Chris Spencer of the Olympic Project (Remastered)

0:02 I heard heavy movement around the camp and it was just like it wasn't constant, it was just ever so often it sounded something big was moving up by where my jeep was parked, and it would go quiet, and I'm just like, am I hearing things? And I laid down and I was just starting to fall asleep again, and something grabbed the tent those tarps and pulled on those tarps, and I just sat straight up and screamed. Either you're listening to the Big Fort Society podcast and I'm Jeremiah Virons. Every week I talk to individuals who have experienced sasquatch in some way or another, so you won't want to miss an episode. Make sure you're subscribed on the platform that you're listening to, and share this episode where the friend does not cost a thing, and it helps the show continuing to grow. If you'd like to hear Bigfoot Society episodes early in ad free, you can do so by becoming a Patreon supporter or YouTube channel member. Links to those are in the show notes in Paid for Society. I've taken far too much of your time so far, so let's get on with the show. This time, We've got

1:41 mister Chris Spencer with me from the Olympic Project. How's it going, Chris good? How are you Gemara doing well? Man? I've been wanting to talk to you for quite a long time, so I'm pumped to have you on. In case we've got people that are not familiar with Chris, I'm going to go ahead and talk a little bit about your bio before we get into it here. Chris Spencer has been investigating and researching the subject of sasquatch since twenty fifteen. The Washington State native, Chris has had an interest in the subject his whole life, after an anthropology class with doctor Grover Krantz which, Oh my goodness in the spring of nineteen ninety two. He's always approached the subject from a science based perspective. Chris followed the subject loosely until he and his son had a disturbing experience in twenty thirteen. At that point, he began investigating and actively searching for evidence of the target subjects being sasquatch.

2:38 In twenty fifteen, he began audio recording and areas of interest and is now a member of the Olympic Project, which hopefully all listeners to this and know what the Olympic project is. I'll try to remember to put some links so you can watch that great STM documentary. Of course, Chris, you're dropping some crity stuff in that bio. Is there anything else that the audience would want to know? Or should that be good? Do you think pretty good? Like every everybody else that's in the subject found my interest starting with the In Search of film that came out in the seventies. I must have been about six or seven, but shortly after watching that, and I remember my dad watching that film and saying, oh, that's a guy in a suit and this and that. And it wasn't long after that we had a cabin in Packwood, Washington, Okay. And it was I want to say it was late spring. Like I said, I was like six or seven.

3:36 But me and my dad and my little sister went up to cut some wood for the cabin. And there was a fresh clearcut that you could see down into the valley and see Packwood the town. And Dad wanted to take some pictures and he had one of them little instant camera things and he was taking pictures and I'd found these tracks along the side of the road in the mud in the mud and slushy snow, and they're barefoot print tracks. I don't remember the details to them, but they're really big. And I remember telling my dad, Hey, Dad, look at this bigfoot. And what I do remember specifically is my dad's reaction. He came over. I'm bent down over the track and he's looking at the track and his eyes just about bulged out of his head, and he said, get in the truck. We're leaving. Really, that was it. That was like, I don't know, I don't remember the details truck. I just remember there were big barefootprints.

4:30 My dad on the way home, I remember him saying it was probably hunters. And I remember, actually then before we got in the truck, he said it's probably hunters. I remember saying, well, if it's a hunter, he doesn't have shoes on. Dad. Yeah, it definitely bothered him because he always said Bigfoot was a joke. Basically, he doesn't now, which is cool. He's eighty now. He follows what I do. He's really interested in what I'm doing. Now, he's at that age where memories just pop into his head. When I first started this, one of the first suspect things I ever recorded were some whistles, and I was playing him for my dad. This is back in like twenty sixteen or seven, No, actually twenty seventeen, and out of nowhere, he just goes, oh, the whistling wolverine. I'm like, whistling wolverine. What are you talking about? Dad? He goes, it's the whistling wolverine. And I'm like, I'm I go, Dad, what are you talking about? Evidently he was once akin up at Packwood. He had hiked into Packwood Lake and camped out for a night by himself. On his way out, he heard whistles and when he got and he didn't think anything of it when he got back to when he got back to Packwood, he went into the Blue Spruce Tavern, which is still there today, and he asked the locals about it, and they all told him, Oh, it's the whistling wolverine, and that's all he remembered of it. And I goed, why haven't you told me the story before? Because he knows what I do. What was it like to be a student of doctor Grover Krantz in that anthropoulos? Honestly, I was eighteen nineteen time, and my mind was not on Bigfoot in those

