Today, I want to tell you about a journey that I've been on for
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Today. Hey everybody, this is Less Striding. Yes, yes, I
know aka Surviving Man, and you're listening to Brian on Sasquatch Odys. He
guys, and welcome back to Sasquatch Odyssey. Thank you so much for clicking
play. It is Friday. I hope you guys are having every week.
We have an amazing guest lined up for you. But as always, I
want to start the show by inviting me. If you've had an encounter and
you'd like to be on the show, shoot me an email and get me
at Brian at Panormal World Productions dot com. You can head up to the
website check it out, become a memory there and help support the show.
As I said, we've got a great guests lined up. I got to
sit down recently with Bob Strain and if you guys remember a couple of years
ago, I had his wife, Kathy Strain on and she shared some of
her amazing experiences out of Area X with the NAWAC, and Bob is here
to not only talk about his experiences there at Area X, but some of
those that he had prior to going out to Area X with his father while
out on a hunting trip, and we get into all things sasquatch. Bob
is a really cool guy, so I know you guys are going to enjoy
this as much as I did. If you would take a couple of seconds
to rate and review the show. If you're listening to us on Apple podcast
or Spotify, and we would love to have you join us on Instagram at
Sasquatch Odyssey. You can check us out and follow us on TikTok at Sasquatch
Odyssey podcast, and join us on Facebook and the Sasquatch Odyssey Fans group over
there. I will be speaking at Squatch Con in Idaho on August to twenty
six. Make sure you keep an eye on your podcast feed wherever you're listening
to the show, because I'm going to drop a special episode tomorrow with Brandon
Holfins. He's been on here from Squatch Nut. You'll probably remember his episode
where he came on and shared his personal experiences. But Brandon's going to stop
by because we have a huge announcement about SQUATCHCN and it's something that I definitely
think you don't want to miss, So make sure you tune in on Saturday
for that special episode when we make this special announcement, and we'll have some
details that you're definitely gonna want to hear about SQUATCHCN and how you can attend
that and make sure you're a part of that. I think it's going to
be a story. But enough of that. I know you guys are here
to hear Bob Strain, so I'm gonna let the music play. You gotta
sit back, relax and enjoy the show. Hey, folks, don't want
to my guest to the show. It is none other than Bob Strain.
Welcome to the show, Bob Brian, Thank you very much, pleasure to
be here. I am so glad to have you. So let's get right
into it. Let's talk about the Sasquats thing everybody always wants to know,
or at least I want to know. What is the thing that got you
interested in? The subject should begin with, well, it was a probably
inexperience that happened to me. You are graduated in high school in nineteen seventy
five. My dad and I had a bunch of other guys but hunting,
big game hunting and Idaho up near the Montana border and were on the edge
of the wilderness area and I had a sighting one morning that I thought it
was a bear and the wat should walk across the hillside at an unobstructed view.
Was on all fours, but it kept looking behind itself like it was
waiting for something to come out of the trees. Did come out of the
open, and I was, you know, thinking maybe it was a mama
bear. We were waiting on its cubs or something like that, and then
it were behind some rocks. It stayed there like ten minutes and then started
moving again. And decided it was a mama bear because there was nothing behind
it, although it kept looking behind it, and it's still on all fours,
and then it turned and went straight uphill to the ridge, which was
probably a good hundred yards distance it had to traverse in the open. It
was on all fours, and I thought, Okay, that's gonna be a
bear, and I was actually going to shoot it. We had fair tags
and just about the time I got my crosshairs on it and figure out,
you know, my range and the whole thing. It stood up on two
legs and once it got to the top of the ridge and it was flat
up there. It stood up on two legs, and it was huge,
and it was solid black, and there was I mean, I could see
its hands. I couldn't see his face, but I could see his hands
and solid color head to toe. And then it walked off and it resembled
Now I think I knew anything about Bigfoot at that time. I may have
seen something, but you know, I never really paid it much attention or
give him my stock. But it had the cross country skier kind of motion,
leaning forward and swinging its arms. Whoever that is over there is going
to get shot, because I almost shot him. I had my finger on
the trigger. I was I was about to squeeze, and it stood up
on two legs and now did no exactly what the thing? I thought,
You know, it was kind of mad, and I thought, well,
you know what, we're out here in middle of nowhere. I could crank
off a couple of rounds over its head, you know, say hey,
but to walk around in a first suit in elk season, and I know
then a couple of days later, and that bothered me for a long time,
not really knowing what it was. Two days later, it snowed heavy
the next date, and then the next the following morning, we were in
a couple of four World Drive vehicles headed up this old logging road and in
about you know, six eight inches of new snow, and it was before
daylight, and we saw something on the side of the road. They looked
like a burned out tree stump. And we're going real slow because of the
conditions, and this tree stump got shorter and wider as we were getting close
to it, and we're all leaning out of the window like, yeah,
what is going on? And then I described it as an oil slick moved
across the white road. It was a two track road, and it was
black, and it slowly, slowly inched across the road and until at one
point it took up the entire width of the roadway all right, and then
it went. It was an embankment over to the way it went, and
it knocked off some snow out some tree limbs that were like, you know,
heavy laden with snow, and then knocked that down. And so we
saw the snow come down, and so we set a guy over the edge,
and you know, he didn't want to do it at first, but
you know, when you're sitting in the right hand seat in a four wheel
drive truck called shotgun for a reason, and that means you know you're the
one that's guy that it was anything you need a gun for it, you're
it, you know. So it's like opening the gate Texas. You sit
on that side, you're opened the nevergate here encountered. So he goes,
well, I don't have my good my rifles in the back all locked up,
and the driver goes goes out of forty five in a flashlight as Tim
goes, here's your chance to be a man, got him out of the
truck, went over the side, came back in a big hurry, and
I didn't want to talk about it, said let's go, let's go.
