Ep. 309 - Wes Germer!

Cliff Barackman, James "Bobo" Fay, and Matt Pruitt speak with friend and fellow podcaster Wes Germer, host of the legendary Sasquatch Chronicles! Wes poses 'squatchy questions for the trio and describes a few of the stories that he's heard that didn't make it to the air! Find Wes and Sasquatch Chronicles online here: https://sasquatchchronicles.com

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Big Food and Beyond with Cliff and Bubo.

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

Speaker 3 (00:18):
Righteous go on yes today and listening watching Lin always
keep its watching. And now you're hosts Cliff Barrickman and
James boogle Fay.

Speaker 4 (00:31):
All right, Well that brings us to our guests this evening.
We are blessed with getting the man himself, the king
of the big Foot podcast, Wes Germer from Sasquatch Chronicles.
He's been a huge help to us. He's helped us
get our show off the ground and give us advice
and just super generous this time and knowledge. And again
he's coming with you for us beat on the show today,

(00:51):
So welcome to Wes.

Speaker 1 (00:53):
Welcome Wes. Hey, guys, thanks for having me on. I
really appreciate it all pleasure.

Speaker 2 (00:58):
Yeah, thank you for coming on. It's been a long
time coming between our schedules and your schedule to finally
have you on as a guest, and we're just thrilled
about it.

Speaker 1 (01:06):
So thank you. Yeah. First things first, Cliff, how's my
dog doing?

Speaker 2 (01:11):
Our dog is doing fine? Yeah, did I talk about
that on the podcast? Who our listeners know, Yeah, West
fell in love with Sochi, and I mean, who I
mean to know Sochi is to love her.

Speaker 4 (01:23):
So that's how you can.

Speaker 2 (01:23):
You can always tell if somebody knows has ever met
her because they love her.

Speaker 4 (01:28):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:28):
So, yeah, she's doing great. She's she's I say it
all the time, but I wish they could be old
dogs longer. She's just perfect. She lays around all the time,
super Stoked needs super Stoked to go outside for the
smallest of walks. She's absolutely fantastic. She asked about you too,
so whatever that's worth.

Speaker 1 (01:46):
Yeah, she's easy to fall in love with, that's for sure.
And it's so cool that you guys. You know, I
really like your guys' podcast because it's so different. You know,
sometimes you guys tackle different subjects. Sometimes you guys have
guests on. I like the Variety and the show. And
you know, even with my show being Sessquatch Chronicles, amlingly

(02:06):
interview eyewitnesses, and I don't think I'd quite have the
show if it weren't for you guys doing finding Bigfoot,
you know, with the whole I know, you guys get
a crap for finding Bigfoot, but really it was the
start of bringing eyewitnesses forward, you guys going out doing
the investigations. You guys really were the first ones to

(02:27):
start that. Well, I don't know.

Speaker 2 (02:28):
I mean, I m'd be giving us a little bit
too much credit, but we certainly did bring it to
the public. I think put it into the public scrutiny
for a little while. And you know, it's surprising we
don't get as much crap as you would think for
finding Bigfoot. Some of the Bigfooters like to flick poop
at us, you know, but I mean that's because they
weren't on TV. You know, they don't get it, and
there were some hokey things about it and stuff. I

(02:49):
totally get that for the most part. But by and large,
you know, the show and I don't think any of
us as cast members on Finding Bigfoot really understood this
right at least at first, you know, it sank and
eventually Bigfooters were not the target audience, you know, the
target audience or the general public who doesn't know anything
about it and kind of introducing them to this whole thing.

(03:10):
Bigfooters all have an opinion, but they also all have
buttholes and they all stink too, So like it doesn't
matter what they say.

Speaker 1 (03:18):
Yeah, it's so true. You know, it's kind of curious.
One thing I wanted to ask all three of you, Matt, Bobo,
and Cliff.

Speaker 2 (03:25):
Wait, wait, who's only interviewing here?

Speaker 4 (03:27):
Buddy?

Speaker 2 (03:28):
Whose show is this?

Speaker 1 (03:29):
Anyway? I apologize, you're right.

Speaker 2 (03:31):
No, no, no, no, I'm just totally kidding you. Go ahead.
That's a great thing about interviewing podcasters is because it's
a real legit conversation.

Speaker 1 (03:37):
Yeah. One of the things I was really curious on
your guys' opinion on is you know, a lot of
times when people encounter these creatures, they'll talk about the
force going quiet, dead, silent. It feels very unnatural. Like
when I've experienced it, it felt weird.

Speaker 4 (03:54):
You know.

Speaker 1 (03:54):
I had a witness one time to describe it like
being underwater or going underwater, you know that sort of thing,
or like a switch. It's like the forest takes a
deep breath and just goes quiet, and it's usually right
before they see the creature or while they're seeing the creature,
everything goes silent. And to me, I mean, you know,

(04:16):
I've had researchers go, well, you know, anytime there's a
big predator in the area your pray is going to
be quiet, and that's true to an extent, But the
bugs don't shut off. The crickets don't shut off. What's
your guys' take on the forest just going quiet.

Speaker 4 (04:32):
I think I think most of the times just the
forest does go quiet. But when you get that like
or that underwater for things, like where you get like
in your in your hair goes up. Because I mean,
I've been in the forest tons of times when it
goes quiet, my hair doesn't stand up. But I've had
those ones where it does go up and and everything
goes dead quiet. You feel like you're, like you said,
like that underwater feeling kind of. I think that's they're

(04:52):
infrastounding us, and like the infrastund shuts everything down, is
what I think. But I'm sure Cliff and metelhouse some
kind of scientif an exploation for that is not that,
But that's my take.

Speaker 2 (05:04):
See, the thing is, I've encountered sasquatches where it's been
very like a loud forest with tons of life and
things moving and chittering and crackling, and there's been bigfoots around.
But I've also encountered them in the deadliest of quiet situations,
So I don't think there's a pattern. Personally, I don't
see one being predominant. I see that in the good

(05:27):
spooky stories people say the forest went quiet, and then
something dramatic happened. I think there's a pattern in human storytelling.
But as far as I can tell with sasquatches, and
I've been around them fair amount, you know, in my opinion,
maybe I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure I have. I
don't think there's a pattern as far as that sort
of thing goes. If people do describe that sort of thing,

(05:50):
especially with some sort of kind of a murky or
a fuzzy description of some other sensory input or response,
I would agree with Bobo that is probably infrasonic, because
as doctor Krantz even noted in his book that many
people note the feeling of being watched even before they

(06:13):
observed the sasquatch that they later found out was in
the area. So I do think that infrasound is the
most likely culprit, so to speak, of all the weird
spooky stuff that may or may not even happen around sasquatches,
but are certainly prevalent in the stories.

Speaker 4 (06:32):
To Cliff's point.

