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You're listening to Big for Society, and I'm Jeremiah Byron.
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In this show, we go beyond the campfire stories to
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bring you first hand encounters from people who say they've
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seen something impossible. From backwoods trails and remote mountain haulers
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to quiet farms and crowded highways. The stories come from everywhere,
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and each one leaves us with more questions than answers.
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These are the voices of the people who've lived it.
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To settle in, because today you'll hear another account that
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just might change the way you see the woods forever.
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So stay with us, all right, Big for Society. You've
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got the privilege of talking to Greg from the Cryptozoology
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YouTube channel today and that's with a k at the beginning.
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We'll have that linked in the show notes for sure.
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Greg is a documentary filmmaker from Pennsylvania. He's got a
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degree in Electronic media and film and he's also a
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member of the Screen Actors Guild, which is pretty cool,
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and he's been documenting his Bigfoot related experiences all around
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the mid Atlantic region. I've been wanting to have Greg
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on the show for a while. We're finally able to
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get him on the show.
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Today.
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So how are you doing today, Greg?
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Oh great, Jeremy, I thank you so much for having
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me on. Absolutely, yeah, I guess I guess I'll just
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start in a West Virginia. That's kind of where actually
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I had my first experience, uh a number of years ago.
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And this is actually before I was really even into
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cryptozoology or anything of the like. And I was actually
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I was visiting a friend out in like I said,
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like the eastern panhandle of West Virginia, and so I
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was coming back and this deer cut cut in front
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of me, and it was really bizarre just because like
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I've driven you know, you know, thousands of miles of
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back roads and never never really had too many you
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know deer, you know, wild turkey kind of cut out
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in front of me, and you know the so the
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deer crosses the road and then uh, there's there's a
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predator following it and it had it looked like it
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was like a dog like like just like almost looked
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like a wild dog. And so I really kind of
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you know, looked into this subject and it's I know,
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it's kind of crazy, but there's actually been hyena sightings
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like in North America, and I I kind of I
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looked into this and there's there's actually like Hyaena sightings
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in like West Virginia a lot, and it because it
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didn't really fit into that category of being a dog
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or like a coyote or a wolf, and it just
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had these like large, like large haunches and it looked
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at me and then just continued to pursue the deer.
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And I had always had, like, you know, some interest
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in you know the macabre, you know, with like Arthur C.
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Clark's and a serious world and so on, you know,
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watching that back in the nineties when I was a kid,
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and to really to have something like so weird like
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dash out in front of me, it really kind of
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changed my whole like paradigm for you know, what what's
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possible and what can exist. And so I did like
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a little bit of research. And I'm not sure if
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you're familiar with it. It's called the shunka wall rackn Yes,
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in yes, yeah, yeah, that's in like I believe Montana,
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like out towards you know, more like the Pacific Northwest,
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and you know, it was it was known as like
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a predator that carried carried off dogs like that was
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kind of the nickname for it, and having having seen
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this thing really kind of you know, blew my mind
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like that, like what, you know, what is what is
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happening out here? This This was like maybe like two
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thousand and eight, and so I really didn't have like
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that developed of an interest in cryptozoology. And it wasn't
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really untill like almost like the twenty tens with like
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you know, finding Bigfoot and like things like that and
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kind of Sasquatch you know, chronicles like you know, kind
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of blowing up. I was like, oh, okay, this is
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subject is like kind of kind of interesting. And so
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I had my I actually had some experiences in Maryland.
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I actually I used to live in Maryland for moving
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back to PA. And so there's the in Maryland, there's
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the goat Man. That's the that's kind of like you know,
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I lived like near like you know, kind of southern
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near Napolis, Maryland, and that's like a really really famous
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you know area for you know, sightings of the goat man.
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And you know, really I looked into the whole area
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and actually the whole that Governor's Bridge Road right now
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is actually shut down and it's been like repeatedly shut
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down and you know, first time, I believe it was
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like the bridge actually just got washed out. But the
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second time, like a like a tractor trailer like was
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trying to get through there, like they rebuilt the bridge
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and everything and so and it's still been shut down
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so like all along there for like the past ten
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or fifteen years, you know, where where Goatman is like
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reportedly like the sightings, it's all been shut down for
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like almost like two decades, which is like super crazy.
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And so I I have a friend and so she
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actually kind of like lives over in that area, and
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she so we were like camp kind of camping outside
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that type of thing, and like it was it just
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it's it started to rain right like it So it
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was like a normal, normal night and then like out
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of nowhere, this like large like sigh like came came
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from the woods. Like you know, it just it was
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like someone like a like a giant like almost like
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a like a like a bear or something. But there's
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absolutely there's no bears that are in like in this
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area in like southern Maryland, like they've been like extirpated
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for like decades, and and so so like you know,
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I talked around to her neighbors, and yeah, the neighbors
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said that you know, they uh they saw like red
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eyes at eight eight feet in the in the area,
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and like also that a neighbor said that, you know,
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they there was a goose that actually got caught in
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her fence and she heard these like large footsteps like
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like bound across the area and and it grabbed that
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that goose that was like stuck in the fence. And
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another another person she reported that there was you know,
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she felt like she was being like there's there's like
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fishing spots down there, and and she felt like there
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was she was being followed, and she had this really
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creepy feeling like it was a real, real, real bizarre
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experience for her. And so that in terms of that area,
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you know, I feel like a lot of people are
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kind of like mislabeling you know, goat man and and
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I feel like, you know, like that's that's like a
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common occurrence, you know, in terms of like the same
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you know, the Jersey Devil and things like that, like
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people just put like a different name like a local
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colloquialism for uh, you know, for Bigfoot. And I think
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in Maryland, like you know, Bigfoot can really just be
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called like goat man. So I guess to keep keep
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on moving on, you know, with with my experiences in Maryland.