There was something down there. It was Harry was trying to hide, and
I didn't want to mess with it and move, let's go. So parked
up in the top of the ridge and all day didn't see anything. Came
back to the truck and there was like big giant footprints all the way around
the truck in the snow, and I see that we're the first one's back
and I go, Dad, my god, look at the size of that.
What is that a bear? And his look and his nun Yeah,
it's a bear. It's a big one too. And I thought they had
four legs. He goes, Oh, sometimes a bear, you know,
they'll step down in the know the front speed, you know, their back
feet stuff or their front feet r and made some look bigger. And I'm
looking and that she looks like a human footprint to me. Barefoot, you
know, walked all the way around one trip around the regul we could sit
so uh, you know that that always kind of bothered me. All those
events. We had a couple of other things that had happened to me as
well. A couple of years later, up here in the Sierra is not
far from where I live right now. As a matter of fact, my
dad and I we're scouting for a place to hunt deer and on all the
morning. And so we had gone up about a month before season opened,
and we were gonna find a place to hunt and build some brush ups,
some deer blinds, you know, just find some concealment spots and brush it
up so that the wildlife will get used to the change in the environment.
And so it was just the two of us up there at the end of
a get end road, and as a matter of fact, the wilderness.
That was a trail hit for the wilderness area, which is the same wilderness
area where the cur selves were recorded, So we were probably within eight or
ten miles as a pro flies, you know, from the recording site,
which we're not really sure exactly where it is, but it's something, you
know, somewhere in the wilderness area up there. Anyway, we're sitting around
the campfire and my dad's looking off into the darkness and he's gone, son,
come over here, and what do you see over there? And I
see a set of red eyes big and bicycle would fluck their eyes out there,
just to pitch black Dad. There's a couple of big, giant red
eyes looking at us. Because what do you suppose that is, unless I
don't know, raccoon up in the tree maybe because it's really high, and
he goes, m one problem with that is there that's a meadow. There
ain't no trees out there. Oh yo, you're right, And uh so
I had a little flashlight that shot my flashlight and then the eyes you can
see that kind of would turn and you could see him getting narrow and turned
and man, I don't see anything that you know, And then a couple
of minutes later, they'd reappear. Over half hour period. Eventually there were
three sets of red eyes watching us from out in that area. One real
tall, one a little shorter, No, one way off to the side,
like real close to the ground. Man. We couldn't figure it out.
So Dad goes, well, I'm hungry, Let's get in the camper.
They had a camper that sits on the bed of a truck. Grew
up in there and he's making some sandwiches, and out of nowhere, we're
just sitting there talking. Bom something smacks the side of that camper and just
reverberates the mirror on the truck. Well, those old Ford trucks had those
big giant mirrors. The mirror just went, oh stuff and came down out
of off the shelves and we're like, what the heck was that? You
know? So we jumped out. They had flashlights and pistols and we went
all we were on the truck. We found nothing. We found nothing,
no clue. Was dead silent darkness out there. And about the time we're
getting back into the truck, there's a skyd awful, blood curdling scream happened
in the darkness, probably not more than fifty yards in front of the truck.
They've went downhill. It was down in a gully over there, just
blood curdling woman getting murdered scream, and then similar, almost identical scream answered
it from back where the red eyes were, which was in the opposite direction.
