Ep. 332 - A Tribute to Dr. Jeff Meldrum

Cliff Barackman, James "Bobo" Fay, and Matt Pruitt discuss Dr. Jeff Meldrum's many contributions to sasquatchery.

Dr. Jeff Meldrum: Selected Works & Appearances

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Episode Transcript

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

Speaker 2 (00:06):
With Cliff and Bulbo. These guys are your favor It's
so like say subscribe and raid it.

Speaker 1 (00:13):
Live, Stock and.

Speaker 2 (00:18):
Righteous, go on yesterday and listening, watching always keep its watching.

Speaker 1 (00:26):
And now you're hosts Cliff Berrickman and James Bubo Fay.

Speaker 2 (00:31):
All right, Bobs, how you doing man?

Speaker 3 (00:33):
That's pretty rough. I know, yeah, it's it's hard for
the last couple of days.

Speaker 2 (00:39):
Yeah, it is not a good time right now. But
we've come to celebrate a life not more than our
loss necessarily. I mean, I know that's hard to do,
especially when the loss is as great as the one
we experienced this week. Of course, everybody knows everybody, doctor
Jeff Meltrim passed away this past week, and it is

(01:00):
a terrible blow to the community. Yeah, it's it's a
horrible blow to the community and also personally as well.
I mean everyone in the show here. It was a
good friend of doctor Jeff Meltrum. He stayed at my
house a number of times, and he loved my dog,
you love my wife, and like it just that's a
good good friend. We're all very fortunate to have had

(01:20):
Jeff in our life in any way at all. But
I think that the focus here isn't it shouldn't really
be on what we've lost, but rather than what we've gained,
you know, rather what we've gained here, because the bigfoot
field would be very, very different if Jeff had never
existed at all, and so many of the things that

(01:43):
we just take for granted nowadays are because of Jef. Essentially,
we can look back and it's very easy to tell,
like what Jeff has given us as a community, at
least academically, shall I say, you know that what he's
given us personally, and you know, the smiles, the jokes,
the you know, the star Trek trivia, whatever else that

(02:07):
you know from Jeff is yours and subjective and personal.
But we have kind of a timeline marker, a calibration marker,
what we knew or thought about sasquatches before Jeff showed
up on the scene. And that is, of course, doctor
Grover Krantz's book Big Footprints, which is the first edition,

(02:28):
and I want to specifically say the first edition, not
Bigfoot Sasquatch Evidence, which is pretty much the same book
with some addendums in it, you know, with some pendicies,
I guess editions because in nineteen ninety two, when doctor
Krantz published Big foot Prints, he was the guy. He
was the scientist who had studied this subject for years

(02:52):
and years and years, and he published pretty much what
he thought of the thought or knew at the time.
But when he did the second edition, and I'm afraid
I don't have off the top of my head the
date of the second edition versus the first, but one
of those appendices, one of those additions that he added
to his book was the arrival of doctor Meldrum on

(03:13):
the scene. You can look at what Krantz wrote and
then compare it to what doctor Meldrum wrote, and also
really compared to what we all know and take for
granted at this moment, in that kind of gauges how
much doctor Meldrum has added to the field. Yeah, I
don't know. I mean, I might struggle with words a

(03:35):
little bit sometimes during this podcast because I don't see
how his contribution it might even be the sing his
participation in the subject might be the single most important
thing that's ever happened. I'd say so, Yeah, on par
with the PG film itself, or the nineteen fifty eight
Jerry Crew Footprints or anything else for that matter.

Speaker 3 (03:53):
Yeah, I mean even people that are in a big
Foot don't realize how much Jeff contributed. I mean, he's
a he was a brilliant guy. I mean he was
his expertise, like you know, primate locomotion and the adaptation
of biopedalism. I mean, I mean in his own field,
he was a top notch guy. And then compared to
the big Foot film, there's just no one else of
his stats. I mean, Bennanaga was great, and he was,

(04:15):
you know, a serious researcher and he made contributions, but
Jeff was like, I mean, he was just like a
like another level on a discovering things. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (04:26):
I think if if you were to look at the
backgrounds of many of the people that were previously involved,
Let's say, hypothetically, if there was a great expert in
primate dentition, what would they have to evaluate as regards
to sasquatch. It's not like we have a lot of
things that sasquatches have bitten or chewed, right. You know,
within any discipline, you have many sub disciplines and these
sort of laser focused kind of specialists, and so generally

(04:49):
he was a physical or biological anthropologist and an anatomous
but his specialty was, you know, bipedal locomotion and the
evolution thereof, and specifically the anatomy of feet in this
suite of adaptations. And so the biggest body of existing
Sasquatch evidence consists of footprints. And so there really was
no one better suited to tackle this subject than he

(05:11):
was as a singular figure.

Speaker 2 (05:13):
And to contrast that, you know, I'll go back to
Krantz for a moment. Krantz when he wrote his book
Big Footprints and later on Big Sasquatch Evidence, the same thing,
he noted that there was a considerable amount of flexibility
in the Sasquatch foot, but he didn't put a word
on it. He didn't slap that mid tarsal joint on there.
He didn't explain it how that the foot flex is
behind the metatarsals. He didn't do any of that. And

(05:36):
it's not because he didn't he wasn't aware of the words,
or he didn't understand the concept or anything like that.
It's really because Krantz is more of a bone guy
in general. He was osteologist or something like that. If
I remember correctly, that specialty in physical anthropology, So bones
in general were kind of his gig from what I understand,
and I've never met Krantz. Of course, he passed away
before I had a chance to connect with him. Unfortunately.

(06:00):
Jeff's gig was was anatomy and physiology and the anatomy
of the primate foot and the adaptations for bipedalism. So
it took Jeff to even recognize. It took someone with
the eyes to see, as I often say, what we're
looking at in sasquatch footprints. And of course the greatest
example of this is the famous photograph from the Patterson

(06:22):
Gimblin film site by Lyle Labberty. You know of that
very very famous print with the mid tarsal pressure ridge
right behind it. If you notice on that picture there's
a stick on the left hand side sticking into the ground,
and everybody kind of assumed, assumed for years, decades, literally decades,
that that stick was underneath that ridge, and that's why

(06:46):
that ridge was there, because the sasquatch stepped on the
stick and it didn't push down, and that ridge is
actually what made that pressure ridge what we now know
is a pressure ridge. You can just look at the
photograph and it doesn't line up exactly, but that's what
people thought. That was the best guess. Now, Krantz probably
could have figured that out, but it took someone with
a specialty in sasquad or an eight feet in general

(07:10):
to do so. And that's what Jeff did. I think
he published it somewhere around the year two thousand. I'd
have to double check here. I'll see if I can
pull that up, but he basically published it and said, hey, guys,
that's what that is, and that also explains all these
other marks in the foot as well. And you can
see that same feature in so many of the other footprints,

(07:31):
footprint photographs and footprint casts. And it was in that
one thing alone, which I would say ninety percent of
big foot nerds or officionados or fans or researchers know about.
I mean, we went from nineteen sixty seven to about
the year two thousand before we knew what we were
looking at. And that one thing is because of doctor Meldrum,

(07:53):
you know, and so many of the other givens of
what we think we know about suasquatches today also come
from him. But that's that's probably one of his major
contributions right there. And I want to point out major
contributions because there were so many minor ones.

