Speaker 1: Big Food and On with Cliff and Bobo.
Speaker 2: These guys are your favorites, so like say subscribe and Raid.
Speaker 3: It Live, Star and.
Speaker 4: Greatest on Yesterday and listening watching limb always keep its watching.
Speaker 4: And now you're hosts Cliff Berrickman and James Bobo Fay.
Speaker 2: Hey, everybody, welcome to Bigfoot and Beyond with Cliff and
Speaker 2: Bobo and Matt and everybody else in the world on
Speaker 2: this side of the microphone and you on the other
Speaker 2: side of the microphone and speakers and all that good stuff.
Speaker 2: Bobo was out squatching until late last night. We have
Speaker 2: an appointment with him this morning to do the podcast,
Speaker 2: but he is not here yet, but he did give
Speaker 2: us a heads up whatever. At least we know he's coming.
Speaker 2: So we are starting a kind of on time. We
Speaker 2: usually do start pretty close to on time. We're just
Speaker 2: doing it without Bobo. We're gonna see how long it
Speaker 2: takes him to show up today.
Speaker 4: We should make it clear. Bobo told us to start
Speaker 4: without him. He said, go ahead and start, I'll be
Speaker 4: in there as soon as I can. And so we're
Speaker 4: not trying to start without Bobo. We are following his
Speaker 4: instructions to the letter.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, although he did not tell us to do
Speaker 2: an over under, so I think that we should do that.
Speaker 5: For sure, for sure.
Speaker 2: So yeah, so over under. Let's see it is. Uh,
Speaker 2: we started one minute and five seconds ago, according to
Speaker 2: the recording timer. Do you think, Matt, he's going to
Speaker 2: be more than twenty minutes late or less?
Speaker 3: I'll go less, you're.
Speaker 2: Gonna go less than twenty minutes? What number do you think.
Speaker 3: Between ten and fifteen?
Speaker 4: Let's just say twelve minutes thirty seconds to split the
Speaker 4: difference between ten and fifteen.
Speaker 2: Okay, I'm writing that down. I am not so optimistic
Speaker 2: or I am optimistic, depending on how you look at
Speaker 2: these things. I think Bobo will be thirty five minutes late.
Speaker 4: Is this like the price is right, like you wager
Speaker 4: one dollar or whatever?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, exactly what. We will play it by those
Speaker 2: So if he's I think he will be less than
Speaker 2: thirty five minutes late. How's that? And then you think
Speaker 2: he's gonna be less than twelve minutes and thirty seconds late?
Speaker 3: Got of work?
Speaker 5: Okay.
Speaker 2: Of course, there's no money on this or anything like that.
Speaker 2: It's just a good, good natured gentleman's bet sort of thing.
Speaker 2: Because I think there's a very real possibility that both
Speaker 2: of us are going to be wrong on this one,
Speaker 2: but we'll see, we'll see. But that's what membership is
Speaker 2: for because he'll certainly be here by the end of
Speaker 2: the hour, so he'll be participating in the membership episode.
Speaker 2: And if you want to be a member and listen
Speaker 2: to a little bit more Bobo on these episodes, you
Speaker 2: can just click that link in the show notes below.
Speaker 2: There's other benefits besides listening to Bobo more often. One
Speaker 2: of those benefits is you gets an extra show every
Speaker 2: single week where we get a little bit looser, we
Speaker 2: get a little bit more willy nilly, a little bit
Speaker 2: loosey goosey on that side of things. But also when
Speaker 2: we talk about things and oh, I've got a picture
Speaker 2: of that, you get to see the picture because we
Speaker 2: post those things on the Patreon. When there's a discussion
Speaker 2: that perhaps I covered in a North American Bigfoot Center video,
Speaker 2: I actually give the video to the members as well.
Speaker 2: So there's a lot a lot of benefits. And finally,
Speaker 2: one more benefit of being a member being an honorary pigeon.
Speaker 2: As we say, you get this episode that you're listening
Speaker 2: to at this very moment, completely ad free. So go
Speaker 2: ahead and click that link below, tie your five dollars
Speaker 2: and become a member because it's cool. That's it on
Speaker 2: that side of things. What's going on, Matt? Anything good?
Speaker 4: I think you're about to congratulate me.
Speaker 2: Oh, I certainly am. Congratulations Matt. Now you need to
Speaker 2: tell me why.
Speaker 3: Look at the screen.
Speaker 2: Look at the screen. I see guests. I don't see
Speaker 2: Bobo yet.
Speaker 4: We'll see it appears that someone is trying to log
Speaker 4: in at as our counter reads three minutes and forty
Speaker 4: two seconds, so.
Speaker 3: We will see.
Speaker 4: Okay, since we do have a topic to get into,
Speaker 4: if Bobo jumps in before we get to that topic,
Speaker 4: maybe he can fill us in on what happened in
Speaker 4: the field, so we don't interrupt.
Speaker 3: The topic to hear about that, because I do want
Speaker 3: to here if he had any good look out there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I think he was one of the bluff
Speaker 2: creaker thereabout, so I'd like to hear about that as well.
Speaker 4: But in the meantime, while this guest is attempting to
Speaker 4: log in, we get a lot of these great Q
Speaker 4: and A submissions that are amazing questions that as soon
Speaker 4: as I see him I'm like, oh, man, we could
Speaker 4: talk about that for two hours. There's just no short
Speaker 4: answer to that question, or you couldn't do the question
Speaker 4: justice with a short answer in the context of like
Speaker 4: a ten or twelve question and answer episode. And so
Speaker 4: we did one of those recently for the members, and
Speaker 4: you had a funny line at the end because I said,
Speaker 4: I think we went you know, beyond for this member
Speaker 4: and answered the question, and you said, oh, I think
Speaker 4: we went above and beyond. So I thought, oh, it'd
Speaker 4: be fun to do a little like above and Beyond series.
Speaker 4: I almost titled the member episode that, and then another
Speaker 4: one of our members, a pigeon, commented and was like, oh.
Speaker 3: You should do these as a series called Above.
Speaker 4: And Beyond, Bigfoot and Beyond. So I really liked that idea.
Speaker 4: And so today we had a couple of those on
Speaker 4: the table that have been sitting in our Q and
Speaker 4: A inbox for a while. Address So we're going to
Speaker 4: do one of those here for the main episode. Obviously,
Speaker 4: I won't reveal what that is yet until our guest
Speaker 4: completes the log in process, which is still ongoing. And
Speaker 4: so now you know, I edit these so it won't
Speaker 4: line up with what the listener sees. But now we're
Speaker 4: at five minutes and twenty one seconds and the guest
Speaker 4: is still trying to log in, so that congratulations might
Speaker 4: not have been It might have been premature because it
Speaker 4: might take another seven minutes, in which case you would
Speaker 4: win and I would have to congratulate you. Yeah, you
Speaker 4: don't count your pigeon eggs before they hatch.
Speaker 2: No, I'm sorry, I see P equal bracket P minus James.
Speaker 2: So that's Bobo's call in line. I think you won
Speaker 2: six minutes and forty eight seconds. Can you hear us, Bobouck,
Speaker 2: I guess that means yes, you are just in time.
Speaker 4: So we told the listeners that you been out late
Speaker 4: squatching and so you were getting a late start, and
Speaker 4: so we hadn't even gotten into the proposed topics yet.
Speaker 4: So this is perfect timing because I'm sure people want
Speaker 4: to know if you had it, and we want to
Speaker 4: know if you had any action out there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, tell us about your trip, all.
Speaker 4: Right, listeners. So there was just you're going to hear
Speaker 4: some time compression because we had to stop the session
Speaker 4: and start recording again. And by the time the session stopped,
Speaker 4: it was at twelve minutes and sixteen seconds, and several
Speaker 4: minutes have passed since in so I actually lost the bet.
Speaker 4: Cliff has won the bet. So congratulations to you, Cliff, Thank.
Speaker 2: You very much.
Speaker 5: I bet I've got somebody else will be twenty minutes.
Speaker 4: I said you would be here by twelve minutes and
Speaker 4: thirty seconds, and you logged in before that, and so
Speaker 4: I started congratulating myself, but then it didn't work. And
Speaker 4: so now that we're finally rolling, it's beyond that time.
Speaker 4: Oh man, inquiring minds, Cliff and myself included, I want
Speaker 4: to know how was your trip in the field?
Speaker 2: Yeah, where'd you go? Who'd you go with?
Speaker 5: We'll say that from the members.
Speaker 2: All right, we'll give them a little bit of something special. Then.