So all night long, you know, I got here crunch crunch,
crunch, crunch, crunch all around the caprinum, and my face up to
that I didn't see anything. But you know, those were all within a
few year time period, and I never really thought about it together after that
until the Internet came along and I just happened to find, you know,
the Bigfoot Farms in two thousand and three, surfd there from another site,
you know, reading something on who knows what, and just surfing my way
over there and started reading some of that stuff and started putting two and two
together. I thinking, you know, there's probably a sasquatch that you know,
was the cause of all that, And it's been something that had been
just sitting at the back of my brain for years, one of those things
you can quite figure out, and you know, and so I kind of
took an interest in it, and I, you know, started investigating reports,
and you know, I went to two thousand and three International Bickboot Symposium
in Well Creek, which is where I'm at. Kathy. We hit it
off for a well and started, you know, our dating. We were
going out. You know, I'm looking for sasquatch, our huntingmoon, you
know, the garden Capital of America. We went Arkansas, where Legend of
Baggy Creek was filmed, so you know, we got I got that going
for me, So you know, the rest is just you know, natural
progression of the things. The deeper you dig into something, and this has
legitimate See I talk to people sometimes I tell them, you know, people
like really interested in it, but don't have an experience to back it up.
It's like very compelling to them, but they're not. I mean,
they want to believe. They believe they you know, skeptics make fun of,
oh, you're a knower, who was like, you're like a you
know, a boomer whatever, you're just jealous. But I kind of have
a lot of people at a disadvantage because I knew something was up. I
mean I knew it. I didn't know what it was, and I'm pretty
skeptical on the retired firefighter paramedic, and you know, I try to be,
you know, pretty skeptical about things. I mean, like, you
know, work the nine one one ambulance in the downtown Sacramento for years and
transported and through Wholesome Fire Department out of Wholesome prison. If there's a b
a story that they had, I've heard it. You know, it's like,
you know, how did how did that get there? You know,
it's like, oh, well, you see, just I have, you
know, a disadvantage over people that want to have an answer, And my
answers came before the question. You know. But just because I know that
something exists doesn't mean that every story that I hear it's something, there's something
real. You know. I think it gives me an advantage there as well.
I won't call it an addiction, because an addiction you could break.
I'm not sure you could break this. It can break you, however,
you know, so if you know there are people I was talking to the
guy from the Pacific Northwest Real nice research, and I said, well why
do you why do you research? He goes, well, because the one
I have answers and said, well, what's gonna be an answer for you.
They said, well, when I have an experience, I said,
in an encounter, when you see one, you see one up close?
Well yeah, and I said, are you ready for that? Because if
you realize what's going on at the time, you know, it can be
can be a frightening and experience, you know. So that's that's kind of
what got me interested in And then I've met a great group of friends that
you know that we have now that are interested in it as well, so
you know, we're we're compelled to finish this out, to find a resolution,
you know, to this question. I think it's very important to talk
a little bit about what you just mentioned. Is I've started asking that question
over and over with the people that I've talked to recently about what the motivation
is for people who are into this subject, because you know, for some
people, it is they want to have that experience, they want to have
that encounter, they want to experience whatever it is they want to experience,
and that's really what they're looking for. For some people, they say,
I want to prove the subject. I want to prove that these things are
real. I think the motivation is different in a lot of cases. For
a lot of people. But I think that's a really important question that everybody
needs to ask themselves, is why am I doing this? I certainly asked
myself that every single day, and I am very skeptical. I've had experiences
that I certainly can't explain, but I've never seen one of these things.
For me, it's trying to document as many encounter stories as possible through the
show. Obviously it's entertaining to people. People like those kind of stories,
but for me, it's about collecting data because I think every experience that people
have is important, even if it's just a vocalization. You know, people,
I don't want to share my story because I didn't really see anything.
Well, I had an experience when I was twelve and I didn't see anything,
but I'm pretty sure it was with a sasquatch. So I think those
things are certainly important. And I think it's amazing that you went to a
symposium and ended up meeting Kathy and you guys have been together all this time
being able to share that, because I think that's a really important part of
this as well. There's a lot of people that are into this their husband
or wives aren't supportive of what they either their own experiences. Some of them
don't even believe their experiences, right, you know. I've talked to people
that have told and shared it with their husbands and wives and they just look
at them like they're crazy and say, sure, honeyuts, that's what you
saw, you know, kind of pat them on the head and say,
bless your hard and move on. But I think it's so powerful when you
have that in your life and that support system because you both have had experiences
that you can share with each other, and that you get to go out
and do this research together, I think is just brilliant. I love it.
