Texas Bigfoot Research Conservancy

The rubber Sasquatch head stared with glassy eyes from atop its pedestal. Beneath its gaze, Bigfoot Conference attendees milled about Tyler’s Caldwell Auditorium. Children peeked at the hairy visage from around parents’ legs. A pale man wearing black cowboy boots crossed his arms as a friend snapped a picture with his cell phone. Three teenage boys gave mocking thumbs-ups. Like the elusive or mythical creature that inspired it, the rubber Bigfoot was indifferent to the awe, curiosity and ridicule it provoked.

This was the vendor’s section of the ninth Texas Bigfoot Conference, held annually in the East Texas Piney Woods. Hosted by the nonprofit Texas Bigfoot Research Conservancy, the conference is dedicated to the large ape Gigantopithecus blacki that purportedly crossed from Siberia to North America via the Beringia land bridge during the last Ice Age, 12,000 years ago. The ape’s descendants—usually described as bipedal, hairy and standing 7 to 9 feet tall—are most often sighted in rural forested areas receiving large amounts of rainfall, like the Pacific Northwest. Bigfoot also is said to roam the 65-million acre forestland along the Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Louisiana borders.

The conference aimed to separate fact from fiction. Mentions of the 1987 schlock film Harry and the Hendersons—in which John Lithgow takes a bumbling Bigfoot into his Seattle home—were met with tight grins by conservancy members.

“A lot of us like to joke around, but we never play in the field,” said member Mike Street.

Attended by about 500, the conference mixed scientific presentations with folks hoping to make a buck off the creature’s legend. In the auditorium, American Museum of Natural History primate biologist Esteban Sarmiento lectured on great apes he’d studied in Africa, Sumatra and Borneo. National Book Award-­winning naturalist-author Peter Matthiessen described a possible Yeti encounter in Tibet and said academia needs to keep a skeptical, but open, mind on undocumented species.

In the adjoining vendor area, a former standup comedian sold Sasquatch-themed hiking DVDs. Nearby, a Hollywood production designer hawked the Sasqwatch, a timepiece enclosed in a large, brown plastic foot.

“Everyone’s always real nice at the conferences,” Sasqwatch-creator Yolie Moreno said. “I’m just happy that Bob Gimlin is wearing one.”

She nodded to a tan man with a white mustache, turquoise eyes and straw cowboy hat. He sipped from a McDonald’s coffee cup, talking with people. Along with Robert Patterson, Gimlin is famous for the only known filming of a Sasquatch. Shot on 16mm film in 1967, the footage shakily depicts a hairy creature walking upright like a man near a creek in Northern California. A regular feature on the History Channel’s Monster Quest, 78-year-old Gimlin is the Mick Jagger of Bigfoot conferences.

“I took so much ridicule over that for 40 years,” Gimlin said. “For a while I was really sorry that I’d ever been down there to see it. But since I’ve started meeting people at conferences like this one, I’ve enjoyed doing them.”

Another Bigfoot celebrity, Smokey Crabtree, scouted locations and starred as himself in the 1970s Bigfoot feature film The Legend of Boggy Creek, shot in Fouke, Arkansas. The movie’s YouTube trailer is replete with grainy Texarkana forestland footage and a Charlie’s Angels-style soundtrack. Crabtree self-published an account of the production, as well as the story of his real-life encounter with Bigfoot, Smokey and the Fouke Monster … A True Story.

“My son shot him three times with a shotgun,” Crabtree said, adjusting his cowboy hat and bolo. “It didn’t do him no harm at all, though. My son was 60 feet away and using squirrel shot.”

Crabtree pointed to a framed picture of a four-toed, 8-foot-long possible Bigfoot skeleton he discovered decomposing on a bed of Arkansas pine needles. “That’s not human,” he said.

He and his wife sold copies of his books and spoken-word CD, The Legend of Smokey Crabtree, next to a poster board covered with faded newspaper clippings. They depicted Crabtree’s other grapples with nature: a 200-pound alligator gar from the Red River in 1958, a 575-pound wild boar and a ­37-pound bobcat trapped with grandson Skeeter.

“One of the biggest mistakes was making that movie,” he said. “I used to shoot ducks in my underwear from the back porch. When the movie caught on, 5 million people came beating down my door. I had to give my property away.”

A young hipster couple next to Crabtree promoted their Web site, BelieveItTour.com. Their logo—“As a child you believe. What happens then?”—depicted a cartoon Bigfoot attempting to hitch a ride alongside a white-sheet ghost and a green alien.

Conservancy members do not appreciate having Bigfoot ridiculed.

“There is a stigma attached to saying you’ve seen a Bigfoot or are interested in the subject,” said conservancy President Craig Woolheater. He squinted through rectangular glasses. “People will laugh at you. It’s lumped in with the paranormal—ghosts, witchcraft, UFOs, voodoo. That’s where the Bigfoot books are in the library.”

It takes a certain type of person to earnestly study a creature that’s largely been dismissed by the mainstream scientific community. And, judging by the conference, men seemed more likely than women to possess that perfect mix of curiosity, stuborness and a predilection for elusive hairy primates. “My sweet wife won’t ever come to these things,” said Gimlin, who had sighted the creature along rural back roads. A few spouses worked the ticket booth with the resigned tolerance that might be shown for ­nascar or wrestling.

I understood their feelings. My wife Catherine had agreed to accompany me to the conference. In an Austin boutique, she’d bought a T-shirt depicting a Bigfoot holding an American flag among pine trees. At the last moment, fearing conference attendees might take her shirt as mockery, she decided to wear her jacket and scarf as cover.

“You don’t seem like a believer,” one man told her. “Did somebody drag you here today?”

Like Dungeons and Dragons enthusiasts wary of a meathead jock, Bigfoot conference attendees and conservancy members sometimes hesitated to be interviewed. When I told them I was originally from Henderson, just down the road from Tyler, they became more at ease.

