Face to Face with Bigfoot in Salt Fork!

0:00 Welcome to Big for Society. If you have bigfoot activity to report from the same areas discussed in this episode, please reach out to me directly after this episode. And if you'd like to be on the podcast to discuss a personal bigfoot encounter, please reach out to me directly at Big for Society at gmail dot com. Do you wish there was more Big for Society to listen to you every week? Well there is now. If you become a supporting member over at Patreon, you get a special members only episode every single week on Wednesdays, and sometimes even more episodes. Head on over to patreon dot com. Forward slash the Bigfoot Society, and now let's get on with the show. All right, Big for Society. I've got the privilege of talking to Eric today. Eric is a bigfoot researcher from Ohio. He's had some interesting things happen in the Salt Fork area. And how's it going tonight?

0:49 Eric? It's going very well, Bud, it's going really well. Whether it's starting to calm down a little bit, getting out of the eat so yeah, shine, signs of autumn are are coming. So I'm loving it. Before we get into the Salt Fork action, do you mind sharing with us a little bit about what got you into this whole wild bigfoot adventure to begin with? Yeah, it was, you know, it was the classic uh seeing seeing Patty on on the Patterson give one, you know, on in search of years and years ago. And and always always had that in the mind of the possibility, you know, even as a young kid, just why not, you know, never never closed minded on on on that.

1:44 And then just growing up and being an avid hunter, avid tracker, uh, spending a lot of time in the woods, and but never never had anything happen. But then it was right at the millennium, right around that era of two thousand and two thousand and one, I was working for a grain handling company here in Ohio and during crop season, they're grain drivers. They would run them twenty four to seven and I would service those grain drivers.

2:24 So it wasn't anything for me to roll up on a farm at you know, two thirty three o'clock in the morning. And I had happened to be at a seminar though, me and a couple other guys from the company way up in northeastern Ohio and Ascribulu, and we actually were on our way home from this, I guess it was like a conference or whatever it was. And we were on a back road and middle of the night on and I'm in the back passenger seat and I've got my head up against the window and I'm kind of just looking at the ditchline like towards the front of the car and in front of us, coming towards us. Well, we're coming up on it. It basically looked like a big brush pile, is what it looked like.

3:20 But as we got closer, it started to take shape. And then when we got right up on top of it, there was no mistaking of what this thing was. And we never slowed down. But what I saw all good was the left side, and it was it was squatting, and it had its arms on its on its knees, and it's in the ditch, just just looking at us. And as we drove by it, I just you know, I it passed. Its head was like right eye level with me, and as we drove past it, obviously it went dark. But I turned and looked out the back window and it's completely dark, and I turned back around.

4:01 When I turned back around, the driver is actually rubber necked looking back at you. Know, at the window, the rear window, and he just looks at me and goes, I don't know. And that was it. That was that. That was the only time we ever talked about it. And the only person I told was mine was my dad at the time. And you know, he he kind of ran me through the gambit on a lot of stuff, you know, of the weather and fog and this and that and how was the night, and just kind of ran me through a gambit a little bit. And at the end of it, he just told me, he said, look, he said, you're you know, I believe what you're saying.

4:42 He said, you're the one that's going to have to deal with it. And so and back then, I mean, if you talked about this, it was so taboo, you know, So I just locked it away for many years. And now working h in what I do, mechanical WAIGHTSVAC, I do large commercial and me and my research partner, we kind of came up together in the field. But when I came to work at this particular company that he was at when I first met him, you kind of carpool with each other when you're kind of working out of town. So he and I would meet up and be out about an hour drive each way to the job.

5:31 I'm back. So you talk, you know, throughout the course of the job. And these jobs were anywhere six months to year long projects. So we got to know each other and found out we had the same lights, dislikes, whatever. And finally I was like, you know what, I'm gonna tell him. I'm want to see you know. And I was ready for the ridicule. I was ready for the haha. And I told him and he just looked at him and he was like, well, let's let's go find you. So that's that's where it all really started. And that was roughly fourteen years ago. So and that's that's what threw us down this rabbit hole. And we haven't stopped.

6:16 Wow, so you've been you've been going after it ever since? Yeah, yeah, not stop out in the field though, actually in the field hardcore actually, when we consider research, has been roughly fourteen years okay, So yeah, before that, it was just kind of once I had that first sighting years ago, I started I started reading more, I started trying to find information about the subject, but not really going out into the field. So it wasn't until after he and I talked, and that's when we decided, Okay, let's let's do this. And we wanted to We didn't want to be like, we didn't want to have like any influences or anything like that, or we did. We weren't into social media at the time, so we didn't we didn't know that there was actually a social media platform in this realm, you know, or for this realm.

7:22 And so we were out there just just really just pounding and pounding and you know, growing on our own and making mistakes and finding out certain things work, certain things don't, and just blazing our own trail basically with the subject. And for me being being like I said in an Avid hundred in a tracker, that was really what I was focused on. I needed, I realized, I needed to understand what it was that I was looking for first and foremost, and then how do I track it. I'm not tracking a human, I'm not I'm not tracking a non animal. How do I identify what I'm looking at?

