I guess this is sort of like beating a dead horse... but I've been up all night fixing the Railroad... and I finally made it back home... am having my first cup of coffee... and felt like victimizing all of you good folks with my typing. :wink:

So far, this year... here in Oregon... and most recently... we have lost three Mountain Climbers up on Mt. Hood. (two of which have not been recovered.) Last month, we lost one stranded motorist, in the Southern Oregon forests . (Who was ultimately found, dead.) And... back in October... one little boy (I think 9 y.o.) up on Crater Lake, who's body has never been found. We can assume that all of these individuals where actively seeking help. (They were TRYING to be found.)

If you were to combine the three rescue attempts... there were over 1000 trained professional rescue workers (searchers,) which included Law Enforcement... SAR... Volunteers, as well as the military, which utilized the latest and most modern pieces of machinery, (aircraft, including helicopters,) complete with night vision, heat sensing cameras, ect... ect... and still... they have yet to locate two grown men, and a small boy.

If I'm doing my math right.... we have lost 5 individuals... and have only recovered 2 (bodies)... which works out to a 40% success rate, when utilizing over 1000 professional searches... and the above mentioned equipment. In light of the recent search operations here in Oregon... it becomes painfully obvious as to the daunting task of locating Bigfoot, who DOESN'T want to be found.

And... just another little tidbit to wet yer whistle...

I read a bulletin from the FAA several years ago, and as of that date (1998) there were 54 missing aircraft somewhere in the forests of Oregon. (It was either 54... or "fifty-something".) Most of which had active transponders, which failed before the aircraft and its occupants were located.

So... if anybody asks "Why hasn't a Bigfoot been hit on the highway" or any other similar question... I think its safe to say that "Its a little more complicated than THAT!" :doh:

Take care and have a great morning!

Donnie

Add to that the swamps of the south That not many dare to tread that are vast also and you will start to realize the magnitude of the search . Ive said this all along it will not be easy but we should not let that stop us from trying you cant catch a fish less you put your hook in the water the same goes for bigfoot . It might take me 50 years to see one again I dont care how long it takes I know he is out there and I wont see him again unless I put the time in to do it . All the studying on the internet is fine and good but your not going to get any real results without going into the bush . Dont rely on the bfro to bring you the evidence this is a joke it will be the independent reseachers the ones willing to put it all on the line these people will be the ones that bring it home

It irks me how many people seem to consider the wilderness tamed, fully explored, and under the direct control of humans. It's the same kind of arrogance as saying mankind has conquered space 'coz we sent a few guys on a few weekend trips to the moon. We can measure it, map it to a reasonable scale, but it don't really qualify as full exploration, and doesn't come anywhere near taming it or even being aware of what's going on most of the time. Do a 20 mile hike across a scrap of forest, and have you explored the forest? Nope, just taken a 20 mile transect of it, probably a 50ft wide snapshot of whatever couldn't get out of your way, like trees.


Nature programs really don't make the understanding any easier. They make it look like you can just stroll into the woods and see any animal you want to. The public don't care that the filmmaker might have spent 2 or 3 months in the field to get that 2 or 3 minutes of footage, for a common animal. Half the time the up close shots of wild critters aren't shots of wild critters in the wild. They're either staged shots of recently captured wild critters, in a caged off section of habitat, or staged habitat with critters from zoological collections. Then there's situations where a group of animals are under long term study by wildlife biologists and others and are somewhat habituated to human presence or the presence of blinds. In those cases the filmmakers can just swan in for a few days get some good shots and leave. However said wildlife biologist has probably taken from months to years to get to this point. Dian Fossey took a couple of months in the field to even find her 1st gorillas, getting in a mere few hours of observational time in her first half year with them. It was after years of habituation that we saw stunning up close film footage of them.


There is I beleive also a general lack of understanding about how many species became known to science in the first place, how they were obtained, and how they got live ones for zoos. The perception is I believe, that a zoological collector would get on a boat with a few hearty fellows, some nets and cages, go to africa or whereever, take two weeks in the bush catching half a dozen animals a day, load them up and sail back to waiting zoos.... Well it don't happen like that....


