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August 22, 2025 64 mins
We're bringing back another "classic" episode! Cliff Barackman and James "Bobo" Fay originally recorded this interview with 'squatcher and author Dr. Russ Jones back in March of 2022. Russ discussed his book The Appalachian Bigfoot and updates from his field research in Ohio and West Virginia! 

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Transcript

Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Big Food and Beyond with Cliff and Bobo.

Speaker 2 (00:08):
These guys are your favorites, so like to subscribe and
read it.

Speaker 3 (00:13):
Five star and me.

Speaker 4 (00:18):
Just go on Yesterday and listening, Oh watching Lin always
keep it's watching.

Speaker 3 (00:26):
And now you're hosts Cliff Barrickman and James Bubo Fay.

Speaker 5 (00:31):
Good afternoon, Cliff.

Speaker 3 (00:32):
Good afternoon to you. Bobo. How are you doing today?

Speaker 6 (00:35):
Pretty good? Nothing new to report. I know you're pressure
for Tash. You want to get into it.

Speaker 3 (00:39):
I'm more than happy to do that absolutely.

Speaker 7 (00:41):
So, Yeah, this is gonna be an exciting episode because
it's not very often we have a guest back twice.
There's been one, maybe two other folks, but this is
a This is fairly new for us. We tend to
have people on once and that's about it. But there's
a reason for this. We've invited this guy back because
he has a brand new book out and it has

(01:02):
been doing quite well. Apparently it's made quite the splash
in the community. And I don't know if everybody's heard
about this or not yet, but yeah, today we're welcoming
back doctor Russ Jones from West Virginia and he has
a brand new book called The Appalachian Bigfoot. The first book,
of course, was Tracking the Stoneman, a great book. I
think it's fantastic, especially if you live in West Virginia.

(01:24):
It's a must have, must read. But really, no matter
where you are, you should check out that book. So
now he's followed up with a well, actually it's a
it's a more intensive, more jam packed book. There's more pages,
there's more diagrams. In general, it's so far, so good man.
I'm really liking this book.

Speaker 3 (01:41):
So, doctor Russ Jones, welcome back to Bigfoot and Beyond
with Cliff and the Bows.

Speaker 1 (01:46):
Hey, guys, thanks for having me. It's an honor to
be here. And you know, I always enjoyed the podcast,
so I'm glad to be back.

Speaker 5 (01:53):
The honors all ours for us.

Speaker 7 (01:55):
Well, yeah, so you have a brand new book out.
I guess said before we hop into the book. Well,
you haven't been on for about a year and a
half or something like that. What have you been up
to besides writing this book?

Speaker 1 (02:06):
Gosha's have been that long since it's been I guess
Covid kind of makes it so it's all blur.

Speaker 7 (02:11):
Yeah, they've got a kind of elastic sense of time
and know be fair, So it could have been three
months ago for all I know, but it feels like
a year and a half.

Speaker 5 (02:17):
Well, time is elastic, Cliff, I know.

Speaker 3 (02:20):
You know, I've been spend a lot of time in
the woods.

Speaker 1 (02:22):
I'm still doing my thing with you know, I try
to get out three or four times a week, and
then maybe every couple of months I'm out for a
whole week and I'm up to around forty game cams.
Now it's kind of funny. Last weekend I went through
seventeen thousand pictures and of course, you know, sixteen eighty

(02:42):
three of them was a squirrel looking at me, and
maybe another three hundred where a deer knows, you know,
sniffing at my camera.

Speaker 3 (02:50):
But you know, it's fun for me. I enjoy being
out there.

Speaker 1 (02:53):
And you know, if you're going out all the time
and you're hoping to see a bigfoot every time, you're
probably gonna be disappointed. But if you just like being
out in the woods and getting a chance to be out,
and you know, I like that a lot.

Speaker 5 (03:04):
Some people will see a big foot time they go out.

Speaker 3 (03:06):
Yeah, how does that work?

Speaker 5 (03:10):
Panda circle on?

Speaker 1 (03:11):
Before Covid I had started the other book, it had
been like six years since I wrote Tracking the Stoneman,
and then COVID hit and I set it aside. And
then in the first year of COVID, i'd moved and
when I got to the new place, I just didn't
have a place where I really felt like sitting down
and writing.

Speaker 3 (03:31):
So I didn't do anything for about three or four months.

Speaker 1 (03:33):
And then you're trying to get a desk, and it's like,
you know, four or five months to get a piece
of furniture, and but then you know, several months ago
I was on it really hard and heavy, you know,
a couple of hours each day for several months, and
you know, you're always nervous because you know, you write
something and you just don't know how it's going to

(03:54):
be perceived or how the public's going to feel about it.
And of course you're putting stuff out there, there's always
people that disagree with some of the things that you say.
But I mean, I was I've just been very humbled
at how well it's done, just happy with that awesome.

Speaker 5 (04:09):
I haven't read it yet.

Speaker 6 (04:11):
I got to because I like the first one so much,
read that like two or three times, and I got
to get this new one what's it's.

Speaker 3 (04:16):
Called the web again, it's called the Appalachian Bigfoot and
it's ten weeks now. It's been at number one on Amazon,
you know, in that Science New Age category that most
of this type of stuff is in.

Speaker 5 (04:29):
Well, yeah, congrats, thank you.

Speaker 1 (04:31):
It's done so well that the publisher signed me to
do a second edition of The Stoneman, the first book.

Speaker 3 (04:38):
And it was funny.

Speaker 1 (04:39):
He asked me, if you know, maybe I could have
it done in like seven or eight months, and I'm like,
I don't have anything else to say, so and so
I just need some time in the woods. And I
just started a new website. It's called the Bigfoot doc
dot com. You know, I'm trying to generate some reports
through Appalachia, but other people for other areas or welcome

(05:01):
to send reports to me and I'll find somebody that'll
get in contact with them, just like you know many
times Cliff will get something an appellation, send it to
me and you know, and I'll follow up on it.
So I'm hoping to do the same. I guess that's
that's the end of it. Well, it's kind of just
the beginning really of anything. So the Bigfoot Doc. I
was not aware that you were making a website. It's

(05:23):
the bigfoot doc dot com.

Speaker 3 (05:26):
Yeah, the bigfoot doc dot com.

Speaker 1 (05:28):
It's funny, Cliff, because you know you usually like on Twitter,
I'm just a bigfoot doc. Well, I went on just
to make sure that it was available, a bigfoot doc. Well,
I went on like a week later when I was
working with the company that does the websites, and Bigfoot
Doc was fifty thousand dollars on go Daddy, apparently because
I had searched for it before and looked at it,

(05:49):
and so somebody had apparently bought it, and so then
that's how I ended.

Speaker 3 (05:53):
Up with the Bigfoot Doc. Well, I like you the
bigfoot doc as opposed to a Bigfoot doc. Yeah, definite
articles as opposed to the indefinite ones. Yeah, this just
sounds better.

Speaker 1 (06:05):
But you know, it's when you look at things, it's
hard to generate all the data. And I guess, you know,
we go through different phases, just like in practice when
I'm seeing patients. You know, at first, you're working all
the time and you're seeing all these patients and you're
not taking much time off. And then you get a
little older and you are, you know, trying to take
more time off and trying to do the things you
do and maybe not doing that well.

Speaker 3 (06:26):
Bigfoot was kind of like that for me too.

Speaker 1 (06:28):
You know, I've went through phases, and now in this
last couple of years, I've got through the phase where
I'm just trying to accumulate data. And really, Cliff, I
don't know if you remember this, but you know, we
were at a conference and Matt Prewitt, you, Jeff Meldrum,
and I can't remember who the other person was, and

(06:48):
we were all sitting there talking and you'd ask me
what I was up, you know too lately, and.

Speaker 3 (06:54):
What kind of things I was doing in the woods.

Speaker 1 (06:55):
Well kind of, you know, I'm usually doing these nifty
things like you know, maybe I have mirror set up
in trees or you know, different types of things going
on that I'm just you know, trying to, you know,
get something reflexibly to happen. And you said, you know,
I just haven't got out. This was before you know,
the museum open for you. You said, I just haven't
got to do that much stuff lately, man, And I'm like,

(07:15):
I'm so busy speaking and when I was listening to you, I.

Speaker 3 (07:19):
Just thought, I just want to be in the woods.

