120: Appalachian Bigfoot: Dr. Russell Jones Interview

Episode Transcript
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(00:03):
The Basement. Our guest tonight.Bob is doctor Russell Jones. He is
an author. He has written TheAppalachian Bigfoot, Tracking the Stoneman, West
Virginia's big Foot. Find him onTwitter at Bigfoot Underscore Doc and Russ.
I'm just gonna use your Twitter byline, which is pretty good. He's an

(00:28):
author. He's an anti aging chiropractor, which is very interesting. Over two
hundred thousand patient visits. Bigfoot Guy, certified Master Naturalist, co host of
the Wide Open Research podcast, andan Ohio State alum. Is that right?
Well, I just grew up outsideColumbus, so I'm a diehard Buckeye

(00:50):
fan. Yeah, there you go. And you're based in West Virginia.
Bob himself has roots in West Virginia. Do you not, Bob? I
do. Yeah, I grew upin West Virginia. Yeah, are at
Morgantown area, Okay, Yeah,I live in and where I live we
call it Hurricane West Virginia. Butoutside of West Virginia, everybody else says

(01:10):
Hurricane. Yeah, I've heard ofthat. Yeah. I live in Hurricane
and West Virginia and I have afarm in Athens, Ohio, and I
split my time about evenly. Oh, that's awesome. Nice. So we
are bigfoot novices, somewhat layman.We have been interested in the subject for
a couple of years now. Basicallywe went down a few paranormal rabbit holes

(01:34):
as part of this podcast and endedup just by happenstance, on West Germer's
podcast, and because of that,you know, we started listening to more
and more of it and started realizingI was one of those guys who,
you know, Bigfoot was, youknow, not even a thing on my

(01:55):
mind. It was a movie andstuff like that. But then started hearing
all these stories on his podcast,another podcast out there, and how can
so many people have so many ofthese experiences? Hunters, policemen, doctors,
I mean, you name it,yeah, all kinds of people.
I mean, these people can't allbe lying or hallucinating. So then we

(02:16):
started becoming somewhat believers ourselves. AndI'll be honest, I don't even know
how we came across your info,just out there looking at bigfoot stuff and
you ended up coming up found yourbooks on Amazon, read most of the
Appellachian Bigfoot and then ask you tocome on and here we are. Well,

(02:38):
I appreciate that. I'm glad youhad me. Yeah, even knows
I like to talk about bigfoot,you know, it's it's a way of
life for me. Yeah, yeah, we do too. We'd love it.
Yeah, we just haven't had wehaven't had an experience ourselves, but
we like binge all the podcast.It's hard, man, I mean it's
uh, you know, they're they'rerare, They're not very common, and
so I mean, there was thesetwo biologists named Phukin and Sullivan. They

(03:01):
were out in I want to sayit was Oregon and they had a big
foot sighting. This is in theseventies, and you know, they didn't
have all the cool cameras. Youknow, they were carrying their camera around,
you know, like just trying toget a picture and really documenting their
time in the woods. And theysaid that it takes about two hundred hours
in the woods to find some typeof evidence, whether it's a footprint,

(03:23):
have a some type of sighting,find some poop, whatever it happens to
be. And for years I thoughtthat was about right, about two hundred
hours. Wow, And a lotof people, you know, are not
in the woods two hundred hours inthe woods in a year. Lately,
I found that it's about one hundredhours now for I me instood two hundred

(03:45):
still a lot of time. That'sour poe. Yeah, yeah, I
mean it's hard man. I meanthe reality is everybody's busy. You know,
everybody's got kids, they got theirfamily, they got a wife,
they got a job, they gotother hobbies. Not that many people are
that interested in Bigfoot, and sono one's really keeping up with the research
that's going on. I mean,I'm in the woods usually every Tuesday,

(04:08):
every Thursday for several hours, usuallyone day of the weekend for a while,
and then about every six weeks I'llhave a whole week that I'm in
the woods. So are you inlike a tent or tent camp camper?
No, Like, for instance,the farm I have in Ohio. I
bought the farm because I had joineda park for three quarters of a mile

(04:29):
that has a history of bigfoot sidings. Literally bought it because of that.
And in West Virginia, you knowabout anywhere you live, you can be
in a fairly remote area in fifteenor twenty minutes usually where there's a history
of sidings. And so I'm luckyenough that everything is pretty close for me,
is it because of your roots inAppalachia that you kind of became the

(04:50):
Appalachian big Foot go to guy.I guess though. I mean the reality
is, you know, you figurethere there's a lot of people that are
interested in Bigfoot, but the greatmajority of the people that are interested are
kind of citizens scientists. We probablyhave maybe less than a hundred of us
in the country that are doing youknow, legitimate scientific research, meaning you

(05:15):
know, we're following scientific method andwhat we're doing. It makes it a
challenge, you know, because ifthe government was involved in the universities were
involved with then there would be allthis money and you would have these people
were getting in these locations that otherpeople couldn't get in, and they would
be staying for long periods of time. But as it is now, you
have weekend Warriors out there and someof the groups doing work like the Olympic

(05:39):
Project out in the Pacific Northwest,and there's the would A Conservancy that's in
Texas and Oklahoma, and then theBFRO, which is the group I'm part
of, which is the first onestarted doing scientific research type things in the
nineties. But you know, whatyour guys were saying, is you know,

(06:00):
if you think about it, youknow, we estimate about one out
of every twenty sidings get reported.There's around one hundred thousand sidings. So
if you just took, yeah,if you just took and threw out like
ninety five percent of them, ormaybe even ninety nine percent of them,
and you just kept the best onethousand big foot reports out there, you

(06:24):
would have somebody like Action Jackson.Have you ever heard of him? Yeah,
you know, he's the renowned retirednow park ranger at Yellowstone. You
know, patrolled the area of themost remote area in the whole country.
And after he retired, you know, during a podcast he talked about he
had a daylight big foot siding.And so usually I think that most of

(06:45):
the time witnesses are misidentifications the greatmajority of the times. Then some people
probably trying to hoax or just getattention. But you know, you have
legitimately a couple thousand cases of peoplethat are forest rangers, park rangers,
wildlife biologists, different types of doctorsand professionals that have clear daytime sidings that

(07:10):
are hard to refute. You know, for me, I've taken almost a
thousand reports, maybe every year Iwill get one or two just outstanding reports,
and the rest are just kind offluff stuff. So BFR being a
part of that organization, and that'sthe Bigfoot Research Organization. Is that what

(07:32):
that stands for? Yeah, BigfootField Research Organization. It used to be
that when you google bigfoot, thatwas the first thing that came up.
But now there's a lot of stuffout there, you know, as I
mean, Bigfoot's just really thriving rightnow. But the website at one point
was getting a million hits a day. Oh yeah, I mean, it's

(07:53):
a it's it's crazy, I mean, and you know, I'm part of
the Untold Radio Network. There's sevenpodcasts in it, and a lot of
them cover different subjects. But we'vefound that, you know, like I
may do a subject to one losingweight or aging well or whatever it happens
to be in about half the peoplewatch, But if I do one on
Bigfoot, it's booming. Yeah.You know, It's like I want to

(08:16):
do other things, but people don'treally want to do other things. They're
very interested in Bigfoot. Yeah,they love bigot. I mean same,
you know, we uh, someof our podcast episodes end up on YouTube.
Most don't, but some do,especially when they're video centric. And
you know, the one we didwith um Ron Moorehead has thousands and thousands

(08:39):
and thousands of views, and theother ones have hundreds or maybe a thousand,
and it's just yeah, I meanit's crazy. Yeah, yeah,
I mean, I like Ron.Ron's a really nice guy and he's bright.
But you know, Ron's an exampleof like insider community, we have
all different types of people, andRon would be one that's into interested in
the pair normal or those of uswould call woo right like it. And

(09:03):
then people like me are um aflesh and blood person, meaning that I
believe that bigfoots are perfectly ordinary animal. And so in the community, we
have a lot of people that believedifferent things. So now on that subject,
west On Sasquatch Chronicles and some ofthe other Sasquatch podcasts out there,

(09:26):
they love to talk about the orbsthat people, yeah say they see when
there's a sasquatch sighting or prior toYeah, so yeah, what do you
think that is? Just? Um, you know, here's what I think.
Like, have you guys heard thepeople talking about infrasound with bigfoot and
how Zapp's people and then there's certainanimals like lions and tigers and you know

(09:50):
all these you know, whales andsome other things use infrasound for communication or
you know, maybe to cause theirprey to pause so they can get there.
But when I hear many of thereports going on, to me,
it sounds like a normal physiological response. Somebody's in the woods, they're not
used to being in the woods atnight. They're tired, they're not resting

(10:11):
that well because they're in some tentwith a rock under their shoulder blade.
People are telling bigfoot stories. Youget out there, you have no lights,
and you have a perfectly normal experiencewith that's like an anxiety or a
panic attack. So before we jumpto the woo thing, then I think
that we should say, you know, let's just rule out everything that's normal.