Speaker 3 (08:10):
Yeah, and he also everybody everyone, like when you were
like discussing with a skeptic or someone at your family
dinner or whatever, like at the bar, you're talking to
someone and they you'd always bring up Melgium. Everyone brings
up Melgium. Like, well, there's doctor Jeff Melguman in Outaho
State and he's an anthropologist, and he noted the mid
tarsal break and showed that how it looks like the
same as print from like one point eight million years ago,

(08:33):
you know. You you see that same kind of foot structure
and the god the Australiopithoscene. And uh, I mean like
everyone everyone used him, and he helped us may look
less crazy to other people, you know, because this academic
qualified guy was saying these things and showing and giving
examples and showing how how it works. It was he
helped everybody. He helped everybody out. You know.

Speaker 1 (08:55):
Oh, that's that is so very true because for him
to articulate that well and so many different iterations, and
to show the temporal context and the fact that you know,
when this first emerge, which he even observed in the
original crew cast, you know, which he's talked about at
linked in a number of interviews that in that famous
newspaper photograph, you know, it's the surface of the track

(09:15):
is or the cast is parallel to the lens, and
you know, they use these big bright flashes to illuminate
the scene, and so it looks like a pretty flat
sort of two D object. But then he was able
to examine the actual cast and there's the mid tarsal
pressure ridge right there, going back to fifty eight. But
so for him to show that this feature is present
in these tracks and that it would only be later

(09:36):
that Lucy would be discovered Australlio Pithecus a Forendus and
then the lay Totally tracks, you know, the Australopithosen tracks
that you're referring to many years after the Patterson film.
I think Lucy was officially discovered at least presented to
the world in either seventy three or seventy four, and
then the laya Totally tracks shortly thereafter, if I'm not mistaken,
but around that same timeframe. And so for him to

(09:58):
put into context, like how is it that you know,
if these were hoaxed that people could include a feature
based on fossils that hadn't been unearthed yet to understand
that an animal like this would have this physical adaptation
to that environment. That's a crucial component of the evolution
of bipedalism. And for him to teach us all about

(10:18):
that through numerous podcasts and documentaries to where just like
Bobo said, someone could be sitting at a campfire or
a bar and articulate that and show that, well, you know,
this is pretty compelling evidence. And I know Meldren would
often say like, if there is a smoking gun thus far,
it's that, And he taught us all that.

Speaker 2 (10:38):
And the smoking gun that he mentioned to me one
time was when he went to China, of course, for
I think it was only a monster quest, and he
spoke to the ranger who had observed a Yeheren, the
Chinese version of a sasquatch at some distance and he
had really nice observation of the thing. And then after
the animal left, he went down and cast footprints that

(10:58):
were on the side of the creek or whatever it
was crouching next to. And when doctor Meldrum met him
for the first time through a translator, because the gentleman
didn't speak any English. He had he showed doctor Meldrum
the cast that he had made in China of the
Ya wren, and that that mid tarsal pressure ridge was
right there. It was right there, even to the point

(11:19):
where there was a there's this like this heart shape,
like this double bump sort of feature and in between
two of the bones that are make up that jumble
of bones right underneath the ankle. And uh, that same
feature was in the Yareen cast. And then like Jeff
got really excited, of course, and then he pulled out
the Patterson Gimlin cast, the one that I mentioned earlier

(11:40):
that Lyle Laberty had photographed, and they compared the two
and it was just spot on, spot on, including that
even that little double bump heart shape feature in the print.
You can see that same feature in the Patterson Gimlin
cast as well. And again that's that's a function of
two of the couple of bones. I'd have to go
back and double check, because unlike Jeff, I don't know

(12:01):
all the bones in the ankle area. Unfortunately, I'm gonna
have to up my game though, because Jeff is now gone,
I can't rely on him anymore. And you know, it's
also of interest about these two castle one from China
and the one I think was from the nineties and
the one from northern California, is that that feature of
the footprint is made by the push off and downwards
and backwards motion where the metatarsals end, you know, the

(12:25):
back end of the metatarsals, so the bones looked up
and that thing pushes down and back and raises that
mount of dirt there. It was at the same place
proportionally in the foot, which is of great significance because
the bones in a Sasquatch foot are not proportionally similar
to humans. You know that they are different. The metatarsals

(12:45):
have been shortened, the ankle segment or the heel segment
have been lengthened. The ankles move forward on the foot,
and you can tell that by certain markers in the foot.
So the fact that the Sasquatch footprint from the sixty
seven matched this other foot from China in the ninety
nineties or whatever it was, is really stunning. Is very
very stunning. Where you have the same flexible foot feature

(13:08):
showing the same anatomical signatures in the same place proportionally
in the foot like that is a smoking gun, and
that cannot be I mean, I don't know that they
I'm going to say it can't be ignored, but clearly
most scientists are kind of ignoring that. But that is
an astounding, astounding congruence between two very diverse pieces of

(13:31):
evidence from different times and places and literally continents. And
you know what's so fascinating about this is is and
one of the final things that I remember doctor Meldrum
telling me about in this particular story when he visited Chanl,
China and met this gentleman, is through the translator, you know,
after you know, the excitement of comparing the two footprint

(13:51):
casts was over and they saw the congruency and they
really felt they like, oh, there's something this is so interesting.
Through the translator, the ranger in China asked doctor Meldrim, so,
do you have anything like the wild man in America?
He had never heard of bigfoot or sasquatch never, but

(14:14):
yet he had a footprint that if you would have
just picked it up and shown it to anybody with
the eyes to see, you know, doctor Meldrim, or even
me or somebody, they go, oh, yeah, that's a sasquatch.
Footprint and here's why. That is a huge congruence. And
if there ever is a smoking gun, that's it. Stay
tuned for more Bigfoot and beyond with Cliff and Bobo

(14:36):
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that brought to mind was that another I say early,
I mean Meldrim had already been involved for a number
of years by this point, but early for me is
that kind of mid two thousands point where Jeff had

(16:41):
started to do the three D scans of the track
collection that he had amassed thus far, and that there
was that interactive thing on ISU's website where you could
move the three D scans in sort of like digital space,
and we will you know, we'll talk about this later,
but I'm going to put together a repository of links
for listeners to check out. But one of the slides
that he used in presentations often as the consequence of

(17:03):
those scans, was showing you know, all those Tipmus casts
that we've seen photographs of you. I mean, you guys
have been lucky enough to see the actual cast, but
for the rest of us, you know, reading books or
watching documentaries, we only see those two D photos. But
for him to take those ten consecutive casts that Tipmas
took at the Patterson site, lay them essentially on their
sides in digital space, to see the midfoot flexibility expressed

(17:27):
to varying degrees in every single footfall, you know, with
these degrees of difference, some more exaggerated than others. But that,
to me is such a remarkable thing to show people,
because you know, when I first saw him do it
in presentations, it was powerful. And then he released that
slide and various slides with those scans and other papers,
and so you know, I've shown those two people, because

(17:48):
most folks just see the two D photographs and they
think about that sort of two D look that the
two tracks for example, that Roger and Bob cast the
most perfect ones that they do look kind of flat,
you know, but then to show no, actually, this midfoot
flexibility is present in every single one of those tracks
and two varying degrees which a carve stomper cannot accomplish.

