I Wasn't Alone in Gifford Pinchot! | Washington

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 bigfo 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 Big For Society, and now let's get on with the show. The following interview was recorded on December nineteenth, twenty twenty four, prior to the tragic passing of two individuals who are searching for Sasquatch and the Gifford Pinchot National Forest. This episode includes an interview in which the guest shares experiences of solo camping and extremely remote and unforgiving areas of that National forest in Washington. We want to emphasize the importance of safety when venturing into such wilderness areas. Always be aware of current weather conditions, plan your trips carefully, and equip yourself with a proper gear and resources for survival. Your safety should always be your top priority. All Right, I pick the society. You got the privilege of talking to mister Jeff's sidebottom. He is a bigfoot researcher, but he's also a BFRORO investigator out there in the great state of Washington. It's privileged to have you on the show today.

1:25 Jeff. How are you doing, sir? I'm doing well. I feel privileged to be on. Get the word out there and hopefully get something solid that we can get some believers out there, get something substantial one of these days. Absolutely. I love usually starting interviews like this with a question that gets regularly asked. But what was it that first got you into the field or being interested in Bigfoot? I was in I guess late grade school, early middle school. There used to be a show on TV in Search of and they'd do various shows like in Search of Noah's Ark or in Bigfoot, and I saw the in Search of Bigfoot and that episode just fascinated me. And I grew up around farms and woods. I was rarely in town very much. I just enjoyed being out Moore and just things that growing up and being out there that I couldn't explain and that my parents couldn't explain.

2:40 I thought that show probably is the one that got me started, because it just after that. Every time I went in the woods, especially at night, I was looking for bigfoot and they're around where I was born and raised in Kentucky. They had legends like the poplic Monster and go Man sheep Man. So I was always into the unexplained. I wanted to know and explain it. So I think that show is probably what picked it off for me. So that's very interesting. You grew up in the state of Kentucky, which is as you alluded to, it's a state full of many mysteries, many different cryptids, a lot of bigfoot stuff. Were there any particular things you got involved with when you were out there looking for things in the woods. Did you stumble upon anything?

3:36 There were some areas. There was an area in their home that we called the ghost Woods. If we'd go out take the dogs out to coon hunt at night, if your dogs got over in that area, they'd just stopped barking. It'd go dead, silent. And the wind would be blowing hard everywhere, but when you went into the ghostwood, it was just stone still, not a tree moving. You could hear wind, but nothing was moving, and you may or may not see your dog again. And one of the things that stuck in my mind. We were probably I don't know, sixteen years old, and there was a big, huge, like a thorn bush, a lot of blackberries, and there was a hole through it, and we took the lanterns and crawled in and there was a complete skeleton of a horse. And there were cattle on that farm, but no horses, so none of us knew who that might have been. But the weird thing about it was every bone on that skeleton was just white, clean white, no mode, no mildew, no dirt, and pristine white. And we'd wandered back in there over a couple of years and looked to see if it was still there, and it was

5:09 and it was all still pristine white. It was like it was just painted that way or something. And I'd be curious to know how it remained like that. But that whole area now is under interstate and shopping centers and housing developments, and that's part of why I moved out here when I got the chance. It's more remote, more wilderness, and everything where I was at back home was just grown up and developed, but sent across some oddities like that. Every now and. Then, absolutely, I've talked to a few people from Kentucky in there. I was talking about Daniel Booe National Forest or land between the lakes, and so it sounds like the ghost Woods are under concrete. That's what I get.

6:01 Yeah, Yeah, that whole area now is under Interstate two sixty five, and then there's a lot of brand new subdivisions that are in there. There were some there was a set of pay lakes not far from that, and on that property there was still a log cabin that was originally built when Kentucky was still part of Virginia. And all of that's gone. The lakes are gone, the cabin's gone. It's just big, multi thousand dollars homes, way out of my budget. It's irritating when the place you were born and raised in your whole life and you can't afford to live there now and all the interesting things like that are gone. Just I'd say about two miles from there's black Acre Farm and that was the oldest working farm in Kentucky. They still do demonstrations. They'll break ground with mule teams and there's old cabin out there and they do a lot of stuff. The public can come in and see how things used to be done and an interesting place to visit.

7:18 So that was I just did a quick search on a map. Is that around Louis Louisville. Then yeah, that was just east of Louisville Blackacre And then that area from Interstate two sixty five was over east of Jeffersontown. So then after that you decide to move out to Washington. It sounds like, yeah, I moved out to Washington in twenty thirteen, and the first four years roughly, I was down in Vancouver, and when I was down there, just every day I had off, I was up in Gifford Pnchow National Forest and over along the coast and out on the peninsula. I wanted to spend more time over in whole rainforest area because that's a real big hot spot, and it just between work and my schedule trying to find time to make it worth going and camping when overnight or to night or wasn't going to do it for me. I had about a week vacation and made a loop all the way around the peninsula, and I keep planning to go back, and I haven't done it yet.

8:35 Such a beautiful area. But was there a time when you first got out there that you realized, Hey, this place is a whole different ball of yarn out here. There's big foot stuff everywhere. Was there a situation you got yourself involved with where things just got really real with you as it pertains to the bigfoot subject. Yeah, growing up in Kentucky, it's a lot of hardwood, oak, maple, hickory, walnut, just all that kind of trees. Out here. It's primarily evergreen, and you've got some oak and things mixed in there.

9:17 So everything backcountry survival that I knew from Kentucky I had to relearn out here for this area. So I'd be out there constantly doing bushcraft camps and teaching myself and learning and looking in books. And a buddy of mine got me turned onto the Spencer Meadow area over there outside of Cougar, Washington, and I got to looking at the map and I told him, I said, this just right across the hill basically from Skook of Meadows and that's where they did the schook of body cast, and if I remembered correctly, that was an all female expedition.