Speaker 1 (07:22):
And so when I got home, I had scheduled several
conferences to speak and I just called them and just said, hey,
I'm going to do something else right now, and you know,
and that's what I'm trying to do. I'm doing podcasts,
but other than that, I'm just trying to spend my
time in the woods.

Speaker 3 (07:36):
I'm just trying to get more data, you know.

Speaker 1 (07:39):
And it's trying to find out when I think something's
going to be at a certain place at a certain time
of the year. And you know, you can only do
that by either you coming up with your own answers
through you know, your game cameras or you know, witness
filing a report or something along those lines.

Speaker 3 (07:57):
You know, I told you I was up to about
forty game cameras now.

Speaker 1 (08:00):
But one of the interesting things I think is that,
you know, I want a picture of a bigfoot on
a game can.

Speaker 3 (08:06):
Of course, who doesn't.

Speaker 1 (08:08):
But now I start looking at other things, like when
all the animals don't show up, Because largely the cameras
are in place for about a year wherever they're at,
I want four seasons with them, and so you get
familiar with the certain animals in that particular area of
the woods, what they're doing. You know, you may see
twenty three or twenty four deer every single day, or

(08:28):
a couple of coyotes or what happens to be. But
I noticed over the years that I would start to
see a week or so, sometimes four days, sometimes eight
or nine days where nothing would be on there at all.
And so I just theorized, hypothesize that there's something in
the woods bothering the animals of that particular camera, whatever
it happens to be, and you know, Bigfoot is a

(08:49):
possible reason why that could be. So you know, I
try to you know, I always keep a big Foot
calendar of sightings and different things and what my cameras
are showing, and so before that comes up, I try
to move more cameras into that particular area during that
time to see if I can reproduce it, to see
if it's the whole area or whatever it happens to be.
But you know, just trying to recreate accumulate as much

(09:11):
data as I can. I guess I'm in the data
collecting phase of the Bigfoot development right now.

Speaker 7 (09:16):
Well that's fantastic, And you know, if you don't have
a platform like the Bigfoot doc or something like that,
which is new, right, But if you don't have a
platform like a website or a BFRO or the North
American Bigfoot Center or something like that where people are
bringing you stuff, you got to go out and make
your own data. You've got to go out and find
your own data. You know that you have to produce

(09:37):
your own data, essentially, and most of it's going to
be negative data, which is largely overlooked.

Speaker 3 (09:41):
I think.

Speaker 7 (09:43):
I think negative data can be very very instructive, and
that's kind of what you're talking about now with the
game cameras.

Speaker 3 (09:48):
When there's you.

Speaker 7 (09:50):
See these coyotes three or four times a week and
stead of a couple of weeks ago buying, you don't
see them. That's negative data, Like you're not getting anything.
What can that teach you as well?

Speaker 5 (09:59):
Right?

Speaker 1 (10:00):
I Mean it's interesting too, because you have to keep
in mind that there's people in the bigfoot world to
believe that, you know, there's a relationship between coyotes and bigfoot.
I don't have an opinion on that, but when I'm
looking at camera pictures, you know, I'm keeping it in mind.

Speaker 3 (10:12):
Same way with the deer and you know, we don't
have through Appalachia. It's acknowledged that there is mountain lions.

Speaker 8 (10:20):
Now.

Speaker 1 (10:20):
You know, there's been some that have showed up. One
was killed in New England, had a tag go was
from South Dakota. Tennessee has acknowledged a couple of game
cameras from state. And I had a picture I believe
that was a you know, I couldn't see quite the
rear end. So I sent it to Derek Randalls because
I figure, you know, if anybody knows anything about mountain lions,
it's probably Derek right between all the game can pictures

(10:42):
and the hunting, and he told me that he thought
that it was a mountain lion as well. And so
you know, this can have an effect on you know,
your deer that are in there looking that you're looking
at as well. But nonetheless, you know there's something going
on in that period of time. It's worth investigating, just
like keeping trying of all the sidings in a particular
area and going back, and you know, last year having

(11:06):
a you know, I think that I had an encounter
for the first time in terms of actually getting to
see one. It wasn't very good, but I was in
a particular park because two years prior to gentlemen had
had a sighting when they were fishing there, and so
you know, it was on my calendar, and I tried
to go back like I was in a particular place
last week, because there have been a sighting there a
couple of years before as well, and it had rained

(11:29):
a lot of the night before.

Speaker 3 (11:29):
And when I got there, you know, there was nobody
there at the park.

Speaker 1 (11:32):
And you know, when I hit the trail that took
kind of takes you up around the mountain, I went
up and I know there's no tracks, and no wouldn't
have been there before me. And you know, Shade, my
lab is walking with me all the time. I'm carrying
a leash around my neck, but you know he's not
leash because you know, he just listens well, and he's
you know, twenty feet in front of me all the time.
And when I got up on top of this hill

(11:53):
and I started around, I glanced and to my ride
about sixty yards.

Speaker 3 (11:57):
Away, I thought, hiker.

Speaker 1 (12:02):
I noticed it was all buff colored all the way
up and down, and I noticed what I thought was
a backpack, and I just kind of whistled at Shade.
He ran back to me, and I clipped him on.
Five seconds later, literally we're walking again. But as soon
as I start walking, I noticed the trail turns, and
I got suspicious immediately, you know, when I ran right
up there to where it had been, and there's a

(12:23):
ridge right there, and I went up the ridge and
I looked all over, and of course I wouldn't been
able to see anything, and there was just nothing there.
But you know, many times I've talked to different people,
including Matt Preuitt, about how your brain in an instant,
will try to categorize it into something recognizable when you're
in the woods. So almost every time that I go
in the woods, before I go in, I tell myself,

(12:44):
if you see something or you hear something, make sure
a pause, because you know, I just instantly will try
to put whatever I saw or heard into something I've
recognized previously and what it is most likely, and you know,
and I don't want to make an assumption when I
in the woods doing bigfoot stuff.

Speaker 7 (13:02):
Yeah, it seems to me like a very large percentage
of people who observe sasquatches think there are people when
they when they see them, and they kind of convinced
themselves until later they go, my god, maybe that wasn't
a person.

Speaker 3 (13:13):
It sounds like you probably did the exact same thing,
I know.

Speaker 1 (13:16):
And you know, I really felt like that I wouldn't
be one of those people that because I'd spent so
much time since I was a little boy in the woods,
always hunting and trapping and all this other stuff, that
I wouldn't be vulnerable to vulnerable to that. But in
the end, you know, it's just like everybody else, and
so now I just have to remind myself, you know,
like it wasn't very long ago.

Speaker 3 (13:34):
I started.

Speaker 1 (13:35):
When I moved, I picked up another area that I
started researching, and I'd be in there, like, you know,
once or twice a week and putting cameras in their
net stuff. While I was up this hollow and I
don't know, it's about a two mile walk or so.
Clear sunny day it was nice and a tree fell
and it was close to me, you know, within one
hundred yards, but it was brush.

Speaker 3 (13:54):
I couldn't really see in there very well.

Speaker 1 (13:56):
But my immediate thought was that's just too loud, and
I just kept walking. And then later, you know, I thought,
why wouldn't you just walk over there. I mean, you know,
it's one hundred yards away. I mean, just walk over
in a brush and look around. I mean, you know,
maybe it wasn't too loud. I mean, how do you
know what's too loud?

Speaker 3 (14:12):
Yeah, you know.

Speaker 1 (14:14):
So, like I said, it's it's interesting how we're shaped,
you know. Like for instance, last year, I was in
the woods with my uncle and he's a lifetime hunter traver,
you know, running dogs, coons and you know, rabbits all
this other stuff. Well, we're in this really thick area
and we're looking for a pipe that used to be
decades ago putting this creek. And I was trying to

(14:34):
find a place where I could get a tractor across.
And of course, my personal farm borders a park where
there's a history of sidings, and my farm borders it
for three quarters of a mile, so there's no hunting there,
and you know, there's just a history of a good
place for there to be a big foot activities. And
so we're one my part of the farm. It's really thick.

