Big Food and be on with Cliff and Bobo. These guys are your favorites.
So like Shay, subscribe and read it time station and Today listening watching
always keep it squatching and now your hosts, Cliff Berkman and James Bubbo Fey.
Hey, Bobbo. What's happening man, Well, not much, just
doing the same old hustle, same old hustle. Yeah, well, welcome
back to your side hustle, big Fit and beyond. That's gonna be a
good day of the day. We've got a good guest. But before we
get into that, anything fun exciting you want to share with anybody? Nope,
nope, none of their business. I don't got anything fun or exciting,
Okay, and it's none of their business. I don't know what.
I think. It's funny thing about doing hosting a podcast. It always feels
like people are listening to you. Yeah, well, I'm pretty sure that
this is gonna this is gonna air before the Blazer game. That's still happening.
The Blazers have invited the North American Bigfoot Center to come participate in a
big Foot Night. Some cool stuff is going to be happening. I found
that a little bit more about it. I'm not going to say anything,
but some cool things are happening at the Blazer game. Besides, if we're
going to be a present, I edited together a one minute or fifty something
second commercial for the NABC that they're going to show in the JumboTron. I
think I mentioned that somebody came to the other day to film a bunch of
b role in the museum. They're going to piece together some sort of little
comedy bit or something like that with a local comedian. I don't know if
he's going to be there or not, but what was his name, Lee
something. I have to look it up, but yeah, some local comedian
is doing a little bit where he's looking for a sasquatch or something like that.
And of course we're getting a ten by ten booth sort of thing,
you know, like like one of those like like when we speak at a
conference, we get a little booth through whatever. Yeah, luxury box,
Sure, that's a really nice way to put it in. So we're gonna
get one of those at the game. We're not gonna sell anything note the
game, although we have this amazing backdrop. It's pretty awesome. It's it's
eight feet by eight feet and it's just a picture of Murphy's face, you
know, with the says North American big Foot Center on top. And it's
pretty It's pretty cool, man. I's gonna draw a lot of eyes over.
So I bought a bunch of flyers to give away. So that's gonna
be the big thing in our in my near future. But it's March fourteenth.
If anybody wants to come down to the game, I think where the
Trailblazers are playing the Knicks. Apparently that's the name of another basketball team.
I'm not really a sport guy, but I do know the Trailblazers have even
been to a few games. So that's going to be on the fourteenth of
March at the Modus Center here in Portland, Oregon. So if anybody wants
to come down and say hi, please do There's got to be some you
know, season ticket holders or something in our audience. I would think it's
fans, Yeah, fans. Everybody loves the Trailblazers, unless you're on a
team that is playing the Trailblazers, you know. I mean even I like
the Trailblazers, you know, And I'm not a sports guy. They still
love me when they're not on the same team. Yeah. Have you ever
been to a Trailblazer game, Bobs? Yeah, it's it's nuts, right,
And of course you probably have gone to a lot of sport events that
I have not. But I found it overwhelming when I was at a basketball
game, and I saw the Clippers too, because my brother has a seal
season tickets for the Clippers, so I saw one of their games too,
and it's just so much stimulus if I really find it overwhelming. After about
half, you know, is it a halftime or is it half point?
What do you call the thing in the middleman? What do you call that
halftime? Is it halftime? Okay, so I went on that one gay
sports. So anyway, Yeah, that's that's the big thing in my future.
And waiting for all the snow to go to waste so I can go
to the mountains again. Right, Well, we gotta give them the day.
Cliff tell us about it. Well, she I met her when she
was just a young college girl about nineteen or twenty, and yeah, she's
gone on to some academic success and she actually her course of study through university
was kind of guided by the Sasquatch phenomena, and she's she's all kinds of
good information. She's been squashing for twenty years. I met her on the
first or second expedition, the very first one in Washington, think it was
the second one ever. I met her up there and been friends with her
ever since. So welcome to Tracy. Hi Tracy, Welcome to Big Fan
and beyond. Yeah, thanks for having me, guys. Yea and Tracy.
I've met you, right, I mean, I happen in my head
that I've met you. I just can't remember where that would be. We've
met a few times at the gravel Pit in Washington, the site of the
first Washington expedition. Okay, very good. Again. I know I've earned
across to you, but god, I mean, my memory is just failing
as I grow older. Of course, there's actually a joke that we have
in my family because my mom is a huge fan of both of yours,
and she was so excited to meet you both. And when she introduced herself
to you and she said I'm Tracy's mom, and you said Tracy, who,
Well, I do that for everybody, she just started laughing, and
I was like, yeah, mom, I'm important. In the big footing
world. Yes, you are. You're one of the few like you have
a PhD. Right, I have a master's and what primate behavior? Okay,
great, I've got a lot of questions for you. I've got a
lot of questions. So um And of course, well Bobo said that part
of it is because the Sasquatch is that yours. Is that your story as
well, and you're stick into it? Or is there some other avenue there's
a murdered pathway that you took to get there. Well, I was studying
cultural anthropology and social sciences, and after going on a big footing expedition,
I thought it would be fun to take some biological anthropology and I was just
really inspired after after the expeditions and after that class, and I decided to
focus on that for my master's degree. Fantastic any regrets so far. No,
it is really hard to be gainfully employed as a primatologist. So you
have to you unless you really want to work at a zoo or if you're
willing to do field research in you know, a foreign country. But it's
that the pay is really low and it's it's a really difficult job. If
you also have a family, and so I you know, I'm peripherally aware
of what's going on in primatology, but I'm employed elsewhere. Did you actually
work at a zoo and then also do field work in other countries, which
is how you know you don't really want to do that for a living.
No, I know that I don't want to do it for a living because
you don't get paid enough, and it's it's pretty difficult work. I worked
at a chimpanzee sanctuary, and I did field work with baboons in Africa.
I've worked with spider monkeys at a spider monkeys sanctuary. So I know that
it's work that I enjoy, but the jobs are few and far between,
and you know, it's pretty close to minimum wage for the most part.
