I know the answers will vary greatly according to everyone's individual location. But I think this is an important thing to discuss. I have seen discussions about what bait to use, and it seems to me that the best bait would be a natuarlly occuring food source.

What do you think are the best possible sources of food for a Sasquatch?

I think that thier diet would be largely like that of large bears. Although if Grover Krantz was correct about the shape of a BF's hand, I think they would be very capable rock throwers and could take down large game this way. People used to hunt with slings that threw marble sized rocks. A creature with the stength of a BF throwing a rock the size of a human's fist could take down just about anything in the Americas.

Whatever it wants! Seriously. Omnivorous. Berries, plants, fish, game. We may think that certain areas won't support a large animal, but we don't live there and probably don't know all of the food sources available like they do.

this has puzzled me to no end ,i have always wondered what and how much they needed to keep healthy.if they are omnivorous i would think that it would be easier for the land to sustain them such as it does the bear.i believe this is why nature has made them a migrating animal making them move on to another location before the area is depleated of its resources.
the u.s. has the largest deer herd now than ever before and in my opinion this is one reason you have more sightings due to the fact that more food sources mean more bfs especially in the southern u.s.for such a large animal with its strength and speed would need a very large food base.as far as what type of plants they would eat would be close to the bear's palate imo.with this in mind the weather would play a great part in their moving about because of the plant life available at certain times of year.

pancakes, with syrup?

I just read that the larger the animal the less they actually NEED to eat for thier size. Just an interesting thing to keep in mind for future considerations on this subject.

I am assuming it would really depend on what is available in a particular region. Grubs and berries, I believe are major sources of nutrients in my area.

Hmmmmm. Sacramento's major nutrient is grubs and berries? Geeze, I remember when it was the most productive agricultural landscape in the world.

haha... my research area is out of Sacramento

Most primates are omnivores so I would assume BF is also.
I’ve been out hiking 5-6 miles a day after the first snow south of Wood Canyon lake on the edge of Mogollon rim of AZ looking for fresh trails. The Elk, Whitetail and Fox tracks I have found are all heading to lower elevation as expected. Interesting how most of the single Elk trails converge into one as they head down the Rim. I chose this area because there are only a few trails per mile that are passable and easy for the 1500ft or so drop off the rim. Most of it is a Cliff and would be a killer if one slipped on the Ice. I wonder if BF heads to lower elevation also when following the game. Do they follow the game? I'm no expert and haven't hunted in 20 years but something has got me interested in this primate. This time of year the Cedar family have seeded from the rim down to lower elevations. Again I assume they are Cedar but they do have small seeds like the Arborvitaes of the cypress family. Some of the other white pines have the lower limbs ripped off them and scattered only in some areas while other white pines are untouched. I assume the Elk or Whitetail are the culprit. I followed black bear tracks and noticed the digging up of the ground and some places really dug deep this guy was really foraging heavy. Trying to think of the food that grows near the base of the fir and white pine trees? The creeks that come off the Rim all have hatcheries and below them the trout are plentiful and someone with half a mind could easily scoop one out of the water. The hatcheries would be a good place for a game cam.
I search this area for tracks because of the history of BF in the area over the years. The Rim area is rugged and has many caves that are almost impossible for the average joe to access. So either this is a migration route or there is a family around.

I would think a family.

But what do i Know?

Keep on keeping on!

Animals that are capable of doing so will naturally stay in proximity to their foodsource. If BF is an opportunistic omnivore and ambush hunter of deer, elk, and similarly scaled prey animals, which seems likely regardless of the other details, it would be reasonable to presume that their habitat would be the part of any landscape where productivity is typically highest. Regardless of the regional characteristics , it is typically in those areas where forest transitions to open land dominated by grasses and forbes. In many ways it's analagous to the inter-tidal zone along our seashores where the ebb and flow of terrestrial and marine environments create the nursery for a significant portion of the oceans' life. Here the ebb and flow of wildlife migrating in and out of the forest,scrub and grassy meadows is like the mechanism of an engine, capturing the available energy, storing it and making it accessible.