Speaker 3 (06:33):
You know, a number of the experiences that I've had
were in noisy forests, Like the first encounter that I
had there was a number of cicada sounds and tree frogs,
like the forest was pretty loud, And I've had other
experiences of that nature in other parts of the country
and then again in quiet forests. But I don't think
any blanket explanation could cover all of the stories of
the experiences. But I think one really important insight that

(06:54):
I had gained from studying a number of other disciplines
was that when something novel emerges, and especially if it's
something novel and threatening, you know, we have a hardwired
response that's called the orienting reflex, where essentially you involuntarily
direct all your attention to the novel thing that's emerged.
So in those cases, all of your cognitive resources get

(07:16):
devoted to this myopic tunnel vision assessment of the novel
or the threat. And so you'll see this phenomenon in
people too that have other frightening, threatening encounters. For example,
like if you've ever been driving down the road and
someone swerves into your lane and you think you're about
to get hit head on, and people will report the
absolute disappearance of all other sensory information. And so in

(07:39):
retrospect it's like, well, you know that there was a
song on the radio, or you were listening to a
podcast or this or that. But you know, I've asked
many people like you ever had that experience, and they'll say, yes,
I'm big what song was on the radio? And they're like, oh,
I have no idea because it's not committed to memory.
It's deemed immediately irrelevant by your cognitive systems, almost like neurobiologically,

(08:00):
and so in memory, it's as if there was nothing
on the radio. And so I think there's a large
number of these cases, not all of them. I'm not
trying to explain them all away, but I think for
a number of people going about their business and what
they perceived to be sort of explored territory, and then
this novel, frightening thing emerges and they direct all their
focus and attention to it, again involuntarily, it's against their will.

(08:24):
They have no agency in that. In those systems being
activated in memory, they're thinking like there was an absence
of forest sounds where they may not have been. It's
just that none of those were experienced and therefore none
of those were committed to memory. So I think that
constitutes a large number of those cases. And there are,
to your point, like a handful where people say like

(08:46):
they observed first that the forest went silent, and then
observed something. But in all the people I've interviewed, that
tends to be on the rarer side. Most people just
have this frightening, shocking experience and then you know, describe
like the absence of sounds and all very often like,
well when did you notice the absence of sounds? And
oftentimes it's like during the event or in the recollection

(09:08):
of the event. So I think that constitutes a big
portion of it, if that makes sense.

Speaker 1 (09:12):
Yeah, that does.

Speaker 2 (09:14):
What do you think, West?

Speaker 1 (09:15):
I don't know. I think there's something else going on there,
because it's so odd if you've ever experienced it, the
forest just going silent. But there might be something to
Matt's point, you know, I was in a major car
accident and I can't remember the sound of the crash.
I can remember what it felt like hitting the windshield,

(09:36):
I can remember pain, but I I can't say that
I remember any sounds going on. It seems like everything
just kind of slowed down. In that car accident to
where I. You know, you would think I would hear
the crash, but I really don't remember hearing the crash.
Is it like fear, do you think, Matt? Is that
what you're saying is it's your brain chutting down the

(09:56):
things you don't need at that moment.

Speaker 3 (09:58):
I think fear is a component, know of it. But
if you the way I laid it out in the
book is like a cascade of these system failures. You
know that car normal baseline operating systems, and that number one,
you're in a place that you consider to be implicitly
like explored territory. So you know, if someone were to
send you to a habitable earth like planet that no

(10:19):
human had ever gone to, you would know that like, oh, man,
I might encounter some life form that no one's ever seen,
Like you'd have some preparation, you'd be you'd have that
as part of your perceptual system. People just don't feel
that way when they're in Kentucky or northern California or
you know, Utah or something like that. And so when
something like that emerges, it's shocking because it is completely unknown,

(10:41):
it's totally novel, and so that's the sort of first shock,
and the immediate response in the face of novelty is
the orienting reflex, coupled with the involuntary freezing response, which
is called tonic immobility, and so you know, you're basically
paralyzed involuntarily. That's conserved across all primates, but especially humans,

(11:02):
great aps, et cetera. And then one of the first
things that we try to do is map the anomaly,
which is sort of like a categorization exercise. And as
you know, like these things when you talk to witnesses,
this blurs the lines of so many categories that most
people will say, like they spent those seconds cognitively going
what am I looking at? Like it's kind of like

(11:22):
a person, and it's nothing like a person. It's kind
of like a bear. It's nothing like a bear, kind
of like an animal, it's nothing like an animal. And
so they're unable to map the anomaly, so to speak,
and so that creates a sort of cognitive shock that's
simultaneous with the physiological shock, you know, the thing that's
instantiated in your body. And then on top of all
those things, you have the basic predator prayer response, because

(11:45):
there's no older fear than the fear of like the
large intimidating animal, the thing that's bigger than us. You know,
we're all here because our ancestors successfully navigated that at
least long enough to reproduce, right, And so I think
it's a host of things novelty, you know, the unknown
in the form of a large intimidating animal that's very
difficult to categorize without a lot of prior exposure. So

(12:09):
you know, if you studied sasquatch your whole life and
you went into the forest hoping or expecting to see one,
you might have a different response versus as you know,
because I listen to your podcast and you'll say, like,
what do you think about this, and the vast majority
of your interviewees say like, oh, I thought it was
all nonsense until I saw it, or yeah, I heard stories,
but I never took it seriously, and so bam, you

(12:29):
have these multiple systems like failing all at once.

Speaker 4 (12:34):
It's kind of like if your body goes in a
freezing you know, you start shutting down part like your
body like takes all the heats of the core.

Speaker 3 (12:42):
Well, I think a big part of what people describe
that they frame as mystical, metaphysical, paranormal. Are these physiological
and cognitive responses, and so they're not lying when they
say the sasquatch paralyzed me. And you'll find those same
beliefs associated with a host of other animals around the world,
and it's it's true. It's just that the animals not
generating something that paralyzes you like it's happening within the

(13:06):
human observer, but because you're powerless to it, it does
feel like it's being imposed upon you. So I think
that explains a lot of it, not all of it.
I'm not trying to write everything off, but I think
that's a way to bridge the gap between acknowledging that
people are really genuinely having these experiences that people want
to write off as oh, that's just paranormal, therefore it's
a lie. It's like, no, there's a perfectly normal explanation

(13:28):
that says, like, these animals can't exist and these experiences
are real, devoid of a metaphysical explanation.

Speaker 2 (13:37):
Stay tuned for more Bigfoot and Beyond with Cliff and
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(13:57):
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squatching squad of course, of course, And how much do
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In squatching you're gonna see one in six months? Probably not,
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Speaker 4 (16:01):
Well tigers have them for sound, because you always say, like,
how tigers have that attributed to him? And that could
be why people say, like it froze me? Is the
inver sound hit them? I think that's on the table.
I just don't think we necessarily have to reach for that.
When you can show examples of like devoid of the
animal generating any sounds or pheromones whatsoever, people will absolutely
have those same responses and they go into dissociative states.

(16:24):
If you listen to enough interviews with people with grizzly
bear encounters, especially people who are attacked very often, it's
because they spook to grizzly at close range, and one
of the first things they go into, especially if they're
not a woodsman, like not a grizzly hunter or somebody
with a lot of experience, they immediately go into cognitive
shock and a dissociative state and tonic immobility and bammed.

(16:44):
Then the attack happens, and you know, grizzly bears aren't
generating some force that's compelling the person to respond that way.
It's just the normative human response.

Speaker 2 (16:54):
Grizzlies are just dicks, Yeah, and it can be I
did this were bringing up a couple points real fast.
Its number one. A couple summers ago, somebody came into
the North American big Foot Center and was talking about
how he accidentally surprised a grizzly bear. I forget it's
in glacier or somewhere like that. It comes around a
corner and there's a grizzly bear right there, ten feet

(17:15):
from him, fifteen feet from him, like entirely too close.
And I thought it was interesting because he said right
away a voice came into my head said you need
to get out of here now. And I always bring
that up with people who claimed telepathic communication with sasquatches.
Is that are we to believe that grizzlies can do
this as well? Because that happened to that man. I thought,
I always think that that's really interesting as far as
some of the stuff that you're talking about there, Matt.