10:04 So I started going up there, doing solo heights and solo camping up in scuok of meadows, and people were telling me I was crazy, and the sounds you hear up there would just blow your mind at night. I was camped up there. One night I came back up a trail out of the meadow up to a curve. I had camped in a big white area in the road, and I was coming back to camp and it was just getting dark and I looked back and there's a log, a big log i'd say two and a half three feet diameter, and somebody had saw a chunk out of the middle so you could walk through it down that trail.

10:54 It ran along a creek. And I glanced back and there was something blocking that notch in that log, and it was fairly good size, but I couldn't make it out in that light, and I was thinking black bear. So I just squatted down where I was at and it squatted down, and I thought, all right, it was up on its hind feet. It wasn't moving towards me, and it wasn't running away, and I thought a black bear would do something, so I just thought, we'll see what happens. And I stood up and I started on up the hill and I turned around and looked back and it was gone, and I shrugged it off, and by the time I got back to camp it was completely dark. The rain had really picked up, and I think it was about one thirty in the morning, and I just had to go to the restrooms about it as up the pop and I thought, do I want to get dressed and get out in this rain and go, or do I want to just wait? And I heard this scream come off the top of the ridge behind me, and it was I don't know how to describe it.

12:18 It was like a roar, but it had a higher pitch in there too, but it was so loud you could feel it reverberate. I just felt it through my chest and I just goose bumped up. The hair on my arms stood up, and I thought, that's not elk and that's not a cougar, and because neither of them are that loud. And I heard it again and pulled my pistol over by me closer and I sat there a little bit. I heard it maybe two more times, and I thought i'd probably be safer since I'm by myself to get in the car, and I was driving a Key of Soul at that time. So I got in there and set and every so often I flipped the wipers on and kicked the headlights on, thinking maybe I'll get lucky and by a chance catch something out in the lights. And I never did see anything ahead of me, and i'd step on the brake pedal and watched out the mirror in the back through the rain what I could see, and I never saw anything. And the next morning there's a road that goes off of that curve and it's gated, and so I walked that road,

13:50 and I went up the ridge and walked along the about the midways up three fourths the way up on that ridge, and I hiked a pretty good ways, just sweeping back and forth, and I couldn't find a track. And I came back down and I drove up the road the way I came in, and the only road that goes up on top of that ridge was gated. So I went on and parked and hiked up and I couldn't find any tracks and as far as I went anyway, but so I know nobody was up got up there hiding and parked their vehicle and went up and messing with the guy camping out. And I thought, especially in that kind of a downpour, it was cold, it was windy and rainy, and I thought, I don't even think a bunch of drunks would get up there and do that party. But that that kind of convinced me there was something out there to be considered. And the guy that got me turned onto going over to Spencer's Meadow not far from there. He went by himself.

15:03 He set up a big outfitter tent. You'd probably get three or four cots in there, and it's got a wood stove. And he said he got ready and went to bed, and he had no sooner laid down, he heard a scream from across the meadow. He said, he's lived out there all his life, and he's elkinded all his life. He said, he has never heard anything like that. Big for society, who will be right back after these messages?

15:49 And he got in the truck and he sat with his pistol in his hand in the truck all night. He said he didn't know whether to leave and come back the next day in the daylight with help to get his tent and his beer, or just wait it out. And he decided to wait it out. He heard it a few more times through the night, but never saw anything. And after that he refuses to go up there and camp by himself. He said, I'll never do it again. He'll go if some other guys go with him, but he won't even go up and day hike in that area. And that's just that whole area outside of Cougar, Washington.

16:31 That's also over close to Ape Caves and getting up toward eight Canyon and where the miners were supposedly attacked and rocks thrown at their cabin years and years ago. And so a lot of history in that area. The whole area between Mount Saint Helens and Mount Adams, just so many wild things. You mentioned the Scuca Meadows area. There's a little Mosquito lake has come up in a interview recently an a tire junction area. There's a lot of history. But I did want to ask you just for maybe people where this is new, this area is new to them. Why was it that people said you were crazy for being solo out there in Scuoka Meadows.

17:19 Scuoka Meadows, from what I understand, the Native Americans have said for generations that they're subsquatching there, big boots in there, and the sightings and the vocalizations. I think some tree breaks and that kind of thing. Tracks have been found. They got that body cast, and I guess even some of the locals that are familiar with the background on that area, I guess they thought, you're from Kentucky and you don't really know what you're getting into, and you're going out there by yourself. To me, it's like worst case scenario. I can die just as easy with twenty people around me as I can by myself. And if you take the just the stats on what you hear on the size is a big foot, you figure what anywhere from eight to ten or twelve feet tall is what I hear all the time, and probably eight hundred plus pounds. You have five or ten guys with you.

18:28 If it got mad, in reality, there's not going to be anything you can do. Yeah, and exactly people want to, people need to. It's going to be back and forth on this, but people need to realize that if it did want to take you out. It could take you out very quickly. It is a large creature. And then there's a whole discussion that we could have about that. But how hard is it to get to a place like Scuka Metal? How hard was it for you to actually drive up to that area? Driving up there wasn't too bad. I've gone in going out of Cougar, and I've gone in a different way.

19:12 I've gone in that way. But to get actually out into the meadows, I found a spot where I could park and there was a trail that goes down along a creek and then when it gets back, it goes through a small meadow and crosses into some trees and it follows the creek around. There's a big tree that was down across the creek, so I climbed up on that and walked across and jumped off, and then just got my map wearing in it and shot a bearing with my compass and took off walking. And it's not a difficult hike. It's one you need to be careful on because you're going through grass that's anywhere from knee deep to armpit deep, and you're walking on solid ground.