8:08 How do I identify a trackway, establishing a travel pattern? All these things. So that's what I really dove into, and and we just we went everywhere, I mean, not just here in Ohio, but surrounding states. And yeah, we just kind of just went and and kind of hanged in on what each of us wanted to bring to the table. And and on my end, that's that's what I wanted to figure out. That's that was my passion. I love tracking, so that's that's really what I dove into. And we finally we finally found like a research area what we consider Okay, this is our base, this is this is what we're going to dedicate time. And it happened to be at Sault for now. You know, Saltfork is kind of a mecca here in Ohio. You know, everybody, all the enthusiasts, you know, the so called researchers whatever, everybody gravitates to Saltfork. Eventually they get there. But we knew the areas that a lot of people are going, and a lot of people were just traut hiking. They go off one hundred yards here, one hundred yards there, and that was it. They weren't really getting in deep. And Saltfork is just over eighteen thousand acres and it's the

9:40 largest state park in Ohio. And there are some there's a few really remote areas in Saltfork, and we knew, and I knew that you had to get in deep, and you had to get in as far as you could, as remote as you could, and the nastiest, nastiest stuff to get results. And so that's that's what we did. And that took us, that took us about three years out in Salt Fork and just really pounded it and pounded it and and trying to find that one area, that one location in that park that would hold what we would believe, you know, stuff showing sign of the subject.

10:27 And we'd actually found it. And it was through interactions, you know, we were getting the classic knocks through the days, very light vocalizations, not not you know, wroofs, loud woofs, but little little, little, tiny chatter sounds we had found here that they don't they don't vocalize through the day unless you're really on top of them. It's mainly breaking twig is, breaking branches. They'll throw a little stuff at you. They'll give you a little you know, and a little like you. I don't know if you've heard people talk about samurai chatter, but you'll get garbled up like very quick, just different sounds, little light, subtle sounds that aren't non animal, So we knew that this area was where we needed to be and so we fast forward. It took at that point then really to establish a trackway to establish travel pattern. So what we did was we went through the park and we would establish a trackway of buy people tracks non human and we'd found these and they were heading in the same direction throughout the whole the whole park. And what we'd found throughout a very long

12:01 process that they were traveling in a counterclockwise circumference of the park, and we average a destimation of roughly about five to ten mile radius that they were traveling in a circle. We honed in, really honed in on one spot that was our spot, and we started researching it really heavy and documenting things that we were finding, structures that we believe weren't Mother Nature and weren't human manipulation.

12:42 We would record the data anything from heights to length to with everything that you could measure on these sticks that were put together, documenting sticks being taken away, sticks being added to them throughout this whole, this whole area that we were researching. So and then that that in itself is what led me up to my what I consider today to be my actual full long visual siding of the of the creature. I find it fascinating that it took three whole years to really to analyze the state park. And I think you have to listeners have to realize how big this place is. It's massive, it.

13:38 Is, it's it's a it's a really large large area. I've been, you know, and I've been in bigger areas obviously, but you know, when I when I talk to people, especially like the newcomers coming up, you know, don't think that this is going to happen over now. You can go out and you can be off trailed, you can be both whacking in and you you can have something happen. Sure, But I'm talking research and and research and collecting data and getting the interactions where you know, for a fact it's not known animal and it's not human that you're dealing with something else. In collecting all this data, it takes a long time to do. Uh And and I try to stress that to the to the ones that are up and coming into the field, that you know, take your time, be extremely patient because it's going to take a long time.

14:38 Do you have any advice for people that are like you know, I got this, I got this place next to me. It's a big state park or state forest. You know, what are what are some best practices they might be able to do if they want to start going in there and they don't know where to start to. Try to analyze this place for where where the bigfoot places might be in it. Learn learn the area. Learn so uh with with tracking. I've learned topo maps through the years at a young age. Learn your topo maps. Learn the terrain, learn the area, do your research on the area. Understand the area. Go back in history of the area. See what was there prior to the settlers. Go as far back as you possibly can to who was there. Learn the vegetation, learn the wildlife. Learn the water sources. Once again, learn learn the elevation. The elevation will be a key factor and in in your research as you as you mature into your research and you get further into it, you're going to find elevation has a lot to do with their travel and with seasons. So but that and don't think you know human You know, I told her a good

16:08 friend of mine once that I told him, I said, get out of your own way, get out of your own head, because we were having a conversation Big. For society will be right back after these messages. He was like, yeah, but I wouldn't. Yeah, but that's not what I and that's not how I. And I finally I just I looked at it and I said stop. I said, stop thinking like a human. Stop, get out of your own way. They don't think like we do.

