Big Food and on with Cliff and Bulbo. These guys are your favorites,
so like say subscribe and raid it live stock and on USh today listening watching
Limb always keep it squatchy. And now you're hosts Cliff Barrickman and James Boobo
Fay, Hey Bobs, how you doing today? Man? Good Cliff,
things are generally good. I got out to the woods a little bit this
week. Didn't find anything, of course, you know, just but I
had to go. I had to go to the woods, man, it's
just good for your soul. I went to three or four of my favorite
spots in one day. It was a long, long day. Man drove
all the way down the clack Miss almost all the way to Big Bottom.
There's a great spot out there. It's not just a spinal tap song.
It's actually a location down there called Big Bottom. Were you pulling cards?
No, no, no, no cards or anything like that. Just want
to go walk around? You know a few of my favorite spots. Got
the Secret Swamp going down there, a few other locations. So but I
didn't find anything. But you know what I did find that I thought was
interesting. And now mind you, it has been dumping rain dumping and dumping
rain like that atmospheric river or whatever fancy term they're calling it nowadays, has
been just going wild, right, But despite of that, I found our
own footprints from May and June, you know, and there it was a
super saturated soil. Yeah, and you know, it took me a little
while, like I found, I found one possible thing, because there's a
swamp down there that I found juvenile tracks in, and I also obtained a
juvenile sasquatch handprint from very very close to there, Like it's certainly the same
animal, certainly undoubtedly the same animal, like one hundred yards apart, and
the trackway was going to the place where the juvenile handprint was discovered. And
by the way, I think, correct me if I'm wrong, and maybe
listeners can to help me out with this too. I believe this is the
only juvenile sasquatch handprint on record. I could be wrong about that though,
but that's what I believe at this point. I would love to know about
another one. So if you, if in your listeners, if you happen
to know about another juvenile sasquatch handprint, I would love to know about it.
But anyway, yeah, so I was down and there and poking around,
and I found one thing that maybe was a footprint, and I was
looking at it and I said, I don't know about that. It could
just be a double stepping, like some sort of composite as we call them,
where more than one impression of something else makes it look like a larger
impression, you know, but nearby that, I said, well it is.
And I started looking at that. Oh this is about ten inches long.
This isn't And it took me. I had to look at a couple
of different impressions, and I finally figured out, oh, yeah, these
are hours. This is left over from May and June when I was here.
So I thought that was really interesting how long footprints like that can last.
And the soil was super saturated. This was probably a foot and a
half from the creek, so the soil was muddy and super saturated. And
I was very impressed. And it's just another thing I got to take a
note on. It was very, very impressed at the longevity of our own
footprints when they're deep, and these sunk in probably four to six inches at
the time, and they're still there. They're still there. They're not real
clear, but they were clearly that my own footprints are Nico's footprints. I'm
not sure who's, but I thought that was interesting. It's not directly Sasquatch
related, but I think it is a valuable information for people like myself who
are out there looking for footprints in the ground to try to remember it's like,
well, you know, other things could be there. You know,
you have to kind of think about who's been there recently, and also who's
been there five months ago, three minles. What is it's November now,
So June, July, August, September, October, November, five months
have passed, four or five months have passed, and my footprints are still
visible there. I love going to the same places over and over to see
how like how long it takes something to degree, because it just gives you
more info from when you're out tracking, you know, a similar situation you're
looking at, Well, how do you think those are you doing? It's
like they got just more things you can draw on. Yeah, that's about
it. Looking forward to CRYPTIDCN next weekend, by the way, Yeah,
the preepy people management stuff, A lot of good people are going to be
there. It's it's going to be a fun, fun job. Melissa's coming
out with me, so that's going to be a lot of fun as well.
Got a great house sitter for Sochi, so I'm excited about that as
well. But yeah, look looking forward to doing that, seeing some old
friends and all that sort of stuff. I spoke to Tom Shaye for a
while today. There's always interesting things going on in Tom Shay's environment. But
he's going to bring a thing or two to help me with some work.
I'm doing some a footprint that I'm kind of look. I'm looking next year,
I'm going to revamp my presentation. I think I'm going to be doing
something on hand casts because there's been a four or five years since I've done
something on that. There's a lot of new information going on with hands,
so I'd like to focus on hands for next year. So Tom Shay is
going to help me out with a couple of things that he's going to bring
from his collection anyway, So that's what's going on. Man. I'm just
kind of rambling about bigfoot stuff, but that's what I do. But enough
about me, man, what's up. I'm just excited about the guests we
got coming on today. I know this is going to be a good one,
because this is this guy. Man. I've had the pleasure of meeting
Chester several times now. I don't know, I don't think I know him
well enough. We haven't interacted enough to say like we're friends when we hang
out, but like, he's great. I love the guy. Every time
I talk to him, I learned some cool stuff. But the thing here
with me which makes me excited about having Chester on is that I've heard about
Chester for years and years and years and years long before I met him.
You know, he is kind of this this like this mainstay in cryptozoology in
general, and it is absolutely a pleasure to be able to have him on
finally. I don't know why we didn't think of it this sooner. Honestly,
he's a naturalist. I mean he wrote for like hunting magazines, outdoor
magazines. He's like a real naturalist. He knows what he's talking about,
Like he really knows how it avery down in Texas where he's from. I
mean, he's good, dudes, smart, he's you know, he's got
good ethics, good morals and smart, you know, so he knows what
he's doing, he knows what he's looking at and he can explain it.
Yeah, so with that, I think we should just bring him on.
Man, ladies and gentlemen, meet Chester more longtime cryptosologists and all around rad
dude, finally making this a hear ands on Bigfoot and beyond. Chester.
Thanks so much for coming on the show with us. Greetings from the mosquito
infested swamps of southeast Texas. It's an honor and privilege and beyond with you
guys, all right, you know, honor and privilege is all ours,
my friend. Thank you so much for making some time for us. And
I'd be fun to talk with you guys much less get out there and you
know, be able to communicate with the people listening to the program and all
of our shared collective love all things wild and mysterious. Yeah, absolutely so.