20:05 And then you take a step and your ankle deeper knee deep in water, or you might be like I say, up to your armpits or over your head in water. To me, it reminds me of the Everglades. You just see grass and even be walking along and you're in water or mud. Once you're out in there, there's like two big sections of trees, and the meadow is almost to me in like a figure eight shape, more or less more rounded, but a figure eight around those trees. So when i'd go by myself, I'd set trail cameras up along the edges of those woods, pointing outward, and then i'd get in the opposite section of woods across the meadow. I'd set a couple up pointing in and I'd sit out on the edge of the trees and I just bedroll camp. I didn't take a tent with me, and normally I wouldn't light a fire. I'd just sit there by my bed row where I could see across the meadow to those other trees, and I could look left and right and see the trees out on each side of the meadow pretty far across. And it's not a hard hike. It's just something you have to be careful doing by myself. If I'd have stepped off and turned an ankle or broke a leg, or stepped into something and got into some pretty deep mud, it could

21:37 get bad. I know, grown men with guns that you say, I'm going to scoop a meadow and see if I can find some bigfoot tracks. You want to go Nope, and they're just not having it. So that puts a whole different view on it. So you were going to this area, not with the tent. You're under the stars, bedroll, camping fire. That is just one of the most gutsiest things I've heard in the interviews I've done over the years, Like that is really putting yourself into a situation. Yeah. I don't know if it's gutsy or stupid, and it's probably a little bit of both. To me, I wouldn't really call it gutsy because I'm just used to camping like that. I did a lot of that in Kentucky.

22:28 We had black bear and wild boar back there, and the occasional skunk, and you had coyotes and bobcat, and the big cats out there weren't quite as big as the cougar out here, and A lot of the old timers called them ledge lions because you could be going along like a ridge and look up on the cliff and there'd be one just laying up there watching you go by. But you never heard of them messing with anybody. And so I came out here and i'd throw a bedroll down, or some times I'll build a bushcraft shelter and like a lean to or whatever. But if I'm just getting in and out, if the weather's not gonna be bad, I just throw a bedroll down and no fire.

23:14 I'll have a flashlight or whatever, and I've got the ability to get a fire going, but I just don't because I like to see what's going to come in and if it's something that's going to pick up my scent and not get close enough to really see, at least I'm maybe getting it to come through that web trail cameras I've got out, so I've got some bear and kyote and cougar and elk, and I just haven't got a bigfoot on one yet. Have you ever done that type of camping without the trail cam set up? I have, and it varies in the results, and I really need to do more so I can make no on it and see how it compares from Marriott to area and down around Bumping Lake in Washington. I've been down there and had trail cameras and motion detection devices all around the tent, and I'll have them set up a half mile to a mile out from the tent.

24:19 The cameras and then the motion detectors are set up in closer and won't hear a thing all night unless it's way off in the distance. And I can go out and do the same thing in the same spot a few weeks later and not put a camera up. I'll still put up motion detectors, and I might hear tree knocks or rock clacks, you might hear some vocalizations. And there were several of us down there one night and we're all sitting around this little pit where they had a fire, but there was a burn band so we didn't get to have a camp and it was starting to get dark. There were a couple of new investigators with us, and all of a sudden, you hear this.

25:07 It sounded like a bear with a deep voice off in the distance but close enough to rattle you. A couple of those guys were looking around. What was that? Was that a bigfoot and one of the guys is a veterinarian. It goes out there with us. And he looked at me, he said, what was that? Jeff? I said, a night hawk? And it did. It sounded like a cross between a bear and a bullfrog. But it was fun to you could really get them going. Everybody be quiet. I just heard them noise. And if you're doing a night hike with redhead lamps or no light at all, if you've got enough moonlight, a night hawk, if you can hear one of those, it's perfect to play with the new guys or somebody that's never been out there with you. And I've got a buddy that I grew up with in Kentucky. We met the first day of first grade in school, been friends ever since, and he lives here in Yakama, so we still get together. But you get him out there at night, he's not going away from the truck. And if you're camping, he's staying close to the tent or his truck camp or you're not getting him on a night hike. He won't do it.

26:25 And he's been with me when we've heard tree knocks and rock clacks and rocks thrown. And we were in a little clearcut area one night, down under the bottom of a hill, and there's not a tree on the side of that hill anywhere, and there's one scraggly dead tree at the top. He was standing on the passenger side of the truck by the tailgate, and I was standing in the middle of the tailgate area, in the rear of the truck. And I was getting ready to go up and get my night vision video off of a rock in some remote audio i'd set up. And that's probably twelve thirty or one in the morning. I said, I'm not have to walk up there and get the camera in the audio. And about that time, this rock lands on the ground, just rolls between us, up under the truck, and he looked at me. He said, what was that? I said, I don't know, a rock or a pine cone. He's looking back at the hill. He goes where to come from? I said, But didn't roll down the hill. I said, there's too much in the way to get enough momentum to bounce and get that much care and art coming over towards us. And I had another set of night vision and some flear I said, come on, let's go up the hill and see what it was. Nope, nope, my waiting truck. We hung out to see if it would happen again, and it didn't.

