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| Tree break |
This
post/report from TCC Team Member Jason Morse. Jason is a lifelong
outdoor enthusiast, trained in wilderness survival tactics, a 26 year
martial artist, DJ, EMT and amateur writer. Jason conducts bigfoot field
research, witness interviews and more for The Crypto Crew.
Tree knocks and stick structures... Bigfoot or not?
By Jason Morse
Many researchers frequently go out into the woods looking for various evidence of the possibility of a Bigfoot being nearby, or for one that's passed through the area. Lately, some of the common pieces of “evidence” presented are stick structures and audio or video depicting what sounds like a tree being struck by a limb or other piece of a tree.
I want to touch on a couple things that could open the serious researcher's mind.
I was speaking to a good friend and great researcher, Bruce Barraclough, founder of
NEAR (North Eastern Anomalous Research) and he made mention of a few very interesting things. The following will touch on these topics.
Let's start with the tree knocking....
I will now pose a question to all the researchers out there. How many of you have been walking through the woods and decide to attempt to elicit a response from a possible Bigfoot by grabbing a stick from the ground and whacking a nearby tree? Most of have at one point or another, I know I have. Now, my point.... When one finds a limb, stick, etc on the ground, it's usually due to wind breaking a branch, deteriorating of the tree, causing it to break off and fall, and each time I've found one and decided to try a tree knock, I've got one, perhaps two good knocks before the item that I'm using is reduced to toothpicks. Now, I'm not a really small guy, I've been in concrete construction for 20+ years, am over 6 feet tall, and have a relatively decent amount of strength, and I get one , or if I've found a more sturdy stick, two good knocks from it. Now put that same branch, limb, or portion of tree into the hands of a creature that's over 7 feet tall, weighing 400+ lbs with three or more times the strength of a normal man. I don't think I need to explain what happens. I've talked to other researchers that have decided that picking up a stick and smacking a tree is pointless, because it can only provide a couple knocks, so they go out armed with the handle of an axe or sledgehammer. So how can a creature the size of a Sasquatch accomplish numerous knocks with rotted wood? Simple. Both Bruce and myself have talked about this, and we're in complete agreement that if anything, the knocks are being accomplished by using a rock against a tree or other rock. Rock “clacking” has been reported many times, and I'm tempted to believe that a stone is the only implement that could be used to accomplish this. NOW, next time Bill D. Researcher goes out into the woods, go ahead and find a fallen stick and give it a try, then use a rock. The sound is different, and the rock against a tree causes the sound to travel further, and rock against rock emits a sound that can be heard even further away.
In the fall and spring, when the mornings are brisk, and the afternoon warms up, the fibers in the tree expand and contract, often causing “snapping” noises, and it's my thought that this is often (not necessarily always) misidentified as a tree knock. Furthermore, in certain areas, finding an adequate sized rock in dense woods isn't the easiest thing to locate.
So there's some food for thought about tree knocks. Now let's talk about stick structures and tree twists.
I was contacted by a novice researcher a while back, saying he'd located an amazing stick structure, and I had to check it out, so I met him at the location about an hour's drive from my home, we then trekked out about 2 hours into the woods off trail at a nearby state park. We crested a knoll, and there it was, the mother of all stick structures. Intricately crafted, it had a large horizontal support with smaller branches leaning at a 45 degree angle from the larger tree trunk to the ground, and even smaller branches were weaved in and out of those. I was exited, thinking that there had to be some kind of evidence inside this thing, such as hair, prey remains, etc. So I wasted no time carefully poking my head inside, and looked around inside the 3 foot wide by 7 foot long by 3 foot tall structure, only to be disappointed to find the remains of a small fireplace. Hiker, hardcore camper, or survivalist. Darn. After touching on this subject with Bruce, I started talking with folks from varied walks of life.
I grew up in Downeast Maine, about 30 miles northeast of Bar Harbor, and most of my friends, family, and others that lived in the area were avid hunters, so I spoke to some of them about this.
The most interesting guy I talked to, I'll call him Jack, said that he used to go out hunting for a couple days at a time frequently, and at night, he'd often make a rudimentary shelter if the weather got bad, or just to take a nap in. When I mentioned tree twists, he said that he would be walking through the woods, and he'd grab a small limb and give it a twist and break it in the direction he came from. (He was leaving markers to easily find his way home) He had picked up this technique from his father who'd been shown it by his father. There's 3 generations of tree twists and stick structures in one family in one small area. When multiplied by other old school hunters, trappers, fisherman, campers, or avid outdoors-men, that adds up to a lot of structures and twists.
Then I talked to a local hunter who's son was in the Boy Scouts of America....
His son had just received a badge in camping and survival. He was accompanied by the troop and troop leader on an overnight trek. The troop was instructed to make a shelter to stay out of the wind and weather, then to find his way out. That old hunter''s trick must have proved to be very useful, the troop would break off small branches to show the route they took, and markers were fashioned to show the way back as well.
Hmm, hunters, outdoors-men, now Boy Scouts... Wait, I'm not done yet.
I have an acquaintance that has had a difficult time with his life. He's been homeless for reasons that aren't important in this topic. What is important is that he said he'd go to the public library and read about old military tricks to survive in the wild. Yup, you guessed it, branch breaks to find his way, and learned to make structures out of branches, old tarps, whatever was available.
In closing, the mind HAS to be open to all possibilities when doing Bigfoot research, look at all angles. What could this or that have been, what could have built this or that, and what was that noise coming from? These should be the first things thought about when you find a couple trees leaning against each other. I'm not in the least saying that a Bigfoot wouldn't do any of these things, one very well might, however, EVERY broken branch, leaning tree, and structure don't mean it's necessarily a Sasquatch.
Very special thanks to Bruce Barraclough from
NEAR for getting me thinking about this, and giving me some info about it. Be safe and smart in the woods, folks. The truth IS out there!
~JM~
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