(14:55):
We're walking along and I happened to notice, and there's
pictures of it in the book, that there's like ten
or twelve saplings that are about half the width through
your wrist, and they're twisted and broken off, and they're
all laying there stacked, and I don't know whether I
would call it a bed or whether I would call
it a blind, but you know, I said to my uncle, just,

(15:15):
you know, just look at this. And he came back
and he's like what, And I'm like, well, look at
all these sticks laying here. You know, something broke these,
something had to break these with their hand and they're
laying here, and he just said huh, and he.

Speaker 3 (15:26):
Just walked off. You know, it wasn't related to turkeys,
or to deer, or to rabbits, or to all the
other things that he hunted. So you know, it makes
me wonder. You know, I always talk about how I
suspect that so many people have bigfoot encounters, but they
really don't know that they had an encounter.

Speaker 1 (15:42):
You know, they don't either they interpret what they saw differently.
They think it was a human or a deer, or
they don't know the bigfoot sounds or the behaviors like
a rock being thrown or a stick being thrown or
something like that, and they just pass it off.

Speaker 3 (15:56):
As you know, something just falling or something we all
do that.

Speaker 6 (16:00):
I mean I know from personal experience. I did the
same thing for years and years, and most bigfoot investigars,
I know, the same thing, Like they didn't know what
they were missing for a long time.

Speaker 1 (16:10):
Yeah, you know, that's the reality of you know, I
suspect there's a lot of people that have had bigfoot
interactions and didn't recognize that they that they were. And
then even hunters woodsmans that are skilled and have been
in the woods a long time, it's not part of
what they're looking for, so maybe they just don't recognize.
I can remember being in the most remote places in

(16:33):
all of Ohio coon hunting with my grandfather, you know,
and this is in the seventies.

Speaker 3 (16:37):
We didn't have really good flashlights. I mean we were
using carbide lights.

Speaker 1 (16:41):
He had one and it's like a candle kind of
like you see the miners used to wear. And I
had like there was these battery or a flashlights that
you know, you screwed onto the battery and it was
really bright, but they didn't last that long. And so
you know, I had it a rope around my neck
and he would never let you turn it on unless
you had seen a coon in a tree, because you know,

(17:02):
you're always worried that you just weren't going to have
any light whenever, you know, you happen to get something
to read, and you know, we'd go to the cellar
and we stuff as many apples in our pockets as
we could before we went out, and we would be
you know, you drive back in some state forest or
some remote area, and then you're parking and you're driving
and you're walking, you know, several hours back in here

(17:22):
in the middle of nowhere, and you're just sitting in
the dark waiting for your dogs to bark. And I
can remember on a couple of different occasions hearing wood
knocks and I'd ask my grandfather, you know what that was,
and he said that, you know, sound carries funny in
the hills and somebody slams a car door and it
comes up all these hollows and it makes a different
sound like that, and you know he believed that, you know,

(17:43):
he just didn't know that there was something different.

Speaker 3 (17:45):
And now in retrospect, you know I knew exactly what
it was.

Speaker 9 (17:49):
Stay tuned for more Bigfoot and Beyond with Cliff and Bogo.
We'll be right back after these messages.

Speaker 2 (18:00):
Hey, Bob, but whatever happened to your gone squatch and
hat used to wear and finding Bigfoot?

Speaker 5 (18:04):
Now I don't have that hat anymore.

Speaker 6 (18:05):
I gave it to Lauren Coleman for his museum, but
I might be asking for it back because I'm getting
a little nervous in summertime, getting too much so on
the scalp up there now, and I'm getting bit uy
a mosquitoes. There's not a big lush crop to fend
them off. It's as hell, Bobs.

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Speaker 6 (19:42):
Cliff and I have noticed all over North America you
hear slamming door card doors where there's no way, there's
a car within miles of you, there's no road, and
you hear this, like close by a loud car, doors slamming.

Speaker 5 (19:56):
Have you heard that?

Speaker 1 (19:57):
You know, I've heard you guys talk about that, and
other people talk about that here. Not very long ago,
I was in a place putting out a camera and
I thought that I heard to me, it sounded like
a card door that was kind of like rusty screen
or rusty closed like, not.

Speaker 3 (20:14):
Like a regular card door.

Speaker 1 (20:16):
But it was like, you know, if you had one,
it was like a junked one that you pushed it
shut and it kind of went and you know, made
it sound similar to that, you know, but the reality
is is that no matter how much you're out, even
if you're out thousands and thousands of hours, I mean,
it's not common to hear wood knocks.

Speaker 3 (20:35):
You know, it's not common to find footprints.

Speaker 1 (20:38):
You know, most of the time you're just in the
woods hiking, you know, looking around. You know, I think
that's one of the things I wonder if why we
haven't had this proliferation of WU across the big foot field,
is that when you go into the woods, a lot
of times people just expect, you know, to have action
all the time, or to have something happen all the time,
and you know, it's just not like that, at least

(21:00):
I don't believe. I mean, these are large animals, and
you know, they it seems like that they stay relatively
in the same kind of areas, but you know, they
have to.

Speaker 3 (21:07):
Move a little bit because you know, they're large and
they need.

Speaker 1 (21:09):
Food, and you know, they couldn't use all the food
sources and stay. Of course, you know, they'd have to
be able to move on. I guess that was a
long answer, but but I aspologize to that. But I've
heard a screeching card door, but that was about it.

Speaker 5 (21:22):
Don't let that happen again.

Speaker 3 (21:23):
Ross, Yeah, it seems like there's very out of place sounds.

Speaker 7 (21:27):
Occasionally. I have heard that card doors slam thing. I've
been with people who have heard it, and I've been
in the vicinity. So my working hypothesis at this point
is that these things are kind of like parrots. They
can probably produce whatever sound they kind of want to.
Maybe that's at the source of some of this mechanical
noise that people report out in the woods or a
variety of other things. And everybody in their mother who
if you've been around Bigfoot for any period of time,

(21:49):
that's heard about the eight hundred pound owl. And I
tend to think those are probably owls, But you know,
without seeing them, and it sounds like an owl, you know,
you could say, well, that's not the wind, that's a
big footitating the wind. Like how far do you want
to take it? Really, it's always go with the safest answer,
But when you have no possible way, there could be
a vehicle within a few hundred yards and you hear

(22:10):
something like that, it kind of makes you wonder. I
think that's a suitable situation that forms it sort of hypothesis.

Speaker 1 (22:16):
There's just one place that I've been to several times,
and several different times I've had activity when I'm in there.
I mean, let's say that I've been there twenty or
thirty times, and maybe once or twice, you know, something
happened to let me believe that they were in there
for whatever reason. And I know that the last two
times I had been in there, I noticed that I
would hear a bardow. And of course I'm in there

(22:38):
during the daylight, because you know, if anybody's heard me talk,
they you know.

Speaker 3 (22:42):
What I believe is that most of the.

Speaker 1 (22:44):
Time when people go out at night, they're going out
to have an experience, you know, they're getting going out
to be near the animals, going out to you know,
maybe have something come close to you or whatever. But
I don't believe there's that much evidence that it's really
pushing anything forward that's coming from it. Not so almost
all the time when I'm out it's during the day.
And I had recognized that I had heard the an

(23:09):
ow twice, you know, when I was in there, the
two different occasions, And so I was conscious of it,
you know, because you always hear people say that, you know,
they're sitting by a campfire and they hear this eight
hundred pound owl or the six hundred pounds bird or
whatever it happens to be, And so I was conscious
of it, trying to think of you know, is this
bigfoot mimicking because I do believe that they mimic an
hour Is it really an owl? But I could never

(23:31):
tell because to me it legitimately sounded like an owl.
And you know, you will hear bart owl's occasionally during
the day, not like you do at night. But you know,
it's hard to know, you know, because you're never getting
a chance to really see, you know, the animal. Same
way with WOODKNOCKX. You know, is is it a hand clap?
Is it a mouth pop?

Speaker 5 (23:48):
You know?

Speaker 1 (23:48):
Are they carrying a piece of stick to hit something?
You know, we really don't know.

Speaker 7 (23:53):
Yeah, there's no way to know unless you actually see.
And you know, it's the other thing that people say
all the time, but I hear so much. It's like,
oh that the thing that was yelled at us, it
was only fifty yards away.

Speaker 3 (24:05):
How do you know?

Speaker 7 (24:05):
I mean, really, I he had to be disrespectful, but
not you personally. But how does one know if you
don't know how loud it is at the source, you know,
but I mean, these this thing had to be within
twenty fifty twenty thirty yards, so you.