27:52 So I hiked on up the ridge and got my camera gear, my audio and came back and oh, I had on a red headlamp, but that's all of hat on. And I came back. He said, you're out of your mind. And I said, if anything ever happens, you just keep videoing because it's going to look cool whatever. And there you go. Yeah, I would. I don't really worry about it. I'd rather go doing something like that than sitting on the couch and have a stroke. I'm more at home out there than I am at home, So I guess that's why it's not the biggest deal for me. But there's times I get concerned and I start getting pretty nervous, and I've had people with me. I'm like, all right, I want to see one, but right now it's the time we need to back out of here and rethink this, because we're in their living room. And if you walk around the forest in Washington State, off the beaten hiking trails where everybody goes. If you get out in the forest and you're away from the trails and the campgrounds, the windfall, the snowload, tree falls, the fire scars. You've got a big tree down, another one laying over it, and then there's another one over that, and it's just one right after another in any direction you look. So it's you walk twenty feet, you crawl over one, you walk in feet, you crawl under one, you walk another ten feet, and you go around a couple. You're not

29:23 outrunning anything out there. You won't outrun a coyote or a cougar or a bear. Big for society will be right back after these messages. And something that big that lives out there, well, you say, sasquatch has what a fifty seven inch stride something like that, and that's walking. You're not out running that. They live in it. And so you got to everybody wants to find one, get the good picture, get the good evidence, the good DNA. But no matter what kind of accolade you're going to get through that, you've got to stop and think. You got to keep your safety in there, because if you're by yourself, it's one thing, but if somebody's with you, and they're not that familiar with being out.

30:30 Now you're responsible for them, so there's times you've got to rethink what you're doing and back out. And I've had that happen a couple of times. So there has been a time where things have escalated or gotten pretty intense and you've had to back away. Yeah, a few years ago, I was out camping with another investigator and we met on an expedition and ever since we've has been buddies. So we try to get together a couple times a year and do a camp out and maybe get out and do some research. We were out, decided to hike over toward a ridge from camp, and it, like say, it was one of those things where there's no hiking trails and there's no four wheelers and no dirt bikes and horses or anything. You're just out there and we're walking around looking for tracks and there's a little bit of a marshy area and then it starts up a steeper part of the mountain and pretty good ways from camp. And I had left my dog in the tent because typically you don't want to take a pet with you, but I didn't have anybody that could watch you that week in. So she's in the tent, got food and water, and we're out there a couple miles away and we got talking about heading back, and we start hearing these loud tree knots, and this is in an area that gets quite a few and

32:03 I said, what do you want to do. And we said, let's see how close we can get. And I said, so we start up this mountain and tree knocks getting louder and louder, and we got up. It went up pretty steep, and then it leveled out a little bit, and then it started up again, and on that little flat area there was a big tree down weighing on its side. I could just tip toe and look over it, and then there was one still standing about eight to ten feet to the right of it from where we were. When we topped that ridge onto that little plateau to start up the next section, another set of tree knocks started.

32:46 So we had one in front of us and one directly off to our right, and he motioned for me to get down, so I just ducked down behind that tree that was on its side, and he walked over and got behind the other big one. He stayed where he was out of sight up the hill, but he was also out of sight directly to the right, so he's cat a corner toward me where we could see each other. And it went dead quiet, and the knocks stopped. The birds. There was nothing. It was just silence out there, and he held his finger up for me to wait a second, and he stepped out toward me, and when he did, the knocks up the ridge just turned loose.

33:35 Whack whack whack whack, and then there were four directly to my right behind him, and he stepped back behind the tree and they stopped. So he motioned to me, and I stepped out from behind the tree. I was at the one up the hills. Black whit whit wh like four good solid hits, and they were just crazy loud. The ones over behind him four more, and I stepped back behind the tree and they stopped. And so we just sat there looking at each other, and I held my hand up to wait, and we waited, and there's nothing, not a sound. So I held up a finger. Hold on a minute. I stepped out again. Whack whack whack white.

34:21 Then over behind him, whack whack white. So he just stepped out towards me, and when he did down behind me to the other side, even clos there's a whack whack, white whack, and you could hear rock clacks out there. And I told him, I said, they're up the hill in front of us. There's one off to the right, and now there's one down behind us. And I said, if if we get one to this other side, they're squared up between us and the camp. And I said, I'm thinking we need to back out of here. And I said, run steep, rugged ground, and those tree falls were not going to outrun anything. And yeah, I'd like to get a picture if we could get close enough.

35:09 But when we started up the hill it was one set of wax and now it's three. It was coordinated enough they got around us. I don't want to get this other direction blocked where we can't move to get out, and he said agreed. So we worked our way farther that would have been north from the way we came in and made a big loop, which we were thinking was way behind the one that got behind me where we could walk back out. But we ended up making a pretty good hike, getting back out onto a forest road and then coming back up and cutting across through the forest to get back up to where we were camped, so we made a pretty decent loop. But we talked about that until we went to bed that night, that it was just unreal that this is supposedly a wild creature but smart enough to use tree knocks to communicate and or at least signal where they're at, and smart enough that three of them. One was knocking in, the other two knocking back, but the other two managed to get almost around us. We were in the middle of a triangle, and I don't know how many more would have been out there, and he didn't and may not

36:41 have been anymore. But you read these encounters where a hunter is had a big caliber hunting rifle for elk or deer or whatever, and they've shot them point blank and they just turn around and walk off. Both of us had pistols, but my forty five isn't going to do anything but make it upset. If a large caliber elk rifle didn't hurt them, what's the point of getting that out? And my big deal is, you know they talk about it's going to take a body to prove that I'm not willing to kill something just to prove something I just don't want to and if I could avoid it, I would. But people my girlfriend has asked, we gon to do if you ever come face to face with one. There's nothing I can do. I can't fight it, and when I can't outrun it, shooting it's going to be pointless, I said. As scared as I would be that close face to face, I think I would just sit down and try to be non threatening.

