finding, so Tom knows what he's talking about. He's
probably one of the best, if not the best tracker
in the United States and really nosy stuff as far
as being able to track these creatures and cast the

(56:25):
tracks and stuff, and like I said, Tom's seen all
of our stuff and verified the Yes, it is a bigfoot,
it's not a human. There's other parts of that story
too that as far as other evidence that we found
there where that took place that I don't know whether
we have enough time to go into that or not,

(56:45):
but that's could be a story for another day.

Speaker 1 (56:49):
Sure, if you'd like to go into a By all means.

Speaker 2 (56:52):
Okay, Well, this thing had come out of the woods.
There was a woods there, there was a pond kind
of it walked out of the woods into the pond,
back out of the pond. Now, one of the other
reasons that we believed that this was not a human
was because it came out of the woods, walked in

(57:12):
the pond back out. No human in the right mind
is going to walk into that pond and back out
when there's people that fish in that pond, so which
means there would probably be fishing hooks and things like
that down there in the water. It circled the pond.
I don't know, you know, whether you're looking for fish

(57:33):
what it was looking for, but it was digging up
fresh water muscles that were down in the mud. When
we were there. It was very very muddy. Matter of fact,
I fell at one time because I had just had
surgery and I had a hip replaced, and one of

(57:54):
my kind of as we were walking around this pond,
it's kind of slope there, So one of my feet
was downhill, the other one was uphill, and the one
that was downhill kept sliding in this mud, and so
you know, I ended up going down and and so
got back up and stuff. And as we were walking around,

(58:16):
you know, following these tracks and stuff, we were able
to find several places where it had shoved its fist
or its hand down in the ground and was pulling
out these fresh water muscles, and it would crack the
shells open. Sometimes it would just it would appeared to

(58:36):
eat the muscle and just throw the shell down. At
other places, it piled the shells up very neatly in
a pile. And we found two or three of those
piles of shells, and so, you know that that was
pretty cool to be able to find that and see
how orderly it had been in piling up these shells.

(59:01):
We do have photographs of all that. We have photographs
of the tracks. We measured all of them. We used
the little markers that we use when doing you know, investigations.
I have numbers and stuff on them to show where
the various tracks were. We we measured both the track, this, this,

(59:23):
the step, the strides between the various tracks. You could tell,
especially since we you know, cast them, that the tracks
were all in a very linear fashion, one behind the other,
not not in a straddle like humans walk right leg,

(59:46):
left leg, that kind of stuff. These things walked right foot,
left foot, but it was all almost a very straight
line as it walked around this pond. So we have
photographs of all that. We were very opious in the
way that we collected the evidence, the measuring that we did,
the casting of the tracks. We still have all those

(01:00:08):
casts and stuff, and so we tried to do a
very thorough job, very detailed job when we're investigating. You know,
by virtue of me having been an investigator in my life,
I know how to do the proper gathering of evidence,
and I thought other team members with the BFRO how

(01:00:31):
to do that. As a matter of fact, I've had
scavenger hunts before where we divide up into teams and
they had to go from point to point and use
the proper methods of gathering evidence and actually take photos
and videos of them gathering evidence at these locations, whether

(01:00:52):
it be a hair that was put out, say on
a fence, or whether it was a track or you
know whatever us and they had to use evidence envelopes
to collect like the hair and things like that, or
if it was something kind of wet, you know, they
would use glass specimen bottles to collect that. In again

(01:01:16):
with the proper instruments they would use like tweezers to
collect hair and so forth. They would wear nitrile gloves
when they would collect the evidence of a lot of times,
I like to use particularly the black ones, because then
you can use you can hold up, say, if you've

(01:01:37):
got a reddish brown hairway hair, silver hair, you can
hold those up against it and use the contrast in
the gloves to photograph the hair. The only thing that
doesn't show up well would be a black one, of course,
but they all know how to do that, and they
know how to lift the fingerprints and how to use

(01:01:59):
the backer background to show contrast for those fingerprints, depending
on what kind of dusting material that they're using. So
you know, they in my belief, they've been well trained
whenever we have an expedition, we're always willing to take

(01:02:21):
the attendees and show them how to collect evidence properly.
We take them out on night op night ops at
night to locations where that we've either had a sighting
and we found tracks things of that nature where we
know there have been bigfoots, and try to give them
the opportunity to see or hear some have some kind

(01:02:44):
of encounter, some type of experience. And then again we
come back and the next day we get up and
we discuss that at our debriefing. We have thermals on hand,
we have night vision on hand, things of that nature,
and we'll allow them to try those when we're out
doing night ops and so they can get a feel
for what that's like and see what that's like. A

(01:03:07):
lot of times on these expeditions we find tracks and
we're able to cast those, so that's cool. We get
hair samples at times. A lot of times we do
get the fingerprints and stuff where they've gone up and
been nosy and snooping around cars and looking in the
windows and things like that. We're of the belief that

(01:03:31):
we've gone there enough times that they perhaps recognize our
tents and our campers, our vehicles, and that they know
then who we are, and they know that we're safe,
that we don't bother them, we don't try to hurt
them any anyway. So I think that's why they're comfortable

(01:03:52):
coming up in our base camp, because we're no threat
to them in any way. So I guess, Yeah, I've
got a thousands more stories, but you know, I'll stop there.

Speaker 1 (01:04:06):
Well, i'd love to hear them. If you're up for
coming back some time to share more of these experiences
with us, all I have to do is let me know,
because I'd love to bring you back on.