Speaker 3 (24:17):
Know, you just don't know that.

Speaker 7 (24:18):
Man, an extraordinarily loud thing at two hundred yard sounds
exactly the same as what you were you know. So yeah,
without seeing these things, we're just kind of guessing. We're
just kind of guessing, is the fact whether people like
to hear that or not.

Speaker 3 (24:30):
We're just guessing.

Speaker 5 (24:31):
You know.

Speaker 1 (24:32):
It's interesting when you talk about the sound too, is
that I had read a study when they were talking
about turkeys. You know, because of course here in the spring,
people will be out hunting turkeys, and when you hear
a turkey gobble, it sounds so loud. But there was
some studies that show that, you know, you really couldn't
hear you know, unless you're look at talking about you know,
from mountain to mountain or something like that, you really
couldn't hear a turkey gobble much behind two hundred yards

(24:56):
and two hundred yards.

Speaker 3 (24:57):
You know, it really isn't that far. You know, it's
a couple of football links.

Speaker 1 (25:00):
And you know, so a lot of times when you're
reading the report, so you talk to a witness, you know,
and you'll hear them say something along the lines you.

Speaker 3 (25:06):
Know it was a quarter mile away or half mile away.
And I think that when you think about witnesses human witnesses,
I think that people discount it too easily. You know.

Speaker 1 (25:17):
It's not like when you go to a police station
and they say, well, you know it was a green car,
it was a red car, and humans mix it up
or whatever, but they don't mix up whether it was
a human or not a human.

Speaker 3 (25:27):
I think that people can.

Speaker 1 (25:28):
Probably tell pretty easy if they saw a big foot
walk through an area, you know that they knew that
it wasn't a human or whatever. But I don't think
that people are very good at judging like height or
distance or you know. For that reason, the sounds like
how things are, you know, and invariably you'll hear all
the time people say, you know, hey, it's I've been

(25:48):
in the woods my whole life, I heard this noise.

Speaker 3 (25:50):
I've never heard anything like this before. But the reality is,
you know, people aren't in the woods very much, and
they don't know all the sounds, and you know, there's
some stuff that makes them pretty weird.

Speaker 7 (25:59):
Say, owns in the woods, we have foxes and raccoons
among them, you know, very common animals, and they make
some pretty crazy noises. Yeah, when somebody tells me, if
they tell me a number. This thing was I don't know,
three hundred yards away and it was eight and a
half feet tall, I don't even I mean, I listened,
but at the end of the day I might write
it down because that's the witnesses perspective, But I don't

(26:20):
believe it.

Speaker 3 (26:21):
And it's not like they're lying.

Speaker 4 (26:22):
It's just that people are terrible observers, and they're terrible
at numerical values for things like heights, weights, distances and
all that sort of stuff unless you've been specifically trained
on that.

Speaker 6 (26:31):
Both hundreds are pretty good, like a distance. I listen
to them, they're talking about like thirty or eighty yards.

Speaker 3 (26:36):
Or sure, yeah, yeah, because their skill depends on it.

Speaker 6 (26:41):
Yeah, Because when I'd be driving with my friends, like
around up in northern cal and I'd measured some of
the big foot statues along the roadways. I'd say how like,
you know, we'd be like, you know, three four hundred yards,
two hundred yards. I'd say how tall I think that
that big foot statues. They'd say six foot, seven foot,
and then we'd get thanks to it's eight foot, you know,

(27:01):
nine foot, or they to the opposite, like there's someone
there's this one that was seven foot I think it
was seven foot eight or nine, and they'd say, looks,
you know, it's it's your size six foot, you know,
sixty six maybe the most.

Speaker 5 (27:15):
It's like, yeah, they'd be way off.

Speaker 9 (27:21):
Stay tuned for more Bigfoot and beyond with Cliff and Bogo.
We'll be right back after these messages.

Speaker 7 (27:33):
Yeah, I think if you took one hundred people and
gave them a surprising glance at something at at one
hundred two hundred yards away, less than fifteen percent of
them would be close to actual heights, especially if they
were scared or like I said, surprised, or the view
was so like a sound squasherboard, like a two second
view of something running at a distance. Well, you're not

(27:56):
going to be very good at that.

Speaker 4 (27:57):
So I kind of if they say eight and a half,
they say nine or ten feet or whatever.

Speaker 3 (28:00):
I just say, I put in my own mind big,
there's a big you know whatever, you know. And if
they say, I don't know six or seven or something, no,
that in the case a little bit smaller, you know.
And then medium is you know, and then there's small three,
four or five feet tall, that sort of thing. That's
basically as accurate as I think anybody can be unless
there's some other compelling reasons, some law enforcement or bowhunters

(28:22):
both Boo said, some other skills set that has been
practiced or instilled in this person that makes them more accurate.
It's just basically small, medium, and big at this point.

Speaker 1 (28:33):
One of the things I'm excited about right now is,
you know, it's becoming one of the times of the
year that we for sure can kind of pick where
they would be around. You know, here in West Virginia
all through Appalachia, spring is coming and the vernal pools,
and if anybody doesn't know what a vernal pool is,
it's a long creek and low places that with winter weather,

(28:55):
snows and flooding, you'll get these areas. Maybe there's size
of a swimming pool, you know, some a little larger,
some a little smaller that they're not very deep, and
you know that's where all the wood frogs are laying
their eggs, the salamanders are coming out.

Speaker 3 (29:08):
It is an early Smorgus boot board of food. It's interesting.

Speaker 1 (29:11):
I mean, say, here in West Virginia, you know when
the TV show Finding Bigfoot was here. We're here because
of a herpetologists had a sighting and near one of these.
And it's interesting because I had been at that park
eight days in a row because of that, every single day,
and you know, the park runs for miles. But that

(29:31):
guy that had the sighting was literally parked where I was.
But just two hours later he came at night because
he wanted to see the spot at salamanders. And it's
pretty amazing because these things are like you know, they're
literally have dots on them, spots on them, and they
come down the mountain sides and there's tens of thousands

(29:51):
of them, maybe hundreds of thousands, and they're just everywhere,
and you have dozens of owls just sitting there getting them.
All the animals are after them, and they're about the
size of a Snickers bar, and they're slow, they're not
very aggressive, so it's just a good early year food source,
and the problem is of course picking you know, which

(30:14):
hole or which vernal pool you know would be the best.
You know, a lot of times when I'm hiking, I
see them or see where one will be and try
to keep an idea on that.

Speaker 3 (30:22):
But you know that's coming up anytime.

Speaker 1 (30:24):
They're already active right now, so there's a very good
chance that you know, a bigfoot would be visiting these.
And of course then we get into summer, we have
the berries. You know, then you're trying to pick right
of ways where four wheelers wouldn't have access. You know,
it's a little remote, so something can have some privacy
and not be hassled by people and hikers. So it

(30:47):
seems like it's really proderfect, especially vernal pool because the
leaves aren't on until about April, so you can be
off trail, you can see a little better. It's a
pretty exciting time for bigfooters.

Speaker 3 (30:57):
Do you target any of these vernal pools, especially in
off the beaten path areas with your game cameras?

Speaker 1 (31:04):
So what I have done in the past is that
I'm constantly trying to come up with new areas, Like
I was just in that same park where they had
that happen, and.

Speaker 3 (31:13):
I put one on a vernal pool.

Speaker 1 (31:16):
And then I'm always trying to come up with a
different idea because you know, Cliff, you and I had
talked about before you were talking to I can't think
of the name of that privatologist is on some of
the TV shows, the woman that's from England.

Speaker 3 (31:26):
She was supposed to come to the Ohio conference. Oh yeah,
doctor Anna and Karis, that's right.

Speaker 1 (31:30):
And so we were talking about you were talking to
her and having a conversation about game cameras and you
know where are You're putting them on ridges, on flats, saddles,
you know, right down the line. And then she said
to you, you know, how do you know they even
travel that way? And you know, so you had to
constantly challenge yourself, like I put one out last Thursday,

(31:52):
and it's not someplace that I would put normally a
game camera, but it was just you know, a little
drawl that came up from a deep hollow, and I thought,
you know, you just don't know. So you know, as
she said, you know, they may travel only on north
facing hillsides twenty two degrees up the slope or whatever.