You work on some famous chimpanzees, right, I did. I worked with
the chimpanzees who knew the signs of American sign language. How's that, Cliff,
Well, that's that's pretty pretty amazing. Um. Now, I know
there's some sort of debate amongst primatologists, or maybe maybe less of about primatologist
from primatologists and just zoologists in general, about whether any ape you know,
whether it's these chimpanzees you're mentioning, or cocod the gorilla, or any of
these things, whether they're just mimicking or if they're actually communicating, actually communicating
unique symbolic thought. And having worked with these actual animals that are doing that,
what does your take on that well? As a fellow ape. I'll
just use one example of a story. So I was early in my training
and one of the chimpanzees kept on signing what I thought she was signing smell,
And I just had a pedicure done, and so I thought she wanted
to smell my feet because I had lotion and bright blue tonail polish on.
And I kept on asking her why, and she kept on signing what I
thought was smell, And so I stood on one foot and then I fanned
the odor of my other foot toward her. I mean, looking like some
weird blue toe nailed flamingo. I think of it as yoga, the look
that she gave me. And then she very carefully signed mask. So she'd
just been signing in a hurry, so it looked like smell, but it
was actually mask. And then she pointed behind me, and I saw there
was a mask behind me, So I slid it under the caging, and
she just kind of shook her head and walked away, muttering to herself,
silly ape. Yeah. We also we had nicknames for each other. One
of the chimpanzees. My nickname for him was good Friend. And I'd been
gone for a couple of weeks, and when I came back, the person
who was serving him dinner came out of the area where she was serving and
she said, Okay, who here is called good friend because he keeps on
asking for good Friend. And so looking at conversations like that, it's it's
easy to say that it's just mimicry. It's not language the way some linguists
would classify it. But it's definitely language. But you also have to remember
this is a non human so they're conforming to our concept of language. These
are things that weren't necessarily important to them during their evolutionary histories. And so
the fact that they are able to communicate with themselves in their own language and
using sign language, and they could also understand verbal verbal words. Some of
them, even if I spelled out the word cookie, they knew what I
was spelling because they recognize some of the letters. Sure, yeah, I
would argue that even my dog can do some of that stuff. I mean,
obviously any ape would be heads and shoulders and more above. Of course,
did you ever observe two chimpanzees signing and communicating on their own to each
other? And what did they say? Like, what kind of stuff do
chimps talk about when we're not listening? Absolutely well, they might comment on
things that they saw. One of the most interesting things to me actually was
if they would be looking at a book or a magazine and they would be
signing about what they saw to themselves. They're talking to themselves, right,
Okay, that's interesting because one of the things I often mentioned is about sasquatch
behaviors and social structures in particular, is that they're probably moving around in groups
even though they're only seen individually. And I base that. Part of the
reason I base that is, or I believe that is because I don't think
that they would be knocking or calling to themselves. It just doesn't make sense
to me. But you're saying that at least some apes do in fact sit
around and sign to themselves. Well, it's it's kind of like a glimpse
into their thought process, right, they're looking at it going, oh,
hey, that's some flowers and there's some ice cream. And I think that
we all do that to some extent. But it would make more sense to
me that they were traveling in groups and that they were, you know,
doing wood knocks and whoops to one another rather than just by themselves. Yeah.
And if they are by themselves in doing it, they're probably trying to
locate other members of their group anyway. So yeah, different intention. Cool.
Now, let me ask you this. I get a lot of heat
for this because I am always kind of the voice on the Enoba disagrees.
Of course, I very often say loudly and clearly that human beings are apes,
you know, period. That is our families, our biological family.
What is the current, because you know, words shift around, definitions shift
around quite a bit. What is a good concise, perhaps or not even
concise, a good definition for what apes are for our listeners? Is there
a misunderstanding about what an ape is? Are you saying that people argue that
humans aren't apes? Yeah, yeah, i'mentally most of these people say,
we're not dumb apes, and so they have they have a huge misunderstanding what
apes are. Anyway, But what is the technical definition of an ape?
I know it has something to do with shoulders for brachiation, and and probably
fingers or something like that, some sort of digits or something, and belonging
to a certain clade perhaps, But do you know what a good functional definition
for that would be. You know, I probably could have told you this
in twenty eleven when I was still in school. But in terms of apes
versus monkeys, so apes don't have a tail um. They're also typically highly
encephalized. You know, their their brain to body ratio is pretty high.
But when I hear people say, you know, we're not dumb apes,
to me, it's just people that don't understand how basic science and evolution work.
And that's okay. I mean, if you're coming from a place of
ignorance, that's one thing. But if you're presented with the information and you
still disagree, that's different. Have you read that book A Naked Ape back
in the day, It was really popular in the seventies or something like that.