Ye mean you you are like this renaissance man of cryptozoology, because you
know, there's a few other people in the field that kind of represent what
you do, but in a different way. Like I'd say, Lauren Coleman
is probably up there because he has such a huge, varied interest in various
critters all over the world. You know, Ken Gerhart comes to mind because
he's a generalist. Boys, Texas. Yeah, exactly, and you are
one of these because you have your fingers in everything pretty much. I mean,
Bigfoot is just one little sliver of the pie that you serve yourself every
single day. Is there anything that you're you're not interested in? I don't
know, man, you know, it's just I love nature. I mean,
I think I came out of the womb of nature fanatic, grew up
hunting and fishing and learning about conservation and watching like Mutual Omaha's Wild Kingdom and
Jacques Cousteau specials, and you know, at that time, the Patterson Gimlin
stuff was everywhere in the seventies on shows, and saw our Argacy magazine,
and then I saw the legend of Boggie Creek when I was six, and
that kind of just set the idea that there are mysteries in nature. And
then, of course, growing up in the South, you can't help but
hear about black panthers and giant catfish below dams and all kinds of stuff.
And pursuing a wildlife journalism career, which I've been blessed to be doing since
I was nineteen, writing about you know, quote unquote mainstream wildlife stuff.
Then to me, like looking into the mysteries was just a natural thing because
you go to a hunting camp, these topics pop up and it's it's just
a natural extension what I do. And I'm so dang cureusius guys. Well,
I think that's one of the commonalities of all bigfooters for the most part,
is that we have this undying curiosity about this thing, you know,
and sometimes it's focused on one animal. Sometimes it's like you you're a generalist
all sorts of unknown mysteries, because to engage in nature is really literally to
engage in the mystery, no doubt about it. So do you remember your
first cryptid hunt? So to speak? I know, I know that I
don't want to only focus on cryptids in this conversation, of course, but
you know, our audience is largely bigfooters and all that sort of stuff,
so we'll start there. Yeah, there's lots of normal animals around, but
like, and I'm sure a lot of these other cryptids are normal animals as
well. But do you remember the first time that you took a cryptid seriously
enough to actually mount some sort of expedition. It doesn't have to be professional
level or anything. To go look for evidence or perhaps citing of those animals.
Yeah, I mean it's something that's been proven to sort of be back
out in the wild, and that is the red wolf here in southeast Texas
and southwest Louisiana, to cleared extinct in the wild in nineteen eighty only lived
in zoos in a little population they restocked from fourteen animals they captured over in
like North Carolina. But people kept seeing them. And my first ever published
story was an investigation I did of a red wolf sighting and I saw myself.
I saw and I wrote Texas Parks and Wildlife when I was a junior
in high school about this sighting, and a very kind biologist normally they blow
you off about stuff like that people but said there were probably animals still with
some red wolf DNA. The problem was hybridizing with coyotes. And the first
thing I ever did like that was red wolves. And then I got to
break the story in twenty eighteen when they found there was red wolf DNA still
existing here, So that was like coming full circle on that one. We
heard the red wolves when we were in Louisiana. That's what they told us
they were. They're definitely still wolf. The funny thing is they call them
now, some of the biologists call them non coyote canids. And I remember
running a picture of when I got on a trail cam in a newspaper when
I wrote for newspapers and running and they said, oh, it's a biologist's
emails that possibly there's no way that's a red wolf. It's got to be
a coyote because it has coyote blood in it. And my reply was,
if it can't be a red wolf because it has coyote blood, how could
it be a coyote that has red wolf blood? And that's kind of the
struggle you always have as some of the official while well, that was the
first thing that would be on the mysterious side of that. And then like
in nineteen ninety nine, my cousins had an encounter with something they thought was
a mountain lion in East Texas, giving this crazy vocalization and scared him to
death. And I went out in the woods with them, and that was
probably the first thing that I could do to be tied into Bigfoot. How
So, so I go out there with him the next night and my one
cousin's you know, like a live wire man. He's always you know,
he's real keyed up, and the other guys very calm, and the calm
one. I shine this light down in this creek butt and I'm about to
say I think there's a deer down there. I saw like eyes shining,
and he just takes a Ruger ten twenty two of the thirty round clip and
just fires it, and he's going crazy, and I'm like, dude,
what are you doing? He goes after what we heard last night, I
know, a human's eyes don't glow. Everything else is getting shot, and
I'm like, he had a real encounter with something. And then did I
don't make any noise he shot at? Did he hit anything? He was
just going crazy. It was like his Ramble moment. He was genuinely freaked
out because of the vocalization. But dial this back to me. That was
nineteen ninety nine. Let's go back to nineteen eighty four when I was like
ten, Me and my dad and my uncle and aunt were rabbit hunting on
the same property and this thing growled at us for like five minutes. And
my uncle, who was a marine sixty eight sixty nine of my dad both
vets, both armed with twelve ages, got out of dodge and I remember
asking Daddy what was that. He goes on, Uncle Bill's bulls must have
been hung up in the fence, and I said, let's go help it.
And I'm trying to my dad and then he said it must be a
bear, because sometimes bears would come back into East Texas from Louisiana. And
then me and him later on had the same kind of vocalization. And the
closest thing I can tell you this is the Sierra Sounds very close to some
of the Sierra Sound stuff, and that's basically what my cousins heard. And
then that kind of went into some early research that I did out there in
Newton County, Texas and stuff like that. So it just it just kind
of started talking to people. They started talking about footprints, they started talking
about sightings and stuff. So that all kind of began right there with that
report. Very interesting so is that that location has a long history of encounters
as well. Well. What we heard, I don't know. I can't
say what I heard because I didn't see it making the vocalization, but some
of the sounds on the Sierra Sounds were that noise there not the chatter stuff
here, but like the guttural stuff, it was definitely the same kind of
tone. And when I played him that later on, they said that's what
they heard as well, and that was just an area that's had a you
know, as I come to find out, a ton of activity over the
years. But you know, bigfoot is a word you used at the time,
mainly in the Pacific Northwest. And you said bigfoot to people. They
kind of looked at you, and I said, you ever see anything weird?