(10:33):
And it's the same way with theorbs. So like, even though
I've taken all these reports, I'veliterally never taken one where someone's told me
that I've never heard that before.And I know I listened to us all
the time. I really like himand him and I correspond to him,
and he's always been really kind tome. But but I know, as
time has went on, he's talkedabout that. But you know, just
in the last year, there wasa study that we're saying that there was

(10:56):
we were finding the areas of tectonicplate movement, that there was some types
of ball type energy that was beingproduced. So I think that before we
assume that there may be some typeof orbs or light associated with bigfoot things,
that we should, you know,go after the more normal things.
They're normal. I don't want tosay physiological, but you know, what's

(11:18):
the word I want to use here, Yeah, exactly, that that's that's
a good way to put it,would be more terrestrial in the findings.
And so, I mean, Ithink that that's one of the things I'm
trying to push for is you know, if you see a big foot print
on the internet, if you're onFacebook today or Instagram or something, they

(11:39):
have all those garbage it's out therethat it's it's just not compelling. There's
a lot of scientists they're very interestedin it, but they're disturbed by the
woo. They're disturbed by the paranormalthing that you know, none of that
existed until the last seven or eightyears ago. I mean, there was
really one guy named Tom Powell.That's a great guy that's out west,
that's written books that he was ina b fr ow and he was doing

(12:01):
some of the weird cases, buthe was really the only one. And
now you have all these people thatare doing it all the time. And
I really think it's because never inour lives have we ever been in the
woods less. I mean, You'llsee some tree break or whatever on the
Internet, and I'll say, doyou know what kind of tree that is?
They have no idea. I mean, they don't know what type of
tree it is. They don't knowwhat type of disease attaches that tree,

(12:24):
or what height attaches it. Theydon't look at the break under a microscope
or a field scope to see ifthere's some type of parasite or insect in
investation or whatever would happen to be. People say that, you know,
they'll see these tracks and all ofa sudden the tracks disappear. But I'm
much more inclined that people just aren'ta woodsman like our forefathers were. They're

(12:45):
just not that good in the woodsanymore. They don't spend very much time
there. They're they're doing other things. And I don't think it's to mislead
people or to be you know,not have good intentions. I just don't
think that. I mean, hunter'sgoing in the woods now and they don't
even know what a different oak treelooks like, you know, or what
the deer or feeding on, orif you're squirrel hunting, what nuts or

(13:07):
fay on there? Or if you'rea gen thing hunter, you know,
where do you find those at?Or you know what other types of plants
around. I just don't think thatpeople are that interested in learning doing all
the research it needs to do.They just want to skip the hard stuff
and go right to the thing wherethey're out there and they see some eyes
or whatever, or they're in thecamp bus side and they're cooking bacon because
they think that Bigfoot may or maynot come in to be curious about the

(13:30):
bacon cooking. Yeah, so nowwe u because we got into it,
like I said, a couple ofyears ago, and we are friends with
and our husbands of people who areyou know, they're your normal like Bigfoot
is nonsense? Well they yeah,the nonbelievers, Yeah, complete nonbelievers.

(13:52):
Right, And so if we justgo down the list of the very now
common you know, reasons why Bigfoot'snot real? Yeah, you know what
they all are? How can we'veever found a dead one? How come
there's no bones? You know?How do they hide so well? How
does and you actually had this inyour book. How does something so large

(14:16):
sustain itself with food out in thewilderness? So you know, what are?
What are? How can we Howcan Bob and I convince our wives
that those are not valid argument?You know, it's funny about uh,
you know, it's between twenty twoand thirty three percent of the people believe
in Bigfoot, but you're including peoplefrom Miami and New York and Chicago,

(14:37):
in LA and people that are literallyin the woods. And it's so funny
because sometimes for insta I'll walk upto people and say, hey, can
I ask you a question? Andthey're leery, and then as soon as
I say, do you believe inBigfoot? Then they all smile, every
single one. And it doesn't matterwho it is. You know, people
are intrigued by it, they're interestedin it, and everybody has an opinion
about it, even if they've neverbeen in the woods in their whole life.

(15:00):
I mean, it's crazy, butI think that the reality is that
you have all these guys, andI see him in my practice because you
know, I've been in West Virginiapracticing for thirty one years, and people
will say to me, you know, I've been in the woods my whole
life. I've never heard anything different. I've never seen anything. But probably
half the people I see either havea big foot story or they know someone

(15:22):
that had a big foot story.And in the Pacific Northwest and in Appalachia,
it's well over fifty percent of thepeople that believe, you know,
the people that live in West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, so forth,
and so on, they recognize theamount of territory that there is that man
is not commonly in whereas you know, if you live in New York,

(15:43):
you know, while big footage isin upstate New York, I'm sure it's
hard to imagine when you're in NewYork thinking that people aren't, you know,
everywhere. I know. I dida radio show for some guys in
New Orleans and they asked me,They said, well, it just seems
like that if something was out therethat somebody would have, you know,
ran into it. And I waslike, who is somebody? I mean,

(16:03):
I'm out there all the time,and I'll see anybody. I mean,
there's just nobody in the woods anymore. You know, even at deer
season in West Virginia, you know, once you get past like a half
mile, you don't see anybody becausethey don't want to drag a deer that
far. They don't want to draga deer up a hill. So you
know, there's all these safe placesthat something can like that can exist.
And I think that the largest thingis that people discount the rarity of the

(16:27):
animal. This is something that's veryrare, you know, in terms of
sheer numbers. If I was goingto guess, say four to ten thousand
in all of North America, soUnited States, say in Canada. But
then when you start dividing it outby states and by counties, I mean
in someplace like West Virginia where ifyou're driving from say the Panhandle up near

(16:51):
DC to all the way over toHuntington, which is probably like I don't
know, like five or six hourdrive on an interstate. Yeah, I
mean, you would probably have onehundred and fifty animals in a whole state
driving that far. You know,maybe one family group in a county and
a County being you know what,twenty five miles by twenty five miles or
something, and you know, here'ssomething that probably would be our closest relative.

(17:15):
It learns where people go, wherepeople don't go. It's largely active
at night. We know that it'smore active at night than during the day.
And I can tell you that ifthey're around someone that does the Bigfoot
all the time, it doesn't takevery long for anybody that meets me and
is one of my friends. Aftera while, they're like always convinced the

(17:37):
big Foot's real for sure, youknow when they hear me talking to different
witnesses. I mean, you know, you'll have people call you and say,
you know, they could be onFinding a big Foot TV show when
I was taking the show around inOhio, West Virginia, and they don't
want to be on, but they'lltake you right to where it is and
say, hey, I was themayor of Charleston, West Virginia for eight
years. And you know you can'ttell anybody. I'm not gonna I don't

(18:00):
want you you know, I'm gonnadeny this, but I just want you
to know who I am so thatyou take this seriously. You know,
in police chiefs and park rangers andpeople from all walks of life, they'll
have these sidings. I mean,the youngest sheriff in the history of Florida
had a siding in West Virginia.You know, an engineer that we just
retired from NASA had a siding inWest Virginia. I mean, it's really

(18:22):
common for it to happen. Butit's not like you can just always go
out and look for it, youknow, it just it just doesn't happen
that way. So now does ithappen? Um? You know when people
like you just mentioned the NASA engineer, the police officer, etc. Does
it happen to them where the bigFoot is for some reason approaching closer to

(18:45):
you know, the living space ofhumans or are these do these people happen
to go out deep into the wildernessand then and then it happens to them.
So the most common sighting is aroad siding, and that's the great
majority of them. The second mostcommon sighting is a hunter, and the
third miscommon sighting is somebody that livesin the country that the Bigfoot is visiting

(19:08):
their house or region for a reason. You know, whether it's that they
have chickens, or they have youknow, some type of feed, or
they have a garden or an orchardor whatever happens to be, and this
people commonly do it. But Imean, I think one of the interesting
things is, you know, priorto say, the Finding Bigfoot TV show,
which I mean at its height,it had almost two million people watching

(19:30):
and it was only for ten seasons, which is like crazy for any TV
show, and people didn't really knowthat Bigfoot made noises prior to that.
I mean, the people that wereinterested did, but the public didn't.
And so then you started getting hundredsand hundreds and hundreds, maybe thousands of
reports about these noises people had heard, you know, because in order to
have a Bigfoot experience, you haveto recognize the behavior of an animal that's

(19:55):
doing something. So you know,many times they're not seen, but people
commonly would hear like the wood knockthat, you know, the noise one
of the noises the big Foot supposedlymakes, and they would you know,
maybe encounter some other type of behaviorwhatever it happened to be, something following
them or something paralleling them, andyou know, they didn't have any idea
what it was. But then lateryou know they put it together. Now,

(20:18):
Is the Ohio how that type ofthing common? No? I mean
I've only heard the Ohio how twotimes, and I've been doing this for
probably fifteen years. I mean Iwas interested in my whole life because you
know, I had some couple ofencounters or experiences I should say, when
I was younger, growing up inmy hunting family. But I talked about

(20:38):
that in the first book, Trackingthe Stoneman, which just got remade into
a second edition. It was outlike three weeks ago, and yeah,
so I updated with new reports andthings that people just haven't seen. And
so what was it you asked memore time? I'm sorry about that?
Is the Ohio? Was the Ohio? Is the Ohio how common? Yeah?