37:55 Maybe do late that they do when they're studying guerrillas, like the Silvers. Just sit down, try to stay calm, don't make eye contact, look at the ground, glance up with your eyes occasionally. You know, you'd want to reach for your phone or whatever and take a picture, but at the same time, you don't want to get broken in half. And from what I've seen so far, there's maybe a handful of accounts where there was ever so called attack or whatever, so I'm not really that concerned about it. Oh God, you don't see on the news that a hiker was killed by Bigfoot or put in the hospital by Bigfoot, a cougar or moose.

38:43 Yeah, but are these public reports like on the BFRO that you're referring to, or the. One where me and my buddy were out there, weren't. We didn't put them on there. There's reports on there that are public, and the way it works is somebody will submit a report, and then an investigator a look for reports in his area and he'll assign them to himself for herself, and they'll try to contact the witness and get all the details and if it's where they can get out there and look the area over for tracks or if they've got a track or something and get some measurements. They do that and pictures, and then once they get it all uploaded and submitted, then they'll be made but on the public side of the website and you can go in and look at those.

39:36 What I was specifically referring to is you'd mentioned that you've read some reports where there was maybe even some attacks on people that were made by bigfoot. Are there any of those that come to mind that you've read over the years. Yeah, Ape Canyon, there were some minors. Those guys they I had getting in the cabin and throwing big rocks and boulders all night. One of the guys supposedly shot one. I don't think there was a body recovered, but and then there was one that I've heard a couple times and read about where President Roosevelt had told about some trappers.

40:17 I think those were up in Canada and they got it. I read a report and I think that was actually a public one on the BFRO site. But some guys had hiked in, I think from up near Bumping Lake area down toward Twin Sisters Lakes to do some fishing. They got down there and set up camp, and something got to throw in some pretty big rocks at them, and they tore camp down and hiked back out. And that's pretty good hike. To turn around and come back without fishing and all that, you'd have to get pretty rattled. When it runs the Gamut. There's mistaken identities. Have been a bear they saw I could have been a bear standing up, but the way the old man's beard the tree moss hangs it made it look bigger in the moonlight.

41:10 I've got one I've been looking at and I don't think it's going to go anywhere. This guy submitted a report about they found a hand, a big foot hand on a ridge out here, and it was his best friend and another guy that found it when they were hunting those two don't even know that. This guy submitted the report and he sent me a picture of it and it's got squared off, rounded, normal looking fingernails. And that friend of mine I told you is a veterinarian that as an investigator. I sent him the picture and he said, I'm thinking it's a hoax or a misidentification because looks like a raccoon paw. So I took a picture of a raccoon paw put next to it, and I said, I don't think so. Raccons they have claws, they don't have rounded, worn off fingernails like that, and the fingers were definitely bigger. But I said, I'm still on that same hoax theory or whatever you figure. If a bigfoot is eight hundred to fifteen hundred pounds and there what eight or twelve feet tall, whatever they happen to be, What is out there big enough to do that to a bigfoot unless one died or with natural causes, and then a cougar or a fox or whatever you'd descend off. Just so many things you have to consider on it.

42:39 That is extremely unique. Maybe it's not. I only have access to public databases, but that just sounds like it's a very unique report. To me. I've never heard anything like that where it's like, you know, disattached bigfoothand found up on a ridge. That's it's pretty wild. Yeah, and I hadn't either. We got people that claim to have a big foothead and a freezer, but nobody's ever seen it. Or I got a hand, or I got hair, I've you know, I've tried emailing this guy and calling him and he can't get anything set up for me to talk to the guys that were actually there, So I can't get even a close estimation of where it was. He just said it was on this ridge, and I'm like, this doesn't really do me any good.

43:27 I can't go anywhere with it. Wow, we don't. If I found a bigfootthand severed on the ridge, it's coming back with me. There's DNA, there's hair samples. Yeah, so why wouldn't you bring it back? Oh they didn't bring it back. They left it there? No, Yeah, and I'd looked rink. Okay, there's a hand, Are there any tracks? Are there any tree breaks? Are there any signs of a struggle? Is there anything else up here? Dead? It's just common sense stuff that even a hunter would look for all, right, this is a bigfoot hand. What's up here that could do this to a bigfoot? And a skilled hunter is going to start looking around. What did it? Are their tracks? Was it a bear? Or what happened? And there was none of that.

44:15 This is all current day that this is happening. Yeah, well I got and I've still got to update that report, but I'm not gonna push it public. I'm gonna list it as a misidentification or not nothingfo or whatever, because there's just nothing there to You put it up there for the public and you could stick that picture up there and they're gonna think the same thing, that's a raccoon hand. They're hopes in it. You know. That's a shame. I was. Yeah, that's a shame. I was camped. I do pre eighteen forties mountain man re enactment things, so I've got the buckskins, the flint lock rifle, all the period correct gear, and i was doing pre eighteen forties camp by myself one weekend and I just get out and practice the skills. But I'm out in the middle of this wilderness area.

45:09 Big for society, who will be right back after these messages. And I part and then I hike in because I don't want to be near hiking trails or camps or people. So wilderness area there's no motorized vehicles and all that. And I get back in this steep, rocky, rugged terrain, a lot of thick brush and trees, and I'm moving through this area and I happen to look down. It looks like hair going off the branch of a bush, over to another bush, over to another bush, and going around a tree. And I thought, so's beard. Moss is getting tangled in everything. I got to looking at it closer, and it wasn't moss. It was hair. I took a strand off real careful and put it in a bag, and then I pulled another strand off that I could just roll up and carry back out to check out and not worry about contaminating it too much. So I stretched it out on top of my I've got a diamond shelter. I stretched it out on that and I measured it, and that strand of hair is just over fifty one inches long. And I looked around. I thought

46:40 it had to be a horse or something up here. There's no horse tracks. I don't think you could ride a horse through there without falling off the side of that hill. And there's no hiking trails, there's no dirt bike, no quads. It is some rugged, rough area. So I didn't really I've still got it laying around somewhere in an envelope. But I was looking at some maps down at the Forest Stranger headquarters there in Natchez, Washington, and I ran into one of the Forest Service guys over there gas station right after I left, and I said, I got a question. I said, what's up in these mountains?