6:05 days at all. But I loved history and anthropology that my major was history. But I took just as many anthropology classes as I did history classes, and I just I didn't think much of it. He was just an older, kind of scary professor. Yeah, I'm old school. I was scared of a lot of my teachers. And it was it wasn't that I was scared of. It was just I had a certain respect for him. And it was doctor Krantz and this and that, and it was just a regular class until one day, and I found out this later. He devoted one lecture every semester to the topic of sasquatch. Definitely, and this is one of the now looking back, man, I wish I had a tape recorder with me for that lecture. I have my notes somewhere in a box out in my garage I need to dig out. I walked into class and here on his counter were these cast tracks and of course the recreation of the Gigantapithecus skull that he actually came up with from the job. He took measurement and built that that skull that you see all the time now, and that was sitting on the counter and I'm like, what the heck's going on? But like I said, I wish I had a tape recorder because that's a long time ago. I don't remember all the details. But he went through the Patterson Gimlin film and he had I think a third generation copy. And when

7:35 he was done with that film, like I said before, up until that point, my dad had always said it was a guy in a suit, and pretty much that's what I thought too. When I left that lecture, I believe that was a real animal. Wow. He explained why it couldn't be a person, and he had the film, and the film that he showed in the class was way better quality than what I had seen on TV. Oh yeah, oh yeah. And so after that class, I called my mom and I told her about it, and it just happened. That was the same year that he released Big Footprints. His book had just come out. But my mom actually picked me up a copy of the book and I was home on one of the weekends because I was I live in western Washington, so ever so often i'd drive home for a weekend or something.

8:24 But she got me a copy of that book and I actually took it to his lab and I got him to sign it, and then I bought a copy of the Dermals Cast. It's one of the tracks in his book that he discusses quite a bit because it has dermal ridges on it and it's a cast that Paul Freeman had made from the Blue Mountains. So I have a copy of that, and I think I paid twenty bucks for it or something. But oh, I didn't think I was a dummy. I didn't get him to sign it. I got him to sign a book. Yeah, I had him signed the darn cast. I didn't do that, man, I thought would be nuts. I still have that book. I've read that book. I don't know how many times. Oh dude, it's probably hands down. It's one of the best books out there. If you're just getting into the subject, you got to read Grover Krantz's Big Footprints. It's got Yeah, it's got to be. What other books do you recommend too?

9:16 Just question? Yeah, when legend meets science, I actually see I'm trying to. I really enjoyed Lan's book that just came out in the Bluff Creek Project. Oh yeah, I haven't read that yet. I need to. Yeah, it's not really about big there's not a lot of bigfoot stuff in it, but I enjoyed hearing his take on the process of refinding the film site. I really enjoyed that he did a good job. Yeah, I honestly a lot of the books are really repetitive to me. My top top book is probably John Green's book, and Grover Krantz is Big Footprints. That's those are awesome my two top picks. I love anthy Strain's book, which is basically a collection of Native American stories, and I actually got that in twenty fifteen, and I meant Kathy in twenty fifteen and I got her to sign that. But she's really nice, really nice lady, very encouraging, and I have nothing but good things to say about her and her husband, Bob. They're awesome people, very encouraging people when you're when you first meet them, just very down to earth people. I loved her book because it actually has the Native American stories from tribes in my area, and I've recorded some of the things they talk about in their stories, so it's like lends that little extra credence to the area that I'm recording in. When I whistled,