Typically the first animals to become known to science in an area would be the ones the natives liked to eat, skins would be available and traded for, and would be studied. The natives would be cultivated with gifts and money if they had a use for it, and encouraged to trade for a full body. So you might have a village of 500 natives, who are subsistance hunters, know the area like the back of their hand, who are working to obtain a specimen of a common animal for you. Sure enough in a week or two, you have a body. Great, study the soft stuff quick, clean the bones, mount it properly, send it back, another one for science. Now the guys back home are interested, and they want a live one. So you put the word out, apply more gifts etc, and sit and wait. In a couple of months your small army of hunters might get you a juvenile from a killed parent. Great stuff, feed it, load it, rake in the profit, science triumphs. So far this is only food animals, as you get all the boring stuff in the area out of the way, your zoos and men of science back home, start to want the more spectacular ones. The ones with gnashing teeth and powerful muscles that make the paying public ooh and ahh, and give them their moneys worth. Your natives see these critters more rarely and haven't hunted them much, maybe they're too much work for food, or don't taste all that good, the experience of hunting them isn't there. So you end up waiting and waiting and spreading your cash far and wide, befriending more villages, soon you have several thousand natives combing the bush on their regular hunting trips. After a few months you get results, a body and possibly a live juvenile or two. You cash in, science triumphs, the paying customers get their moneys worth.....

So far you've done all right in your collecting, the scientists and zoos are happy. Now as you chat among the natives, finding out what else you might get here, you hear of creatures that are big and powerful, very rarely seen, almost legendary, they might be ascribed with mystical and terrible powers by the natives, sometimes the less powerful, the less mystical, succumb to the promise of money and goods, and you get a specimen, charging a pretty penny for it back home and making a nice profit. However, then there are the creatures that are so powerful, that have so much legend behind them that the natives tell you about them, but that no amount of bribes, cash or whisky can get you a specimen. The natives basically flat out refuse to have anything to do with this dangerous magnificent creature. Some of this might be out of common sense, they might only have spears. The reports you're sending back home are whipping up some excitement and your reputation is beginning to ride on getting one of these beasts. If you spread enough cash around, you might find some who will guide a party with firearms. So instead of sitting around waiting for the animals to come to you, via native hunters, you have to turn hunter. If you're lucky, you might after weeks and much wasted cash, get a glimpse of one of these rarer creatures. You might be getting broke by now though, and head home having blown most of your profit hoping to cash in on "the big one".

So this is mostly what happened with creatures such as the mountain gorillas, powerful creatures that the natives had great awe of. No matter how much cash you spread around the hunters, the answer to the request to get one was always something like "no f***** way!". However excitement back home about them may have raised subscriptions to fund specific expeditions for these creatures.

This is how we first came to know about most of the creatures we know about. This would have been a mostly European driven thing, in colonial times, from around 1800 onward. Now, relate this to north america. Most of the fauna the europeans knew about would have been through the fur trade originally, apart from that which it was easy to hunt for food. Then american independance probably smothered relations between the european scientific establishment and the fledgeling american one. So european science was only really getting interested in thorough collection around the time america was denied to them. In north america at the time, other issues were more important. Relations with natives here were already a bit screwed up. If the europeans had heard of large apes here and asked native americans to get one, we can imagine that that pretty likely got a "no freaking way!". Relations with europe were touchy and even if the men of science were intrigued, I think that if there was suggestion of landing an armed party of europeans "to look for an ape man" that such requests would have been regarded with great suspicion. American science of the time I think was looking outward rather than inward. So zoology lost out on the first half of the 19th century in north america, then there was the civil war, which took everyone's attention. By 1870 or so though, native american relations would have been so screwed up that even if european scientists had been motivated to follow up any ape man reports, they probably wouldn't have found much willing help. American science was blind to it's own lands and wanted to copy what the europeans were doing in africa and south america, so their zoological aspirations focussed there too. There was something similar to the "space race" going on between European superpowers in the latter half of the 19th century, a race to be scientifically pre-eminent and this showed in competition between Paris, Berlin, London etc, zoos to be the first to have creature X, a heck of a lot of money was thrown around in consequence, don't think any got spent over here. The US would also have been trying to prove itself so to speak and was targetting the same creatures as the Europeans. By the time everything over here had settled down and got organised enough that people might have started thinking about looking over the fauna more closely, the effects of overhunting, overlogging etc were becoming chronic. Witness the demise of the passenger pigeon, and who knows what else. Settlers might have come across some interesting stuff, but word wasn't getting to the right ears. By the time anyone was listening, it might have been too late. If there was anything big over here, it was by now extremely rare and we had no co-operation from natives to find one. Forgetting it's failures, science began to scoff.

So, that's how it happened in the rest of the world and how it failed to happen the same way in the US. Reading such authors as Gerald Durrell and his collecting experiences may allow more insight into the whole method of zoological collection etc. He also has some accounts of attempts to film wildlife that are quite educational.

So, had Sasquatch been easy to hunt and good eating, had US stayed a colony until the 1900s, had the US had less distractions in the period where interest was high in filling in the taxonomic blanks, had it had a coat of fine grade fur that made up into nice coats, then it might have been known to science by now.

