Yeah, it's been done before. And if you could please give a reason why.

Excluding Mexico.

I realize that 10K or more sounds like a lot, but we are speaking of an animal that is supposedly spread across the U.S and Canada. That much territory and 10K now doesnt sound that big. I believe any thing less and you wouldnt have a viable breeding population.

dav

hey cool that was my 100th post.

dav

What DavSquatch said.

Heck, there is about 200 hundred of them roaming and causing mayham here in Ohio. :wink:

Many of the local populations are propably seriously affected by inbreeding.

I doubt that there is more then 1500 in North America. Somebody would hava found a body by now if there are 10 000.

There may be more If they are nocturnal animals that sleep during the day as some say.

Hardly 10 000 though.

The fact no one has found a body can be argued the same way it always is. Have you ever seen any wildlife carcasses in the wild that died of natural causes. I haven't.

In all my years hunting, hiking, fishing and general outdoorsin' I have seen the following:

-a deer that was hit by a truck off of a dirt road about 25 yards into the bush.
-a moose that some a**-h*** had shot behind a slough and was too lazy to pull out.
-(this is the weird one) 2 deer that were complete but slightly decomposed about 5 feet apart and about 3 miles into the bush. And a place no-one had any reason to be. Something must have killed them for them to be so close together, at least I think so.

*not 1 bear even though they are like rabbits here in BC, or any other critter for that matter.

These are all animals that posess little intelligence and no "cultural" traits like a close relative of ours might. When I say this I mean what if they bury their dead? Everyone says how human they look and act. Is it such a stretch to think they might do just that? I have no idea but I can't rule it out.

Anyway, just my .02


Maybe a good poll would be if we could somehow ask who has or hasn't seen dead critters in the bush. Ones that as far as you could tell died naturally.

I've seen plenty of dead little critters in the woods. The problem is, HOW would you or I KNOW how they died?


I answered 0 - 2500. The RAREity of sightings even in areas claimed to be highly habitated tells you there really AREN'T that many of them roaming the forests and country side of N.A.

How many bigfoots are there - more than the skeptics think and less than the romantics think. I'd have to vote 0 - 2500, with my personal feelings of being on the high side of that population range. I do not know much about Canada, except thru WestCoast Sasquatch. So the figure could be closer to 3000 to 4000 including Canada. To me Canada is the great unknown as far as North American population.

I went with 0-2500, and like billkirby, I think it's on the high side of that range (if not in the 2500-5000 category).

My primary reasons for estimating the population so low is:

1) The lack of more evidence (photos, poached animals, more footprints, etc), but mostly..........

2) The fact that a roadkilled animal hasn't been yet produced.

Even with the species being primarily nocturnal (which helps explain the lack of lucky photographic/poacher evidence), one would think that one would get hit by a vehicle. Although very rare, this even happens with bears.

I also went with the 0-2500 estimate, and lean towards the high side. If the population was evenly distributed among the 49 States and 12 Canadian Provinces, there would be about 41 in each area. I doubt they are evenly distributed, and would think some areas would have a much higher populations than others. Not knowing how large of any area they might consider the boundaries of their territory, areas along borders of States, Provinces and even Countries probabaly share individuals of the populations.

If they exist, I would say that their numbers are in proportion to the number of Brown Bears. Not too many of them primary because of territory. Does anyone know, or can give a good guesstimate, on how much area/territory is required for a male "quatch"???

The desert ............ well, no place to hide, no water and no food (well, theres lots of reptiles and jacks but thats it. They do not like/eat snakes do they???). Highly unlikely to find them there.

Now, I have not heard of any sightings in Mexico, Central and South America. Does anyone even know of any sightings down there??

Interesting point.



Agreed, but the basic point of "41 per state/province" illustrates their certain rarity.

I voted 0-2500, mainly because if there were many more, I think we'd have run over one of them by now. If they exist, I think it is in small pockets.

Even though my vote goes in the same spot either way, I'm torn between "0" and "a thousand or two"...... lets face it, it's gotta be one or the other... even though the implications of the two assertions are miles apart.

1 to 2500
I think there home range is larger than most think
maybe as much as 500 to 800 sq miles.

Sounds like there are at least 41 in tiny Carlsbad California alone. That extrapolates to a few hundred thousand in the US and Canada. :wink: Pretty soon they'll become a nuisance pest. You'll be able to buy RAID Bigfoot-be-gone in your local hardware store :laugh:

Perhaps..... but wouldnt a nomadic creature with such wide territorial parameters increase the odds of an auto collision/shooting incident, as compared with a more localized existence in familiar territory?

