I seem to recall (can't remember where) a story about a Sasquatch who picked a small tree to hide behind. Larger trees were readily at hand, but there he was, shoulders sticking out very prominently on either side of the tree and appearing to the human observer as if thinking he was perfectly out of sight.

Does anyone else recall any stories about individual Sasq. who didn't appear too bright compared to what is usually reported?

If a real animal, Sasq. should show the dumb side too, just like you see in certain dogs or people most of the time (or all dogs and all people once in a while).

"Sojourners" report to BFRO, mentions the individual crossing the road, then trying to conceal himself behind a small tree. I'm sure he can give you the link.

Well what I note here are some assumptions on what the animal was actually doing...so I shall add some of my own and see if the outcome is a different scenario!

First of all, I vaguely remember the report you are talking about.

To me the sasquatch was not so much as hiding from the observer ..as just setting up a barrier between them so he could observe the intent of the reporter with a degree of separation. (Think of it as almost playing a victim to put both parties at ease. Let me explain.

I have seen other animals do this, both domestic and wild. I remember flushing out a coyote while taking a walk on a country road. He scurried off a hundred feet or so and stopped behind a fence post ( which served to cover only a small part of his body. ) to observe my intent. And we have to agree..'stupid' is not a word often associated with a coyote!:)
Anyway when I got near he decided he had enough and beat a retreat. He was not at any time in fear of me..and he had the situation ( in his mind, at least ) totally under control! He just wanted to check me out..and only vacated the area when I came too near to him. And we watched each other for a full minute, or so.
So that is an alternate explanation for that event.

I figure that 90% of the time that would work, ways to avoid being seen

I) Freeze, peripheral vision detects movement very easily.
II) break up silhouette or shape. Partial hiding or camoflage.
III) get behind something big enough to cover you completely.

So I would say, not particularly stupid, but not the most appropriate in the circumstances. Maybe he was aware he might be seen, but wasn't actually aware of having already been seen. If he was only aware of the possibility of being seen, standing still and partial hiding would have hidden him from 90% of people walking by. If he wasn't sure he had been spotted, then making a larger movement/more noise to get to complete cover may have been a gamble that would have made his presence more obvious if he hadn't already been spotted.

Sounds ridiculous, but I don't think it really is. Unfortunate descriptions of Sasquatch "moving from tree to tree like a cartoon character" make him seem stupid or comical, and makes the whole sighting take on an air of the ridiculous, but it obviously works more often than not. How did cartoons become cartoons? By exagerating the real expressions and movements of animals and people. For instance, should I deny the reality of this discovery because it looks too much like Mickey? http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/...61013100520.htm

But anyway, apparently stupid things may have their reasons. I can think of one "unwise" sasquatch that wandered up a suburban/urban creek and got seen by two truckers, not the best place for him to go for sure, but on the other hand, as the truckers pointed out, none of the cars could see him because of the parapet on the bridge, the ravine for the creek being rather deep and steep sided.

On the other hand,

I heard this tale of a sasquatch bold,
Lived up by a lake in the northern cold,
Ice fishers round there thought him not so bright,
When he came by the shacks in the middle of the night,
They'd offer him two fish, one large, one small,
and much to the mirth and merriment of all,
He'd take the minnow and leave the whale.
I was trapping nearby when I heard this tale,
So I jumped on my sled and mushed over for the ride,
And I found the Sasquatch and asked his side,
Said he "Dem fishermen think old Sas a dunce,
but if me ever take dat big one, dey only do it once!"

(With apologies to William Robert Service for murdering his style)

Flashman

Ah, yeah johnymoonburn. Thanks. I was actually half thinking of Sojourn's sighting when I wrote this post (he told me personally about it). I almost wrote it down, but didn't want to make the post too long. I also wasn't sure if it was a dumb thing to do, if the Sasq. was trying to distract Sojourner from something (another Sasq?).

Grand Cherokee,

Your interpretation makes alot of sense in this instance.(and, yep, there aren't many dumb coyotes out there that I've seen; they probably wouldn't last too long in ranch country, at least when I was growing up). I couldn't remember any details for this sighting except the shoulders sticking out.

Another story that comes to my mind, tho it should probably be put down to inexperience rather than dumbness. That's the story in The Locals by Thom Powell, where a Sasq. is dodging heavy traffic, terrified, on I-80 in Oregon trying to get to the other side.

Ah, Flashman, you are a poet! Very nice.

Yeah, I guess I was wondering about stories like, say, a Sasq. walking around with a pickle jar on his hand, because he doesn't have enough sense to unclench his fist. . . stuff like that. (that's a made up story as a hypothetical).

re Grand Cherokee, I've seen a coyote (granted, a young one) playing jump on the prickly pear cactus like it was a vole. Amazingly he jumped full footed on the cactus (maybe there was a real vole underneath) several times before the inevitable yelping away and wiping its nose on the ground.

