As I sat these last few days I've been going over sightings here in my area of Middle Tennessee, and more specific, the locations and terrain involved with said locations...
Something I've come across while studying these sighting areas now has me wondering...In the vast majority of the sightings (although I've yet to tabulate the frequency, it's looking in the arena of 80% atleast), the local has been either in or within a few short miles of a gulf (aka gulch or "hollow")...
Now, what I propose is this -

Could these animals now be making use of these gulfs to keep themselves out of the way of man?...

Most of these gulfs in my part of the state, as well as those farther east towards Appalachia, are heavily wooded (in some instances not having been used by man in any real regard ever, save hunters on occassion), dominated by atleast one of more (most often) large mountain streams, several caves and rocky out croppings of various size and shape, as well as a plethora of native wildlife in abundance (white tail deer, wild boar, raccoon, coyote, oppossum, skunks, weasles, wild fowl of multiple sorts, ect. ect.) and wild food flora (black berries, wild blue berries, persimmons, wild cherry, walnut, pecan, acorn, ect. ect.)...

Could it be that humanity has driven these animals, atleast in this part of the eastern United States, where such geography occurs, into the few areas that man has no real want or use of?...

Some of these gulfs span miles upon miles and are quite difficult to get into if You don't know Your way around them...A number of these gulfs are only seperated from one another by no more then 1/2 mile in some instances...In a number of them I've been in, the growth is so unbelievably lush that I've walked up on, quite literally, deer and wild turkeys, and they seemed just as shocked to see me as I was them...One such gulf, known as "Dyers Gulf", sits at the back of my property...Although it's possible to get into this gulf with a little know how, it definatly deserves it's moniker, as it's one of the most dangerous Gulfs I've ever been into...Enclosed on almost all sides by tall cliffs of varying heights, the trees in Dyers Gulf are huge, having never been cut by anything more then a local here and there (atleast, so I've been told by the old timers that live nearby), as it's just too difficult to get in and out of...And I'm sure almost every southener who's ever had even a passing interest in the subject of Bigfoot, "boogers" or "screaming jacks", ect, have heard tales of these creatures or something along their lines being heard "screaming" "down in those hollers"...

I know that prior research has been done on Bigfoot sightings and their relation to a water source of one type or another, and I suppose this harkens back to that to some degree, but as I go over these areas, studying the layout of the geography, and having been to many of them quite a few times, remembering the various nearby caves and shelters, I'm seriously beginning to believe that these animals may very well be living the majority of their lives in these gulfs, secluded from man's prying eyes, per se...Perhaps they only really leave during certain times of the year, when food becomes scarce or possibly to breed (this could account for many of those seen crossing roads and so forth, atleast to some small degree) ?...

Either way, I'd be most appreciative to hear others opinions on this and, if possible, any other sightings that took place in such areas as these Gulfs...

Thanks alot...

Hey Randy!

Pretty interesting theory. It would seem likely that if something like a bigfoot were to exist in the SE US, then it would probably be confined to the deepest parts of the wilderness. One thing i thought of as I was reading your post is the possible effectiveness of "driving" these animals down the ravines. This is a popular tactic in the NE when hunting white tails. The animals have a tendency to run parallel to ridges instead of running out of them and over the ridgeline. Perhaps you can incorporate this into your research, learning the topography first would be necessary of course. Best of luck in your explorations, and dont forget your camera!!

Great post Randy! I do believe we have very similiar ideas on this subject. I stated in the thread "Best of the Best" that there are corridors in Ga that have higher habitat potential, and I based this on historical reports, recent sightings, and newspaper reports. I compared the reports to the topography of the area. I then did some expeditionary trips to the areas, not necessarily for evidence collection, but to compare the geography of the locations(Ga has some pretty diverse landscape). There are a couple of things that the different locals have in common: water and isolation. All of the places are either around tributaries to rivers or around the rivers themselves. The land in these areas are not developed or if there is houses; they are isolated seperated by vast stretches of woods. There is one exception that has a subdivision going up near one of the creeks, but still a good portion of it is thick forrest.