And I remember a guy saying, I don't know about no bigfoot,
but one of my buddies saw a booger down by the Sabine River. And
so what did this booger look like? Well, he had some coyotes had
become up to his garbage can at night, and he went out there for
the twenty two and one night to shoot the coyotes and this thing stand up
about seven foot tall behind the garbage can. It runs off down toward the
river. Because that was a booger. So you know. Then, of
course, the media Bigfoot's now known to be all around the country reports of
them so sometimes and back in the day it was almost like just ask people
if you see anything strange that kind of stuff. Yeah, especially not in
the Pacidic Northwest. Yeah, if you're on the Pacific Northwest, saying hear
anything weird? Do you ever see anything weird? You ever hear you know?
Like that comes off a lot better than have you seen Bigfoot? Yeah?
Yeah? Yeah, And people talk, So that was that was an
interesting learning curve for me, just talking to people and saying, hey,
seeing things strange, anything weird, anything unusual, And a lot of times
they would have her story and it was often pretty compelling stuff. Stay tuned
for more Bigfoot and Beyond with Cliff and Bogo. We'll be right back after
these messages. Now, is that how you get most of the leads on
various things to follow up on? Is just talking to people? Or do
you do you look for like printed accounts or how do you go about choosing
either it could be a Bigfoot thing or could be you know, ivor rebuild
wood woodpecker. It doesn't matter, like, how do you get the leads
or is there so such a variety of ways that you can't even narrow one
down. It's a great question, Like I really don't do sasquatch research anymore.
My only sasquatch stuff of do anymore is taking kids facing special challenges on
like terminal illness on expeditions. That's kind of my sasquatch stuff I do now.
But the other stuff, and going back to when I first started,
was I would often just put something out in the media. You know,
that would be my starting point, because you know, if I have a
chance to be published in front of one hundred thousand people or whatever and say,
hey, you know, any reports of X, Y and Z or
whatever that would help. Now you do that, you get a lot of
game camera photos and videos, which is wonderful. I've been doing a lot
of that with cat stuff lately. And I would also look at a lot
of stuff. Used to go back to the library a lot and look at
old books and look at old microfilm and stuff like that, and just try
to find historical database of like you know, in patterns. I'm a journalist,
so I look for patterns. You know. I would see, like,
you know, there's this weird report over here, there's this history of
these large cats being seen a certain ear that not supposed to be. That's
usually a pretty good spot to go into. And then you start interviewing people.
I really like the one on one part of sitting down with someone interviewing
them. You know, that really helps a lot. And so it's you
know, it's all of the above pretty much. But now a lot of
the stuff comes to me, so well, I get more stuff than I
can handle sometimes to look into, you know, because people know I do
this stuff, and I'm in a lot of different publications and podcasts, so
I get a lot of just reports of different stuffs into me, which is
great. What's your favorite thing to look into? At this point, I'm
really into the cat stuff, like because of some kind of discoveries that I've
made in this regard. You know, the black panther phenomenon in America is
really intriguing. And what's interesting about it, of course, you know the
black cat people see in a television show or a zoo or either melanistic jaguars
or melanistic leopards or usually leopards, and of course jaguars are native originally into
the US, but you know, there's very few that come across the border.
But people see these black cats everywhere, and that's an interesting one.
But also people about five years ago, I would get reports people thinking they
saw ocelots and servals and margays and stuff like in Oklahoma, Arkansas and places
like that. And it really opened up sort of Pandora's box to like what
was really going on out there in this cat industry because I kind of discovered
a few things that like made perfect sense, but it was hard to get
to that point that makes any sense, you know. Well, so like,
for example, what like what was so shocking and that you it took
a while for you to come up upon. Well, I'll give you a
prime example. You know, I was getting quite a few people saying they
saw a cat that looked like an ocelot, And an ocelot is native to
the southern portion stream southern Texas, but there's only a handful there, very
common in parts of Mexico, Belize and stuff like that. And people would
also use the word serval or some kind of large spotting cat with a long
tail, and there was a lot of reports. Well, four or five
years ago, I started getting you know, cell phone pictures, which usually
aren't that good, but game cam photos are, and I got one from
San Patricio, Texas, and I looked at this particular shot and my first
thought was, this is about one hundred miles north of no Oscalot range and
they're not known to be a migratory cat. And I went, man,
that looks like an oscalot. Then I sort of cropping and zooming in and
went, that's a Bengal cat. What a Bengal cat? So I have
three bingle cats about fifty yards from me at our facility here the Kingdom's Wildlife
Center. They are a registerable domestic cat that were originally hybridized with an Asian
leopard cat. An Asian leopard cat basically is an osalot from like Oceania,
okay, And they're beautiful cats. They're about the size of a bobcat or
an osalot. But they bred them into a domestic tabi cat, and they
made a domestic hybrid that has a lot of different kind of patterns, but
a lot of them have the pattern like an ocelot or an Asian leopard cat.
People wouldn't know the difference they saw them. And there are tens of
thousands of these in America and a lot of them are going feral now and
they survive really well because they have a little more wild ends thincts. I
have purity and purity we've had for seven years. And she is a little
for a Bengal. She's small, and she's what they call a snow leopard
pattern. She has basically the ocelot looking pattern, but she's white and gray.
It has blue eyes, and she can probably get her back feet about
seven feet in the air. I mean very agile animals and people. They
look like a wildcat, and so people these things are getting feral and going
on out there, and people are seeing a lot of stuff there. They're
right, that's not normally supposed to be there, but they're seeing some of
these domestic and designer cats done feral. Is there a name for that?