Speaker 4: Well, in our effort to go above and beyond bigfoot
Speaker 4: and beyond for some of these listener questions, we got
Speaker 4: a great question from a pigeon recently named Angela, and
Speaker 4: she had asked, I've been doing some unrelated research and
Speaker 4: was reminded of the observer effect in quantum physics. How
Speaker 4: do you all think that relates to bigfooting ie field research?
Speaker 4: And I think that's a great question, and there's definitely
Speaker 4: no short answer to it, So I thought that'd be
Speaker 4: a fun topic to discuss for the next hour with
Speaker 4: our listeners here, especially those who are aspiring or active
Speaker 4: field researchers.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and of course, I think probably the best way
Speaker 2: to start that conversation is to define what the observer
Speaker 2: effect is, because it's mostly used in physics, you know,
Speaker 2: and particularly quantum mechanics. I think the most common terminology
Speaker 2: for it would be the Heisenberg and certainty principle. I
Speaker 2: think that's a version of this real simple it's much much,
Speaker 2: much more simple than that. It's basically that by observing
Speaker 2: a situation, you change that situation. Now that is true everywhere,
Speaker 2: you know, Like, for example, I know that in the
Speaker 2: morning of if Melissa is working in the kitchen and
Speaker 2: I go out and I just stand there and look,
Speaker 2: she's going to go, what the hell you're looking at? Like,
Speaker 2: what's your problem?
Speaker 5: What are you doing?
Speaker 2: And it's going to weird her out, essentially because my
Speaker 2: observation of this situation changed that situation. That's a very
Speaker 2: obvious example of the observer effect, you know, but there's many,
Speaker 2: many others, and I think for this conversation, we're obviously
Speaker 2: talking about sasquatches release the context of sasquatches, So we're
Speaker 2: looking at wildlife. And again I see this every day
Speaker 2: as well. Melissa has taken to feeding the birds, and
Speaker 2: for a while she's feeding the squirrels and chipmunks, but
Speaker 2: I kind of discouraged her from doing that because they
Speaker 2: are rodents and they will live in our walls. We
Speaker 2: already have one in the wall somewhere. I can hear
Speaker 2: it scritch scratch around at night. But I don't necessarily
Speaker 2: want to gather rodents to a safe haven in my home,
Speaker 2: right But birds are way cooler in that sort of way,
Speaker 2: although I still don't trust him so and I know
Speaker 2: in the morning, like Melissa goes out to you know,
Speaker 2: check the feeders and all that sort of stuff and
Speaker 2: do what she enjoys doing, and by her being out there,
Speaker 2: the birds act differently, the squirrels act differently, everything acts differently.
Speaker 2: The observer effect. So clearly that's true of sasquatches as well.
Speaker 2: And I've I've been kind of ranting about this a
Speaker 2: bit because a few years ago I heard a pretty
Speaker 2: prominent bigfoot researcher say that what could another footprint cast
Speaker 2: possibly teach us and I was just aghast at that,
Speaker 2: you know, just like what I'm not a ridiculous thing
Speaker 2: to say. And because you know, when if somebody is
Speaker 2: lucky enough to see a sasquatch, they're most likely their
Speaker 2: observation of the animal is going to last two to
Speaker 2: three seconds or so. Yeah, not very long. Basically, So
Speaker 2: I've been arguing very loudly for years that the only
Speaker 2: way to observe a sasquatch and its natural habitat without
Speaker 2: changing its behavior, which comes back to the observer effect,
Speaker 2: is by tracking them. That's it, because if you're lucky
Speaker 2: to see one for two or three seconds, you're not
Speaker 2: going to have a long look. Almost certainly the sasquatch
Speaker 2: is going to realize as being observed, although that's not
Speaker 2: always true, and then it's going to change its behavior,
Speaker 2: most likely by assessing the threat, which is you, and
Speaker 2: or walking away and leaving the situation. So the only
Speaker 2: to me, the only effective way of observing sasquatches in
Speaker 2: their natural habitat without changing their behavior is by observing
Speaker 2: the stuff they leave behind their spore in other words,
Speaker 2: the footprints, forging sign, whatever else is behind them, hair, whatever,
Speaker 2: and then trying to decipher that trying to read the
Speaker 2: tracking essentially, which is why I'm so gung ho about it,
Speaker 2: because I'm deeply interested in the animals themselves. Yeah, I
Speaker 2: don't know, maybe that's it for me. What else you
Speaker 2: have to say?
Speaker 4: Well, as you had brought up, it applies heavily to wildlife.
Speaker 4: One of the examples that comes to mind is that,
Speaker 4: as I understand it, during the initial observational field studies
Speaker 4: that Jane Goodall conducted in Gombay, there was a lot
Speaker 4: of criticism because she was introducing food and so it
Speaker 4: wasn't necessarily the observation of natural behavior of chimpanzees in
Speaker 4: their natural habitat. But you know, in attempting to have
Speaker 4: closer observations of living chimpanzees, she enticed them with food
Speaker 4: and that of course changed their behavior. So she's still
Speaker 4: observing chimpanzees. But you know, to split hairs, you could
Speaker 4: easily say, well, that's you're not observing natural behavior, you're
Speaker 4: influencing that behavior. Airgo, you're influencing the phenomenon that you're
Speaker 4: trying to observe. But obviously her contributions are great, and
Speaker 4: you know, I think those criticisms might have been warranted
Speaker 4: in the day, but we've all benefited tremendously from her methods.
Speaker 3: But it did raise questions.
Speaker 4: I guess that there was some degree of aggression that
Speaker 4: was first documented by Goodall that you know, sort of
Speaker 4: shocking and paradigm shifting to the idea that chimpanzees were
Speaker 4: these sort of like gentle animals that were non violent,
Speaker 4: you know, as opposed to us their violent cousins, and
Speaker 4: so a lot of I think that early criticism was that, well,
Speaker 4: they're only violent because they're competing over this food that
Speaker 4: you introduced. Ergo, you know, we have to question whether
Speaker 4: or not they are naturally violent, which now that's been
Speaker 4: soundly put to rest. They are very naturally violent critters,
Speaker 4: scarily so. But I think it does apply to the
Speaker 4: field in a lot of ways. One of the analogies
Speaker 4: I've used before is that, you know, if you could
Speaker 4: imagine that you were a police officer who was getting
Speaker 4: a call frequently from a local resident who said that
Speaker 4: there was a prowler coming to their property every night
Speaker 4: and jiggling the door handle, trying to break in, peering
Speaker 4: in the windows, and you wanted to see if this
Speaker 4: prowler existed and if so apprehend them, how would you
Speaker 4: conduct yourself? Well, if you were to go out there
Speaker 4: in your cruiser and park in the driveway, you know,
Speaker 4: in the front yard, right in front of the house,
Speaker 4: and leave your blue lights on and observe no such prowler,
Speaker 4: would it be fair to say, well, the phenomenon this
Speaker 4: claimant is describing doesn't exist, because I went there, I searched,
Speaker 4: and nothing appeared to me that would empirically prove to
Speaker 4: me that this phenomenon exists to be observed. And I
Speaker 4: think anyone would say, well, no, you change the environment,
Speaker 4: because a prowler likely isn't going to approach the house
Speaker 4: when there's a police cruiser with the blue lights on
Speaker 4: in the driveway all night. The reason I use that
Speaker 4: analogy is I think that applies to a lot of
Speaker 4: what sasquatch field research is is that if you're trying
Speaker 4: to study this phenomenon that people describe, so you take
Speaker 4: those testimonies and what is it that they're describing. Well,
Speaker 4: what they describe approximates a living animal, and based on
Speaker 4: the sort of overarching patterns of all the interactions, observations,
Speaker 4: and behaviors, it seems to be a very wary, elusive,
Speaker 4: furtive animal that flees from human contact and tries to
Speaker 4: avoid human detection. And so if you're in the field,
Speaker 4: if you don't conduct yourself as if that's the kind
Speaker 4: of thing you're trying to observe, you might be influencing it.
Speaker 4: So if you're hoping to observe a living sasquatch and
Speaker 4: you're being very loud, very visible, you know offensive. You know,
Speaker 4: how many times have we seen people go out and
Speaker 4: slam the car doors and smoke half a pack of
Speaker 4: cigarettes and talk loudly and then cough and clear their
Speaker 4: throat and then do a bigfoot howl expecting that they're
Speaker 4: going to trick a sasquatch into responding back because it
Speaker 4: thinks there's another sasquatch in the area, Like it wouldn't
Speaker 4: have detected all of the indications that there was a
Speaker 4: human involved, or it's not optimum, it's not optimal. Well,
Speaker 4: my point is that so many people might go into
Speaker 4: the field that way and then when nothing happens, say yeah,
Speaker 4: there was never anything here to begin with, just like
Speaker 4: the cop might say, yeah, this person's lying, there's no prowler.