16:52 They're very intelligent creatures, extremely intelligent, but they don't think like you and I, and you have to get out of your own way your mind, relax yourself, stop thinking this isn't how I would do it, and just look at the landscape. Read the landscape, walk the landscape. Just clear it out of your head. You're not looking for softquatch. You're not out there looking for sastquatch. You're looking for evidence. You're looking for for data. Is what you're looking for. If you have the encounter, that's great, and eventually through time and your research, yes, you are wanting to capture its in its natural state, and you want to be able to record it in its natural state. But just starting out and just learning, just relax, take your time, clear your mind, stop thinking as if they're going to move and do things the way that you would do it, because they're not they're not at all. And once you're able to do that, and once you're able to get in there and just just go, things will open up for you. You'll look at you look at the area, you look at the woods in a totally different mindset, and things will start opening up for you.

18:17 When you look at let's say you're looking at a map of an area for you know, the first time, are there certain things that are gonna jump out to you as potential areas that might be to look into, maybe like geographic forms or different bodies of water. Yeah, So what you're looking for is you're looking for deep caresses in the topo, deep channels, fingers that come out to point, some off of bridges that then drop down and there's water below, a stream of a cree maybe even a river. You're looking for areas like that.

19:05 You're looking for areas that are extremely remote. You're looking at like like here in Ohio, I think I are our highest elevation, maybe down and I'm pushing it, maybe thirteen hundred feet maybe thirteen hundred so not very high in elevation, but you want to look at the at the highest elevation points as you can look for your fingers, look for your points coming off in very dense areas. Look for the water source around those areas. Look for your deep drop offs, your your big channels, cutting through your big cuts, valleys in between ridge wines, and things like that. That's what you want to concentrate on, and and try to get as remote as you. Try to find those areas as remotely as possible.

20:04 Why is it important to find those those ridges and those steep drop offs. That's where they hold themselves and on the on these ridges, that that's where you're going to find. That's where you're going to find their natural How to explain this? They don't. They don't when when they're in these areas and when they're on top, they're going to take the high ground. Every single time they're going to take the high ground. Most wild animals will take a high ground. It's it's just an instinct for the It's a steak for us.

20:46 You know, you want to you want to hold the high ground and you want to be able to observe everything around you. And I've found this not just like I said just here, I mean in the adiron acts and the ozarks all up and down the applasia. We find these fingers and we find these massive structures within them. So that's to me, that's that's why they want, That's why you find it there on these high points. They're very comfortable in these areas. They don't have to worry about, you know, outsiders coming in, they don't have to hide, they don't They're just they're relaxed in their natural state in these areas.

21:37 You mentioned finding structures. Are there main things you look for that would differentiate it being a bigfoot structure from a potential bushcraft? I do and and I've done a lot of survival stuff as well as in building my own structures. Is like that, I look at you have to look at how much energy that you're putting into it. And if you're out there in the wilderness and you're surviving in the wilderness, what how much energy you're going to spend building something, you know, creating something, how much energy you're going to burn when you're eating vegetation, you're you're hunting, you know what, what wild game there is? You know, it's you have to think of all of these things.

22:37 And then I look at the area itself, like would would would somebody travel this far in just to make a TP structure? You know, what's the possibility? I look at human you know, if there's any has been any type of human activity in that area. Will I'm not just scouting, you know, non human feedal prints or tracks. I'm looking at the natural game, natural wildlife. I'm looking for human tracks. I'm looking for everything, and I know I can rule out you know those certain well the human aspect anyways of no humans being in this area.

23:22 And then you look at a wind, You look at you know, mother nature itself. You know, how how is in this area? What what's it been like with mother nature? What are the storms like? What are the seasons like? Are they harsh winters in this area? It's heavy snowload in this area? You know, you look, you look at all of that stuff. You look at the trees around a structure. Do these trees hold these style? Is it the same style tree that the structures created out of the trees that are around you? Are these branches part of those trees? Are these trees large enough to hold these branches? You know? Are they are they the size that will carry a branch the size that's in the structure you look at, you look at all of these things to be able to rule out. Now, human manipulation to me is the hardest to rule out because I do know, I do know certain guys that do travel in they push back very deep in, you know, just just a camp and and and do survival videos and build structures. Well, once again with with tracking, I know if if there's been human in this area, I know if there's been a man and woman in this area. Uh.

24:44 And when I quickly rule that out, there's there's no doubt that it's created by something else. So and then you get into then then that follows up with what is it and why is it being built? What's what's the purpose of it? And that that in itself as a whole, a whole another part of research that that that took us roughly ten years to figure out. And it's just one one certain thing and in certain structures, not all structures that we found, but certain structures that we have found hold a navigational data to it. So we we know now for a fact because once once once we found it, actually my partner once he found it and and brought it to me and said, you know, we need to take a look at this. We found that certain structures held navigation to them. So we took it out of our area and we took it to three different states, two of which the Ozarks and in Georgia, I believe what was the second state unknown locations to