Let's talk about how you guys got involved in the North American Woodape Conservancy
and how that all came to be, and how you got out to Area
X, and let's get into some of the things that you've experienced out of
there here. Sure. Well, like I said, Captain, I'm at
in two thousand and three, and she was a member of the BF by
Row and that had been for several years, and she was a speaker at
some and give her presentation on the Harryman Pictographs near Portaville, California that she
gave a brilliant hyper about so when we started dating, we first got together,
I got involved with the bf bar Row. Now I had read all
of her reports on the bf ROW shoot was the most prolific investigator on the
West Coast, and so all the encounter reports in California, I had read
most of them, you know, were ones that she had followed up on
and read the report on. It's always familiar with that, and so we
were able to have, you know, great discussions about that, and I
got involved with the bf ROW did it as an investigator and later curator and
whatever. Anyway, I investigated a lot of reports during that process. That
time, Cathy was invited to speak in several occasions at the TBRC. And
now you talked to Mike Hays about the evolution of the in a WAC from
the TBRC. Stay tuned for more sasquatch otysee. Moving right back after these
messages, they were given us a conferences and Kathy spoke as several of them,
and so of course I accompanied her a lot of those trips. But
we've got to be good friends. But the people that you know, Darryl
and Alton, they were such with the BFRRO at that time as well.
And so they were They were basically our friends, and even though we were
members of the TBRC, it was they were more based in Texas at that
time. But they had some experiences that I know that Darrell talked about that
they had been in there as a group doing camera trap operations, had spent
some time in there and during the summer before it was well twenty eleven,
it was the Echo incident when they almost collected the specimen and I was able
to retrieve some blood off some rocks, but fortunately weren't able to complete the
collection of the specimen. It was minorly wounded, as it turns out,
probably be as it was seen again later the following year. So they had
a whole lot of activity. They really wrapped up there what was going on,
and it was just happening fast and furious. So they had respect for
us as we did for them. They know we had a lot of experience
and they know firsthand personal experience. So they invited us to come. We
weren't members to come to areas, and we came in two thousand and twelve
and they and I spent a week there and seems like it was it was
only a week, but it seems like a year for everything that happened there
that week. That was probably one of the craziest weeks of our lives certainly,
so it was just natural then, you know, we joined, became
members, and wou'd have been members and big supporters of the NAWASC ever since.
Well, let's talk about some of those experiences that happened over that first
week out there. You referred to Darrell being on the show. I had
Michael May's on the show a couple of days ago, and I've got Brian
Brown scheduled. I think next week I'm going to have Brian on, and
of course Matt Prue. It's a friend of the show. I've had Matt
on before. You know, I'm fascinated with the way that you guys go
about your business there because and people have seen obviously some of the documentaries that
you guys have been involved in. You and Kathy have been intricraling some of
those and shared some of your experiences. But I think one of the things
that always piqued my interest the most about the NAWAC was the way that you
guys went about it. You're looking to for a long time. I know
that Darryl talks a little bit about how that sort of shifted recently. But
specimen collection has always been a part of what you guys are trying to do.
And I think if any group is really serious, in my opinion,
it's just my opinion, if you're serious about going about proving these things as
a species, that has to be part of your mission statement because science requires
what it requires, and I think in order to prove these things, somebody's
going to have to take one down and bring it in and let the scientists
take it apart and look at it and figure out what it is. But
in addition to that, the way that you guys go out and spend the
time that you spend there is the other thing, because there's a lot of
us that like to go out. I love to hike my property. I
found a footprint on my property a week and a half or so ago.
Pretty sure it looks like a sasquatch footprint to me. Yeah, I'm not
an expert, but that's what it looks like, and I just happened upon
it. I don't go out in the woods like you guys too, So
for you guys to go out and spend weeks at a time and in rotation.
I think that's the only way to really do the research. So you
and Kathy get out there and you get your experience an area X. What
was it like when you guys hit the ground there was it almost immediate?
What did you guys experience during that first week you were out there? Well,
I was unprepared for it. Not unprepared for the activity, I was
unprepared for the environment. I mean I was born and raised in Texas.
I mean, you know, grew up in West Texas, and I'd been
to Oklahoma. Being from Texas, you go to Oklahoma only when absolutely necessary.
But I had never been to that part of southeast Oklahoma before, and
I did not realize how of a lush, rugged environment. It actually is
just like being air dropped into Cambodia in the height of the summertime. And
that's basically what it was like. We dropped down that as Darryl calls it,
a mule trail, and I mean he's being kind. I would think
mules would refuse to go down that trail. You'd have to pull him and
they would hate you for it. From that point, for the rest of
the week, it was just total immersion. You can imagine you are operating
in a canopy of dice dits forest, dince forest, and everything is grown
up around the sides. There's poison oak, poison ivy, green briar,
millions of tiny trees, millions of big trees, all competing for sun.