Speaker 3: I looked. It's like, well, did you really look.
Speaker 4: You know, you have a hypothesis, which is that the
Speaker 4: phenomenon exists, and how do you conduct the experiment? Well,
Speaker 4: you have to, at least in this case, which I
Speaker 4: think makes it sort of unscientific. You have to behave
Speaker 4: as if the phenomenon does exist, Like you have to
Speaker 4: conduct yourself as if sasquatches are real animals for the
Speaker 4: most part, if you're trying to conduct that experiment.
Speaker 1: Stay tuned for more Bigfoot and Beyond with Cliff and
Speaker 1: Bobo will be right back after these messages. You know, Bobes,
Speaker 1: squatching season is in full swing and I can't help
Speaker 1: but notice you're wearing that goune squatching hats. But are
Speaker 1: you wearing that hat to support your favorite hobby or
Speaker 1: to hide.
Speaker 2: Your thinning hair bom. You don't have to answer that, Bobes,
Speaker 2: because HYMNS offers access to a range of prescription treatments
Speaker 2: that are awesome out in the woods while you're squatching
Speaker 2: for hair regrowth, so you can see results by the
Speaker 2: time that you actually hear that vocalization offers convenient access
Speaker 2: to a range of prescription hair loss treatments with ingredients
Speaker 2: at work, including choose oral medications, serums and sprays for
Speaker 2: sure Doctor trusted clinically proven ingredients like finasteride and monoxidel
Speaker 2: can stop hair loss and regrow hair in as little
Speaker 2: as three to six months. YO get started from the
Speaker 2: comfort of home, Fill out an intake form, and a
Speaker 2: medical provider will determine if treatment is right for you.
Speaker 2: If prescribed, your treatment is sent directly to you for free.
Speaker 2: Classic The process is one hundred percent online, which means
Speaker 2: getting started has never been more convenient. HYMS has helped
Speaker 2: hundreds of thousands of men get their confidence back with
Speaker 2: visibly thicker and squatchier hair. Start your free online visit
Speaker 2: today at hymns dot com slash beyond.
Speaker 5: That's hims dot com slash beyond for your personalized hair
Speaker 5: loss treatment options.
Speaker 2: Hymns dot com slash beyond.
Speaker 4: Individual results may vary based on studies of topical and
Speaker 4: oral monoxidyl and finasteride. Prescription required see website for full details,
Speaker 4: restrictions and important safety information. You have to behave as
Speaker 4: if the phenomenon exists that you're testing to see whether
Speaker 4: or not it exists.
Speaker 3: Does that make sense, Well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, of course, I mean it's like you know, money
Speaker 2: maker would always criticize people for doing woodknocks wrong, and
Speaker 2: he was absolutely correct, by the way, even though the
Speaker 2: people who are like, what, how do you do a
Speaker 2: woodknock wrong? Well, it's the context. The context of the
Speaker 2: situation dictates whether you're doing it correctly or not, because
Speaker 2: you know, hitting the tree with a bat, there's only
Speaker 2: so many ways you can do it right. You can
Speaker 2: choose the right place in the tree and choose the
Speaker 2: right kind of wood and tree and all that kind
Speaker 2: of stuff. There's things you know can't you can affect right.
Speaker 2: But one of the things that people do, the civilians
Speaker 2: generally do this is they roll up to a campsite,
Speaker 2: they get everything out, they're making them some noise, and
Speaker 2: at midnight or something, they step slightly away from the
Speaker 2: fire and do tree knocks. And that's the wrong way
Speaker 2: to do it. That's the wrong way to do it
Speaker 2: because your fire is there, you've been there for a
Speaker 2: couple hours generally making some noise. Every sasquatch, every bear,
Speaker 2: every deer, every elk, every every critter with an earshot
Speaker 2: knows you're there, and you're just training the sasquatches that,
Speaker 2: oh yeah, yeah, this is a human thing doing this
Speaker 2: is something humans do. Now, they probably don't get that
Speaker 2: they're doing it for them, because, oh, that's just more
Speaker 2: weird human noises, because humans make weird noises, you know,
Speaker 2: the correct way to do something like that, if you're
Speaker 2: having a bonfire or having friends.
Speaker 5: That's an assumption. Clue that they don't know we're doing
Speaker 5: it for them.
Speaker 2: It is. I think it's a pretty safe assumption, the
Speaker 2: same way that I like deer necessarily know that we're
Speaker 2: doing we're banging on a tree for or whatever. You know,
Speaker 2: like I think that animals, that's true. That is an assumption.
Speaker 2: But I think it's a pretty safe assumption that that
Speaker 2: any weird noise coming from a human camp, I think
Speaker 2: is just going to be interpreted as a weird noise
Speaker 2: coming from a human camp.
Speaker 5: Well, I think they know that, we admit it. I
Speaker 5: think they know we do knocks and whistles and calls
Speaker 5: we do. Especially since the show came out so many
Speaker 5: people have done it all over the place. I think
Speaker 5: they're pretty aware of it now. They don't get they
Speaker 5: don't get us fired up when they hear it at first, now,
Speaker 5: like they don't have to come charging in hardly. Ever,
Speaker 5: if you do knocks and calls, like the first time
Speaker 5: you do it somewhere like like ever then they jabbed
Speaker 5: some places.
Speaker 2: It doesn't seem like it's changed their behavior at all.
Speaker 2: I like bumping, Yeah, like bumping, you know. So I
Speaker 2: don't know, I have no idea. I guess I don't
Speaker 2: know if it's it's best to assume that they think
Speaker 2: that we're after them or not. But I think hitting
Speaker 2: a tree with a baseball bat at the edge of
Speaker 2: the fire, I don't think it's any sasquatch would assume,
Speaker 2: Oh they're doing that for me. I think, oh, just
Speaker 2: humans do weird things, and there's there's yet another weird
Speaker 2: human noise coming from that same camp.
Speaker 5: Well, they know they know we make knocking sounds, that
Speaker 5: everyone's split in wood and stuff like that. And I
Speaker 5: think when they hear it in the same place and
Speaker 5: bumping is don't exact like salt fork still get stuff
Speaker 5: going on. But I think, yeah, I just think they're
Speaker 5: smarter to know, like, well, I don't think they would
Speaker 5: someone's it was trying to attract them. But I think
Speaker 5: if it's like you know, for instance, soal Fark can
Speaker 5: probably where people go there and do calls, all the time,
Speaker 5: and they still come around and they'll answer sometimes that's
Speaker 5: like that's more rare than it is normal.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think the correct way to do those things
Speaker 2: is a step away from camp a few hundred yards.
Speaker 5: Oh totally, Well, the best way to get even I
Speaker 5: think the best way to do is hike in a
Speaker 5: couple of miles and then do it. Hike it before
Speaker 5: we gonna start where I get start, and then do
Speaker 5: it in the middle of like get off trail and
Speaker 5: do it there like yeah, way better chance of it response.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, exactly. So it goes back to the observer
Speaker 2: effect again, is that general, generally speaking, they're going to
Speaker 2: change their behavior based on your presence and whether you're
Speaker 2: observing them or not. I guess you're trying to, and
Speaker 2: I think that's an element of the observer effect that
Speaker 2: probably needs to be addressed. Trying to observe them, for
Speaker 2: them would be the same thing as being observed.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, if you know someone's looking for you
Speaker 2: and you haven't been found yet, that changes your behavior too.
Speaker 3: If you think about it.
