I like this track. What do the rest of you think? Here's the link -
http://pages.prodigy.net/ghostfish/_wsn/page10.html

Suspicious...

From their web page



Franklin Creek is a very small town, mostly agricultural land around it, but I'm assuming they are talking about Franklin Creek State Park. The park covers 646 acres and below you can see an aerial view of it.. the wooded area.. from Google Earth.

Click to view attachment

Using the tools included with Google Earth I placed a spot pin at the far NW Corner of the park and another at the far SE Corner. Total distance 2.06 miles. I highly doubt they walked clear across the park and if they did they were always within a short distance of open land so it's not like "Deep Forest" even exists in this area. The widest areas measured North to South are just about 1/2 mile so the deepest one could ever get into this "Forest" is 1/4 mile.

Edited to add:

Looking at the Web Page for this park, the topography is interesting with gorges the creek runs through. However as I said "Deep Forest" is non-existent from what the Google View shows. It's not that far from me, so maybe in the near future, if the nice weather holds up I'll take a run down there and see if anything suggests I take a closer look to change my opinion.

Gotta love that Google Earth. Aerial views can sometimes speak volumes. Also, I wonder, in all that mud, only one impression?

I downloaded the pic and played with it. It actually looks like a pretty good print, no matter where it was found. It's flat footed landing, with the four toes curling down, digging in, leaving a ridge between the toe tips and the ball of the foot, sqeezing up between the toes. The big toe didn't curl down, almost like it was turned up a bit, as the foot lifted up from the step. Looks like a couple of squishy inches of top soil, over hard clay. Ejecta coming out of the arch, like it should. More pressure on the outer edge of the foot, than the inner edge. A bit too squishy to show any skin ridges on the pad. The picture is a bit pixelated, and showing false texture lines. If someone made a fake foot, then they know about BF's use of it's toes, like fingers gripping down. It'd be a great fake.

Yep, I agree. I looked at the blown up version too and liked it.

moregon - What if you just take the photo at face value? No idea where it came from - just looking at the photo?

Stan - What do you know of this photo and that website?

Oh, by the way you Illinois folks, a black bear was spotted 5 miles east of Savanna IL out where my sister lives. She and Dan have an incredible hobby farm within walking distance of Palisades state park.

I would be thrilled to find a footprint that looked this good in the mud. I know when the witness returned from his hike in the rain that the track had deteriorated.

Here's a copy of the picture enlarged, changed to B&W and adjusted.

Click to view attachment

Stan by your comment it sounds as if you may have talked to the witnesses or at least had some correspondence with them. The muddy appearance tends to suggest it's a fresh track, and your comment that the track deteriorated by the time he returned from his/her hike. The problem I have with that is although there was allegedly enough force to push those sticks into the mud, it seems to have left the small seedlings in the footprint untouched. They still appear to be standing upright, and their color is still bright green. If it was that fresh they should also be smooshed down into the mud and dirty in appearance. It looks to me as though they sprouted at some time after the track was made.

Click to view attachment

And according to their website..



If it had JUMPED down there with enough force to bury those sticks, it would most likely had destroyed the seedlings.

Here is the BFRO report -

BFRO>Illinois>Lee County - June 2003 - Hikers find large footprint along Franklin Creek.

He used to be a member of the BFF but I have not seen him on for several years. I last spoke with him about four years ago.

Something else wrong with that pic... but I'm too tired at the moment to put my finger on it.

Moregon, good catch. Don't know how I missed those sprouts. Track had to have been there at least 24 hours.

Here's some more information that makes the claim in regards to that track suspicious. Some of these are minor, but still valid.

BFRO Report linked above from Stan says the incident happened June 14, 2003
Their web site says June 15, 2003

Only 1 day difference but at least gives us an idea of which part of June it allegedly took place.

Stan says

BFRO Report says

The BFRO Report supports what Stan said, and is based on the information from the witnesses. So according to this information there was a heavy rain that night that allegedly flooded the creek that washed away the footprint. The ground was muddy where the footprint was created so evidently there was a recent rain, or at least not in the too distant past. Weather patterns travel predominantly West to East. In Sterling, IL there is a National Weather Service recording station. Sterling, IL is located approximately 18 miles West of Franklin Creek State Park where the footprint was allegedly found. The data from June of 2003 is accessible online from the National Weather Service, and this includes precipitation amounts. So if there was a rain hard enough to flood the creek that would wash away that footprint, there would be a record of it. Since we only know an approximate date of either June 14 or June 15, 2003 I'll cover from June 10th to June 20th to see if enough rain fell to flood the creek to wash away the track. Here are the totals by day.

June 10th 2003 .23 inch (Less than a quarter of an inch)
June 11th 2003 No Rain
June 12th 2003 No Rain
June 13th 2003 No Rain
June 14th 2003 No Rain
June 15th 2003 No Rain
June 16th 2003 No Rain
June 17th 2003 No Rain
June 18th 2003 .19 inch (Less than a fifth of an inch)
June 19th 2003 No Rain
June 20th 2003 No Rain

According to this data, there wasn't a significant rainfall to cause any creek to flood and wash away a track.

Here's a screen shot to show the data is from June 2003 and there was no rainfall on June 20th, 2003.