“Did you grow up hearing stories?” was a typical question.

I truthfully had to answer no. Most Bigfoot sightings occur around Texarkana and in the Big Thicket. Henderson falls between these two regions. I could think of only one person who, out of boredom, had spent nights searching for Sasquatch without ever discovering even a footprint.

Many conservancy members claim to have sighted the creature. Woolheater said he and his girlfriend saw Bigfoot walking beside a remote highway while driving from New Orleans to Dallas in 1994. Daryl Colyer sighted Bigfoot near the Trinity River in 2004, claiming the creature smelled “like a sweaty horse.” The conservancy maintains the creature has the population size of the jaguarundi (a medium-sized wild cat whose Texas population is estimated at less than 50) and the intelligence of an orangutan, and lives in the forest’s most remote sections.

“In my lifetime, I’d like to see credible evidence of this animal brought to light and public acceptance,” Woolheater said.

Representing a scientific organization that is largely shunned by academia, Colyer spoke indignantly about this treatment during his slideshow, “Bigfoot 101.” He mentioned University of Florida anthropologist David Daegling’s 2004 book, Bigfoot Exposed: An Anthropologist Examines America’s Enduring Legend. Fellow believers in the audience grumbled. Among other debunkings, the book states there is no scientific proof supporting the creature’s existence and that its recent resurgence is mostly because believers share stories over the Internet.

“My question to Daegling is, ‘Who’s been looking?’ ” Colyer told the crowd. “Do we have any teams out there right now heavily funded by a university? TBRC members do the best we can, but at the end of the day, we’ve got to go back home and put food on the table. We need funding. Money talks.”

Until a Bigfoot is killed or captured, believers hope for other evidence. Bill Dranginis sold his “EyeGotcha” surveillance video equipment at a vendor’s table. Cameras covered in metal grates could be fixed to trees. “Hair snares”—triangular-shaped metal tubes whose inner walls were lined with stiff steel brushes—could be baited and hung from branches to snag a section of Bigfoot hide for DNA study. During one presentation, conservancy wildlife biologist Alton Higgins said the group had spent over $50,000 for surveillance equipment in the Piney Woods. So far they had procured many images of black bears playing with hair snares.

“Do you think Bigfoot can smell the batteries in the camera?” a man asked Dranginis.

“That’s a good question,” he replied.

Believers blame the lack of evidence on the creature’s remote habitat, seemingly nocturnal nature, and the fact that most animals crawl into a crevasse or tucked-away spot to die. “We have 40 cameras out now,” Woolheater said, referring to a Texas-Oklahoma-Arkansas-Louisiana forestland roughly the size of Oregon. “Do the math. It’s very unlikely we’ll get a photo.”

As Dranginis explained the “Eyegotcha” method, American Museum of Natural History primate biologist Sarmiento began his afternoon presentation on the world’s great apes. With shoulder-length black hair, Sarmiento resembled Tarzan’s urban cousin. His slides, displaying many great-ape genitalia, resembled a college lecture. He said species were dying out as human populations encroached on their habitats. Neither negating nor confirming Bigfoot’s existence, Sarmiento said the Patterson-Gimlin footage was not of a great ape.

“The depicted creature’s large mammary glands are hairy, whereas those of humans or chimpanzees,” he said, clicking onto a new slide, “are clearly not.”

Squirming in their seats, a middle-aged couple glanced at each other over their young boy’s head.

Matthiessen, the keynote speaker, is a tall thin man with sunken eyes and gray hair. As late-afternoon attendees sat outside discussing college football or sightings, he leaned against a railing, scribbling on a legal pad. His 1978 National Book Award-winning travelogue, The Snow Leopard, recounts how Matthiessen saw what he believed to be a Yeti in the mountains of Tibet. He had been brought to the Texas Bigfoot Conference by his friend, John Mionczynski, a wildlife biologist who in 1972 encountered Bigfoot in the Big Horn Mountains, which stretch from Wyoming into Montana. Contemplating whether to write a book on the subject, Matthiessen paused to muse on Bigfoot and his worldwide brethren.

“People have a need for story and myth,” Matthiessen said, watching a crowd form around Gimlin. “Most scientists are very skeptical. And they should be. But they shouldn’t have a completely closed mind about it. Remember the coelacanth, a so-called fossil fish? It was believed to be 200,000 years extinct and then turned up 20 years ago off the Madagascar coast. I saw some myself in a tank while visiting the Comoros Islands. So, you know, stranger things have happened than Bigfoot.”

Matthiessen squinted into the humid afternoon sun. Two men with gelled hair, camouflage T-shirts, and fanny packs walked past.

“I’m all for mystery,” he said. “I think it’s going to be a very dull world when there’s no more mystery at all.”

Feeling trampled by Bigfoot, my wife decreed we put an end to the proceedings. After a stop at Starbucks, we sped away from Tyler. Office buildings and chain stores gave way to thick forest and red-dirt back roads. As Catherine unbuttoned her jacket, the T-shirt Bigfoot emerged from its hiding spot to stare at the quarter moon ascending the dashboard.

See the original article at the Texas Observer.

Mike Ford won’t forget the first black bear he saw near his home in Red River County, about 120 miles east of Dallas. It was the middle of a hot summer day in 2007. Ford, a former SMU quarterback raised in Mesquite, was driving along a dirt road when he noticed a black animal well ahead of his truck.

“I first thought it was a turkey because we’ve got lots of wild turkeys in this area and they’re pretty dark colored,” Ford said. "Then I saw that the animal was too big for a turkey and I figured it was a wild hog but that didn’t look right, either. As I got within about 200 yards, I thought I was seeing a black calf.