Have you bring up back and taken a look at that. Yeah,
I think I read it in two thousand and nine. Because we have we
are are, we're ape, so we have that same behavior. Like almost
everything that I see sasquatches do or chimpanzees, or we can find some sort
of analog in our own behavior. I think tree breaking, you know,
breaking like hitting a pillow, for example, it would be a good ethic
analog for that. One of the coolest things that I ever saw, and
this was on an expedition in New Mexico where Bobo was there too. There
were all of these ant hills and they had some big holes in the side
of them, and we thought a lot's weird. And then we came to
one that had some tiny sticks poked into the side of the ant hill,
and it reminded me of when I was a little kid and I'd be running
around with my brother and my cousins and we would be breaking off sticks and
poking ant hills and just exploring and examining everything. And it was kind of
neat to see that. And we never did figure out what it was,
but it was just out in the middle of nowhere, tiny little sticks poked
into ant hills. I talked with some of those Apatchie others and they totally
were talking before I even mentioned that We're talking about how they seen them fishing
like the chimpanzees putting the stick in the termite mount hill. And that was
also what it reminded me of, you know, a combination of either kids
playing in an ant in ant hill or you know a lot of chimpanzees in
different cultural groups, they'll fish for termites, and they do it in different
ways, but it's the same outcome that they get termites out. Have you
seen a sasquatch yet? I have you? Have? You would like to
tell us about that? I'd love to hear about it. It was two
thousand and four and I was with three other women and we were walking down
what we called Spooky Road, and it was my first real nightwalk like that,
my first expedition, my first everything with big footing, and I was
a little bit spooked, and so I suggested that we should sing, because
that makes me feel better. But I don't know the words to anything,
and none of us knew the words to the same things other than things like
Christmas carols and Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, And so that's what we were singing
while we were walking down Spooky Road. And three of us had our night
vision trained ahead of us, and one of us, Christine, had her
night vision to the back just so that we were completely covered, and we
started to hear these really complex whistles, and myself, being ignorant, I
said, well, that's really weird that that bird is whistling like that at
night. And two of the gals just kind of looked at me, like,
why do you think that's a bird? Have you ever heard a bird
do that at night? And I said no, And so we kept on
walking, and then we saw something peer from behind the back of a tree,
and it was just the head and the shoulder, and it looked out
at us, and it impacted me so profoundly that have you ever seen close
encounters of the third kind? With the guy that kept on making the mountain
out of the mashed potatoes and everything like that. I drew and I sketched
and I painted what I saw so many times. But the episode was cut
short because some of the guys from the expedition were worried because they haven't heard
from us from a long time, so they were driving toward us on the
road and spooked whatever or whoever it was. And how long did you get
a chance to observe it? I'd have to check my journal because I wrote
it down right after it happened. I know that memory is a tricky thing.
Every time you remember something, you change the memory itself. But I
think it was just for a few seconds. But I remember I got like
a double jimmy leg because I wasn't expecting to have something like that happened.
And from what I remember, it was about seven feet up and we were
all just stunned. And I'm glad that two other people saw it, because
I thought, wait, did I really see something? I mean, what
are the chances that the first time I go out on something like that that
something happens. I think it's pretty good. I've actually because a beginner seemed
to have all the luck, or they're just fooling themselves. But I mean,
I really do think that there's such thing as beginner's luck, and I've
seen it in a million forms, whether you know. My first trip out
doing big Foot stuff, I found footprints, and it was a decade until
That's not true, probably, but almost a decade until I found another set.
Stay tuned for more Bigfoot and beyond with Cliff and Bogo. We'll be
right back after these messages. We found footprints on that expedition too, and
I think on the next one we found footprints down was it the Quinault River
found them down in the mud, and even really tiny footprints. So there
there it looked like it was a family that was down there together in the
mud. There. They weren't giant, huge trucks. They were like about
the bigger ones were about the size of my boot, like a size fourteen
boot. But you can see where, like the smaller set of the two
faced the embankment because it was low tide, and you can see where the
where the little one was set down, I can see where it's it's feet
hit and then where it started walking around there's these a little four inch prints.
Yeah, I found the small prints, and I was really excited about
it. And at first I thought that a little kid had been playing down
in the mud, but it was in such a remote area. And the
shape of the foot because kid kid feet are kind of, you know,
short and stubby in comparison to adult feet, but it was even shorter and
fatter than what you would think, and the toes were splayed a little bit
differently. How long were these footprints, the small ones, would you say
about four or five inches. They weren't that big, they're they're a little
over four. Would that be interesting to see? Did you take pictures of
them or cast him or anything? We did. We took pictures. Um.
They were on the internet for a while. Um. Unfortunately somebody came
through and kind of stomped this crazy guy they got that taught me how to
foot tinfoil inside a bicycle hump for when the big foots throw rocks. Oh
geez, he walked in. It was it was like it was crazy,
dude. He walked in and he's always going, well, dude, don't
step there, don't stop there, and he's like what he's like spinning in
circles and just try like We're like, don't step there, and he's like
he was not to you all there. He got panicked and started moving more
and more like shuffle his feet and just wiped out the whole thing. Yeah,
and he couldn't have wiped them out more if he'd tried, right,
But you also found something along with those baby trucks. Yeah. I think
that was the second expedition again. My friend Kevin and I were out in
a kayak and we saw what looked like tracks on the side and so Kevin
pulled the kayak over and I found some grass that was braided and tied together.
And again, I mean, there's no way for us to know if
if a human did this or a non human did this, But it was
in such a remote area that I broke the grass off and brought it back
to show everybody to see what they thought. That was tied up into a
branch. So the branch was overhanging, and they woved and tied the grass
into the branch. It was like a little daisy chain. Yeah, I
had little knots in it. I mean, whoever or whatever did it,
there was definitely some manual dexterity. What was it? I mean, I
hope no sasquatches are listening. Some mean no disrespect, but like, was
it poorly done? Was it a poorly done braiding weaving thing? Or is
it pretty? I think it was poorly done. No, No, Okay.
I've seen some stuff that people had purported sasquatches made, um, and
the stuff that I have found most compelling, um, I'm thinking of like
those mouse wraps that I've seen twice now, Um, yeah, they're pretty
poorly done, you know. And I've and I've seen some cedar ball sort
of things that I thought were intriguing. Yeah, yeah, that like that
quality of stuff. It wasn't like jewelry quality. But in maybe the kid
had done it. I mean, if a little kid said, oh,
you know, look at this, you know, necklace that I made,
or look at this beautiful chain that I made, you could tell that somebody
made it. Sure, Sure, And you found these in what context,
like in this in the swamp, or in the along along a road or
I think that this was at the mouth of the Quinault River. Okay,
Okay, by the way, I did look for the photographs of the juvenile
prints and I found them online on the bfr O site. Oh good,
there was all kinds of stuff out in that time, I saw. That's
why I had that great sighting, the one on one that night, and
like five of us saw that one. There's that one where those guys were
walking down the main road and they got where Walt saw him run off,
and then they had three of them come up behind him. The huge one
sit on the road, the other two went on each side of the road
off into the brush, and then ran up beside him and passed them on
each side of him, with the big one coming up behind me. There
was there was a bunch of stuff happening that trip. One story that I
wanted to share that it's one of my favorite stories because people wonder, oh,
well, you know, how is it that you're not always being tricked
And it's possible that we're being tricked every time. But I was again out
with a group of gals out I don't want any say the name of the
site because it's my favorite site, but it's in central Washington, and it
was three of us gals and a guy that it was his first time big
footing, and he was hogging the night vision and finally we just said just
keep it. We don't care, because you don't really want to go back
and forth from night vision to not because then when you take the night vision
away, you can't see. And so I'd rather do one or the other.