47:24 It has hair fifty one inches long? And he just looked at me funny. He said, probably something you need to forget about, and he took a sip off his coffee, got in his truck and drove away. No way. Yeah, And I thought, I grew up around horses. The tail you're not even going to get fifty one inches. You might on a saddle bread some of those show horses, but they're going to be well groomed, maintained. Nothing out that far living wild. I don't know of anything out there with hair that long. But then again, one reason I never put that into a report myself is i've never read any report on Bigfoot where they had hair that long. It's always four inches long, maybe six at the most, matted, dirty, smelly. I've never read a report of real long hair on one. Just so, it's what if you're the.

48:26 First guy, What if you're the first guy that come that has come across that it's because no one else has encountered that you're the first one too, Like, I don't know. That might be a way to look. At it though, Like yeah, and it uh, it was. It's unnerving when you're used to being out by yourself, but you never find anything. You found a great big track, And I've got pictures of tracks I've taken and laid the tape out and measured huge tracks. Tree breaks, tree structures that just defy what you would consider natural. And you can look at all that's snow break, that's windlowed, that's a fire that caused that, and then there's others.

49:12 You're looking at it gone, that's not possible. A tree doesn't naturally fall and get interwoven through others. And there's one and this one's down there, bumping buddy of mine was with me. The root ball is still attached to it and it is woven through these other big trees. And this tree's got to be two feet in diameter foot and a half two feet and it's woven, interwoven through the trees. And the root ball is up there, but there's no hole where the root ball came out of. And I told him, I said, look how all those trees are and all the limbs on them are still intact.

49:56 If that tree fell like that, it would have shared limbs office so trees. And there were two women in a forest service truck coming down the mountain when we were coming up, and we stopped and talked to them for a minute, and I said, when you get down behind us in that curve, look over to your passenger side, and I said, you're going to see a big tree woven through the other trees, root boss still on it, and there's not a hole anywhere over that root ball came out. And she goes, oh, yeah, bigfoot did it. And I just laughed it off. I said it wouldn't surprise me. I didn't tell her we were in looking for tracks and stuff, so she had no clue that I was an investigator, we were doing research or anything.

50:45 I never mentioned anything like that. She just laughed it off as oh, yeah, Bigfoot did it. And there was camp down in that area and this woman, i'd guess they're in her late sixties. Her usband dropped her off and they had their camper set up, and then he had to go back because he had an appointment, and then he was coming back out the next day, and there were probably ten of us sitting around camp and you hear this just blood curdling scream, and her dogs that had been barking across the road from us went silent. Nothing.

51:26 We sat there a little while and one of the guys said maybe we should go check on her, because that was behind her camp. They went over there and they said, your dogs had really been making of fuss and we heard that scream, that noise, and we thought we'd come check on you because we saw your husband had left you. She goes, yeah, we camped her all the time. That was Bigfoot. Said every time he does that, he scares my dogs and they go into camper and won't come back out. And she was just so nonchalant about it. We didn't say anything then either. We just laughed it off as long as you're okay, went back over to camp, and I went back up a couple of weeks after that on my own and I parked over where we had camped, and I hiked in and went up that ridge behind where she was camped. But I didn't find anything. I didn't find any tracks or there's tree brakes and weird things all over the place, but no tracks, no sounds. And I was hoping, all right, I'm by myself, all alone out here, let's hear something, let's see something. It's a perfect time for it to jump out and scare me or do whatever. One nothing, but it just like it draws you in. It's at the time you think we'd have found something by now, there's something else that pops up that just grabs your attention and your wonder and your imagination. And it just said,

52:58 I don't know. So f of exploration, I guess for me, I like finding out what the unknown is, what made the noise, what broke the tree, what scares people, and why. I think you're right. In our world, there's so much knowledge available that we're able to look at and just to search for using computers and the Internet and libraries, that when we as a culture realize there's a huge part where we don't know all the information, but yet it seems like there's these clues, these things we keep experiencing that it's very addictive. It really draws you in.

53:45 I experienced that in Oregon this summer, and it just pulls you in entirely. There's been a I want to address something more for the listeners. So there's been a few places where you're not telling where they are. That's, you know, I haven't really been pushing because you are a BFRO investigator and a lot of times when you're out there, you're not able to and you don't want to give away areas they might not be public areas. So for listeners that are like wise in he asking where the areas are, it's because usually you can't share those that kind of addresses that. There were some areas though that I wanted to ask if you would if you were aware of them, or if you had done anything in the areas. Have you ever heard of an area called dead Men's Lake?

54:38 I have heard of it, but I've never been out there. Okay, And like you said, there's some places that we just don't give away the location. Yes, And other places are private property and some of the areas are just vast listeners that get a curiosity and want to go, want to go, try to find something or hear something. Me moving out here, new from Kentucky, I just had to pick a spot, and so Gifford Penn show that whole forest you get reports in there. I started looking up here in the North Wilderness area. I just I don't know why. I was just looking at it and it caught my attention. They've had several wildfires, and I think where the wildfires were on one side of Highway four ten is going to push them across four ten to the other side, or they're going to have to go farther south. And a lot of the areas where we get reports or public areas, I've heard a lot of stuff down around the room Rock Lake, and I go down there quite a bit, and I talked to guys that hunt down there. I know one it won't hunt down there. He was going up a hill and he said a soccer ball sized rock went past his head when he's going up this hill. And I said, well,

56:11 hunting season, the weather's doing weird things. It warms up, it freezes, it warms up, rocks break loose, expansion contraction. The rock big rock could roll down the hill and bounce, get some momentum and roll and bounce, and I might go past your head. I could see it. Big coincidence, but I could see it. And he said, you don't understand the rock flew past my head going up the hill. It was going uphill, not downhill. And I said, oh, that's different. And I said, I'll get you one weekend. We'll right out. You can show me where it happened. He said, I'm not going back out there. He won't even hunt down there anymore. He won't camp, he won't hunt.