26:14 both of us, never been there before, studied the mask, did our thing went actually was able to find a trackway in both states, was able to find what we believed and knew to be structures created by, you know, something other than the human or mother nature. We found certain structures then that held these navigational points and followed it strictly, strictly on on just what the structures were telling us, and we were able to follow from from one structure to another structure. We were able to turn, We were able to read this oft your turn and navigate a different direction to another structure. And once we did that, we came back here. And that's when my partners told me. He was like, dude, we got we have to bring people in and we have to show them that we can do this. And at the time, I was a very closed chest with our research. I mean I was I was I was lock and key with with our with our research, and finally we decided, okay, let's let's do this. So we contacted a few guys that we really trusted and we brought them up and

27:45 they spent four days with us and we went out we want What we wanted to do was show them you can establish the trackway, you can establish travel pattern, you can get in front of them prior to them coming through, and you can document it as they come through the area. And we did it for three days out in the books and had interaction and actually gathered some pretty muh pretty amazing vocalization. Uh no, no more than thirty yards from our camp up above us on the ridge. So it was it was big for for my partner on. It was huge because now we we had we had individuals that we showed them you could do it, and it happened and we got in front of them and they came through on us. So it was looked huge breakthrough for our research.

28:53 That is that is incredible? Was that documented in any way? Yes? Oh yeah, yeah, set available for the public in any way. Yes, it is. It's actually on the saw Us Beast. It's a four part series okay on saw Yeah, so people if if they want to see it, you gotta, you gotta go back. I think it was now it's been maybe six years ago, five years ago something like that when we did it, So you gotta, you gotta scroll through. But yeah, it's it's on sawdust piece. So it's a it's a four part. It sounds like it's it's very worth taking the time to go through that. If if what you're you're talking about is all in that series, that's that's some good information for people to know. So yeah, yeah, definitely people should be checking that out. And that all happened within Salt Fork. You said, yes, yeah, it's just that is just so so wild. It's hard for me to wrap my around. But I know it's a huge place. It's totally totally possible. Do you mind if we go into talking about the time in Salt Fork when you had that very intense visual that you were referencing to before.

30:17 Sure, Yeah, it's so this was twenty and fifteen. We went out to our area. Now, what made this day different than any other day? Normally we would drive out, we'd get out of the truck, hit the ridge, go in, do our thing, come back out, get in the truck and leave. This particular weekend, we had my wife and my partner's girlfriend at the time with us when we were camping up at the campground. Big for Society, who will be right back after these messages.

31:09 So they actually dropped us off that that morning and we go in that day we get which is also documented and this would be on my partner's page Facebook page House of emich And you have to go once again scroll way back. But so we're getting I had a I had a low can speaker Bluetooth can speaker, and I'm a huge, huge fan of Jane Goodall and a lot of my research is based off of how Jane does her stuff and so but what I did was I put low line silver back Gorilla sounds. I downloaded them on my phone and one of them was an aggression call, basically like a challenge call. And we're going through we're making our way back into where we actually do our research and what we're already getting, like things tassed, we're getting you know, things snapping, you know, on the on the ridge beside us. And so I just stopped. We stopped for a second and I told my partner, I said, I'm gonna play this snap and

32:41 I blast this, and immediately you get this crack, crack, crack, snap. And then across from us, on the ridge, across from us, you see this I don't know, five six foot long by maybe six to eight inches round, either either a trunk of a tree or a huge, huge, huge branch of a tree come hurling off off the ridge towards us. And so we're like, okay, all right, so we we we keep going back in and we we do our stuff.

33:21 We come as we're coming back out, we're being parallel on top of the ridge, and we would we would, you know, just we don't. We don't act on sounds. We don't. We've trained ourselves early on. Don't turn in what directly would you hear? Don't acknowledge it at first, just keep doing your thing, just to try to ignore it as much as you can't. Be consisus of it being there, but just act like it's no big deal. So we're coming back out. We're being parallel from the top of the ridge. So we drop down onto the road and once again, instead of getting in the truck and leaving, we walk through the gravel road up to a bridge. Now in this area. It's where we research on these three ridges. It's surrounded the I guess it'd be like the east side of it is surrounded with marshland.

34:31 But what cuts through this marsh is like a channel. So we walk up the road to this bridge where this channel goes out into the marsh. We've got all of our gears stripped off. My partner is sitting on the guard rail with his back to the marsh, and he's facing me and I'm facing him, and we're just talking, waiting for the girls to show up. And as we're talking, I just glance up. When I glance up, I see this huge branch or this tree pushed straight up in the air, and I see this farm, and then this thing steps out and he comes up full body, and we just locked eyes and we're just staring at each other.

35:17 Now at this point, I freeze my mind just I go into a total lock and I can't do anything. I can't do nothing but stare at this thing. I mean, we're we're locked in eye to eye and he flares up and he flares out, his head goes back, his eyes go wide. Never showed any type of aggression, nothing like that, and I've pulled people in the past. He actually had a look of like I just screwed up, Like, oh crap, they're they're They're not supposed to be here.