10:50 specifically the Yakima tribe the Palp tribe. I think the Shahalas tribe too, but I know the Yakima tribe and the Peealp tribe. Talked about whistles. I'm Mount Saint Helens quite a bit and so that's one of the things I've recorded up there. Over let's say, all the things you've recorded, is there a recording that sticks out to you, like maybe you could describe that? Hey, that to me is like the coolest thing I've ever recorded. It changes every year. I get one thing every year, but there's one from twenty sixteen, okay, call it eight fit, and it's hands down one of my favorites. Helme. It sounds like a gorilla getting ticked off in the woods. WHOA, yeah, that's why. But I've ever I mean, I was talking to Shane just the other day and like, I have a lot of cool audio I need to come back through that I forget about obviously the whistles. Again, some of my first catches are my favorites. I have one called Mister Grumpy Pants I got in twenty sixteen and it's just I don't even describe it. It's on my YouTube channel if anyone wants to go listen everything. Both those are on my YouTube channel. Awesome.

12:03 Are they actually titled that too? Yeah, well I did a comparison, and then mister grumpy Pants is just titled mister grumpy Pants. Perfect. I will link those in these show notes. Let's talk about the experience with your son. There's something that happened in twenty thirteen. Do you mind sharing that? So? I actually, I want to say twenty eleven. I had a just a knocking kind of experience well bass fishing, so I rekindled my interest in the subject. At the time of that experience, I knew about knocking bout it. I didn't correlate it really with Bigfoot until I started investigating it. But basically I want to say it was either twenty ten or twenty eleven. I'd been I used to fish. My thing before Bigfoot was competition bass fishing, so oh cool, I network I was bass fishing and it just happened. I was fishing with a friend from my bass club on Rife Lake in late September. It was a gorgeous day and we'd just been running cranks parallel to the shore and we got as we're going down this one shoreline, there was something large moving in the timber, and we were on the We were on the side that's up against the gift Ford pinch On National Forest. It was all thick, almost straight up and down hillside right there.

13:28 It was something big and it was breaking branches, and it wasn't all the time, but it was consistently moving with us as we fished down the shoreline for a good half hour plus. And I had noticed it, and I didn't say anything to my buddy. And we got to a creek and we got on some fish. So we hung out around this creek and I was dropped shotting in about twenty feet water. And I love small mouthfishing. We're catching small mouth anyways, so the thought of whatever that was just it's gone. We're catching, We're getting doubles and this and that, and finally the fishing slows down, and we decided let's drop the big motor and run up the lake to closer to the mouth of the river where the river flows into the reservoir. And as we're putting our poles away and he's lowering the big motor pow from the timber, and I looked at him and he laughed.

14:22 He goes, what do you think it is bigfoot? And I'm like, oh, I just like I don't know. I go, did you notice what was moving? There was something moving along shore. He goes, yeah, it's probably elk And that was it. We went fishing. But that spurred my interest in the subject again and I actually started looking at YouTube and reading all the junk that's out there in this and that I did have bigfoot in the back of my brain. It wasn't like an obsession like it is now, but I was more aware of the subject at that point in time. So by two thousand and thirty, I wasn't clearly out of the loop with the subject. And I actually contacted BFRO guy because I found the BFROL shortly after that, and I was actually in the process of making a report with him about that experience and when we had our experience in twenty thirteen.

15:16 Anyways, so my son was thirteen years old and I bought him a little Walmart two man tent for Christmas and he really wanted to use it. And so his spring break started April April fifth, so it was really it was a colder year. It was very much like this year. We're having really a cold wet spring this year, and it was a similar weatherwise year, and it was just horrid weather. And I told Jamis, I said, well, let's just get on fourteen and we'll head east and we'll see what the weather's like east of the mountains. We end up driving out to Skimania County camp Ground. The weather was nicer, it was drier. It was still wasn't great weather, but it was cold, and there was still snow up above up around two thousand foot level. But this is so this was April fifth, It was a Friday. We got to the campground.

