Bigfoot Found!...Maybe

Interesting. In the article, Tom Nelson, a university professor says:

"To the average person, these places just seem like extreme wilderness where you'll find lions and tigers and bears," he said. "The reality is that you're never more than a mile from a road." I take issue with this statement. As a backpacker who's hiked many miles of the Appalachian Trail, I can attest that you can be many miles from civilization or even a road.

http://www.appalachiantrail.org/site/c.jkLXJ8MQKtH/b.730555/k.96ED/State_by_State.htm - sorry, link no longer available

In fact, some of the hardest sections of the trail are in Maine, including the "Hundred Mile Trail". The name is no joke, you actually hike 100 miles with out crossing a single road.

In I believe 1977, a hiker on the AT spotted a mountain lion in Vermont. An examination of collected scat confirmed this. A Mountain lion had not been spotted in VT for 90 years! Today, it's been confirmed that a population exists in New England, however they are rarely seen, and their numbers are unknown.

Do I believe that a Bigfoot type creature exists? Probably not. However, there's a lot of stuff in the woods humans don't know about.

Just to clear a few things up. I was at work yesterday when I made this post, so I didn't have my reference library.

In 1983, a man walking in the Berkshire Hills of Massachusetts just off the AP saw a mountain lion cross his path. Mountain lions hadn't been seen in the northeastern US since 1903, when the last one was shot in New York State. *

Soon, however, sightings were were reported all over New England. In the late winter of 1994, a farmer saw 3 mountain lions, about 70 ft away. He called state wildlife biologists. Scat proved to be from Felis concolor, the eastern mountain lion, aka, the panther, cougar, puma, and especially in New England, catamount.*

Today, it's been confirmed that a population exists in New England, however they are rarely seen, and their numbers are unknown.

Massachusetts has 250,000 acres of woodland, 100,000 in the Berkshires. Maine is deceptive. It's the 12th smallest state, but has more uninhabited forests- ten million acres- than any other state but Alaska.*

Do I believe that a Bigfoot type creature exists? Probably not.

My point is, that with so much uninhabited land, even right here in my own backyard, there is much going on in the woods that we just don't know about! My own experence is that if a woodland creature doesn't want to be seen, it can very easily run away or hide, and you wouldn't have a clue.

* Condensed from "A walk in the Woods" by Bill Bryson. Broadway Books, first edition 1998.

I highly recommend the above book. Bill relates his experience hiking the AT, and rounds it out with history, geology, and a wry sense of humor that will have your loved ones giving you strange looks as you roll on the floor with laughter.

if a woodland creature doesn't want to be seen, it can very easily run away or hide, and you wouldn't have a clue.

In my experience if a woodland creature doesn't want to be seen they stand still as a statue and we miss it unless we catch sight of it in the periphery of our eyesight.

Very good point. In a relatively populated rural area our nightly visitors include bears and mountain lions of the black variety. No Bigfoot or Chupacabra sightings but a few counties away back in 1950s and 1960s there were such reports even by law enforcement.

The nice thing about this story is that it will take an expert only about 30 seconds to determine if it's a fake or not.

It's Hogzillas North Georgia cousin.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hogzilla

Sorry ... on the cusp of possibly a major breakthrough (or not), all I can think about is ...

I wonder if his wife found it in the freezer before he had a chance to warn her

Like the road-kill otter in mine, perhaps? That raised some eyebrows... Still looking for the right taxidermist, Del.

I hate to say it, but we shouldn't discount the possibility (given the location) of some serious inbreeding. Remember the novel/movie "Deliverance"?

I wonder what shoe size he has?

Big?

It seems he visited the Philippines' famous Marikina shoe capital for a pair. He left in a hurry though and forgot one of them.

_{This is (or was, I'm not sure) the world's biggest shoe created back in 2002 for the Guiness World Record.}

Oh now I have a moral dilemma, well I'm old enough to know better but here we go.

I have twice seen one of these creatures described as a 'Bigfoot'. Once in a remote boggy river bottom on the USA east coast and again near Stevens Pass, WA..

Now I'm going on a vacation without any bars c'ya

Join the club,

Mine was near the base of Mt. Adams in 1970. I also saw the aftermath of an aparently very disturbed something which left bigfoot tracks at a logging camp. Can you imagine a 55 gallon drum of diesel aparently thrown 150 feet. There were no drag marks between where it started and where it was found.

Alas, looks like just another hoax.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/16/us/16brfs-BIGFOOTREMAI_BRF.html?_r=1&sq=bigfoot&st=cse&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&scp=1&adxnnlx=1218979740-EKwi/48I7XMJqWL7lFSu/A

Figured as much.

Speaking of the AT. Did you ever hike knifes edge along Mt. Katahden? Took our Boy Scouts on a high adventure along the trail. Truly Gods country in the Northeast. Well above the tree line and gorgeous scenery in any direction. You've got to get to the gate around 5AM cause once the permits are full you can't get on the mountain.

Yes, but many years ago.

Today, I'm working on hiking the Long Trail, completely in Vermont, from the Massachusetts border to the Canadian border. We've been doing it a section at a time, over the last few years. About the bottom 100 mi. of the LT is also the AT.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Trail

We're about 50 miles from the Canadian border now, and hope to do a couple more sections this year, and complete early next year.

I knew it.. Bigfoot is a bipedal marsupial closely related to man!

Chewbacca!!!! I told you time and again not to drink so much!!!!

Looks like it was a hoax after all. But that just means the real bigfoot is still out there somewhere.

"...still out there somewhere..."

Who knows where...

By the way, did the two (gentlemen...) in question ever explain how they were physically able to move an intact, 500 pound corpse from the "outdoors" to inside of a building, and then into a freezer, without cutting up the body into more readily transportable portions of meat?...

I presume they just let all the (hot) air out of it, and re-inflated it once tucked in the cooler. But I wasn't there (honest!) so it's just a guess...

I heard that they beamed him into the freezer using their transporter, but accidentally scattered its molecules and killed it, because they were running low on dilithium crystals. But this is just hearsay.

Here's another animal thought not to exist in Massachusetts, The Russian wild boar:

http://www.boston.com/news/local/breaking_news/2008/10/wild_boar_struc.html?p1=Well_MostPop_Emailed3

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