(21:00):
You know, really of the timeyou're in the woods, you don't
hear anything, you don't find anything. Most of the time through Appalachia,
meaning you know that whole quarter orfrom southeast Ohio up to New York.
Well it's in the main I guessbecause the Appalachian Trail and all the way
into North Georgia there's leaflet or everywhere. You know, they see cognizant of
leaving footprints, much like mountain lionsand chimpanzees or cognizant or leaving footprints.

(21:26):
So it's not that common for youto find a good footprint. Maybe once
a year I'll find a really goodone, and maybe a few times a
year I'll find something that it's afootprint, but I just can't see it
that well enough that it would becompelling. So most of the time it's
just nothing. But I mean it'sgood for you, right, I mean,
you're out in these beautiful areas inthe middle of nowhere, hiking around

(21:48):
with your dog. You know alot of times you don't have a cell
signal, so you're not getting textsfrom patients or from some one of your
friends want to know something or other. You know, it's just good for
you. Well, though, I'dbe a little me personally because of some
of the stuff I've heard in thepodcast and things like missing four one one
and all that stuff. I'm alittle nervous, right if I think that

(22:12):
I hear something in the woods andmaybe it is a big foot, I'd
be one of those guys who's allscared. Especially, yeah, they say
a vibrant I mean historically, youknow, there's accounts of things happening.
But I mean I think that ifthey were dangerous, man would have found

(22:32):
him and hunted them down and killedhim. I mean, I'm sure there's
outliers, but you know, becausepeople do disappear. I mean, David
Pilotti's with his H four one onemissing stuff. You know, he read
this first two big Foot books.They were great, and back then him
and I would communicate some about that, and then he started the Missing four
one one stuff because he found outthat the National Park Service wasn't keeping track

(22:53):
of missing people. And that's howyou know that all came about. And
I think that now if you askedDavid, and I know he said it
that you know, he thinks thatvery few of these people are related to
a type of bigfoot activity. Andfor years, I mean, unless I
was hunting, I never carried agun. I mean I would have a
hiking stick, but I mean Iwas just always comfortable being in a woods.

(23:15):
You know, I've been instance.I was a little boy at night
coon hunting and rabbit hunting and everythingelse, running my trap line, and
I just figured that if you're abig guy with a stick and someone's going
to have a bag of day buteventually I got to the point where it's
probably I don't know, eight ornine years ago and I was coming down
off this old mine and I didn'thave cell service, and you know I

(23:37):
had. It must have been aroundthe time I turned fifteen. I just
turned fifty eight last week. So, oh, you're good. I want
to get into your secrets on that. Yeah, have you believed a birthday
consistency? Man? And so consistentlydrinking or what? No? No,
no, no, you can't drinkman. Yeah, you know, it's
that's right. I was just listeningto Hugh Roman's day. Don't know if

(24:00):
you guys ever listened to Berman Labs, but he always has a lot of
great anti aging research. But hewas on his latest episode and they were
talking about you know, in thepast, we used to believe that alcohol,
you know, need to have adrink a day, and it would
be okay or blah blah blah blahblah. But now we just know that
if you're going to have a drink, have a drink, but don't think
it's good, because it's not good. It's just not help for you.

(24:26):
But I was sliding the on offthis coal bank and it was sketchy,
and I was like, you know, I could have like broken ankle or
something here. And so then Istarted paying attention to if I had to
spend the night in the woods,what wouldn't make me comfortable spending the night
in the woods. So I alwayshave a head lamp, I always have
extra batteries, I always have agun, and I'm usually carrying I used

(24:48):
the on X Apple my phone,and you can see now I have the
new Apple Ultra Watch and it actuallyhas a second GPS locator that so I
can push a button when I goin the woods and it'll just give me
an arrow on which way to getback out. It's not, you know,
like it could take me over acliff, but you know, it's
just what I'm using for my backup, right, And so now I'm carrying.

(25:14):
Um. You know, I docarry a gun all the time when
I'm in the woods. So haveyou ever been scared from a sighting or
tracks or when you're when you're byyourself in the woods. No, Um,
One time I was, I wasup in this area around Canain Valley
Ski Resort in Blackwater State Park whereI was getting ready to take the finding
big Foot show, and there's thiswetland and they're called Canain Valley Wildlife Refuge

(25:40):
Area, and it's the largest wetlandin the eastern United States. And I
had went in there at night inthe middle of the week with a friend
and you know, you had todrive the dead end road like six miles
back. There's no houses, nobody'sback there. You get back there and
you're alone. And then we'd walkeda couple of miles in there and we
were we both had thorough as youknow though that so we're looking for heat

(26:00):
signatures. But sometimes when it's thick, you just can't see very much.
And I heard something whistle at methat you know, I knew was not
a bird. I mean, Ihelped teach the Master Naturalist bird class.
You know, I'm aware of birds. And my friend said, you hear
that, and I'm like, yeah, I heard that, and he's like,

(26:21):
I can't see anything. I'm like, I can't see anything either.
And man, in that area,the fog just comes up and it got
so thick in there that we hadto use our thermals to walk out.
We just could not see at all. It would just completely enveloped us.
And I could hear something walking overbeside us for a portion of the trip
back out, and I was nervousthat night, punchy. But I mean

(26:44):
other than that, I can't reallythink of a time. You know,
maybe when I was a little boyrunning my trap line. You know,
we didn't have good flashlights back then, and I was just you know,
eight or nine, running a trapline in the woods around these rocks and
stuff. Maybe I was nervous backthen, but typically I'm comfortable and don't

(27:04):
get nervous. I mean, Iguess it's just like anything else. It's
whatever you do all the time.You just don't think much of it.
So since you're obviously very experienced inthe wilderness, if I go hiking with
my family, yeah, wife andmy two young kids and there's a bear,
what do I do? Yeah,well, just make noise look big.

(27:27):
I mean, if you're in aplace like Appalachia where they hunt them,
they're going to run from you assoon as they see you. Even
if there's cubs, regardless of whatpeople say, they just run from and
they're rare to see, like Imean, I may just see a couple.
I mean, unless you're around adump or you know, maybe a
coal mine where the guys are feedingthem, or something in a normal woods

(27:47):
in Appalachia. In West Virginia,we have twenty two thousand bears, and
I may see, like I don'tknow, one or two a year,
even out as much as I am. I mean, it's fairly common for
me to see where they've been layingand there's a million flies there and it
smells, but they've smelled me comingand they've left before I even got there,
which, by the way, thenthe bears is the best argument for

(28:08):
why how can we don't find sasquatchbones? You know, it is one
of the better counter arguments. Doyou how often do you come across bear
bones when you're out hiking? Me? None? And I wrote in one
of the books that I had spielkento somebody that was in charge of bare
biology for the state of West Virginiaand and they had never found a natural
occurring dead bear find in West Virginia. But really, I mean, if

(28:32):
you think about it, you findprey bones, right, you find deer,
you find things like that. Youdon't find predator bones. I mean,
there's hundreds of thousands of coyotes inWest Virginia, and Ohio. But
you don't find their bones usually unlessyou know somebody you know, hit them
or whatever. And it was interesting. One time I was in this park
in Ohio and it was kind oflike this gravel road and another truck was

(28:55):
coming, so we both had tokind of get off. We both stopped
and he had a US Forest Servicedecal on and we were talking and he
asked what I did, and Itold him that I was a Cairo and
he said, are you that kyrothat does the big foot stuff? And
I'm like, yeah, ask me, and so he slammed the thing there
and we talked. He was aPhD in ecollegist for US Corus Service.
He told me that in a seventeenyears that on eight occasions he had heard

(29:19):
those wood knocks and he knew thatit was not something native or natural.
And we were talking about bones,and he said, really, if you
think about it, it's common forus to see deer bones, but we
don't see all the deer bones weshould see. There should be a lot
more. Yeah, and we don'treally see them. I mean, but
I think nature just takes care ofit. I mean, I've given whole

(29:41):
lectures for an hour long just onwhere of the bones, you know,
and I'd give another lecture, anhour long one why we don't have good
game camp pictures of them, youknow, even I have forty one game
cameras out and they're all professional reconics, expensive ones, you know, and
I'd have like a few pictures thatI would show a friend somewhere that are

(30:03):
like sketchy and not that great.But I certainly don't have anything that's clear,
you know, So you have tofind a reason why, you know,
why you're not finding bones, youknow, why you believe that that's
reasonable for their not to be bonesif there's an animal there, a creature
or whatever. But I think that, you know, once again, it
all just comes down to the scarceof the animal. They're just not very
common. And if you ask people, you know, have you ever seen

(30:26):
a bear in the woods? Imean most people haven't even seen a bear.
Or how about a maunter lion Imean, yeah, or you know,
maybe even a better thing would toconsider as a wolverine. I mean,
they're very very rare. You know, their numbers might be something comparable
to a big foot or mountain lionsin the eastern United states just getting acknowledged

(30:47):
down some of the states, there'snumbers probably rival a big Foot number,
maybe a little less than a bigFoot number. So imagine that something that's
smarter, that spent that whole lifetimejust learning where to go and where not
to go. I mean, they'reso punchy, Like when you talk to
witnesses, like they seldom they alwayshave a tree in front of them.