I think even more than that, in certain circumstances.

In ideal habitat, they may even live in cooperation, as the Ostman and Muchalat Harry reports indicate. In other areas, the habitat range may go literally forever.

At any rate, I'm sure they are rare creatures.




Carlsbad!

Hell, I went hunting for naked girls at Black's Beach once, and ended up nude, caked with sand, hungover, and woke up with an older Japanese guy combing the beach with a metal detector nearby, not paying any attention at all to my silly ass.

Shows what a great hunter I am............

No sasquatches anywhere in sight, and they would be in sight. Not many trees in that area.

Hell, the place is full of homes now..........

here in East Texas watersheds or river systems seem to be the common link.
The rivers here in East Texas general run north and South with a little southeast slant to them, the two
Major highways are Interstate 45 and US 59 both run north and south any intersection with these two are
few so that leaves farm market roads that are much smaller and less traveled certainly at
night. In north Texas interstate 20 and 30 run east to west with plenty of room between them. Could a bigfoot go under these highways where rivers intersect ? Yes its much safer than crossing the major highways. I can not explain why a hunter here in Texas has'nt shot one there are more hunters here than anywhere go figure :doh:

My gut reaction was to put somewhere in the neighborhood of 2500-5000 but then I selected 10,000 plus. Like a few mentioned above, between the US and Canada we're talking somewhere in the neighborhood of 7 million square miles, and 10,000 would put the distribution at roughly 1 per 700 square miles, on average. When you think about the hundreds of thousands of square miles that man has not even set foot in North America, 10,000 is not a lot.
If these creatures are as intelligent as we think they are and go out of their way to remain unseen, then 10,000 could stay hidden just as easily as 1,000.
At these levels, all these choices are essentially on the same order of magnitude. Now if you were to tack on another 0 or two to this figure, then the liklihood probably decreases significantly.

Thanks Sachmo, I just did some figgerin'. I was just going to say do you people realise how big British Coluimbia is alone? About 365000 square miles. So with 10000 BF running around BC ALONE that would be on 1 per 36 square miles.

You guys can do the math for north america.

The opinions expressed for the lower population estimates are very reasonable, however I went with the +10,000 population figure for North America.

My reasoning is that Bigfoot shares the same range as that of the American black bear and with an estimated North American black bear population of approximately 800,000 having only 1 Bigfoot per 100 black bear would be equal to at least 8,000 Sasquatch.


see: http://www.wwf.ca/NewsAndFacts/NewsRoom/de...ID=1270&lang=EN

By the way, in New Jersey we are currently not peacefully coexisting with our black bears! :surrender:

I don't know how to link past posts, but check out BluffCreek35's similar poll from last July 29th.


I'll stand by my ballpark 10,000 vote based on some figgerin' about home range size and effective population size from the field of conservation genetics. It's possible for there to be a few hundred Whooping Cranes because their range is so restricted. Basically, all of the potential members of the breeding population have access to each other. (I'm just talking abou the Alberta flock here.)

It's not possible (ok, "highly unlikely") for there to only be a few hundred sasquatch IF we accept the alleged creatures' range to basically encompass all of North America. Breeding invididuals need to have access to each other - if they're spread too thin then they must travel insane distances to encounter each other, and that only works up to a point.

Male grizzly home range can be 3000 square miles (though usually smaller). I estimate about 1/3 of North American land area is usable by sasquatch, or about 3 million square miles. So at "sparse grizzly density", there should be 1000 male sasquatches out looking for a date at any given moment in North America.

Now let's add in some females, and make their home range a little less than that of the males' (although still huge): 2000 square miles. That's 1500 adult females in North America.

Now i'll apply the conservation genetics rule of thumb that breeding individuals represent about 36% of the total population for diploid, sexually reproducing organisms: 2500/.36 = 6,944. So by really maxxing out the home range size, I get an estimate of almost 7000. (I don't think home ranges that big are all that typical, so I bump up the pop'n estimate a bit.)

PS: and THANK GOD for our fallen servicemen and women who gave the ultimate sacrifice so we could spend Memorial Day contemplating the number of sasquatches out there instead of more life and death concerns.

I'll throw up the numbers I have. Hopefully the sites I pulled them from are semi-accurate..If not sorry.
The total Landmass for the U.S and Canada is 7,772,873 square miles
Roughly 25% of that is considered forrested area, from the numbers I found.

There are approximatly 600,000 blackbear or one for every 12.9 miles of total landmass, or one for every 3.23 miles of forrested area.