Speaker 4: But like generating sounds in order to get responses, you know,
Speaker 4: what we're trying to do is just confirm the presence
Speaker 4: of sasquatches, but in a way you could make an
Speaker 4: analogy between that and any other sort of measurement. That's
Speaker 4: one of the things about the Heisenberger uncertainty principle that
Speaker 4: people get into the minutiaw about is that it's not
Speaker 4: even necessarily in some cases that the active observation changes
Speaker 4: the phenomenon. It's that the act of measurement changes the phenomenon,
Speaker 4: And so good analogies would be if you use a
Speaker 4: tire pressure gauge. You know that has a certain set
Speaker 4: of parameters and psi, et cetera. But in order to
Speaker 4: measure the pressure of a tire, you have to let
Speaker 4: out a little bit of air. So if you had
Speaker 4: a sensitive enough pressure gauge that could get into like
Speaker 4: the most minute decimal points, you would find that the
Speaker 4: pressure of the tire is actually different before you begin
Speaker 4: to measure it. Or if you had, you know, a
Speaker 4: tub or a bucket full of water and you insert
Speaker 4: a tape measure or a ruler into it to measure
Speaker 4: the depth of it, you're actually raising the level of
Speaker 4: that water by displacing it with the tool. Now, those
Speaker 4: measurements we consider them to be sort of inconsequential because
Speaker 4: we're looking at sort of a macro like centimeters inches,
Speaker 4: whatever the case may be, or again psi pounds per
Speaker 4: square inch. But actually we are changing the phenomenon by
Speaker 4: the act of measuring it. And if we're measuring sasquatch
Speaker 4: activity by generating sounds or by baiting with food or
Speaker 4: in any way, we're changing the phenomenon in that way too,
Speaker 4: Because who's to say that what it is that we're
Speaker 4: hearing or observing is not natural behavior but is a
Speaker 4: stress response. You know, a naturally occurring animal that was
Speaker 4: in a baseline state is now displaying a stress response
Speaker 4: or an avoidance behavior, or an aggressive response to intimidate,
Speaker 4: and so so many of the things that we observe
Speaker 4: that we think are normative behaviors might actually be more
Speaker 4: like stress responses, etc. So we're measuring the phenomenon and
Speaker 4: undoubtedly having an effect on it each and every time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think whenever there's a human in the vicinity
Speaker 2: of a sasquatch, that probably heightens the sasquatch's stress levels.
Speaker 2: And there are reports that you can see evidence of
Speaker 2: that in whether it's reports of sasquatches smiling at the
Speaker 2: observer because you know, smiling for an ape is a
Speaker 2: is a negative thing. It is a stress reaction. They're
Speaker 2: kind of showing you their knives, so to speak, their teeth,
Speaker 2: you know, in humans it doesn't mean that, But we
Speaker 2: can't interpret other animals based on human nonverbal communication. We
Speaker 2: have to kind of look outside of that. When you
Speaker 2: look at all the other ape species, when they're smiling
Speaker 2: at you, like generally speaking, that's not a good thing.
Speaker 2: You know, they're bearing their teeth or any other animal
Speaker 2: for that matter. Also, I think, like we talked about
Speaker 2: this recently, I think on another recent broadcast that the
Speaker 2: smell might be associated with a stress reaction in sasquatches
Speaker 2: as well. Out in the field, I've seen broken trees
Speaker 2: quite often, very odd oddly broken trees, and I think
Speaker 2: that these are probably stress reactions as well, because so
Speaker 2: far they've mostly been located on roads or trails where
Speaker 2: humans are, so that the presence of humans in that
Speaker 2: sort of way does elicit I think that the evidence
Speaker 2: is there that it does probably elicit a lot of
Speaker 2: stress and sasquatches which completely changes their behavior.
Speaker 4: And how much of what we were recording, you know,
Speaker 4: because the observer effect falls back on the observer, because
Speaker 4: there's observer bias, and so you know, if you have
Speaker 4: pre existing biases, which we all do, there's no one
Speaker 4: that's immune to that. You know, if we're going through
Speaker 4: the research notes or the claimant eyewitness testimony, you know,
Speaker 4: how much of what's being quote unquote observed is actually
Speaker 4: like selectively edited in the moment, maybe even involuntarily to
Speaker 4: fit some presupposition. And so even the data that we're seeing,
Speaker 4: as long as it's testimony or anecdotal, is still going
Speaker 4: to be biased by the observer. And so there's an
Speaker 4: observer effect there, or even the differences between a range
Speaker 4: of observers. You know, what's relevant to what person to
Speaker 4: one person might not be relevant to another, and so
Speaker 4: things are noteworthy and some aren't. And so I don't
Speaker 4: see how this field couldn't be influenced heavily by it.
Speaker 4: And that just has to be true of any and
Speaker 4: all wildlife observational studies, which I think if we're looking
Speaker 4: for models, at least as it pertains to capturing visual evidence,
Speaker 4: you know, trying to see one photograph one, get video
Speaker 4: of one. Then it's like, well, I really like to
Speaker 4: read the travelogus and nature writing of hunters and wildlife photographers.
Speaker 4: Even though I'm not hunting one, I kind of am
Speaker 4: with a camera and it's like, well, what methods do
Speaker 4: these people use to have extended observations of wildlife and
Speaker 4: to document those observations? And that's a lot more relevant
Speaker 4: than what are sasquatch researchers doing in a lot of
Speaker 4: those cases.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, you know a lot of this conversation reminds
Speaker 2: me of something that Tom Powell mentions a lot and
Speaker 2: his presentations, And of course Tom's very paranormal and stuff,
Speaker 2: but he does have some really good points about the
Speaker 2: sasquatch phenomenon in some ways. And one of the things
Speaker 2: he really hammers is that we should be focusing on
Speaker 2: gathering intel versus gathering evidence, because evidence is scarce and
Speaker 2: it's hard, and it's not going to convince very many people.
Speaker 2: But he thinks that we can actually get a lot further,
Speaker 2: a lot faster by gathering what is essentially intel, you know,
Speaker 2: like from a CIA perspective sort of thing, Whereas if
Speaker 2: we're going out and we're trying to find you know,
Speaker 2: observations and behavioral patterns and consistencies within witness testimonies and
Speaker 2: that sort of thing, like basically anecdotal sort of things
Speaker 2: is you know.
Speaker 5: It's all anecdotal because it's all their.
Speaker 2: Perception, right right. So that's his point that it doesn't
Speaker 2: amount to scientific proof or real evidence in any sort
Speaker 2: of way. It's more intel, and he thinks that we
Speaker 2: can get further that way than gather trying to gather
Speaker 2: the evidence. I agree that, but so far, that's what
Speaker 2: most of the Bigfoot history of the subject has been
Speaker 2: focused on, is intel, and it's gotten us here, and
Speaker 2: we've kind of stalled out I think here for the
Speaker 2: last thirty or fifty years or so. Maybe intel. I
Speaker 2: mean it's it's a good way to go, and it's
Speaker 2: a good way for most hobbyists and stuff like that,
Speaker 2: but really pushing the ball down the field, I think
Speaker 2: that you have to go pass that and just focus
Speaker 2: on the evidence versus intel, and I think the evidence itself.
Speaker 2: When you go to a level of evidence, I think
Speaker 2: that that's when you start leaving the observer effect behind.
Speaker 2: You know, if I gather a footprint cast, the Sasquatch
Speaker 2: is likely did not know I gathered that cast unless
Speaker 2: it was in the area which and I don't know
Speaker 2: how often they're in the area, essentially, And also you
Speaker 2: remove that evidence from the environment and you can you
Speaker 2: can analyze it and give it to other people who
Speaker 2: have no idea about the context and see what they
Speaker 2: think about it, and all that sort of stuff kind
Speaker 2: of removes the observer.
Speaker 4: I think those are great points. I mean, in terms
Speaker 4: of gathering intel. To me, that is the path to evidence,
Speaker 4: and so I'd have to see exactly what Tom said
Speaker 4: or what he intends by that. But I don't think
Speaker 4: that you can abandon evidence to prefer intel, because the path, too,
Speaker 4: ever is by following intel. You know, Matt made that point.
Speaker 4: Matt money Maker made that point in our members only
Speaker 4: episode with him, is that you know, by gathering testimony
Speaker 4: that might lead you to the evidence that then leads
Speaker 4: you to conclusive proof.
Speaker 3: And so there's a.
Speaker 4: Sort of a series of steps that have to be taken.
Speaker 4: But again, I think if we look at the legacy
Speaker 4: of methodology that's successful for hunters and wildlife photographers, everything
Speaker 4: they do in the field is to you know, negate
Speaker 4: the observer effect. They're trying to negate all of those
Speaker 4: effects by employing stealth and camouflage and scent control and
Speaker 4: a whole host of factors to make themselves, you know,
Speaker 4: undetectable so that the observer effect doesn't happen to the
Speaker 4: extent that they can at least document observations or in
Speaker 4: the case of hunters, collect the animals that they're after.
Speaker 4: And there's there's a lot to learn from there, and
Speaker 4: it's not easy. I mean, you know, I spent years
Speaker 4: basically carrying out like the sort of expedition protocol A
Speaker 4: because I like sploring and looking for sign and then
Speaker 4: B because it's a lot of fun to be out
Speaker 4: at night in the dark trying to get responses and
Speaker 4: trying to see things with a thermal image or have
Speaker 4: experiences like I still do that. I enjoy it. I
Speaker 4: just don't have the expectation that that's going to get
Speaker 4: me great visual evidence. To get great visual evidence, you
Speaker 4: kind of have to behave like a hunter or wildlie photographer,
Speaker 4: and it can be really tedious and very boring and
Speaker 4: make for a lot of long days where nothing happens.