I mean, cryptosology is a studyed by known animals having discovered Is there a
name for the study or looking at looking at the mysteries of animals that are
known or domesticated and then escaped. Well, you know what, I coined
the phrase about twenty years ago. I just started using it like my own
writings and stuff. Known cryptids. In other words, it's something that we
know there, it's just not supposed to be where it's at, you know,
or you know that that kind of thing, And this is a prime
example, and it's integrating into the wild, and there's wild populations. There's
also one we're starting to see now, and that is the Savannah cat,
which was hybridized with a beautiful cat called an African serval. And there are
some f one hybrids out there that are fifty percent served to look almost one
hundred percent served. They're very harder to sing, there's the difference, and
they can. They're very agile. They're pretty tall cats. And this stuff
is running around the wilds of America everywhere. And you know, one of
my things, guys, is always hated it when someone is very sincere calls
a fishing game department or calls a game warden or something and they give a
genuine reporter seeing something like a mountain lion and an area not supposed to be
and they get made fun of, right, And I like to let I
like to put information out there to let people know, Hey, I'm not
gonna make funny for what you report. Let's look at what's really going on
out there. Not everyone is a wildlife expert, you know, Yeah,
but you actually know a lot about it this stuff, and you've been around
these animals because you're employed. You have a lot of experience, of course,
over all these years, and I think that's one of the biggest hurdle
hurdles, especially you know, long before safe Finding Bigfoot or something like that,
people thought they'd be laughed at for reporting a sasquatch sighting. So many
of them kind of clammed up. And it still happens today, of course,
But people who see things that are unexpected in places where things should not
be oftentimes don't share that story. It's kind of locally known only, I
suppose. Yeah, it kind of like, you know, it's like a
shame thing really comes down on people and they don't want to share it or
maybe for their profession's sake or whatever's going on, you know, And it's
like the black panther reports. I know, people have been berated for reporting
that, and that's that's the one that really gets people's attention. There's a
lot of controversy over it, you know, and that's one I think probably
has like three to four answers for what the phenomenon is. Well, you
know, every Bobo and I have both seen those, and I can say
with confidence that the one that I saw was a melanistic mountain lion. That's
really crazy because there's never been one observed, never one born in captivity brought
to a taxidermis. So that's that's a really interesting thing to you know,
to be part of that phenomenon. And that's part of you know, my
four or five answers is that the possibility of melanisteques. Was it in Pacific
Northwest? No, it's an Illinois actually, yeah. And then the reason
I say with confidence it was a it was a mountain line. And of
course yeah, I'm I'm I can say it with confidence and still be wrong,
by the way, whatever that's worth. I don't care about being wrong.
But hill it was. I thought it was a German shepherd at first,
like one of those dark gray German shepherds, but it had a black
cap on its tail, like a mountain lion does, and it also had
black tips on its ears, and then I thought it was black. But
when I saw those those markings, I realized that it was a dark,
dark, charcoal gray. Yeah, and that makes perfect sense. Like h
in captive populations, I've seen some that were almost chocolate color, you know,
like real chocolate, like the Jaguar Rundy, which is a cat I
believe was responsible for some of the black panther sightings. They are not really
black, but they're real dark gray, and if you don't have it in
the right light, they look solid black. You see them in sunlight,
they kind of look more like they're like a slate colored gray. You know.
Oh, maybe that's what I saw then. But it was quite large.
It is larger than a a like a big german shepherd, Like I
said, definitely, if you anything bigger than german shepherd, I mean that's
that would definitely be more into like you're you know, either like a melanistic
cougar or potentially a melanistic jaguar, but which is crazy into its own thing
to talk about that. And but you know, a lot of these people
are sending photos of Almost all the ones I've seen are domestic house cats.
I saw a black mountain lion in northern California, like broad daylight, just
trot across the road, dirt road, just trying to right right across.
And it was I know exactly what jaguars and leopards look like a mountain.
I've seen tons of mountain lions and do this thing was not a jaguar or
not it was a mountain lion, just the whole bill to tail everything.
Well, I'm hoping someone gets one of these on a really good trail cam.
There's a white one captured on trail cam in Brazil which was amazing,
have blue eyes. And there was white ones born in the zoo in Belgium
as well, which was really cool. There's a picture was floating around for
a long time from Costa Rica back in the fifties of a really black and
white, really really dark at least a very dark brown one. And so
it's interesting, you know, there's all these different things and people are seeing
something and I think with the black panther thing, I think people are seeing
but I actually think there's potential for some of these feral cat populations to be
producing gigantic feral cats, like not cougar size, but you know, thirty
forty pound cats. There's some evidence of that in feral cats in Australia that
they're getting really big in the wild. Did they found did they find one
that was like seventy two pounds or something? They found some really I don't
have the dead in front of it. They were like they were like hues
bigger than a lynks size, you know, like big yeah, yeah,
but the big long tailed faral cats. And I have a few photos that
in my collection of black cats from Texas that you look at him, that
is a faral basically a faral cat, but there's a way longer tail than
normal and a different build and a big, stocky build. I got one
of my own game camp right in front of a little hog trap I had
set out. Wasn't expecting it. But so there's a lot of weird stuff
out there. And that's why the cat thing is so intriguing to me,
because there's so many things. And you guys have two incredible reports to potentially
black mountain lions. And then I have a friend of mine who goes exploring
caves in Texas and before he gets to some of these caves, he takes
it's on top of the cave and takes a rock and throws it in because
there's so many faral hogs. Now, he doesn't want to go into a
tight quarter with a faral hog. Right, he threw a rock inside one
of these he's and he used to work at a cat sanctuary, and this
huge black cat came out grunting a real guttural grunt that a jaguar does when
it ran out and it was solid black. So there's like stuff like that
out there too. So to me, that's always been an intriguing one because
it seems to be, like you said, at Illinois, Cliff, and
then Bobo, you had California. I got stuff in Texas and Louisiana.
So it's kind of like everywhere. Kind of like the Bigfoot thing, it's
everywhere. There's a lot of different answers maybe to what people are seeing.
Stay tuned for more Bigfoot and beyond with Cliff and Bogo will be right back
after these messages. But you know, one of the things that I think,
I read here's and here's and years ago that you were looking into and
I said, and wow, that's really cool, and it's also a little
scary to me. But then again, I'm kind of scared of weird things.
Like the giant ape man thing doesn't bother me at all, but other
things scare me for some reason. And one of the things that I heard
you were doing, and I don't know if I've ever spoken to you about
this or not, you were diving to go look for giant catfish weren't you.
Yes, And that has been a that was a fun project. It
was about a two to three year investigation that I conducted. It was from
like two thousand and three to like two thousand and six, sometimes somewhere in
there. And what could happened was for years I would hear, since I
was a little kid, here reports of like, you know, the divers
don't want to go below Toledo Ben Dam because they were down there working on
the dam and these catfish the size of a Volkswagen came up and they were
terrified, and it was you would hear these all the time. Yeah,
that's scares the hell out of me. Did you ever hear it firsthand though,
from something that actually was a diver there? No, No. I
asked and I asked and I asked, and I've never gotten the first hand
report. But what was interesting, this is the interesting part, is when
I made me decide to do it, was the world record catfish was caught
in two thousand and five in text at Lake Texolma on the Texas Oklahoma border.