I think that they a driven into these area because the only contact they have is from the occasional hunter or fisherman. The land around these places is hard to develop because of flooding, or swamp, or just plain inconvienent from any town or city. The idea you have about Tenn would apply to North Ga, because of the similarity of terrain. Also, all of these areas have high concentration of food. Deer, rabbit, turkey,fish, acorns, wild pecan trees, and the occasional farmer's field(which the main crops are peanuts, soybean, grain such as millet, and corn). Good job Randy!

Mike

Randy,
I definately think you're on to something !
That might take care of the "where", now....
time to figure out the "when"......

Hi Mike, I'll bet the bigguy could travel a hundred miles through central Ga. and not get in anybodies way!!! I've always thought about the Lake Seminole area being prime country for him to hang in. God, there's Some Bad ASS Bush down there!!!

Crew Chief

PS You doing any Turkey Hunting at Oakey Woods this year??? Maybe our last year there!!

Shelter, water, food and seclusion. These are what I think the prefered habitat of BF is. These things may change due to food availability, weather and pressure from intrusion into their territory.

Although there is not enough known about these animals to predict certain patterns. We can look at other animal behavior and maybe predict how BF may react to challanges BF may face in it's struggle for survival.

Example: When a cow (I know most about cows) is raised in a certain area that animal is shown what plants to eat and what plants not to eat by watching her mother and other heard mates. Certain grasses have a built in protection to keep an animal from eating all the grass. In other words if a cow eats too much of this plant they get indigestion. This is built into the plant for survival of the plant, this keeps the cows from eliminating the plant. Other plants have an antacid effect for the cow. Studies have shown certain plants are even used by the cows for medical purposes.

When a cow is moved from that environment to another and the cow know has different plants to select from. It takes about 2 years for the animal to adjust too the new plants, she once again watches her heard mates and learns to eat the plants that are good for her, until she ajust she suffers a loss in production, weight loss and reduced fertility. What does this heve to do with BF? It is an example of how moving too far from familiar territory may be a last option for BF. Only guessing though.

I think TN, GA, AL, NC, SC and FL all have areas where BF could flourish. The area of North GA had sightings in the late 60's and early 70’s. One area where sightings took place is in an old dumping area where table scraps and even farmers and home owners dumped dead animal carcass. The area was in a drought and was having forest fires.

This may have forced the BF into looking for a way to survive and they may have taken chances they would not normally take. The animals sighted were described as deformed bears (or bears burt in the fires), one farmer advised he chased one across his field in a pickup at 40 MPH, he advised he caught it chasing his cows, he was unable to catch the animal which ran on 2 legs by the way.

Pretty neat PEPPERSFARM.



Roger that Chief. I am lucky to have 1600 acres right across from Oakey. I hadn't had a chance to go this year with work in the way, but I did ride a jeep trail in the Oakey Wood to the Ocmulgee(which wasn't as far as it normally would be due to flooding.)a couple of weeks ago. I think a good portion of my land is under water right now due to the rains over the weekend and Big Indian creek(which flows through the property), flooding due to an earthen dam giving away Sunday night.

Mike

I live in Northeast Florida...on the coast, and one of the things that keeps me wondering about my bigfoot encounter years ago is 'what's a bigfoot doing just 150-200 yards from the shoreline, in a State Park?'
Now I know that the garbage cans in the picnic areas offer a very good source of scrap food for lots of wildlife. I've seen coons, opposums, foxes, deer tracks, bear tracks, stray cats and wild dogs all over the place out there. Little Talbot Island State Park is a very busy, well used park with camping, nature trails, etc.
What would a bigfoot creature be doing there? What attracts it? How does it get around with so many people in and out of the park without being seen? How far from it's nesting does it travel to frequent these areas?
These are the questions that continue to plague me since my sighting in 1994. My sighting was in the middle of the night, in the Park's off-season, in a dune-like, piney, palmetto terrain. The bigfoot that I encountered could blend in easily in the sanddunes...being a tan-beige color.
So many unanswered questions......

i think the same for the state of connecticut there is a low amount of sasquatch sightings etc probley becouse of alot of water not enough food. its my opinion. bill green

Hi Bill. Other than deer or game animals, what does Connecticut have as far as farm crops? I'm not familiar with your area.