For deer the population is estimated at 27,000,000 or one for every . 28 miles of landmass or one for ever .07 of forrested area.
With 10,000 Sasquatches you would get one for 777.29 miles of landmass or every 194.32 square miles of forrested area.
At 2500 is one for every 3,100.15 landmass and 777.29 forrested area.

I'm not sure exactly what they were including as forrested area to reach that nuimber so it may vary, but still at 194.32 for every one at the upper estimate, thats a lot of ground to cover to find it.

I voted 5000-7500 just as a middle gound for estimates throught greater North America, based on history of sightings and the geographic diversity of them if real. Even with an estimate of only half the total reports from 1950 upwards being true or accurate there would almost have to be at least that number to account for the sightings.

I really like the math factors I'm reading about on this thread.

I chose 0-2500, even though I think there are 2501 of them running around. Just kidding. Really, I think if they were any more than scattered populations (if there are any) then one of the following would happen:
1. Someone would find a skull or a femur. (I found a deer skull in the middle of the woods 2 weeks ago) I admit these finds are rare, but eventually something would be found. I mean there are 1200 moose or whatever in Michigan, and the DNR knows exactly how many, and how they died each year.

2. Someone would shoot a decent photo of one. There are photographers out shooting grizzly bears, deer, eagles and they have no problem locating them for a shot.

3. A hunter would shoot one. While they may have superhuman senses, if a hunter is downwind, and fully camoflaged, a BF would walk into the sights of one of the Millions of hunters in the woods every year. And If one did, I'm sure that a hunter would shoot him because he is going to be a rich man if he does.

4. Game cameras, there are 100's of thousands of game cameras in places people don't normally hike, someone would get a decent shot of one. Not just a long hair blob.

I would be pretty stoked if there were 100s of thousands of game cameras out there. Seems a bit high. But then again who knows.

Hunster? did you and I figure out at one time that ..BC, Yukon and Alaska combined ..were equal to the entire land mass of the continental U.S.A. With a combined population the size of California.

In other words..everyone in the contential USA would be living only in california..making small forays outside of that border into the rest of the wilderness country (USA )..and that will give you an idea of how hard it would be to find one out of 10,000 creatures scattered across the country.

Oh, I'm sure we dilly-dallied with such math. I do it all the time in my mind.

Actually, the entire nation of Canada, along with the state of Alaska, has fewer citizens than California has residents.



Good illustration.

I don't know, it's a guess, but if you figure 2000 people/state= 100,000, and 4000/state=200,000
I'm sure theyre not in use all the time. But i'ts a lot of cameras.

Saw a moose one time north of Timmins (about 3-4 miles deep in the bush) that had been chased or ran into a timber dead fall (some hardwood some conifer) and must have just gotten hung up in there. It was pretty badly decomposed (I don't watch CSI so I couldn't tell you how long it had been there, hee hee) and I couldn't see where it had been exsanguinated or anything.

Makes you wonder though. Beyond that, I have seen hardly even any skeletal remains of much anything in the bush over the years. So if you can't find too many moose carcasses (hundreds of thousands in population in Ontario) it's no surprise you wouldn't find the bodies of too many fairly secretive crypto species no?

Cheers

Alex

I heard on CBC radio one time one of these population experts saying that the entire population of the WORLD could fit in Texas.

Thoughts?

Cheers

Alex

If you packed them in as densely as a modern metropolitan city, I think it's possible.

One fifth of the world's population right now is packed into the cities of China.

I've never understood that arguement. Maybe I'm just lucky, but I've found a whole lot of skeletons and dead animals in the woods. Several dozen, in fact. It may have to do with the areas I hunt, which are generally small parcels of timber surrounded by a lot of open pasture and farmland.

Ha ha ha, sorry, I guess not huh?

All those wide open spaces full of high rises, eeuuggh!

Then again, Ontario is even bigger and....

So 10,000 bigfeet in North America is entirely possible then I suppose

cheers

Alex

Good point, the bush is generally pretty thick up here.

It´s possible that dead BF:s have been found many times but people just say "leave that stinking hairy thing alone" if it´s on it´s belly and with the arms and legs curled up.

It´s not impossible that they cover their dead with earth when they die though.

Don´t expect to find any graves marked with "here lies Patty Bigfoot the first BF that became a movie star" though :laugh:


There should have been a couple of preserved bodies When St´ Helen´s exploded if Skamania county is the most BF-populated area in the US as BFRO encounters seems to indicate.

I had to go with 10K. If they are real I think the numbers would have to be higher for them to maintain their population over the US/Canada landscape That's a lot of land mass, and a lot of reported sightings.

But that is my 2 cents.