16:14 The campground had opened April first, and there was no one else there, and I'm pretty sure we were the first people to camp there. We set up camp right on the river, got out and decided to do a little exploring. And the campground is you basically have Highway fourteen and then you have the Columbia River and it's just this little sliver of timber. It's maybe five acres and at that time it was very thick with brush. There was a lot of vine maple, a lot of salmon berry and around the campground. We went down to the river and we walked up along the river and We came to a spot where there was a trail that went back into the timber, and there was some old, degraded tracks, human foot shaped tracks in the sand. And I remember my son Jameson is, oh, look, Dad, bigfoot, and I'm like whatever. We walked up this trail and it hit another trail that went back to camp. As we're walking in the timber, I started noticing little clusters of piles of freshwater clams in the timber that were just open and clean. They weren't chewed on, they weren't broken, and it just in the back of my mind, I's like odd birds ravens will pick those up. Jays will pick those up. But usually I usually find the shells at the shoreline where critters have not on them, broken and this and that. But it wasn't out of the realm of possibility that

17:47 some jays or ravens had brought some back into the timber. But it was just something in the back of my head that was that just was odd because they weren't, like I said, they weren't shoot on, and they were just open and clean. We got walking and we were almost to our camp and we come around a bend and right in the middle of the trail, there's this bind maple that's twist broke and wrapped around a big fir tree and it's fresh, twist broke up about six feet high. And right below it in the pine needles is an eight x nine inch track and you can see a definite heel oh man, and what looks like toad. It was very fresh. I'm just both me and Jameson were like, holy crap. We're like, this is cool, and so we started really looking around. We ended up we found another track that went into thicker brush in all this leaf matter that measured eight or nine by eighteen. I actually ran back to my jeep to get a tape maje or so I can measure all these and I had a flip phone at the time. I have pictures somewhere, but they're terrible, but we took pictures and basically we're excited. We're like, oh, this is cool. We found some other odd broken branches and stuff with that vinomental lymb twist. I actually I cut it out. Oh oh you got it right there. No way, it's nothing like it was because it flexed itself. It's all dried up. But this was green and wow, twisted all the way over. So yeah, that's awesome. You still have

19:18 it. Anyways, we went back to camp and we were all excited and we decided go fishing. We went and fished a couple ponds that are off the highway there and came back and we're roasting hot dogs and it started lightly raining, so I set up this little tent of his. Didn't come with a rain flight, it's a walmart. I took two. I had two small tarps and I set up two tarps over the top of our tent and I tied them up with para cord. It gets dark and Jameson went to bed about nine thirty, and I fully admit I was thinking about those tracks and that twist break we found, and it's dark, we're the only people.

20:00 I was creeped out, But I finally went to bed maybe a half an hour after him. I fell asleep, but I woke up shortly after midnight. I heard heavy movement around the camp and it was just like it wasn't constant, it was just ever so often, I it sounded something big was moving up by where my jeep was parked, and it would go quiet and I'm just like, am I hearing things? And I lay down and I was just starting to fall asleep again, fall asleep, and something grabbed the tent those tarps and pulled on those tarts. Oh no, and I just sat straight up and screamed the F word yeah, and screamed what the f and jamis? It woke Jamison up, and Jamison was just like, what's going on. I'm like nothing, I'm just a bad dream. Go back to sleep. And yeah, he's thirteen, he'd just go to sleep like that on the times he goes back to sleep. And I only down and I'm like, I'm second guessing myself. I'm like, did I really hear that? Or because I was in and out of sleep and I was just talking myself into it, that didn't happen. And just in case, I grabbed the fob to my jeep. I had the fob in my hand and I had the forty four on the other hand, and I've just fallen asleep again, and it happened again, and this time I hit the fob.

21:25 Lights and a horn go off with the jeep yep, and I didn't sleep the rest of the night. I sat there. That's probably the scaredest I've ever been. Up to that point. That's the scaredest I've ever been camping. And it's still the scaredest I've ever been. I really did a number on myself. I was like shaking. I was so scared of a couple of points. Oh, and I can't I couldn't get myself to get out of tent. I'm sitting there with my son. I got a forty four magnum I can't talk myself into getting out of tent now. Mind you. Nothing touched the tent again or those tarps. Nothing came close to us again. But I did sporadically throughout the night, I would hear that heavy movement and at one point, because we're right by the water, something was down splashing around in the water. Really yeah, and it was just it was actually really nerve wracking. I had the sweats that I was Someone told me after it happened, They're like, oh, you got zapped. I'm like, no, I didn't get zapped. I was just scared out of my mind. But somewhere around three point thirty, I remember looking at my phone and I was just like, oh, please let it get light.