56:54 And I'm like, can you show me on the map, And he's not exactly. I could walk you too that you said, you're showing you on the map. I can get you close. So I've got a point to start from. I might get out there this spring when the snow's melt off. Oh cool. It just any listener wanting to try it. Do some research on what investigators do, and along an investigative type of line. Don't think I'm just going to go take pictures or cast a footprint. Think more along the lines of I'm going to have a like a tape measure like a seamstress or a tailor would use that. You can just roll up a stick in your pockets so I can lay it next to the track something for scale.

57:42 Note what the weather is, was the ground soft, was it frozen, was it muddy? Was it moss? On picking area? And just look for things that might look a little out of place. And I've stumped across tracks when I wasn't even looking for them, And I found tracks going up the side of a mud bank off of a road, pretty well traveled road. And I measured it out. From the tip of the big toe back to the hill was just at eighteen and a half inches and across the ball of the foot was just over eight inches wide, and the ground was frozen. And this thing was still pushed down close to an inch deep in the frozen ground, and you could see where it had broken it loose, it didn't step in it, and then it froze. You could actually see in the picture where it broke it when it stepped. And that stride going up that hill was just under fifty inches and you could see where it was digging in toes going up and the metatarsal breake there in the middle of the foot and everything.

58:57 But I found those just driving by and looked over and saw it, and I backed up and got out to look at the one that really stood out. And then there's a few others going up that hill, and once they got up on the flatter ground just kind of bandished, got up in their rock and the harder frozen ground and was gone. But it's just keep your eyes open, pick an area where you might want to go. What was hard for me to get away from us thinking just pure wilderness. Get out there in the middle of nowhere and look for them. But so many reports come from around campgrounds. Organized campgrounds. They get curious about people.

59:39 They like to look in coolers, and I've read somewhere recently they're fascinated with blue tarps, for they'd like to rub their hand on them, or the noise they make, or something that they'll play with a blue tarp, and then they go on their way, and it just it's hit or miss. You'd like to being to say, if you want to see a big foot, you need to go up to Chinook Pass and hike this trail, and when you get to this curve, get off the trail and go about a quarter mile. It just it doesn't work like that. I was just that's funny, I was. That was my next question was actually going to be so another area I wanted to talk to you about. I keep getting stuff from over by Packwood. Have you ever experienced anything over there?

1:00:30 Not personally. The first time I camped up in that area, pouring down rain and cold, and I parked on the forest road and I hiked up to Glacier Lake and there were already two or three guys camping there, and about the only spots you could set up that was flat, and they had a couple of tarts out over the tent and out over the front where they had their fire. And I didn't mention bigfoot. I asked, how's it going. I said, you mind if I come around your camp walk around the lake, And they said, we don't care. He said be careful though. Something's out there throwing the big rocks in the lake and making all kinds of noise.

1:01:10 And I said, all right, I'll be careful. And I had my dog with me then, little chewahwah terrier mix, and I went around out on the edge of the lake as far as I could get in the tree. Fall and all that with the dog big for Society will be right back after these messages. And just cold and wet, and I didn't hear anything, didn't see anything, and no rock throws in the water or anything. And I hiked back out from there about halfway out in camp and then there was nothing. But I've heard people talk about that area. And then if you come in from the other side from the rim Rock Lake area, if you go across Conrad Meadows into Surprise Lakes up into the Goat Rocks Wilderness. I've heard people talk about different encounters up there the Packwood. I've heard a lot of people talk about vocalizations, rock throws, rock clydes, tree knots, trees getting broken over and then over around Randall. I've actually got a book that my aunt got me about day hipes in the Washington Cascades,

1:02:42 and one of them mentioned the creek just south of Randall where you might run into Bigfoot, and I was cracking up when I read that. I thought, oh man, they're putting it out in the books now where you can go find him. That's awesome. The whole area is it's just it's wild. Once you look at the map, in a certain way, and you're like, Okay, it's this triangle. We're near Saint Helen's Adams. Everything in between this in this triangle is absolutely crazy. There's just so many different areas within that that triangle and around it too. Just Gifford Pinchota is crazy.

1:03:28 Yeah. And you would think with all the hikers and the skiers and people cross country ski and snowshoe, you would think everybody's got a cell phone, so you would think there'd be a picture somewhere, and every picture that there is so grainy and blurry or so far off you can't see it. This android phone, I think it's a Galaxy something or another, one of the newer ones. I can stand out here in the yard and zoom in on the moon and count craters. I can snap a picture and sit there and count the craters and see the detail in them. And I'm thinking, there's no way you can't get a picture of Bigfoot. If you see one, there's no excuse other than you're scared to death and shaking and making it blurry. But now the phones have that anti shape option you can use on it to stabilize it. It's just but then I look on Facebook or Instagram, and people taking selfies in the bathroom mirror because they don't know how to use the button on the phone to flip the camera around. And I'm thinking, okay, there's why we don't have a big book picture.