(17:37):
But also back to the original thing about noises and
no noises and stuff of it's not exactly it's not
exactly in response to the question necessarily, but I do
think it's worth pointing out that number one when we
were on Finding Bigfoot, and you know, I learned a
lot about finding sasquatches on the show, of course, because
Moneymaker is very good at it. You know, I will
say that till the day I die. You can talk

(17:58):
whatever smack you want about the show or mat or
anybody else, but Matt Moneymaker is one of the best
in the world and actually finding where sasquatches are. And
one of the things I learned from him is always
you know, it didn't take long to figure it out.
A lot of this stuff out, of course, but always
look for where all the animals are, because the forest,
just like the ocean, is largely empty.

Speaker 4 (18:18):
Honestly.

Speaker 2 (18:19):
You know, when I was when I was fishing in
southern California, it was always ninety percent of the fish
living ten percent of the ocean, and that's I believe
that's approximately true with the forest as well. So you're
always looking for where there is the most animal life.
So the loudest place, you know, the place for the
animals are crunching around doing their thing and moving and
making noises and all that owls we always use owls
as an indicator species because if owls are in the area,

(18:41):
that means the rodents are in the area, and then
the food chain continues from there, right So, And I'm
not sure which way to go in this either because
at the same time, on the other side of the coin,
the very coin I'm talking about right now, I have
found that some of the best sasquatch spots are places
where it's deadly quiet all the time. So it's a

(19:02):
little bit of both as far as noises in the woods.
And I know that's not in direct response what you're saying, Wes,
but I do find that there's a certain dichotomy here.

Speaker 4 (19:09):
There's a certain.

Speaker 2 (19:12):
Complication in the noise no noise sort of thing as well,
because you do find sasquatches where all the animals are,
generally speaking, but within those zones where the animals are moving,
because that's where the food happens to be at the time.
If you can find the quietest spots in there, that's
likely where the sasquatches are going to be, because I

(19:33):
think that a great deal of their observation of the
woods themselves is not a visual observation. I mean, it's nighttime,
for example, and you know the forest is thick, you
can't you just can't see very far. I think that
the vast majority of their observation of their environment, of
the animals, including humans in their environment, is by listening,

(19:53):
and therefore I think that they gravitate towards those really
quiet places so they can tell if something comes in
or out very easily.

Speaker 1 (20:00):
Yeah. Interesting, I'll see. My next question is where do
you see yourself in five years?

Speaker 4 (20:07):
What's your take?

Speaker 2 (20:08):
Was?

Speaker 1 (20:09):
What's my take? Bobo? I don't know. You know, I've
experienced it, and I think there's something weird to it.
I think you could be onto something with the infrasound.
I can't disagree with any of your guys's opinions though,
I mean, all of you guys could be onto something.
It's just weird how everything. Again, you you would anticipate
things going quiet, but things like crickets and the insects

(20:31):
just don't shut off. And people report that, they'll say
everything went quiet, even the cricket shut up. And it
makes me wonder sometimes. And you know, you might be right, Bobo.
With the infrasound, it's really hard to say it's that.
And I've always been fascinated with when people say that
feeling of being watched, and you know, I don't. I'm

(20:54):
not saying that's anything paranormal. But I interviewed Rocky Elmore,
who's a border patrol age, and he told me what
they would do is they would sit on the side
of a path in the bushes and they would hear
the people coming through on the path. And it's funny,
because well it's not funny. It's interesting that the government
actually has instructions on not to look at the people

(21:17):
as they pass by, so they're trained to actually look
at the ground as the people are going by. And
I asked Rocky why, and he goes, because people know
when they're being watched. They absolutely know when they're being watched,
and a lot of times they'll look in the direction
of them being watched. And so I've been fascinated with
that since too as well. I'm kind of getting off track, but.

Speaker 2 (21:39):
No, I agree with you there. I tell a story
when I was living back in Long Beach. I remember
I was at a place in line for a burrito
or something, which is where I tend to be oftentimes,
but I remember getting a weird feeling and I turned
around and there was some guy, you know, like mad
doging me from across the rooms. Like I don't know
what I did, but I wasn't even facing his direction,
you know, when I kind of like felt compelled to

(22:01):
turn around and see what was going on behind me
because I felt something, I just didn't know what it was.
And they go, oh, the why is that guy staring
at me? And then it kind of occurred to me.

Speaker 1 (22:09):
It's like, oh, not.

Speaker 2 (22:10):
Odd that I kind of felt that or sensed that
in some sort of way.

Speaker 4 (22:14):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (22:14):
Rupert Childric, I believe his book is called The Sense
of Being Stared At is probably the most prominent researcher
who's done a lot of work into that subject. You know,
it's interesting, like I've experienced. I can't recall a memory
involving insects, but like many times because I'm out in
the summertime a lot, and you have a lot of
tree frogs and frogs and all the pools of collected
water on roadbeds or just anywhere on the ground, and

(22:37):
there's been like plenty of times that I've been walking
through a loud forest and I've made a noise, whether
I'm like stepping on a stick that breaks or something
like that in the dark, and all the frogs go quiet,
and like the proximal ones start first, and then it's
like this wave of silence that extends out beyond you.
Like the frogs at the distance maybe they didn't hear
the stick break, but they heard the other frogs go quiet,
and so they go quiet too. That that might occur

(23:01):
in some of these cases where proximal to the sasquatch
moving or being seen, like critters go quiet and then
it just extends out as other critters noticed the silence,
and there's got to be some beneficial adaptation of like,
well they go quiet involuntarily for like self preservation, and
so it'd be good for all of your species if
you notice that your your buddies are setting up that like, oh,

(23:23):
I better shut up too because something's coming, you know.
So there might be something to that. At least maybe
that extends to insects or birds as well.

Speaker 4 (23:30):
Who knows. We know that. I mean everyone's heard that
where the frogs shut off, like you know, like it
spreads out and all that. I mean, that's normal.

Speaker 1 (23:38):
I actually had an eyewitness one time. He was in
his tent. He was camping, and I'll make the long
story really really short. But he was sitting in his
tent and he could hear this thing coming in at night.
It wouldn't just crash through, we would slowly make its
way to the camp. And at first he thought it
was a person. He didn't even know what it was.

(23:59):
One of the things he said, though, I thought, was
kind of fascinating. He goes, you know, crickets are on
a timer. And I go, what do you mean they're
on a timer? And he goes, listen to crickets. They
will do their noise for like thirty seconds and then
they'll stop for ten seconds, and then it'll turn back
on for thirty seconds and then they'll stop. And if

(24:19):
you notice, they're all in in sequence with each other.
And it was kind of fascinating because this creature would
only move when the cicadas and the you know or
whatever it was, the crickets would be loud, and the
minute they would stop, it would stop moving. He could
hear it stop moving in the forest and I thought

(24:40):
that was kind of fascinating.

Speaker 3 (24:41):
Oh, definitely. I think there's plenty of like ambush predators
that move. They use the natural sounds as subterfuge. At
one sasspatch encounter I had in Oklahoma sort of fit
that model. That's why I don't think they're necessarily generating
something that would always tip off their presence, because it
seems like their whole lifestyles dependent on not being detected anything.
So whatever percentage of their diet consists of animal protein,

(25:04):
you know, if they're grabbing prey, they would just never
eat if they constantly, if they were like generating something
that let everything know like, hey, I'm here all the
time versus you know, these these other examples. But yeah,
that's that's an interesting one for sure.