And it's like no sun gets down to the bottom of the ground is damp
and it's humid and it's one hundred degrees one hundred percent humidity, and reptiles
love it, and there's venimous snakes. I mean, this is like they're
in heaven in that place, and there's rats everywhere, and it's like it's
like it's Jurassic It's absolutely Jurassic Area. And I can see why the apes
love it. It's because humans hate it. I mean, I don't love
it. So, I mean the apes are there for a reason. And
you know Daryl was talking about it, it's a core world, yeah,
I mean, because humans won't go there. But when we got there,
it you know, there was a lot of people right at first. So
every time you do, you know, like a shift change as of where
you know, there's a bunch of people and we came in. You know,
there have been a team there. I can't remember exactly how many there
were on that team, but there was a team there and they waited for
us, and so we arrived with the crew and there were five of us
that stayed that we and so you know, the first day is usually I
mean, there's just too much emotion going on. And then Sunday, you
know, it was kind of quiet, and then but by Monday, Monday
it was it was when I know that Kathy told you about that. It's
a bit of of seeing two of them run up the hillside behind the cabin.
And when I say cabins, you know, they're structures. That's that's
true. There's structures. There is no electricity, there is no running water.
That primitive at its best, and that's being kind. They were permitted
fifty years ago and they haven't been improved. But anyway, I think that's
part of the attraction for the apes because it's like it's like an obstacle Courson.
They're all acted. There are four cabins there and they all have tin
roofs, and there are some sheds there and they all have tin roofs,
and man, they're just covered with rocks. We would take the rocks off,
which we made sure to do was sweep all the rocks off the tin
roof. You climb up there with a broom, you sweep it off.
You know, they started out with rocks on the tin roof and having us
run back and forth. And these apes can work in Unison when they want
to. I know, Daryl talked about the woodknocks and four different directions.
That's what they'll do. They'll they'll make a loud noise and it distracts you.
Right if you were going after a loud noise and then there's a loud
noise behind you, then you kind of go that way until you catch on.
And that's what Kathy did because she's murdered and the rest of us sitting
up clearly, and she went, yeah, I'm just gonna stand right here
in the middle because it's not you know, I got banging over there,
and we got banging over there, and let's see what happens right here.
And that's when she saw the tree limb being pulled down and something peaked.
And that's when I went over there. That was on Monday, so it
was Monday or the week, you know, our first week there, and
I looked inside the bushes, and she was certain that she had been peeked
out. And I looked inside the bushes and I didn't see anything, and
she does, we'll take a better look, you know, and I,
you know, put my head in the bushes and I could see through to
the other side, and I can see the hillside going up. Now,
I just see a game trail going off that way, which would have been
obscured from where she was. And I said, if there's something here,
I don't see anything now. There's just a big dead tree that had fallen
and it was sticking out in the trail and had to walk around the butt
end of it. And I'm thinking, well, there's a little ditch.
I'm thinking I could get on this old tree and like you walked across the
ditch, get on the other side. And there's a couple of logs in
the ditch. Maybe I could step on, you know, step here,
step there. Oh no, it's you know, I can see, you
know, there's nothing there. So we came back and we've been sitting down
and Ken was a video documenting all everything you know about all the rock brows
banging and running back and point and as he's sitting there. He just put
his camera down. That's when Cathy saw the two coming at us, said,
well, they were walking right at us. Well, I'll say right
at us. It was they were gonna go to a shed which was off
to our side. It looks like they were trying to steak behind that shed
to get closer. They weren't giant ones. They weren't. They weren't small,
they weren't babies. I'd say probably adolescence, dark black, I mean
head to toe. Of course it was Kathy. She stands up and she
goes, oh my god, there they are, and a full sprint takes
off, running straight out of them, which you know, it was kind
of comical in retrospect because the one of them went up like this, you
could tell us it's kind of like going, O that lady, let's running
that at us, you know. And then one was in front of the
other, and the one that saw Kathy running turn around and went I am
and just ran right in those like two people in a subway just work,
you know, look at where they are going, just slammed right into each
other. And they stood there for a minute like that got their bearings.
And then and then flew up the hill, I mean like breeze lightning,
like shot out of the cannon. They completely silent. We heard him walking
up in the leaves, but didn't make any noise at all. As they
shot up that hill side and traversed it like it was, it was ghost
like. I'll tell you, it was absolutely ghost like watching them brow up
that hill. But the first one that went up on up i'm too late
eggs and tucked its arms like this and bent over. And the other woman,
which was a little bit smaller, went a few yards over and went
up a fallen tree that was probably about six inch dime atter, a tree
that had fallen a few years before, was laying straight down the hill.