Speaker 2 (01:04:15):
Yeah, I'd be glad to just let me know, as
long as we can get it scheduled in advance to
where you know, I make sure that I've got the
time and I'm free to do it.

Speaker 1 (01:04:24):
Well, that's music to my ears. I really do appreciate it.
And before we get out of here, Dusty, if anyone
listening would like to share a sighting they had in
Ohio with you, what's the best way for them to
do that?

Speaker 2 (01:04:37):
Well, the best thing for him to do would be
to get on the b f r O website. It's
actually www. Dot b f r O dot net. Don't
put dot org or dot dot com or anything. Put
dot net. That's a gay n www dot b f
r O dot net. There's you can get on there

(01:04:59):
and there's a screen that you go to where you
can log the report, give a thorough or detailed description
of what you've seen, where it was at, and so forth.
Then we as investigators, we've got the largest database in
the world. You can actually go on there and you
can do reports made in your individual states and counties.

(01:05:23):
But you can log your report and one of us,
as an individual, will take your report and we'll go
out and investigate. I will share this with you a
lot of times. If I'm out doing a speaking engagement,
I'll pass out my business cards which has actually my
real cell phone number on it and it's got my

(01:05:45):
email address. I'll give you my email address, which is
Dusty Ruth the number one numeral one at gmail dot com.
So it's Dusty d Usdy Ruth are uh one at
gmail dot com. Anytime that you would want to talk

(01:06:07):
to me or anything, you feel free to do so,
you can contact me via that email. Once you've done
that and you tell me what you want to talk
about and so forth. Probably a range of time then
in which to call you and discuss it with you
over the phone. And I always encourage people to do that.
You know, anytime that they want to talk, if they

(01:06:28):
got any questions anything, feel free to call me. Yeah,
contact me via email first and then I'll call you
and we'll range the time to sit down and talk together.
And so if you want to come on in one
of our expeditions, i'd encourage you to do that again.
Go to the BFRO website again. It's got some links

(01:06:50):
on there that you can go to and you can
see where the various expeditions are being given in the
United States. We are actually having three in Ohio next year.
Usually we have two. We have one and man in September.
We're adding a third one next year in October, So

(01:07:11):
we'll have one in May one in September. Those will
be at our usual location where we do have them
come into base camp. Like I said, the third one's
going to be at a new location that we kind
of went out and scouted out this past June, and
so we're going to give that a try in October.
So you can go on there. You can see when

(01:07:32):
those are going to be. You can also contact us
on that via that website ask any questions regarding how
much it is that kind of stuff. We're not allowed
to give out exact the exact location. I can give
you the general part of Ohio, but we don't give
out the exact location unless you have registered, and then

(01:07:54):
I give it out about a week before to keep
people from hopefully coming out in hoaxus and that kind
of thing. But we encourage you to, if you're in rested,
to sign up for one of our expeditions and come.
We'll try to teach you everything we can. We will
answer any of your questions, and I can't promise you

(01:08:15):
a citing but I will promise you that you will
have a great time and you'll make friends there you'll
have the rest of your life.

Speaker 1 (01:08:23):
I believe you, Dusty, I'll bet that is a great time.

Speaker 2 (01:08:26):
It is. I've got some of my best friends that
I have right now are people that I met at
the very first expedition I ever attended as an attendee,
and some of those people are members of my BFRO
team right here in Ohio. It is a great time.
We have a good time. Like I said, a lot

(01:08:48):
of times we do have activity, but we have people
that follow us and come back every time. You know,
they enjoy just coming together and being with our friends
together in and one thing, you do know a lot
of times when you go someplace, you may not have
anything in common with somebody. I can guarantee you, if

(01:09:11):
you're interested in Bigfoot, you come to one of our expeditions,
you at least have one thing in common. You know,
you all have an interest in Bigfoot before you ever come,
so that that gives you a start right there toward
a friendship.

Speaker 1 (01:09:26):
A very good start. Desty, thank you so much again
for coming on to share all these experiences with us.
I really appreciate it.

Speaker 2 (01:09:35):
Oh it's been fun. I enjoy it, Vic, and I
thank you for asking me to do it. Where I'm
always interested in letting people know what we've experienced, and
you know what our experiences have been in investigating reports
and other research that we've done in trying to find

(01:09:55):
out Yeah, I don't really look at the trying to
prove the big what exists, you know, That's not what
I'm all about. I'm more interested in their behavior. I
know they exist, I've seen them, you know. I'm more
interested in their behavior and what they do and why
they do what they do.

Speaker 1 (01:10:14):
Got to give it to you, Dusty, You're one heck
of an ambassador for the field. You really are.

Speaker 2 (01:10:18):
I appreciate it. Thank you.

Speaker 1 (01:10:20):
Oh you're welcome. But yeah, just telling them like it
is I really am. But having said that, thanks again
so much for your time. I really do appreciate it.
And if I can never help you out in the future,
please let me know.

Speaker 2 (01:10:33):
I appreciate it. Vic, thank you very much.

Speaker 1 (01:10:36):
Oh you know you're welcome. Thanks again so much, and
have a great night. That's it for another episode of
Bigfoot Eyewitness Radio with Vic Kundiff.

Speaker 2 (01:10:52):
If you've had a sasquatch encounter and would like.

Speaker 1 (01:10:54):
To be a guest on the show, please go to
Bigfoot Eyewitness dot com and submit a report.

Speaker 2 (01:11:00):
We'd love to hear from you.

Speaker 1 (01:11:02):
Thanks for listening, have a great night.