And he was so excited with, you know, anything that he might
see. And so we stood on the side of the road for a little
bit and we were just talking and laughing, and he said that he saw
something way down in the woods off to the side, and so we were
telling him to explain what he saw. And I just assumed it was probably
an elk or deer, and then he said, no, no, no,
it's it's bipedal. I'm sure it's bi petal. And he said no,
there's two of them, and so the three of us girls again thought,
you know, maybe he's mistaking something else. Just for warmth. We
started to weave back and forth, and he said, now it's weaving back
and forth, so he couldn't see what we were doing. He could only
see ahead of him with the night vision. He wasn't turning around to see
what we were doing. And whatever we would do, the two things down
in the brush on the other side of the gravel road would do the same
thing. And we didn't tell him that it was copying us until later,
but that that one still gives me goosebumps because it was just so cool.
And of course the three of us girls, we didn't see it at all.
All we heard was the enthusiasm in his voice and it was kind of
cool to experience that. And I think finally one of the girls was like,
will you just give me the night vision goggles so that I can see
what's going on too, And he really didn't want to give them up when
we told him later, like, yeah, we were. We were weaving
back and forth and then we were moving our arms and and we were like,
okay, we'll just keep telling us what they're doing. And so whatever
we would do, it would do. So it was mimicking us. So
obviously it wasn't threatened by whatever we were doing. Yeah, it kind of
gives a new meaning to monkey see, monkey do, but the navitail must
ape do. Yeah, I mean it was aping us. There you go,
there you go, we're speaking of that. I mean we were talking.
You were talking about the primate like the chimpanzees using like hand signs and
sign language. You saw sasquatch do the same, do a hand gesture down
into Mexico when we were down there too. Yeah. We were up near
some on a sazzy ruins and we were walking back from the ruins and I
was walking with my ex and we each simultaneously smelled something. He smelled a
really foul odor, and I smelled what smelled like cinnamon, And I was
trying to think of what could be growing in that area that would have a
scent like that, And so he went running off to go tell everybody that
we smelled something weird, and then I was just standing down there waiting,
and then I noticed that there were two parallel tracks in the tall grass,
and I started to walk toward the paths and then the hair went up on
the back of my neck and I saw and again I wrote this in my
journal, I saw something dark brownish that was horizontal, and it was moving
up and down. It's hard to explain it without doing a visual but if
you imagine like the motion that one of the gates does for a train track,
it was kind it was kind of like that, kind of like the
up and down, but not as obvious. Does that make sense, Yeah,
I think so. And you see something weird like that and your brain
doesn't know what to make of it, and it sasquatch was not what I
thought at all. That was not the first thought. I just thought,
it's like a weird, like horizontal animal, Like, what is that?
And I turned my head to yell for everybody else that I saw something,
and I know that's you're not supposed to do that. And when I turned
back, it was gone, and I was a little bit shaken. And
so by that point everybody was kind of coming back down to the area,
and I told Kevin what I had seen, and he took off running up
the slope and I was afraid because I didn't know what it was, and
he was gone for a really long time. Yeah, he had a whole
sighting up there, though. But how many months later was it? Months
later, when I was in a class, they were showing gestures and I
think it was a bonobo that did this, and then bonobo did the same
gesture with its arm that I had seen in New Mexico, and I literally
fell out of my seat in class, and I mean, it was really
embarrassing. And the professor was this kind of really grouchy ish or older lady
that I really liked her, but she was really tough on her students,
and she just gave me this look like she was really mad at me for
causing a scene. But I just it was so strange to see another primate
doing what I thought I had seen in New Mexico. And I imagine you
were a secret You were secretive about your big foot interests, especially at that
point. Yea. I mentioned it to that teacher because she was talking about
Grover Crants. She'd been friends with Grover, and I mentioned grover to her,
and she laughed and talked about how it was so stupid that he believed
in Bigfoot and blah blah blah, and I just kind of dropped it there
thought a very welcoming environment to bring it up. I suppose, yeah,
because it wasn't it doing like a like an upside down field, like if
you were giving the thumbs down signaled to somebody like, yeah, the hand
was faced away from me, and the hand was mostly closed and the yeah,
the thumb wasn't sticking up, and it was just kind of moving up
and down. And so that's not a hand gesture that you normally see with
the human And so I really didn't know what I was looking at. And
for our listeners, by the way, there's another BFR page devoted to I
believe this particular expedition, the Northern New Mexico reports. So there's going to
be links in the show notes for all these expedition reports from back in the
day. So there were you with us when we found that where they slept.
Did you see that? Did you did you see that where we found
that the prints and the dust and all that. Yeah, there were also
the huge piles of scat and the tree twists that these trees were huge,
and something had you know, that was seven or eight feet that had a
reach of seven or eight feet up had just taken the top of it and
just twisted it around. And I was looking at it, going, could
the snow do that? The snow and I think it was Hoyt just kind
of smiled and shook his head. No. There is a picture of that
scat pile on the New Mexico breakdown by the way too. So yeah,
we found three. There was like three spots like they slept that they almost
like swept it like there was nothing in these batting There was no betting materials,
just it was just clean shaped and you can see like we're they had
been laying down and there was and they went to the bathroom right there,
like right in the where they'd been sleeping, like they pee, like I
think they all peed, and like they all had urine marks in the middle
of them, right. Yeah. Is that an ape thing to do?