Use that like a ladder, and we went up the hillside on that on
all fours, and it was used on his hands, you know, like
a you know, the bullets way up at it, and so it went
up on all fours. So that was Monday. Of course, we were
shocked after that. And then that night, I mean it was like they
bombarded us with rocks. Well we kind of harassed them a little dead after
that. We didn't really necessarily mean too. But as they ran up the
hill, we went up to try to find them if you couldn't, you
know, humans going up that hillside covered with the boulders up there of a
square and I'm very unusual terrain, very rocky, so it's hard for humans
to navigate what they just flew up. But we were shining in it was
up before us. So as it got dark, we're looking and we see
eyes shine out there and harassing them, and it sounded like there was like
more than one multiple creatures coming down at us in a beard hurry, and
just as they got dark, so we backed off, you know, like
it was coming from like four different directions, and so we stopped pressing it
and we figured we can't, we can't go up there. Anyway. We
had a couple more visuals that week. I saw another one up the hillside
that was reddish cinnamon and colored like an Irish center walking through an opening in
the trees, and the sun just listened off of it. I can see
it in this waste sound like Chewbacca almost looking, I mean that type of
a look to see if we had a bluff charge that week, And that
was the one that one of the ones that Darryl had referred to had a
couple of creatures that were on either side of a guy that was in a
blind, in a deer blind, and they were like echo locating each other
by clicking like mouthpops. He mouthpoped back at him and one of them bluff
charging, so he wasn't It didn't stopped before I got right to the edge
of the bank of the creek where he was. There was a water pump
that was behind this cabin, and there was like the spring that where the
water would pool up and you could run the water pump and they put into
like this plastic tank very small to collect this and to if you wanted to
have water in the house, like an RV that stink in the cabin,
you'd have to hook up the battery, hook up the water pump and then
pressurized. Of course, the sink just drained right out on the ground.
You know, it's a little sanitary. The landowner said, well, you
know, whenever you start that pump up, you know, sometimes you know,
starts getting happening up there on the hill, and so I would watch
out for them, and I happening what happens on the hill, you know,
and sure enough, well you get rock start at you. So we
had rock start at us. We had the cabin slapped multiple times. I
mean it got so bad that, I mean they they kept us awake all
night, stop the cabin. We get lights, guns right outside, nothing,
silent, dead, silent. This became a game for them. And
finally, you know, I got pissed off, you know, four him
one night and they're just slapping the cabin. They're slapping. It's so hard
the stuff falls off the ceiling. And you know, I just went out
on the front borders and I kind of lose. And I know, listen,
I've had it. Would do you stupid monkeys? You try that again,
I'm gonna beat you. Of course, I'm all taught, you know
what I mean. It's like it on the porch. Yeah, come up
here, but the entire forest went silent, you know, half an hour
later. Bum, It's like all right, all right, Yeah, we
left. There was like being in combat that it's not certainly not combat,
you know, but it's that, you know, closest thing you can get
to it without actually being shot at. It was stressful, it really was.
And we thought we were prepared for We thought, yeah, it's no
big deal, you know, it's like you to go. There's like,
I'm never going back there again, you know, months later is you know,
whenever we going back, and crazy stuff can happen at a moment's notice.
They can be quiet there for somebody will go there for a week and
sit there. It's just like crickets and locusts all night long, trying you
mad, you know, and they come out there, you go all the
what you guys are talking about, and then all the way out, you
know, they'll see an ape and this has happened. They'll see an ape
standing on the side of the road. Loser, get back. You know,
I saw an ape on the side of the road. It's like,
sure about they don't exist. Well, they had a lot of people that
have have had their reality checked pretty quickly. I mean, that's one of
those things. It's thrilling, it's exhilarating, it's madening having conversations with you
Daryl, call your Michael Maze and people who have spent a ton of time
there. It's one of those things that it's always permeates throughout the just the
conversation around Bigfoot in general. Why don't we have a body? Why is
it easier to see one of these things. Why aren't they better pictures?
Why aren't there better videos? You're in a place like Area X, and
you know they're there, people have had a visual sightings. You're getting rocks
thrown at you, these vocalizations, all this stuff is happening. Yet it's
just like Kevin, I had talked to Darrel recently and he's like, we've
been up there fifteen hundred hours or so this year, and there's probably been
three visuals that lasted for a total of three seconds out of fifteen hundred hours
of observation. Right, So that in and of itself for me in that
area and what you guys are doing further proves why it's so difficult to document
these things with photographs, with videos, or with frankly taking one down and
bringing it in as a specimen collection of a specimen. So it sort of
gives me hope in a way, you know, as an armchair researcher who
goes out and hikes, you know, a couple of times a week and
maybe looks for things and tries to find some sign of things around here on
our property. But I think that's one of the things that has really fascinated
me about that area is like you said, you can go up there for
a week and nothing happened, and then you go up there in the first
five minutes it's balls to the wall, and then it's like that for seven
straight days. Are you guys finding any patterns to the behavior. I think
Daryl might have talked a little bit about that, about some of the vocalizations
and things like happening at night. But is there a specific time that you
guys are finding patterns where they're moving in and out of the area, or
just in general when you guys are doing the research as far as correlations with
behavior and times of the year and that kind of thing. Well, I
mean, as far as the time of a year goes. Of course,
the environment is such that it's a forgatma lay a hardwood forest, so it
loses its leaves, it becomes very barren in the winter time. So cover
is you know, evergreen trees or conifers you know, provide and they do
have the dents grows of that in the area as well, and so that
we can you know, kind of estimate or guess that seasonal movements. And
of course I know that Mike talked about the tag set in the paper,
and that we believe we did a tag and a we think that we've eliminated
all the other potential candidates that would do something like that, and not only
at first sight. If anybody who doesn't read the paper, you should you
owe it to yourself, because it's not just simply we put you know,
we were able to attach this bird that had a little radio transmitter that we
could pick up the signal to get a directional fix on it. You know,
the big deal. You know, that could have been anything. No,
it's where we tracked it and the way we tracked it and the way
they tried to initially found it, you know, by using an airplane.
