I love me some bigfoot lore.
I suspect Bigfoots were once real apes that lived in the US and were in the process of dying out by the time European settlers were seeing them. Into the 1900s, there probably wasn't more than 100-200 Bigfoots left in all of North America. Apes live a long time and Bigfoots presumably haven't had natural predators since the last batch of mega fauna died out (sabertooth cats, cave bears, etc). Therefore, if a very small population was hanging on well below the numbers needs for healthy propagation of the species, those last individuals could still be around for many decades.
I think virtually every Bigfoot sighting that happens today in most of the US is misidentification, imagination, hoaxing, and outright lying. People can tell very convincing lies for motives only they know. Bigfoot is also a part of our popular culture and I suspect that it's easy for the brain to fill in "Bigfoot" details during encounters with what is more likely other animals or humans.
That's the best way I can square very ape-looking artifacts from Native Americans and apish descriptions from early settlers (people who never saw an ape before) with an almost total lack of evidence today. In 1950, the woods of North America were still vast and impenetrable. It could have been very realistic for a few large, nocturnal, apes to be running around and only occasionally be seen. In 2023, there's no excuse that I find credible to explain why Bigfoots don't get caught on trail camera once in a while. Technology has expanded too much and the wilderness has receded too much for such an animal to remain hidden IMO.
I think the lack of evidence with modern technology and the state of the wilderness is what's causing people to gravitate towards more supernatural explanations for Bigfoot today than what was offered in decades past. There's also a trend to not only subscribe human intelligence to Sasquatches but beyond human intelligence.
I suspect that in other parts of the world, there may be a few Bigfoot-like apes left. Especially in remote parts of Asia.
Now for stories:
When I was a teenager my family used to lease several thousand acres of woods in a region of Florida called Gulf Hammock that we used for hunting. Something around 50,000-60,000 acres total. Today much of the land we leased is a state wildlife management area, but back then it was privately owned and was not visited by humans who weren't the leaseholders. This would have been in the 1990s. The woods were mostly hammock. Hammock is what we in Florida call a stretch of forest that is made up primarily of oaks and other deciduous trees, as contrasted to pine flat woods or cypress/bay swamp. We had to use ATV to get anywhere on the lease, and our hunting spots could be a 30 minute - 1 hour ATV ride from our trucks, then our stands could be a 1-2 hour hike from where we parked our ATVs. The main roads were in disrepair and often went underwater for long stretches where creeks or even a river intersected.
One summer we were scouting as a family unit for new places to hunt that fall. The family broke into two groups. My group stay along the local river. At one point we found what looked like a classic Bigfoot print in the mud. It was very much like Eric Shipton's yeti print. It had a large, prehensile looking big toe, very little small toes, and lacked an instep. We could only find one track, so we wrote it off as an anomaly.
That winter my grandfather and I were hunting far back in the river swamp. It took us about 45 minutes for us to walk from where we parked the ATVs to my stand, then my grandfather would slip hunt beyond me. Meaning he'd take a rifle and quietly walk the swamp beyond my hunting area hoping to snipe a buck in the distance. The woods were old growth so visibility was far. Around 200-300 yards in most directions, which is not typical for Florida woods. The plan was that we'd hunt through noon time. However, late morning my grandpa came out of the swamp and picked me up off the stand. He said we needed to leave, which was fine with me as I was bored not seeing any deer.
We hiked out and met up with other family members after noon and had lunch by the river. As I ate lunch, my grandfather told my uncle that he saw something that morning he'd never seen before. Something he couldn't see walked up on him to about 100 yards, then walked a circle around him beating the trees. It sounded like it had a limb and was walking the trees as hard as it could. He couldn't see it, and it was odd that the animal was able to walk around him without being seen. It unnerved him enough that he came and got me.
My grandfather, in addition to being a frontiersman (Florida was frontier through the mid twentieth century) and a woodsman, was a high up in the state wildlife agency. He was very experienced in the woods both personally and professionally. He knew he had encountered some sort of animal but couldn't say what could hit the trees with a stick, pinpoint his own location, and walk a circle around him without being seen.
That's my story, The only one I have. There might have been a Bigfoot or two running around Gulf Hammock then. But as a life long woodsman myself, I've never seen a Bigfoot track or sign I suspected came from a Bigfoot since that one possible track I saw. If they're real and flesh and blood, they'd leave sign. I don't think Bigfoots are out there in any woods I've been in since Gulf Hammock of that era. Those wood aren't around anymore in that pristine condition, having been logged in the late 1990s and much of the hammock being replaced with farmed pines.
It is telling to me that the more hard core of a woodsman someone is, the less likely they are to believe in Bigfoot. Woodsman know that particular areas aren't as wild as a city person might think they are. I often read through Florida Bigfoot reports and I know the areas the reports are coming from. What the person may call "wild Florida jungle" might be a sub division that has trees. Most of the woods in Florida aren't real woods at all, but are instead just large wood lots between developments. But you have to know the locality to know that.
https://www.bfro.net/GDB/show_report.asp?id=33764
The sighting linked above came from my buddy's uncle. He used to be a wildlife officer that worked for my grandfather and has other credentials that would put him in a good position to accurate describe what he says he saw. Yet the area he say the alleged Bigfoot it simply isn't that wild. The Ocala National Forest is vast, but it's constantly occupied by humans and there's no spot in it that isn't a short hike off a trail or a road. I used to solo camp it all the time. I simply can't believe a large ape is living there. Nor am I prepared to call this man a liar. So I have to simply shrug my shoulders and say "I don't know why people see Bigfoots in unlikely places." There's got to be some explanation for it, even if it's in the human mind and not being caused by an unknown ape in the woods.