Speaker 2 (25:19):
Well, unless they didn't want you there, which is what
I think that a lot of the human things are.
Because I don't think we're necessarily seeing its prey species
for sasquatches, and as evidence of that is we're all here,
you know, but we would have been killed by now
if that was the case. But I think that if
if a sasquatch says it finds us camping in their
zone and they're saying this isn't cool, they might they

(25:40):
might be over there growling, But I would agree that
they certain in my opinion, they almost certainly do not
know that we cannot hear any infrasonic noises that they
emit in the same sort of way that I'm convinced
that they don't know that we can't see in the dark,
because you know the thermal imaging shots that are available
out there. They're all hiding, you know, Like, why would

(26:02):
they be hiding from us if they know that we
can't see them in the dark. Right, So it's like
when I was in fifth grade and somebody told me
that dogs are color blind. I couldn't really wrap my
head around that because I wasn't colorblind. I think that
they have the same sort of intellect, you know that
outside of their experience, it's really hard for them to
figure that out, you know. So why would they be

(26:23):
making noise if they can hear it and we can't.
They wouldn't know that we can't hear it.

Speaker 1 (26:27):
I had a guy on the show. I've talked about
this many times, and you bring up a good point, Cliff,
about you know, why don't they attack more people? I
often wonder that. I mean, I'll hear our encounters where
I think this guy's dead. I mean, I'm talking to
him on the phone. He's obviously not dead. But they
seem like they get so pissed to a certain point,
but generally they don't kill you. And I've always wondered

(26:50):
about that. Oh. I had this guy on the show
one time and he I always used the Finding Bigfoot illustration.
I'm like, you know, and he watched the guys on
Finding Bigfoot how it looks like they're lit up when
like Cliff or Bobo or Renee, they had their cameras
right in front of their face, and I was like,
they're actually walking around there dark. That's actually this infrared

(27:13):
light hitting them. And I know a lot of people
have wondered if Sasquatch could actually see that infrared light.
Obviously I don't know, but this is just an illustration
of what someone told me. But he had these things
on his property, right, and he was trying to get
them on video. And he goes out there one night
and he's up on this hillside and I know the

(27:35):
camera camera ed was a cannon. It was a night
visioning camera where you press a button and that infrared
light kicks out. Well, without that infrared light, you just
have starlight to kind of see. And he sees these
two guys down below him while he's up on this
ridge and it looks like they're talking to each other.
He's like, is that my neighbor? Is that my neighbor

(27:57):
on my property? And you know, he totally threw bigfoot
out the window for some reason. He was like, it's
got to be one of my neighbors. And he was
on the starlight portion of the camera. Well, he clicked
that button. And I know the camera because I used
to own one as well, But he clicked that button
and that infrared beam comes out, which really lights it
up when you're looking through the eyehole of the camera.

(28:19):
The minute he hit that button, it was two of
these creatures. They both turned and looked right at him,
like he had turned on a flashlight or something and
shined it right on them. And so it does make
me wonder, you know, if they can see in these
different spectrums or hear in these different spectrums that we can't.

Speaker 3 (28:38):
I totally think they do. I've had that experience with
Elk in the dark, you know, where I'm watching Elk
through a night vision unit and then I turned on
the infrared illuminator and it.

Speaker 4 (28:46):
Just turns and looks right at me.

Speaker 3 (28:47):
And then with game cameras, I've seen the same phenomenon where,
you know, I use these Verreconics game cameras in the
field for years, because you know, infrared light only refers
to the human visible spectrum, so it's infrared as any
below the human ability to detect. And so I had
a number of pictures from these stationary cameras where animals
would walk right by them during the daytime and never

(29:09):
look at them all seasons, you know, so summer you
could assume it'd be noisy with like insects sounds the
day and night in the wintertime when it's totally dead
and quiet, and during the daytime they'd walk right by,
and at night they'd stop and look right at the camera.
And so I don't think it was that they were
hearing it or that they were smelling it, because then
you'd think, well, hearing and smelling are not light dependent,

(29:31):
because the camera's not firing that ir flash during the daytime,
and you know, if they were hearing it smelling it,
they should be just as interested in it as day
or night. But it was only at night that they'd
stop and stare and look right at that flashing light.
And so most mammals that operate at night, can see
into the infrared range or the near ir range at
the very least, So to me, it would make perfect

(29:51):
sense that these things could too.

Speaker 2 (29:52):
Well, there's two I have two data points for my
supposition that they do that exactly that same thing, seeing
a little bit at least into the for red. And
number one is the Kentucky pancake video, which I think
is legitimate and its attributed again to Matt Moneymaker, was
part of the Ericson project where the lady put out
the thing of food in that infrared spotlight and it

(30:13):
did not enter the spotlight when the sasquatch came up
to grab it, it stayed at the edge of the
spotlight and reached in and picked up the plate and
sat there at the edge outside the light and ate
the thing, which I thought was interesting. And also the
case when Bobo and I were out at the water
spot and we had sasquatches there that night. It was
one of the crazier nights I've ever experienced, and I

(30:33):
think Boba would probably back that up. The thing was
making as much noise as it possibly could to scare
us away by splashing in the water of this swampy
area that we were camped next to. That's what we
call it, the water spot, and it was just going crazy.
It's going like bananas. And then I had one of

(30:54):
those Sony night shot cameras because this is way I
don't even know what year, Bobo, what do you think,
like two thousand and two or three or something. I've
no idea. You're five six, I have no idea.

Speaker 4 (31:02):
Yeah, like two thousand and six.

Speaker 2 (31:03):
I had one of these Sony night shot cameras and
I was just I was going to turn it on
to record the noise, you know, because at the time
I was still working with mini disc players and my
mini disc had run out of whatever, and I didn't
nothing was recording at the time, you know, And so
I turned on the camera just to record the noise.
But unbeknownst to me, the night shot was enabled, and

(31:24):
it was about a foot above the ground, all the
way on the other side of this pond. Thing that's
got to be you know what is that, Bobes. You're
good at distances one hundred and twenty yards or something
like that.

Speaker 4 (31:34):
Oh from where it was, Yeah, it was it was
a good hundred and ten yards. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (31:39):
I always ask a football guy. If you don't know,
you know. Yeah, So that and the second I turned
it on, even though it was facing the ground, like
a foot above the ground and that far away, instantaneously,
at the exact same moment, all activities stopped and it
went completely silent after that. So that that was pretty
telling to me, because I don't think that was just

(32:00):
a coincidence. I think they saw that I turned on
a light of some sort and then it just totally
went dead quiet. So I've got two data points to
sup support my hypothesis on that one. I do think
they see in the infrared.

Speaker 4 (32:14):
They do. They totally do.

Speaker 2 (32:18):
Stay tuned for more Bigfoot and Beyond with Cliff and Bogo.
We'll be right back after these messages.

Speaker 4 (32:30):
Yeah, Well, you hear so many your reference stories like oh,
I've heard this off the air. They wouldn't go on
the air. Like, what's some stories you can tell us
like that you heard over the years that didn't make
it to the show.