We had lost it. We tagged it, and it was there that night
and it was several hundred yards away, but because it was dark, they
couldn't, you know, they didn't go after it. The next morning it
was nowhere to be found. A signal had disappeared state for more sasquatch otysee,
we'll be right back after these messages. And so it was a month
or two maybe more that we thought it's lost, it's gone. You know,
we'll never do it. And we've been out on foot, driven around
I mean all kinds of stuff, no contact whatsoever. And we had a
couple of private pilots in the group. We have several and the commercial pilots
and this well, you know what, let's just the last hit chap Let's
stick an tinnel on the bottom of plane and just fire out. And they
did a grid I mean a circular pattern and getting further and further away from
where we had any idea where we thought it might be. And they got
it, man, that's how they got it. And it was it was
several miles away, so they were able to get a fix on it.
And we sent teams in over several week period and tracked this thing both the
air and coordinating ground teams, you know, two different ground teams to try
and track it. Had the radio trans locators on you know, in the
air and on the ground, and followed it and chased it and got within
several hundred yards a couple of times. But it was in terrain that was
absolutely impossible for our members and have moved at such a rate it was,
it was incredible, and always stayed about the same distance and get out one
hundred or two hundred yards ahead of the group that was pursuing it and it
would stop. You know, this isn't the dead of winter when the majority
of the bears in the area are denned up. So anyway from that,
you know, we can you know, kind of postulate its range and seize
the movement's because we tracked that for about nine months, you know, as
far as any other routines. I mean, I love Daryl talked about you
know, woodnocks and stuff like that. Well, what we do is,
I mean, I'm speaking for myself, you know, them communicating with each
other there if you will that they have eyes on you, and that's what
it is, if you if you hear or would not by heart or would
not. I personally think I've been spotted that somebody is telling something's telling telling
rest on. Hey, you know I got eyes on the bogey. Not
to say that they don't do it at other times because those Noah has been
recorded, you know, in the middle of the night. But there again,
you know, what's the context. I think that you know, that
type of thing can be used for one thing, but probably you know,
some type of other communication. What it is, you know, what's producing
the knock? You know, I mean I didn't tell you. You know,
I'm sure they have a variety of methods of how they produce that sound,
but at times a day, you know, they're not strictly nocturnal her
they're not. They operate most of the day and at night. But it
seemed to get most active when we our first week there in two thousand and
twelve. It was late afternoon, about four or thirty. You know,
they would be dead all day. I've been until about that time. It
was really hot. So it's I mean, it's hard to say what's their
slip socle like, you know, I mean, well when us, you
know, it's hot in the afternoon and it's real easy just to take it
easy in the shade somewhere, you know. But I think that they're always
on guard and have somebody that's And that's the thing Mike had alluded to this
is that you know, we're working with educated apes, you know, because
we educated them. You know, It's like, are they following there are
normal patterns of behavior when we're there because we're there or you know, or
in spite of how to have we affected their routine. It could us affecting
their routine part to be part of their frustration with us, and I'm sure
probably is. I mean, I think there's a very small segment that there
the wood ape population that is glad to have us there. They're probably the
youngsters, you know, because we're curious, you know, I mean the
side as we've seen those smaller ones because they were checking us out. Yeah,
I definitely think they're curious. So you've had these experiences, Bob,
Kathy's had her experience, as you guys had some really wild close up encounters
with these things. I guess the question is for me before we close out,
is what's next for you guys? What does your journey look like?
Are you still in this to prove the species for everybody else? What is
the research how has it developed over the last few years for you? Are
you still going out trying to have more encounters? What is the research like
for you? And what's the ultimate goal for you as far as the wood
ape is concerned. Well, I mean they ultimate goal for Captain I both,
I think is for the species to be you know, proved to the
science into the world as a real species so that the conservation can begin.