(18:09):
And so that whole project of his and what came
out of it, I think was a major contribution too.
And that's still early days for Jeff.

Speaker 2 (18:17):
And his intent, of course was to be able to
share footprint casts with scientists and other qualified individuals around
the world. And because these scanning the apps, we have
them on our phone now. But you know, this is
a long time ago. This is ten to fifteen years ago,
or more twenty years ago. It was a different world
back then, and I had the privilege of watching a
number of footprint casts be scanned at ISU one time

(18:40):
when I went out to visit doctor Meldrum. It took
a number of footprints that I had cast and brought
them down to the lab and it was a long,
grueling process. I mean, it probably took fifteen minutes for
each one cast, I'm guessing, And of course it's much
higher resolution than the stuff we have on our phones.
It still is good technology, but it's gone so much

(19:01):
further at this moment. So and then you know, nowadays
on your phone you can tap two locations on a
cast or a footprint or of whatever it is, or
anything of the skin of a room, and it'll tell
you the distance. And that was his intent he wanted.
He was telling me one time he wanted to do
this thing where you can take two footprints of seemingly
the same individual and then lay them over one another,

(19:23):
and if the opposite footprints just flip it, it doesn't matter,
because you can do that digitally so well. And if
you color one one color and color the other casts
another color digitally, like yellow and green, where the overlap
should be blue, right, and where they're different, you should
see the yellow and green, and that would show differentiation
in toe positions, depths, flexion, and a number of other

(19:44):
anatomical features that he was great, greatly interested in. And
those files are out there. Those files are out there,
and he uses them every once in a while in
his publications and saying there's fascinating things. But to get
back to the Patterson Gimlin thing where you mentioned Bob
Titmas's ten casts in a row regardless of quality, one
of the other things that stood out, which makes perfect sense.

(20:06):
And again, but it took someone like Jeff to point
it out. I think, you know, because sometimes you don't
see the obvious until somebody points it out. And I've
had pleasure of pointing things out to Jeff too. We
can tell that's right in a while too. But when
you look at all ten of those prince in a row,
especially from the top down, like that perpendicular perspective before
he turns it, you know, forty five degrees or ninety

(20:28):
degrees to the angle of the camera, the prince are
many of them are are different sizes, you know, some
are two or three inches longer than the other ones,
Which goes back to this idea that I'm always harping
on that footprints are not the shape of the foot,
They're the shape of the damage done to the ground
by the foot, right. I say that all the time
most presentations. That comes out of my mouth several times.

(20:50):
But when you look at the prince flat, you know,
laying flat on a table, so to speak. There's two
three four inches in difference between those many times. But
if you look at where the mid tarsal pressure ridge is,
or the evidence of the inflection in the foot at
least to the toes, those do not vary very much.
Those don't don't vary probably more than a half an

(21:13):
inch or something like that, which which is the kind
of variance you would expect. And the reason is when
a sasquatch walks, and and everything I'm saying, everything I'm saying,
is because Jeff taught us, by the way, But when
a sasquatch walks, the foot flexes in the in the
mid part of the foot right underneath the ankle, while
that big jumble of bones are right behind the mid

(21:33):
of tarsals. And then the push off of the foot therefore,
the force with all that weight behind it as the
animal walks to the next step is on the entirety
of the front half of the foot. And to take
it even one step further. And I talked to Jeff
about this.

Speaker 1 (21:49):
No.

Speaker 2 (21:49):
No longer ago than June, doctor Meldrim and I had
shared an airbnb for Charlie Raymond's conference back in June,
and we didn't have a ride anywhere. So we woke
up in the morning, had breakfast together, and had a
seven hour, six and a half seven hour conversation because
there's nothing else to do. And so I was talking
to him about the things I've seen in the field
and stuff, and he pretty much agreed with me on this.

(22:11):
Is that So the push off on the front half
of the foot like that which pushes down into the ground,
because that's where the greatest forces and it's the part
of the gait that has the greatest amount of force,
that's the deepest part, And so that wouldn't be expected
to have a great degree of variance in it, whereas
the heel strike and stuff. Push makes the prince and
the patterson gimlin thing longer, you know, that expects. But

(22:35):
the toes, the toes on a sasquatch aren't used to
the same degree as in human beings as far as
the force upon push off. They seem to be more
of like a stabilization thing. Yeah, there's a little bit
of force on him that toes do impress, you know,
but many, many, like a significant percentage of the sasquatch

(22:58):
footprints that I have personally observed the ground. The toes
sometimes barely register. You know that the toes are there
for stabilization and grasping and that sort of thing, but
the force is not on the toes, which makes sense
because the toe. And this is another thing I remember, Jeff,
I don't know what TV show this is in, but
this is before I even met the guy. I think
I remember him saying that the toes of a sasquatch

(23:19):
are probably about as long as your fingers are, and
therefore can be expected to have about the same level
of prehensibility, you know. And you know, they're not grabbing
pens and writing or something with them, or they're not
changing the channel on those old fashioned TVs, you know,
with their toes like I did when I was a
kid or whatever. But but they're used for stabilization and
then kind of grasping the substrate to some degree. And

(23:42):
these are all things that doctor Meldrum showed us.

Speaker 1 (23:46):
Oh, he was incredibly generous with those things. You know.
As you were describing all that, I was thinking about
a number of other things. You know, I don't really
want to make comparisons to people that passed. I just don't.
I don't think it would be fair to the people
that passed, But obviously there's a history of people sort
of hoarding evidence or what they find. And it's pretty
remarkable that Jeff wanted so many eyes on those casts

(24:09):
and then realizing the difficulty it would be to fly
people to Idaho, or the difficulty of transporting that cast
collection around, that he endeavored to have them represented in
digital space so that scientists from around the world could
lay their eyes on him and interact with him. I mean,
that's that's a pretty generous thing that doesn't happen very
often in Sasquatch, where he let alone all the willingness

(24:30):
to you know, it's sort of like the consummate professor
teacher sharing the gift of knowledge. Because yeah, so, like
Boba mentioned, like you're mentioning, so many of these things
we've learned came from his willingness to talk on camera
to seemingly like anyone who would show an interest because
I used to listen to him on you know, a
lot of blog talk radio shows, you know, early internet radio,

(24:51):
pre podcast that sort of thing, and he really was
extremely generous with this knowledge and those discoveries and his
willingness to share is pretty unique in the history of
Sasquatrey not to dine great people of the past, but
not everyone was as generous.