Speaker 1 (32:43):
There's a couple I remember I had this and this
kind of fascinated me. This eyewitness from Washington. He was
actually near Bumping Lake. I think he was farther up
in the hills though I don't think he was actually
on the lake, but he was out there camping. He
was doing bushcraft, and he's kind of in the middle

(33:04):
of nowhere out there, and so he sets up. This
guy sets up his camp. And I've had so many
people run out of Bumping Lake, by the way, but
this guy set up his camp. And the next day
he decides to go for like this long walk and
he comes back to his camp and all of his
stuff had been gone through like a person had gone

(33:25):
through it. And I'd asked him if anything was missing,
and he said that this guy does road construction. And
he said that his bright orange vest, anything bright orange,
was taken out of his bag. And so he really
thought someone was screwing with him that night or during,
you know, the whole time he was out there. Well,

(33:46):
that night he falls asleep and he heard this huge
crash through the bushes, and this thing sprincester his camp
and as it ran by his tent, it actually ran
its hand across the top of the tent, or what
he assumed was the hand across the top of his tent.
And so now in his mind, you know, this is someone.

(34:08):
So he jumps out of his tent with a gun,
and there's nothing, and he talked about the force being silent.
He said, everything was dead silent, no crickets, nothing, and
we kind of talked about that earlier. But the next
day he goes out, decides to go hiking again, and
he leaves. And every time he went hiking, he was

(34:28):
there for a total of three days. Every time he
went hiking, he would always leave the same way and
come back the same way, and same thing he would
he took off, he went hiking, he came back to
his camp and his tent was actually the stakes were
pulled up and the tent was turned one hundred and
eighty degrees away from the woodline. And so again that

(34:54):
night there's weird things going on. He said he felt
like there was pebbles being thrown at his tent and
he couldn't really and he would yell at whoever this was.
He was like, you know, I got a gun, I'm
gonna shoot you, and no response back, nothing, And during
the day it would be quiet. It seemed like it
only happened at night. He couldn't really figure out how
this person unless they hiked in, because there's really nowhere

(35:17):
to kind of drive into where he was at well.
The third day, he gets up, he goes for a
hike and he leaves the same way he always leaves
to go for a hike when he you know, exits
the camp and on his way back, he kind of
got turned around and he couldn't figure out exactly how
to get back to his camp. So he takes a
little bit of time trying to get back to the

(35:38):
camp and he comes back from a completely different route.
And when he came back to camp, he said he
was kind of coming in quietly in case this person
was in the camp. He was going to confront him.
Before he left. That morning, he actually put his fire out,
and you know sometimes those fires kicked back up if
you really don't dump water on them, or you know

(35:58):
a lot of winds going on, those coalsl kick back up. Well,
this fire had kicked back up, and he had thought
he'd put it out, but when he walked into camp,
what he saw was like this four foot tall creature
and what it was doing is it was grabbing the
logs out of the fire and it would look at
him and drop one, grabbing another one. Look at it

(36:20):
and he said it would make it was making really
odd noises like ooh ah. And it was really the
expressions on its face, he said, reminded of him, well
love like a kid, you know, a kid in wonderment
or a kid that's amazed. And one time he had
reached in and actually grabbed one of the logs and
he sitting there watching this from the woodline. He described

(36:40):
this whole creature. It was black, it was covered in
kind of a reddish blackish hair. The last time I
grabbed a log, he thinks it burned its hand because
it dropped the log and it screamed. And when it screamed,
he said, it was like almost like a pain scream.
But he said it was so loud, just the sound
of saying coming off. And he goes, this creature really

(37:02):
wasn't that big. He goes, I'm talking four four and
a half feet tall. But when it screamed, he goes,
I felt the scream. I felt like my organs felt
like they were shaking when this thing screamed. And it
ended up running off and he packed up and got
you know, got out of there. But I've had a
I had a guy run out of Bumping Lake, this

(37:24):
older gentleman, he was in that area he was camping
and he had called me. He doesn't believe in Bigfoot,
by the way, he said, it was some ape, but
he had pulled into He was actually camping on the lake.
He had pulled in set up his camp. He said
the sun was just going down and he was starting

(37:45):
to light a fire when this ape looking thing came
crashing into his camp and he said it looked pissed.
He said that the face on it was pure rage,
and he didn't know what it was. He didn't know
why this thing was pissed off. He told me he
thought it was an ape that probably escaped from the zoo.

(38:07):
But as he described it, I mean, this ape is
eight feet tall. It's huge. I mean, there's nothing about it. It
sounds like an ape. But it had actually picked up
his cooler and had thrown it. And he goes, when
I talk about it, and he goes, this cooler was
full of water, ice, all my food. He goes, I
was going to be there a week. It was a
heavy cooler. He said, this thing picked it up like

(38:28):
you and I would pick up a shoe and just
toss it. And he said it had white teeth, had
teeth like a man. He said, had big, square teeth,
and it was just pissed. And he thought that this
thing was going to kill him. And he said it
would growl and it would mumble, and he said, you know,
my little dog does that. He goes, when my dog's growling,

(38:50):
it almost sounds like it's like it's grumbling to itself.
He goes, that's kind of what this thing was doing.
It eventually left, but before it left, it screamed at him,
and he goes. The weirdest part about it screaming, He goes,
it almost like did a bow, but its head wasn't
facing the ground. It was facing me. And he said
it just went out. He could see it taking all

(39:12):
this breath and it screamed at him and like you
were saying bubbo earlier with like infrasound. He goes, I
felt like I was stunned, you know, And that might
have been fear. I mean, I probably would have said
the same thing if something that big was screaming at me.
But and he said it went marching off into the forest.
It didn't really run off, he said, it just kind
of walked back into the forest. He got in his

(39:33):
truck and left, and he called me and said, he
told me exactly where his camp was at, and he goes,
I left behind thousands of dollars of stuff. He goes,
if you want it west, it's yours. I'm not going back.
And this guy was like in his late sixties. But
he refused to say it was bigfoot because he did
you know, bigfoot doesn't exist. He was sure it was

(39:54):
some ape that escaped from a zoo or something like that,
which in you know, makes no sense at all. But
you guys know that area bumping the lake, don't you.

Speaker 4 (40:05):
Oh?

Speaker 1 (40:05):
Yeah, have you guys had experiences there? I mean I've
had a lot of my witnesses come forward.

Speaker 4 (40:11):
Yeah. I was right there when Bart had his famous
sighting up there. I was with him. Actually, I was like, dude,
I'd go sit outside of camp and then he experienced that.
And then after he saw that, I went out and
I had to go number dose. It was actually the
same area where he saw it. I walked out a
couple like I don't know, two hundred yards and dug

(40:31):
a hole and I was due to my biz. All
of a sudden, I got something ran at me full
speed through the woods like big heavy bipeople just boom,
boom boom, and I said, damn it, I'm taking a turn,
get the hell out of here, and it just stopped.
And then later that night, I was with my buddy
Jamie Jayden and he had like a nine months old
some of them. We were in the same tent and
there was two smaller ones going back and forth around,

(40:53):
going into the camp and out of the camp, and
like you know, it was dragging. It's doing that whole
thing about running its fingers along the side of the
tent as it walked by on the roof, and just
that mumbling like you can't make out words or language,
but it's like you know, something's talking about. You can't
make anything out if you're hearing that, like grumbly, low
mumbling stuff. And I've heard some screams there, and yeah,

(41:15):
stuff's happen when I've been there. Yeah, it's a great spot.

Speaker 2 (41:18):
Yeah, it's consistent too. It's been a long time. I
know several people have seen them there. And I was
standing twenty thirty feet from Bart when he saw his.
I was just distracted elsewhere because it was dark, you know,
and he Bart didn't say anything, He just kept snapping.
I mean, what is he just snapping about feeling all
snappy at me.