Because you know, the conservation is what it's all about. So we are
not in it for the thrill, but yeah, we will. We still
do go out on occasion, you know when we can't, but our emphasis
is different now we don't. I mean we do in the Sierras, would
apes are very vocal and and so it's you know, it's fairly easy if
in the right spot at the right time, to a list of the call
response and that's exciting for use. And it's very low energy. You're just
drive with my truck and get the speakers out of the back of you know,
And we said and listen. But investigating reports, you know, so
you know that we do. We still do. I've been up. Doesn't
matter if I kathy to the Port Service gets reports from local you know,
sightings that happen from campers and were reported to law enforcement, and law enforcement,
you know, tell scatty and we'll go follow up on it, you
know, check it out. And we've seen, you know, felt some
exciting things. But we are about the conservation of the just the animal.
But it's habitat and which is you know, really important. You know,
if what we are doing through the NAWAC isn't you know, immediately successful in
reaching our goal and folktrolling our mission. At least, we're along the way
collecting as much data as possible. I mean, we're taking pictures, you
know, We're not putting them out there and going, hey, you know,
look at this black blur. You know, we don't know, you
know, and we also know that that's not going to prove the species.
But we are collecting data. And along with these any photos that we may
get audio recordings, we have field journals that it all correlates with, so
we can tell what the humans, our investigators on the ground there are doing
at the time that these photos, that these encounters happen, that these recordings
are made, and so you know, we build a big database of our
own and was trying to look at correlations there. So we're trying to learn
more about the animal. What I mean, we're doing a million things at
one time here, trying to you know, to collect the data, educate
the public, and then also you know, prove the species, and then
to prepare for conservation of the animal and it's habitat. And real quick,
I will give a shout out to my good buddy Cliff Broyland who turned me
onto the federal website called the Loss of Open Space g ob or whatever.
And there is, according to the government numbers that we are in the United
in the lower forty eight United States of America losing six thousand acres per day
of open space. And that's not just development, but there's also loss of
habitat and mentation of habitats. So if you have like ten thousand acres and
you know, suddenly you lose you know, a tenth of it, what
was it down here in the corner or is it scattered all over the place,
or is it like bisector right in half. So now you no longer
have the ten thousand acre potential habitat. You have two five thousand acre potential
habitats, you know, separated by urban and so that's the kind of stuff
that happens, you know, and the changing of the forests. You know,
big demand for cardwood boxes right now, you know, so they're growing
trees to supply that demand. You know, Southeast Oklahoma is a big producer
of the paper products, and so in the past what they've done is cut
down nut bearing hardwoods and replaced it with fast growing conifers, you know,
for the paper industry. So you know, there's a race against time.
And if we do anything. We help to encourage other researchers to try to
do the very best. And like you began the program, why are you
doing this And if you're only doing it too for your own hobby, your
own enjoyment, that's cool, that's fine, but don't pretend that you are
a true researcher. You are looking at for an adventure. And if you
are in the camp that you don't want the species to be any harm to
come to them. Nobody wants any harm to come to a w A note.
No, we love them, oop, we didn't want to hurt them.
And I know that sounds like a dicotomy, but it's not our rules,
you know, we're not. We don't make the rules. Takes the
specimen. So if you don't want the species to be proved, then you
need to stop looking for it and you need to stop talking about it because
it's it's not genuine if you want to if you want to protect the species,
then you stop looking for it unless you want to prove it. That's
my own personal opinion. We offer everything up for free, our OPM or
what you do watch your top project monographed and the Time seven paper is they
on our website and there's no chargeboard, and some other group can do what
we're doing and have uneducated apes and they can even if it's just audio our
video do it. You know, let's help prove the species. If you
think that audio alone is going to do it, who knows it might you
know, I don't know. Maybe things will change. But if you don't
go for it now, you know it's time loss. You know, hopefully
we can you know, encourage somebody else to do what we're doing and get
us taken care of so we can protect the habitat. And unless you know,
in the in the species long term, it's going to be necessary.
It really is. I don't like it. That sweet is Everybody, go
check out the North American Wooda Conservancy. I have it linked in the show
notes. You guys, check it out. There's all kinds of interesting stuff
over there. There's tons of audio, the tag seven papers there. Like
Bob said, all the stuff is documented right there. It's free, it's
education. Go get it, dive in and support them anyway you possibly can.
Bob Strain, I really appreciate you coming on man. I've had a
blast talking to you. Well, thank you. It's been my pleasure.
They say, you don't gotta go cast trying to try and try everything,
calling badna my choice for me to stay right you call it right away.
Come back downs us to us, to us, to us, to us,