22:34 I wanted to get light and between the somewhere around that time and four cow knock right behind me. I laid there probably for another ten minutes, and then all of a sudden, I was like, this is silly. I got out of the tent. I built up a fire and I waited for Jamison to get up, And of course when he got up, I asked him, I said, what did you hear last night? And he's I heard you cut sing and I heard the horn and the lights and everything going off on the jeep. And then I told him what I heard and he looked at me. He goes, I don't want to stay here again, dad, and like we're not right. Yeah, totally. That's what got me into this. That's funny because it's like a parallel to what happened to you and your father where you saw the track and your dad was like getting the jeeper going it is but it can't happen with your son. That's really cool man. That wasn't lost upon me, so yeah, it was Yeah.

23:32 After that, I just, yeah, I did the YouTube thing. I was watching and reading everything I could possibly find on the subject, and I started listening to podcasts and Shane had a he had another podcast besides the Monster X going. I'd listened to him several times and I was like, Man, I really like this guy. I want to meet him sometime. And it was I think it was either one of his shows, one of those shows, or one of Monster X shows. I heard David Ellis talking about audio recording. Oh yeah, And this is like twenty fourteen by this time, and I'm like, you know what that really interests me. Just taking a recorder out in the woods when no one's there and just leaving it and seeing what it picks up at night. I was intrigued by that thought, and I decided I'm going to find a place to do that at And I actually in twenty fourteen, I went back to that campground and the county had gone through. The county had gone through and cleared it all out.

24:32 It's wide up, and all the big trees are there, but all that brushed, all that vine maple's gone. You could see for days in there. Then interesting, because I had planned, if it's still the way it was, I was going to set up a recorder there. Why not. And I spent a lot of time driving around the wind River, around the south to the southeast, side of Saint Helens and it just dawned on me. I was coming home. I was going past Eagle Cliff store when you evening after spending the day driving all over and it just don't mean you dummy. You got to go where the animals are. And I know where the Elk Winner makes. You're very close to where I live. And I decided I'm going to go in there and start recording there, and I sure is you know what, I end up catching some interesting stuff and I I didn't mean to ramble, I got off topic, but no, that's good, dude. Do you mind if we try to play one of the sound clips right now? I'm going to try to share one, specifically the eight fit one. All right, let's see if I can do it. Hi, Jeremiah from the future there. Spoiler alert, he did not do it.

25:47 We had some technical malfunctions there. But I will put in the show notes the link to the sound that we were trying to play, and also a link to another sound that I really should have played. It's a whole deal. But thanks for your patience, guys. All right, back to the show. That's one of the first things I put up on my Oh, okay, gotcha, got you, got ya. I've done a comparison since then that's a little bit better. But that I can tell you about that recording. What's cool about it. Yeah, Basically at that point in time, I was taking a task camout with an external battery pack and I could get about three days and two nights. And I put it out on a Friday, and the elk had been in there, and so I don't know if you ever record out. They're like I heard of cattle going through the woods. They make a lot of noise, okay, And so the elk were in there the first night. Somewhere in the morning, the elk actually leaves. You hear them breaking branches and walking off. A storm rolls through, big storm. I actually recorded a bunch of thunder and light thunder on it. Around six o'clock. Storm's done, and it's just that silent silence in the woods, just that there's no wind. It's just utterly silent.

27:07 There's a few drops of water from residual rain and just complete silence. At ten fifty one PM that happens, and basically, if you didn't hear there's several percussives, there's something grunting, and then there's an ending percussive. You have that noise, and then it goes dead silent again, and it's silent till the batteries died in the recorder, like eight hours later. I've looked at the grunts and it's not like any elk I've ever recorded before. Some people say could be beare the percussives are what make it for me. When I get vocals and percussives, that's when it becomes really intriguing because that last percussive that was done intentionally and something with hands did it. So that's why I love that clip. I try to tell people with the audio, it's not I'm looking at everything visually. Of course, It's not just it's a combination of things. It's what the visual signatures are, what it sounds like, the pitch and tone. But it's also the context, what was going on before the sound occurred, what happened after the sound occurred. All of that plays a part in how I come to dub something suspicious or not.