Mike

hi mike thanks for the reply. well connecticut has great amount farm crops for a large creature like bigfoot such as corn, apples, watermelons etc but i still think thats the main reason of lack of sightings in connecticut. not enough food for them more water. they need both to stay in a state for awhile my opinion. bill green

Bill, thanks for the info. Does your area have alot of oak trees? Here's some info out of the BIP:



Here is a little more:



You could have a little more food source than you might suspect, but still doesnt mean your area supports sasquatch habitation. Your suspicion could be right about travel corridors. Keep up the good work .

Mike

hi mike there are oak trees pine trees etc in connecticut that could hide a sasquatch. as far as water resources is the connecticut & farmington river could be great for sasquatch becouse of trout bass & salmon etc are great resource of food for sasquatch in connecticut also the colebrook river dam has alot fish for sasquatch to eat. deer is still great amounts in connecticut. what im trying to say is that most forest areas in connecticut are pretty dense thickly wooded thanks for your reply. bill green

Interesting note this may not have anything to do with BF, but a lot of the old timers advised that at one time the settlers kept the woods in the Southeast burnt off. They advised that you could take a wagon and a team of mules anywhere in the woods. This was the practice until maybe the 30’s or 40’s. Does anyone have info on this? If this is true wonder how much this effected the BF population?

What I understood they burnt of the wood around homes and farms for pest control; snakes and mice. That is just the way I understood it from my Dad and Grandmother.

hi mike everyone i agree with your posts about sasquatch. but please respond to my thread my ct bigfoot sighting i just put some new interesting inputs in there. its in the sightings & encounters section. bill green

Mmm...that's pretty much the same thing I've been led to understand, as to the reasonings for such...

Also, many back in the day kept goats (both for milk as well as a food source upon occassion) and the shoots brought about by burning out a small area were oft times very good for a families goat herds...

What I understood they burnt of the wood around homes and farms for pest control; snakes and mice. That is just the way I understood it from my Dad and Grandmother.

Also, many back in the day kept goats (both for milk as well as a food source upon occassion) and the shoots brought about by burning out a small area were oft times very good for a families goat herds...




Thanks for the info guys, there is talk of doing some control burns in the area to reduce fuel for potential forest fires. There is also talk of using goats, but some people think that is not an option due to predators in the area. The reasoning is to try and eliminate the likelihood of a repeat of the devastating fires in Florida and South Georgia a few years ago which was intensified by under growth and bush or so they say.

One of the forestry guys who is retired thinks this will be devastating to turkey bobwhite and other animals and I agree. The bobwhite is not in the same numbers they were when I was a kid, back then everybody had bird dogs and hunted them, they seem ot be few in numbers know. I was wanting to find some more info before I made my mind up.

I haven't actively researched this subject much, but my friends an I(all avid hunters), have felt the depletion of quail in our areas of Ga have been due to pesticides and defoliates. Pestacides sprayed and crop-dusted onto fields. Defoliates used in and around logging operations and farms. These not only due the job they are designed for but take a bite out of the wildlife. I remember as a boy, having huge coveys of bobwhite quail all around, but now you don't find as many. Alot of the big hunting plantations in south Ga use pen raised quail to help boost the numbers. From what I've seen in some surveys, population is on a rebound. Hopefully they are making a come back. You should have pretty good turkey numbers up in your part of the state. I always some how manage to see several when ever we head up to North Ga.

Mike

The area I am in non-of the farmers uses pesticide or herbicide, most grass dairy and cattle. A number of years ago there was a huge infestation of armyworms and the state sprayed from planes, they did not spray our land, but all around. The county sprays the roadways to kill the grass (stinks too) and sprays areas for misquote. There are a lot of killdees thought and they nest on the ground.