“Then it moved and there was no doubt what it was. I’ve seen lots of black bears while I was fishing and hunting in the Rocky Mountains, but I didn’t expect to see one in northeast Texas.”

As wild bears spread into eastern Texas from neighboring Oklahoma, Arkansas and Louisiana, more Texas residents can expect bear encounters. Texas Parks and Wildlife biologist Ricky Maxey has logged reports of 14 bear sightings in the last year.

That’s a record number but Maxey wonders if it translates to more bears or merely a heightened awareness from the public, which understands the importance of documenting the animals. Most sightings are like Ford’s experience – from a vehicle at a distance.

Outdoor enthusiasts will just have to put up with the bears, protected from Texas hunters. Deer hunting season starts Saturday and with moderate temperatures conducive to increased hiking and camping, more Texans will be in the woods. Curious and intelligent with an insatiable appetite for almost any fruit, vegetable or meat, bears can be highly mischievous.

Nathan Garner, TP&W district wildlife biologist for the Tyler area, said he has two reports that were up close and personal, but both witnesses declined to be interviewed for this story. One encounter occurred not far from the Neches River near the proposed National Wildlife Refuge site in Cherokee County. The other was in the Sulphur River area. Garner said close encounters with East Texas bears are very rare.

Maxey credits habitat conditions for the erratic increase in bear sightings reported to the state agency. When conditions are lush and there’s plenty to eat, bears are less visible. In the 1980s, there were five East Texas bear sightings. That increased to 34 in the 1990s and 49 since the most recent turn of the century.

Since 2000, bear sightings were documented in 23 East Texas counties, and the bruins are showing up more often on remote game cameras used by hunters to monitor deer feeder activity.

“A black bear is essentially a 200-pound raccoon,” Maxey said. “Bears have a tremendous sense of smell, and most of their waking hours are spent following their noses to a food source. The food source is often corn or other bait that hunters use to attract deer.”

Twelve of the counties where bears have been seen in the last nine years border Oklahoma, Arkansas or Louisiana. Five others are one county removed from the border with those neighboring states, lending credence to the theory that bears are migrating into East Texas.

No confrontations between bears and people have been reported, but encounters are most likely during deer season, when hunters spend a lot of time in the woods. Maxey cautions hunters that bears are strictly protected by law.

Since black feral hogs are sometimes mistaken for bears, hunters must be absolutely certain of their target when hog hunting. It would be less expensive to travel to Canada and pay a hunting outfitter than to be convicted of killing a Texas bear.

Maxey said the bears in Red River County are probably young males forced out of Oklahoma by mature males.

Maxey added that the only bear killed by a car in East Texas was a young male run over on Interstate 30 near Mount Vernon in May 1999.

Texas officials have no idea how many bears have drifted into East Texas, but Chris Comer believes the number is small. Comer is an associate wildlife professor at Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogdoches. For three years, he’s overseen graduate student studies designed to quantify bear numbers and habitat quality.

“We had a graduate student in Red River County who put out more than 350 hair snares to collect hair samples from a bear that brushes up against them,” Comer said. “He only got one hair sample. I suspect the number is much less than 100 bears and possibly no more than 20.”

East Texas black bears were common in the 1800s and Comer said a bear was reportedly killed in Sabine County near the Louisiana border as recently as 1964. Bears were hunted for meat, their fat was used as cooking grease and their hides were tanned. The large animals were also viewed as threats to settlers’ livestock and crops.

The Big Thicket of southeast Texas was the region’s last stronghold for bears. Still largely undeveloped, the Big Thicket is a vast expanse of bottomland hardwood forest north of Beaumont.

In Hardin County, “Uncle Bud” Bracken was considered the bear hunting champ, with 305 hides accumulated during his career in the 19th century. Two hunters in Liberty County reported killing 182 bears from 1883-1885. All their hunting occurred in a 10-mile radius of the Trinity River drainage. Another prominent Big Thicket bear hunter was Ben Lilley, who reportedly killed 118 of the animals in 1906.

Because of shrinking East Texas habitat, black bears will never return to those numbers, but the animals are thriving in southeastern Oklahoma. Joe Hemphill has been monitoring bears for Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation for 20 years, and he conservatively estimates as many as 800 bears in the four-county area across the Texas border from Red River County.

Oklahoma had its first modern bear season in October with a strict quota of 20 bears. Archery hunters bagged 16 bruins during the initial 23 days of hunting. Then the season was expanded to muzzle-loading firearms. The biggest bear reported by an archery hunter weighed 345 pounds after it was dressed and quartered. Its live weight was more than 400 pounds.

Hemphill received more than 40 nuisance bear reports last summer. He managed to trap and relocate three of the problem bears.

“Most of the nuisance bears are young males,” he said, “but we’re trapping more nuisance females, and that seems to indicate an expanding bear population. People want to make pets out of these bears, and that’s a bad idea. Bears are powerful animals, and they can be very dangerous when they lose their fear of people.”

Part of the Red River County ranch that Mike Ford owns has been in his family for more than 100 years.

“It’s exciting to think that the bears were here when my family first owned this land and now they’re coming back,” Ford said. “The landowners that I’ve talked with are excited about it. They appreciate all the native animals, whether they’re turkeys or bears.”

BLACK BEARS AT A GLANCE

What: A large omnivorous mammal once native to most of Texas.

Size: Adult bears are five to six feet long and weigh 150 to 400 pounds.

Diet: Bears eat just about anything, including leaves, nuts, berries, roots, fruits, tubers, insects and meat. About 90 percent of their diet is vegetarian.

Habitat: Bears can survive from the deserts of the Trans-Pecos region to the deep forests of the Piney Woods. They den in hollow trees, brush piles, thickets, rock crevices or caves.

Personality: Intelligent, shy and secretive. Most bears work hard to avoid contact with humans. Mothers with cubs are protective of their offspring.