Speaker 1 (41:33):
Why do you think they're in that area, Cliff? Why
do you think they hang out, especially at Bumping Lake.
I don't know.

Speaker 2 (41:39):
I mean, I don't know what it is. I've only
been there once or twice, so I'm not an expert
in the area by any means. You know, I know
a little bit about the geography and stuff. But what
I find, at least from the areas that I tend
to work, is that they're in the same areas all
the time. Like, I really don't think they leave. And
this whole migration thing, I don't know where that that
came from. This whole migrating thing, there's just zero evidence

(42:02):
of that. You know, it's ridiculous to me at least
because the spots that I'm working, we're finding the same
individual's footprints year round, just just a few miles apart.
It's mostly an elevation change and that's really all it is.
But again, you got to look at the zones, right,
So what is it about that area? It's probably going
to come down to well, food, water and cover, and

(42:23):
with sasquatches, you have to look a little bit further
and think about strategic terrain, what sort what features in
that environment enable them to get a step up on
whatever animals are going after, or on the converse, using
the same skills to create some sort of defensive strategy.

(42:45):
What can I observe what's going on and then get
out quickly? And it probably has to do with the
steep sides to that, I mean, because it's not all
isolated the bumping Lake. I mean, I've seen footprints from
a place called Rattlesnake. I think it's a creek just
a little bit up the slope from there. The next
valley over produces stuff too, So it's that zone. There's

(43:05):
a group of sasquatches in that zone that probably stay
there most if not all, of the year, essentially just
move up and down the slopes depending on what the
weather's doing. But once they are there, and this has
been coined as the halibut effect, you can look at
locations that were active twenty fifty, one hundred or more
years ago, and if the area has not changed dramatically,

(43:29):
in other words, been paved or something like that, the
sasquatches are almost certainly still there. Whatever it is about
the zone, they stay in the same area and I'm
really interested to see that if after Discovery Day happens,
after these things are academically accepted species here in North
America that you can study using wildlife biology methods and

(43:50):
things like that, if there's going to be some sort
of like you know, for lack of better terms, almost
like a cultural territory where like families have lived for
generations and they just don't leave because that's what they do,
you know, because why leave if everything you need is there?
And so it's going to be interesting to see. I

(44:12):
think that that will be on the table after academic
acceptance of the species and maybe has something to you know,
we can look at ourselves. I think when we look
when we look towards sasquatches as well as the other
ape species, we're holding mirrors up to ourselves, right because
we learn about say like the process of grieving through
studying chimps, you know, or compassion or warfare for that matter,

(44:35):
by studying chimpanzees. Right, Well, it goes two ways. We
can look at ourselves and learn and at least hypothesize
a little bit about sasquatches I believe, you know, I mean,
they're not humans by any stretchy imagination. But they're in
our family. Just like you can learn a little bit
about your say, your brother or sister by looking at yourself,
you can learn a little bit about their species by

(44:57):
looking at ourselves. And the fact that many of us
are home bodies and like have seventh generation Oregonian or
whatever these people claim, you know, that kind of stuff,
you can probably find some sort of parallel behavior in
their species based on our own, you know. So, I
don't know, it's going to be interesting. And these areas,
there's something about them. They like, everything they need is there,

(45:19):
and at the end of the day, if you have
everything you want, why leave, you know? And that might
be a generational, multi generational phenomenon for all I know.

Speaker 4 (45:27):
Oh, I definitely think it is.

Speaker 3 (45:29):
Like there's a really interesting study of chimpanzee cognition that
I referenced in the book, but it basically looks at
how much of like the chimpanzee cognitive capacity is devoted
to mapping not just space but time. You know, they're
in a different environment. It's not a temperate environment like
North America, but we do obviously have subtropics and temperate environments,

(45:51):
et cetera. But because resources are paturally distributed, like in
a given forest, you know, the fruit let's say, berries, apples,
whatever the case, maybe is not evenly distributed. You know,
they'll be in patches or you know, certain clusters of
certain foods. So there's this spatial mapping that's required to
locate and memorize places the most beneficial routes of ingress

(46:12):
and egress to and from those places. But also they're
ephemeral because they're seasonal, so they're not always you know,
ripening or available, et cetera. So they're constantly mapping space
and time for a significant portion of their development, and
then they operate within that map throughout their lives. And
that's probably a big part of like hominoid cognition in general,

(46:33):
and so I think the same would apply to sasquatch.
It's like they seem like they have an intimate familiarity
of the areas that they live in and a map
of that of space and time, which would include the
patterning of human activity. And you think if they were
migrating and they were constantly inserting themselves into environments with
which they were unfamiliar. First of all, they have to
cross so many roads and interstates, you know, not just

(46:55):
the two lane country road that people see them cross,
but then also like they would have no idea where
the best water sources were, where the prey aggregate, where
humans come and go the most often. You know, I
think the sidings would be so much more numerous if
they were just constantly stumbling into places that they were
unfamiliar with.

Speaker 2 (47:13):
You know, stay tuned for more Bigfoot and Beyond with
Cliff and Bobo. We'll be right back after these messages.

Speaker 1 (47:28):
But going back to what you guys were just saying,
and I don't know if you would consider this migration, Cliff,
I don't think I'd really consider it. But back in
I honestly it was twenty fifteen. For about a two
year period, I would get these eyewitnesses that we're all
seeing the same creature. None of them actually came on

(47:48):
the air. I think maybe one of them did, but
all of them I talked to you privately. It was
this large gray sasquatch that people would describe as being
you know, sometimes people say, well they you know, their
hair was clean, and this one wasn't like that, This
saying was dirty. It was filthy and had a piss

(48:11):
poor attitude. But one of the unique features about their
creature is had a scar across his chest, almost like
you know, like you'd have someone cut you with a
knife or something, had this huge scar across his chest.
And eyewitnesses would contact me and again, over to year period,
I talked to a lot of people that had run

(48:33):
into this creature.

Speaker 4 (48:34):
I heard the same stories I heard about that one.

Speaker 1 (48:37):
Yeah, And it's fascinating because they would all describe this
same creature. And by the fourth or fifth one, I
was like, did have a scar on his chest? And
people would stop. There'd be like this long pause on
the phone. They'd be like, well, how did you know that?
And it's because people locals in the area were telling
me about it. But what was weird is in the

(48:59):
summertime you would almost find it closer up towards Mount
Saint Helens, and in the winter time you would find
it down kind of off the mountain, you know, near
yakole Yale, that it would come all actually come off
the mountain and it would do this whole like weird
counterclockwise circle. People were even seeing it down near the

(49:23):
Columbia River and it would circle back up. But it
seems like the hotter it got the farther up the
mountain it went, the colder it got the more it
came down. And I don't know if it was following
animals or not, but and I don't even know if
i'd really consider that migration.