Speaker 3 (25:06):
Oh, he was unreal generousal this time. I mean I
used to feel bad for him. You know, they're like, God,
you gotta you know, you go to these conferences or whatnot,
and you know, you got to deal with these people
that have like these crazy ideas or like just no
clue what they're talking about. And he'd listened to him
and you know, like try to kind of gently correct
him and show him like what the facts on certain

(25:28):
things were, and he just his patience was unreal. I mean,
he was such a gentleman.

Speaker 1 (25:33):
Yeah, I mean, imagine how many times have you guys
seen him explain to someone the mechanics, you know, the
function of midfoot flexibility, because so many people see those
fixed casts and they think that that's the way the
foot is shaped, and they'll think that that's a feature
of the foot itself, rather than like, no, that's a
record of how the foot interacted with the substrate. And

(25:55):
I've seen him teach that lesson so many times to people,
which requires a lot of general It would be a
lot easier to say, I just go read my book
and leave me alone, you know. But he was very
generous to teach.

Speaker 2 (26:07):
And nearly every every time I observed him sharing that
knowledge with somebody at a conference or whatever. You know,
you watch him for two or like a minute and
a half or something like that, and he starts getting
excited about it. He starts getting like his body motion
gets more animated, his voice starts going, and he starts smiling,
like he gets really excited about that kind of I mean,

(26:29):
he was a he was a nerd man. He loved
what he did, and he loved the teaching aspect, and yeah, yeah,
and it was it was always a treasured moment to
see him doing what he loved, which is teaching about
something that he got really got excited about, you know.

Speaker 3 (26:48):
And he was hilarious.

Speaker 1 (26:51):
I hope those track scans become you know, there used
to be a portal on the ISU website through like
his portion of the I s U website, there was
a portal the Virtual Footprint Archive, and so that data
must exist somewhere. Do you guys know if he had
the same intentions with you remember the three D scan
that was done of the Scuokum cast that Jeff was
involved with.

Speaker 2 (27:09):
I don't want with that was that's pretty ancient technology, though,
it'd be interesting to dig that up or see if
he has that, or if Rick Nole has that, or
who has that. Who knows what happened to that.

Speaker 1 (27:19):
I'm just assuming like he had the same intention is
that it's going to be really hard to get you know,
the cast to places. You know, John Green had sort
of proposed that that they should travel take the cast
on tour to various universities to have people evaluate it.
But you know, maybe that's where that seed was planted,
with Jeff saying, well, if we create a digital version
of this in three D space, we can share with
people that way. But he really did a lot to

(27:41):
try to bring this subject to his peers and colleagues
and just to the world, just in terms of you know,
that project being one of many examples of trying to
share that in a really literal and figuratively a high
resolution manner, you know, not just some paper with a
black and white, you know, two D picture in it,

(28:02):
but really trying to bring this information to people. And
those are huge contributions.

Speaker 2 (28:08):
Yeah, and talk about the generosity of his time he
was lamenting to me. This is back in June again
when we had that wonderful conversation for six hours or so.
He's lamenting to me that he's he felt bad about
starting to have to say no to some podcast requests
because he says, well, you know, like I don't have
a lot of time, and these people sometimes they only

(28:30):
have twenty five or thirty people listening, but I'm going
to take an hour and I just don't have that
kind of time, and I feel terrible. He was lamenting
about not being able to help the little guy.

Speaker 3 (28:40):
Yeah. I was always telling him, don't worry about it.
I was always something like, dude, like you're just you're
burning your time, Like your time is too vital. I
mean a lot of people don't know he had six boys,
six sons. I mean he's busy, dude, a full time
job and squatching. I mean he was slammed for time.

Speaker 2 (28:57):
Yeah, he didn't have a lot of time, and he
just kept getting busy and busier and busier. He was
doing all these appearances and whatnot, trying to share his knowledge,
trying to you know, bring people back down the earth
about sasquatches. And then yeah, and when I say that
it'd like to kind of just like dispel a lot
of these paranormal ideas, you know, because he knew that
that didn't really serve the subject, unfortunately, and then it

(29:20):
drove his colleagues away and made him look bad. And
he didn't do it because he looked bad. He always
spoke about the subject in a scientific, biological manner because
he thought that the subject deserved that, and to go
to fanciful lengths to explain things through paranormal means does
no service to the animals nor the subject.

Speaker 1 (29:40):
Yeah, he did more to legitimize the pursuit, certainly in
the last twenty five years, but to your earlier points,
maybe more than any other single individuals, or at least
any single individual scientist or academic that's ever been involved
in this subject. From designating a name, you know, an
IGNO taxon, to the footprints and using the Patterson film

(30:02):
site footprints as the sort of type specimen for the
Igno taxon, things of that nature really serve to legitimize
what is seen by most people as an outlandish or
preposterous sort of idea or pursuit. And I can't think
of anyone who's done more good to legitimize this asquatch

(30:26):
than Jeff's done in the last twenty five years.

Speaker 2 (30:30):
Stay tuned for more Bigfoot and Beyond with Cliff and
Bobo will be right back. After these messages. He wrote
a paper called the Ichno Taxonomy of Giant Hominoid Tracts
in North America. So let us pause on that just
for a minute, because this really gets to me in

(30:52):
a lot of ways. This is a great example of
kind of what who Jeff was in a scientific and
someone manner at the same time. You see that from
what I understand if I remember correctly, and Jeff told
me this story more than once. There there was a
conference going on and he submitted this paper. It was
about the Ichno taxonomy. Okay, Now, taxonomy is the is

(31:15):
the study or the science I guess of naming animals.
You know, we all know that there's a genus and
species name that it's in Latin, you know, Homo sapiens,
you know, or some americanas like that kind of stuff,
where there's a genus and a species name. That's what
taxonomy is.

Speaker 3 (31:30):
You know.

Speaker 2 (31:30):
In Linnaeus back in you know, several hundred years ago,
he kind of made up that system and we all
follow it at this moment. Ichno taxonomy is the naming
of basically the naming of species, or maybe not the
species itself, but giving a name to the footprints that
come from a certain species, you know what I mean.
And there was this conference going on, and so he

(31:52):
submitted this paper to it on one hand because it
was kind of funny in a way that yeah, I
can do this and there's no rules against it. See,
in taxonomy, you need a type specimen, a hollo type,
you need a species sample, you know, to name something.
But in Ichno taxonomy you need a footprint. And this

(32:12):
is they use Ichno taxonomy for things like dinosaur footprints
for example, or the Leatoli tracks. We don't really know
that it was Australopithis and Australopithecus affensus that made those,
but Ichno taxonomists have attributed it to that species, you know.
So that's what ichno taxonomy kind of is. So we
have lots of footprints of sasquatches, and he used the

(32:33):
Patterson Gimlin film subject as the prime example and kind
of proposed a name, proposed a name for the uh
They call it an Ichnogenus an ignospecies, you know, describing
those footprints, you know, so like there was a species
that made those. But I believe, and I could be wrong.