Greater diversity is supported in these productive fringe areas, which is an added advantage to a opportunistic omnivore, it would seem. And the typically moister and cooler forests offer protection from drying exposure, not just to provide a sense of security for a shy creature such as we imagine BF to be, but for a lot of other animals, deer and elk, for example, birds and small mammals that regulate their energy budget by lying low and conserving energy when exposure is too high, and which wait for the time of day best suited for their instinctually guided strategy of foraging in concert with their natually adapted sensory capabilities.

Relatively empty rural, agricultural range, and western range and forest lands offer a lot of places that could meet that criteria, and by some measurements there is an increasing amount amount of this kind of land as traditional smaller operations are being consolidated or liquidated, becoming an almost defacto land trust. When I read reports I will frequently check out the location's proximity to that kind of environment out of curiousity and am satisfied with my informal survey that suggests to me that our interactions with BF are incidental to what the major action in the creature's life-style would be, or at least as I imagine it now.

I think that by attempting to understand that we learn more about how the rest of the natural system keeps itself in such dynamic equilibrium, and even if there were no BF I'd be interested in speculating as to why not and probably not to anyone but myself. How could nature not have created a perfectly reasonable creature such as descriptions lead me to think might have survived with a set of instincts perfectly atuned to avoid regular attention from the kind of fellow apex predators that could do it some damage.That'd be our ancestors, for one.

I hear again and again that riparian fringe is the best habitat for numbers of large and small game animals, rodents, and look at the territory around here and into the midwest and see just that, lots of woodlots, some connected, the dots are joined more often than not by wooded in creeks, fields in between, it's ALL fringe. I could swear there's more protein per unit area than in deep dank old growth. But because there are farmhouses, often hobby farms scattered around in this semi agricultural landscape, people will say "Nope no chance of BF here, too many people"... yes there might be too much exposure to risk raising junior here in his first few years, but other than that it looks perfect to me. Wide range of food sources, and in desperate times, human raised food to poach.

I've been on the lookout for Alder stands recently, after hearing that it's one species that Sas is reputed to get his veggie ration from. Turns out that areas I thought that felt "squatchy" have a lot of alder in them, those that I don't feel "squatchy" don't. Though I keep looking in the non-squatchy feeling ones from time to time. I always feel vaguely dissappointed after a trip into those areas, whereas the other ones, there's a lot of those ambiguous clues that have you thinking mayyyybe, mayyyybe he comes in here once in a while...

Anyway, I'd tempt him with some natural "delicacy" type foods. We have a few peach orchards around here, so maybe some bruised up peaches (that have quite a heady smell) would get his stomach rumbling.

I guess the challenge is knowing what he is hungry for "At the moment" many of his foodstuffs will be seasonal and he'll be looking for particular types at particular times. No point staking out a chipmunk colony if it's at a period where larger game is more accessible, etc.

I'm in full agreement with the riparian zone being the singularly most productive habitat no matter where it occurs, particularly in the East where water is so much more abundant. Riparian Zones in the west tend to be jealously guarded for their water and/or are already inhabited by us and our cows. Water being indispensible for life, and riparian zones water is frequently the sustaining constant for water critical for most of the tree species that quickly colonize any opportunity from disturbance...also creating the very cover that animals with an inbred need for the kind of security that cover brings them.

While these strips of woodlands and weeds make ideal corridors for animals' travelling, those riparian zones which have not already been improved for residential and industrial/agricultrual uses, are also deucedly difficult for humans to negotiate, making them even more appealing to the elusive types if they can endure the mosquitoes and damp shadow that monkeys like us usually avoid as being undesireable, unlike a lot of prey animals and their affiliated predators.
As appealling as riparian zones may be, a predator such as we describe BF, would have to leave the zone to sustain itself, and doing so during periods of lower light make sense from the perspective of its own feelings of exposure, and to follow the patterns of grazing deer that leave their cover to feed when the visibility is lower. I think the focus in looking for deep forests might prove lucky one day but the idea of searching for a creature that is primarily directed to hunt away from the deep forest and in the areas where the prey are susceptible to ambush while out and about feeding is how I would apply my field research when I once agan find myself able.