I suspect Bigfoots were once real apes that lived in the US and were in the process of dying out by the time European settlers were seeing them. Into the 1900s, there probably wasn't more than 100-200 Bigfoots left in all of North America. Apes live a long time and Bigfoots presumably haven't had natural predators since the last batch of mega fauna died out (sabertooth cats, cave bears, etc). Therefore, if a very small population was hanging on well below the numbers needs for healthy propagation of the species, those last individuals could still be around for many decades.
I think virtually every Bigfoot sighting that happens today in most of the US is misidentification, imagination, hoaxing, and outright lying. People can tell very convincing lies for motives only they know. Bigfoot is also a part of our popular culture and I suspect that it's easy for the brain to fill in "Bigfoot" details during encounters with what is more likely other animals or humans.
That's the best way I can square very ape-looking artifacts from Native Americans and apish descriptions from early settlers (people who never saw an ape before) with an almost total lack of evidence today. In 1950, the woods of North America were still vast and impenetrable. It could have been very realistic for a few large, nocturnal, apes to be running around and only occasionally be seen. In 2023, there's no excuse that I find credible to explain why Bigfoots don't get caught on trail camera once in a while. Technology has expanded too much and the wilderness has receded too much for such an animal to remain hidden IMO.
I think the lack of evidence with modern technology and the state of the wilderness is what's causing people to gravitate towards more supernatural explanations for Bigfoot today than what was offered in decades past. There's also a trend to not only subscribe human intelligence to Sasquatches but beyond human intelligence.
I suspect that in other parts of the world, there may be a few Bigfoot-like apes left. Especially in remote parts of Asia.
Now for stories:
When I was a teenager my family used to lease several thousand acres of woods in a region of Florida called Gulf Hammock that we used for hunting. Something around 50,000-60,000 acres total. Today much of the land we leased is a state wildlife management area, but back then it was privately owned and was not visited by humans who weren't the leaseholders. This would have been in the 1990s. The woods were mostly hammock. Hammock is what we in Florida call a stretch of forest that is made up primarily of oaks and other deciduous trees, as contrasted to pine flat woods or cypress/bay swamp. We had to use ATV to get anywhere on the lease, and our hunting spots could be a 30 minute - 1 hour ATV ride from our trucks, then our stands could be a 1-2 hour hike from where we parked our ATVs. The main roads were in disrepair and often went underwater for long stretches where creeks or even a river intersected.
One summer we were scouting as a family unit for new places to hunt that fall. The family broke into two groups. My group stay along the local river. At one point we found what looked like a classic Bigfoot print in the mud. It was very much like Eric Shipton's yeti print. It had a large, prehensile looking big toe, very little small toes, and lacked an instep. We could only find one track, so we wrote it off as an anomaly.
That winter my grandfather and I were hunting far back in the river swamp. It took us about 45 minutes for us to walk from where we parked the ATVs to my stand, then my grandfather would slip hunt beyond me. Meaning he'd take a rifle and quietly walk the swamp beyond my hunting area hoping to snipe a buck in the distance. The woods were old growth so visibility was far. Around 200-300 yards in most directions, which is not typical for Florida woods. The plan was that we'd hunt through noon time. However, late morning my grandpa came out of the swamp and picked me up off the stand. He said we needed to leave, which was fine with me as I was bored not seeing any deer.
We hiked out and met up with other family members after noon and had lunch by the river. As I ate lunch, my grandfather told my uncle that he saw something that morning he'd never seen before. Something he couldn't see walked up on him to about 100 yards, then walked a circle around him beating the trees. It sounded like it had a limb and was walking the trees as hard as it could. He couldn't see it, and it was odd that the animal was able to walk around him without being seen. It unnerved him enough that he came and got me.
My grandfather, in addition to being a frontiersman (Florida was frontier through the mid twentieth century) and a woodsman, was a high up in the state wildlife agency. He was very experienced in the woods both personally and professionally. He knew he had encountered some sort of animal but couldn't say what could hit the trees with a stick, pinpoint his own location, and walk a circle around him without being seen.
That's my story, The only one I have. There might have been a Bigfoot or two running around Gulf Hammock then. But as a life long woodsman myself, I've never seen a Bigfoot track or sign I suspected came from a Bigfoot since that one possible track I saw. If they're real and flesh and blood, they'd leave sign. I don't think Bigfoots are out there in any woods I've been in since Gulf Hammock of that era. Those wood aren't around anymore in that pristine condition, having been logged in the late 1990s and much of the hammock being replaced with farmed pines.
It is telling to me that the more hard core of a woodsman someone is, the less likely they are to believe in Bigfoot. Woodsman know that particular areas aren't as wild as a city person might think they are. I often read through Florida Bigfoot reports and I know the areas the reports are coming from. What the person may call "wild Florida jungle" might be a sub division that has trees. Most of the woods in Florida aren't real woods at all, but are instead just large wood lots between developments. But you have to know the locality to know that.
https://www.bfro.net/GDB/show_report.asp?id=33764
The sighting linked above came from my buddy's uncle. He used to be a wildlife officer that worked for my grandfather and has other credentials that would put him in a good position to accurate describe what he says he saw. Yet the area he say the alleged Bigfoot it simply isn't that wild. The Ocala National Forest is vast, but it's constantly occupied by humans and there's no spot in it that isn't a short hike off a trail or a road. I used to solo camp it all the time. I simply can't believe a large ape is living there. Nor am I prepared to call this man a liar. So I have to simply shrug my shoulders and say "I don't know why people see Bigfoots in unlikely places." There's got to be some explanation for it, even if it's in the human mind and not being caused by an unknown ape in the woods.
Like lots of things (UFO’s, supernatural etc) I’m guessing not to cause a panic among people.
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