I mean, I don't do that. Um, Typically the apes that I
worked with didn't poo and pee and then sleep right where they pooed and peede.
But I think they got up. I think they got up when they
left they did it, I think is it looked like Yeah, that would
make more sense. But I mean they don't have the same taboo about it
that we do, you know. I think I remember Dennis full telling me
that they found that at the Kentucky site, big swaths of the ground cleared
away by these things. Um, this swept clean of most of the leaf
litter and forest litter and all that it had brushed it off so that it
was smooth. Yeah, that's interesting. Owner with that. What that's what
that's about. It's more comfortable than playing on rocks and sticks. Yeah.
Have you have you been able to go observe the Olympic Project nests? I
haven't. No. Oh really, Yeah, that might be something for you
to check out. You probably get a lot out of that. I mean
they're still there, so yeah. I don't do a lot of on site
stuff anymore. Um. The last time I was really able to be out
in the field was autumn of twenty twenty one on horseback, and that was
that was a lot of fun. Do you still do You still live in
Washington? I do, gotcha, So there's opportunity. This is a matter
of time and m gumption and availability. I have a thirteen month old.
Oh gosh, well yeah again time exactly, and you frankly have more import
and things to do. Perhaps then you went to Africa, right Tracy for
baboons. Yeah, I studied baboons in South Africa for a few months.
I was a research assistant for somebody who was pursuing their PhD. And we
were just looking at how they used their their time and space. It was
a spatial ecology study, and yeah, it was really interesting. There were
three different groups and they had various levels of habituation. So one was I
don't want to say tame, but pretty acclimated to humans, one was in
the middle, and one was pretty skittish. So depending on which troop you'd
been assigned to, you may or may not even see them all day,
even though you were assigned to tracking them. Part of it was just trying
to find them in the first place, examining scat, examining tracks. It
was a lot of fun. And how many animals were in the troops that
you were following, you know, I can't remember off the top of my
head, but I want to say that it was probably around twenty ish.
Did you ever hear them make sounds, it reminds you of there some things
you heard of the pisod of Northwest I did, yeah, just some some
of the sounds that they made kind of reminded me of like the chatter that
is it Ron moorehead. Yeah, some of the chatter that he got.
You heard the baboons make stuff that sounded like the what you heard on Ron
mooreheadge a little bit um. They would make kind of some type type noises
here and there, kind of just some chitter chatter. Was there a prompt
for them to make that noise? I? Did they do it in a
response to certain stimulus or Yeah? Actually that noise that I made was a
noise that they made when they were having sex. Oh okay, yeah,
so yes, it was definitely in response to a stimulus. Gotcha. I
don't think that's that was the case with the sasquatches at the hunting camp at
the time, and I I don't think that there would be a lot of
similarities between baboons and sasquatch. I mean, first of all, one's a
monkey, one's an ape, and they're so evolutionarily removed. You know,
you're going to have you know some basic primate similarities, but I mean they
were very different. Stay tuned for more Bigfoot and Beyond with Cliff and Bogo.
Will be right back after these messages. I'd like to talk a little
bit about a potential sasquatch social structure, because it seems from my reading that
most primate social structure kind of falls within a small number of categories. But
also we're dealing with a small number of apes. The very few apes that
are still living are just a small sliver of what once was, So there's
probably many more social structures, but you know, so family, group and
troop and something. But I'm most interested in actually the orangutan social structure because
I think, and I don't know this, of course, but my best
guests based on what I've seen in the data available to me, is that
that is probably closest to the sasquatch social structure. Do you have any thoughts
on that? Yeah, I would think with scarcity of resources, you would
probably see something similar to the orangutan or something like the gorilla, but to
a smaller extent, like the families would be smaller. Because nobody has studied
this, and nobody really knows it's hard to say what their family groups would
look like, if the male would stay present with the female after offspring were
born, or if they would just leave, or if they're like gorillas,
they're often bachelor groups, young bachelors that don't have their own family yet,
but it's safer for them to be in groups together. I would guess that
Sasquatch would do something like that where they would have the bachelor groups, especially
with some of the stories that I've heard about some of the more daring type
behaviors, like in New Mexico where rocks we're getting thrown at us, I
would guess that that would probably be juvenile male type behavior. But yeah,
I would guess somewhere similar to orangutan, where it's typically the female with the
young and then the male just kind of, you know, has his territory
and he doesn't stay with them necessarily, or guerrilla where it might be you
know, a male and a couple of females in an offspring, but typically
the sightings that people have, they don't see a big group of them,
so I wouldn't think that it would be a social structure similar to like chimpanzees
where there's a big troop together. Yeah, it seems to be between maybe
one and three or something like that. And I'm sure there's outliers with four
or maybe five or something, but one or two, maybe three individuals moving
around in an area together and their footprints are found in same general area for
quite a while. And there's and again, there's so few examples of this
in the data set. It's hard to make any generalization off a data set
of like three, you know, one, or it's just not fair to
the to accuracy in the animals themselves. Um, but the big ones do
seem to get around a little bit more. And I'm assuming like orangutan's kind
of swooping into an area and maybe doing some booty calls or something, and
um, and that's kind of it, you know, just circulating through the
area. But I don't know, I don't know. There's so much to
learn about this, and I think the only way you really can learn about
that is by setting the footprints and trying to identify the individuals in an area.
Well, I'm just comparing reports, you know, how many how many
they see together? Um, Like like you said, you know, you
don't get a lot of reports of where it's more than three of them together.
Yeah, well that that might be is to be a factor of how
well they hide. To some team members at the NABC, they they saw
us as squat in August at one of our study sites, and they were
hearing they thought three animals moved through the woods. They didn't know what they
were for a long time until they saw one, but they heard they thought
they had three things moving around them most relightful previous hour, but they only
saw one. So we're kind of we're kind of limited on what humans.