Reproduction: Females mature at 3 to 5 years. On average, they give birth to two cubs every other year.

Life expectancy: About 15 to 18 years.

Home range: About 20,000 acres for a male, 5,000 acres for a female.

Speed: A bear can run as fast as 35 mph for short bursts.

Texas status: Threatened. Bears are protected by state law. The fine for killing a bear is as high as $10,000 plus restitution fees.

Population trend: Bears are moving back into Texas from Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana and Mexico

IF YOU ENCOUNTER A BEAR

• Talk in a calm manner while backing slowly away. Do not make direct eye contact.

• Do not run. This may trigger a bear’s chase instincts.

• If a bear approaches you, stand your ground, raise your arms, backpack or jacket to appear larger. Yell at the bear.

• If attacked, fight the bear aggressively to let the animal know you are not easy prey. Do not play dead.

PREVENTING BEAR CONFRONTATIONS

• Never feed bears. Feeding teaches the bears to expect food from humans and is essentially a death sentence for the animal and potentially dangerous for any humans the habituated bear encounters.

• Keep your camp clean with food stored away from tent or trailer.

• Hunters should discard remains of processed game far away from the campsite.

• Hang automatic game feeders beyond the reach of bears.

• Deer corn in piles or open feeders attract more bears.

• Switch from corn to soybeans for wildlife bait to attract fewer bears.

BEAR INFORMATION ON THE INTERNET

• www.bebearaware.org

• www.bbcc.org

• www.fws.gov/endangered/

• www.tpwd.state.tx.us

TO REPORT AN EAST TEXAS BEAR SIGHTING

Call 903-679-9821 or 409-384-6894 or e-mail This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

EAST TEXAS COUNTIES WITH DOCUMENTED BEAR SIGHTINGS SINCE 2000

Angelina, Bowie, Cass, Cherokee, Franklin, Grayson, Hardin, Jasper, Jefferson, Lamar, Marion, Montgomery, Morris, Newton, Orange, Panola, Polk, Red River, Rusk, Sabine, San Augustine, Shelby, Wood.

Original article featured in The Dallas Morning News.

The 2009 Texas Bigfoot Conference was held for the first time in Tyler, Texas, at the Caldwell Auditorium. The move to Tyler from Jefferson certainly appears to have been a success, as event income and attendance were significantly greater than last year’s event. The attendance final figure was 425, with many of the attendees from Tyler and the surrounding area.

The Tyler Convention and Visitors Bureau provided tremendous support and encouragement for the event. The TBRC also experienced great cooperation from the hospitality industry and the Discovery Science Place, Tyler’s award winning science center. During this first year, a very positive foundation has been laid for future symposia.

While the chosen venue was spacious and attractive, some attendees commented that a few sections of the auditorium had sound quality issues, and there appeared to be a bit of inconvenience at times with traffic flow into and out of the vendor area. Overall, however, the overwhelming assessment was that Caldwell Auditorium represented a quantum leap over previous conference locations used in Jefferson.

Over and above all of the positives already mentioned, however, attendees were greatly pleased with the conference itself, along with the related activities. Diligent planning and hard work fell together in a good way and each of the events from Thursday through Sunday came off without a hitch. The speaker lineup was arguably one of the most remarkable assemblies ever presented for a sasquatch symposium. One attendee remarked that arranging for all those outstanding individuals to be together on the same weekend was extraordinary.

The TBRC always strives to create a positive experience for guest speakers, and by all appearances, that goal was attained. The speakers, in turn, produced some excellent presentations. Unfortunately, there are no plans to produce a DVD of the speaker sessions.

Among the speakers, Peter Matthiessen was the most prominent, and the TBRC was honored that he agreed to participate in the conference. Matthiessen is greatly interested in the sasquatch phenomenon, as is well known, and he shared some stories regarding some of his field endeavors in the Pacific Northwest. He also shared details of a conversation from some years back that he had with a prominent pioneering conservationist friend from Southeast Texas who told him of upright hairy “wildmen” seen from time to time in the Big Thicket area. Interestingly enough, during Matthiessen’s banquet presentation he said that he was not divulging everything he could say on the subject, and he announced that he was working on a sasquatch-related book.

All the other speakers were outstanding as well, and several of them could easily serve as headline speakers at any conference. One auspicious byproduct of the conference is that both Peter Matthiessen and Esteban Sarmiento are now serving on the TBRC Board of Advisors, and they have already proved helpful in supporting the organization.

This year’s Texas Bigfoot Conference was a wonderful experience in many ways, and the TBRC looks forward with great anticipation to what the future may hold in Tyler.

They came from across the country to share experiences and become informed on the latest scientific clues that may prove that their belief in the so-called Bigfoot is not so implausible. The need to validate the existence of Bigfoot or Sasquatch has been an ongoing effort since the 1950s and it was thriving Saturday in Tyler.

For the first time, the Texas Bigfoot Research Conservancy’s Bigfoot Conference met in Tyler, after outgrowing former venues. An estimated 500 people lingered around D.K. Caldwell Auditorium to hear sociologists, biologists and TBRC organizers speak about scientific research on the infamous hairy creature.

Daryl Colyer, vice chairman of TBRC, said he’s turned his childhood interest in Bigfoot into a full-time hobby.

“I’ve heard a lot of legends and stories from family when I was growing up,” he said. “When I got older it was all folklore but I decided to research it for myself before making an opinion about it.”

Colyer said his encounter with a Bigfoot-type creature occurred in Liberty County just off the Trinity River. He said while he and his wife were walking a trail at dusk, they spotted a hairy, reddish brown figure with a musky smell crossing the trail.

“I was in shock, in total awe,” he said. “From there, legend became a reality. I don’t care if people don’t believe me. That’s what I saw.”