Big Macs

This just in: Bigfoot eats big sacks of Big Macs!

On the other hand, both Dogu4's and Flashman's posts make a lot of sense.

Anything that help to narrow down search areas is a good point. That is the idea after all. If you try to find even a herd of elk in a million acres, good luck. Worse than a needle in a haystack. but narrow it down to 40 acres and you have a much better chance. Narrow it down to 40 acres that is more open than forest and your chances are almost assured.

I just finished reading a link to G.C.B.R.O. and followed some others on that site and found animal kills by Mary Green with casts made of 18" prints near by.



This suggest they eat meat.

Another report with little detail of a young boy with a dog encountered a growling BF that appears to suggest they do not like dogs and will kill them when they get to close.

The Washington 911 call said his dog was killed the night before.

Explain the alder trees? What's the fungi that grows near the roots of some trees? I find many dig holes at or near the trunks of western white pine. So many questions and so little time.

I think they eat whatever is avialable at the time & season like nuts , berries , and even meat

Jasonch1112: Good point. I see your location is Western Washington. I think if you're on the wet side, your observation is accurate which is one reason I think looking around the temperate rainforest is sorta setting oneself up for a hard time of findin' any specific animal with much certainty.
But on the eastern dry side of the mountains I think it could be a bit different. Don't know if you've ever been out to Yellowstone, but its big open meadows, during the right time of the year, attract some pretty good sized groups whose seasonal movements are fairly well understood. I'm not saying that BF are there necessarily in Yellowstone but throughout the intermountain west sightings are reported and the landscapes that support some healthy populations of elk and deer which naturally congregate near and in similar meadows and grassland, aren't too rare. If elk and deer are the prey then watching them where they're more visible would work to the advantage of a researcher with a really big area that could be watched from a nice elevated prospect, frequently focusing on possible food and water sources over many thousands of acres as well as other features that would expose a big animal to a distant viewer's observation.

I am not sure what the correlation is between BF and dogs. It seems to be a recurring theme over many reports. Perhaps they equate them with wolves which would be a big competition for resources. The big difference is that dogs bark and wolves do not. In this case they may just be trying to shut them up. After all, they wouldn't want anything giving thier position away.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but on one of the shows it was suggested that BF may eat lichen in the NW.

Here is a link to describe the fungus Link.

What other animals use this as a food source?

To answer my own question.

Very informative, though I did not read it all. Dr Meldrum suggested in his book that BF might eat lichen for the carbohydrates. It would seem to me that due to the very nature of lichen that they would be quite nutritious as well, especially in trace minerals from the ones that grow on rocks. If that is true, then I can see how lichen would be a very important food source for BF. Now we need to look for signs of lichen scrapings and try to determine if BF would be responsible for certain ones.

Wolves do bark:

Wikipedia:


Ask a Scientist:


Blurtit:


lichen is a good source of food and many species take advantage of it.

The GCBRO report, where is the link? Some of these reports of deer kill and deer found in trees, I wonder are the results of big cats.

you know, lichens are a potential nutrient source I never thought of, but it does make a lot of sense. Lichens have about the equivalent nutrional value to a standard cereal, are edible (people and animals have eaten them for years), and are widely available in most areas of the country. Definitely something to be on the look-out for when looking for potential BF habitats

I would guess/speculate it is in fact, as you say, equating dogs to wolves on the part of the Bigfoot, but for reasons different than yours. Wolves hunt in packs and would, I think, pose a threat not only to juveniles, but adults as well. I suspect they perceive a barking dog as possibly a 'wolf gone amok', and in the din/confusion, destroy (or attempt to) the dog in the process. There are many reports of dogs encountering these creatures with often the dogs coming out on the 'short' end of the deal.

Sam

You might be thinking of truffles, they are symbiotic with oak, maybe some other trees, fix nitrogen or something. As for the Alder, it was something Meldrum mentioned as being someting native americans had observed, when he was on Coast to Coast AM last.