(31:08):
They're always around cover. It's rarefor someone to see something clearly. So
what's the theory behind not finding barebones? Because they die in caves and
shit or now you know that bearswhen they get sick, they're kind of
like an old dog there. They'reon these steep remote mountain sides. They
just crawl into these briar patches andthat's where they die. It's like animals

(31:33):
inherently know that something's going on andthey just try to get away by themselves.
And then if you go on YouTubeand you watch the different types of
animal remains being scattered, it's it'sjust days that everything is completely gone,
and then you know everything's feeding onthe bones for minerals, I mean even
deery bones. So unless it waslike a skull that someone found. I

(31:59):
seriously doubt that anyone would even pickup a bone even if they saw this
big fem or they would think that, you know, hey, it's it's
probably a cowbone or a horse bone, or you know, an elk bone
or a moose whatever it happened tobe. Yeah. Interesting. So now
what is your theory on how intelligentthey are? Well, I mean I

(32:22):
think that biologically anthropopologically, when welook at it, one of the big
indicators for brain size and brain functionbrain intelligence was when something went upright and
was bipedal. So you know whatI mean, we have to look back
then. You know, of course, most people how it works is something

(32:45):
like this, you know. Soyou know, we used to have this
thing called Barrengia, which is,you know, the Bearing Land Bridge between
Russia and Alaska, and ten totwenty thousand years ago that the iced over
and things came over and crossed overinto the United States. So prior to
that, there was nothing in theUnited States. Nothing was here, and
so ten to twenty thousand years agoeverything came over the Bearing Land Bridge or

(33:09):
some people came along the coast andboats about that same time frame and started
to spread across the United States andthey would do that chasing game territory,
that type of thing. But thenumber one, two, and three states
for big foot sidings are the PacificNorthwest States, which makes sense, right
because that's closest to where everything cameover. And then there was actually,

(33:32):
you know, a large ape.It was called gigantopithecus. There was actually
in Asia. There was millions ofthem and they were about eight feet tall,
some ten feet tall. We havebones from them, we know where
they existed, and you know,it's possible that it could be something like
that. You know, there's someproblems with it. You know, some

(33:53):
people think that it was a knucklewalker. Some people think that it was
maybe more into you know, leafmatter. It just wasn't it was a
vegetarian. It wasn't an omnivore orcarnivore. You know. Then in Africa
there was something called parenthropists, andparenthropis essentially is a bigfoot. It looks
like one about the size of one. But the problem is it had to

(34:14):
come all the way from Africa throughAsia and then across there and we just
don't have evidence that did that yet. But you know, if you think
we only have evidence of about twentypercent fossils of twenty percent of all the
things that existed. So it couldbe evidence that Parenthropis came through there and
we just don't have it because wedon't have it for most things. Yeah,

(34:37):
that's a lot of detailed information.Yeah, that's very cool. And
how long do you think a bigfootlives? Well, I mean, if
it's like most great apes, agood guess would be around fifty years.
So it would be something that didn'treproduce very often. Most of the animals
like that are reproducing maybe every fiveto seven years, you know, just

(34:57):
assuming that it would be along thesame lines, you know as the other
great apes. It's interesting like thenoise of the we call it a wood
knock or whatever, but no one'sreally sure whether, you know, there
is the reports of people seeing themhit something against a tree, but it's
hard to imagine that bigfoot's walking throughthe wood's carrying a stick, you know.
But some of the orangutangs and thegreat apes, they will mouth pop,

(35:21):
and their mouths are so large thatit's very loud. And then some
of them handclap. The mountain gorillaswill hand clap. And if you've ever
been around someone that claps really loud, you know, those people that can
do that really loud. To imaginesomething that has hands twice the size of
ours. And you know, sowhen mountain gorillas get upset with their children
and they're doing something they're not they'reirritated, you know, they're doing that.

(35:42):
So a lot of people believe thatit could be a hand clap,
or maybe it's all three you know, maybe it's a mixture of those things
when they're making that type of noise. But a lot of people and a
lot of hunters. I can rememberwhen I was with my grandfather, the
greatest woodsman I ever knew, andhim and I were in a deepollo and
this isn't the seventies in the remote, remote section of Ohio, and we're
sitting on some hillside in the dark, waiting for our coonhounds to bark.

(36:06):
And I heard that wood knock.I heard it a couple of times,
and I asked him what it was, and he said, well, the
way the hollow runs, it's kindof someone slammed the door and the sound
comes all the way up to hollowand it makes it sound funny. And
that's what he believed you know hedidn't know differently because you know, now
at him and I were talking,I say, well, Grandpa, this
is what they do. And haveyou ever been in the woods and heard

(36:27):
that noise? Or have you everfelt like something was staring at you but
you just couldn't see it, Oryou ever saw a flipprint that kind of
looked like, you know, ahuman but you know, blah blah blah.
And I'll bet you now he wouldsay, oh, there's you know,
there's all kinds of things that areout there, or you know,
maybe you should go check this oneplace. I remember something back in there.
Now, have you heard of thedog I mean, I'm sure you've

(36:52):
heard of it. Have you everlooked into the dogman phenomena? So I've
never taken a report of a dogman, But this is what I'll say.
I mean, I think that atthis time in our history, for
whatever reason, it seems like there'smore cryptids than there's ever been. And
I think that maybe we're in aweird time. You know, I don't

(37:15):
know if it's some type of geneticdefilement or you know that it's some type
of spirituality. I don't know whatit would be but I don't think that,
you know, there's not a historicaltype thing of bigfoot, you know,
being a dog man or a dogmanbeing around. I mean, I
think it's shocking when you know,you consider, you know, the Egyptians

(37:37):
had, they had what a NubisI think was the name of the you
know what I mean, It's justshocking when you look, it's like exactly
what people describe. So it makesme wonder if there's not something that we
just don't understand that maybe is around. But you know, in terms of
Bigfoot, I think that it's perfectlyuntil proven differently, a perfectly normal animal.

(37:58):
But I do believe that we're seeingother things that we haven't seen in
the past. And I mean,I wonder sometimes I think it was the
Nordic people. We're talking about thinplaces where places where heaven and earth were
just really close, that sometimes peoplewould see different things or they would experience
different things. And sometimes I havea hard time going there, just because

(38:24):
my mind is so physically based interms of evidence and whatnot. But you
know, I can accept that thereare people to see weird things. I
just don't like to throw it inthere with all the big foot stuff.
Right, And that's where it getscloudy where people are always yeah, like
the wou Factory. Oh my gosh, man, they're killing me off.

(38:45):
I mean it's it's you know,you're just doing a show, like I
did this one show for some ladyand man, she has a huge YouTube
following it. I mean, likehundreds of thousands of views on our things.
But the show before me, Iwon't name it, but you know
is falling this family and Da dada and so many things with Bigfoot.
Like I think that people have somelegitimate sighting or they legitimately find something,

(39:08):
but then everything becomes Bigfoot. Andyou know, you see that with witnesses
all the time. Like we havepeople that we call habituators, and an
habituator, as I've defined it,is someone that's either knowingly or unknowingly interacting
or feeding these animals. So it'slike people that throw scraps out, or

(39:30):
the people that you know they havea big gardens coming in or whatever it
happens to be. But you know, it's interesting, there's all these reports
and hundreds and hundreds of them acrossthe nation, people making these claims,
but we yet to get one pieceof evidence from the people not one.
And it's almost like in some casesthat they don't really care whether people believe

(39:51):
that what they're seeing. They comealmost protective of the animal, just like
now I'm saying this, and youknow I do. I try to videos
for TikTok and one insta maybe Idon't know, a couple times a week
or something. And the other dayI did one and I was talking about
something along those lines, and Ialways say, if they exist, even
though I believe they exist, butyou know, then you'll have all these

(40:13):
people in this thread saying, wow, you know, if you've seen one,
you'd know they exist. And theproblem is it's not a human,
it's a spirit and you need todo bow down or whatever it is that
you need to do, you knowwhat I mean, Like, it's hard
to have this conversation because today withthe Internet, I mean, you have
all these people coming out of theseweird places that I mean, not only

(40:34):
are they I mean Bigfoot's it's controversial, you know what I mean, Like
it legitimately will take a lot ofevidence to prove something like that, probably
a body or a piece of one. But you have all these people that
are just skipping that whole thing,and just because they believe something, they're
making that assumption and they're they're throwingall that other stuff in there, and
it's you know a lot of thebigfoot guys disappear after a few years.