Yup! I remember as a kid being dumb enough to stick my finger into a light socket...and many times when I see one these days..I still get a twinge of.."I double dog Dare Ya!"

Thanks Flashman, we need a little humor in this forum.

Now, one time while on a spring walk in Iowa I flushed a hen bobwhite quail. She tried the crippled wing trick to draw me away. Having seen kill-deer do that I knew there were chicks about so I didn't move in fear of stepping on the little guys. I crouched and there on a wood chip was a little quail about the size of a bumble-bee. He had flattened himself on the chip and had his eyes tightly closed. I guess he figured if he couldn't see me I couldn't see him....After a few min. the mother limped back, chirped and about 15 of the little guys from out of nowhere ran off to her protection. Carefully I backed away. Were they thinking or was this pure instinct?
Ahhh, the wonderful world of nature!

We had a baby blue jay play dead, right in the middle of our backyard. My dog was previously nosing at it, as she never hurts the birds, just noses them around. Apparently the bird just flipped itself over and played dead. I went to pick it up with a towel in case it was just traumatized, and put it back into the bush. Right before I even touched it, it flipped over and high tailed it to the bush(it was too young to fly). Laughingly, only it's head was in the bush; none of his body was covered. This time I was going to be faster, and managed to pick him up and put him high into the bushes from where he started. While all this is going on, we had two really angry and loud parent birds circling a 30 feet diameter circle. Glad they never attacked!

Juvenile maybe ???

Actually, in the bigfoot on I-84 in Oregon case, it was running up the freeway. On an elevated section of the freeway with concrete barriers on both sides. According to the report, when it came to a point where the hillside came down to meet the barrier, it crossed two lanes of traffic and jumped the barrier and went up the hillside. Not dumb - but closer to being trapped.

BIP: So it's just guesswork to say these creatures are on the verge extinction?

JG: Oh, that's ridiculous. They're not under any pressure at all. They obviously have never been numerous. It's certainly a possibility that the population was knocked down by the same diseases that wiped out so many of the Indians. They would presumably be susceptible to them just as the great apes are. But as to anything that's happening today causing them to become extinct, you can't make any case for that at all.
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I wonder why John Green thinks he knows that sasquatches are not under any pressure at all. He’s got a background in journalism, I think, not wildlife biology or anything else that would put him on a footing to have an informed opinion on such a thing (as if anyone can say anything useful about the health of a species that no one can prove is even real). If anything, I would say that the opposite is a fair guess, just because most animals anything like what a sasquatch seems to be tend to be in trouble (e.g. gorillas and grizzly bears).

I think they're on a major rebound, these figures say it all to me, whitetail deer population 1930 ~ 300,000, 2006 ~ 30,000,000. 100 times more deer these days doesn't mean 100x more Sasquatch, but he's going to move into the areas they're in these days. I think that we brought his numbers low with overexploitaton of his food sources between approx 1870-1970, and that since then they've been breeding very successfully and expanding their range.

I see. Along those same lines, perhaps sasquatches will all be dead by next week on account of the way the faucet on wild salmon is down to a drip, so they've been breeding very poorly and losing their range.

But I like the sound of what you're saying better so I'm going to believe that.

Thanks billkirbywofb for your corrections. I've been finding that my memory has more holes than I care to admit.

Interesting take on the salmon in the PNW. Do you know of any studies that have been done about the effect of declining salmon pop.s on, say, black or brown bear?

The John Green quote actually makes a lotta sense to me from a biological perspective, even if it's purely speculative. Presuming that Sasq. are susceptible to human diseases like gorillas and chimps (and alot of other primates for that matter), it would be logical to speculate that the diseases the Amer. Indians fell to would also affect the Sasq. populations.

Presumably, sometime in the 20th century, as the Amer. Indian populations started to climb back up, the survivors having immunity to these diseases, the Sasq. population would parallel that trend.

By the way, I noticed that this thread has some stars attached to it. What is their meaning?

tsiatkoVS, can you measure all of mankind's intelligence or lack thereof, by measuring one person's stupidity?

Sorry tsiatkoVS, I missed this one earlier. I did have thoughts alternating between the intelligence and stupidity of the creature in my sighting. On the one hand, it walked out in the road right in front of me. It could've just stayed still and out of sight and I would've passed right on by none the wiser and never would've gotten caught up in all this stuff, which would've been better as far as some are concerned I'm sure. :laugh: On the other hand, it walked non-chalantly across in front of me, did not hurry or pick it up a step, and then when it crossed the road and reached any cover at all, it clearly bent over to try to take advantage of that cover as soon as possible to hide itself. I was thinking at the time "Wow, that's smart!" But then, it was dumb to just walk in front of me to begin with and then trying to hide afterwards was kind of pointless. Which can then lead to all kinds of interesting campfire stories and speculations, some of which we probably had.