In a cattleman’s meeting the DNR guys came and spoke and they blamed the demise of the bobwhite on lack of habitat. They requested we leave 8-10 feet from fence wire uncut or tilled and I thing most people are doing that. The bobwhite is beautiful bird and there are still a few, but not like there were at one time. Turkeys are a pest, there were not any years ago in this area, but I have seen flocks of 30 or more at times. They come up and eat out the cows feed troughs.

Thanks mike for the info!!!!!

Thanks for the info PEPPERFARMS. I can see where turkey could be a nuisance, if you want to make a few disappear......................

We're way down in quail population here over the past few years. The Game and Fish guys that I work with tell me that one of the main reasons is fire ants. They say that the ants will actually consume the eggs on the nest, and those chicks that do hatch stand a chance of being killed by the little devils. I don't know which is worse, the ants themselves or the chemicals used to try and stop them.

We do have fireants, but not many. South GA is covered up or was the last time I was down that way. They told us they would not get much farther north than GA, but I have seen them in the Smokies in TN. Some claim that grits will kill them don’t know. The local farm store sells Amdron to kill them, saying the workers takes the Amdron to the queen who eats and dies and then the colony dies. Don’t know the impact of the chemical though. I do know they hurt when they bite.

There was this one time my wife was in the back yard, I was mowing in the pasture, and she began doing this crazy dance. Then she began a strip tease. I was thinking she was putting on a show for me until I discovered she had been standing in a bed of fire ants.

Thanks JayleeD (my little girls love The Redneck Woman got the CD and DVD for her Easter).

Yup Peppers I heard that corn meal would kill them, but only if you soaked it in red food coloring. Gives them the red a** so bad they stroke out and die!

Seriously, there are so many of them here that's it's almost unbelieveable. Nobody can afford the cost for the large amount of the chemicals it would take to kill them. I had a guy ask me last year why I was planting trees in my pasture. He was actually seeing fire ant mounds, and that was AFTER I had broadcast the chemicals to get rid of them. I stress constantly about my horses and other farm animals. Those little red devils have killed newborn calves and foals around here.

Fireants are nasty. When I lived in south Ga we had plenty. Mounds everywhere. They made yardwork interesting, espeacially if you didn't see a mound in the grass. OUCH!! :blacknblue: I don't know why, for some reason I don't have any where I live at now. We just have what we call sugar ants. The real small ones that love to get into your house. They dont bite, but are still irritating.


By the way grits don't kill em, they just chew up them up and put the moist mix on their mounds. It drys. Reinforces it, hard as concrete.






Little secret for those of you who haven't had grits. They are a staple in a southerner's diet. They are a great source of carbs and other nutrition, plus if you don't eat them all you can use the left overs to fill in any cracks in your brick morter around your house.

Sorry I joined this thread so late..........

Randy, you bring up some excellent points and I think you're right on with the direction you're going. I'm sure Mike and Sam will add more, but in my own research there were three things that seemed to be necessary for a good BF area, at least in the GA/AL areas I investigated:

1) A good source of flowing water such as a creek or river

2) A good source of food near the water, such as farms or trash dumps or an area that attracts and concentrates smaller wildlife

3) A good place to hide nearby

From what I could figure out, BF seem to have a central core habitat, such as a large expanse of deep woods, but with outwardly radiating corridors that tend to follow along rivers or large creeks. If the actual course of the water is secluded and is surrounded by heavily vegetated areas with minimal human traffic and this condition continues for some distance away from this core, BF will tend to follow it as far out from the core as is practical to them. Along the way there must be good places to hide (thick fields of young pine on paper-company land seem to be a favorite) close to the food sources. These seem to serve as "stopover" points where the animals will travel to, stop for a day or so, then move on.

When you go out looking, look particularly for the corridors that follow hollows and ravines as these are natural funnels for wildlife. The cross-section of area the BF have to move through is much reduced in these spots and your chances are much better there. Don't spend an inordinate amount of time in the core habitat areas as they can spread out there and your chances are much lower and more random.