I know we started out with search and rescue, but I thought it relevant in general to point out how historically how animals in particular have been sought out, since we seemed to be on the general topic of "How hard it is to find anything" and how people may not realise it.

Flash.

Some of our more notorious "critical thinkers" seem to think that a body surely should have been found by now. I participated in a very large search for a body that we never found. A farmer's dog brought in a decomposing scalp lock of long red hair. According to the farmer, the dog never went more than a mile or so from the farm. 2 weeks of searching with dogs, people on horseback, people walking the grid, flyovers with thermal gear and whatnot, failed to turn up the body. It's still out there somewhere and this was on Wisconsin farm land and not some endless tract of wilderness. Perhaps it should be easier by far to find bigfoot crap?


Dan

I too have a problem with people who say that areas in the US have been explored. Specially in my State of Washington. Probibly every square miles has seen human footprints. But the point is how often has it happened. Maybe a gold miner or two in the late 19th century. A surveying team sometime. Possibly a timber cruiser at one time. But there are areas that have not seen many hikers or even hunters because it is just too unaccessable. I would bet there are areas that have seen human eyes not more than once every 10 years.

As far as aircraft crash sites, Washington State has some 60 missing planes. Some going back to World War-II. While I have not kept track, I believe we have had 3 planes go missing here in the past year. Only one was found. And it was only a mile or so off the I-90 freeway. And while they had a good idea were it had gone down, it took about 6 months or so to find it.

And there are areas not far from major citys that could hide bigfoots, and you would never know it. For example, Washington's State Route 18 between Auburn and North Bend has such thick brush that you can not see anything 75 feet off the 4 lane highway. I could march an army brigade into that brush, line them up shoulder to shoulder, and from 100 feet away you would never see them. They would all be ready for retirement before someone hiking thru that heavy brush would find them. And this is only about 25 miles from Seattle.

I suspect that a lot of those who say that areas of the northwest have been totally explored, are those who have not done much exploring themselfs.

Good post bill... it's not like we don't have the ability to explore just about anyplace this side of the speed of light; the hole in the argument, 'we would have found/killed/etc. a BF by now...' appears in the fact that there is still a tremendous amount of area that humans don't frequent.

It's hard to find an area that humans haven't explored, but it's easy to find areas where humans haven't been for quite some time...which makes me wonder why BF don't leave more quantitative evidence behind...or if we simply miss it. Both are equally probable in my mind.

InMich;

If it's there at all, it's being missed. And based on who I encounter in the woods, it's easy to understand why it's being missed.

Dan

I agree...although I'm sure there are plenty of people in the woods that are capable of finding such evidence. There's just not a whole lot that are capable, and actively looking, to think "we should have found one by now."

As has been pointed out, we often can't find who/what we're looking for even when we have those with the knowledge/experience out in groups actively seeking.

Can anyone dig up the sources for the missing planes? I was challenged for citing Bryne on that some months ago and couldn't find anything from the FAA online.

This is supposedly just an urban legend or another "Footer" lie.

LAL,

When I found the information I was working at an F.B.O. I received a listing off all the tail numbers registered within Oregon and Washington and their current owners. This list, (which was put on a C.D. and sent to me by the FAA,) also listed all of the "Grounded" and "Missing" Planes, "believed" to be in Oregon and Washington. Each missing plane was given a (for lack of better words,) "Report" number. With that number you could request a history of that aircraft from the FAA.

I requested the information for ALL aircraft in the pacific Northwest. (I was using these "report" numbers to gather information for my company.) I then had to weed through the histories of all the aircraft (both missing and registered,) to complete my project. During my search, I came across the missing planes that are located in the Cascade Mountains, The Olympics, the Coastal Mountains, as well as a few up in Stevens Co. Wa., and the Blues of Oregon.

I doubt you will find this information cruising the internet.

Donnie

Thank you very much. Your post is going to show up on JREF, along with a couple of "Ah ha!"s.

I did some quick digging, and came up with some historical figures that back Donnie up a bit...
http://www.airweb.faa.gov/Regulatory_and_G...48?OpenDocument

We might assume that recovery ratio is up a bit these days with more SAR beacons and EPIRBs etc, but not all aircraft have them still, and they can fail. However, as it pertains to finding a Sasquatch, one would assume that figures taken from a period where location beacons were not in widespread use are more applicable than to a period when they are, since we might confidently assume that Sasquatches don't carry them either. :biggrin:

Flash

I checked out the NTSB (National Transportation Safety Board) Website which has an extensive database regarding Aviation accidents etc. I put in a request for information specifically addressing still missing aircraft in that region, and am currently waiting for the results. Will keep you informed of any information I receive back.