The entire site is COPYRIGHTED so here is the page to access the BF Animal kill link Hopefully I didn't violate anything!

thanks Flashman, Found it late last night while looking up Lichen and other types of fungi. I followed Bear tracks last month and it was digging real deep next to every white pine but never did find anything left over.

Sam, thats a good explanation. In some reports the dog are scared and will not even bark. In no reports I have read the deceased dog has been eaten. They don't taste that bad, in fact its hard to tell what your eating in Korea, it maybe your pet.

I looked up alder and found some interesting things about it, but how they might apply to BF????????? Alder is a popular food for many moth and butterfly larva. Good easy protien source? The young bark yields 16% tannin. Some kind of BF tea chew?? They support a certain bacteria that helps release nitrogen. Can't see how this would apply unless there is a fungus that likes a LOT of nitrogen.

Thanks for the link. Providing a link doesn't violate the copyright. Those pictures to me, are more of an argument for a large predator cat than a bigfoot.

I did not spend a lot of time going through the various links there. But if you were looking at the same pictures I looked at I would say it looked more like a bird of prey than a cat. The way the hair was pulled out in tufts and kept close to the kill.

I would expect in any animal that was killed by a BF that the smaller ones would be torn apart and the larger ones would show a broken neck at the least. I do not see a large animal with hands killing with it's teeth when it could more easily snap it's neck and end the struggle much faster.

Maybe bird of prey, like a turkey buzzard after the fact, but the entry hole near the rear flank, and the neck wounds, looks to me like a big cat. Small calf and deer are prime prey for one.

All this seems to show is that people REALLY need to get to know the local wildlife before making such claims. If a corpse was found that was obviously NOT killed by a known local animal, then MAYBE BF was involved. It really seems there are too many people out there 'investigating' BF who see anything they know nothing about swear it must have been BF ( or whatever as the case may be). Double bear prints, a carcass of any sort, elk rubs, poacher's bedding. So many things are exclaimed to be from BF that turn out to have perfectly simple explanations. It is rather irritating trying to find new stuff on BF like this. It is like wading through miles of sewage just to find a penny.

I whole heartedly agree! There are pennys out there IMO, Jason. You gotta ask the questions and see if what you are seeing, hearing or experiencing hold water. I have a saying: Bullsh*@ and steak come from the same source, but there is people out there who will try there best to convince you they both taste the same.

LOVELY ANALOGY!!!!!!

We apparently were not looking at the same pictures. The only deer I saw was a skeleton. The animal I was referencing was a rabbit with it's hair pulled out. Which is what prompted my comment. I do not see how a skeleton could be positively identified as a BF kill. And I SERIOUSLY doubt BF has the fine motor skills necessary to pull tufts of hair out of a rabbit. ON something small like that, I would expect a bite to break the skin, then it pulled back ( a kind of rough skinning), etc. Like I said before, a large animal, I would expect a seriously broken neck. A quick kill. SOMETHING that would indicate large strong HANDS doing the work.

This is like the Animal Control officers in Florida that cannot tell the difference between a house cat, opossum, raccoon, or an orang. I can EASILY tell the difference in all of these.

I was thinking, if you can consider any one food "tried and tested" it seems to be apples, seems sometimes every 3rd or 4th report mentions apples, search for apples on BFRO and you get a lot of hits among reports, media articles and older tales ...
http://www.google.ca/search?q=site:bfro.ne...tart=0&sa=N

To me it's conclusive enough to think "If they won't take apples then they ain't hungry" so if the intention is getting a surefire bait then that would be the closest we've got so far.

One advantage of using a fruit that BF would not be familiar with is that you could drug them and they might not notice the scent or taste. If you tried that with a food they were familiar with, they would know something wasn't right with it.

I have heard of some success with apples. That is what was used at the Skookum Casting site. However the fruit wasn't eaten completely or take with the animal. That suggests it was just trying them and didn't care too much for them.

I still can't beliebve they would bait an area and not set up trailcams to watch the bait. A good pic would be much better than that controversial cast.

I was looking at the calf.

I only took a cursory glance at some of the pics. They told me enough not to waste too much time looking at thier other ones.