I guess where the sasquatches make a mistake and the humans observe them or something.
So yeah, I mean three wouldn't surprise me. Again, I think
a lot of the things that people report, I would guess would be the
juvenile groups kind of reminds me of teenagers, you know, going out and
toilet papering and egging houses. That period of adolescence where your brain isn't fully
developed and you're just making bad choices and you're a little bit less risk averse
than maybe an adult would be. Well, Bubba's going to outgrow that eventually,
But yeah, I think a lot of a lot of those types of
interactions where it is maybe a group of three. And I was with somebody
once where they said they had the impression that the one was getting dared to
do stuff, and we were joking about that. But I thought, you
know, that's not out of the realm of possibility that they're you know,
egging each other on in some way. Oh yeah, I think they are
the juvenile ones especially, Yeah, which of course begs the communication thing again.
What do you think the chances that these things are talking to one another?
And of course you don't know, none of us know, but what
are your thoughts on that. Well, there's obviously some kind of communication between
the wood knocks, which carry long distances and the whoops. I mean,
there's no way for us to know. I know that I would get scared
when Bobo would make one of his more aggressive calls, because I would go,
Okay, I don't want to be anywhere near where there's an aggressive call
because I don't want there to be any kind of a misinterpretation. There's not
a station. Yeah, well, I mean I didn't know that then.
That was my third expedition. Remember in New Mexico. I would get really
shaken and not want to be around when there was one of those like really
deep calls that went out. Don't you think that if Bobo laid on a
really heavy, sort of scary aggressive call, they would just kind of look
at them and roll their eyes. Though I think that now, I think
that they would. They would know that. I didn't think that then,
because his calls are really loud. I mean, you wouldn't think that somebody
can make a call that loud. And yeah, my first thought was if
you know, if I heard that, I would be like, hey,
who's in my area? Well, it's Bobo's Learngeal Sacks is why you know
hack he's he's a surfer. He can pack that oxygen like a deep sea
diver, right, like a harbor seal. Right. He Tracy even on
some expeditions and you and around the country. That's a great story you got
from down in Florida, you know the one I'm talking about. Yeah,
So there were a group of us in Florida and one of the guys was
really eager to camp remotely, and so he went and he set up the
site down in the jungle, down off a dirt road, and he had
some beers in the back of his truck. He set up his tent,
and he was really happy with how his campsite was looking. And then after
his his tent was set up, he went to go back to his truck
to get the beers and I think some other stuff and something didn't let him
go back to the truck. It was kind of menacing him, and we
were able to have cell phone reception. So he called the base camp and
said, hey, you know, I'm feeling intimidated. I can't get back
to truck. Could somebody else come down here too? And I was the
only gal there. It was all guys on the expedition, and I said,
oh, I'll go. You know, came all the way to Florida
to have something happened we camp. Base camp is really boring and the guys
said, no, that's emasculating. You can't be the one to go,
and so discussing who they want to go, and I'm like, guys,
it's getting dark, guys, time's ticking. And so finally we decided nobody
else was really interested. They're like, it's probably nothing. And so my
ex agreed to drive me down there and then he would walk with me to
Tony's camp and then he would walk back and then take the car back to
base camp, and we get down to this dirt road and get to the
area where you can't drive anymore and you have to walk. And I'm informed
that I'm on my own. He's just going to stay at the car and
make sure I'm okay. So I'm a little bit nervous. I'm in the
Florida jungle at night. And then they said, don't use your white headlight,
just use your red headlight that doesn't really put out very much light.
And so I'm walking on this dirt road in pretty much complete darkness, and
I have my walkie talkie and I'm going really slowly, and I'm scared,
and I just, you know, I keep telling myself, just keep walking,
You're fine, just keep walking forward. And then I hear something in
the brush to the left of me, and I get on the radio and
I go, oh, Tony, I think I can hear you. I
must be getting really close. And Tony gets on the radio and he goes,
I'm just sitting here at my tent. It's not me. And so
then you know, I get the goose bumps, I get the hair on
the back of my neck because I don't know, is it a wild boar?
Is it an alligator? What is it? And so every time I
would walk, it would walk. Every time I would stop, it would
stop, and I'm just the sheer adrenaline. I mean, I'm like,
you know, cold, sweaty, and let's just keep walking. Don't run
because then it'll chase you. Just keep walking like you're supposed to be here.
And I finally get to his truck and I tell him, hand at
your truck and he comes out to the pathway and meets me, and he's
excited because then he can get his drinks out of the truck. And I
don't think they were beers because I don't drink beer. It was something else.
But we get back to the campfire and he's like, I really needed
one of these. So we each have a drink and then we're just sitting
there talking and after a while, I said, you know, I actually
have to go to the bathroom, and he goes, we'll just do it
here. I'm like no, So I walk off into the darkness so that
I can have some privacy to go to the bathroom. And as I'm going
to the bathroom, something comes running up to camp and it's big whatever it
is, and it's it's I can feel like the concussion of the footsteps on
the ground. And I was so startled that the only thing that I could
think to say was you're not playing there. And it stopped right then.
And then I finished going to the bathroom and I came back and Tony was
like, did you hear that? I'm like, well, yeah, it
was right next to me. And so then we talked for a little bit
longer, and then it was kind of quiet, and so I said,
well, you know, I'm kind of tired. I think I want to
head to bed now. And so I went into the tent and then he
got into and then he goes, you know, I left the machete outside.
What if it gets the machete? And I was gonna say, they
could rip you limb from limb, they don't need any but instead I was
like, you know what, good idea. You should probably get your machete.
