First, let me start by saying this will probably be a rather long post that will include pictures and a video. I hope you stay with it and enjoy the information.
My day started very early and I was in the woods heading for my gifting area at just a little past 8am. The weather was pretty nice but it didn't take long until you could feel the humidity. My plan for the day was to make a quick trip to the gifting area, check it out, and set up some new food items. Once done there, I had another area I wanted to go check out. That turned out to be a good choice.
So, I made my quick trip to the first area. Left out some new food items and scouted a couple areas where I had found tracks in the past. No luck this time. So it was a hike back to the truck and a drive to another area.
I arrived in the area, but it was still early ...roughly around 9:30am. This is an area I had not been back to for about 2 months or more. The last time I was there I was with Guy Luneau and on that occasion, we had a really eventful day. I did a series of posts about our adventure, and Guy made one as well, if you missed them you can click the links to get caught up. (Post 1, Post 2, Post 3, Post 4)
As I started my hike, I noticed the area was really wet, wetter than normal on this part of the hike. The area I really wanted to make it to was an area that has a lot of water seepage that creates some very nice muddy areas. Great for tracks. So, I hiked quickly and only stopped on a few occasions to catch my breath. I had a lot of work I needed to do at home and I didn't want to spend all day in there.
I finally made it near the area of interest. I found what I thought was a small bigfoot track, but a leaf had fallen on part of the track. I removed the leaf and debated that it might be a bear's back foot but I did not see any other tracks to indicate a bear had walked through the mud.
For some reason or another, this track was messed up on one side. Maybe the mud was softer at the time and one side slumped back in towards the track. I continued on my hike and soon found 3 or 4 more tracks that were the same size as this first one. These were small tracks and I thought 2 of them were good enough to try to cast. I also found several different track sizes but the small tracks is what interested me the most.
Here is a fairly long video of the adventure, the tracks, the castings, and some thoughts about a popular theory on where and how bigfoot travel from one area to another.
I got pretty muddy wallowing around in all that mud but it was a good day. I managed to get the track castings home and finally measured them with a tape measure. The track was a mere 7 inches long. These are probably the smallest tracks that I have ever found. I'm glad I cast them. This also lets me know that bigfoot is producing offspring and continuing the lifecycle. These are not back feet of a bear. The area was really muddy and there were no bear tracks. I know bear tracks very well, I understand and have seen bear double steps. A bear's front paw is very distinctive to me and there were none there. This is a baby/young bigfoot's tracks. Period.
Now, I want to address something I recently saw from a bigfoot researcher. I actually don't even remember the person's name and have no desire to look it up. Anyway, his statement was basically that we should not be making a plaster cast of tracks as we can not be sure they are not made by humans. That we were getting the cart before the horse, so to speak. My rebuttal to this is that almost any seasoned bigfoot researcher should have the ability to distinguish between human and non-human tracks. And, this is not how investigation, research, and discovery work. We can not start at the goal and then start collecting evidence. We must collect anecdotal and trace evidence first to help reach the goal. Not that my goal is to prove bigfoot to the world, that is not my goal at all, but for many that is what they are hoping to achieve.
We, of course, need photographs and castings of tracks, pictures of odd stick formations, recordings of unknown howls and sounds, hair samples, and any other evidence that can be collected. That is what you do. You don't just go arrest a criminal without having some type of evidence to back it up and make your case. So, on that point, I disagree with my fellow researcher who was adamant about not making plaster castings.
In fact, I would say make a casting even if you are not sure what made the track. Sometimes you will see details in a casting that will help you make a determination as to what or who made the track. Sometimes a track in the mud will not show the arch of a human foot. But many times the casting of that same track will show the arch. So, cast those tracks, it will help you learn some things you might not know. It is a good learning experience on how to work with plaster and how to remove tracks from the ground....even though there is no exact science to it.
I guess that about wraps up this post for today. I hope you enjoyed it and found it interesting. Sadly, we have many people in the bigfoot field that will mislead you on purpose, or just really don't know what they are doing and some don't even have basic wildlife knowledge. I said that to say this...be careful where you get your information and who your trust.
This
post by Thomas Marcum, Thomas is the founder/leader of the
cryptozoology and paranormal research organization known as The Crypto
Crew. Over 20 years of experience with research and investigation of
unexplained activity, working with video and websites. A trained wild
land firefighter and a published photographer, and a poet.
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This
post by Thomas Marcum, Thomas is the founder/leader of the
cryptozoology and paranormal research organization known as The Crypto
Crew. Over 20 years of experience with research and investigation of
unexplained activity, working with video and websites. A trained wild
land firefighter and a published photographer, and a poet.
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