Speaker 2 (49:40):
Well, the furthest distance that I've said this before, but
the furthest distance I'm aware of that two sat that
at the same sasquatch has almost certainly been found is
sit about sixty miles and that is, of course the
sasquatch that we named the species at Bigfoot, you know,
because we have Bigfoot's footprint from Bluff Creek in nineteen
fifty eight to nineteen sixty three, nineteen maybe nineteen sixty four,

(50:04):
the nineteen sixty three and for sure and then down
in High Impalm, which is sixty miles away but also
on one ridge, one mountain ridge. So right now I
happen to have my Google Maps open, we're looking at
twenty miles between Mount Saint Helens and the river and
the Columbia River, and it's significantly shorter, so I'm that's

(50:24):
well within the zone now. But this is also a
singular case. And if my model, my hypothetical model of
sasquatch social structure, which is loosely based on the orangutan structure,
is correct. If it's a big male of some sort,
then they would expect to be ranging a bit further
than the other ones, because what I think is going

(50:44):
on is a female and its offspring hang out in
a smaller area than the male, and that abuts another
female in an offspring of abutting another female in an
offspring sort of thing, and then the big male moves
through and does booty calls essentially with his harem essentially.
So we're looking at twenty mile between Mount Saint Helens
and the river versus sixty miles between Bluff Creek and

(51:04):
High Impalm with another set of females down there, not Patty,
which is what the female was up in Bluff Creek,
but a different one in High Impalm. So I think
that's well within reasonable range. But again I would even
have to wonder, like if it was gray, could that
be an indicator of age? And I'm Matt, I know
you've done some work with old, older male silverback gorillas,

(51:27):
reading about them kind of returning to places where they
once grew up because they were run out of their
social group. At some point. You kind of have to
wonder if a sasquatch has passed its prime and a younger,
a young buck so to speak, comes up and displays them,
is he going to be hanging out in the same
areas or is he going to be wandering a little
bit more widely.

Speaker 3 (51:45):
Yeah, in those cases it was actually sub adults reaching adulthood,
So it wasn't the older males being displaced, but it
was sub adults being driven out by the current dominant
male that were returning to these areas. And George Shaller
wrote about that in The Mountain Gorilla Behavior in Ecology.

Speaker 4 (52:01):
Which is a great book.

Speaker 3 (52:02):
It details the first observational field study of mountain guerrillas
that it ever occurred. But to that model, yeah, I
mean that's the case with most mammalian species, and especially
the analogous mammalian species like bears, have the same model.
Where in Appalachia, a male will have a home range
of about sixteen to eighteen square miles, the females are
like two to four square miles. The same is true

(52:23):
of tigers, like Siberian tigers, the male covers about fifteen
hundred square kilometers. The females cover about four hundred and
fifty square kilometers, and so if you apply that to
the sasquatch, like it answers so many questions, but it also,
like I think the most important one is like, if
the males are moving that much and they're straying from
defensible core areas and coming more into the periphery of

(52:44):
human habitation because we're so prolific, that answers the question
of like, why are most sasquatch sidings of lon males? Well,
it's like there's a perfectly normal behavioral ecological reason for
that that applies not only to apes but to these
other analogous mammals as well.

Speaker 2 (53:00):
But again back to the point West, I wouldn't consider
that necessarily a real strong migration as opposed to just
wandering around.

Speaker 1 (53:07):
Yeah, that's kind of what I thought too. And this
particular creature had a real piss poor attitude. Like I said,
it terrified everyone it ran into.

Speaker 3 (53:15):
That's a common feature of the large gray males, which
I do think is a function of age. But when
I was with the North American Woody Conservancy, there was
a number of sidings down there of at least one
very large gray individual, although some positive that there might
have been two, but we did a whole episode because
they colloquially would refer to that one as old Gray.
And it was fairly bold, and I wouldn't say aggressive

(53:38):
as much as just like confrontational, almost like direct confrontation,
but without you didn't chase people or scream out a
roar at them, but it would be pretty confrontational. And
so if you go back through a lot of the literature,
whether it's John Green's database or the things, you find that, like,
these grayer ones tend to be very large, not just
in height but in mass, because you know, you have
these subadults that are almost of equal height, but they

(53:59):
tend to darker in color and thin that sort of
a lean, lanky basketball player Olympic swimmer build versus like
something of the similar size, but it's just built like
a you know, brick crap house, just big, thick and massive.
And those gray ones tend to be like pretty confrontational
in the sense of like they don't seem to have
as much fear or avoidance of people, And so I'm

(54:22):
always fascinated by those stories. So that's really interesting.

Speaker 2 (54:25):
Hey, Wes, you know you may have noticed we do
a podcast too, And by the way, whatever it's worth
whenever you you text us after our episodes come out
and heckle us. I'm always flattered, by the way, because
you're the you're the king of Bigfoot podcast. Honestly, I
mean you really are. And uh so we deeply appreciate
your help getting ours launched and everything. And and then

(54:47):
you know, on a Tuesday or something, I'll get some
heckling bust iner butt email or text from you and
I said, oh crap, I forgot Wes is even listening,
you know, because I forget anybody listens, but they do,
and you're one of them. And it kind of makes
me up my game a little bit and be extra
thankful for our editor, Matt Pruitt. But doing a podcast
is hard, man. It's not just sitting down once like

(55:09):
an hour a week or something like that. There's a
lot more that goes into this. And God, you're kind
of a one man show in a lot of ways.
I must how many of these things do you pump?
Like in a busy week, are you doing like two
or three episodes? And I imagine you take a week
or two off or something like are you doing two
or three of these things a week sometimes?

Speaker 1 (55:26):
Or yeah, I do a public show and then I
do a member show. But you guys know, I mean
sometimes you're range for eyewitnesses to come on, then they
don't show up, and so throughout every week, I mean,
I'm talking to people, and but I mainly do two
episodes a week, and it doesn't seem like much work.

(55:48):
I think a lot of people think I turn on
the mic and hit record and there you go, we're done.
But there's a lot that goes into it. But to
answer your question, Cliff, yeah, two a.

Speaker 2 (55:58):
Week, two a week, Yeah, because that's it's tough man
stuff to even do that. And it doesn't sound like
could be very hard, but from experience, it can be excruciating.

Speaker 4 (56:06):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (56:06):
People need to understand just like how big and awesome
Wes's audiences and how generous Wes is. I remember when
we first talked, Wes had reached out to me. We
were talking about podcast production, and then he was like, so,
why'd you pick a bigfoot podcast? And I was like,
oh no, no, I'm not a podcast guy. I'm a bigfoot
guy that just happens to do this. So then we
talked about a Bigfoot for a few hours, and he

(56:26):
promoted an episode or two of a podcast I was
producing at the time, and we had this like massive
spike in listenership, and so I reached out to you, Wes.
I was like, dude, that was super kind to you, man,
to bring people's attention to thank you so much. Wes
was like, oh, no, dude, that was all you, brother,
and I was like, no, it was not, it was
you because it was this huge spike.

Speaker 4 (56:47):
So greatly appreciate that. Man.

Speaker 3 (56:49):
You've always been super generous with making our content available
to your audience, and like I always say, like, whatever
we give you props, I'm like, well, I'm pretty sure
one hundred percent of our liststeners listened to Sasquatch Chronicles,
So we're preaching the choir, but we do so happily
because you've always been so generous to us.

Speaker 1 (57:07):
Oh. I appreciate it, guys, and I appreciate the kind
of words. I don't know if I'm the king of
the Bigfoot podcast. I think you're the only one that
says that, Cliff, but.

Speaker 4 (57:18):
I'm going that says it. We all say it. I
said it first. I've been doing it for twenty years.

Speaker 1 (57:26):
I made up the word king.

Speaker 2 (57:30):
And when I first saw that, you were, you know,
retweeting or reposting our episodes and thinking what is this?
Oh my gosh, it was just amazing. It was just
it was humbling, honestly, you know, yeah, because you know whatever,
we're on TV and stuff. But that's stupid, man, Like,
you have a huge listenership every single week and it
keeps coming back from more and you've been killing to
sing for for how long has Sasqatch Chronicle has been
on the air now, and it's forever right?