(32:54):
I don't know everything. I barely know anything I feel
most days, but ichno, taxonomy is the naming of the
footprint thing, not necessarily the species. Whlthough they're kind of
tied together and agree and if if I'm incorrect and
you happen to know, let me know. But he said, well,
we have footprints for this, and it would be a
fun way to get the sasquatch thing in front of
a conference of scientists who are kind of interested in footprints,

(33:17):
because I think it was a nicdo taxonomy conference that
was going on at the time. So yeah, this is
a great way to get this kind of evidence in
front of these kinds of people and hopefully it'll turn
a few heads and maybe even lure a couple of
the other mainstream scientists over to the dark side so
they can study sasquatches a little bit. And I don't

(33:37):
know if he was successful in that, but it kind
of shows Jeff's number one scientific rigor because being interested
in the sasquatch thing, Jeff had to be very very
conservative with his claims. He had to back them up rigorously.
So anybody, if you're going to present a paper like
this to a conference, he's got to make sure all

(33:59):
his tease or crossed and ezer dotted and all that jazz,
you know. So but also shows a sense of humor
because he knew that it would ruffle some feathers. He
knew that going into this, but he did it anyway
because frankly, he was a badass when it came to
stuff like that. He was more than willing to smile
and ruffle a few feathers along the way, especially when

(34:21):
he knew that he did a good job with the
paper and there's no reason, no foundation for it being rejected.
And of course he was rejected a few times in
various paper publications because of a sasquatch subject. But in
something like this, they let us slide through, They let
it go through, and he was just so pleased about it,
and he thought that really gave him a kick. I
remember talking to him several times about this paper and hopefully,

(34:44):
you know, it turns some heads like like he was hoping,
and maybe even did bring a few scientists into this
area of interest.

Speaker 1 (34:50):
So absolutely. I pulled up the paper and I'll put
that in those links too. It looks like it was
published in two thousand and seven and the ichno genus
and species was anthroportepez Amora borealis North American eight foot,
which is certainly a mouthful. So good luck spell in that, folks,
But just click the link in the show notes.

Speaker 2 (35:09):
Yeah, and that'll be on the next Bobo appearance on
Sasquatch Chronicles. For the trivia thing, you know that maybe
they should do a spelling be next time instead of
trivia with you bobs.

Speaker 1 (35:19):
You know what came to mind when you guys were
talking about this stuff too, is that one aspect of
Jeff's pursuit of the Sasquatch that I was always super
interested in and I only ever got bits and pieces
of from various interviews. He was a pretty avid field researcher.

Speaker 2 (35:35):
You know.

Speaker 1 (35:35):
He was deeply involved with those Six Rivers expeditions that
Richard Greenwell led, but he also had the North American
ap project and did a lot of field work with
John Mainzinski in the Northwest and the Inner Mountain, West Wyoming, etc.
And so you guys probably know a lot more about
his field research, but I was always curious to learn
more about all that.

Speaker 2 (35:55):
Well, hopefully in the next few weeks we'll have a
guest on that can enlighten us a little bit more,
because you know, one of the things I'd earned when
I was at Walla Walla. I went to Walla Walla,
Washington to some stuff in the Blues a couple of
weeks ago, and I managed to finally track down a
historic bigfooter named Brian Smith, who of course is best
known for the Cueterville, Idaho cast from two thousand and one,

(36:15):
I believe, but I have a lengthy interview with Brian
over lunch, and Brian saw a Sasquatch in ninety two.
I actually saw two of them walk in front of
his car in nineteen ninety two, and that kind of
put him on the trail there, you know. And he
only met Paul Freeman once, but he was very active
in the Blues. He mostly hung out with West Summerland,
but he ran across doctor Meldrim at some point and

(36:37):
became a member of doctor Meldrum's nonprofit research group called
the North American Eight Project, and I think Minezinski was involved.
Derek Randalls, I know, was involved. Brian Smith was involved,
and doctor Meldrim was the head of it all and
stuff was a nonprofit somehow associated with the ISU, the
Ido State University. But Brian was telling me stories about

(37:00):
being in the field with doctor Meldrum. They used to
stay in a cabin up on Biscuit Ridge somewhere, which
is one of these hills above the Wallah Walla. There's
a woman gave them access to her cabin, if I
remember right, and they used to stay there and then
do field work day and night, I guess, you know,
but they had a place to stay there. There's a
lot about the field work of doctor Meldrim that I

(37:21):
honestly don't know about. And that was one of the
fascinating things about having conversations, you know, casual conversations with Jeff,
is that he would bring up, you know, this time
that he was at West Summerlin's house and you know,
and his wife would do this, and like it's like
all these personal relationships that he had with some of

(37:42):
the greatest names in Bigfoot, or the most legendary names
in Bigfoot, you know, whether it is you know, West
Summerlin or Paul Freeman, or doctor Krantz, for example, I
like little things. To me, the minutia is always the
most meaningful in a lot of ways. You know. It's
kind of like when they say, don't forget that the
good old days are actually what's happening right now. You

(38:03):
know that kind of thing, like the little things count
and that, you know that kind of thing. But I
remember doctor Krantz as far as that's concerned. One time,
doctor Meldrum went to visit doctor Krantz in his lab
at Pullman in Washington, and they got out all of
Krantz's footprints from a certain area and then kind of

(38:24):
made a gradient of them. They like, he said, they
laid him across the hallway, is what he told me.
Where they Okay, well, this cast like this one over here,
cast A. We know that that's like cast. We know
that's the same individual as cast B here, right, And
this one here looks a lot like Cast C. So

(38:44):
A and C must be the same. And they just
kept doing that where there's like a dozen or twenty
footprints across the hallway, and when you look at A
and you know Z on the other side, they don't
look very much alike. But since there's a connection from
A to B and B two C B. You know
that gradient exists, then you know A and Z must
be the same, you know, that kind of logic sort

(39:06):
of thing. And he said, yeah, so where do we
cut it off? And that was like the way one
of the ways that doctor Krantz and doctor Meldrum started
looking into the recurrence of individual sasquatches over time is
by looking at the variation that is possible in the
sasquatch foot. And then of course that got Jeff's brains
moving and stuff you know about because he knows the

(39:27):
inner workings of the food pretty much better than most
people do, you know, ninety nine percent or more of
everybody on the planet obviously, and he said, well, that
really got him moving on that sort of thing. You know,
it's just like little little stories of behind the scenes.
I've always appreciated and those are some of my most
treasured kernels of knowledge that I've picked up from Jeff.

Speaker 3 (39:49):
I was shocked first of all in the field of them,
because I thought I thought it was like some ivory tower,
you know, geek, you know, never got outside man. He
was an outdoors when he and he track and he
he knew like what you know because he spent a
lot of time with Myrion Chinsky too. He learned so
much from Myrian Chinsky, you know about you know, the
food sources and you know medicinal plants. And I was

(40:13):
I was surprised. I was pretty stuck, you know, going
out with them and getting in the woods of them
and learning from him.

Speaker 4 (40:20):
Am I remembering correctly, Cliff, that there was a sort
of like a similar interaction with you and Jeff where
you would pointed out two of the Blue Mountain casts
and say like, hey, Jeff, I think these are the
same individual and he sort of realized that one was
pronated one supernated. Am I remembering that story correctly?