“It is strange and it is bizarre. It’s difficult for most people to believe. But we need to be aware of the facts. It can exist. We know that Gigantopithecus blacki once existed. So it’s not that far of a stretch.”

Researchers say Gigantopithecus blacki is an extinct genus of ape that lived hundreds of thousands of years ago in China and other parts of Asia.

“It was a species. We assume it’s extinct, but this may be what people are seeing,” Colyer said. “It’s tough for people to wrap their minds around it.”

FIGHTING STEREOTYPES

Attendees at the conference came from various backgrounds and ages. Baylor University sociologist Carson Mencken told the audience that while the typical casual Bigfoot believer has been someone from a low socioeconomic group, a minority and/or has a nonprofessional vocation, there are plenty of educated professionals who are interested in researching the creature. He said the Bigfoot believer as a backwoods eccentric is a product of media hype.

“The media likes interesting stories. They are more interested in finding strange people with tin foil on their heads. We want to dispel those stereotypes.”

He added, “It’s not just gullible people that didn’t go to school. We have people of all walks of life doing research on Bigfoot.”

Lance Hightower, of Tulsa, Okla., is an example of the not-so-typical Bigfoot enthusiast. He attended the conference for the first time with his 11-year-old son, Sterling.

“I fell into a weird category,” he said. “I’m a minority, I’m self-employed, a professional and I’m a doctor.”

Hightower said he’s been drawn to Bigfoot lore since he was a young boy. He said he came to the conference to be among other “like-minded people” who are serious about the subject.

“Since I was (Sterling’s) age I’ve always been fascinated with Bigfoot,” he said. “It really wasn’t until a brother of mine had an encounter that it began to resurface my interest.”

Hightower said his brother and a friend had a close encounter with a large ape-like figure while relaxing at a riverbank. He said the creature chased them as they fled in their truck.

“He waited two years to tell me that story and he’s told it to me five or six times since then and the story’s never changed,” Hightower said.

Hightower said his Christian faith does not keep him from believing Bigfoot exists.

“God made everything. Why can’t he still make a creature like this that we’ve never seen?”

An avid outdoorsman, Hightower said he hopes to one day spot Bigfoot as he continues his own research.

A FORMER SKEPTIC

Bob Gimlin, the man who partnered with Roger Patterson to record the first sighting of Bigfoot, was at the conference. He signed autographs and took photos with admirers.

“I came down here because I feel people are interested in coming to these conferences and I want to enlighten thing about my experience,” he said.

Patterson recorded the infamous video of a supposed Bigfoot on Oct. 20, 1967. Gimlin said rights were sold to different companies in 1972 and since then, the famous image of an ape-like creature in mid-stride has surfaced around the world. He said he has made no money from it. Gimlin recounted that day at a creek in northern California.

“I was pretty much a skeptic at the time,” he said. “We were hoping to see one but didn’t think we’d see one. Some people claim it was fake, that it was a man wearing a suit. It’s been hashed out for 42 years.”

Gimlin said he was frightened by the creature that’s estimated to be about 7-4 and weighed between 500 and 800 pounds.

“My heart was jumping up and down inside my body,” he said. “When you see something that’s nearly 8 feet tall covered with hair and is not supposed to exist, it makes you pretty scared.”

He added, “I know it was real. This is America, where you can have whatever thought you want and say what you think.”

WHAT NEXT?

Colyer said scientists claim there are 10 million species yet to be discovered and 10,000 to 20,000 new species are discovered every year. He said five new primates have been classified in this decade. Bigfoot believers say if science proves the creature exists, it would be time for government-funded research that might lend a clue into the history of human beings.

“That’s when the real fun begins,” Colyer said. “Maybe anthropology books would have to be rewritten.”

Most accounts of a Bigfoot sighting indicate that the creature is not violent and is often frightened by humans. Believers say they do not want to hurt or capture the animal.

“I think you appreciate it. You protect it,” Hightower said.

Sean Whitley, of Dallas, produced a documentary called “Southern Fried Bigfoot.” It was filmed in parts of East Texas and draws attention to suspected sightings in the South as some believe Bigfoot only appears in the northwest. His film debuted on the Documentary Channel in the spring.

“I keep and open mind. I don’t believe or disbelieve,” he said. “I leave it up to the audience to make their minds up.”

Attendees participated in a survey and submitted results halfway through the conference. One result indicated that 70 percent of those participating thought that Bigfoot’s existence would be confirmed within the next 10 years.

Original article in the Tyler Morning Telegraph.

With the 2009 Texas Bigfoot Conference right around the corner, speakers are preparing to present information on Bigfoot sightings and research to audience members.

The Texas Bigfoot Research Conservancy, a Plano-based nonprofit organization, is preparing to hold the all-day scientific conference, which will include about a dozen speakers, Saturday at the D.K. Caldwell Auditorium, 301 S. College Ave. Saturday’s event is scheduled for 8:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m.

Following the conference, a fundraiser banquet dinner will be held from 7:30 to 9:30 p.m. at the Discovery Science Place, 308 N. Broadway Ave., and will feature a special presentation by wildlife author, photographer and naturalist Peter Matthiessen.

Daryl Colyer, vice chairman of the TBRC board of directors, will be one of the speakers at the conference.

He said he and other TBRC members volunteer their time to participate in the organization, with the sole mission of proving that a Bigfoot-type animal does exist.

Volunteers talk to witnesses who report sightings of the animal and then follow up on sightings that are deemed possibly credible, Colyer said.

Some months, he said, they may get four of five reports, and out of every 10 reports, there are probably two or three worth checking.

At Saturday’s conference, Colyer plans to discuss frequently asked questions with attendees, such as, “Why are there no bones?” and “What does it eat?”

He said they don’t have physical evidence of what it eats, but they do have credible reports from people who’ve seen something tall and upright walking off with chickens from their farm or even fishing.