And it was caught in the winter and it was weighed one hundred and
thirty pounds. It was a blue cat well what about the six hundred pounders
of Vietnam. I'm going to tell you about some one hundred and fifty two
hundred pounders in Spain in a minute. But this was the biggest nome catfish
in America and they kept it live. They wrapped it in the tarka in
the winter, and it stayed alive, and they kept it in this aquarium
for two years. I got to go dive with it, and I talked
them into letting me go dive with it and having a photographer on the outside
and me with my camera on the inside to get perspective of what seeing.
The largest nome catfish in America was sitting in front of me. Now,
now, before you go on, I want to try to picture this because
you said the weight, what'd you say? One hundred and pounds, hundred
thirty pounds about six feet long. Yeah, that's why I want to get
to like how big is one hundred and thirty pound catfish? It was about
probably five and a half six feet long, was really fat, huge,
bigger round catfish. And they gave me some rainbow trout and koi in a
little bag to feed it. Because the divers are trying to start feeding,
and I got to eat that catfish to get out of my hand twice.
Got a great photo. And I got this idea because when I was down
there, I was trying to keep a rational perspective as you're sticking your hand
out like an idiot to feed a six foot long catfish, right, And
this thing swims up to me and gently took it. But looking through my
you know, my goggles, I'm looking at this fish through the water.
This thing looked like it weighed three hundred pounds. You know, it was
monstrous up on top of me. So I thought, well, maybe the
origin of this could be murky water divers see a catfish of this size or
bigger. And that kind of started story. So what I did is me
and Ken Gearhart. I got Ken to go with me on my friend Zero
Burley on ba Steinhagen Reservoir. We weren't able to because this was after nine
to eleven, to get below the damn access, but we got in the
deep hole north of the damn spillway and I took a rope. I wasn't
going to have free dives are pretty deep, and I took a rope and
a tether and led my myself down to the bottom of the water to get
an idea because it was kind of standard water conditions there and I could see
about six inches in front of me, and only fish I got to see
on that trip were like light mass came by me and they had to be
right by my mask for me to see them. But it was it was
an idea of like immersing myself in these murky southern reservoirs, you know.
But the coolest part came is when I went to Spain in two thousand and
five, me and my wife Lisa. I had signed a deal with Magic
Circle Records with my good friend Eric Adam, the singer of man O War,
and we released the Hunting and Fishing DVD around the world and I got
to go speak in Germany at their fan convention. And so we went to
Spain to the Segra River to fish for Wells catfish, which is a giant
European catfish, in the same stretch of river that Jeremy Wade did for river
monsters. And I actually talked to Jeremy and got a recommendation where to go
because I interviewed him and we both caught six and a half seven we could
both caught seven footers and I caught a six footer as well. But my
guide, his name was Aid. He had his shirt off, was in
the summer, and on the back he had this big, giant round scar
and I said, what is that from me? He goes, well,
I went into the water to get one of the catfish for the anglers and
the wrestler to the bank, and I slipped and it attacked me. And
then he looked at me and told me, he goes the divers on these
reservoirs when they work on the dam going a shark cage. Because the wells
mess with all of their dive, their mask and their BC's and all that
stuff. I'd be scary as hell. Dude. That freaked me out,
man. And you know those wells, we know they get ten feet.
The ones we caught were seven, the biggest ones, and they weighed about
one sixty at the time. He said, in the winter, those fish
would have been probably one ninety two hundred, so monster fish. And so
that was kind of my look at the giant catfish phenomenon. You had reports,
but never the guy who saw as always somebody's uncle's, sister's, cousin's
former roommate. You know, I'll tell you that the thing that scares me
the most about it because I'm an a quarrest. I've always had aquariums since
I was a teenager. I still do today, and I you know,
so I've gone through my phases. I like nice pieceful mellow fish now,
but I've always I've had oscars, and I've had peacock bass. I've had
all sorts of things in my thanks over the years. And catfish, the
red tailed catfish, for example, is a nice specimen. They can swallow
things that are way too big for any reasonable catfish to swallow. And if
they can't swallow it, they'll certainly try. And I just kept thinking,
like someone your size, you know, of going down to deal with these,
a fish your size or a little even smaller would try to eat you,
would try to engulf you whole. And that's to me, just seems
like a bad way to go. Well, I saw the guys scar it
looked when that guy said that, I mean, I could see the sky.
It was a round catfish from out shaped scarleway across his back. How
big, like how many how many inches would you guess about like across the
wound. Yeah, it's probably fifteen sixteen inches across. Oh a shark.
But yeah it was big. I mean the ones we caught. I got
pictures of me with the biggest one I caught the out there online, and
I mean they're massive. They could swallow. You know, there are guys
out there that use twenty pound cart for bait for these things. You know,
they're huge. So you got to thinking about, like, you know,
I could see that happening in Spain and in America. My conclusion was
that probably just kind of urban legends started with people seeing something that was of
record size or something like that. I don't think there are any, you
know, eight hundred pound catfish in America, but there could be some that
are quite a bit bigger than the world record that just never came in.
If you ran into one of those suckers and you know, murky water with
a dive mask on it fifty feet, that would freak you out pretty bad.
Oh yeah, and the water has a tendency. I've done my first
share of snorkeling and stuff. Though. The water has a tendency to magnify
the size of everything in it. Yeah, it does. And so that's
why I wanted to go to experiment with the biggest known blue catfish at the
time in America. So that was kind of a fun, little little adventure.
And you know, the great thing about a lot of this, it
always gets when you do these media projects like that, It gets people talking
about nature and wildlife consents and stuff. That's always been a very important thing
to me. You know, we know along those lines. Aren't you intimately
involved in this the ivory build woodpecker thing. I did a lot early on
with the Ivory bild woodpecker search. Our area was very much kind of a
hotbed of sightings from about two Iradius and me, and we went out a
lot. I got to go out and Sey Sports Topics in two thousand and
two did a search and I got to go out with them for a you
know, and their their search for a day or two. And the guy
who got the footage of the ivory bill in Arkansas a few years later,
David Luno, was the guy I was in the field with. Yeah,
I spent a day with him in the Pearl River Wildlife Management area. Him
and a guy named Martian Lambertink. He was a burder from I think the
I think Belgium. But we had guys around here that were dedicated birders who
just swore up and down. They would know a pilat woodpecker from an ivory
build they saw ivy bills, and so we did quite a bit on it.