Speaker 2 (40:36):
That's absolutely correct. Yeah. One of the times I was
in his lab because and I don't remember when this was.
It might have been when I was in filming in
bokatell and finding Bigfoot. I'm not sure, because I know
we filmed in his lab. But I went back the
next day, like Jeff invited me back the next day,
and I kind of, you know, ran rampant through his lab.
But I've been to his lab with him probably three

(40:57):
or four times. I don't remember exactly how many times.
But on one of these occasions, Jeff had work to do.
You know, he's a professor, he's got emails, he's got
things to do, grading papers or whatever whatever you had
to do. And his lab is you know, it's kind
of big. I mean maybe thirty feet by twenty feet
or something like that, I don't know. And there's a
small little area that's like probably ten by ten or less,

(41:20):
and that's where his desk and computer and books and
stuff are, and the rest of it's just you know,
like science nerd stuff, you know, footprints and all that jazz.
So he had stuff to do at his desk, so's
he said, well, yeah, why don't you rummage through the drawers, man,
see what's of interest here for you? And I go
all right, you know, and then he went to go
or I don't know how you could work like over me,
giggling like a schoolgirl outside every two minutes about something.

(41:43):
You know, I don't know how he could do it
focus with me making so much noise and my shrieks
of glee as I went through the drawers and looked
at various casts and things like that. I'm exaggerating a
little bit but not that much. But at one point
I pulled out two casts, and one of them was
from West Summerland, and one of them was from Paul Freeman.
I think it was nineteen eighty six and nineteen eighty eight.

(42:07):
One of them was from I think the Freeman. One
was from a place called Yellow Jacket, which is over
by Tiger Saddle and the Blue Mountains and the other places.
The other one is from a place called Indian Camp,
which is some miles away, maybe five miles away or
something like that, maybe seven at the most.

Speaker 3 (42:25):
I think.

Speaker 2 (42:26):
But I was looking at the two prints, and one
of them, the toes were across the top, and then
the other one of the toes were slanted diagonally down
the side. But I was looking at it and the
toes stood out to me in an interesting way. And
I brought them to Jeff and I said, Jeff, I'm
sorry interrupting or whatever you're doing what you do? And

(42:47):
I said, are these the same individual? And he goes,
let's take a look, and stood He stood up and
he says, I've always kind of thought that, but now
that you're saying it, let's really take a look at this,
you know, And then we eate them both down, and
I said, well, look at the shape of the big toe,
because that's something i'd noticed at that point in my life,
because I mean, I'm surrounded by footprint casts. I mean,
both of you guys have been in my garage. It's

(43:09):
ridiculous around here. I'm surrounded by footprint casts every time
I go anywhere in my house. And so I said,
look at the big toe. I mean, halex is really
a differentiator as far as individual sasquatches go. I'm completely
confident of that, in the same sort of way that
you know, the tail fins of whales are used to
identify individual whales, or the dorsal fins of orcas or

(43:32):
great white sharks are used to identify individual animals, you know,
just like you know our faces are used for human beings,
like I know what Matt looks like, I know what
Bobo looks like. These other identifiers and other animals are
pretty they stand out, and the halex, the big toe
on sasquatch footprints is one of those things that stands
out to at least me, because I've seen so many

(43:53):
footprint casts and I'm surrounded by them all the time.
But the halex on. Both of these are very very similar,
and I say what he's and they're about the same length,
and they weren't that far apart. So Jeff laid him
down and we started talking about it, and and he goes, oh, yeah,
I think they are. And then he started talking about
the supernation and pronation of the foot. And you can
imagine how how happy that made me. Is Like, even

(44:15):
though Jeff had kind of considered that before, he had
never really done the grunt work of getting it down
and moving it around and comparing the two and and
and and again. To Jeff's credit of being a fantastic
and humble human being, he would he would say that, like, yeah,
Cliff Barrickmhan was in my lab and he pointed this
out to me, and I'd always thought so, but it

(44:37):
was it was, you know, through through U. I mean,
we did that, and I think that's so That's just
I almost said the F word there. It's so cool
to have been able to, I guess, be there or
pointed out, you know, or nudge him to like confirm
my thought. I mean, I don't know what I did,

(44:58):
but I was there and it was cool. And I've
even seen it just yesterday. I think I saw maybe
today I saw a diagram of those two casts with
an explanation underneath it, and I'm thinking, yeah, that's I
was there. That's cool. That was really neat when that
quote unquote discovery was made. And I'm thrilled that Jeff listened,
you know, because you would think that somebody of his

(45:20):
stature wouldn't need to listen to the little guy like me.
It's just really cool.

Speaker 3 (45:26):
Well that happened. I was like, damn, Cliff, you made it.

Speaker 2 (45:29):
Well, I'm just lucky enough to know the guy. You know,
stay tuned for more Bigfoot and Beyond with Cliff and
Bobo will be right back. After these messages. The few
times I've heard him speak and my name came up
for something that I contributed in some sort of way,

(45:51):
that makes me feel good, you know.

Speaker 1 (45:53):
You know.

Speaker 2 (45:53):
It's like you mentioned earlier, the Jerry Crew footprint. You
know how that that the Jerry Crew footprint. From a
certain angle, you can see that there's a mid victual
pressure ridge there. But I could never been noticed before
because the cast was you know, kind of hidden away
in the Crew family collection and no one really had
access to it. But that's something that you know, Bobo
and I kind of had a small part in a

(46:14):
way because the first time that the cast had been
brought out into public was when we were filming Finding Bigfoot.
The producers for Finding Bigfoot got a hold of the
crew family and Wade and John came out to the
site and we got to see the actual cast. We
were like amongst the first people in Bigfoot Nerd Nerd Bill,
you know that, to actually see the actual cast in

(46:37):
decades and decades and decades, and I took I took
several pictures of it, of course with permission from John
Crue and Wade, and it was it's that photograph that
I sent the Doctor Meldrum that he used for that comparison.
It's just another cool thing that I was accidentally involved in,
and I'm just so thankful that I had a chance

(46:58):
to contribute something. I'll send that article over right now
and you can link it in the show notes below
about the Supernation, and it has photographs of those two casts,
and actually this particular article even has photographs of the
cast from China and the Labrity casts and as well
as the tipmus stuff too. So I'll send that over
to you right now.

Speaker 3 (47:16):
Excellent.

Speaker 1 (47:17):
I mean we haven't even talked about his book yet.

Speaker 2 (47:20):
No, just kind of buddy, we haven't even mentioned relatominoids.
The scientific context in which sasquatches certainly reside this idea
that species that were probably once more abundant on the
planet are now in small, isolated pockets all throughout the world.
And that's what sasquatches certainly are some sort of relict

(47:42):
species that still exists. That goes to Jeff as well,
like giving scientists a reason to think sasquatches could be real.

