wvbig

Did you even bother to click on the links?

Here is a link to some photos of possible tracks, scat, & stick structures:http://www.flickr.com/photos/22265802@N02/sets/72157603574305126/show/ And here are the links to each section of the Monsterquest episode detailing the analysis of the Skookum Cast & the two-pronged analysis of the Patterson/Gimlin film I mentioned in the beginning: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VieSSGjh6I http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vt0s34Gk-f8&feature=related http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sn6R9bjm_W=&feature=related http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTRj2CEo7A8&feature=related http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFUD1EoET1M&feature=related

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!!! How many times do I have to keep saying this? Neither I nor any of my colleagues are saying any of the evidence is proof. Just that it warrants further investigation.

Well as I stated at the very beginning, there have been scat samples found. Scat samples from an omnivore that so far have defied a conclusive link to any known animal. One such sample was found by researcher Ken Gerhard on a farm in Texas that has been owned by the same family for many many years & the current owner has hunted on it for many years. He is quite certain there are no bears or big cats on the property. I know it's not proof. But when you combine that with tracks, sightings, destruction of deer feeders, stick formations that can't be accidents of nature, and a lack of bear & cat tracks, it's highly suggestive in my opinion.This all was chronicled on a documentary called "Bigfoot Hunters" I'll contact him to see if there is an article that goes along with it for you all to read if you wish.

I know this. I also know the being able to repeat a result part is collecting more than one specimen. But I'm not clear on what kind of an experiment applies when it comes to trying to prove the existence of an animal unless it would be something like putting out something for food that only the new animal will eat. But that is obviously putting the cart before the horse. Any advice will be appreciated:-) Oh really? Is that why stories of the Gorilla were laughed at just as much as stories of Bigfoot are now until there were actual remains to examine? You don't honestly expect me to track down & repost here, every single piece of evidence ever collected over the past 80+ years & every single analysis ever done on each piece do you?

Ok. When was the article documenting the encounters with Gorillas first taken seriously? Also, are you really comparing fictional books & movies to non-fiction books & documentaries?

No. You are the ones doing that. You're saying this eye witness report about Hanno's voyage is evidence that Greeks encountered Gorillas in 450 B.C. but eye witness reports are not evidence for Bigfoot. The scientists I was referring to are: Dr. Jeff Meldrum Dr. John Bindernagel Dr. Henner H. Fahrenbach Dr John Mierjenski(sp?) Participated with Dr. Meldrum in the North American Great Ape Project The late Dr. Grover Krantz The late Dr. Daris Swindler The info is documented in various documentaries & books on the subject of Bigfoot. But I suppose being in documentaries & in books on the subject of an as yet unproven creature somehow invalidates the evidence in the eyes of the skeptical scientific community.The link I believe I listed in the beginning, http://www.bigfootencounters.com, has lots of scientific data. In addition, There is Dr. Meldrum's book "Sasquatch: Legend Meets Science" and a website called "Bigfoot: Fact or Fantasy? goes into great detail about how the height of the subject in the Patterson/Gimlin film, was calculated & how height relates to track length.

Well in the first place, it's nothing more than an elaborate eye witness report. No more & no less substantial than a Bigfoot sighting report. And second, the description of "men" & "women" covered with hair sounds a lot more like Bigfoot than Gorillas. If the expedition party referred to them as men & women, it seems likely to me that they were at least primarily bipedal. Plus I believe female great apes only have pendulous breasts during pregnancy & nursing. Chances are the expedition members were judging the sex of the "women" based on the presence of breasts. Yes I see your point. But the scientists who I mentioned are Anthropologists & Biologists. In addition, experts in video analysis have been analyzing the Patterson/Gimlin film for years. Some researchers have even turned to special effects experts to analyze & in some cases, attempt to recreate, the film. With pathetic results I might add. Bigfoot documentaries just aren't as full of inaccurate info & scientists in unrelated fields as skeptics seem to want to believe.

And just what is the evidence?

You don't watch any Bigfoot documentaries do you? They use REAL scientists such as Dr. Jeff Meldrum, Dr. John Bindernagel, Dr. Henner H. Fahrenbach, Dr. Lyn Rogers, Dr. John Myerjenski(sp?) the late Dr. Grover Krantz, & the late Dr. Daris Swindler.