Speaker 4: And I still know in my mind that it's the
Speaker 4: right thing to do, but of course my heart wants
Speaker 4: the adventure, you know, But all of that really is
Speaker 4: predicated on negating the observer effect.
Speaker 1: At the end of the day, stay tuned for more
Speaker 1: Bigfoot and Beyond with Cliff and Bobo will be right
Speaker 1: back after these messages.
Speaker 2: So what's the best way for the standard Joe, you know,
Speaker 2: like our listeners us, what do you think the best
Speaker 2: way to deal with with eliminating the observer effect to
Speaker 2: observe sasquatches in their natural environment without changing their behaviors.
Speaker 4: I think using those methods like trying to be visually undetectable,
Speaker 4: whether that's you know, wearing camouflage at the very least
Speaker 4: earth tones so that you're not wearing something you know,
Speaker 4: bright red or bright blue or something that completely stands
Speaker 4: out that makes you easily visually detectable. Because apes, you know,
Speaker 4: primemates are visual animals, and apes we have the best vision,
Speaker 4: or at least as far as mammalia is concerned. So
Speaker 4: trying to be visually undetectable, trying to move as little
Speaker 4: as possible because motion is very easy to detect, so
Speaker 4: you know, being stationary in a place where you have
Speaker 4: good lanes of observation, trying to be still, trying to
Speaker 4: be quiet because you know, as a secondary sense. Our
Speaker 4: hearing is pretty good, and as is the hearing of
Speaker 4: other apes. Typically, the ape behavioral response to a novel
Speaker 4: sound is to immediately try to investigate it visually, so
Speaker 4: they are always listening. I know we've talked about this
Speaker 4: quite a bit, but it's just not as sexy to say, like,
Speaker 4: we'll get out there, hide, be still, be quiet and
Speaker 4: keep your eyes and ears open, because it's not as
Speaker 4: fun as exploring and moving and trying to make contact
Speaker 4: and have interactions.
Speaker 3: And I still try to do those things.
Speaker 4: So I'm not detegrating that approach, but I'm just saying, like,
Speaker 4: I don't expect that that will lead me to observing
Speaker 4: a sasquatch in its natural environment, exhibiting its natural behavior
Speaker 4: as much as those wildlife photography or hunting methods, and
Speaker 4: just having done field research as long as I have
Speaker 4: around the country, almost known is doing that. I didn't
Speaker 4: even start doing it until I started to spend a
Speaker 4: lot of time with Darryl Collier and a couple of
Speaker 4: other NAWAC members who were doing that and who had
Speaker 4: had observations using that method, And so I try to
Speaker 4: be more committed to it now, despite how boring it
Speaker 4: can be.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's not really my take on. I mean, you're
Speaker 2: absolutely correct. If you want to observe a sasquatch and
Speaker 2: for thirty seconds or a minute or something, or having
Speaker 2: like an extended observation of a sasquatch, that's probably and
Speaker 2: without it knowing. That's got to beretty much one of
Speaker 2: the only ways to do it except for blindly stumbling
Speaker 2: upon one that doesn't happen to notice you, or.
Speaker 5: Put out cameras at a pretty like a spot that's
Speaker 5: a hot spot and like have like you know, military
Speaker 5: grade or even like you know, not even not high,
Speaker 5: but better than what we have. Like the guys from
Speaker 5: a study sasquatch bar and those guys, what they're doing
Speaker 5: with those long distance therms. I think that's gonna be
Speaker 5: way more productive than anything else.
Speaker 2: Maybe have you got multiple If you got multiples, have you.
Speaker 5: Got if you got you know, a couple of dozen
Speaker 5: of them?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I guess it depends on what they get.
Speaker 2: I just I just don't have a lot of faith
Speaker 2: in that a thermal imaging video will show us much.
Speaker 5: Oh, like one of those one of those new high
Speaker 5: tech like it's a digital thermal and filmed, all laid
Speaker 5: over each other, all three you've seen you see those, right, No.
Speaker 2: I don't pay attention to I'm not really a tech
Speaker 2: guy like that, you know, because I don't think it's
Speaker 2: going to do it. But so I don't know. I mean,
Speaker 2: I don't. I don't pay attention to that stuff.
Speaker 5: You know, these will do as long as you trust
Speaker 5: a source and don't think can say it's trustworthy source,
Speaker 5: these things will definitely be able to show it no problem. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, now, Bobo, we've talked before about how we suspect
Speaker 2: sasquatches might be able to detect electronics in some sort
Speaker 2: of way, whether it's a sound or an EMF thing
Speaker 2: or whatever else, and we don't really know. Don't you
Speaker 2: think that will come into play here?
Speaker 5: Well, their units are all self contained in like these
Speaker 5: ammal cases that are the MF that are totally the
Speaker 5: MF proof. They put a shield up around the whole
Speaker 5: thing barrier, so it's all self contained, so there's no
Speaker 5: EMF detective detect They're setting them up at several hundred
Speaker 5: yards away too, well.
Speaker 2: From where they hope it's going to walk. But you
Speaker 2: can't really control where a sass which is going to walk.
Speaker 5: No, no, but if you've got enough of those things out,
Speaker 5: you're going to cover pretty much all your avenues. You know,
Speaker 5: if you got enough resources to cover all your avenues,
Speaker 5: then the matter of them actually walking in. But yeah,
Speaker 5: you never know what You never know what they're going
Speaker 5: to do for sure.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I guess we'll see, you know, we'll see
Speaker 2: if they get anything. You know, I know it's been
Speaker 2: going on for about a year now, right, Yeah.
Speaker 5: Well they got held up because of the Terra stuff
Speaker 5: and all that stuff come out of China and this
Speaker 5: and that. Like, I know, they got held up because
Speaker 5: of that.
Speaker 2: So it's not it has many year because the terrorist
Speaker 2: have not eve been affecting a few months here, so
Speaker 2: it's been a lot less.
Speaker 5: They have they have five they are going to build
Speaker 5: ten more, but they don't they don't have all the parts. Shit.
Speaker 2: Well, well hopefully they get something.
Speaker 4: So if the goal is how do you get thermal
Speaker 4: imaging video of a Sasquatch, I think they're absolutely correctly
Speaker 4: pursuing that goal.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 4: If the goal was like, well how do you find tracks,
Speaker 4: then it's like, well, don't worry about what clothes you're wearing.
Speaker 3: You can wear bright blue or bright red or whatever.
Speaker 4: Because none of that has to do with you know,
Speaker 4: trying to spook or not spook the animals. You need
Speaker 4: to have your eyes and focus on the ground and
Speaker 4: documentation materials with you, whether that's camera and tape, measure
Speaker 4: and casting materials, et cetera.
Speaker 3: So it's all goal dependent.
Speaker 5: I got. I'm just saying, yeah, I mean you need
Speaker 5: like a sniper, like a military, like a green Bridish sniper.
Speaker 5: It's like super came out, like you got set block on,
Speaker 5: so like guard dogs not smell you or you know,
Speaker 5: I mean, like you got to go all the way
Speaker 5: to be real discipline and how you littlely you move
Speaker 5: all that kind of stuff. Like you know, those guys
Speaker 5: have like those you know, pea bottles so they don't
Speaker 5: have to get up from their position. They can just
Speaker 5: go to the bathroom right there, like like that stuff.
Speaker 5: I thinks it's gonna take to get some squash fage,
Speaker 5: like if you want to get consistent footage or more
Speaker 5: than once, if you need kind of that kind of approach.
Speaker 4: Well, I think if the goal was like to personally
Speaker 4: capture footage, you know, if the goal was just footage
Speaker 4: in general, then yeah, with enough money, you just put
Speaker 4: up the right kind of surveillance or game cameras or
Speaker 4: whatever the case may be, in high enough abundance or
Speaker 4: cameras on a house like the Ericson project, and then
Speaker 4: you don't even need a human who could sit out
Speaker 4: in the field for hours or days at a time.
Speaker 4: So it's really that's what I mean by goal specific.
Speaker 5: Oh for someone, Oh yeah, you're right, you're right. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 5: so yeah, just be do what you can on your
Speaker 5: budget and time, and yeah, be being like yeah nature
Speaker 5: for a hundred Just take the precautions and be out
Speaker 5: and be out there as much as you can in
Speaker 5: a good spot quiet, be quiet and unobtrusive and.