28:22 Different animals will have specific signatures, and each individual animal may have a different pitch and tone may run a little variance in the frequencies, but especially birds are really repetitive. Coyotes have a very distinctive signature, and coyotes they're all over the place. They make a lot of different vocals, and that's where tone and pitch come into play. It's just overall, there's a lot of different aspects that goes into reviewing the audio. And it's not just I'm dubbing something suspicious because of one thing. There's multiple things. Is that go into why I would label something suspicious? Gotcha, Let's say we've got people listening.

29:07 I need to make sure I have a good sound recorder. What are your thoughts on what to get as a beginner. I went with task Cams DR O fives. They're relatively inexpensive, they record good sound, they're perfect. I still use them when I go camping. I have six that because I like to put out multiple recorders at different distances and different directions. But I know some people like zooms, but for affordability for your first recorder, I like task cams. I think I know Alex he likes his zoom. I don't think they're I don't think one is better than the other. For the price range around one hundred bucks. I think task cam dr O five x's one hundred and ten bucks or something. You don't want Mono stare.

30:00 It was always better, and I usually with the taskams I have them set to the three twenty K MP three just because wave is actually going to collect more detail. When you record in wave format, you'll actually get a better quality recording, but it takes up so much memory. Yes, the thirty two gig chip that those recorders take will fill up in a matter of hours versus days. Like with a thirty two gig chip set of MP three three twenty k you can get three days, like I said, with an external battery and with lithium batteries. I've gotten two days with just the lithium batteries.

30:41 And it says not to use lithium in them, but I've never had an issue with taskams and lithium. But wave is obviously going to give you a better quality recording format wise, but it just takes up all your memory. You need some like the SM fours that I use now, they have two terabyte slots. I can put two terabytes cards in them because it records only in wave and memory and power would come into play. But if you're a beginner, just get the task camera, zoom and set it to MP three. Why is it important to record in stereo? It gives you more context to the overall ambient sound. It sounds better. If you listen to the Sierra sounds, they sound that that was in mono. It doesn't.

31:32 It sounds crappy, and that's part of the criticism to those sounds. And I just I mean, you can record a lot of people like using parabolic dishes. I hate them. It sounds like crap. And unless you honestly, unless you know specifically where to point it. Why I want to catch three sixty I want an OMNIMC or I want stereo. I want to catch three sixty, three hundred and sixty degrees around my recorder. I want to catch all the sound around it. I don't want to just focus on one place, but the other thing with if you have stereo mics on it, if you remember I always forget that if you have stereo mics, when you're reviewing in spectrogram on Audacity, it'll show you each mic. You're going to get a picture for each mic. Okay, start getting some directional on it.

32:16 If the sound's coming in more on your left mic. That's where the sound's coming from. So if I if I remember to, I point my MIC's north to south and left mic says pointed north, and something's coming in stronger on the left mic than I know it's coming from the north. And then I could go back to that areas and look at the area and say, okay, well that makes sense. There's a ridgeline right there. There's sounds coming off that ridge line. When you are, let's say, walking around on an expedition out on the woods, do you have the recorder clip to your backpack or you're probably not holding it in your hands or what is the what's the thought with that? So back in twenty fifteen, I had a couple experiences. Okay, and that's the first place I started recording in, and I decided I was going to start carrying my recorder with me various times carrying it. It's picking up all my movement, my noise. So I took a band from one of my head lamps and I put it on my head and I just put the recorder in the band behind my hat right there. If you watch cets film the recorder on my head, I use a different recorder. Now it's a smaller recorder. It's actually a better recorder than the TASKM. But yeah, the minute I'm out of the rig, there's a I call it the head recorder. If you look at my files, head recorder, and then it'll have for the date all the sound I captured on that date stuff I have. The minute I'm out of the rig, I give a timestamp and I'm rolling. I don't go in the woods

33:49 without that recorder going. I've had too much stuff happen in person, and I thankfully virtually every experience. I haven't had a lot of experiences, but virtually every experience I've had, I got it recorded. It's not just a story I've heard from actually multiple people that have told me sometimes the knock will happen right when you come in the woods, so you got to be ready right after that, you won't have time to click it on. You better be ready to go. I talk about it my last YouTube video. But just recently March twelfth of this year, Shane and Rebecca and I were servicing audio in the nest area and we didn't hear any of it because we're talking.