Well I guess I can add something here in respect to fairly intelligent animals hiding. As an avid hunter, I've seen a few comedic methods used by big game. In fact, I just returned from my annual elk hunt yesterday. (Successful I might add).

Anyway, elk do draw a fairly good comparison due to their comparable size. Elk can run up to 1,200 lbs over on the Coast Range of Oregon, and up to around 800 lbs on the East Side of the state. I've hunted both varieties. Elk are a very intelligent and cunning game animal. If you get on their trail, they will often do circles around you (literally) as you try to circle them. One of the amazingly funny antics of elk, is their attempts to hide.

One of the most productive places to find elk hiding are in what are known as pole thickets, which are fairly dense woods with small diameter trees (8" - 10" +-) with lots of blowdown throughout. Well, as you're walking through these woods, elk will often hide behind one of these small 10" diameter trees. It would have its head ahead of the tree slightly, and its entire body would be sticking out the other side a good 8'. It's actually something you want to laugh at when it happens. But you also try not to make eye contact with the animal because once you do, it bolts. As long as you pretent to NOT see it, it will stay hiding. It is truly funny.

Another time, a hunting buddy and I were walking down a small logging road. I had already gotten my elk so wasn't carrying a rifle. He was to my right as we walked. As we're walking, I see the outline of a bull elk lying down just a few feet from me as I passed. I pretended not to see it as we passed. My hunt partner missed it completely. So some 30' past the animal, I non-chalantly informed my buddy "that we just passed right by a bull elk but don't look. Let's just go a little farther and calmly turn around. Just don't look in the direction of the elk until you have a clear shot.". Well we turned around and were actually intentionally looking around in a different direction. Well, we go near and he couldn't help but look. The animal bolted and he never got a clear shot with the foilage.

But the ability of this large animal to remain camoflaged simply by holding still at such close proximity also is worth the reference. This is one of their primary methods of preventing detection other then running and crashing thru anything in their way to get away from us. They are so big and powerful, that they effectively crash through any foilage in much the same was Sasquatch does (something which I have also experienced when a Sas approached me to where I would have to pass within 22' of him). And elk don't care how much noise they make either when they get to running.

As for Salmon, IMHO, Sas isn't so entirely depending on them. A few of my encounter and now research sites have no Salmon in the immediate vicinity. Salmon are only in the smaller streams for several weeks at most before they spawn and die. Much of the spawning takes place on larger tributaries as well that are heavily traveled by rafters (at least during daylight hours). I've never heard of a Sasquatch sighting along the actual river course I live on by any river runners. The rest of the fishes life, they are at sea or in lower river migration trying to get past the gauntlet of Sea Lions, fishermen and hydro-electric dams.

Just my thoughts...

A couple of Yakima boys reported one playing off their nets in the Columbia. It was evidently after the fish.

Love the elk stories. There are similar ones of a controlled deer hunt. The deer won.

Thats what happened with my encounter.....

I saw a massive sasquatch...and when he saw me he tried to hide behind a tree only a few inches thick....

I agree. In fact, I think the math of reported sightings makes it quite clear. These creatures number in the low thousands continent wide (if they even exist continent wide, and if so, they are clearly more rare in many areas). If not going extinct, they are clearly rare. Whether or not that level of rarity spells extinction for the species is another question entirely, and one that will not likely be answered until more is learned of their reproduction.

I think they may be increasing in some areas, such as in the Southern Appallachians, due to cessation of logging.

Along with disease, destruction of habitat would have certainly reduced their numbers in some regions.

(emphasis mine)

Typo, or on purpose?

I can't spell. I did just fine with "Cascades" before I moved.

Well they're smarter than you think,,, I ain't put a HOLE in one yet!!!!! And by God we're a tryin!!!!

Crew Chief

No, of course not. That wasn't my intent.

All fairly intelligent species will probably show a range of individual abilities, some dumb, some geniuses, most in between.

Talk on the BFF is usually about how smart Sasq. are. I just wanted to turn the issue on its head by asking for examples of what may be examples of individual Sasquatches showing not so bright thinking, compared to what we normally see for them.

It's not a measure of the species, but of individuals, and should be seen if there is enough data, just like we see for definitely real species like chimps, humans, dogs, etc.

Yeah, Sojourner, I was partly thinking of your experience when I posted this thread. But I didn't mention it, because I'm not at all convinced that this was a stupid thing for it to do. Everything about its behaviour suggests that this was a very intentional thing for it to do. Why would it do this? Got me. I just know that this kind of sighting, in general, is very common where a Sasq. walks calmly in front of a car's headlights for no apparent reason.

& i hope you never will !!! :wink:

Are you near U-TaPao Air Base Bobby??? I spent a few weeks in Ole Thailand..

Crew Chief
834th Air Division