Speaker 4: Is Yeah, if your goal is to observe one in
Speaker 4: its natural habitat without it knowing.
Speaker 2: I have to jump in here. I think that the
Speaker 2: conversation here is confused footage with observations.
Speaker 5: Are you're right?
Speaker 2: Footage is not the only way to observe a sasquatch. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I think that's an important thing here, Like footage is
Speaker 2: a different game. That's a different game that they're playing.
Speaker 2: If you're trying to get footage, and of course the
Speaker 2: footage will help us visually observe a sasquatch for however
Speaker 2: long it's in the viewfinder. You know, I understand that.
Speaker 2: But there's other ways to observe the sasquatch. You can
Speaker 2: observe their presence by listening and hearing for knox or vocalizations.
Speaker 2: I routinely observe their recent presence by looking at footprints
Speaker 2: and finding foraging sign and other spore that they leave behind.
Speaker 2: Observing a sasquatch is much different than filming one, is
Speaker 2: my point here, So I think that we shouldn't confuse
Speaker 2: the two. I mean, everybody wants to see a sasquatch,
Speaker 2: and the cool thing about footage is that you can
Speaker 2: share your observation of it. That's why everybody loves a
Speaker 2: PG film because that might be the only sasquatch most
Speaker 2: of us ever get to see in broad daylight. Right.
Speaker 2: But Roger and Bob are the ones who observed it,
Speaker 2: and they're just sharing their observation with us by sharing
Speaker 2: the film. But there's other ways to observe a sasquatch,
Speaker 2: And I think when and I would, I would argue
Speaker 2: that the tracking method which I regularly employ has yielded
Speaker 2: more results than any of the other observation methods, except
Speaker 2: with the possible exception of vocalizations. But we don't know
Speaker 2: really what's making some of these vocalizations.
Speaker 4: Certainly, Yeah, I mean, I guess I would restrict if
Speaker 4: we're splitting hairs like visual observation is the way I
Speaker 4: interpreted the question about observing a sasquatch and its natural
Speaker 4: habitat without annoying it's being observed.
Speaker 2: Yeah, see, I didn't. I didn't even think. I mean,
Speaker 2: that would be cool, that'd be the cherry on the cake.
Speaker 2: But to me, I wasn't even thinking along that because
Speaker 2: I have observed evidence of sasquatch behavior before, like move
Speaker 2: logs aside and foraging and breaking apart tree stumps and
Speaker 2: breaking trees and all that sort of stuff. I've observed
Speaker 2: plenty of indirectly observed plenty of sasquatch behavior just by
Speaker 2: doing what I do, going out once or twice a
Speaker 2: week to the areas and spooping around and see trying
Speaker 2: to find stuff.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, that's where I would say, again, if
Speaker 4: the goal was to observe the living animal versus to
Speaker 4: observe the consequences of the animal's interaction with the environment.
Speaker 4: Those are two different things that have two very different methodologies.
Speaker 3: So my answer was.
Speaker 4: Specifically about like visually observing the animal and its environment
Speaker 4: versus the consequences of its interaction with the environment in
Speaker 4: the aftermath of its having passed through, etc.
Speaker 2: I would argue that even on finding big Foot, going
Speaker 2: out and getting the vocalizations, which is a pretty low
Speaker 2: hanging fruit, it's a much easier thing to do than
Speaker 2: actually putting your eyes on a sasquatch that's also an
Speaker 2: observation of a sasquatch, But also we had changed their
Speaker 2: behaviors as well, you know, the observe effect was in
Speaker 2: full bloom and finding Bigfoot of course, and all these episodes.
Speaker 3: Oh certainly.
Speaker 4: I just think, to my broader point, like, if most
Speaker 4: people are trying to see one in the environment, learning
Speaker 4: from people who do so successfully with other wildlife and
Speaker 4: seeing that almost everything they do is predicated on negating
Speaker 4: or at least accounting for, the observe effect is worth
Speaker 4: trying to replicate.
Speaker 3: In your own experiments.
Speaker 4: And I think that's where most people go wrong, and
Speaker 4: myself included, I've done it many times where I've just
Speaker 4: made the mistakes and have gotten home and nothing happened.
Speaker 4: And then, if I'm being honest, I have to go, well,
Speaker 4: did I really do my best.
Speaker 3: To be undetectable?
Speaker 4: Now I probably could have done better, And so is
Speaker 4: the silence and the absence of evidence that I experienced
Speaker 4: proof that there was nothing there? Or could that have
Speaker 4: been because I actually influenced the environment because I was
Speaker 4: too noisy coming in, or I slammed my car doors
Speaker 4: too loud, or you know, I got up and moved
Speaker 4: around too much when I should have stayed station. I'll
Speaker 4: never know, but I think to be responsible about it,
Speaker 4: I have to go, well, I didn't quite properly conduct
Speaker 4: the experiment the way it should have been to have
Speaker 4: any certainty that there was never anything there, you know
Speaker 4: what I mean?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4: And the hard thing about this field, I think for anyone,
Speaker 4: is like, we don't know how to interpret negative data
Speaker 4: because I hear a lot of people say things to
Speaker 4: the effect of like they know we're here and they're
Speaker 4: choosing not to respond. That's their interpretation of like getting
Speaker 4: no responses. Versus my I'd be like, well, there's not
Speaker 4: any around, you know, and who knows whether either of.
Speaker 3: Us are right or wrong?
Speaker 4: Because it's unverifiable and unfalsifiable. Right, So most of the time,
Speaker 4: what you're left with is negative data, is the absence
Speaker 4: of responses or the absence of sign and people can
Speaker 4: choose to interpret that in whatever way best fits.
Speaker 3: Their narrative or their again, their biases.
Speaker 4: And so I think you have a lot of people
Speaker 4: that say, oh, well, we conducted an experiment quote unquote,
Speaker 4: we knocked this many times and nothing happened. And so
Speaker 4: it's definitely the case that that was too many times.
Speaker 4: Maybe if we had knocked fewer times, they would have
Speaker 4: chosen to respond.
Speaker 3: Where it's like, well, you're.
Speaker 4: Assuming that there was even one in earshot to hear
Speaker 4: your knocks in the first place.
Speaker 3: We don't know that.
Speaker 4: People are still trying to like decode you know, what
Speaker 4: all these things mean, or they're they're always looking for
Speaker 4: the panaceo, you know, the magic bullet, Like what is
Speaker 4: it that is irresistible to them that they will respond
Speaker 4: to every time predicated on the assumption that they're there
Speaker 4: in the first place hearing the stimuli and electing not
Speaker 4: to respond.
Speaker 5: You know, that drives me crazy. You know people that
Speaker 5: are like, oh, there's it's like to you don't know
Speaker 5: one heard it. You don't. You don't know if it
Speaker 5: heard it and ignored it or didn't hear it. Yeah,
Speaker 5: we don't know. But people say that all the time.
Speaker 5: But there's times like when I was out my buddy
Speaker 5: from Pennsylvania that you guys know, we left all those
Speaker 5: recorders out one and up in the Redwoods. We didn't
Speaker 5: know they were there. We played the record in the
Speaker 5: next city, or knocking doing real loud knocks in the
Speaker 5: last loud knocking right next to the recorder. So it's
Speaker 5: like they're there. They knew we were there, they just
Speaker 5: waited till we left. But we didn't. We wouldn't know
Speaker 5: that unless we had an auto recorder running when we left.
Speaker 2: Does the insertion of electronic recording devices like long duration
Speaker 2: recorders or game cameras or these long distance therms and
Speaker 2: whatever that bar those guys are doing, How does that
Speaker 2: affect their behavior? You think?
Speaker 5: Well, everyone, everyone seems to say that audio doesn't seem
Speaker 5: to bother them. The auto recorders. It's the cameras. For
Speaker 5: whatever reason, Because I know a lot of people, like
Speaker 5: I've heard firsonal ones at least set out where sometimes
Speaker 5: up in funnels around the krons then puts it back
Speaker 5: down and you hear it a walk away. I mean,
Speaker 5: so you don't hear like I think they mess with
Speaker 5: game cameras sometimes, but they usually don't mess with cameras
Speaker 5: too much like they do the auto recorder.
Speaker 2: It seems like, yeah, or they're just not close enough
Speaker 2: to the audio recorder you didn't even know it's there.
Speaker 5: I mean, I'm talking abou when they pick it up
Speaker 5: and sniff it and stuff.