34:30 When you're talking and you're with other people and moving. There's a lot of stuff you don't hear, but the minute I step out of Shane's truck, there's a whoop, catching several other whoops. And what we did here at the time is you want me to tell the whole story. Let's go for it, man, Yeah, totally. Some of the audio is on my YouTube channel too if you want to check it out, but I'll link it, don't worry. Anyways, we'd gone up there, it was about nine in the morning. We were a bs and I gave a timestamp jump out of Shane's rig and I have three different areas that record in the necessary and this is quote unquote necessary three. It's where we parked the rig is actually not far from where the recorder is at, but you have to go about a roundabout way to get to because of Huckleberry and there's a one trail that we used to get in, so we walked around up the trail.

35:23 I'm messing with the recorder and actually me and Rebecca were arguing about something on and off, so I was irritated with her. She was really irritated with me, but she was checking a game camera and she got a Bobcat so she was all excited and she was showing Shane and this and that, and I was mad at the recorder for some reason, because there's always a technical difficulty that ticks me off when I get out there and I'm dinking around with that, and Shane goes, hey, I'm going to go back instead of game camera and such and such location. I'm like, okay, yes, whatever, we'll see you back at the truck. Well, he takes off, and me and Rebecca going about what doing. And Rebecca had heard after he left. She'd heard some branches break and she just assumed it was Shane and I didn't hear any of Shane got done setting up his camera and he went back to the truck and where he was at his truck, we're probably one hundred and fifty maybe two hundred yards from where the truck is. He can't see us, the Huckleberry's six to nine feet tall in that area.

36:27 But he can hear our distant voices. He can hear me and Rebecca every so often gibber jabbering, and all of a sudden he hears branches breaking and brush movement going towards me and Rebecca's location. Oh Man and he calls me on his cell phone. I have my phone on airplane mode because I don't get my phone's a piece of crap, and he's constantly looking for a signal up there, so I just put it on airplane mode. Otherwise about battery's dead, I do, and so he doesn't get a hold of me, and he's worried and it's not baar behavior, but he's if there's a screwy bear going at him. And he hears this saying getting closer to me and Rebecca, so he starts heading back in the trail to meet with us.

37:13 He actually drew his gun too. Me and Rebecca we're on our way out by this time, and Rebecca had heard there was one big crash evidently, and once again I did not hear it, and I was ticked off about something and she had heard it and she thought it with Shane. We get back and we finally we meet halfway with Shane and he just he looks distraught, and I'm like, what's going on? He goes, you didn't hear that. I go, hear, what is There's something going towards you guys, or something moving through the brush, And man like I didn't hear anything. Rebecca goes, oh, that wasn't you, and she's like, no, it wasn't me. So we actually we hung out for a while and we didn't see or hear anything, and I'm like, it's probably a bear or something. But it was coing towards us, which that was what was really odd, and that was sticking in the back of our brains because definitely it wasn't deer running towards us. Whatever was running coming towards me and Rebecca and I have my thoughts on why. But anyways, we went about our day and I got back home and I started reviewing the audio from my audio recorder. Thirty seconds after I step out of Shane's rig, whoop, there's a whoop that we didn't ended up recording three more whoops. I sent.

38:35 One of them is really close. We call it a slide whistle loop. It has whoop, it has a perfect signature. It's on my YouTube channel. They were close to us and we didn't even know it. And actually I sent the audio to Monoga Haley. He actually found another whoop that I didn't even see. But yeah, so that's why I carry an audio recorder on my head. All the time because I didn't even know it. We didn't even know what was going on. We would have never known that there was actual vocalizations going on as well as the branch breaking and the percussives. In the last few minutes that we have, I'm curious what to you is the most compelling piece of Big for evidence The tracks? Honestly, Okay, the tracks, no audio. I love audio, and a lot of the audio for me is yeah, it's definitely our target subjects. But what's always impressed me is the tracks. The track and the Patterson Game One film.