And one of the coolest things was we were out there one day in
an area they tended to make more of a an oval shape I think it
was nesting, and they would rip bark off a tree, you know,
like a rip it off, And there was an area they had a lot
of that in there, and we saw this bird fly and in this dense
thicket on the Sabine River on the Texas Louisiana border, and we heard the
tin horn sound that und of an ivory bill. I have never heard that
sound since in nature, and we heard it and there was me and my
dad and my friend Patrick Trumble all that same day. So I'm pretty sure
we had an ivory bill a woodpecker encounter. But what I do on ivory
bills now is anytime I get a chance to talk about birding, I asked
for people to submit reports and stuff like that kind of log and haven't had
much activity on that recently, but a few years back, there was someone
of the Big Thicket National Preserve that swore they saw a female ivory bill,
which looks different than the male. The male has the red crest, you
know, and she's like black with a kind of line thing on her,
which I thought was interesting. It's almost like someone would I can see a
mistaking appiliated at a distance, but a female ivory bill is a pretty specific
thing to say you saw. So we're still we're still probing stuff out there
as well. On that. Did you see that a photo out of those
photos out of Florida, of Florida couple, like maybe a year and a
half ago, Yeah, look pretty interesting to me, man, I thought
that they're pretty good. But I dealt a lot with I was dealing a
lot with that Zeis Sports Optics team back in the day. And then we
would do our own stuff up here in all these areas because there's a lot
of river bottoms up here that very few people ever go into. And you
know, there was even talk that some of the I forget which First Nations
tribe used to say they thought that the ivory bill traveled, They would move,
they wouldn't stay in a spot very long. You know, and be
in some of these dense bottom lands, So that makes sense if you had
a low population, a few of them are moving around some music areas that
people would never fly under the radar literally, you know, some of the
places you've mentioned about the Ivory Bille Alshards are known bigfoot locations as well.
No, dude, Pearl River. When I'm there, there was the Bigfoot
Hunting Club sign on the way in, and it is literally the harlan Ford
you know, in search of Honey Island Swamp Monster Area. You know,
yeah, it's gonna say that's the Honey Island Swamp Monster Area, right right,
That's what I was in there. I was like, this is cool.
I'm like cause that episode scared the crap out of me as a kid,
you know, and I was like, dude, this is awesome being
down in the harland Ford area. You know. That was but a lot
of that stuff, and I think what we're seeing is that it links up.
It's like, if you have remote quality habitat for one particular animal that
may or may not still exist, maybe something we don't know exists but also
live there, you know. So I think there's a link to all this
habitat, and that's why habitat is so important, especially things like river bottoms
which are declining because of making reservoirs and a lot of this stuff. I
think it's really important to look at this habitat is you because you can't have
mysteries out there. There's no place for him to live. Yeah, but
back in two thousand and eight, maybe two thousand and six, I started
advocating this. That's when I had a blog and I was really acting up
like blogging all the time. I was advocating this idea of conservation before discovery,
about sasquatches and about how anything you do to save big patches of land
it's going to help sasquatches. And since they're unproven species at this point,
the only thing we can do is protect our habitat. And you don't have
to believe in Bigfoot to protect amazing, beautiful, pristine habitat. So I
think it's one of the great things that environmentalists in general are doing well.
I get the absolutestion for that, brother, because that's I work in the
wildlife world, and whether we're talking about you know, waterfowl or we're talking
about a wild sheep, or whatever. Habitat is always something that's that's being
pressured by development and intrusion and degradation of habitat. I'm actually narrating a new
Bigfoot series my friend's doing called wild Man of the Woods, and the aim
of his whole series, Paul Pazinski's doing it is to bring the habitat thing
into people's you know, to make them think about it, you know,
because these mysteries are out there. I mean, I can't remember guys ever
driving by a wood lot or a river and not wondering what is out there,
you know, And that's that's what motivates me, you know, other
than working with kids like we do in a wildlife That motivates me. And
to think that we're losing it's pretty sad. But the good news is there
are people. I think people are getting a better look at you know,
hey, that those woods that used to hunt is now a development, or
that place they used to hike is now a ste lodge. So I think
we're getting some positive traction on that. And I think you're right, whether
you believe in Bigfoot or not, Man, it won't be there if it's
a parking lot, you know, stay tuned for more Bigfoot and Beyond with
Cliff and Bogo will be right back after these messages. Bigfooters in general or
people are just whether they're the researchers are just aficionados of the subject in general,
are a force of good essentially, if we can just start kind of
focusing on like, yeah, you know, bigfoots are important. We can't
protect them as a species, but we can protect where they live, and
by doing that we're helping everything else that lives here and also frankly ourselves well
you know, and you guys actually tie into this. We do a ministry
outreach for kids called wild Wishes, and we grant wildlife encounters for kids who
have a critical illness, traumatic loss of paran or sibling. Kids in Foster
we even had the privilege of working we're girls that have been through trafficking,
and we've granted in almost ten years, two hundred and twenty five of those
wishes. Wow. The third wish was a bigfoot expedition. A little boy
named Jackson, and I took him into the Big Thicket National Preserve with his
family and some of their friends, into an area where I filmed the Animal
X episode with my friend Natalie Schmidt back in five. Yeah, and I
did that one, you know, And we were out there. The kids
actually found a mountain lion track, which is really rare to find out there,
and there's a couple of possible vocals bay in the distance. But as
we drove out, I told him it's a long drive out, guy,
that's late. It was about one o'clock in the morning. I'm gonna stop
at three places and do some calling. I'd forgotten I was gonna stop at
three. I was about to leave the exit the area. My dad goes,
hey, you better stop again. I'm oh. I stopped and pulled
over and I let her yell out, and this vocalization came barreling. It
couldn't have been more than thirty or forty yards from us. Everybody jumped back
in the cars and it changed other people's paradigm of life. And they're just
little kid who had lost his brother recently, smiling this incredible smile. Well,
we became good friends with that family. This is where you tie in.