Speaker 3 (32:08):
It happens to be.

Speaker 1 (32:09):
That's an exaggeration, of course, but you know, we just
don't know until we know. But I suspect that once
we start getting an antsw er more data and someone
comes up with a game camera says this is how
it was set up, then I suspect we'll be able
to get a lot of game a lot of evidence
come out all at once.

Speaker 7 (32:28):
Because one thing is abundantly clear is that whatever we're
doing now isn't working. So what we should just do
the opposite of what we're doing now. You know, one
of the things doctor Nikara said, try this, throw a
rock wherever it lands, put up a game camera. So wow,
just totally random and said, yeah, well, until you start
getting positive hits, how do you know where they are?

(32:48):
You think they travel like the other animals. Well apparently not,
because you're getting all the other animals on game camera
and not these things. It's very interesting speaking to her,
and I would recommend anything that she does take a
very good heart those listen to. She's a legitimate PhD
who studies one of the only nocturnal primates in the
world in Sumatra, and she has fascinating data. If you

(33:09):
can hear her speaking person, do it really really fascinating stuff,
Like I remember one thing that always stuck with me
is the shed there's a correlation, a data correlation between
the speed with which one walks and how many animals
you see. And of course, everybody in their mother like
all the hunters out there are saying, yeah, you have course, Cliff, no,
but like apparently, if you walk something like one hundred

(33:31):
yards an hour, you will see five or six times
more animals of all species than you would if you're
just your normal you know, one and a half mile
per hour walking speed or whatever you walk at. So
I hadn't heard of that's interesting, very interesting, very interesting.

Speaker 6 (33:48):
Yeah, and also how many for primate encounters directly every
time you added a person. If you go with one person,
you get say five hundred, if you go with two
people you get like two hundred and fifty. It keeps
the gap keeps, Like you know, you got six people,
you might get twenty interactions instead of the five hundred

(34:09):
by yourself.

Speaker 7 (34:10):
Yeah, there is a relationship there, Yeah, between the number
of people in the group and how many animals you see.
Of course, and all these things are obvious, you know,
once you see them. But if they're so obvious, why
aren't we doing it?

Speaker 1 (34:22):
Yeah, I think that that's what I'm hoping for, is
that we'll see I mean, I suspect that when Bigfoot
is documented that there'll be a lot of evidence come
out that people are holding back for whatever reason.

Speaker 3 (34:32):
They don't want to be called a name, or they.

Speaker 1 (34:33):
Don't want to be bugged about it, or they don't
want people in their land.

Speaker 3 (34:37):
I suspect there's a lot like that that's out there
right now.

Speaker 1 (34:40):
But I mean, for instance, there was this park that
I was in, and you know, they close this park
down at like eleven at night, and there's this one
road that goes out in the middle of nowhere, and
there's a pond right at the end of it.

Speaker 3 (34:50):
It's just a little pond about size of like I
don't know, maybe fifty feet, but fifty feet. It's not
very big. But you know, when I was back there,
I was like, in my mind.

Speaker 1 (34:59):
I thought, if they're there's ever a Bigfoot in this area,
it's coming to this pond eventually. And so you know,
then you're looking at I thought, well, you know, how
would I approach this pond? Of course, you know, I'm
just guessing right, because I could in all likelihood be wrong,
But there was a drain out of the bomb side
of it. And so I put a camera on this
tree down there, and I had it out over a
year is there, maybe a couple of years because I'd

(35:20):
had some interesting pictures that came out that that weren't
necessarily interesting in terms of bigfoot, but cool coyotes or
maybe a big Bucks or Bobcats or something. So you know,
I'm always working with these parks, and so I'm sending.

Speaker 3 (35:34):
The rangers or the park.

Speaker 1 (35:36):
Managers nice pictures of big Bucks, of Bobcats, just cool pictures,
and they're putting them up on their website.

Speaker 3 (35:41):
And that's part of the way.

Speaker 1 (35:42):
You know, you're developing a relationship with them so that
when something happens, you know, they may email you or
call you or say, you know, like now I can
walk in most parks with a map and you know,
just talk to them about different areas of the park
and if they're having problems, you know, like I just
recently was in one and there's like four or five
remote areas in that park, and you know, and they

(36:04):
took a marker and said, don't go here. They're having
problems with four wheelers and you know, so then you're
getting some valuable information from them. But anyways, back to
that drainage that was in there, I put a camera there.
We you know, if you put it up this time
of the year, you just don't know. When I went back,
I found a footprint, and you know, I don't find
them often, you know, maybe a couple of year, three

(36:26):
a year maybe, And in Appalasia, you know, you usually
you don't have a track line. There's leaf duff everywhere,
and so you may find an a track and that's
about it, because they may step on a trail or
a path and they're through it. And there was that track,
and I knew my camera was right down there, maybe
just fifty feet below, and I thought it walked right

(36:47):
by my camera. But when I got down there, the
early leaves that came on and there was a new
leaf that came out or a new branch, and it
was just enveloping my camera inside it.

Speaker 3 (36:58):
You know, I couldn't even see my camera.

Speaker 5 (37:01):
Squatcher's law.

Speaker 6 (37:02):
I did to ask you, Russ, what do you think
I mean, because you're level headed, data driven and all this,
what do you think the danger potential is of sasquatches
out in Appalachia.

Speaker 1 (37:13):
I used to never carry a gun when I was
out for years and years and years. And a friend
of mine brag County's investigator in Columbus, and he started
talking to me about David Plaidi's four one one books,
and you know, I had read his first two big
Foot books, which were great, and then, you know, so
I read the four to one books and most of them.

(37:34):
You know, when you're a provider and you see patients
all day, like the great majority of them, you know,
there could have been some type of health related incident
and probably weren't that big a deal, but there was
some that were really compelling and interesting. And I worry
more about people than I do an animal, you know,
I worry about the people growing pot on state national

(37:54):
forest lands, that type of people. So I'm carrying a
weapon with me all the time now, which I didn't
do when I was younger. Maybe it's because I was
naive and you're thinking, oh, you're pretty big guy, and
you're carrying this walking stick and you're good to go.

Speaker 3 (38:08):
But you know, sometimes I come out.

Speaker 1 (38:09):
I'm always parked in a remote location, and you know,
a lot of times I come out, there might be somebody,
you know, it's just guys sparked back there having a
few drinks or something, or maybe a couple parked, you know,
and you just don't know what the situation is.

Speaker 3 (38:22):
Going to be.

Speaker 1 (38:23):
And then of course I got my lab with me,
and of course he thinks, no matter who you are,
that it's his friend, so he wants to cool sprint
over there to get, you know, some attention from those people.
But I think that the reality is is if they
were dangerous, they would have already been hunted down and killed.

Speaker 5 (38:39):
They're rare.

Speaker 3 (38:40):
There's not any many of them around. I mean I was.

Speaker 1 (38:44):
Thinking earlier because you know, I did a I was
talking to somebody about finding the bones or whatever, and
I'm like, you know, if you just think about it,
And I used to think that there was quite a
few of them. And then as I've gotten older and
done this more years, you know, of course this is
just speculation. I guess I don't think there's quite as
many of them, and so you know, I started thinking
about numbers, you know, because of needing a carrying capacity

(39:05):
of the woods, you know, you're sharing it with other animals.
You're sharing it with humans, you know how many of
them there might be, And so you know, I was thinking, like,
you know, four thousand to twenty thousand, and I'm hesitant
to even say it because you know, just like writing
a book, as soon as you put something out.

Speaker 3 (39:21):
There, there's a lot more skeptics for what you say,
because I'll say, oh, I can be right.

Speaker 1 (39:25):
And I had somebody that was wooish told me one
time that there was around a million of them, which
I thought was a really large number. But you know,
I was thinking four thousand to twenty thousand or something
for North America. And then if you started dividing it out,
how many would be each state, and if they live
something like the Greater apes would be you know, maybe
around fifty years or so, more or less. Then you

(39:48):
start thinking about five percent attrition is what's average. So
in a state like Washington, Oregon, Ohio, West Virginia, you know,
you may have ten animals in each place die in
a whole year in a whole state. And when you
start looking at it like that, you know there's not
very good odds. It's a bumping into something like that. No,

(40:10):
And as far as I'm being dangerous. My data that
I point out is like, clearly they're potentially dangerous. They
should be given a wide berth like grizzly bears or
anything else like that. But at the end of the day,
if they were out to get us, there'd be very
few of us left. Yeah, sorry, Bobo, I kind of
went off topic about that, but no, that was perfect,
It's great.