After only one or two weeks, above ground and in the open, most of the bones disappeared. How hard do you think it should be to find ones that were buried with perhaps hundreds of years of exposure to rodents. There are tens of thousands of whitetail deer all over West Virginia, but it's rare to find a shed antler. Just because I believe at this point, that Bigfoot exists, doesn't mean I'm not open to the possibility that I'm wrong. It simply means that for now, in my opinion, there is more evidence for the existence of Bigfoot than against it. If experts in anatomy, primate locomotion, human & non-human primate fingerprint analysis, & biology are convinced, who am I to disagree? Especially considering all the reports. Particularly those by European settlers that pre-date the discovery of the Gorilla. And just what may I ask makes you think the feet have no toes? You can plainly see them in the M.K. Davis enhancement of the film which is easy enough to find in a simple google search. You can also plainly see movement in the feet & hands. But I'm guessing none of the skeptics will bother to look for that or anything else that might be in conflict with their beliefs. And what is wrong with documentaries if they have actual scientists sharing their expertise?

No toes?? Are you blind?? Casts were made of the tracks it left & I assure you the casts have toes. I've seen them on many documentaries.

I agree that the estimates aren't really worth anything. The main value in them is to have as correct as possible an answer to the question "How many Bigfoots do you suppose there are in North America?" It's actually a very common question. I'm sure sooner or later, probably sooner, some remains will be discovered. There is also the possibility that the remains of "giants" that have been reportedly found over the past couple hundred years, are Bigfoot remains.

What in the world does climate have to do with anything? Bringing climate into the equation is like saying if there are sightings in a certain climate in one area & there are no sightings in a different area that has the same climate, then the ones in the second area just aren't being spotted. My way is simply counting those that are being spotted & then attributing multiple sightings to one creature if there is a clear indication that for example, a 7' creature, reddish-brown in color is spotted at point A on a certain date. Then a 7' creature, reddish-brown in color is spotted 10 miles away a month later, then another sighting of a 7', reddish-brown creature is spotted 10 miles from the second sighting or back at the first sighting, that is an indication of one creature. Not three. I'm sure there is a large margin of error in my estimate though since there is no way of knowing for sure which reports, if any, are true & which are not. Of the twelve reports we've received, not counting the two times I've heard strange vocalizations, three were ruled false. But that doesn't prove the other nine are true. The three that we chose not to publish had very obvious problems. The first one went something like this "I saw Bigfoot out by the chicken coop. He came in my house & sat down at my dining room table. My house stunk for three days" The second report was of a man who claimed to have had a sighting & he said he had a hair sample. When one of my members attempted to make an appointment with the witness for a follow up interview & to collect the hair sample to have it analyzed, the witness disappeared. The third report was from a man claiming that he was riding in an 18 wheeler when it struck a Bigfoot. When one of my members called him to do a follow up interview, he got no answer & the message he left on the man's answering machine vielded no return phone call. I'm glad you brought up climate though. The majority of sightings overall, occur in areas with at least 20" of precipitation annually & in Texas, the majority of reports come from areas with at least 30" of precipitation annually. You asked why no definitive traces of Bigfoot have never been found. My mentor, Robert W. Morgan, was told by an old Native American that when he was little his grandfather told him a story about happening on to a group of Bigfoots burying one of their dead. What they did was, rolled back a large boulder, scoop out an area big enough for the body, place the body in the trench, & roll the boulder back over it. This seems reasonable because the body would remain hidden long enough for the soft tissue to decompose in the damp ground & then the rodents that burrough ynder ground & under large rocks could et at the bones. I'm sure you are well aware of the fact that rodents make short work of bones for the calcium & other minerals. There was an experiment chronicled on "Monsterquest" where a freshly killed doe was placed in front of a continuously running video camera to see how quickly it would disappear. Within either one or two weeks, the deer was reduced to a few bones.

Actually I used the two biggest databases & my own: http://www.bfro.net http://www.gcbro.com http://steventitchenell.tripod.com/wvbig

I plotted the sighting/evidence reports for my state I believed to be most credible & least likely to be misidentifications of bears, from the 3 biggest report databases. Then if I could plot a path of several similar reports along a timeline, I assumed all of those were from the same creature. This gave me a state estimate of 45-50 creatures. Then I multiplied that by 50 & doubled that figure to take into account Canada. Some criticized me for not adding some because some new ones are surely born each year. But in my opinion, if you're going to assume some are born each year, you also have to assume that some die each year. And without specific data to determine either a birth or a mortality rate, I decided that they offset one another & made no additions for new births or subtractions for deaths. I personally think the population is on the lower end of the 4,000-6,000 estimate but I'm not as familiar with the number of Canadian reports as I am with the U.S. reports. In 2006 I decided to try to keep track of the bear sightings in my state for the next 5 years because that was when bear sightings began to sharply increase & I wanted to see if there was a similar increase in Bigfoot sightings. My reason for doing this was to try to determine the likelyhood that Bigfoot sightings in my state are the result of misidentifications of bears. So far, there has also been a sharp increase in the number of Bigfoot sightings in West Virginia. But the fascinating thing is that only about 7% of the new Bigfoot sighting reports could have been a bear. I decided on a 5 year study because it takes most people an average of 5 years to muster the courage to report a sighting.