And so he got out of the tent, got the machete, dove
back into the tent with a machete and I'm like, who careful with that
thing? And then I fell asleep, and I was texting the Washington Group
here and there, but all Throughout the night there was like some I don't
know if it was rednecks, I don't know what it was, but like
some kind of percussion type stuff where things were it was like wood knocks,
but it was triangulating around us. And I don't know what it was,
but I don't think Tony got as much sleep as I did. I slept
pretty well that night, and then the next day we just packed up and
left. I felt so bad for him because he started out with such enthusiasm
and he's like, guys, I'm going to set up this remote camp and
everyone was like, yeah, yeah, okay, whatever, go ahead,
and yeah. I mean he waited a long time for somebody else to come
down there. And it was definitely weird down there. Whatever was going on,
they definitely wanted their presence known, ye speaking and speaking it scared or
not scared. You were actually with Renee on her Renee from the show,
on her first night out squashing up in Washington. Yes, yeah, well
we'll tell us about that. Because I met Renee on the show. I
didn't know her at all before that. Yeah. So she was a field
biologist and she'd had a few potential sightings and she just wanted to look into
it a little bit more, and she was. It was Renee and Matt
Moneymaker and I and she was nervous, and she asked if she could hold
my hand, and I said sure, and then I just promptly fell asleep,
which was kind of my m O. Unfortunately, with big footing,
I used to be able to sleep like a champ, and I, you
know, pretty much slept through the night. But I mean, it's it
is scary if it's the first time you've done something like that and you know
you're out of your element and you've maybe had some spooky things happen in that
area. Well yeah, and you know a lot of people want to go
do this and then something happens and then they were ready for it, even
though that's they literally went asking for that. But you just can't prepare yourself
for the reality of facing off with one of these things, even if you
don't actually visually see it. Well, I think a lot of the time
they think that they want to have something happen because they think it sounds cool,
but the reality is a lot different from maybe what you're picturing. Because
when I was going to the bathroom and that thing was charging at me.
Nobody wants that, right, And it's not like you get to pick the
kind of encounter that you're going to have. Yeah, a lot of people
in the museum tell me that they'd love to see one as long as they
were in their car or something like that, or from a distance. And
you know, it's only damn fools like us that run out and try to
get close to these things. And even I've questioned a couple of times,
being out there alone or whatever and hearing him knock back and forth, wondering
like, what the hell was I thinking? But this is what I do.
So I got to you got to see it through. It'd be horrifying,
scary. Yeah. Well, I mean when I was on that dirt
road all by myself and Florida, I thought, I am an idiot If
I die this way, nobody's going to feel bad for me because this was
a very bad choice. Well, you'd only be an idiot if you didn't
think that. You're mentioning after your friends sitting going out there and going to
the bathroom and having something run at you, the same thing happened to would
barred up in Central Washington. You're a favorite spot Tracy. But after Bart's
exciting, about a half hour that I went out to use the bathroom.
I'm squatting over a hole I dug, and this thing starts running at me
full speed, just boom boom boom, heavy heavy footfalls, and yeah,
I yelled, I yelled, damn it, I'm trying to take a crap,
leave me alone. And it just stopped. It just totally stopped,
and that was it. Yeah, And people were like, well, why
did you say something? Didn't you want to see what it was? And
it's like, if I hadn't been going to the bathroom, it would have
made me go to the bathroom. I mean, it was that rattling.
You just got it out of the way first. I did. Um.
And you know, people have asked me before like have you ever been scared,
and like, of course, I've been scared. Some of this stuff's
really scary. The vast majority of the things that you've observed in the field
are pretty much they're all pretty much ape stuff, right pretty much. Yeah.
I mean some of it you you could explain, um, you know,
it could be bare, it could be dear, it could be elk,
but a lot of it is very ape like and you're you're satisfied that
these things are pretty much that, right? Yeah, I mean if if
you were going to classify them, it wouldn't make sense to put them anywhere
else. All right, Well, let's get into the weeds a little bit
and talk about that slightly. Um, where do you think the most logical
ancestor is you are? Are you in the gigantopithecus vein of thought or really
like the gigantopithecus hypothesis? Um, but I'm open again just because we don't
know. Um, we need to have more evidence before I could, um,
you know, may make a statement one way or another on that.
Heck, we need more evidence of gigantopithecus, not that that it's real,
but just we need to know more about it, you know, Right.
That's always been a tough one for me getting over that part of it.
So we know so little bit gigantus, except for a little bit about what
they ate and maybe how big they were approximately. What are your thoughts on
some of the other hairy hominoids that have been reported worldwide? Do you have
do you do you even bother with that because you may or may not have
firsthand experience with you you mean like the or penduck, orange pendex, Ebu
go Gos, the yearen Um, the almasty. Yeah, I was it.
Maria Mayor was that who was studying the orange pendeck. No, Marea
is a primatologist. She's on the expedition Bigfoot Show. Great. For some
reason, I thought that she'd also studied the oring pendeck made. Maybe it
was somebody else, Debbie Martyr did. She worked for a wildlife organization.
She studied these things, and she's actually still in Sumatra studying the tigers and
doing things for a Wildlife International or one of these organizations. Yeah, there
have been several sightings, and I think a few, of course blurry photos,
because why would they ever be anything but blurry of oring pendec, which
I thought was pretty compelling. Yeah. Yeah, a photographer actually saw it.
Jeremy something saw one of these things, and I don't think. I
don't know if you got a good picture or a bad picture or no picture.
I don't remember that. But I've always thought orange pendex are definitely a
worthy avenue of study, for sure. Yeah, especially in light of the
Homo flurisi insis discovery back in two thousand and four. Another home would lose
on insis as well from the same island chain, but the Philippines. Yeah,
than the prevalence of small bodied homonoids in the area. I think it's
very intriguing. Yeah, that's really interesting too, because everybody always thinks about
just the larger ones, but the smaller ones are equally interesting to study.