I think the hollow/ravine theory is sound since according to paleontologists, many prehistoric human ancestors up to the Neandertal preferred gullys and low places. The Cro-Magnon preferred the high spots and many theorize that this is what gave them an advantage. I would add one more thing to think about: when I investigated the Carbon Hills, AL flap a few years ago, the local witnesses told me that the animals traveled the creek beds coming out of the nearby WMA on what seemed like almost a regular route, with activity seeming to peek in April and in August. They even said that they would be doing yardwork by the woods and as it got dark they would suddenly smell the characteristic odor, and they knew it was time to go in the house and lock up the doors and windows.

So my point would be, find the good narrow corridors (if there are good reports from them, so much the better). The BF may be creatures of habit, so use that to your advantage.

FWIW--------- Steve

G.R.I.T.S. = Girls Raised In The South!

Lord forgive me for having dirty thoughts. :blacknblue:

nothin better than grits.
Fireants. After a crawfish or crab boil I pour the water from the pot on the ants. Kills em good n dead.

Fire ant mound I found and poked with a sharp stick. See all those little red bast**ds running out of the mound. I pissed 'em off good........

When I worked at a gun shop and range we used to end up with about a pound of unburned powder everyday. I would dump it on the red any hils around the store. Some days I would dump old black powder on them. After about a month I would make a small trail and light em up. The cool thing is the ant used the powder to build their homes. Had one pile flare up for almost 5 minutes straight.

I have poured gasoline in the mounds, let it soak in good, and torch it. Not sure if it reaches the queen. Not a good idea in a hayfield. Amdro works fine, but they seem to move back in a year or two. Did you ever look at a fire ant in the act of biting? They put everything they have into it, their body curling up in effort. Every fiber of their being, every smidgen of strength, is focused on their jaws. I hate them.

The guy from the GA Extension office claims the will crawl all over you then the leader blows a bugel and they all attck at once.

Guinea Hens work better'n anything against Fire Ants.

Yep, this is quite correct...

First time I ever came into contact with fire ants, I was around 8yrs old, visiting my aunt in Florida (Clearwater are, to be exact)...I found a rather large mound and thought, what the hell, and began playing Godzilla on their earthen tokyo...

I then bent down and began ripping through the dirt, all the while dozens of these things crawling up my arms in the process...At first, it was like any other ant, with not a thing happening...

Man, I was a malevolent 8yr old god with those things, until they "lost the faith" and began biting me in unison...I don't know if it was a pheremone one of them let off, or how the hell they pulled that off, but they just suddenly started biting all at the same time...

I toddled back to my aunts house, from the overgrown lot next door, with my arms swollen and red any apple...

Then my aunt and uncle laughed at me...Quite a bit...

Never messed with fire ants after that day...I'm just thankful they've not made it as far north as where I live...

They've made it as close as about 60 miles away, to the south, but I've never heard of anyone in my area having seen them...

If you'd like, I could overnight ya some.

I heard talk once that armadillos and coyotes could be partially responsible for the quail population decline. Heard that armadillos will raid the nests at night and eat the eggs and coyote will too. The wild domestic stray cats will eat as many as they can catch too along with baby rabbits.



oak ape

Well said Steve, late to the party or not.

Interesting post, Randy. I've been lurking for quite some time on this board, and this post finally made me register. My experience with this creature (or at least what I think was this creature) happened in a gulf on the Cumberland Plateau back in the early 80's. I've hiked many of Tennessee's gulf's extensively, and I agree that some are pretty remote and quite hard to get into. I've always thought that if I ever needed to "hide out" from the law, they'd be some of the first places I'd think of. Most have water running through them, and there are abundent sources of food (snakes come to mind).

Tennsquire, could You please PM me, or contact me at my e-mail addey (sasquatchsafari@yahoo.com) if You'd be so kind?...

I tried to PM You, but for some reason it wouldn't go through...

Thanks...

You've got mail. I also tried to PM you, and it wouldn't work. I thought it was because I was new.

You're Still a Newbie.....

BTW, Welcome to the BFF!


BELLE