The estimates are based on the plotting of sighting reports & eliminating multiple sighting/evidence reports that most likely were from one creature. I personally feel, based on my estimation of the population in my state, that the overall population is in the 4,000-6,000 range.

I'd like to make something clear. We are not saying that any of the evidence we have gathered is proof of the existence of Bigfoot. We are merely saying that it is evidence that warrants further investigation. As far as the eye witness reports themselves are concerned, we only use them as a starting point to determine the best areas for further research in the same way homicide detectives first question those people closest to the victim. What do you consider a small population? Various Bigfoot population estimates run from 2,000-10,000

Dermal ridges in a film? lol. Actually one of the first casts Jimmy Chilcutt found dermal ridges in was one of the 1967 Bluff Creek casts. Someone asked if dermal ridges could be faked. I suppose someone could create lines on the bottom of a fake foot. But Mr Chilcutt has found a consistent unique ridge pattern. A pattern running vertically along the foot & the right thickness for something the approximate size of a Bigfoot. He also has noted a known characteristic in dermal ridges that is indicative of scarring that is not common knowledge to the average person. In his examinations of casts, he has found two casts with a completely identical dermal ridge pattern, right down to the scarring indications. One was cast in California in 1967 & the other in either Oregon or Washington in 1987. Two completely identical casts with the unique vertical dermal ridge pattern made over 200 miles & 20 years apart.

The video has never been debunked. You've probably been mislead by a poorly researched article done on Ray Wallace shortly after his death. During the interview with the Wallace family, the reporter was told about or possi9bly even shown, a film Mr. Wallace made with his wife wearing a Gorilla suit. This was not the Patterson/Gimlin film. But the reporter didn't do his homework & just assumed it was. Ray Wallace's son has been quoted in at least two articles as saying his dad told him he had nothing whatsoever to do with the Patterson/Gimlin film. Or possibly you fell for Bob Heronimous' claim of being in "the suit" in the Patterson/Gimlin film. There are two major problems with his claim: 1)He has told two different versions of the events of that day. In the first version, he said he never told anyone about it until a few years ago & in the second version, he said he stopped off in the local bar that evening & showed the costume to all the other patrons of the bar. 2)He doesn't even know where the film location is. Bignose said: "Many pranksters have taken their jokes to the grave" And how may I ask, do you conclusively prove such a claim as this?

I know the video alone isn't proof & nobody is saying it is. Just that it's evidence. As I stated before, the video has undergone intense scientific scrutinization & hasn't yet been debunked. To me, the video itself isn't as interesting as the other evidence surrounding it. 1)14.5" footprints deeper than those made by the horses being ridden by Roger Patterson & Bob Gimlin 2)People went back to the location within a couple days & two scientific estimates were made for the height of the subject based on a piece of wood in the film that could be measured. One estimate was 7'3" & the other was 7'3.25" One of the best things the film has going for it in my opinion is it's age. It was shot on 10/20/67. When special effects videography & makeup/costuming were both rather primative Sure they could be faked. But several scientists have examined these various things extensively & don't believe they are faked. Plus another problem with the hoax theory, particularly when the hoaxer is able to pull one over on thousands of people, they have a really hard time not bragging about their accomplishment.

I've given you the resources for the evidence. What more do you want?

With all due respect. I'm sure everyone here is well educated & intelligent. But judging by the posts I found in the search for posts about Bigfoot here, the skeptics don't appear to be very well informed on this particular subject. Which I guess is normal. Most people aren't well informed about things they aren't interested in. But getting back to the problems I found with the skeptical posts about Bigfoot here. 1)I don't know of any researchers not involved in the recent Georgia hoax who fell for it. Tom Biscardi has a well established reputation in the Bigfoot research community for such things. 2)Someone stated the Bigfoot phenomenon started with the tracks found in 1958 that Ray Wallace confessed to hoaxing shortly before his death. This is not true. As I stated previously, sighting reports date back hundreds of years & two of the most famous reports came from 1924 3)Someone stated it's more likely that someone has been hoaxing than Bigfoot really exists. Come on. A series of hoaxes all over the entire continent over a span of hundreds of years? As Dr. Jeff Meldrum says "Who is handing out the instructions?" 4)Someone asked what Bigfoot hair looks like. I can only say what the hair believed to be Bigfoot hair looks like. As Dr. Fahrenbach describes it, it is mammalian, primate, always absent a medulla, & there was one other characteristic I can't recall at the moment. I'm sure you can read all about it at http://www.bigfootencounters.com Some of these hairs have been found snagged in tree twists 10'-12' off the ground in areas where there were no people & no Grizzly bears.

Well that "someone" is awfully old & sure gets around since their have been sightings in every state except Hawaii & in every province in Canada dating back hundreds of years.

Thank you