35:59 He had just this dumbfounded look on his face. And we stood there stairs at each other for a few seconds. His body turned to the right, his head stayed with me. He went to take a step, and his head turned and he stepped. He stepped down into the channel and disappeared. Now at this point, my partner's still talking. He has no clue what's going on. And as soon as this thing disappeared, I take off running down the road. I'm wanted to. I wanted to get another vantage point of the same. So I just take off running, and I can hear my partner behind me, and I could hear him like grabbing gear and stuff. And he doesn't All he knows is were running. That's all. That's all he knows.

36:44 So I stepped into the marsh. And when I I'm six one. And when I stepped into the marsh, the top of the weeds came up to my chest. And when I saw him was from the waist up so very large. I go through. I go, I mean and and and another way I described it to to people, is it that at that moment, you take if you was to take every human emotion that you possibly could, and you ball it up as like as tight as an atom, and it explodes. And that's that's the feeling I felt. I could have. I could have. I could have dropped to the ground and literally just balled like a baby. And it was but it was so much.

37:47 It was so much coming back. It was from years ago seeing what I saw, all the years of my partner and I and all the research that we have done, everywhere we had been, and I just came face to face with it and I saw it brought the line there he is, and it's real. Everything that I knew, everything, everything that all the data I was collecting, everything that I was tracking where I knew in my heart and I knew one hundred percent it was non human, you know, I knew for a fact it was something other than that I was tracking all these things, and there it was in front of me, and it was just I went through a meltdown process, is what I did. And people you hear so many people, you know, why didn't you take a picture of why didn't you do this?

38:48 Why didn't you? And you have to be in the moment. You have to just be in the moment. You will you will go through a meltdown process. We're taught since we're as little as you can, as far back as you can you can remember, you're taught to identify. You're taught that this that this is a tree, this is grass, this is this, this is You're taught all of this. So when you see something like this, your mind goes through the smeltdown process, and it's trying to collect everything that possibly can to make sense of what it is that you're looking at. And so it's grabbing every detail that it possibly can is Your mind is rolling out everything so quickly to then just bam, it is what it is and it's a it's a sasquash and they do exist and yeah, so and from there, man, it just I mean, it's set a fire in me and and has not has not went out since.

40:01 That's that's incredible. Has has what you've seen that day or has anything ever come close to looking like what you saw yourself that day? Have you ever seen anything else, artist representation, anything like that? One? Yeah? One? And and I had a professional sketch artist, sketch mind. And when she sent it to me, I cried. I I couldn't hold back to the emotion because she was so in the and it was over the phone.

40:43 It was she would send me little things like working on the nose, working on the mouth, working on the forehead, just certain things, and we hone in and hone in and hone in. And when she finally sent it to me, I just I broke in. And and that would say. And then one one other I was talking to a guy and he sent me what he had seen. Oh, and he had actually had a sketch artist do his years and years ago. And and what was odd those minds? She did mind in black and white, there's no color to it. And but when he sent me his what I saw was a reddish brown, very leathered skin, dark complexed.

41:36 I I put it as like a Middle Eastern type skin, as in like top tight, no facial hair except on the sides, but nothing in the front, no hair on his on his chest on and very broad shouldered. But when he sent me his picture, I was like, oh my god, and this is coming from Ohio and his was I want to say, maybe Texas or somewhere somewhere out in that area, and you hold them both side by side and look at him and look at the characteristics of both of them, and I was like, oh my god, you know, oh my god, this this is this is a species. This this is yeah, we're looking at a species. Here.

42:38 Is that sketch drawing that you had done? Is that available to see anywhere? Is that kind of a private collection thing for you? No, No, it's it's it's out there on on my on my page, on my Facebook page. Yeah, gotcha. Seeing what you saw that day, you know, dead on you got a great look at it. Did that affect what you had thought about what bigfoot was before then? Or did it just. Mostly yeah, definitely, Okay, prior to it it was it was.

43:19 It was a North American Grade eight one hundred percent. Couldn't couldn't change my mind. And when I saw it and I saw the human characteristics in it, there was there was There was no mistake in that at that point for me. Anyways, My my personal opinion is somewhere somewhere on on the tree we we we share DNA, there was just there was too much in the space that that just there's human there's there's there's there's human characteristics, his eyes, the way he looked at me, just everything, the emotion. I mean that that he showed with with the like oh Dan, you know, like I just screwed up.