I think they're scarier. One of the freakiest things that somebody said to me
was I think this was in New Mexico again, when they were throwing rocks
and we at first we thought that it was somebody in our camp, but
it wasn't. They were throwing rocks, and then another one was kind of
messing with one of the tents. Yeah, we would look with night vision,
then we couldn't see anything, and so somebody said, maybe they're crawling
toward us and hiding. And for some reason, the vision of them crawling
just freaked me out so much I couldn't sleep at all that night. It
turns out that's exactly what they do. I mean, that's what my greens
video shows. Yeah, it was. It was a messing aroun Tracy again
was the only female there, and uh, they were messed around her tent.
And we had another tent set up by hers because she had she was
away from the group a little more, you know, solo, there was
a tent we were keeping all the food in, like putting out bait and
offerings and stuff like that, and all that was next. He was walking
back and fortween those tents, and then I couldn't really see it. I
could see it, you know, doing stuff, but it would good kneel
down by Tracy's tent. I guess at that point it was throwing pebbles down
at the campsite. And I was the only guy up there about the vehicles,
and you know, we were talking about like because she was there,
we were like there we had like a really strict thing about no one looking
through night vision, you know if if at night, you know, if
there's a female going to go to the bathroom or something like that. And
so I thought it was a colonel around the tent, and I was like,
I don't want to be the create that gets caught looking through the night
VISI I had night vision around my neck and I never looked through it because
you know, I was afraid, like I could just see looked through then
like someone looks at me and it's like it looks like I'm spine on him
or something, you know. But yeah, the rock throwing they were really
accurate because Chris was holding the camcorder and those they were throwing little pebble rocks
at us. And they remember they hit the camcorder twice yep, like just
nail the camcorder blank. And then I got hit once in the back of
the head. They also wasn't there like a big metal water trough out in
the field, and they would hit the water trough with rock and it would
just ping, and I was like this, this feels kind of like an
intimidation thing just to keep us on edge, or again juveniles just having fun.
Yeah, we remember we heard it. They were up in the in
the hay loft of the barn. My dad yelled at him and they took
off running out of the hay loft and the big one you could hear it,
like dude running through the hay lofts, went off the backside and there
was big they the hay doors were open up on the you know, the
top part, and you could just hear it like you can hear and then
just boom boo, like you could hear it land, just this heavy thud
and it didn't slow down. Remember, like, there was no like like,
it didn't sound like a buckled it's knee orything. It just ran no
problem. That stepped on that piece of sheet metal and left like a fifteen
and a half inch sat of an outline of a foot. Yeah. Yeah,
I slept in the hayloft, I think the next night. Yeah.
Fantastic, fantastic. Yeah. But yeah, you know, you've been really
fortunate with a lot of early experiences in your big footing career, and when
you look back, I mean seeing one on your first trip out and having
all these high activity expeditions having gone on, that's just nuts. Yeah.
I agree. And she was one of the ones that was one of the
early leaders to be the female on finding big Foot. Oh, to be
considered for it. Yeah, but I just started brad school. Yeah.
So Tracy didn't even show up for the interview. He didn't. Matt Moneymaker
was like what why, And I was like, well, I really like
this program. I think I want to see how it goes. There's there's
probably always going to be another big Foot show if I really want to do
that. Yep, do you think you would ever want to do that.
Um, I don't think so. No TV is a weird gig. Yeah.
I mean I've you know, done live TV here and there for unrelated
things, But I don't know if i'd necessarily want to do something like that
for my job. I really like writing and I like kind of picking my
own schedule. And I know that what you guys did on the show was
stressful and there was a lot of travel and it's it's a lot. Yeah,
it's a whole lot actually, but you know, great, great things
came from it. So no regrets in my behalf, that's for sure.
Did you know that the keep it squatchy came from that first Washington expedition?
No tell us about that. That was the first time that that phrase came
up. Do you remember that, Bobo? I don't remember. No,
I don't. Because we were investigating different areas and I kind of just like
to make up words and so I was like, yeah, and so instead
of saying that traffic is congested, I'll say something is trafficky. And so
I was looking at a site and I said, well, I don't know,
this could be kind of squatchy. And you started laughing and you're like,
squatchy. I like that, And so then after that you you made
up that phrase, keep it squatchy, significant history being revealed here. I
stole it. Well, but you made the phrase. I just that word
to describe it because I didn't know how else to describe something that might have
evidence of it. That's interesting because you know, that's one of the small
triumphs I guess of finding Bigfoot. As we introduced the word squatch or squatchy
to the general public and kind of all traces back to you in some degree,
then that's kind of cool. Well, again, I could be misremembering.
It could have been Bobo who was saying it, and then I was
like, oh, this area looks squashy, But I just remember Boba going,
hey, I like that word. I'll go with your memory over mine.
You win. Well, Tracy, this has been a lot of fun
speaking to you, and really appreciate your time. It sounds like you're able
and willing to stick around for the members section afterwards, for a little while,
at least until the small human in your immediate vicinity wakes up. Ye.
All right, well cool, Well, why don't we hop on that
and that that'll be just for our members, of course, and if you're
interested in becoming a member of Bigfoot and Beyond, you can do that.
You can not just you, Tracy, I'm not talking to you. I'm
talking to the audience here, although you can't as well, Tracy, if
you'd like, go to www dot Bigfoot and Beyond podcast dot com and then
follow the links to the membership stuff or there's always these links in the show
notes, you can do too. But yeah, Tracy, thank you so
much for coming on. We really really appreciate your time. Yeah, thanks
for having me. Guys haven't done any but related for a long time.
Welcome back. We gotta get back out there. It's always good luck going
out with Tracy Neairly. So yeah, yeah, all right, Bubbo,
why don't you take us out and we can do the members thing. Yeah,
all right, folks, thanks for joining us again on another episode of
Bigfoot and Beyond with Cliff and Bobbo. And thanks to Tracy, an old
time Squatch friend that came out on the show with us today. I hope
to get out there again. She's always good luck out there. So thanks
for listening and keep it squatchy. Thanks for listening to this week's episode of
Bigfoot and Beyond. If you liked what you heard, please rate and review
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