39:30 I can't just pick one, dude, but I know that's true. It's tough to pick one, honestly. For I was really influenced by Krantz's book and the track information is really what sticks with me because that was the first thing that besides him showing that film. He also talked about the dermal ridges and the flexing in the foot. He didn't talk about the mid tartl break because that was top secret back then. That came out a little bit later, But back then he talked of each track from the Patterson Gimmon film. That's what really impressed me. I never realized this, but there was like tracks to the animal they film and there's details in those tracks there. It was a living foot that created those tracks. I actually have a copy of two of the tracks now. But just the fact that it wasn't a stamped foot, same foot every time, That's what intrigues me. A living foot is creating these tracks that people are finding. It's not a cookie cutter stamped foot that's being found all the time. There's living, flexible footprints being found that speaks volumes to the existence of something. So you're part of the Olympic Project, the research group looking for bigfoot in Washington State and the Olympic Peninsula.

40:55 What is a way that listeners can keep up to date best with what yourself and what the group is doing. And do you guys have anything cool going on right now the Nest area. I'm doing an audio project there. I'm basically I'm on my way to recording every night for twenty twenty two. I got I can't remember how many nights I got. Most of last year recorded, but I'm logging absolutely everything from dusk till down. Wes Liam from the Squadron Metrics and him last year we were talking and we should just do an analysis of all the sound made from dust kill don so, just record everything and taking down all the animal sounds, the known sounds and the unknown sounds. And we did that last year and I ended up buying two high dollar recorders, but well worth the money. I think that that are capable of recording like I'm up to. I can record realistically about fifty five nights with the batteries I'm using right now. Wow. And we've usually me, Rebecca and Shane. We go on in service the audio about once a month, because honestly, it's hard. I have so much. Basically, I'm reviewing audio twenty four to seven when I'm not at work at my day job.

42:21 Totally just keep up with it. And then I fill out a spreadsheet and then Wes does his statistical analysis because that's what Wes does, and the numbers don't lie when certain things happen. We're finding some patterns and that's our goal is to get this whole year recorded to compare with last year. I'll continue to record in there. I don't know that i'll have it. I have three recorders going in there right now. I probably won't have all three recorders going next year, but I'll record in there as long as the area hasn't been logged and is open to us, will continue to record in there and just log all the sound we want to catch unknowns, but I'm logging all the known animal sounds too. We're doing some game camera work too.

43:06 And our policy has been to stay out of certain areas during certain periods of time when we suspect the nest original nests that we're found were built, and then like right now is the time we start actually exploring. And because of the audio that I've had rolling, we've confirmed that there's a higher amount of activity in certain areas at certain months than there are another months. And now we're in the process of starting to go explore those areas. Hopefully, fingers crossed we can find some newer nests built that would be the Holy Grail or any kind of physical evidence we can find. That's our goal. It's a hard area, though, It's everybody's talked about. Shane's talked about, Dick's talked about it, yep. But you're on your hands and knees sometimes crawling through it. Just it's so thick. But that's why, honestly, that's why they're there. There's no human in their right mind is going through this area. And if you're trying to avoid humans, you're going to go where humans don't go. You get that from watching sets documentary that it is not easy to get to that place. Yeah, it's where you're going where we took seth. We've been going in and out of there long enough that we've actually created kind of a trail. So actually where we're exploring now is thicker

44:37 than that. Chris, in the very very last minutes, share real quick the best way that people can keep up to date with what you're doing. Basically, I have a YouTube channel called Tootle River Valley. Scook Them Chris Spencer, There's going to be some good resources in the show notes for this one. But Chris, thank you so much for coming on here. At Bigfoot Society, our goal is to provide a platform for those that have encountered Bigfoot to share their encounter in a safe and respected environment. But we need to hear your story. If you've experienced something that you just can't explain, please send me an email at Bigfoot Society at gmail dot com. Then we can start the conversation. And I know a lot of you have not shared your encounter at all. It's been twenty years and it's time that you get this off your chest and then you can get some well deserved for rest, because I know you haven't been sleeping. I understand what you're going through, and I appreciate every one of you listening