1:04:39 But right there you go, yeah, yeah, there you go. It's reaction time too. I think a lot of it is. For example, I was driving one day and a bald eagle was flying by me on the side of the road. I it was seconds. I didn't have the reaction time to take my phone out try to take a picture. It's just it happens so quick, and I can't imagine if there's a bigfoot involved. You just. You're not ready. The guy told you got me going to Spencer Meadows who were riding back one day, and where you come back out of Spencer and you make a turn and you go up around below this lookout area and it makes a big wide curve and then at the top you can go into this parking area and it's a big overlook at Mount Saint Helen's looking out there at the mountain. We're coming up that road after we made the left turn in there. We're coming up that road and I just out of the blue. I said, I'd love to see you cougar one of these days, and he said, look it up online. He said, I've lived here my entire life and I've never seen one in the wild. And he knows sooner finished saying it. One jumped out from the driver's side. It's pause, hit the road on the other side, and it was gone up the hill toward the overlook quick and we were both yelling and laughing, high five and we just saw a wild cougar. We pulled in the overlook and let people

1:06:09 know you might want to get your kids closer because cougar just ran across the road coming up that hill towards the parking area, so we don't know where it went. And I told him, I said, that's it. I'm getting a dash cam because you just never know. And I know guys on expeditions, one of them is jeep. He's got motion detector dash cam in the front and one out the back window. And when that thing's parked at night and he's not in it, they're still on the battery and if something moves in front of it or behind it, it triggers those cameras. And he said, you get so many reports of road crossings in front of people, or they look in the rear view mirror after they go by and there's one going across behind them. And so he sunk the money in a couple of nice cameras, and I had one that it did pretty good. I got some good video of just I would guess hundreds of elk running across the forest road. And I was on one side and there was a jeep coming towards me from the other direction, and we both just sit and shut our engines down, sit there and waited, and it was like they ran forever and ever, and they finally the last one ran across, and it was probably five minutes or so. We set there waiting and you just never see elk like that. And I got that on the dash cam. And then the piece that holds it up on the windshield broke off. And I was

1:07:41 out the next week at Grimrock Lake and a black bear ran across in front of me and up the hill, and they didn't have the dash cam to catch it. I thought that I got to get another one, but it's so unpredictable. There's reports. I'll see them online. They'll mention it was over at this location and I'll look at it. It's literally a suburb of Seattle, and I'm like, you're not getting a big foot in an urban area, But there's so many reports of them like that. They might be around landfills or small wooded areas where they wander in out of the mountains and get in their clothes and then maybe they wander back out Silver Lake over there around Castle Rock area. There have been several reports over there vocalizations and tracks, and it's a shot in the dark where you might find one and then are you lucky enough to get a picture?

1:08:43 Yes, it is definitely. I think it's one of the last great mysteries that we have. Someday, someone is there's going to be another Patterson Gimlin quality film or photo, but it's going to be way better and hopefully it'll happen in our lifetime the area that we were talking about, Jeff, I just want to say thank you for spending some time chatting with me about what you've experienced since you moved out there to Washington. In that area alone, that's been a fascinating discussion with you. It's a beautiful area to get out there and even if you get out there in search a lifetime and you don't ever find a track or hear a vocalization or get the big picture of the one that's going to prove at all. If you're out there and you're off trail and you're away from where the hikers are and the four wheelers and the razors and sab besides, you're going to see things out there that most people will never in their life get to see. Some of the most beautiful views ever, some amazing animals out there, And to me, it's worth it to me just to get out experience that. And it seems like whoever's with me, I always end up mumbling that line to them, how many people ever get to see this? And you look how many people live here, and the hunters typically go

1:10:14 to the same areas, and they only go so far from camp, But how many really get in deep and get to see some of these views? And it is just an amazing place to live. And it's just a privilege. And there's still parts of Kentucky like that. Where I came from east of Louisville, I was probably halfway between Louisville and Lexington. Most of what I knew is all gone now. It's concrete and all developed, but there's still places in Kentucky, Big South Fork of the Cumberland River, Daniel Boo National Forests, Cumberland National Forest. There's a lot of reports out in that area, so there's still some beautiful country there to look into. You.

1:11:02 Oh, I agree the Daniel Boone that's a whole different story. That area is very intense for a lot of different reasons. But Jeff I would say, let's continue to keep in touch. You seem like you are a wealth of information about the area and I just have really enjoyed talking to you and thank you for sharing the different things that you've experienced over the years. It's been an enjoyable conversation. You're welcome. Thanks for having me on. You got it. Have a good night, sir, you can have a good Christmas season you as well. Just want to take a few minutes to say thank you to you all my listeners for listening to the podcast. 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.

1:12:16 Here's the list. Number one encounters from Franklin County, Texas. Number two encounters from the entire state of Iowa. Number three encounters from Oakridge, Oregon or the surrounding area. Number four any individuals that know about bigfoot being flown off after the Mount Saint Helens eruption. Number five individuals that have had a bigfoot encounter while in the military. Number six those that have had a bigfoot encounter in the southern New Hampshire or north central Massachusetts area, including Franklin County, Massachusetts. Number seven individuals that have had a bigfoot encounter in a Bible camp or boy Scout camp setting. Number eight individuals that have had bigfoot try to enter their house forcibly while they were living inside. Number nine individuals that have actively have a bigfoot living on their property. And lastly, any sightings that are in the watchitat National Forest Area of Oklahoma or Arkansas. 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. I'll see you back next time. Listeners. SASA Summerfest this year July eleventh through the twelfth. It's going to be fantastic. July eleventh through twelfth in Greenwaters Park and Oakridge, Ore Again and listeners, if you're going to go, you can get a two day ticket for the cost of one if you use the code b FS like Bigfoot Society, but BFS I'll get used some off your cost.

1:13:50 Priscilla was nice enough to provide that for my listeners. So there you go. I look forward to seeing you there, so make sure you head over to www dot Sasquatch Summer dot com and pick up your tickets today