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There's there's a really amazing park it's called Calvert Cliffs
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and that's that's that. That's more. That's more in southern
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Maryland also, and my daughter and I were actually we
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would visit there. This you know, this this is still
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kind of like before you know, I was really doing
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anything with like you know, cryptozoology or anything of the like.
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And you know, we were walking like through the park
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and it was it was like a weird time because
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like most people already gone back to school, so it
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was like it was like early like late fall and
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I'm sorry early fall like late summer. And there was
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like a porter potty there and I it was it's
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a long walk. Like Calvert Cliffs is known for its
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like shark teeth, its fossils, so it's like a real
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like really unique area. And so we're walking back and uh,
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you know, I had to stop and use there's like
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a porter potty there, and you know that you know,
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they had that usually like porter potties have those like
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spring loaded like doors, and it as soon as like
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that happened. We had a response like across this bog
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of like two knocks, like two wood knocks, and it
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was like this it was just like the strangest, strangest
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thing that's like ever happened to us. And like even
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even my daughter like looked at me and was like,
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you know, what is that? Right? It was just like really,
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you know, kind of like bizarre, bizarre experience. And I
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guess also with Maryland also, like there's also I guess
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in terms of cryptozoology in general, there's plenty of Chessea
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sightings like in the area, So Chessa is basically kind
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of like you know, the Locke Monster of the Chesapeake
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Bay and what I've what I've discovered, Like you know,
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there's there's been local sightings like Tapsco I'm sorry, Fort
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Smallwood State Park and that's on the Potapsco that's on
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the Potapsco River. And then also uh near like more
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near the Magothee River, which is like kind of more
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southernly Maryland, and you know there's there's been report like
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report sightings, not necessarily like on the eastern or I'm sorry,
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the western shore of Maryland, but like further south, like
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more towards like the Potomac and of like baby like
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kind of like estuary baby chessea sightings, which is really
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like really wild, just thinking that like, you know, these
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things are you developing like in you know, like a
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estuary somewhere of you know, of you know, the United States.
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So that's that's just basically my time in Maryland when
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I saw and there's also been report sightings like near Antietam,
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and I've been thinking about going out out there just
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to kind of explore, you know, what's what's kind of
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the situation out there. I guess moving moving on the
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like Pennsylvania, I mean I feel like p A. P
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A is just this large, you know, crazy tract of
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land with uh basically has like four four million acres
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of like public land that are really you know that
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gets really wild out there. And it's it's sometimes when
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you're in like you know, Sproul State Forests and Susquehanna
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State Forest, like you're it's not like you're standing on
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a mountain by yourself. You're standing basically like on a
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on like a mountain ridge by yourself. And so so basically,
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you know, having originally been from Pa growing up here,
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that area kind of like north of like State College,
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PA was always just kind of like a mystery to me.
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And in addition to you know, basically there's two point
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two million acres of state forests in PA. There's about
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one and a half million acres of game lands, and
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there's three hundred thousand acres of state parks, and then
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you know, half a million acres for the Allegay National Forest.
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So you're talking about almost like four million, four million
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acres that you know, people can really get lost in.
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And it's it's almost basically, you know, my research area
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is almost basically the size of Connecticut with the population
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of like you know, maybe fifth you know, fifty thousand
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people or something. I mean, really nobody lives like in
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these areas. It's probably even less than that. And so
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basically with the state game lands in Pennsylvania, i mean,
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the hunting seasons like so small that so for three
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cores three cours of the year, you know, basically these
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like state game lands are just completely like unoccupied. And
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I've learned that like a lot of I mean even
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more recently there's been sightings out of the area near
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near State College that believe it's the state game lands
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like three p thirty three and they you know, there's
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been reword settings of a big foot near a fish estuary.
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So basically, I guess the past maybe two years or so.
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Really since twenty twenty three, that's when you know, I
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really kind of got my got my channel together because
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I was kind of getting h I was getting headaches
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from watching people you know, on YouTube use their use
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their camera phone to uh to make you know, like
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crypto Crypto's woldy videos. And I thought I could kind
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of just give it a little bit more of a
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kind of finished product. So I guess really where I
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started was in this little town called cross Forks, PA.
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So cross Forks, PA, that's that's near the Hammersley Wild Area,
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which is like basically the largest area in PA that
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that has no roads. So it's about like fifty fifty
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square miles of no roads that you can you know,
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just really enjoy yourself and kind of you know, these
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real backcountry trails that you know, you're not really interrupted
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in and you know there's there's timber, rattlesnakes, and also
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in this area. Back in the I think it was
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the nineteen twenties, after the last Woodland elk was actually
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shot in PA. They were imported from Colorado. So there's
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actually a heard of like fourteen hundred elk in north
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central PA. And you know, so a lot of them
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go to like these different wild areas that you know,
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are not particularly populated or don't don't have many visitors too.
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And so because I went to the Hamardsley Wild Area,
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it was it was just a good experience and kind
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of like you know, learning how to make like a
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proper narrative, like you know, I mean the first couple
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of videos I made, I like I literally got like
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lost in the woods and like I was still trying
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to get my bearings. And I feel like now I
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have a little bit more of a better better understanding of,