Speaker 3 (40:28):
No, you're right. I think that they could have all
of us.

Speaker 1 (40:30):
Have been out there a lot, They could have gotten
any of us at any given time. I'm sure they're
like people, and there's probably some of them that are
just like us. Some of us you just don't want
to meet, and some of them are probably like that too.
And occasionally something happens and maybe a person disappears, and
I'm sure that has probably happened historically, but you know,
fortunately it hasn't happened to anybody that.

Speaker 3 (40:52):
I know of.

Speaker 6 (40:53):
Yeah, Dave paul Autis just told me personally that he
now thinks that, let way less than five percent of
all the disappearances in this book could be attributed to
a sasquatch.

Speaker 7 (41:02):
This seems about right, I think, yeah, very very small
number of them, but it probably does happen because just
like humans, sasquatches are individuals, you know, and they all
have their own personal experience that kind of accumulate and
inform who they are, and probably wouldn't take very many
people shooting at one before they realize that people are
kind of jerks and don't want to be around them,
or take some sort of you know, revenge or something

(41:24):
like that. They've been shot before. And if you look
at eight, can you or the Bouman incident or any
of these stories that the sasquatch was prone to violence.
They were shot at first. They were shot at first.
Let that be listened to all of us, I guess.
Or what if there's an old one around or a
small one around.

Speaker 1 (41:42):
Of aby and infant, or you know that somebody bumped
into or one that was crippled and was hungry and
was having trouble getting food, and you know, would that
be more aggressive?

Speaker 3 (41:52):
I mean, you know, sin might be.

Speaker 7 (41:55):
Yeah, because at the end of the day, humans are
a food source. If a sasquatch is driven to starvation,
you know, I'm sure I look delicious.

Speaker 5 (42:04):
I know I'm delicious.

Speaker 3 (42:06):
Yeah, look at you.

Speaker 7 (42:07):
Yeah, And that's a situation that the chimpanzees fall into sometimes,
and chimpanzees are known to steal babies and eat them
under starvation situations. So yeah, I don't think there's no
reason to think sasquatches would not do the same thing.

Speaker 4 (42:24):
I mean, they are not. At the end of the day.
Sasquatches are not our forest friends, you know, no more
than bears or anything else are.

Speaker 6 (42:31):
I think there's some that are friendly for sure. Well,
like you think, I think they're probably hominins. And two
percent of all humans have a sociopathic tendency, so.

Speaker 3 (42:42):
And a full twenty percent of lawyers, I might end,
so I've read.

Speaker 5 (42:47):
So you figure.

Speaker 6 (42:47):
I mean, so if that's say it's two percent of
the sociopathic, and you think there's maybe three hundred in Oregon, Cliff,
but that would mean you got five or six seven
of them that could be really dangerous.

Speaker 3 (42:58):
I'll be careful.

Speaker 9 (43:02):
Stay tuned for more Bigfoot and Beyond with Cliff and Bogo.
We'll be right back after these messages.

Speaker 7 (43:14):
Hey Russ, So it surround the woods so much, and
you are interested in accumulating data and whatnot.

Speaker 3 (43:19):
You've been looking for footprints.

Speaker 7 (43:20):
I know you say you find a few a year
have you been able to identify the same individual sasquatch
based on their footprints over time?

Speaker 3 (43:28):
No, I haven't.

Speaker 1 (43:30):
I know that there are some people that have done,
and I've heard you talk about that, Cliff, but I
have not. Primarily, when I find footprints, it's not in
the same area. I haven't found them repetitiously, you know,
in that area. I think that as time goes on
and I get a better idea of when they're in
a certain time in a certain place.

Speaker 5 (43:49):
You know.

Speaker 1 (43:49):
For instance, doctor Kenny Brown, which I think you know, Cliff,
he had spoke one year at Ohio. But Kenny's a
family doctor and you know, kind of a young up
and comer, bigfoot guys.

Speaker 5 (44:01):
Bright.

Speaker 3 (44:01):
He's in the woods all the time. It's really big
deal for him.

Speaker 1 (44:05):
And he's doing he's really interested in the LDRs along
duration recorders. So he is doing it in several areas
that I'm in and he'll call me and say, Hey,
I've got a whoop on this date in this location
or whatever, and so I just keep adding it to
that location. So I'm hoping that, you know, I'll get
to a point where, like right now, maybe only four
or five times a year I have a good idea

(44:26):
of where something may be at a certain place. Of course,
that's no guarantee that you're going to even see anything
or hear anything, but I just have a rough idea
that they're in a general area then, and so I
try to concentrate my hikes there. And you know, it's interesting.
I did this one report. It was this guy that
was a timber guy, and he was way out in

(44:49):
some mountain in West Virginia and the bulldozer broke down
his guys and went to get some parts. And he
was working on this dozer and it was in the
middle of the woods, and his guys came back and
went and they came over the hill. You know, they're
just driving on land or essentially fields to get back there,
and they stopped because they thought that they saw a
bayer up against this tree. Well was they're watching it,

(45:11):
it became apparent to them that it wasn't a bear,
that it was a bigfoot, and it turned and looked
at him, and it took off running.

Speaker 3 (45:17):
And when it got to like their drag road, you know.

Speaker 1 (45:19):
Which is just where the dozers going over dragging logs out,
it jumped the road rather than leaving a track, and
of course, you know, mountain lions chimps are cognizant of
leaving their footprints, and I think that many times these
animals are too. And another thing I found interesting was
that the bigfoot was peaking around a tree, and although
it was several hundred yards from the sky working on

(45:42):
a dozer and rather just standing there and looking, you know,
it was still behind a tree, still peaking.

Speaker 3 (45:47):
You know, it was so punchy, you know about not
being seen.

Speaker 5 (45:50):
Yeah, I know.

Speaker 6 (45:51):
I talked to a logging truck driver one time that
saw one walk up to a buddy road.

Speaker 5 (45:56):
It was actually the road I had my sighting on.

Speaker 6 (46:00):
It's a logging road, but it's a wire one and
you could put three trucks side by side on it,
and certain parts of it for sure, like you don't
you don't have to pull over anywhere to pass on
most of this road. It's so it's pretty wide. And
you said it came out, it dropped down and put
its arms over its head and then barrel rolled across
the mud, just left a smear mark but no footprints,

(46:20):
and it got over to a stump or tree on
the other side and put its feet on the front
of the tree and then wrapped the tandrals to the
back and just pulled itself up and then stepped off
over the brush so that there was no sign of
any footprint anywhere. But you know, you wouldn't it's just
a smear across the road. But you wouldn't even it
wouldn't jump out. It'd be like, that's weird.

Speaker 5 (46:39):
But you just think it's some logging thing or you know,
something like that.

Speaker 3 (46:43):
Yeah, so you know, why is it then this?

Speaker 1 (46:46):
Sometimes there'll be a trackway, but you know, the great
almost majority of the time, you know, you just may
see a scuff or you just may see a little
bit of something. You know, I think it's odd that
it's odd to hear of a trackway, you know, and
you wonder what the circumstances were that made one so

(47:06):
so ambivalent, you know, about just walking through something where
you know that that's not been the case that I
find at all. You know, I find, like you're saying, Bobo,
that it's uh. You know, think of the Scuokum cast
the same way. You know, there was all those apples
out there, and you know, it just didn't walk out
there and get the fruit or whatever.

Speaker 3 (47:23):
It just kind of launged out there, laid out there
to get them.

Speaker 6 (47:26):
Yeah, they're highly cognizant of not leaving tracks.

Speaker 3 (47:30):
I kind of wonder, I mean, this is just a
speculative sort of question on my part.

Speaker 7 (47:37):
I know that when I am hanging out with my dog,
she hates to get her feet wet, you know. And
I know sasquatches are walking through the woods and it's
pretty damp and wet all the time. But I often
wonder it's like, do they just not like the feel
of it, or they maybe they certainly know that they
leave behind their own tracks, and they and as doctor
Krantz hypothesized, they might even recognize other.

Speaker 3 (47:58):
Individuals by their footprints.