But I met you, Bobo at the Willow Creek Bigfoot Symposium in three
and this kid wanted to meet you guys, and the finding Bigfoot producers reached
out to me if I want to be on an episode, and I didn't
at the time, but they asked me about the on hall in Lufkin,
Texas. So I say, can I bring this kid up there to meet
the you know, to meet you guys. And we pull up and you
never even know how the producers are going to live for the word you know,
what's going to go on, and I said, I told the kid,
I said, I met Bobo a long time, and they don't know
if you'll remember me or not. We pull up to the building and you're
out on your phone talking to someone's kid's face lights up and we get out
and you hang up the funny go ches or more what's up? And took
you, took him in and introduced him to Cliff and Renee and it made
the kid's life. And we've done recent Bigfoot expeditions for kids. So that's
pretty much my role now, and doing Bigfoot stuff is taking kids that have
had hell on Earth a few times already maybe to go look for something fun
and fantastic. And I never got to tell you that I started. Just
want to salute you for you guys, for making that kid's life. Oh
man, that's the best part of the show. I do find even now,
actually, after all these years, I find that really the only practical
use for whatever fame we may or may not have is making other people smile,
honestly, Yeah, especially kids. Yep, it's a beautiful thing.
And I have still the picture of view and him some of my Instagram somewhere,
and every once in a while I run into him, and you know,
he still talks about all that. And we took a family out to
the Big Thicket back in September, had some crazy stuff, had sticks thrown
at us that was kind of cool, and some vocals and they had they
saw some weird stuff on thermals and so you know, it's one of the
things we're doing. And you know, the Lord has really blessed my life
to get to work with Wildlife. And I love kids and I hate what
happens to kids in our culture. And you know, not everybody's going to
be the you know, the quarterback of the head cheerleader, and a lot
of kids that are the one that aren't don't feel like they fit really get
into the stuff because Bigfoot's an outsider, you know, and they really draw
out of this stuff, and those are the kids I'm drawn to. And
you know, taking kids on these expeditions and stuff like that, through our
through our out each has been a lot of fun. You know, it's
been it's just been really really cool and a very good positive to do for
the community. You know. Now, don't you have a nonprofit? I
mean that that's what you're you're talking about this right then? This is an
offshoot of our nonprofit. Yeah, you can get more information on that at
Kingdom Zoo dot com. We are are we are the Kingdoms Zoo Wildlife Center.
That's our facility, and we have our wild Wishes program and Higher Calling
Wildlife outreaches and they all tie in together, just different like Higher Calling Wildlife
does, like conservation expeditions for kids with photography, Wild Wishes grants whatever wildlife
encounter they want to meet. I mean, I've got pictures of the wall
here in my office of a girl getting to pet a white lion cub which
was really cool, and a girl getting to go in a desert, big
orange sheet capture with Texas Parks and Wildlife Man, And that's that's my heart,
man, That's that's just so cool to get to see life changing through
encounters in nature. Okay, well, you know I'm not as classy as
you, so I'm just gonna solicit for on your behalf. Like, since
you are a nonprofit, people can give you money as a tax deductible thing.
That's deductible, baby. So if you have a up one hundred extra
thousand dollars laying around in your pocket and you want a good place for it,
I know one. I think it's right here, man, so that
I feel free to give lots and lots of money to this situation here because
it's nonprofit, because it's good for you, tax deductible, and it's making
a difference to the future as well. So you didn't You didn't come out
to say it, Chester, But that's why I'm here. I've got no
qualms about saying that. Man. I'll tell you what. I will give
the web address kingdomszoo dot com. There you go. But uh oh,
what happened there? That's crazy? But uh, thank you. And you
know, like I said, you guys, because you both got great spirits
about you and you're in real friendly with people. I mean, you never
know who you're going to meet out there. That's you know, been through
something that day. And because whatever, you know, whatever celebrity any of
us might have for being on TV show or writing a blog or a podcast,
if we can make someone's life better, that's always a plus. Man.
Yeah, at the end of the day, that's what it's really all
about, I think for sure. And doing some good for the animals too
as well. Yeah, you know, like I said, man, the
thing I'm doing with Paul, we're want to get conservation word out and tie
in the bigfoot thing because so many people are into it and then people click
with it. I mean they go they know that they go to some spot
they had this amazing sighting, and then that site's gone, it's wiped out,
it's you know whatever. Then there's part of them it's like lost,
you know. And like so it's a great way to get people into nature,
and you know, it's always better outside, guys. And when you're
talking about going out in the woods to day, I was in here doing
meetings and stuff all day on Zoom and all kinds of stuff and writing all
day. But I went out right before I saw you guys. In my
pond next to my house, I went fly fishing for thirty minutes. You
know, I had to be outside. That's what it's all about. You
know. I was going to say I forgot, I keep forgetting to bring
us up on the podcast. But I went up to Bluff Creek for the
Patterson give On film site, and the fire on the map went right through
that area. Then we heard from a Forest Service official that the film site
was gone. And then I spoke to some more biologists and foresters and fire
crew. They were just leaving the Bluff Creek area. They're going to lock
the gates behind us, like we were the last guys out there at that
spot. And I was talking with the forester and he said that the site
would say that the guy in charge owner actually diverted resources to save the film
location and it's burned within like less than one hundred yards of it is burned
out. Wow, that's incredible, man. Yeah, So they actually went
out of their way and just shifted manpower to save the film site. Man,
that's great. That's incredible and does my heart good. Yeah. I
was stoked. Yeah, absolutely, man, And you know that's the you
think about that. I mean, when I stun I never forget me and
my dad walking down to that spot, and I'm like, oh my,
you know, and I had Bob come to speak at my conference that I
used to do, the Southern Crypto Conference in two thousand and four, and
taking Bob out to my areas, which was kind of cool. But just
talking to that guy and having been the spot, you know, it was
like it connected me with something that was amazing. I'm like, that's was
a fundamental thing in my childhood and to think that it was saved is a
wonderful thing. You know, yeah, on purpose, Like it wasn't just
like a random because before when there were fires close up there, they never
cared like you know, they try to. They Lows Camp, you know,
the campground out of that that was always like the base of their operations
in that area. So that area, you know, would get saved just
for that alone, but they never, like I remember when there was a
fire coming down from the north there a few I don't know how Low many
years ago, but several years ago, and I was talking those things you
got to save that. You got to cut it off right there on that
ridge. It's gonna come, you know, it's coming down there, and
that's a historic site. You know, it's like that's that's world history there.