(40:58):
They become so frustrated by you know, just the novelty of it all.
And then in the same way,I mean, it's it's hard to get
you know, when we were talkingearlier about the legitimate reports. Last night,
I was talking to this professor fromNC State and they're getting ready to
so shortly do some legitimate DNA studiesthe big foot stuff, and we're talking

(41:20):
about, you know, how we'regoing to go about collecting samples where we're
going to get him from and tryingto vet them in that type of thing.
And that's what him and I weretalking about, is that one,
you know, just trying to notpick up a piece of hair off the
fence and think it's a big footbecause you know, you think there's big
foot in that area and used upall the money for a study. But
in the past, the scientific communityhasn't been very good about it. I

(41:44):
mean, there was this guy that'sOxford scientists named Brian Sykes and they had
a TV show he passed away andwhere he did the studying this DNA from
you know, these samples that camein and they didn't find anything, you
know, or some bear or somethingthat they found somewhere that was unusual or
whatever. But the frustrating thing wasthere was tons of US. I shouldn't
say tons, but a lot ofUS gave samples, and they didn't test

(42:07):
all the samples and then they justdestroyed them. And then you know,
I know of another case where therewas a researcher in California and he had
these witnesses that this big foot wascoming into their house all the time and
they were seeing it often while hadstepped up when their porch, and when
it raised up, it broke theglass of a light that was up there

(42:28):
and it bled and they were ableto collect that blood and that guy you
know, to send it in tobe tested DNA wise when it came back
and said human, and that guyjust quit. He's like, I'm just
done, you know, because we'rejust not testing the sequencing of the DNA
out far enough. You know,an earthworm is sixty percent human and so

(42:50):
you know, an ape is ninetyeight point nine percent human, So you
know this is gonna be something alot closer. So we had to put
that money out there to really beable to get out there farther. I
mean there's new tech technologies like EDand A is compelling. You know where
you can in theory. They're usingit now in waterways to test if we
have invasive species in there. Youcan just take a dip of the water,

(43:10):
you test it, and it tellsyou everything that's in there. Wow.
But it's great about species that weknow of, like if snake had
fish or someplace they're not supposed tobe. But it's not great. It's
showing you something that hasn't been identified. Yeah, but you know, in
a few years that technology is probablygoing to evolve and change. And you

(43:32):
know, the way it's been forthe last fifteen years, even people that
had hair samples, there really wasn'ta place to get a hair sample tested.
I mean, there's a lot ofus that have stereo and compound microscopes
that we're looking at all the hairsamples. There's types that have been established
that you know, we're collecting theones that we think are legitimate. But

(43:53):
there's been studies come up twice nowthat people gave samples too, and one
kind of came out being bogus interms of the study itself. And then
the other one was the psych skythat didn't even really test all the samples.
So the Bigfoot community has gotten where, you know, they don't trust
the scientific community that much. Yeah, switching gears a little bit here.

(44:19):
But is it true that Native Americansslash First Nation people, which I guess
is what they call them in Canada. Yeah, for a lot of them,
the fact that there is Sasquatch orBigfoot is like a foregone conclusion.
It's not even a big deal.Yeah, yeah, I mean there's there's

(44:42):
hundreds literally of names that the NativeAmericans and the First American people's have for
Bigfoot or Sasquatch. In Appalachia,there was in my part you say,
Ohio, West Virginia, Kentucky,Tennessee, there was five different tribes.
Three of the tribes had names forbigot. I mean, it was and
it is accepted that that's part ofpart of nature, just like any other

(45:07):
animal going back, going back hundredsof years. So if you ever,
if you ever came like face toFacebook one, would you would you shoot
it or what would you do?No, I mean I would never shoot
one unless I didn't have a chance. You know, I actually think that
I had a brief sighting a coupleof years ago. You know. I

(45:27):
keep a calendar of all the sightingsthat people have that I think are legitimate.
There's different Like one of my friendshere and West in Ohio, he's
a family doctor. He's doing longduration recording. Where he has these recorders
is turn on at night at sixin the evening and they turn off at
six in the morning, and herecords the sounds. They last about six

(45:51):
weeks, and then he'll go intothese different places, pull them out,
and then put them on software andanalyze the sounds. And he'll call me
and say, hey, you know, in this one particular place, I
heard a woodknock or hood to howor whatever it was he heard, you
know, and give me the date, place and time, and I just
keep adding it to the calendar.And so I had went into this one

(46:12):
park because two gentlemen had had aclear sighting two years before the same week.
And so I'm not saying that they'renecessarily at the same place at the
same time, but to me,it seems like a reasonable thing to be
there. If you're going to beanywhere, you might as well be there.
And it rained all night, andso when I got out, you
know, I had seen there wasno tracks there, nobody had been there,

(46:35):
and it was about three miles youknow, from another location for someone
to be in. And so Iwas walking up the hill and my lab
Shade is with me all the time, and he's always awful Leah. She's
about twenty feet in front of me, and I carry a leash across my
shoulders just in case, you know, I would see something or whatever,
well, or see somebody that mightbe afraid of a dog. Well,

(46:55):
I just glanced to my right andI in my mind I said, hiker.
I saw it was buff collared allthe way up and down, and
that it looked to me like itha had you know, shoulder, you
know type role you know where thehikers have up here. And so as
soon as I saw it, thenI went down on one knee and I

(47:19):
called Shade and I'm like, hey, man, come here, and you
know, he runs right up tome and I clicked him on weird if
I walking in five seconds. Andwhen I was doing that, I just
realized that it was off trail,and when it was off trail, excuse
me, I'm stuffing outside. Mymother had just came back, and and

(47:42):
when I stepped I just ran overthere because it was right on a ridge
and I could see forever. Iwas suspicious and there was nothing there and
I couldn't see anything. But that'sone of the things I try to remind
myself all the time in the woods, is like, don't assume anything today,
like, because our brain wants tocategory something as soon as we see
it immediately what it he is instantly, and you know, it's like I

(48:06):
was in this one place last yearor sometime and I heard this loud break
or tree break or whatever, andin my mind, I said, out
loud, that's too loud to besomething, and I just kind of kept
walking. I mean, it wasn'ta hundred feet from me over in the
brush. But later I was thinking, why wouldn't you just walk over there
and look? I mean, youknow, why not, you know,

(48:28):
but for whatever reason. I mean, when you've been in the woods the
whole your whole life, it's hardto make yourself you know, you just
naturally assume things. So it's reallyyou know, I really challenge myself to
try not to do that. Yeah, yeah, you categorize it and then
move on with your life. Likeyeah, and we do it all day,
right, I mean, it's justnot in the woods. I mean

(48:49):
all of us do it, whetheryou know, we see a shape or
we see we hear a noise orwhatever. You know, it's just part
of the basic human experience. Yeah. With some of the sightings and some
of the experiences that you take inand you investigate, you know how many
of those people are highly cognizant ofbigfoot and you know the whole thing,

(49:15):
whether it's podcasts or TV or whatever, and you think maybe have that whole
tunnel vision where you know, whenyou're looking for something, you see it
everywhere you go, and so they'reinterpreting things and everything they see as I
think that may have been a bigfoot versus somebody who may not have even

(49:37):
had bigfoot on their radar and they'relike, I saw a big foot,
you know what I mean. Yeah, Yeah, So I would say that
in general, while I know thosepeople that you're talking about, and I
hear their stories because you know,they're largely spread across the internet or whatever,
that most of the people I haveare people that didn't really think about

(50:00):
big Foot until they had something happen. And for instance, like last fall,
there was this guy. He's acounselor in the school. You know,
he's a bright guys, thirty somethingyears old. He's fit, he's
in shape. He lives in thesteep coal filled mountains to the southern West
Virginia. Though when you're down there, I mean, I mean it's so
steep down there, man. Youjust look at these hills and you're just

(50:22):
like, this is crazy. Imean, how did these trees grow?
And I mean you're walking on themand you take pictures because you want to
show social media how steep it is, and you look at the picture and
just doesn't do it justice. It'scrazy. And so this guy, like
you know, in Appalachian people huntgin saying a lot. And you know,
most people I would say that ifyou were really a big gin saying

(50:44):
hunter, you know, maybe youwould get like, I don't know,
ten or twenty thousand dollars worth thegin saying in a year. You'd be
a pretty serious guy to get this. Well, this guy, on two
different occasions it's gotten ten thousand dollarsin one weekend. He's looking on map
and going to the most remote placesthat no one else can get to.
They can't get their four wheelers inthere. There's just no way to get

(51:07):
it except for walking. And hewas walking and he's and he's a big
hunter. He's killed five bears,he's killed you know, who knows how
many deer. He hunts everything.And you know he's a gym sanger too.
Well. Him and a steps on, which is thirteen. They walk
back in this place. It's afour hour walk for them to get there.
And he said, when they weredropping into this hollow, and he

(51:29):
said, this hollow is like soremote that it hasn't been timbered recently,
big thick, dark trees. Andhe said, I thought I heard something
laugh at me. And he's like, I paused, and I didn't hear
anything. He said, then Idropped over that hill a little bit and
I heard it again. It waslike a laughing And he said, then
we looked down there and it's aboutone hundred yards away. Then there was

(51:49):
a flat and you know, andfor the people that aren't don't live in
mountains areas, you know, youhave a hollow or a hollow at the
bottom. And then as you're goingup the mountains, every so often you'll
have a flat place, and thenyou have another flat place, and you
may have two or five of them, depending upon the steepness and the duration
of the mountain before you get upthere, and we call those flats.
Well, it was on that flatto blow him, and he said that

(52:12):
it was you know, it wasabout six or seven vitall, and it
was dark hair, and it wascovered in fur, and it was pulling
trees toward him, breaking them,and you know, he watched it for
a minute or whatever, and itwas doing this, and eventually it walked
off and kind of went up thesill, and he told his steps saying,
he's like, come on, Iwant to go down there and look.
And you know, of course,like everybody's wearing a pistol and stuff.