Speaker 7 (48:00):
It wouldn't take any more brain capacity than recognizing the
other individual wolf by its smell for other wolves, right,
So if they can recognize other individuals and certainly yeah, yeah,
they wouldn't want to tell, like clue off where they've been.
Or maybe sometimes they do want to tell the other
sasquatches where they've been, and they would leave an obvious footprint.
It's interesting, there's so much to learn and speculate about

(48:21):
these things. But every once in a while, I kind
of wonder. It's like, well, man, maybe it's don't like mud.
I know that my dog won't walk in it unless,
you know, unless she has to. She's always trying to walk.
She's kind of a press though, to be fair, my
dog's gone too soft.

Speaker 1 (48:35):
Maybe they're like daw other debreeds, you know, like my
lab is. I can't get him to go in my pool.
But every muddle that I come to he walks through.

Speaker 3 (48:43):
Really really yeah, who knows, I don't know. I think
it's interesting.

Speaker 7 (48:47):
And certainly doctor Krantz again speculated on his book, and
I'll see it again, as I say, almost every episode
every episode year. If you have not read Krantz's book,
by god, go get that book and read it. It's
pretty great, especially for early nineties, you know. Anyway, he
says that it's skeptics point and say, well, clearly these
are fake prints because they're found in an obvious place.

(49:08):
But if a sasquatch was communicating to other sasquatches through
their footprints, and they can recognize other individuals.

Speaker 3 (49:15):
Of their family or group or troop or whatever you want.

Speaker 7 (49:17):
To call it, that seems like a really good way
to do it. Leaving footprints around where the other members
of your group with your gang can can see it.
I think that's a very very interesting possibility.

Speaker 4 (49:29):
But that also if that is true, If that is true,
that brings up another whole thing. Can they track their prey?
I think that would be very interesting because certainly dogs
and you know, canines in general, wolves, they would track
their prey by scent, and if it doesn't take any
more brain capacity to do it by sight, well then

(49:50):
why not. Wouldn't that be interesting because certainly humans tracking
ability came from somewhere primordial.

Speaker 5 (49:58):
You don't think that you think that's Will they track
other animals?

Speaker 7 (50:02):
I think it's a question, and I don't think anybody
has a solid answer.

Speaker 6 (50:05):
They seen totally walking right in the track line of
like an elk or a deer, and like fallow it.

Speaker 5 (50:11):
Like I think, I don't think there's a question that
they track animals.

Speaker 3 (50:14):
I think it's a very interesting possibility.

Speaker 1 (50:17):
I mean there's some stories where certain particular deer you know,
have their tongue hanging out similar to like when they're
being chased like a dog, you know, where apparently something
has been on his track and people saw the bigfoot
come along after that, But I mean, I guess I
always perceived them as being more of an ambush you
know type.

Speaker 3 (50:35):
I guess predator would be the right word, or whatever.
That they're laying in weight, there's you know, they know
where the animals go and there's a spring or whatever.
You know.

Speaker 1 (50:43):
One time I was in the woods, and a lot
of times in Appalachia, minerals are found in the rocks,
and of course the deer will go in like the
rock overhangs or like the little shallow caves, and you'll
see all kinds of deer tracks, and there's only one
way in and one way out. And I thought, many times, gosh,
should be so easy for something just to wait for
this deer to come here and then you know, get

(51:03):
one when it comes out.

Speaker 3 (51:06):
But you know, maybe it's because they're opportunistic. They're doing
it all.

Speaker 1 (51:10):
You know, they're eating roadkill, they're eating trash, they're eating
out of dumpsters, they're following year, they're they're ambushing deer.
You know, there's you know, if they pick a snake
up in the book, I had a really interesting report
was out of Tennessee, and this lady like to get

(51:31):
her exercise by walking and you know, they're developing a
lot of Tennessee quickly, and so some of the areas
that are.

Speaker 3 (51:36):
You know, pretty remote are getting developed.

Speaker 1 (51:38):
And it was surrounded on three sides by parks, and
she would walk about six or eight miles down these
you know, park roads or kind of gravel, and she
said that she had came along and she had seen
it was like a sunny air and she's like, you know,
it had been winter and it was cool, and so
it was so nice that sun was just coming through.
And she said, you know, it was about sixty or

(51:59):
seventy yards in front of her, the little field or
rough area maybe kind of where when they were working
on the road they turned the equipment around or something
something like that, you know, not something somebody would farm.
And she said that she just saw something and then
all at once she saw a bigfoot jump out, jump down,
and when it stood back up, she said, I don't

(52:20):
know what kind of snake it was, but it was
holding a really long snake. And she said, then it
jumped right back into the woods. And so, you know,
there's a lot of food and things out there like
that that we just don't think about, you know, necessarily
it's being something that we want to eat. But I
thought that was interesting, you know that you know, she'd
had that type of experience.

Speaker 3 (52:39):
Russ, you were across reports of them eating insects. No,
I mean, it seems reasonable to me that they would.

Speaker 1 (52:46):
You know, I talked to some people in particular, like
doctor Brown that I talked about earlier. You know, his
family is very familiar with you know, funguses and different
mushrooms and things like that, and you know, they had
told me that was the hardest month to be able
to not find things like that to eat in the woods.
That largely every other month there was plenty available, you know.

(53:08):
And I've came upon logs where it looked like something
had been digging, you know. You know, of course bears
will do that, but you know, it's just like certain
behaviors you expect out of a bear. And sometimes when
you come upon something, the way something dug or the
way something where it was at just makes you think
that it might have been something else. So you know,
I'm sure that they probably are after you know, I

(53:31):
think that they're an omnivore. I think that they're opportunistic.
I think they were eating almost anything that they can.
My belief had been over the years that I had
found that when berries were on, which was kind of
you know, when the weather was getting warmer ne early
part of summer, that I was finding more stuff on
the north facing hillside, and so I was looking for
berries that were on the right of way that a

(53:52):
four wheeler couldn't get to, that was on a north
facing hillside. And so then when I would get there,
I would go walking back and forth, and a couple
different times I'd found what I believed were beds, and
one time it had a stack of walnuts that were
like kind of piled up in like a stack, And
of course then I had to look around and look
to see if I could find a walnut tree. There
wasn't any that I had located. You know, of course

(54:14):
it's a mountain side, so there could have been an
easily one that I overlooked. But I mean, I don't
know what nature would go and find walnuts and then
you know, pile them up. I mean, squirrels would take
them and bury them or whatever it happens to be.
But you know, this was obviously you know something else.

Speaker 6 (54:30):
Could you describe the beds the bedding area like what
kind of location and like the terrain that was in
and what was just constructed of.

Speaker 1 (54:37):
So when the weather is warm, my experience has been
that they don't have betting materials like commonly you'll hear
about the Pacific Northwest. I don't know if that was
you know, a different type of weather or you know
that was a different function of those or whatever it
happens to be. I can just say that the ones
that I have seen when the weather's been warmer is

(54:58):
that they were on the ground and they were large,
doughnut shaped, but larger than what you would expect to
see with a bare bed or anything like that. When
you see them sometimes and I've only found them a
few times, I found it to be shocking and how
large they are.

Speaker 3 (55:14):
But once again I.

Speaker 1 (55:16):
Have found that like in Appalachia, where we have hills
or mountains, they generally weren't in the main hollow. And
I'm not saying they don't go in main hollows or
they're not there at night, or whatever happens to be,
but I'm just saying in terms of where they spend
their time, I find it to be a side hollow
with a north facing hillside and there's usually like some

(55:36):
water in it, you know, maybe water that would you know,
in the summer, it may have like a little couple
of puddles that something could drink out of.

Speaker 3 (55:44):
But that's just where I have had luck.

Speaker 5 (55:46):
You know.

Speaker 1 (55:46):
It's probably maybe ten minute walk for me to get
to where the berries would be, so for them just
a couple of minutes maybe, but not four wheeler paths.
But that's just been my experience on you know, what
I look for when it's out the very time, and
I'll go on Google Earth and I'll look at those
right of ways in different areas and maybe large park
lands or whatever it happens to be, and then I'll

(56:08):
just mark them on my on x app.

Speaker 3 (56:11):
And when I go to those areas, I'll hike.