Speaker 2: Like that, right, right, But you know, if an LDR
Speaker 2: is just sitting hanging on a branch somewhere and it's
Speaker 2: it's a quarter mile away the Sasquatch, it's not going
Speaker 2: to know it's there. There's no way.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I like it has any effect having auto recorders out.
Speaker 2: But but cameras, you think that they're they're they're pretty
Speaker 2: wise too.
Speaker 5: I think so, I think, yeah, I think the I
Speaker 5: think the other older ones I think definitely are.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I think it's definitely possible for sure. But at
Speaker 2: the same time, you know, maybe they don't care sometimes too.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 2: What about how does this how does this whole topic
Speaker 2: of conversation lead into the idea the hypothesis. I know
Speaker 2: that Peter Burn put this idea out on a television
Speaker 2: show many many years ago, that sasquatches are aware of
Speaker 2: their own footprints and choose not to leave them in
Speaker 2: certain areas, or choose to leave them in certain areas.
Speaker 2: I mean, doctor Grover Grantz kind of picked up that
Speaker 2: ball and curated it for a bit in his excellent
Speaker 2: book about the idea of that. So how does that
Speaker 2: affect what we're talking about here?
Speaker 5: Well, I think there are constous of their footprints in
Speaker 5: certain substrates for sure. If it's not it's hard packed dirt,
Speaker 5: I think they sometimes you either walk across me the
Speaker 5: log log landing or landing or something that's super you know,
Speaker 5: had das and D five roll around, pack it in
Speaker 5: super tight and the summ you're not gonna leave any evidence,
Speaker 5: and the winner's muddy, they're not going to walking within
Speaker 5: the summer.
Speaker 4: I think if they have anything like the cognition of
Speaker 4: other apes. If not, you know, something closer to our
Speaker 4: level of cognition, because we know that other apes are
Speaker 4: aware of their own footprints, and you know, doctor Melton
Speaker 4: detailed some experiments that demonstrated that quite nicely with chimpanzees.
Speaker 4: And so if they are ambush predators. As part of
Speaker 4: their omnivorous lifestyle, they are probably hip to the tracks
Speaker 4: of prey animals, you know, if they're foraging and moving
Speaker 4: around and then they see, you know, fresh tracks of
Speaker 4: their prey animals. I don't think that's unreasonable, because other
Speaker 4: predators recognize the sign of their prey. And how would
Speaker 4: that not extend to being aware of one's own tracks
Speaker 4: or presence and the desire or ability to try to
Speaker 4: avoid leaving those because your lifestyle is dependent on avoiding
Speaker 4: detection at all costs. I don't think that's outrageous at all.
Speaker 2: Agreed, No. Doctor Krantz actually notes in his book that
Speaker 2: if wolves can identify one another by their scent, it
Speaker 2: doesn't take any more brain power for assas squash to
Speaker 2: identify another individual by the shape of its foot. And
Speaker 2: I think that's very a reasonable way for them to
Speaker 2: navigate the environment and figure out where their ilk have been,
Speaker 2: you know, like where the other sasquatches. I don't know,
Speaker 2: but I saw tracks yesterday over in this spot. They're
Speaker 2: probably over in that zone there, because I'm also a
Speaker 2: sasquatch and I know there's food on that ridge, and
Speaker 2: I know where to find it because I've been there before,
Speaker 2: you know, I think that would be very reasonable expectation,
Speaker 2: and it also might I've kind of hypothesized this a bit.
Speaker 2: I'm not sure if I think it sounds like I've
Speaker 2: just spoken about this on the podcast recently, but maybe
Speaker 2: I haven't. I've often wondered if by when we get
Speaker 2: to actually study sasquatches for real, like they're real animals.
Speaker 2: Everybody knows that there's teams of biologists out there doing it,
Speaker 2: are we going to discover that We're going to learn
Speaker 2: a lot more about the roots of our natural behavior
Speaker 2: of tracking, because that's a behavior of Homo sapiens. We track,
Speaker 2: you know, it's just something that we do. Just like
Speaker 2: you know, squirrels climb trees, Homo sapiens track. I bet
Speaker 2: you we're going to find out a lot about the
Speaker 2: root of that behavior when sasquatches can be studied appropriately.
Speaker 2: Stay tuned for more Bigfoot and Beyond with Cliff and Bobo.
Speaker 2: Will be right back after these messages. I know for
Speaker 2: my own field work, I will say this, though I
Speaker 2: have found tracks in the mud on a number of occasions,
Speaker 2: and I don't have the exact number. I'm going to
Speaker 2: make this up, I'm going to say eighty percent of
Speaker 2: the time, seventy percent of the time, it's always the juvenile.
Speaker 2: It's always the juvenile of the family group. It's you know,
Speaker 2: in one area it's a twelve inch eleven or twelve inch,
Speaker 2: or the other one it's about an eight to ten incher.
Speaker 2: And in every case, well almost every case, the footprints
Speaker 2: in the mud are always of the juvenile, occasionally of
Speaker 2: the presumed female thirteen fourteen inches long occasionally. And I
Speaker 2: have never found the big one, the big one's footprints,
Speaker 2: whether it's either my two areas of the fifteen inch
Speaker 2: or the seventeen inch, I've never found those individuals' tracks
Speaker 2: in the mud always and another sort of substrate. And
Speaker 2: I've kind of wondered about this, and I know that,
Speaker 2: you know, when my dog Sochi was alive, dog rest
Speaker 2: her soul, she would have go out of her way
Speaker 2: to avoid walking in mud. She just didn't like the
Speaker 2: way I felt or something. I don't know. I'm not
Speaker 2: sure what it was, because she certainly didn't care about
Speaker 2: getting inside of the house dirty, so it must have
Speaker 2: been something about the way she felt on her feet.
Speaker 2: And I kind of wonder if that's the case, or
Speaker 2: if the sasquatches are just aware that they're going to
Speaker 2: leave a big, old footprint there. It's easy to find
Speaker 2: it easy to follow. Maybe the big males, I mean,
Speaker 2: maybe they're tuned into the tracking thing a little bit more.
Speaker 2: Maybe that's their job or something, you know, the track
Speaker 2: down their prey. Who knows. The possibilities are infinite at
Speaker 2: this moment because we know so little about these things.
Speaker 2: But I do find it interesting that only the juveniles,
Speaker 2: for the most part, are found in any sort of
Speaker 2: muddy substrate. The larger, presumably wiser individuals seem to avoid
Speaker 2: that sort of substrate.
Speaker 4: An interesting thing to think about is that you know
Speaker 4: ambush predators. And I would again encourage new listeners, if
Speaker 4: you haven't heard me, make these recommendations to read at
Speaker 4: least these two books, The Tiger, A True Story of
Speaker 4: Vengeance and Survival by John Volant and The Great Soul
Speaker 4: of Siberia by Soyong Park, both of which are excellent
Speaker 4: books about the Siberian tiger, but they go into great
Speaker 4: detail about the lifestyle of an ambush predator, and in
Speaker 4: a way, it's as if their whole lifestyle is built
Speaker 4: to account for the observer effect, because they have to
Speaker 4: remain undetectable at all times in order to acquire food resources,
Speaker 4: and so all of their behaviors, not only certain innate behaviors,
Speaker 4: but a great deal of learned behaviors. These really sophisticated
Speaker 4: behavioral responses that are developed over long spans of time,
Speaker 4: are all geared towards avoiding being detected by anything in
Speaker 4: the environment so that they can cesssfully acquire the food
Speaker 4: that they need to survive. And there's a lot of
Speaker 4: intelligence that comes along with especially predators.
Speaker 3: That have diverse praise species.
Speaker 4: They're not specialists that just hunt only one sort of animal,
Speaker 4: and so you know, every animal has a different host
Speaker 4: of senses and sort of perceives the world in a
Speaker 4: different way. So they live in their own perceptual bubbles
Speaker 4: that are made up of different sets and combinations of senses,
Speaker 4: and so an ambush predator has to constantly infiltrate those
Speaker 4: perceptual bubbles without being detected successfully all the time. And
Speaker 4: so in a way, their whole lifestyle is about avoiding
Speaker 4: the observer effect.
Speaker 3: So if you think about a.