(52:34):
And so he went down there,and you should just looking at those
trees trying to figure out, youknow, how big they were and what
the deal was. And then hesaid that a big rock roll down the
hill about the size of a bowlingball, not at them, but just
kind of, you know, nearthem, And he said he looked up
and he could see it sitting upthere by a stump up above him,
and he said, you know,he walked out. Well, you know,

(52:54):
he got consumed with bigfoot and lookingat these maps and sitting me place
and he's like, this would bea perfect place for one. And I
told him, I'm like, listen, man, there's many many more perfect
places for a bigfoot than there arebigfoot. They're just not very common.
They're not around. And I wouldhear from him every day or every couple
days, asking me questions. Butafter a couple of months, you know,

(53:15):
he just kind of disappeared. Becauseyou never really run into him again.
It's hard for it to happen.And you know, and then last
year in July, there was aguy that was driving on some road right
outside Charleston, I mean maybe aten minute drive from the state capitol.
And he's with his wife, he'swith his mother. It's daytime. They

(53:35):
come around a curve, they seea big foot standing there and you know,
it kind of walks over the hill. Well, they stay there for
a second. Well, then hegets out and looks and sees a footprint.
So he goes and they go tohome depot or lows and they get
plaster Paris and he makes a castof it. Well then one way or
another, he gets my name andcalls me and him and I talk and
we meet up, and we metup. I think it was like six

(53:59):
days later or some thing. Andwhen I got there, there was another
fresh track and I cast it.But there was a there were tracks there
because you know, there were cliffsrunning for you know, a half mile
or so, and this was thefirst location that something could cross, you
know, without having to go overa cliff or something, you know,
so all the animals were doing it. I dropped a couple of game cameras

(54:21):
there and it was funny, youknow, guys like I'm gonna do a
started a YouTube channel. I'm gonnago around with my camper and I'm going
to interview people. And it waslike that for I don't know a couple
of months. But there's just notpeople around, you know, and you're
just not able to come up withevidence. But because somebody did that one
time and it's so real to them, then they're enthralled with it, enthused

(54:43):
about it, and I'm sure they'repassionate about it. But I mean,
I think a lot of people thinkthey're interested in bigfoot till they meet me
and find out that I probably spendforty hours a week legitimately one big foot
stuff. And you know, I'min the woods and awful lot. Now
do you have a hard stop atseven forty five? Started to cut you
off? Oh now, let's youknow, let's we can go a little

(55:06):
farther than that. Okay, cool. So on that subject. In your
book, The Appalachian Bigfoot, youdedicate a lot of the chapters to kind
of describing the process you go throughwhen you go out what is commonly referred
to as squatching. And I meanit sounds like a lot of work,
and you know, a lot ofdetail. It's not just going out in

(55:30):
the woods and hanging out and makinga camp and then staring into the woods
or putting on you know, whateveryou think of them. You know,
I watched Todd Standings movie and soto me, squatching was was camping and
putting on night vision goggles. Andit was very much like that, and

(55:52):
what you do is very much moremethodical and yeah, you know, etc.
Etc. I think the point thatI was trying to make to people
is is there's let's say that there'sa thousand or two thousand or five thousand,
and what the number would be peoplethat are They say they're into bigfoot
and they're doing research, and sofor the great majority of them, that
means they're sitting around the campfire.They may take some walks at night and

(56:16):
they're making some noises and that's whatthey're doing, and that's bigfoot research.
But you know, I'm trying totell people that like and explain to them
from a master naturalist perspective or somebodythat's hunted their whole life and trapped and
everything else, that as soon asyou walk into the woods, everything announces
your presence in the woods from theanimals and the birds that are there.

(56:37):
And you know, I try toexplain to people that you know, like
in winter in West Virginia Appalachian andwe may have thirty different birds to stick
around for the winter, and saya cardinal, you know, their home
range is about the size of afootball field, or maybe a blue jay
is two football fields. But assoon as I walk into their territory,
you know, they're alarming. Wehear it so much that we don't think

(57:00):
anything of it, But if youpay attention, you'll start to notice,
and now we're finding in nature.You know, it's called bird language that
scientists naturalists are recognizing that other animalsare using those as well. Bobcats,
coyotes, even deer recognize certain typesof birds, and they may go up

(57:20):
on a hill and say that they'relaying there so that the winds in their
favor. They're trying to watch onedirection the winds blowing them, but they're
listening for those same birds too,So you need to consider that type of
stuff when you're going into the woods, like, you know, how can
I get to a certain place likesave like today it was real windy here
where we were as warm and windy, Well, today I was moving quickly

(57:42):
through the woods because nothing could hearme, right, it's so loud.
But other days when it's really quiet, I'm not even worried about that,
So I'm walking quickly on those daysbecause I'm not going to walk up on
something. But on days where it'srainy or it's real quiet, maybe it's
rained for a couple of days,or is there snow in the ground,
well then I might go into youknow, I might call it like the

(58:04):
death creep, where I'm creeping veryslowly along when I get to certain places
because I'm thinking, you know,there might be something that I could bump
into. But I mean I thinkabout this all the time, and probably
about I don't know, two yearsago, I was up on top of
this mountain and I was, youknow, like so many places in West
Virginia, I was like, Icould see for miles and miles. I'm

(58:25):
thinking, what are the odds ofme being in the right freaking place and
this freaking counting when there's probably onefamily group within twenty five miles of me.
I mean, the odds are justtiny. So you know, I
started my you know, I alreadyhad a social presence, say on Twitter
and on Facebook, but I starteda web page trying to find those people

(58:46):
that actually have them come visiting theirhouse, that they're bugging them, that
they're trying to steal their chickens,or you know, they just see them
or whatever happens to be, becauseI'm trying to skip all those steps of
getting lucky and just be able tohave someone else finding I thought the same
thing the other day. I dida video and I put it on TikTok.
I'm like, here, I amman I drove through five creeks,

(59:07):
the creek five times to get toa place to park. Then I'm walking
off trail. I'm three miles upon top of some mountain. I'm looking
around. I'm like, I'm Isupposed to find a big foot? I
mean, and I mean, whatam I going to see? You know,
Like I'm carrying a GoPro all thetime, So you know, after
I had that first experience, Ialways have one now all the time,
one all the time because I thinkif we could get three or four seconds

(59:30):
of video that's fairly close, itwould compel a lot of people. Now
do you review all of the videosthat end up on YouTube from people who
say they abbot founder is? Probablymost of them are fake. It's insane,
man. I Mean, there's somethat I believe that are a legitimate
footage, like the Freeman footage.You know there was out of the nineteen

(59:51):
seventies and the Blue Mountains. Itwas a little controversial. But there's actually
a book that just came out inthe last couple of months and I was
one of the contributing editors to it, and I believe it to be legitimate.
There's some other ones I find reallycompelling. There's one in Mississippi that
I like. There's tons that arecompelling, but without knowing the people,
you just don't know. Because there'speople that there's that one show called Paranormal

(01:00:15):
Caught on Camera or something like that. And one of my friends that told
me that there's some guy in Ohiothat he's he takes great pride that he's
gotten on the show two times.You know, he's trying to find ways
to get on there. You know, that's kind of how he gets his
excitement going. So you know,you just can't say anything, and you
can't you know, when you seesomeone shows you a footprint cast or something,
you just have to be careful aboutwhat you're saying because you know,

(01:00:38):
you just don't know whether or notsomeone's put it. Now in terms of
the overall thing, you know,we have hundreds of footprint casts that have
been cast. You know, I'msure thousands and thousands have been found that
weren't cast because a lot of thetime people just weren't carrying casting materials.
But I think it's interesting, youknow, when we talk about I don't