You know, it's it's a they had no time. They just did
not care at all, those guys what a historic site it is. Yeah,
for sure, I want to go there this spring. Actually, I
haven't been there in forever since back then. You know, Bob is such
a great guy. Actually, the outreach we do. We brought a girl
up to Craig's conference in Texas Bigfoot conference the last time Bob was there,
and Bob presented her one of the you know, the copies of the tracks
and he signed for her. And I got a picture of me and Bob
and Emily and her mom right there with that just shows the heart of the
good people out there in the cryptozoology and bigfoot community. You know. So
what's next for you? I mean, I know, I know that you
have a steady job, and you've got this fantastic organization that you work with
and everything. Do you have anything on the horizon that you're really looking forward
to, like maybe perhaps another expedition or maybe somewhere that you're speaking, or
some film project that you're working on. Besides I know you mentioned the narration
when the wild Man, I think, yeah, I'm doing that that's wild
Man of the Woods. It's on YouTube. I'm doing the narration. I'll
prob'll be helping with some writing coming up. It's really fun we're doing.
We're already planned expeditions for our outreach next year. We're doing in June EST's
Park, Colorado, that's our normal one we do. We're gonna be going
to the Smoky Mountains and doing one in October, and probably doing Southern Florida
in late July early August. So that's already getting arranging those things going on.
And next year is our tenth year anniversary of that Wild Wishes program will
probably cross the two hundred and fifty kid in the program mark And just you
know, I got my podcast Dark Outdoors, and we're gonna have season three
of that coming up in February. And Dark Outdoors raises awareness to dangers in
the outdoors, ranging from serial killers to traffickers to dangerous wildlife and weather conditions.
And that's won several awards from different press organizations. And I'm really excited
about Overca coming up for season three on that one. I gotta check that
out. Yeah, where can people listen any major podcasting platform, whether you
listen to Spotify, Amazon, you know, Apple Music, you know it's
on all of those. And the way I do this one is I have
to do and see so much research involved in it. I can't just put
one out every week or two, So we do seasons. So it's be
season three starting in an eight episode run in February, and the first episode
on this was about Ted Bundy and it was the guy Steven Michau who set
across from interview Ted for six months how he actually took women into the woods.
And a friend of mine found a tree carving way off trail mule deer
hunting in Utah and it said Ted Bunny nineteen seventy four and that was the
year he escaped to prison in Utah and went to hear the National Forest.
So got me to thinking, what would happen if you run into someone like
that? And I kept running into I actually had a situation in Trinity Klamath
National Forest area there in the Emerald Triangle back at three when me and dad
went there for that Bigfoot event and got chased off a mountain up there.
It was crazy. So we're trying to raise awareness to that stuff and had
some pretty compelling shows you know, if you had that California Fishing Game guy's
former fishing game official that was dealing with the cartails down like just outside the
Bay area and then up in northern California. I actually I've been emailing him
back and forth to do a show with me. He really lays it out
there for this area, dude. I mean, he was telling me some
stuff and some emails he said, you know, he was on the road
doing something he's probably gonna end up being on season three of the show and
wild stuff, man. I mean, just the level of things are going
on. Because someone asked me, hey, Chester, what's the most dangerous
thing in the woods that I don't even think And I said, people,
yeah, And so that came. That turned into a podcast and it'll be
a book next year is gonna be a book on dark outdoors. So that's
all coming up in twenty twenty four. My friends, what's the scariest thing
that's happened to you out in the woods. I'll just say that the scariest
thing that's happened to me out in the woods involved me driving a rental car
eighty miles an hour down the mountain in the middle of the night. I
don't want to poop on your prey here, but let's save that for the
member section. I think that sounds like a great topic to go into the
members, give them a little something special there. Yeah yeah, so let's
let's let's let's save it for that one. That sounds great. You know,
I go to say, two chesters, if you if you got those
making wish whatever your your foundation kids, if you ever want to do something
at Bluff Creek, Be and Clip would definitely be down for doing that with
you guys. Man, that would be mind blowing. And that's actually a
dream of ours, is to take us some kids into that area and that
would be incredible. So let's collaborate on that and make that happen for a
couple of special kids. Awesome, you guys are great. Man. They're
gonna make me cry. I'm a big cry baby about kids. If I
can't make if I can't make one person cry a day, I can't sleep
all at night. Yeah yeah, yeah, I've heard that before from people,
but that's usually me though. It's usually I cried myself to sleep,
honestly, some sort of like fetal position thing until and weep myself into slumber.
So in the member section, you're going to tell us your scariest encounter
driving. That also could tell us your scariest animal encounter crypted or known.
I'll give you both knowingly encrypted. How about that? Yeah, yeah,
we need them both so our listeners out there. If you want to be
a member and hear these special content sort of things, all you have to
do is go to the website there at big Foot and Beyond Podcasts and follow
the links to membership, or mister Matt Prut, our producer, will put
the link in the show notes below. Chester, Thank you so much for
coming on the show. I'm looking forward to the member section conversation and then
exploring this topic a little bit further. Hey, thank you guys so much,
real honor and privilege. You guys are awesome, and you know,
it's great to be able to collaborate and do some great things for some kids.
And thank you guys for being a fun and very informative voice out there
and that you're doing great work. Oh, thank you, thanks for coming
on, Chester. Yeah, it's been too long since we've hung out,
so man, it's good to talk to you for sure. Yeah, looking
forward to seeing you get in person too, right on Chester. All right,
folks, that's Chester more so check them out. He's got some good
stuff going on. He's been in this a long time and knows what he's
talking about. If you want to hear what, we're going to have on
Beyond, big Foot Beyond on Patreon from Remembers right now the fish of y'all.
Keep it Squatchy. Thanks for listening to this week's episode of Bigfoot and
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