44:17 Just there's too much there. And that's yeah, I changed my mindset on that very quickly. That is, I mean that, that's extremely interesting going off of that. You know, you hear all these stories about hunters or you know, people that they have the ability to try to take a shot, but they just can't because the way that it looks, it's just they can't tell exactly you know, what it is. It's just yeah, there's there's there's absolutely no way and certain areas I carried my sidearm with me, but it's it's honestly, it's for cat and it's for bear, and it's a and even then it's just a detern. It's the sound. I'm using it for the sound to get them backing off of me. I could not even if it was even if it was a situation where it was life threatening. I honestly, I don't know. I don't know if I could pull the trigger. I say that, I mean, I don't know I've never been that close quarters with one, but right now, I mean, thinking of a situation like that, I don't I still don't know

45:48 if I could do it. I honestly don't know if I could, you know, put one down. So and I and I've said that many times that you know, you don't have to drag a body out of the woods to prove the existence. You don't have to do it, you know, And what what's it going to do? Anyways, They're gonna throw it on the slab, they're gonna dissect it, and they're going to tell you what it eats. It doesn't tell you anything about the creature. It doesn't tell you anything about them. So for me, you don't have to drag a body. Out big for society will be right back after these messages.

46:41 You know, you'll learn more being out there and documenting them and filming them in their natural environment of what they do, versus dragging one outwards. Like Jane Goodall would have done. Exactly. Are you thinking that it would just take really documented notes to prove it or perhaps even like video evidence a lot. Yeah, yeah, it would take it would take both. It would most definitely take both. But I believe that now where I am and what I can do, what I've shown people I can do. I know, I know I can do it. You know it takes time. Uh, it takes a very long time. I have I have, you know, a collection I don't put I've put very little out on social media. If it's not if you have to, if you have to go into great detail and depth of what somebody's looking at when you put a video out there or even a picture, it's not worth putting the bottom line, you know, so, and and me and my partner holding very fast on you know so, yeah, and and we have peers, certain individuals that we bounce stuff off of each other. We share certain things with each other, and if they say no, then it's then

48:14 it's no, it's not good enough. And it takes a lot of dedication. Though people need to understand it takes a lot of a lot of dedication. Exactly. It's not you know, you weren't just doing like you weren't just out for a weekend like this has been fourteen plus years leading up to this point, which I mean some people listening to this that's more than half their life or almost full life. It could be if I think about it, I'm sure there's some people that are thinking, oh, Lowland Silverback guerrilla aggression call, that's the key. So do you do you recommend people bust that out or is that kind of a uh? I did it, but I wouldn't really recommend it for certain reasons.

49:04 Deal. Yeah, understand, get get familiar with what what it is. Understand what it is that you're doing out there, first and foremost, put some time under your belt. Get comfortable in an area if you know for a fact that you are dealing with this subject out in the field, put some pus, some time under your belt. Understand. They need to understand that, you know, in the in the in the three years to identify and and to get to that point of okay, this is our research area. This is how far we have to go. They need people need to understand that in that three years, we would only be able to go in so far, and we would get sounds, and we would leave, and we would come back, get sounds and leave and come back over and over, and then eventually we'd be able to go a little farther in and and and get a little more interaction and leave and come back and leave, over and over and over and over again, and then a little farther and a little farther back and forth, back and forth. That took every bit of three years of gaining that what we think is trust with them.

50:26 Now even with that, with that said, now I mean we're we're into it years now going to this area and researching this area. One particular day, we get triangulated. One's behind us, one's on the ridge to the right, ones on the ridge to left. And I'm talking aggression. I'm talking pounding and trees bashing. You can hear that. You can hear whatever size branches that they're smacking up against a tree, you can hear it splintering from all three of them. And they were pushing us. And when they would push us, they would they would maneuver themselves.

51:10 The one on the right would push farther ahead of us, the one on the on the on the left, it would drop down elevation a little bit, but stay right with us. The one in the back would push forward a little more. Once we started to move, it would it would lighten up, the knox would lighten up, the sounds, the grass would lighten up. As soon as we would stop. It would get in. It would be total aggression again, and and they would move. They would the one behind us would flank to the right, or flank to the left a little bit. The one on the left would go back up elevation, the one on the right would drop elevation. And they did this for a mile and a half of pushing us out. And this was years after we had already established with them, and this one fatioicular time, it was no, no, no, oh no so and then it even got to the point to where we had to make a decision because the way that they were pushing us, you were getting ready to walk into a huge growth of thickets and I'm talking eight to eight feet tall, just nasty, gnarly stuff. And I told my partner, I wasay, absolutely not. I'm not going in there. I Am not going to lose line of sight.

52:29 I'm not going to do it. So our option, our only option, was to make a hard left to drop down into the bottom and then go back up to the ridge on the left where one is. So as we're standing there talking, all of this stuff is happening, and you can hear them maneuvering themselves around us, all around us, and finally we dropped down and go back up. But right as soon as we made the hard left to drop down in the thickets in front of us, we get the lowest grow vibrating sound I've ever heard in my life of just pure evil, just just nasty, and still to this day, every now and then we'll bring that up with each other and we'll talk about a little more like what was the intent there were they Were they just pushing us and steering us out completely out or were they actually trying to get us to go in there? And if they were trying to get us to go in there, what was in there?