Speaker 1 (47:50):
But man, when his book came out, say, I first
discovered Jeff through Mysterious Encounters, which is so funny because
I was just obsessed with that show, and that's where
I first discovered Bubba too. So part of me is
still like it's so weird to do a podcast with
Bobo because I've been like Bobo was one of the
first squatchers I ever saw, you know what I mean,
because he was in several episodes of that show. But

(48:10):
that's where I first saw Jeff and then started following
other things. Even though Legend Meete Science the documentary had
come out prior to the show I didn't see that
documentary until after I watched Mysterious Encounters. Boat was really
interested in him and trying to track down interviews that
were online, many of which were text interviews print interviews.
But then I remember when the book was announced and

(48:31):
I bought the book like immediately when it came out,
when it hit shelves back in the days when you
had to go to Barnes and Noble or Borders or whatever,
to a physical bookstore to get new books, new releases,
instead of having them delivered to your door. And I
bought two copies. So I was so excited to read it.
And you know, i'd been pursuing it for a couple
of years at that point, and as one does, you know,

(48:52):
you're trying to get everyone you know and care about
to be as interested as you are. And so I
bought a copy for me and a copy for my dad.
You have to read this, even though I hadn't fully
ready yet, but that book was super impactful because at
that point I had only read a handful of books.
It's kind of hard to track them all down at
that point in time. So I'd read Krantz's book, which

(49:14):
was the first book that i'd read, and I think
I had already read Lauren Coleman's Bigfoot The True Story
of Apes in America. I didn't even find a copy
of Apes among us, I think, until after I read
Meldrem's book. But so that was one of the first
texts and just had a huge impact. And that was
one of those things that set the bar of like
I need to really get a grasp of the concepts

(49:38):
and the language, etc. It was shortly thereafter, because I
think Jeff's book came out in two thousand and six,
and then I enrolled in college and the first course
I signed up for was physical anthropology, and that was
all because I was so inspired by that book and
well the subject in general. But it Crantz's book to

(49:59):
some degree to me, Meldrims was more comprehensive, you know,
because it's a little more up to date. But Miltrims
was a bit more accessible to me at that time.
But that has to be I mean, what do you
guys think that's probably the best selling Sasquatch book of
all time? I would think I.

Speaker 2 (50:14):
Think it's the most important.

Speaker 1 (50:16):
Yeah, I mean it's someone I see everywhere, whether it's
like new on shelves and used bookstores Like I just
when you see that many copies of it out in
the world, you think, man, a lot of people have
bought this book. If new stores are keeping it in stock,
and you know enough have been sold that you know,
eventually people pass it on to the used bookshop and

(50:36):
it's just a very it's the ubiquitous Sasquatch book.

Speaker 2 (50:40):
Yeah, it really is.

Speaker 3 (50:41):
Well, he had it, got it got a lot of
press when it came out. One of the reasons it's
got so much press is because Jane Goodall had just
you know, recently given that NPR interview where she said
she thought there were undiscovered, undiscovered really commentades around the world.
Then she wrote that blurb on Jeff's book saying, you know,
saying the same thing, saying, and Jeff came out here

(51:02):
and he was at the Willow Creek Museum, you know,
going through stuff and you know, like the old tracks
and Cassie had there and documenting them. And I went
out there and was, you know, kind of bugging him,
like he didn't need me there, but I was just like,
you know, I was trying to be like a gopher
boy whatever whatever he needed. Then Jane Gettall was speaking

(51:23):
that night in Arcada, doat Humble State University, which is like,
you know, forty five minutes down on the coast, and
so I gave I drove Jeff down there, and I
bought three of his books, and uh, it was sold out.
It was like I think there was fourteen hundred and
sixteen hundred people there. And afterwards she came she came
out in the lobby and was signing stuff and like

(51:44):
you literally it was like a factory line, dude. It
was like they they had a couple of people tell
you like before you get to the front, like you
only got like six seconds, and then they gave you
little pieces of paper. You had to write your name
and spell it properly, like you know, print it so
that she could see it and sign real fast like
say to so and so Jane goodall, and like it
was and she was super tired. Was the last day

(52:05):
of her like two month trip through America, like her
big fundraising trip of the year, and the very next
night she had to be back in London for like
the biggest whatever that Wilderness Society over there is, I
forget what it's called, but like the biggest one and
it was that that night it's the biggest fun night,
Razor Night for her chimp research projects, and so it
was like a big deal and she was and you

(52:27):
can just see she was so run down, but she
gave a great talk. And when we were in line,
people like there was people heckling me, going like oh,
bigfoot stuff this and that, you know, and I was talking, smacking,
like I was yelling at people like you're fools, like
you idiot, you know. And Jeff was just like what
the hell is going on? Like who am I with?
You know, and and uh, we get up there and

(52:49):
Jane Goodall he goes, he goes hi, Jane, I'm I'm Jeff,
and she goes doctor Meldrum and she just stopped the line,
and like, dude, it was like they had people like
doing the Peter Burn and you're like avenue and pushing
you away, going okay, nice to meet you.

Speaker 2 (53:02):
To buy, you know, like she had doing the Peter Burn.

Speaker 3 (53:05):
Yeah, just pumping people through. And she stopped and for
like five six, seven minutes, she talked to Jeff about
the book. She signed our she signed up, she signed book,
she signed a couple of books for him. She signed
three for me, I think three for him, and I
just looked for when we moved, I was looking for
those books and I couldn't. Finally, when my house got
ripped off by that guy was staying with me like

(53:27):
years ago, I'm sure now I know he sold them,
but uh, yeah, it was. It was really cool, like
to see and like Jeff getting that validation, you know,
in front of everyone, and you know, it was uh
because he was he was kind of like a few
people recognized him, not not too many, but a couple
of people recognized him, and they kind of made, you know,

(53:47):
snotty comments like jokes about it, and so uh. She
she was very excited to meet Jeff. And I was
telling her that we had just found those those nests
up in uh North up by Rowed National Park. We'd
found those nests up there, and she she really wanted
to see him. They were still there, like they got
kind of destroyed in the windstorms the next over the

(54:09):
next two winners, they really got thrash, but she she
wanted to go see. We were going to show them
to her, and she was so excited. They just her
team said, no, this is your biggest fundraiser. You have
to go back, We have to leave for she was
flying out on the midnight flight and going straight back
right out of London and she was already burnt out.
So they didn't they didn't let her go, but she

(54:31):
she really wanted to go. And but it was really
cool seeing Jeff get like that validation, you know, such
an important figure, you know, in the global community of
you know, primatology.

Speaker 1 (54:42):
Oh yeah, I mean who And again this is not
to disparage the people of the past in any way,
but for someone to come along and right of work
that's so good that it's endorsed by Jane Goodall, who
did the first you know, observational field studies of chimpanzees,
and George Shaller, who did the first observational field studies
of mountain guerrillas. Like no other sasquatch oriented, writer, academic,

(55:05):
you know, researcher, et cetera, got those sorts of endorsements period. Yeah,
you know, Schaller and Goodall are pretty heavy hitters, like
like Bobo said, on the global stage, not just like
within their field, but you know Schawler's work with snow leopards,
on and on and on. So that in itself speaks
to you know, again, the legitimacy that he was able

(55:27):
to bring to the pursuit of the sasquatch.