Click to view attachment

Weather Data on June 14, 2003
Weather Data on June 15, 2003

The following picture is a map showing Franklin Grove, IL near Franklin Creek State Park, indiicated with the Red Star. The RED CIRCLED city to the west is where the above data came from. To verify this information is most likely correct, I also checked the rainfall data from 3 area airports, circled in PINK on the map. On June 14 and June 15, 2003 not one of these sites reported any precipitation. If there had been significant rainfall to flood a creek and wash away a footprint at least ONE of those locations would have reported some precipitation. Since none did, again I say suspicious. The facts just don't back up the data reported to the investigator by the witnesses.

I love it when people investigate the details and dont just settle for the outer story. Nice work

Wow good work,... that guy was probably thinking, "If I just wait around 6 years to report this, people will never know that it never even rained". D'oh.

Nice work Moregon...I love it when someone does all the leg work, then i can just read it.

Nice work Moregon

What is it JIM? Did you get some rest so you can comment or what?

Maybe someone already nailed it?

Lookinginmich said it. This is the definition of a conclusive investigation.
Speaking for myself, the aerial shot alone was enough for me to dismiss it, right or wrong on my part, unless the northern end of that small plot of woods in that flat, mostly treeless farmland type area connects to a vast forest where a tiny bit of that shown extends offscreen.
Good job and thanks for sharing, moregon.

Yepper. As always, very good work moregon. I find em, you shoot em down!

What's cool to me is the west side (from Sterling on) is my hometown area. I rode the crap out of so much of this area. Never ever ever saw anything that would indicate bigfoot roaming around the area. Of course I wasn't looking though. Maybe the very north west area of Illinois from say about Savanna to the Wisco border. Lots of thick woods there.

NoxieMr just to help answer your question, I zoomed out on Google Earth to give a broader view of the surrounding area. The area circled in YELLOW is the park area, and the area circled in BLUE is the small piece of woods you were wondering if it connected to a vast forest, it doesn't.

Click to view attachment


Uncircled pic to give you a clean view of the area.

Click to view attachment

I live 7 miles away from Belfast, here in Northern Ireland, on Friday we had torrential rainfall, on the way home from the city centre the rain was so heavy I had to drive with my wipers on full blast, when I arrived home it was bone dry, I've seen wet and dry conditions in the space of 100'
This happens all the time here, do conditions like this not exist in the USA?

They do. I live in Manhattan and it could be raining on one block and dry on the next. It's more common to be broken up North to South rather than West to East as is the case described here (or anywhere) due to the Prevailing Westerlies.

That's an excellent point TP as I witnessed that very phenomenon two weeks ago. Torrential downpour in the forest and a nearly clear blue sky at the trail head 1200' away.

Not related but, it seems they may have misidentified the "cougar/panther" track on their website also. This track looks canine to me. Also, if the rain was heavy enough to flood the creek and wash away the print, I'm pretty sure it wouldve been noted. Big difference between a small downpour and substantial rain enough to make creeks swell.


http://pages.prodigy.net/ghostfish/_uimages/mysterycat2.jpg

Was the trail head North, South or West of the forest by any chance? Moregon pointed out that the site was East of the weather station which has a much higher chance of correlating because of the winds that move from west to east called the Prevailing Westerlies. It still can happen but the chances are not the same.

I saw that too and thought German Shepard.

For some reason, I still like the actual track though. Just looks natural to me. But, hell, I've been so wrong, so often before...and not just on BF stuff!

Suddenly coming out of rain and into a clear area, does NOT mean it's raining in a very limited area, it simply means you found the edge of a precipitation shaft. If you would have turned around after walking or driving into the clear area and headed back into the rain it may have been miles and miles before you broke into another clear area.

Without going into a lot of detail, here are some basics. For it to rain you need a Low Pressure System. The data on the site I linked to above also show the barometric pressure readings. During the 24 hours prior to June 14th through the 24 hours after June 15th the area was in a High Pressure System. This is not a localized measurement it covers a much greater area. Since it was a High Pressure System that means that water droplets could NOT condense and turn into rain. This should answer the question of whether or not any rain occurred on the nights in question.

I'm doing this to see if I can load my Google views as much as anything. I have yet to take time to learn to measure and highlight anything I speak of, but for now I'll just say here is an image of Franklin Creek's proximity to downtown Chi and lake Mich. Not very far from the suburbs to the west.
The other views are showing the views to the SW and NW of the area of the print. The only real woods to speak of within a 50+ mile radius is Castle Rock State Park, to the NNW. It is hardly suitable habitat for any large mystery being to remain hidden very long.
Assuming a large creature (or man-sized with a 13" print) wandered into that 2-mile x 1/2 mile park, unless it strayed across many miles of agriculture type land with scant little cover undetected, it would have to have moseyed in from nearby Rock River to the NW, which also runs thru Castle Rock Park. Rock River flows from N of the city of Rockford, SW until it hits the Mississippi at Des Moines and all in between are towns such as Dixon and Oregon that dot the river at almost an interconnecting distance.
If the dates are correct, I don't buy the isolated torrential rain theory either. All rain has edges where it stops and therefore doesn't cover the earth, but I don't believe that was the case in this particular instance.
As for the views, one can zoom in and out over the entire area and not find much to attract any large predator that needs cover and wasn't dropped/picked up from a saucer.

Sorry for duping shot #1 at the end.

Jimeny Christmas. Make that "Davenport", not "Des Moines" above. Let this be a lesson to you kids: do NOT drink and type!