I did a little research over the past couple of days. There are many guidebooks on edible plants around. You might be a bit surprised how many reall common plants have at least part of them edible. And of course I mean by western human standards. Frankly we have rather weak constitutions and many plants we cannot eat can be easily eaten by many animals. This is even better seen with mushrooms. There are over 100 known edible mushrooms, by human standards. Many of these are not recommended for consumption. Though they ARE edible, they have unpleasant tastes, textures, or appearances. There are even more that because of unpleasant textures, appearances, or otherwise are not known whether they are edible or not simply because people have been unwilling to try them. There is something to be found at any time of the year.

Even a little bit of research in the library shows that those people who claim there isn't enough food available to feed a population of BF are simply speaking out of the wrong oriface.

they are definately opportunistic eaters. I recently heard of a guy who got his deer stolen by a BF. A 250 lb deer in northern Wisconsin. The guy left the deer at the base of the tree to get help dragging it out. He came back with the guys and it was gone. They followed a drop blodd trail, so it wasn't dragged by a bear (there was leaves at the time (fall) so it would be obvious if it was dragged). Plus bears were starting hibernating too. So anyway they found the deer 100 yards away going towards the boonie part of the wilderness area (swamp). The deer was starting to get ripped up too. So they eat deer and meat definately along with berries and such.

Does anyone know if the eat fish? I would say most likely. Fish have a great protien source and BFs could use it well.

Thought I'd contribute my story and 2 cents.

I have found huge caches of sunflower seeds several miles from nowhere, they didn't get transported there in a chipmunks
pouch, something hand-carried these things a long distance from bird feeders or bags left out and it wasn't a human in the remote area I was in, they were
cached near a suspected overhanging den area of crushed rhododendron with tree trunks on top. I also feel they are tough
on salamanders in creekbeds in the southern Appalachians, I have been observing for use of lichen but haven't seen such yet
doesn't mean it doesn't happen. Its good survival food for humans too.

real maple syrup and oatmeal bread worked for me
have substituted molasses successfully too

Great posts Smiles and bipedalist. Thanks.

I cannot see how fish would not be a part of BF's diet. BF are known to like to be near water and have been seen to swim. Why else would they need to swim??? Water plants and most other aquatic animals are easily obtained near shore. Also (Ithink I said this before somewhere) BF reports seem to be lacking in 'tearing' teeth. Meat might be occaisional but difficult to eat because of this. Fish would be much easier to eat than red meats. But then I do not claim to be an expert on teeth. Maybe someone has better information on this?? It would be nice to know.

Hi

He eats all things,, Some dirts, grubs, bugs, worms,, rodents, fish, reptiles ( sadly) birds , grass, roots, and all plants, nuts, berries,, tree bark, leaves,, but i don't think he eats or needs much is lots of meat,,, not much at all just enough for protein.....,, just like my reptile friends keep it simple and easy, survive on whats always there, if BF eats lots of meat that would cause problems for him,, if he eats mostely meat i belive there would be more signs of something chowing on animals,,, you know an extra carcuss or many,, don't you ??? plus he would have to be a more active hunter eating meat and risk being seen more, and tons of other stuff


Peace
Tim

Regarding BF eating fish: I've heard it said, and if you google up an image you might agree, that the mammal that has teeth most like the human's is the sea otter. That's not to say that I'm an enthusiastic supporter of the aquatic ape theory but the connection between hominid evolution and lacustrine environments is pretty good, water being critical for a supposed savannah living creature with no special adaptations that allow them to live long without a water source or supply nearby.

As for big animals getting enough calories...you might recall the movie "Never Cry Wolf" based on the book of the same name by the author Farley Mowat. It was based on the true story of the author's being sent into the barren ground caribou country to find out more about the wolves that were presumed responsible for the reported drop in their numbers. He discovers that the wolves eat almost no caribou, surviving instead on voles and other small rodents, and when they did eat caribou it was almost always the weak and un-productive and ultimately acting as a positive influence on the population's continued good health, actual number being controlled by a number of other factors.