Speaker 1 (56:13):
Into those particular areas and just start at the bottom
of the hillside and just work my way back and
forth to the top. And ninety nine point nine percent
of the time it's just a nice day in the woods.

Speaker 3 (56:23):
Have you gone back and found that the same nest
was still discernible, like maybe a year or two three later.

Speaker 1 (56:29):
No, I've been back almost every you know, like I said,
I've only found a couple three or four, and every
time I went back, they have not been active the
following year, So I would assume I speculate that they're
in that same general area, but probably just using a
different place now.

Speaker 7 (56:46):
So the next but the nest was still findable, that
you could still identify the nest, right.

Speaker 1 (56:50):
Yeah, there was one nest I found in the winter,
and the nests I found in the winter had leaves
in it for the betting material, and it was a
picture of it in a book. It's you know, it's
up this remote holly. You drive in the most remote
section of Ohio. You get out on a gravel park
road and then you would walk a mile up a
hollow and then there's no trails or paths, and then

(57:12):
you turn up another hollow and there's some rock cliffs
and it was at the base of the rock cliffs
kind of like a little overhang, so to speak.

Speaker 3 (57:21):
And you know, I don't I don't know what would
be that was an Ohio.

Speaker 1 (57:26):
So there's nothing in Ohio that's building a bed or
a nests like that. I mean, you know, the bears,
there's very few of them around. I mean Ohio has
a less one hundred less or one hundred resident bears
for the population. I mean, Ohio might be the one
state that has more big foots than bears, you know,
that has both. So it's kind of an unusual state

(57:48):
that way. But you know, I'm going back there. I
keep it in mind because I always think about, you know,
maybe E DNA or something like that, that at some
point there will be a technology where I can go
and sift through that particular area to come up with something.

Speaker 6 (58:01):
Yeah, I've never heard of a nest site being discovered
that they've ever utilized them ever. Again, like once a
person found it, they never ever came back from anyone
I've talked about.

Speaker 3 (58:12):
Wow, I never heard that.

Speaker 5 (58:13):
I didn't know.

Speaker 7 (58:14):
Well, certainly I know the Olympic Project nests. I mean
that's the one I've that's the situation I'm most familiar with.
And I've been to the both sites, the new and
old nests, et cetera. And it seems that they don't
come back to the exact same nests. But the first
nest site where there's like what twenty of them along
a mile stretch of ridge, certainly they're using the area.
And since those nests have been discovered, not only have

(58:36):
another nest site been discovered in the same general area
last February. I think it was so a year ago
from now it's two years ago now. Again, my sense
of time is elastic. But they're certainly in the area.
There have been sightings in the area. There have been
footprint finds in the same area. There have been foraging sites.
I mean I found a footprint five feet away from
the exact same bed.

Speaker 3 (58:57):
Yeah, yeah, exactly. But they're still in the same general area,
which is encouraging because they chose that area for a
reason and it doesn't seem like they're abandoning it.

Speaker 1 (59:05):
Have they said whether if the guys noticed that, Shane
and Todd and Derek and those guys, whether or not
it's always on a you know, east facing hillside or
a north facing hillside, or a particular area.

Speaker 7 (59:18):
They seem to be fingers going into a river valley.
So let me think for a minute where this seems situated.

Speaker 5 (59:25):
They're all south to some degree.

Speaker 7 (59:27):
They are, actually all of the nests are kind of
on these fingers that point out from the main ridge.
The ridges run north and south and the fingers point
out to the west, so they're kind of towards the
end of those fingers that are pointing out to the west.

Speaker 1 (59:41):
I just keep hoping that you know, all of us
that are out there are finding our own things, and
you know, hopefully everybody's sharing it. And you know, I'm
hoping by telling you know, somebody may say, well, I
know exactly a place like that when I talk about,
you know, not the main hollow north facing slope, you know,
the you know, they'll go out and look and maybe
they'll find something, who knows, maybe find a dead one,
and I'll be the one.

Speaker 3 (01:00:01):
That solves the whole mystery or whatever happens to be.

Speaker 1 (01:00:04):
But you know, I think that we all need to share,
you know, so that you know, there's a chance that
maybe we can come up with a better data set
or more data and then you know, maybe when Derek
and those guys say, well, you know, listen, if you
go to this particular sub type of terrain and it
looks like this, and you know there's always huckleberries or
whatever happens to be, you know, then maybe we can

(01:00:25):
reproduce it in different areas.

Speaker 7 (01:00:27):
One of the things we're doing here at the NABC
is we're utilizing the data that Paul Freeman West Summerland
and all those guys compiled onto their map, that Paul
Freeman map, and we're looking at that because there's a
number of betting sites on the map, and through the
data that I've collected through the year by either knowing
people involved or doctor Meldrum and his files or whatever,

(01:00:49):
there's actually a fair number of photographs of these nests
as well, and so we're trying to piece together where
certain nests were found based on dates on the photographs
and dates on the map, et cetera. And they seem
and based on the map, I know a map is
a thirty thousand foot view and whatnot. We have to
actually go to the sites to figure it out, but
based on the map, they seem to be positioned very similarly,

(01:01:12):
kind of towards the end of these little fingers that
are going out of a river valleys. So we're trying
to try to piece some things together for internal use
at the museum here for our own field work.

Speaker 3 (01:01:22):
But I cannot agree with you more.

Speaker 7 (01:01:24):
We need more data, whether it's positive data or negative data,
trying to piece the puzzle together, because that's the only
way that this that we're going to push the ball
down the field at all. I think we could continue
going out haphazardly and just get lucky. But if we
had some data to back it up and say, well,
I predict here and then we went there and actually
had success. Like the Freeman footage, Paul predicted where they

(01:01:47):
would be based on siding reports from previous years, started
going up there every single morning, and within a few
weeks he got the footage.

Speaker 3 (01:01:54):
That's one of the only data sets.

Speaker 7 (01:01:56):
PG films kind of like that too, but it wasn't
so specif the PG film has gotten because Roger and
Bob went up there for two weeks after the Blue
Creek Mountain tracks in August a few months before.

Speaker 3 (01:02:09):
But the Paul Freeman footage, you know that that's a
really good example of using data to get something positive.
And if we can start doing that as a community,
we finally start getting somewhere, I believe. Well, Russ, thank
you so much for joining us again.

Speaker 7 (01:02:21):
I'm afraid I have to cut our talk short today.

Speaker 3 (01:02:24):
I've got another appointment I have to go do, so
I need to get going.

Speaker 7 (01:02:28):
But thank you so much for coming back on for
your second dip in the Bigfoot and Beyond Pool. Really,
really appreciate it, and I'm looking forward to seeing you
as the season starts ruling I can get back east
and hopefully see one of these gigs back there.

Speaker 5 (01:02:39):
Yeah.

Speaker 6 (01:02:39):
Thanks, ros can wait to see it again because you know,
I love my West Virginny, So I'll hopefully get back
there and do some squashing with you.

Speaker 5 (01:02:46):
Yeah. I still got to order your book, Russ. Where
can I get it?

Speaker 1 (01:02:49):
So if you go on you can go on Amazon
and find both the books on the air, or you
can go on the Bigfoot doc dot Com my new
website I just got up and running. It'll have links
on air. I'd love it if people would send me
some reports add to my data collection so we can,
you know, try to move the ball forward.

Speaker 3 (01:03:07):
Okay, and you know, and whatever it's worth. We have
autograph copies at the North American Bigfoot Center if you
want to come in and purchase one here you can
do that as well. Thanks guys. I appreciate it.

Speaker 6 (01:03:17):
All right, clip Well that's another great one. Always good
to catch up with the doctor.

Speaker 3 (01:03:22):
Absolutely.

Speaker 5 (01:03:23):
Okay, folks, thanks for tuning in and listening.

Speaker 6 (01:03:25):
If you'd likely you heard share like hit all those
buttons that spread the word and like doctor Jones, keep
it squatchy.

Speaker 9 (01:03:38):
Thanks for listening to this week's episode of Bigfoot and Beyond.
If you liked what you heard, please rate and review
us on iTunes, subscribe to Bigfoot and Beyond wherever you
get your podcasts, and follow us on Facebook and Instagram
at Bigfoot and Beyond podcast. You can find us on
Twitter at Bigfoot and Beyond. That's an N in the middle,

(01:03:59):
and tweet us your thoughts and questions with the hashtag
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