At the conference, Colyer said he hopes to reach people who are immediately dismissive of the idea of a Bigfoot/Sasquatch.

“It’s been a very frustrating and difficult thing to try to get people to take the subject seriously. ... Hopefully, we can just chip away a little bit at that and get some to take it a little bit more seriously,” he said.

TBRC investigator Jerry Hestand said he will talk about how a Bigfoot report is done and the history of TBRC.

“A lot of people look at our Web site and they look at the reports and don’t know exactly how it’s done,” he said.

Among the specific subjects he will address are how witnesses are contacted and how TBRC determines what category a sighting falls under.

Hestand said he will talk to conference attendees about how 40 years ago, there wasn’t the technology to address certain situations.

TBRC scientific adviser Loren Coleman, a cryptozoologist in Portland, Maine, has attended Texas conferences before and is looking forward to Saturday.

“I really enjoy the Texas conferences because, in general, they have a good mix of people,” including women and children, he said. “I just like to visit different parts of the country.”

Coleman also is an author and has assisted television programs.

Wildlife biologist Alton Higgins, an assistant professor at Mid-America Christian University in Oklahoma City, also will be at the conference.

“We’re very excited about the possibility of having a good turnout,” Higgins said. “I’m looking forward to meeting speakers who are coming.”

Higgins has talked about many subjects at past conferences, such as handprints, human and ape body proportions and biological illustration projects.

This year, because the conference will be in a new venue, he said he was thinking about introducing people to the research TBRC does, discussing the organization’s educational outreach efforts and talking about his 2002 sighting.

“I’ve given talks at a lot of conferences. ... I have gone to different colleges and universities, but I’ve never talked about the fact that I’ve seen one of these things myself,” Higgins said. ”... Probably over half of our speakers, a lot of them like myself, have had sightings.”

According to the TBRC Web site, there have been four reported sightings in Smith County. Descriptions of the incidents can be found at www.texasbigfoot.org.

In a recent sighting, a man captured images of what he thought could be a “Bigfoot” at his home in Kentucky Sept. 1, according to media reports.

Other speakers and guests at the conference include: Esteban Sarmiento, primate biologist; John Mionczynski, wildlife biologist and TBRC adviser; John Bindernagel, wildlife biologist, TBRC advisor and author of North America’s Great Ape: The Sasquatch; Chris Bader and Carsen Mencken, sociologists; Bill Dranginis, developer of non-intrusive “Eye Gotcha” wildlife camera; and Robert Swain, artist and cartoonist.

Bob Gimlin, of Yakima, Wash., also is scheduled to make a guest appearance at the conference.

According to TBRC information, Gimlin and his field partner Roger Patterson filmed a possible female sasquatch in the Six Rivers National Forest of Northern California in 1967.

Hestand said the Bigfoot Conference has grown over the years, going from about 150 people at the first two conferences to 500 to 600 people at the biggest conference.

TBRC would like to have about 800 or 1,000 people at this year’s conference, he said.

The conference will serve as a fundraiser for the organization, with all proceeds going toward the TBRC camera project and new equipment.

“We hope to keep growing (in attendance at the conference). ... We want to watch Tyler’s back and they watch ours,” he said. “We’d like to see it (become an) annual event in Tyler where we make money and the city makes money.”

ECONOMIC IMPACT

Shari Rickman, vice president of the Tyler Convention and Visitors Bureau/Conventions, said Tyler is looking at an estimated economic impact of $40,000 from the conference, due in part to food, lodging, general spending and the renting of buildings.

“We saw the potential of what this conference can bring to the city, not only economically, but also opening (Tyler) up to people who have never been here before,” she said, adding that people could decide to move to Tyler after attending an event, come back for vacation or decide to retire in the city.

Ms. Rickman expressed her appreciation to the community for its efforts with the conference.

“I get support for any conferences coming into (Tyler). We live in a really great and unique community where people are willing to give of their time,” she said.

General admission to the event is $15, but a pre-paid package is available for $60 for premium reserved seating at the conference, as well as a ticket to the dinner.

For more information on the conference, visit www.texasbigfoot.org.

Original article in the Tyler Morning Telegraph.

Fifty years ago construction worker Jerry Crew found his tracks; today biologists pursue him by high-tech means. We are talking about Bigfoot, America’s legendary creature.

People who have supposedly seen Bigfoot in various locales of the USA describe the creature as two to three meters tall, hairy and with ape-like facial features. Also notable are the gait and gigantic footprints left behind. This last feature prompted journalist Andrew Genzoli to coin the term Bigfoot. Nowadays, many prefer the term Sasquatch, a name of North American native derivation, originally meaning “Lord of the Forest.” Is it possible that such a creature can lead its life these days, hidden away from science?

Enormous and Black

Alton Higgins belongs to a growing group of persons who have encountered Bigfoot. And he isn’t just anybody: Alton Higgins is a biologist and teaches at Mid-America Christian University in Oklahoma City. “Theoretically, I can’t claim to have seen a bigfoot, in that the existence of this creature has not been proven.” Nevertheless, Higgins claims to have seen an animal in 2002 in Oklahoma that is not contained in any guide to mammals. “I saw a gigantic, black animal, which ran away from me with great speed on two legs,” says the 57 year-old. He observed the animal from a distance of about 40 m under perfect viewing conditions.

Higgins has pursued Bigfoot for 10 years. In 1998 he found a 40 cm long footprint in Washington State. “I couldn’t assign it to any known animal.” Today he is a member of the Texas Bigfoot Research Conservancy, a group of scientists and outdoor enthusiasts who operate under the banner of the documentation and protection of Bigfoot. “We have installed roughly 30 camera traps in the wilderness of Arkansas, Louisiana, Texas and Oklahoma.” To date, no Bigfoot has crossed the infrared beam to trigger one of the traps.