So True.There are people who still have had no trace of them be found when they were lost in the wilderness.

I'm trying to imagine a 40 something man who was lost in the wilderness as a child still surviving to this day ,yet still not escaping being lost.It's a little far fetched but it could happen.

I read about a report of a small plane crash with French tourists I believe in the Washington state area. One of the occupants was a one year old infant,who's small body was never recoverd although the other occupants were all found dead.The strange thing about this story is that about 10 or 11 years after the crash,sightings occurred involving a large bigfoot acompanied by what looked to be a "wild boy"! At the time of these sightings,the "wild boy"fit the age description of the missing infant from the plane crash.I thought it was alot of BS untill I read that the sigtings were made by very reputable individuals,police,forrest rangers,and one doctor among others. Very strange and interesting to say the least!

Strange.How long ago was this?

I remember reading a similar story of an infant girl somehow being found by a pack of wolves somewhere in Texas.Years later there were sightings of a woman who went along with a pack of wolves as if she was one of them.It sounds more like a folk tale though.But I guess I can't say for sure.I'll try and look for the story.

I will try to find web site this report comes from.I read the report about two weeks ago.I believe the crash occured some time in 1979, reports of bigfoot with matted hair wild boy started coming in to authorities in the early 1990's.One report said girl camping with parents saw boy steal food from cooler,father chased boy to woods and was confronted by 7 foot tall bigfoot. He said boy even walked slightly slouched like his bigfoot companion! I'll try to find full report with web site. :smile:

Yep, that's a great point - there is a lot of rugged terrain out there that is rarely traversed by humans. Sometimes search and rescue teams in the PNW may not achieve their goal of finding the lost plane or the stranded mountaineers, but that doesn't add anything to the bigfoot debate - none of 'em have ever brought back a piece of sasquatch either!

Here's my standard, two-part rebuttal for the admonishment that arrogant rubes like myself find it highly suspicious that we can't seem to get our hands on any authenticated sasquatch parts:

#1 - People do, in fact, report seeing sasquatches in the Pacific Northwest, and relatively frequently at that. If the sasquatch report rate was something like one sighting every 5 years or so, I'd be much more inclined to buy the notion that we've got an undescribed species hanging out in wilderness areas. But when we have hundreds of reported sightings each year (I'm not sure it's that high), then I get suspicious that something else is going on. Separating out the "something else" from what might be the real deal is what keeps me interested in this stuff.

#2 - Lots of reports come from places far less rugged than the PNW, but we can't seem to actually find bigfoot in those places either. From what I read in reports, I have to conclude that sasquatch in the Contiguous US states pretty much occur everywhere black bears do, and in similar habitats. (If anything, the sasquatch species' distribution is larger and they are more plastic than bears in their habitat use.)

So the options for why we can't get that elusive, conclusive physical evidence of their existence is:

a) sasquatches exist throughout the entire geographic and habitat use range in which they are reported, and we just haven't recovered a body part yet because we haven't. If we keep at it long enough, we will.

sasquatches only exist in the most remote wilderness areas (be they mountains or swamps), and reports from non-wilderness areas are erroneous. We haven't got that body part yet because so few people ever go where sasquatches go that the encounter rate is so small. We will likely never find that elusive, conclusive evidence without big budget exploration of remote sasquatch areas.

c) sasquatches do not exist as physical beings so there are no body parts out there to be found.

I suspect most folks here fall somewhere in the a-b range, but I'm more of a "c" man myself.

Happy New Year everybody,

~still Saskeptic after all these years

I think many reports are miss identification making those yearly totals much lower in reality.Would you consider that bigfoot is a social species and they possible bury their dead? In such a vast amount of forrested habitat and what is believed to be a very low number of individuals,I think it could be next to impossible to find any remains.

Finally received a response back from the NTSB with an enclosed Excel File listing aircraft that are still missing to date. Unfortunately their data only goes back to 1982, and not back as far as WWII. According to their list there is a total of 113 aircraft still labled missing, but not all are from the Pacific NW. I can only find 4 that could pinpointed somewhere in that region. Alaska seems to have the most planes missing, which isn't surprising to me, but what did surprise me 2 missing planes were in the Chicago, IL area. I'm pretty sure those must have ended up on the bottom of Lake Michigan.

A lot of the seemed to have disappeared around areas with large bodies of water, i.e. off both coasts, Great Lakes etc. Not everyone may be able to open Excel Files so here are screenshots of the data...