Speaker 3 (55:30):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (55:30):
Yeah, And again it's because I think it's because of
the bigfoot thing that he was so careful in his
academic work, because clearly that's something that I don't think
that a lot of bigfooters appreciate, is that, you know,
bigfooting is fun and it's the subject that we all
love and all that sort of stuff, but when you
speak publicly about sasquatches, there's a certain responsibility that goes

(55:52):
with that. In my opinion, that's maybe that's what irks
me about the newer generation being a little flipping about it.
And I think that's it deserves better. And I always
felt that doctor Meldrum was the best ambassador for the
subject in so many different ways because he did take
the subject so seriously, yet he enjoyed it. But also
he was so careful about everything, so conservative in his

(56:13):
science and his claims and his thoughts. You know, he
thought he would entertain interesting thoughts, of course, but like
when if he came to I came to public publication,
he knew that the eyes of the world were on him.
He knew that, so his scholarship had to be impeccable,

(56:35):
and I think by and large it was. I mean,
it surpassed impeccability in so many ways. And it's so
sad that he didn't live to get the recognition that
he will eventually get.

Speaker 3 (56:48):
It makes me think they're going to discover, like recognize
it soon, because of course I will be like, yeah,
he died just before like the the DNA results came out,
or you know, it'll be something that gives me hope
that it's going to happen sooner than later now, because
I was thinking, like, God, it's gonna be so long
for whatever happens. Nothing like it just that's the way
the world works. Like Jeff passes away, then there's gonna

(57:10):
be some breaking, like you know, whether you know the
relatively short time in a few years or something.

Speaker 2 (57:15):
I feel that's true. And one of the reasons I
started thinking that is I never really thought about it.
But he was born in nineteen fifty eight, the same
year that the word bigfoot was born in basically is
born in nineteen fifty eight, And wouldn't it be just
a kick if twenty twenty five, when he checked out.
That's when it happened, you know. But I will say
that Jeff's passing has ignited a fire in me to

(57:39):
do the best job we possibly can to get this
thing done. Doing it for Jeff Man. We're doing it
for Jeff.

Speaker 3 (57:46):
Yeah, amen to that.

Speaker 1 (57:48):
I mean, he his voice was so sorely needed. And
you know, he came at a time when Krantz was
still around and when binner Nagel was still around, and
really since binner Nagel passed twenty eighteen, Jeff has been
the lone voice. He always had the sort of the biggest, strongest,
most sober, considered and again desperately needed voice in the

(58:09):
field of sasquatchery. But for the last seven years, in
terms of academics and scientists, he's kind of been the
lone voice, at least as far as anthropologists are concerned.
And yeah, it has always set a standard that I've
been trying my best to reach. I mean, that's why
I tried to be a perpetual student and become like
autodidactic and build a library about relevant discipline so that

(58:33):
I could hopefully, you know, live up to you something
that Jeff would take. Oh, you're you're a good student,
you know, without having a degree byself. So in the
absence of that mean he's very much a north star
for me and many many people. So his absence leaves
a massive void. But yeah, the only way to even

(58:54):
think about filling that void is to say, like, well,
we just have to aim as high as we can
to reach the standard that Jeff said.

Speaker 2 (59:01):
And he would want that because one of his major pushes,
because he recognized this that he recognized the fact that
the scientists weren't paying attention as much as they probably
ought to be. And so it's up to us, the
citizen scientists, it's up to us to rise to their level,
since I mean, since they're not doing it, they're in
my opinion, they're not being responsible, you know, by looking

(59:24):
into things that they're interested in and curious about. And
some scientists might say that, well, it's because of the
evidence doesn't hold up, and I say, malarkey, you need
to look a little bit closer, you need to look
a broader scope of the evidence. You need to look
at the thing as a whole. The best evidence for
Sasquatch is not one single thing. It's not the film,
it's not a footprint. It's how it all goes together,

(59:47):
and it's congruent. And I think that it's a it's
a negligence of their duty in a lot of ways
because and I can't blame them, you know, scientists, the
academic scientists are looking at that GRANTMA and they're looking
at ladder in their career, they're looking at that kind
of stuff. But I think that it's up to us, man,

(01:00:11):
and especially since Jeff's gone now, it's up to the
citizens scientists to get the job done because until then,
the academics aren't going to move on it. No one's
coming to save us. We got to do it. And
that's the lesson that I took from Jeff. It's up
to me, it's up to you. It's up to us
to do the best job we possibly can and to
rise to their level because they couldn't imagine stooping to ours. Well.

Speaker 1 (01:00:36):
So and again, I'll put together a big repository because
there's so many great papers that Jeff wrote that were
published in other places like the Journal of Scientific Exploration,
a number of other sources that are available online, and
so I'll have a big companion of all those things.
I don't know if there's any single sasquatch researcher who
has been interviewed more than Jeff, again speaking to his generosity,

(01:00:58):
So I will put together what you know, I I
think are the sort of like best of the best
interviews that cover a lot of ground. Thankfully due to
his generosity, anyone who's just if you're hearing this for
the first time the day of its release, or if
you're hearing this in the year twenty thirty, you two
can be a student of Jeff's even though he's gone,
Like you can read his book, you can read these papers,

(01:01:19):
you can listen to I would say, hundreds of hours
of interviews and be a student of his, and I
definitely encourage that. But I will do my best to
create like a one stop shop repository what I think
is the best of the best for our listeners, and
I'll have that link in the show notes.

Speaker 3 (01:01:34):
Yeah, I mean, it's just it's I mean, we're talking
about what a blow does for our community. And he's
got six sons, a wife, I mean, you know, his
other family members, nephews, nieces. I mean, he's leaven a
big hole in a lot of hearts, you know, so
deevis condolences to his whole family.

Speaker 1 (01:01:50):
Absolutely, And on that personal side, you know, both of
you guys spent a lot of time with Jeff. Like
I said, I used to watch the mys Serious Encounters,
so I've seen Jeff and Bobo taking Bob Gimlin to
the Patterson Gimlin film site for the first time and
however many years that was, And so I thought it
would be fun, you know, maybe on the members side,
if I could ask you guys about some of like

(01:02:11):
the personal stories, personal memories, you know, adventures, funny times,
that sort of thing.

Speaker 3 (01:02:17):
Yeah, that'd be cool.

Speaker 2 (01:02:19):
Yeah, Yeah, there's some great musings and it's wonderful times
with Jeff. I'd be happy to share.

Speaker 3 (01:02:24):
Those, Okay. Yeah, then we'll go over to the Patreon
and from the members and we'll do some more personal yeah,
because we got some fun with Jeff. He was he
was as he's a fun guy tovie with. So okay, folks, well,
like we set all our condolences to the Meldrum family
and Jeff, we all miss you and love you, Bud.

(01:02:44):
So thanks for listening and follow those links. If you've
never read his stuff, check it out. Get his book
read these papers mask on a link to in the
show notes and learn, you know, just hit yourself on
the on the squatch. It's more than just scary stories.
So all right, well, thanks for tuning in focus. Until
next time, y'all, keep it squatchy.

Speaker 2 (01:03:09):
Thanks for listening to this week's episode of Bigfoot and Beyond.
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(01:03:29):
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