Search by a Swiss Researcher

For 50 years people like Alton Higgins have searched for proof of the existence of Bigfoot. At the end of the fifties construction worker Jerry Crew found gigantic footprints in the vicinity of the California town of Willow Creek and cast them in plaster of Paris. The photo of him posing with the cast was publicized around the world. It was the starting bell for the search for Bigfoot. Always at the forefront of these efforts was the Swiss René Dahinden. He immigrated from Luzern to Canada in 1953 and spent his life searching for the creature.

From colonial days through to the present day, people supposedly encountered the big-footed creatures time and again; even the native Indians reported the sasquatch. But what, in fact, is a sasquatch? For Jeff Meldrum, an anthropologist at Idaho State University, the answer is Gigantopithecus, a gigantic ape that lived in prehistoric Asia. “Giganto” is considered to have immigrated to North America by way of the Bering land bridge. That sounds reasonable to Alton Higgins: “Gigantopithecus is a good candidate, but what that theory demonstrates above all is that the sasquatch is not a biological absurdity. Such an animal thrived at one time, and there are no biological or ecological reasons why it couldn’t exist today.”

Believers and Fakers

Higgins and Meldrum are among the few scientific advocates of Bigfoot. In 2002 they received prominent support from the well-known chimpanzee researcher Jane Goodall. She revealed in a radio interview that she believes in the existence of Bigfoot, stating, “I am sure that it exists.” Discussions with American Indians had convinced her.

However, many of Goodall’s colleagues think otherwise. David Daegling, an anthropologist at the University of Florida, seriously doubts the existence of Bigfoot. “How can such a large animal remain undiscovered, when it has been looked for for decades? To date, nobody has found bones or other remains of Bigfoot. But that should have happened.” For Daegling, Bigfoot is not a biological phenomenon, but a sociological one: “It is basically an interaction of, on the one hand, Bigfoot believers, for whom it has profound significance – for example as a symbol of raw nature – such that they can’t dismiss it as a myth, and, on the other hand, of fakers, who lay down Bigfoot prints and fake other evidence.” Thereby arise mistaken and imaginary details.

Why no Remains?

It is clear to Alton Higgins that his sighting was not imaginary. “It was no bear and it wasn’t a man,” said Higgins. “Many people in that area have similar reports.” Higgins has explanations why no remains have been found in 50 years. “The sasquatch is rare, it has a long life span, and it decays rapidly after death.” The latter argument holds for other animals as well. “In the USA there are millions of white-tailed deer, but you hardly ever find their bones.”

It is questionable whether Bigfoot will one day leave the realm of legend for that of biological reality. Conversely, it is a fact that new species are constantly being discovered. Recently, the World Wildlife Fund published a report about discoveries in the Mekong Delta area. Over 1,000 new species of plants and animals were found there, including a new species of deer. Even among primates, major discoveries are rather recent: The first scientific description of the Mountain Gorilla was provided only in 1903. Prior to its discovery it was considered to be a myth, a product of the imagination of adventurers.

This article was originally published on 3 May 2009 in the Swiss newspaper Zentralschweiz am Sonntag (Central Switzerland on Sunday).

REFERENCES

Daegling, David. (2004). Bigfoot Exposed: An Anthropologist Examines America's Enduring Legend. 276 pp. AltaMira Press. Walnut Creek, California.
Meldrum, Jeff. (2006). Sasquatch: Legends Meets Science. 304 pp. Forge Books. New York, NY.
The Texas Bigfoot Research Conservancy, www.texasbigfoot.org.

Bigfoot, Sasquatch, Hairy Man, Booger, Wildman. Whatever you prefer to call it; there have been four reported sightings of the elusive creature right here in Smith County.

Coon hunters observed an unknown “animal” south of Tyler in 1963; a couple parked at Lake Palestine had a late night encounter in 1973; three teens report a sighting on Blackhawk Creek near Whitehouse in 2001; and a man has repeated encounters at his residence near Tyler in 2002. Descriptions of the incidents can be found at www.texasbigfoot.org.

Around midnight, deep in the woods, a group of coon hunters claim they “saw a huge animal of some sort, covered in red fur, flaying its arms and making a dreadful howling noise …”

“We saw something very large standing on two feet … It was large, dark and hairy. We could not see details,” a woman reports what she saw while parked with her fiance on a cliff overlooking Lake Palestine late at night.

The sun had just set when some fisherman saw “a big hairy white man like thing” jump out from behind a tree, look at them, then jump a creek—which was far too wide for the average human to jump—before running away.

Daryl Colyer, vice chair of the board of directors of the Texas Bigfoot Research Conservancy (TBRC) grew up hearing lots of stories and has had a few encounters with an unexplainable creature, beginning in 2004. He also volunteers as an investigator for the organization, interviewing people who report sightings, and he will be one of the speakers at the Texas Bigfoot Conference, which is heading to Tyler this year.

TEXAS BIGFOOT CONFERENCE
For those who have seen Bigfoot or are forever in pursuit of the manlike creature, the conference will bring “an impressive list of speakers who present the latest in Bigfoot sightings and research,” according to the TBRC, which has about 50 members.

The Plano-based nonprofit organization is preparing to hold the all-day scientific conference, which will include about a dozen speakers, Sept. 26 at the D.K. Caldwell Auditorium, 301 S. College Ave.

The doors will open at 8:30 a.m. and Colyer will be the first speaker at 9:05 a.m. The conference will conclude with a discussion panel of all the speakers, ending at 6 pm.

Colyer said they are hoping to see 500 to 1,000 people attend the conference, which will be held in Tyler for the first time this year. The conference, which began with 100-150 people in attendance, has been held for the last eight years in Jefferson. He said it has grown in size and ambition and he thinks this year is the best list of speakers they’ve had.