53:36 What would the outcome have been? You know, we will never know, but you know, but it was a learning experience for me as a tracker. It was a learning experience. It would they they they told me. They showed me how they maneuver, what they do, their instincts of of of hunting if they were to be hunting. They showed me how they how they moved as a team as a unit from what they do. So these are things that that my partner and I in our research, this is how our minds work, and things like this occur. We're collecting so much. It's not just oh wow, I can't believe that happened. That's great. Uh No, we look at it as, Okay, what do we learn? What what just took place? What what did we learn about them in this particular time? You know. So it gave us a lot, you know, it gave us a lot of a lot of data on on the end of that day.

54:36 It's a it's a really interesting approach to it. Are you Are you and your partner documenting this and in any way? Oh yeah, yeah. So we constantly record, We're constantly dropped pinning our location on my on my garment, I'm downloading my tracks as we go, things like that. We've so two years ago, my partner went back through everything that we did, all the drop pins that we did, all the all the off the garments, all the all the travel that we've done, and this was like two years ago, and he had he had estimated that we had traveled five thousand miles from from the point of starting our research and play and recording you know, our research up to about two years ago. We had we had traveled five thousand miles center research. To go back to the original question, I mean I would not. I would not recommend any type of, you know, anything to to provoke them in any way. Give them the respect and and honor that from them, and understand, you know what what they're wanting. You know when they when they give you a chatter, and respect that there's always there's always the next time, There's always the next day, there's always the

56:09 next weekend, leave the area, respect it. That makes that makes perfect sense for sure. Do you feel like there's ever a time where you've had any type of communication with them? No, I don't. I don't know. I so it's been two years now. It was I believe May of twenty two. I wanted to go out and I wanted to do a night time in this particular area. I wanted to go completely dark, and I wanted to document them through IR and error thermal of where they would travel from.

57:10 So prior to getting dark, I get my blind set up. My partner is. I'm where I'm set up. I got my back against the tree. I got my blind in front of me. I'm facing like looking up towards the top of the ridge. My partner is to my right about five o'clock to my right, about twenty yards down from me. So, right before it gets dark, I showed the trackway. I show people. Okay, you know they're gonna come from the top of the ridge. They're gonna drop down from my left. They're gonna drop down midway on the ridge. They're gonna make a hard left, and they're gonna come towards me, and the trackway will cut right in front of me, roughly twenty yards in front of me, twenty five yards in front of me. So and I knew that this was roughly the time that that it or they would be coming through. So we get set up, everything set up. We're completely dark, blacked out, and I hear it. I hear it coming all. I hear it coming.

58:23 Tested all of our gear like we always do prior to going in. Everything is fresh, new batteries, new SD cars on that chance, so everything worked. So this thing drops down, the ridge, makes a hard left. It's coming towards me. I'm texting my partner, he's coming. It's here, it's here, it's coming, it's coming. It's on top of me. I light everything up. I light all my my thermals up, and everything is there's all everything with my my ir scrambles my my screen just picked it picked piculates, I get nothing. Everything, everything drops out one hundred percent. Now this thing is dead smack in front of me. And the only thing that at that time, the only thing then that I could do was just light the area up.

59:21 That's all I could do. So I hit my I hit my my lights. I light the area. There's absolutely nothing standing in front of me, absolutely nothing. My partner makes his way up to me, I walk out, We walk out, there's his impressions in the ground. I turn around. I track it all the way back to where I first heard it coming off the off the ridge. I track it all the way back up to the ridge and I turn around. I track it all the way back down to right in front of me, and there's no exit. There's absolutely no exit point and tracks knew nothing.

1:00:02 It was gone at that particular time. I believe that I was this is me, that once again, this is my thought and where I was at in my head space, that it showed me something that I don't think very many people have ever witnessed. And I think that you need to be I think you need to be connected in a certain way for this to happen. And I would have never thought thought that prior to this night.

1:00:44 Once again, like prior to my sighting, I thought they were just a grade eight. Up to this point, they were flesh and blood, an animal, and that is it. Nothing else. I was very close minded. I didn't and I hate using the word wop. I despise the word moove. I wish we could figure out another word to say. But I was not there at all. I'd shut you down on a heartbeat over that stuff up to that point. And then I started really researching, getting into the stories of people that have had this happen to them, and those group of people there's not many out there. There's not a lot of people out there that have had something like this happen. So I honestly believe that that night I was given something. I really do. Now. You know, it's not talking to me. It wasn't speaking to me or anything like that, but I take that as a form of of communication.

1:01:58 That's extremely interesting. Yeah, no, that's that, it seems, you know, And I'm not as far as you guys are for sure, but the further you get into it, you definitely you start to realize some really interesting things kind of as you go along and have you ever had it where you you have a recorder and it picks up sounds that you didn't hear live at the time, but you and if it was recorded by the recorder, it's so close that you should have been able to see whatever you saw, whatever it was, you know what I mean.