It had always been presumed that wolves were rapaceous killers but that was largely due to the fact that wolves had always been observed in the context of forests and where the wolves were under pressure from hunters, where studying them in their natural state is difficult. When observed over the long term in an open and undisturbed environment their complex social relationships and their relationship with their prey becomes apparent and old notions were radically changed though they do still linger.

One things for sure, he doesn't eat our garbage! Of course if he did he would've gotten rabies wandered into a suberb and gone on a rampage and we would've shot 'em killed 'em and prooven his exsistance by now.

Hi


There is a report on BF visiting a dumpster, check it out

http://www.geocities.com/sutek316/


Peace
Tim

Regarding Farley Mowat and what wolves eat. I too am a fan of Mowat, and have read most of his books, but you have to take some of what he says with a grain of salt. For a non-fiction writer he's never allowed bare facts to get in the way of a good story. Never Cry Wolf was a bit of an apology for the perceived vicious nature of wolves, and I suspect Mowat went a little overboard in his claims that wolves rarely eat caribou. Another note as well, I'm sure you've all heard the old platitude that there has never been a documented case of wolves killing a human. Not so anymore -- a coroner's jury about a month ago here in Saskatchewan came to the obvious conclusion that wolves did indeed kill and eat a guy here. Poor bastard was a grad student from Ontario doing a work term in a northern mine. He was out for a walk one night about a year ago and the wolves got him. So much for limited diet of wolves.

Rounder; I've heard that about Mowat(great wiki on him) but the point about wolves' diet and their relationship with their prey is fairly (farley?) solid, even if he painted them in a kinder light than had been done much before him. It is a great read which was the author's primary intent, I believe (My favorite non-fiction is "Sea of Slaughter" for its research method and its depiction of life prior to commecial havesting) and a pretty good adaptation on the screen. It also jives pretty well with the observations of the Murie brothers who brought the concept of an interlligent wolf society to the attention of science in the 30s after their study on the wolves in Denali, likewise a non-forested landscape of the north with a population thought to be relatively undisturbed by the pressure of modern hunting and so a fine place to watch at a long distance from the subjects for a long period of time; something never been achieved before this...again in a similar relationship with caribou. But that also makes it problematic in ascribing behavior generally to wolves who occupy as wide a range of terrestrial habita as any other creature ('cept'n us).
As for the myth of wolves never preying on humans; I've known for a while that one reason for that would be that when you get dissappeared by wolves you really get dissappeared but good. I observed a moose carcass dissappear over a 4 or 5 day period with nothing left but a few tufts of moose hair and a single shard of shin bone about 5 inches long, and I don't know why they hadn't eaten that. As a young guy I knew an old timer whose little baby brother dissappeared from the family up beyond the Mesabi Range in Minnesota while berry picking and wolf sign was all around though there were no witnesses and so no official report. But even accepting lots of other cases are wolf kills, it still seems a rare event and like most predators even when opportunistic they are not too interested in taking down unfamiliar animals. Especially with humans, unfamiliarity equals the possibility of injury which especially in wild wolves is a short step to re-entering the carbon cycle. However along with the modern tolerance for wolves, something that humans haven't expressed for a long time, there comes familiarity from the wolves so maybe some packs are becomming more interested in us. I've heard a couple of stories out of Fairbanks that raised my eyebrow, but nature always has the capacity to surprise a person sometimesin delight and understanding and sometimes in unpleasant ways...which always seemed like as fair a bargain as life ever really hands us.

dogu4,
You're right about the wolves and habituation. These were not 'pristine' wolves, but rather a pack that had gotten used to hanging around the garbage dumps surrounding the mines. They were so habituated, they apparently would come running when they heard the garbage truck a'comin. I felt kind of bad for the poor guy that got eaten, I think he was a mining engineering student doing an internship, so I'm not sure how much real bush experience he had. Let's hope he never formed his opinion of wolves by reading Mowat's work. There never was any doubt how he died though, as soon as he went missing they went out looking and found the pack still chewing on him. I'm not sure why the coroner's inquest was even held, unless it was just to place on the official record that wolves will in fact eat people on occasion.