Speaker 4: Big, intelligent animal with a big brain, you know, an
Speaker 4: ape like a sasquatch, whether they're closer to us or
Speaker 4: the other apes. You know, set that aside for now
Speaker 4: that is innately in a learned sense, likely as well
Speaker 4: acutely aware of the observer effect at a genetic and
Speaker 4: a behavioral level, like an embodied level. Good li luck
Speaker 4: observing an animal that way, you know, an animal that
Speaker 4: operates that way like you're trying to ambush the best
Speaker 4: ambush predator. You're trying to observe the thing that is
Speaker 4: the most acutely aware of the observer effect. And so
Speaker 4: it makes the proposition really, really difficult. And I don't
Speaker 4: think it's outlandish at all, especially if folks, if you
Speaker 4: read those two books, you'll see just how hard it
Speaker 4: is to predictably and reliably observe this big cat, and
Speaker 4: from which you know, you can extrapolate to well, what
Speaker 4: would it be like to have an ape with a
Speaker 4: similar lifestyle or similar evolutionary pressures, similar behavioral adaptations, et cetera.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I figure in that analogy of it's a science
Speaker 5: question as its whole life, Like a fighter pilot shutdown
Speaker 5: behind enemy lines, like move on a star. You know,
Speaker 5: it starts getting twilight lay down on hide somewhere, you know,
Speaker 5: just be real furtive, like be aware where you stepped
Speaker 5: on any tracks. Those signs the most possible. That's how
Speaker 5: big footlet is twenty four to seven.
Speaker 4: And then they have the cultural camouflage too, of the
Speaker 4: fact that most of the population don't believe that they exist,
Speaker 4: and so that helps them hide pretty well too. That
Speaker 4: you know, most people in those environments if they encountered
Speaker 4: sasquatch sign and they wouldn't even observe it, They wouldn't
Speaker 4: know what they were seeing or looking at. I mean,
Speaker 4: cliff to your earlier point about seeing the aftermath of
Speaker 4: their interaction with the environment absent clear five toed tracks,
Speaker 4: how many lay people do you think would pick up
Speaker 4: on what you're documenting?
Speaker 2: Oh, zero exactly, yeah or close to zero, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: Because their feet are big, wide, soft padded, they don't
Speaker 2: leave a lot of sign. The forest substrate itself is
Speaker 2: just not conducive to leaving sign. You really have to
Speaker 2: tune your eyes. You have to spend a lot of
Speaker 2: time out there. And I'll say it again, I'm not
Speaker 2: a great tracker man, but you know I am getting
Speaker 2: eight to ten hours or twice that Sometimes a practice
Speaker 2: every single week, and I've been doing that for a
Speaker 2: few years now. I'm not a great tracker, but I
Speaker 2: have a lot of time under my belt at this point,
Speaker 2: and if it wasn't for that, i'd be missing almost
Speaker 2: I'm getting better too, even still, you know. I mean,
Speaker 2: I was out tracking with Darby last week. I showed
Speaker 2: them a track way out at the outer Rim, and
Speaker 2: I was noticing that I was picking up on some
Speaker 2: sign that I wouldn't have picked up on a few
Speaker 2: years ago, which is always nice to see one's progress,
Speaker 2: you know, whether it's on the tracking or guitar or
Speaker 2: whatever that you're into that you'd like to be better at.
Speaker 2: You can actually notice your own improvement, and I've noticed
Speaker 2: that a little bit lately, so it's kind of cool.
Speaker 2: But for the most part, most people would walk right
Speaker 2: past all of this.
Speaker 3: Stuff, exactly.
Speaker 4: And so especially if you're thinking about an animal that's
Speaker 4: rare with large home ranges, and you know the way
Speaker 4: that they seem to be distributed, at least based on
Speaker 4: evidence and testimonies around North America, their numbers must be
Speaker 4: fairly small, so it's like their impact on the environment
Speaker 4: is undetectable nearly you know, virtually undetectable win compared to
Speaker 4: scores of elk, deer, bear, you know, all the other
Speaker 4: animals that are in much greater abundance leaving a lot
Speaker 4: of sign out there. And so most people, even if
Speaker 4: they did detect the subtle sign that you're describing, would
Speaker 4: likely just attribute it to one of those other animals,
Speaker 4: and in many cases, to the lay person, it would
Speaker 4: be indistinguishable from one of those other animals. So to
Speaker 4: me that it's not a difficult proposition at all. But
Speaker 4: I do think if anyone is going into the field,
Speaker 4: I think most people going into the field are hoping
Speaker 4: that they'll see one. Most of the conversations I have
Speaker 4: with people, that's what they're aiming at. That's what I'm
Speaker 4: aiming at, And so you have to account for the
Speaker 4: observer effect. I think it's a great point that Angela
Speaker 4: brought up and something people should keep in mind. And
Speaker 4: the best way to do that not only read everything
Speaker 4: that we often recommend about the sasquatch phenomenon, but read
Speaker 4: about other animals, and especially read about the methods and
Speaker 4: testimonies of successful hunters and successful wildlife photographers. You know,
Speaker 4: if hunting's not your thing, I'm not a hunter. I
Speaker 4: enjoy reading that stuff. But I know some people might
Speaker 4: cringe at reading about killing animals, But fine, go read.
Speaker 4: There's great books by wildlife photographers about what works for
Speaker 4: them across a range of different species. So it's all
Speaker 4: very very useful.
Speaker 2: There you go. Well, I think that kind of covers
Speaker 2: a lot of a lot of ground here in this
Speaker 2: conversation this week, as far as the observer effect goes,
Speaker 2: some of the implications and just some of the you know,
Speaker 2: I guess are Rata likes just general thoughts about the subject,
Speaker 2: leaving tracks, tracking them, you know, a little bit of
Speaker 2: technology like all that kind of stuff. So hopefully our
Speaker 2: listeners got a little bit of something out of that.
Speaker 2: And I guess at the end of the episode, we
Speaker 2: always like to plug our upcoming events. I'm going to
Speaker 2: be speaking at the Hawking Hills big Foot Festival August
Speaker 2: seventh through tenth, just a couple like a week or
Speaker 2: two away, right, It's going to be at the Vinton
Speaker 2: County fair Grounds in Ohio. Tom Powell just mentioned him
Speaker 2: in the episode. He's going to be there. We have
Speaker 2: a lot of people. I'm obviously I'm going to be
Speaker 2: speaking there. Some people I unfortunately I don't know. But
Speaker 2: the other people I've heard of and I do know
Speaker 2: pretty well. Steve Coles, good friend of the show, is
Speaker 2: going to be there, Mountain Monster folks like the Wild
Speaker 2: Bill folks, and Turtleman's going to be there apparently. Yeah,
Speaker 2: lots and lots of good times, good fun. Charlie Raymond
Speaker 2: and I'm afraid I don't know everybody.
Speaker 3: Can't know everybody.
Speaker 2: I can't know everybody. They have me speaking on Thursday
Speaker 2: at three and Saturday at six. Oh. I got to
Speaker 2: pull a presentation out of my button. Figure out what
Speaker 2: I'm going to be talking about. Interesting, I better start
Speaker 2: preparing for that. I'm glad I did this.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I forgot that.
Speaker 2: B asked me to do that. How funny. Don't worry,
Speaker 2: be I got you. It'll be awesome.
Speaker 3: Just give you the first one backwards right right.
Speaker 2: A palindromic presentation by Cliff Berrickman.
Speaker 4: And I'll be speaking at the Capitol Library in Bowling
Speaker 4: Green on Saturday, August two with Murray Mayor Russe coord
Speaker 4: some of the Mountain Monsters. Folks can't wait to see
Speaker 4: Wild Bill again. And then there's a new event that's
Speaker 4: happening in Loudonville, Ohio. That's called the Mohican Bigfoot Festival.
Speaker 4: And that Moheican Bigfoot Festival is going to be on Saturday,
Speaker 4: September the twentieth, So I'll put the links to all
Speaker 4: these events in the show notes.
Speaker 5: Nice all right, folks, well 'so other week. Thanks for
Speaker 5: joining us hit like Hicks Share. I'll tell you about
Speaker 5: the program. If you like it, we appreciate it. We're
Speaker 5: gonna go over to the Patreon section up for our
Speaker 5: members and hope you join us there eventually. If not
Speaker 5: today then sometime in the future. Until then, y'all keep
Speaker 5: it squatchy.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to this week's episode of Bigfoot and Beyond.
Speaker 1: If you liked what you heard, please rate and review
Speaker 1: us on iTunes, subscribe to Bigfoot and Beyond wherever you
Speaker 1: get your podcasts, and follow us on Facebook and Instagram
Speaker 1: at Bigfoot and Beyond podcast. You can find us on
Speaker 1: Twitter at Bigfoot and Beyond. That's an n in the middle,
Speaker 1: and tweet us your thoughts and questions with the hashtag
Speaker 1: Bigfoot and Beyond
Speaker 5: At the same wi out s Ada CONSTI bet