1:02:47 Yeah, I've had I had my recorder actually two weeks prior to that night that happened. I had my recorder not even not even five feet away from me, and I'm sitting there and I absolutely nothing, heard absolutely nothing, But I went, I left it there. And but I know the times you know, of my when I was there during the recordings, you could hear me, you know, getting up and moving away and walking off. So I knew up to the point of me walking off, I'm there. So what I've captured on the recorder though I didn't hear it, I didn't hear it at all. And is it what is it? Paranormal? Is it? Was it a sasquatch?

1:03:44 I don't know. But my recorder picked up an audio, It picked up something that I literally did not hear. But I've had I've had I've had many we we we have had my partner and I and even even guys that we go out with and bushwhack guys that you know, research the way that we research and how we go in and do things, we've all had it. We've all had it happened to us, Like, how how on the head? Why did we not hear this? How could we not hear this? And when one recorder would tack it up and another recorder twenty yards away didn't retick it up, didn't take it up. How is that possible three recorders would go dead, one recorder would beat us? Fine, it doesn't. Yeah. Yeah.

1:04:40 The more that you're right, and the more you get into this, the more you're out there, the more you research, the more open minded you become. And you you really you have you have to evolve in your research. You have to evolve as your mind and thinking and and you just you have to grow with it, and you you just have to accept certain things. That's a part of research, and that's a part of being a researcher. You have to look at everything. And and that's one thing I beat myself up on now is why was I so closed minded all those years? All those years just being so closed minded? You know, of No, there's no way. No, there's no way. There's why. That's that's not research. That's not what it's about, you know. So that's that's where I am now with my research. There there's there's something more to this. There's two there's there's there's too many stories out there's not a lot of people that had what I had happened to me happened to them. There's not there's not many people out there like that. But there's there's too much when you go back into history, when you start reading history of encounters and this happens to them, you know, there's there's just

1:06:10 you have to look at it. You have to at least look at it. You know, it's a really interesting thing that you guys have going on there. It feels like or hopefully I hope that it continues to progress and it sounds like you guys are still going out and and uh researching in current day correct. Yes, oh yeah, yeah, it doesn't. It doesn't stop. It just doesn't stop. How can it stop? You know, when when when you gathered as much as you have the data that you have to just walk away. You can't just walk away. You can't just oh, Okay, that's enough, I'm done. Yeah, let's let's go find something else. You can't, you can't.

1:07:00 What if Bigfoot was discovered in Southeast Oklahoma tomorrow, would you still continue researching in your area? Most definitely, album, Yeah, most definitely. There's there's always always stuff to learn, you know, all there there will always be things to learn. Just you know, if it came out tomorrow, you know here it is. This is a it doesn't stop. The research doesn't stop, you know, And that goes back to Jane, you know good all she found them, she studied, she didn't stop. Yeah, there was always more to learn, always more to learn.

1:07:43 Absolutely, and Eric, it has been. It has been a really enjoyable conversation with you. You guys are doing some some awesome research out there. Thank you for for hanging out with me tonight and for for sharing what you guys have accomplished so far. Are there are there any ways that people can reach out to you if they have things they want to share with you, or how they can keep up to date with what you guys are doing, or if you guys are just kind of in the background, that's fine too, you know.

1:08:24 Yeah, I mean, you can you can you can find me on on Facebook? You know, Eric Kitten. I don't go buy anything else but my name, so I'm I'm out there. Yeah, if people have questions or whatever, message me, you know. Yeah, And and I travel. I've I've been out on where people have called me and said, hey, is there any way that we can meet up? And you can I've got this going on or this going on, and yeah, I love doing that stuff and I love talking to people, you know, so most definitely, but yeah, you can. You can find me on Facebook.

1:09:09 Fantastic. Well, Eric, thank you so much for chatting tonight, and we'll have to be in touch with you in the future. And have a great night. Sir Jasalon, thank you very much. Please take a minute to help out the show by subscribing on YouTube, making sure you hit the bell so you don't miss any notifications, and share the episode on YouTube with a friend. Also, if you're listening to us on a podcast, thank you so much. Make sure that you're subscribed, share the show with a friend. Really, it's all about sharing the show wherever you can. If you've had a bigfoot encounter related to the following, or know someone who has, please reach out to me at Bigfoot Society at gmail dot com or pass on my email.

1:09:58 Here's the list. If you've any encounters in Oregon, which I'm sure there's probably a few of you out there, please feel free to reach out immediately. You can use email Bigfoot Society at gmail dot com. A special thank you to all the Bigfoot Society, Patreon and YouTube channel members. It's your support that helps keep the show going and I extremely appreciate it. If you want to join in the fun, you can join over at patreon dot com forward slash the big Foot Society. I'll see you there, and again, thanks for listening.

1:11:18 Her and I can get out here, we can tell our stories. Maybe there's somebody else out there listening that's too afraid to tell their story. Maybe this will give them the courage to come out. And I feel so bad about it. Who cares what anybody's thinks. I know what I saw, I know what's out there. That's all I care about. Please let people know, Please let them know. If you ever see one of these things, you need you tell because if you don't, then shame on you, you know, shame on you.