Click to view attachment

Click to view attachment

Click to view attachment

Click to view attachment

My guess is that more planes that went down stayed lost in the days before transponders and snazzy communications infrastructure, etc.

After reading Donnie's post I started looking for some of the accounts in and around Crater Lake and found an interesting website. Link

Dates of importance for those who wish to have a look. Missing people and planes.
April 12, 1934
Sept 26, 1939
April or May, 1944
1940's
Dec 3, 1945
Aug 26,1961
Aug 17, 1970
Mar 28, 1971
Mid 1970's
Jan 29, 1975
Feb 26, 1975
July 31, 1975
Summer 1975
Oct 13 or 14, 1976
Aug 24, 1978
July 5, 1982
Oct 1991
July 1992

Also found two BF sightings listed in the Rangers reports.

June 8 or 9, 1976 and Aug 22, 1981

http://www.feralchildren.com/en/index.php

There are a number of interesting stories regarding feral humans on the above website.

"It is the delight of the Ste - ye - hah' to carry away captive, children who may become lost or separated from their people. Many snows ago two little ones, a brother and a sister, were missing from a hunter-village in the mountains. The parents and friends instituted a wide search and found their trail. Small footprints showed between the imprints of adult tracks,... Long afterwards, perhaps twenty snows, the parents of the lost children were camped in the mountains gathering huckleberries. One night while sitting in their lodge, a stick was thrust through a small crevice in the wall. The old man immediately called out, "You need not come around here bothering me, Ste-ye-hah' ! I know you! You took my two children, Hoom-chin-nah and his sister Whol-te-noo!"

"The Ste-ye-hah' withdrew from the side of the tepee. He was the lost boy. When he could not remember his native tongue, he recognized his own name spoken by the old Indian, his father. He lingered about the lodge, all night, fearing to enter. As daylight appeared, he went back to his people and told his sister what he had seen and heard, that their own parents were in the lone lodge at the berry patch. The next night he returned to the lodge, but did not enter nor let his presence be known. The third night he came again with his sister and entered the lodge. He made the old people to understand that they were their lost children, Hom-chin-nah and Whol-te-noo. It was the bow and arrows of the old man hanging on the lodge pole that had deterred him from entering the previous evenings. The children came often to see their parents, bringing them salmon in abundance. Their has never been any salmon in that part of the Cascades, but the Ste-ye-hah' mah had this fish in quantity. The old people went away with their children, who had married and had families of their own. Later, when Indians visited this place, only the empty lodge was to be seen.The parents stayed with the Ste-ye-hah' mah for one snow, then returned to the berry patch and rejoined their tribe. Ever since that time, when any of the Indians are in the mountains and hear the Chief of the Ste-ye-hah' mah hooting like an owl, calling to his people, they know the mysterious beings are abroad, bent on mischief. Presently they hear a cry like some bird, or the chattering of a chipmunk near their lodge. It is then that the startled inmates call out, "You need not come bothering around here! I am a relative of Hoom-chin-nah and Whol-te-noo!49 This invariably secures that particular lodge from further molestation by the mysterious Ste-ye-hah. They will not knowingly annoy the relatives of the two children whom they once captured and who resided with them so many years as members of their tribe."
http://bfro.net/legends/penutian.htm

I would think that most people out in the woods stay on a specific path and don't just wander aimlessly about in the woods. I know that when I'm out hiking, I stay on the trail, and I'm usually looking where I'm walking so I don't twist an ankle or something instead of gazing off into the trees. I would also think that the big guy doesn't frequent the established trails often, but is mostly out in the woods, where there is no trail. Its not likely a squatch is going to fall dead on the Appalachian Trail so his body can be found by one of the many hikers on that trail. IMHO, I think they are hard to find, because they live in areas where we don't, and even when we're in their area, we tend to stay on established trails or close to them. If they're really out there, the law of averages says one of them has to be found eventually, especially with all the modern technology we have today. I suppose its just a matter of time and a lot of patience.

Without (please!!) going into the ugly political baggage, I personally think of this kinda thing as the "Eric Rudolph Problem." At some point, I'll hafta think up a better name.

The guy stayed unfound in Appalachia for over five years, because he didn't want to be found. He may have had help, and he was found purely by accident. And they wanted to find him very, very badly. I don't know how much outdoors training he had, but he didn't live in the woods 24-7 for his whole life.

I think that a creature, born in and raised to live in the woods 24-7, which appears to be very intelligent, could easily hide itself from searchers for a very long time.

Nice find Matt..

The 2 Sasquatch sightings were by 2 pretty credible witnesses too by the looks of it ???

Nothing out of the ordinary either & pretty much like your every day type of sighting !!