(01:01:00):
know if you know what Bergman's ruleis, but it's a biological rule that
essentially says that the closer to theequator, the smaller the animal. So
a deer, say in Florida,is smaller than a deer in Canada,
and so forth and so on.So there's a lot of suggestion that when
we're taking the average size of thecast that we have, although we don't
have a very large sample size becauseit's just in the hundreds, it follows

(01:01:22):
the rule that the average size ofthe animal is smaller down south than it
is in the north, you know, which is consistent scientifically with some type
of new species. And so it'shard to believe that all the people that
would be faking things or maybe fakingthings are taking that into considerations, saying,
oh, we're in Florida, youknow, on average we should have

(01:01:42):
a twelve inch cast instead of inBritish Columbia. We need to make sure
it's fourteen point seven five inches orwhatever happens to be. Not to mention,
I mean some of the places thatyou find casts or you know,
beds that I found that don't resembleanything that's natural in nature. I mean
you're saying, are in places thatyou're thinking this is crazy? I mean,

(01:02:04):
you know, for instance, likehere on my farm, there's this
thick place that I mean, it'shard to get into, and it's probably
several acres in the middle of myfarm. Of course, my farma joins
a park. It doesn't allow huntingthat several thousand acres. Then my farm
is one hundred and fifty acres andit's posted heavily, so no one's in
here. And my uncle and Iwere looking for a culvert that used to

(01:02:24):
be there, and we're walking alongand I see this nest and I'm like,
hey, look at this, andhe's like what And I'm like,
look at these you know, thesebranches were about the size of your wrist,
but they were all broke off,they were twisted off. You know,
it wasn't a tool, but youknow, he's a lifelong hunter,
but it wasn't a deer or aturkey or anything like that. So he

(01:02:46):
just didn't even pay any attention anddidn't even notice. But you know what
I mean, for me, Iwas like, how many people do that?
And then for instance, like lastyear at the Ohio Bigfoot Conference,
which is the large just conference inthe world. You know, this year
it's in May, there's six thousandpeople there during the course of a weekend,

(01:03:07):
and when I was walking out,I noticed that there's all these buzzards.
You know, this parks it's theSalt Fork State Park. That park
is probably one of the most notoriousplaces in the whole United States for Bigfoot
sightings. And you know, youknow that they're coming in, they're dive
or dumpster diving and doing all thestuff. Well, I wondered, and
the course of the weekend and Iwatched, I never saw anybody walk down
there to see what was dead.Nobody. And this is with six thousand

(01:03:30):
people interested in bigfoot. You wouldthink that one or two people would say,
well, I just better make sure, yeah, you know, and
walk down here. So you know, that's what I'll do. If I'm
in the woods and if I seebuzzards, I mean it's probably nothing,
but I'm still gonna go look becauseyou know, at some point something will
happen. I mean, I've interviewedthree different hunters that had clear shots that

(01:03:52):
they could have taken and they didnot shoot. But at some point someone
will shoot one or a tropical hitone. In history, it's happened,
but you know it'll happen, andyou know, or maybe it'll be a
dashcam video. A lot of us, for they live in different states,
you know, are carrying dashcam videosall the time on our vehicles, and

(01:04:14):
you know, I think that it'sjust a matter of time before you know,
it's accepted or acknowledged. So doyou first of all, well a
two part question. Do you thinkthe Patty film is real? And therefore
it's still the best footage we have? Obviously, I don't think there's any
question in my mind that the Pattyfilm is real. It's funny because people
have an opinion, you know,they just watched the film. They're like,

(01:04:36):
ah, but there's you know,there's legitimately been a couple of different
books written about the Patty Film.You know, probably the best one was
called When Harry Met Patty, andthat was done by Bill Munns, which
is a makeup artist in California.He's been there for decades, him going
through and explaining why they couldn't makeit, And I mean, you know,

(01:04:58):
it's three hundred page long book.And then you know, if people
like podcast, I'm trying to thinkof the one. I'll have to tell
you later what it's called. Butthey have a seven part series one,
the Paterson Gimblin film. It wasseven hours long. Yeah, it's exhaustive
and its research, but people wouldjust look at it and say, da

(01:05:19):
da da da da. You know, whatever it happens to be. I
mean, I've had breakfast many timeswith Bob Gimlin. You know, the
guy that shot the film, RogerPatterson, died of Lompoma a couple of
years after that happened. The othergentleman is around ninety right now and still
goes around the country and speaks andstuff and a kind nice gentleman. And

(01:05:39):
you know, if you've met himin person, you you just would have
trouble believing that it was anything beyondit getting getting past all the fact that
you know, well Dizzey and allthe other people said they couldn't produce anything
like that at that time. It'shard to imagine that a rodeo cowboy that's
bankrupt, you know, it's goingto produce something like that. Well,
and also I always point to thefact that it has rests. And if

(01:06:01):
you are like you said, youknow, a cowboy who said decides one
day I'm gonna make a bigfoot filmto try to get famous, you probably
aren't going to have that thought.Let's do one that's a female with breasts.
I mean that just I wouldn't havethought that I would have made a
big foot as a man, whichis what I think of, right,

(01:06:23):
Yeah, anyway, I mean that'sthat's part of the problem in general,
right, was that there's all thesewitnesses that keep coming out thousands more a
year. You know, people areseeing something, and you know, a
ninety percent of them may have itwrong and didn't see what they thought they
saw, but people are still seeingsomething. And then you know, like
if we talked to law enforcement officersor officers as the court, they would

(01:06:45):
say, well, you know,witness testimony is notoriously sketchy. But I
think that what I have found isthat people aren't very good at estimating distance,
and they aren't very good at estimatingheight. But people should be perfectly
capable of recognizing if they see somethingin the open in daylight, whether it's
human or non human, you know, like assuming that someone's not dressing up

(01:07:09):
in a costume. Right, andin many of these cases, you know,
if you want to talk once againto Action Jackson, that renowned park
ranger, I mean, are you'regoing to tell him what he saw.
He's on a horseback twenty two milesback away from the nearest trail, but
you know he didn't see that,right, you know, it's just not
reasonable. Or the Native Americans thatyou know have accepted it and have sightings

(01:07:30):
going back, you know, hundredsand hundreds of years. I think that
once again, that that's the reasonwhy I write the first book is because
I thought that I didn't like theway that the evidence was organized, and
it just made sense to me ifsomeone would just lay it out in a
cognizant manner that at the end ofthe book that most people would say,

(01:07:53):
you know, I don't know,but someone should probably look at it.
Yeah, you know, it seemsreasonable enough. And you know, I
think that most people. People alwaysask me all the time. I know,
one time on one of the TVshows, they ask, you know,
you see patients for a living,and you're very busy, like what
do people think about you know thatyou're interested in Bigfoot and you know,

(01:08:15):
and I always say, well,it's funny because you know, generally my
patients know me, right, andthey know that I don't do things I
wouldn't spend so much time and efforton something that wasn't reasonable, and they
know that I'm perfectly reasonable. SoI think that most of them enjoy it.
Most of them think that it's funthat I do that maybe they're a

(01:08:35):
little proud to know somebody that's interestedin it. I found that most people
are curious about it. You know, I haven't had that many people that,
you know, at least face toface, would tell me that they
didn't believe that something existed, becauseyou know, if you were, you
were going to intellectually debate them ina conversation. I mean, you just

(01:08:56):
know so much more about it.I mean a couple of times, you
know, I've been on TV showsto debate or not TV shows, but
radio shows to debate anthropologists or whatever. But the reality is, I mean
there's you know, their objections arestill things that you know, the rest
of us work past twenty years ago. They're just not interested. They don't
really know, and they aren't keepingup with it. You know, they
believe that something couldn't exist, becausesomething couldn't exist, you know. But

(01:09:18):
the problem with that when they firstthought that was, you know, we
used to believe that, like youknow, you had home or erect us,
which changed into this, which changedinto chromagnum man, which eventually two
or three times later turned into thisthing. And only one thing could occupy
an area at a given time,right, you know. So, but

(01:09:39):
what we found out now, justin saying the last ten years, well,
all those things existed at the sametime. Largely it wasn't a line,
you know, it was a bush. And so the main objections that
people established long ago really don't holdwater anymore. And frankly, from what
I'm being told in the scientific community, many of the younger scientists are very

(01:10:01):
open to the idea of Bigfoot.But it's just the stodgy old guys.
They're still left in those department heads, and I think in the next ten
years we'll see most of those retireand move along. Well that's good because
it would be nice to have moreconcerted effort among organized I guess if you
want to call it, scientists withmoney behind it, yeah, scientifically getting

(01:10:26):
it because I want I mean,I want of those guys. I want
it to be real, but Iwant evidence too. I want to see
something. Yeah, you know whatI mean, But I am well,
just think about it, huh.I mean, so what happens if one
gets hit or whatever happens to me, or maybe we get a good DNA
sample that satisfies everybody, I meanall at once. Instead of having all

(01:10:46):
the weekend warriors, you have scientiststhat will go into places that no one
else is able to go into.Like there's out west, they have water
sheds that maybe you're twenty or thirtythousand acres. They're patrolled by rangers.
No one's allowed to go in therebecause you know it's protected. Well,
all of a sudden, you'll havea scientist in there with the very best
technology. He's using the newest droneswith clear thermal imaging and the very best

(01:11:14):
DNA tools that they have out there, and they're staying there for months.
I mean think about like remember her, like going after the chimpanzees. Unfortunately
we're losing you. I don't knowif you're getting out of your WiFi range.