Speaker 1 (57:52):
Yeah, it was two thousand and twelve, I think, or thirteen.

Speaker 4 (57:55):
Twelve, thirteen years. Yeah, that's crazy. It is crazy. We
doubled our We doubled our listenership after I was on
a guest on West's show. We doubled our listenership in
like ten days.

Speaker 3 (58:06):
Oh yeah, I've seen those things happen many times, like
when Wes had you guys on and it was great
to see. So it's super cool that you know you've
stuck with it this many years and that you're you know,
you've built such an awesome loyal audience and that they're
so open minded to listening to other sasquatch related shows too.
Like it's that's like the quiet side of the community
that people just don't realize exist, you know. They they

(58:28):
just see this sort of like content creators and talking heads.
They don't realize, like now, man, there's a lot of
people out there who are super interested in this subject.
They just don't go around like posting about it.

Speaker 1 (58:39):
You know, yeah, I appreciate it.

Speaker 2 (58:41):
You know.

Speaker 1 (58:41):
It's it's guys like John Bennernuggle. You know, when him
and I became friends, and you know, he meant a
lot to me, and he would always tell me, you know,
be kind of people, be humble, try to have those
qualities because it'll it'll bring more people in. He goes,
there's enough arrogance, there's enough egos in the bigfoot world

(59:02):
that just be different. And you know, I would watch
John and even Bob Gimlin at these conferences, and I
mean the nicest guys. I saw a lot of crazy
people go up to John a lot where I probably
would have ended the conversation, but he sat there and
talked to them. I never heard him speak poorly of anyone,

(59:24):
you know, so it kind of gave me a goal
to shoot for. You know, the bigfoot world is ugly enough.
There's enough egos, and I try and stay out of it,
you know, with the different researchers and everything else. And
with the podcasting world. That's what I and you and
I were talking about this Matt at Cliff's house, you know,
the podcasting world, I really especially when it comes to

(59:46):
like Bigfoot and cryptids and stuff like that. And they're
not everyone's like this, but I will say most of
the podcasters are really super easy to get along with.
They're really you see a lot of the ego die Dama,
and you know, if I contributed to that in some
little way, then I mean that would make me happier

(01:00:07):
than anything else, just changing the dynamic and changing the
attitude in the room, because you don't quite get the
the attitude you get with like in the bigfoot world,
that you don't get it with the podcasters. The podcasters
generally are pretty cool guys. And it's like I tell people, man,
it's hey, if we all help each other, it's your

(01:00:30):
success is my success. My success is your success.

Speaker 4 (01:00:33):
Dude. You're cool guys, and even rip off your whole
freaking just copy you completely.

Speaker 1 (01:00:37):
You're still yeah, which can be difficult at times. I'm human,
but you know, I try. I try to be nice
to everyone, and I really try to help everyone, and
sometimes it's been me. But at the end of the day,
I think that's really how you change the attitude of
the big Foot world. If these guys don't have an ego,

(01:01:00):
then why do you have an ego? You know? Or
like you? And you and Cliff, I mean, you guys
were on TV. You guys are coolest guys on the planet,
most laid back guys on the planet, fun to hang
out with. And if anyone's going to have an ego,
you guys should have an ego and you don't, So
it just makes it makes it more welcoming for more

(01:01:20):
people to come into this subject, you know, newer people
coming in.

Speaker 4 (01:01:24):
I think Bob Gimmel definitely was the example that a
lot of us strive to be like like Fob because
he's just so gracious.

Speaker 2 (01:01:32):
But I'm glad you brought up Bender Nagle as well,
because he's again just the nicest, was the nicest kind
of the planet and so much of a I feel
like I will honestly be striving the rest of my
life to have the patience and kindness that John showed
to people.

Speaker 1 (01:01:48):
Yeah, I'll tell you a funny story. Johnny's to always
put me in check because I would be like, well,
it's an ape. And towards the end of John's life,
I will say his attitude kind of changed a little bit.
He was more willing to hear more of the weird
stuff out and really think about it and give you
his answer on it. And if he didn't know, he
would say I don't know, but you know, he would

(01:02:09):
he would put me in check in certain ways to
where I would give an answer and John would be like, oh,
I didn't know you had it already, you had it all,
figure it out, Well tell me more. You know. That
was like his old man way of, you know, putting
me in check, basically saying you don't know everything. But
John was I love John. I did a whole thing

(01:02:30):
for kind of remembering him. And it was the week
he died and I couldn't even get the show out.
I tried to record it and I would break down
in tears every time I tried to do that remembering John.
And he called me right before he died and he
was trying to say goodbye, and I wouldn't hear it.
I didn't want to hear it, and I would I

(01:02:50):
would tell him John, You're gonna be fine, you know,
And I would cut him off, I don't you know.
And I regret that now because he died the next day.
But he was calling to say goobye and I didn't
want to hear it. So John, John was if I
could be half the man he was, I would be.
I would call it a win.

Speaker 4 (01:03:09):
That's how That's how I first talked to you, was
we need that thing for John, you give a tribute
to him, contact you saying that was great, And then yeah,
I mean we can't forget Joe and either as partner sidekicks.
She was awesome too.

Speaker 2 (01:03:25):
Well, you know, let's go ahead and turn to the
member section because we have a lot of questions we
want to ask you with a more select listenership perhaps,
And of course, if you want to be a member
of the podcast, you know what to do. Go to
the website, hit that button, or go to the link
that Matt'll probably post below in the show notes. But Wes,
thank you so much for taking some time out from
your ridiculous schedule to join us. And be on our

(01:03:49):
podcast because honestly, we would not be here in whatever
position we have now in the Bigfoot podcasting world without
your help. Your instrumental in getting us going and our
canntinued success. And we can't thank you enough for that.
So I really really appreciate your time and your guidance
and your mentorship. Really do amen and your friendship.

Speaker 1 (01:04:08):
You guys are too kind. You guys are definitely too kind.
Thank you again. It was my honor coming on.

Speaker 3 (01:04:13):
Yeah, and keep doing what you're doing. It's obviously like
influenced a lot of people. It brings a lot of
people joy.

Speaker 4 (01:04:19):
We love to show. My wife and I were on
the road.

Speaker 3 (01:04:20):
We listen to two episodes all the time, and of course,
like I have a bunch of my favorites, a couple
of those I want to ask you about in the
member section. But just keep up the great work. It
brings a lot of joy to a lot of folks.

Speaker 4 (01:04:31):
I got a question for you, Wes, what do you
think these things are?

Speaker 3 (01:04:35):
Just can stay tuned to the member section to find
out Wes's answer.

Speaker 2 (01:04:40):
Ripping you off.

Speaker 1 (01:04:41):
I wasn't sure if you wanted me to answer that or.

Speaker 4 (01:04:44):
I just do my west impersonations. All right, folks, well
big thank you to Wes Germer. I mean you heard
platitudes come from Matt and Cliff and I can say
the same thing. Wes is a great guy. We appreciate them.
But until next week, y'all keep it squad.

Speaker 2 (01:05:05):
Thanks for listening to this week's episode of Bigfoot and Beyond.
If you liked what you heard, please rate and review
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(01:05:25):
and tweet us your thoughts and questions with the hashtag
Bigfoot and Beyond