(01:11:40):
Okay, let me walk over here. Sorry, that's right. I
was pasting in an area where therewas a little more. We didn't hear
it, but I think maybe wereyou talking about Jane Goodall? Yeah,
so Jane Goodall, you know,when she was interested in the chimpanzees.
I don't remember the exact number,but there were certainly hundreds of thousands of
them, and it took her sixmonths to get in sight of them.

(01:12:03):
Of something that's while it's bright,it's not exceptionally bright. It's not human
bright or just below human bright.And you know, so I think that
people just don't really have an ideaof what it all entails, you know,
to be able to get close andbe able to get something like this.
Yeah, all right, So beforewe wrap up, I do want

(01:12:25):
to ask you about the conspiracy theorythat the government I'll put that in quotes,
knows about Bigfoot or sasquatch and theyare covering up the fact that they're
real. For some I've never quiteunderstood what the reason of covering it up
would be. But yeah, that'sa theory out there. What do you

(01:12:46):
say about that? You know,I talk about this a lot. I
don't believe that there's a widespread,concerted effort to hide it from the public.
And the reason why is because whenyou've treat it as many patients as
I have, I mean, peoplejust cannot keep secrets, man, They
just tell stuff, and something likethat would have to be involved a lot

(01:13:10):
of people, and I just havea hard time imagining that. Now.
I believe for sure that there's individuals, there's park rangers that have been told
not to talk about things and notto investigate things. So I think that
in certain areas or certain parks,you know, it might be because of
someone that they're they're not they're doingthat. But I don't think. I
don't believe there's a widespread conspiracy.Yeah, I agree with you one hundred

(01:13:34):
percent on our ability to keep secretsor something like that very difficult. So
to wrap up, we do thisthing that we call words of wisdom,
and we go around the table.I think your words of wisdom, I
mean you can do a multi partbut one of the words of wisdom I'd
love to hear about is your guideto longevity and staying healthy and and whatnot.

(01:14:00):
Okay, So for me with mypatients, I always talk about in
my mind it's a circle. Andso like there's certain vitamins that everybody should
be taking. So for me,it would be like they should be taking
a quality multi that's probably a foodproduct. They should be taking some K,
they should be taking some D,they should be taking some fish oil.

(01:14:21):
There should be taking some magnesiums.That's five things. That's enough.
Now I probably take fifty, right, but for my patients, they're not
gonna take fifty, So I'm liketo close your circle. You know,
you're you're seeing a cairo every nowand then, like it's good for You're
seeing a massage therapist every now andthen. You're seeing your family doctor every
now and then. You're getting enoughrest, you're drinking enough good water,

(01:14:42):
you are trying to avoid stress.You're getting exercise each day, you know,
ten thousand steps plus lifting weights acouple of times a week. You're
taking those vitamins, and when youdo all that, your circle is closed
and it's a complete. So onceyour circle is closed, if you want
to take fifty other vitamins and onethat's weird, that's like then this Whalen
fish gut and Terrick vitamin or something. You know, I would probably take

(01:15:04):
something weird like that personally, butas long as it was okay, But
my circle's closed, so I cando it right. But you can't be
the person that is taking all thisstuff or taking all these pills. But
you don't do all the other stuffright, It just doesn't make sense and
it doesn't matter, and I justdon't see a purpose in it. So
like, you know, like mybrother in law asked me about I don't

(01:15:28):
even remember what it was. Itwas some herb boss whale or something that,
you know, I don't even rememberthe which one for getting rid of
inflammation. And so I'm asking him, you know, hey, I'm a
sugar you eat man, you know, because you can't out diet, you
can't out till you can't out herba poor diet. And so I think
that Americans, you know, we'rereally bad about wanting to skip all the

(01:15:50):
hard stuff and just get to thegood stuff. And we want our bodies
to look good and we want toage, graceflee, but we don't want
to do what it takes. AndI always tell my young dogs, you
know, patients want to feel gooddoing what they want to do. So
you know, they don't want meto say, hey, listen, you
know you can't sugar. You gotloose weight. You know you gotta suck

(01:16:11):
it up. You mean, giveme a break here. You're killing me.
And you know they know me fora long time, so to the
laugh when I'm saying it. Butthey know I'm serious, so they don't
want to do all those things thatyou know, you can walk in a
room and ask a patient. They'recomplaining about how they feel, and I'm
like, in the last five years, can you tell me anything that you've
done for your body? Just namesomething for me something. And in Ohio,

(01:16:33):
West Virginia, rest of Appalachia,seventy five percent of the people have
nothing. They have nothing that theycan tell you that they have done for
your body. Yeah, I mean, that's that's the problem I think with
our modern medicine is you go tothe doctor and you know they'll never they'll
never talk about lifestyle changes. They'lljust immediately try to prescribe you and prescribe

(01:16:57):
which yeah, you know some ofthem like I want to eat my double
cheeseburger and I want to drink mybeer, so you know, no,
right, yeah, I mean,you know it's just part of you know,
I mean, do it every nowand then this school, or have
your dessert every now and then.But you know I always do on Facebook.
You know, they can find meon there, you know as Russ
Jones or I have a West Virginiabig Foot page that you know, I

(01:17:20):
keep up with all the new stuffI just started and all long ago,
and it's already up to seventeen hundredpeople that I'll show new tracks or new
reports and different things like that.But I mean, people are just they're
so funny, you know, they'rejust not interested in anything that's really hard.
And I wish it was different.It's just not the case that it

(01:17:43):
is. Yeah, I understood,Bob your words of wisdom. My words
of wisdom are, if you've neverhad a Pepperoni roal from West Virginia,
order one sent to your house whereyou're from, like up and around Fairmont.
There's some renowned area up there thatthey have this. But but I
can't remember the name of the familyor whatever. But I mean, you
go to West Virginia. At ourgas stations, they have Pepperoni rolls,

(01:18:05):
right, That's where I usually endup buying them. I think there's one.
There's one near Morgantown. It's likea it's a gas station, but
it's called like something market and they'vewon for like the last four years.
So I'm very interested in this phenomenonwhere the best pizza in the in the
US is only in New York.In my opinion, the best steak and

(01:18:29):
cheese is only in Philly, andeven if you get a Philly cheese steak
outside of that, it's never thesame. And now the best pepperoni rolls
is in West Virginia. Yeah,so what is it? How is this
even possible? Like? Why can'tI take that and recreate that recipe here?
You know what I mean? Well, yeah, they don't part of
yeah, the whole thing going toWest Virginia and riding through the hills and
then pulling into a gas station,and you know, the culture of it.

(01:18:56):
I was gonna say, you know, maybe it's a combination of saying
New York when you get New Yorkstyle pizza, the water that they're using
that comes through their pipes is oldand rusty and a little bit nasty,
and you know, you just neverknow what goes into it. And they
say that about New York bagels too, Is that right? Yeah? Yeah?
Okay, all right, all right. My words of wisdom, I

(01:19:16):
have two part words of wisdom.Number one, If you think you know
about something like bigfoot, and youdismiss it out right, but you've never
even looked into it, what areyou doing? Like, give it a
chance, because you haven't even lookedat it at all, So how can
you dismiss it? That? Doesthat make any sense? Bob? They

(01:19:38):
watched the Patty film for like thirtyseconds. Ipees next. Yeah, So
when somebody comes to you and saysI'm interested in bigfoot, you know,
don't dismiss it. Look into ita little bit. Second part of my
words of wisdom. Go find doctorRussell Jones on Twitter at Bigfoot Underscore Doc.

(01:19:58):
Go buy his books on Amazon,The Appalachian Bigfoot and Tracking the Stoneman,
West Virginia's big Foot um and wewill link if you want to send
me your Facebook page, my websiteas your website dot dot com the Bigfoot
dot dot com. Is there alink to your podcast on there linked to
the podcast and linked to the booksas well. Podcast is wide open research.

(01:20:20):
We want to thank you so much. Okay, awesome, We want
to thank you so much for thankscoming on and uh, we'll reach out,
especially when we come across a YouTubevideo of a supposed bigfoot, Okay,
and we debate those on here everyonce in a while, I'll send
it to you and ask you whatyou think. Okay, I'll give you

(01:20:41):
a next furt opinion. You appreciateit. Thanks for coming on. Okay,
hey, thanks so much. Mym m m m m m m

(01:22:47):
m m m you and you andyou and

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