The answer to the mystery of bigfoot is funding and the conference is all about increasing its funds to improve its efforts, Colyer said. They are all volunteers, he added.

Colyer, of Lorena, said about 90 percent of the people he’s talked to who claim they have seen Bigfoot are misidentifications and jokes. But the other 10 percent seem very plausible and are made by credible people, he said. Colyer also helps with the checking and upkeep of camera traps set around Texas. “That’s how we spend our time and resources,” he said.

“So far we don’t have the evidence that’s needed,” Colyer said. People are understandably skeptical that Bigfoot exists but he believes that if they can get a good, clear photograph or video of the creature, people would be inclined to join in.

“We’re hoping to solve this mystery,” he said. “We’re actually pretty serious about it.”

Following the conference, a fundraiser banquet dinner will be held from 7:30-9:30 p.m. at the Discovery Science Place, 308 N. Broadway Ave., and will feature a special presentation by wildlife author, photographer and naturalist Peter Matthiessen, who wrote the Snow Leopard.

General admission to the event is $15 but a pre-paid package is available for $60 for premium reserved seating at the conference and lunch, as well as a ticket to the dinner.

Speakers at the conference include: Esteban Sarmiento, primate biologist; John Mioncynzski, wildlife biologist and TBRC adviser; John Bindernagel, wildlife biologist, TBRC advisor and author of North America’s Great Ape: the Sasquatch; Alton Higgins, wildlife biologist and TBRC investigator; Chris Bader and Carsen Mencken, sociologists; Bill Dranginis, developer of non-intrusive “Eye Gotcha’ wildlife camera; Jerry Hestand, TBRC investigator; Daryl Colyer, TBRC investigator; and Robert Swain, artist and cartoonist.

The TBRC is funded by membership dues, fundraisers, donations, grants and the annual conference. The TBRC desires to enhance the credibility of bigfoot/sasquatch research and facilitate a greater degree of acceptance by the scientific community and other segments of society of the likelihood of a biological basis behind the Sasquatch mystery.

Members and advisers of the TBRC have been featured on the History Channel’s MonsterQuest; the Travel Channel’s Weird Travels; and the Discovery Channel’s Legend Meets Science.

The host hotel offering a discounted price for the event is the Tyler Sleep Inn and Suites, at 5555 S. Donnybrook Ave. Overflow hotels in Tyler include the Baymont Inn and Suites, Country Inn and Suites, Comfort Suites and the Quality Inn Conference Center.

For more information, visit: www.texasbigfoot.org.

(Link to original article in the Tyler Morning Telegraph.)

It seems that new and surprising discoveries regarding the behavior, intelligence, and ingenuity of the great apes are being made on an astoundingly regular basis. This past week scientists revealed a startling discovery regarding chimpanzees. In a study published in the International Journal of Primatology, scientists in the Republic of Congo reported that wild chimpanzees arm themselves with large clubs crafted from branches to pound the nests of bees in order to gain access to the honey inside. In addition, these same chimps also put together “toolkits” made up of different sized wooden implements to help in their quest for the sweet treat.

Primatologists have long been aware that chimps love honey and will go to great lengths to get it. Previous studies have noted how these apes fashion and shape sticks to dip into or pry open nests; however, until now, no one knew just how far chimpanzees would go to gain access to honey. Dr. Crickette Sanz, of the Max Planck Institute of Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, said, “It seems these chimps in central Africa have developed more sophisticated techniques for getting at the honey than populations in eastern and western Africa – maybe it is some kind of regional feature.” He added, “These nests are tough to get into – they can be at the top of the forest canopy, at the end of a branch – and the chimps will go up there and hang at all sorts of precarious angles to get to the honey, using these clubs in any way that they can to access it.” Video footage, taken during four years of observation by researchers, shows chimpanzees pounding concrete-hard nests over 1000 times. Researchers observed some chimps take well over 1000 swings in the morning, stop and rest several hours, and then return in the afternoon to take another 1000 or so swings before finally breaking through and gaining access to the honey.

The chimpanzees of the Congo are also using tools of a more subtle type in their beehive raids. David Morgan, one of the co-authors of the study, from the Wildlife Conservation Society and Chicago’s Lincoln Park Zoo, said, “One of the most exciting aspects is that they are using multiple tools to access the honey that is in these hives.” Morgan and the other researchers noted the use of “toolkits” made up of the large pounding clubs, smaller and thinner “dipping wands,” and smaller sticks used for gaining enough leverage to open a hive. Researchers observed the chimps fashioning these tools and then setting them aside for later use. “They cache them in the canopy,” said Dr. Morgan. This behavior seems to point to forethought and an understanding, at least of some level, of the future. A comparable behavior was reported a few weeks ago in a study of a captive chimp, housed in the Furuvik Zoo. The chimp, named Santino, was observed collecting and fashioning throwing-sized rocks in the morning, creating a hidden cache of these rocks, and then accessing and throwing them at zoo patrons in the afternoon. It seems evident that great apes evaluate the future in ways that are much more complex than previously thought.

Considering this new information, the “wood knocking” behavior sometimes proposed for the sasquatch seems all the more plausible. Even though there have been no visual reports of a sasquatch hitting a large limb against a tree, this should not be surprising, given that chimpanzees, a species long known to exist, have only recently been seen whacking limbs against trees for purposes of extracting honey. It is suspected by some that wood knock sounds heard in remote wooded areas may be attributable to the sasquatch; such sounds have been reported, and recorded, many times. These sounds are said to be distinctly different than the sounds of even the largest woodpeckers. Further, the sounds are often identified at night. Members of the TBRC have heard and recorded such knocks in the woods of East Texas, generally in the middle of the night in extremely remote areas where the involvement of other humans was considered highly unlikely.

The most common theory put forth by researchers who believe the wood-knocking sounds are attributable to the sasquatch centers on communication as the purpose. Others have hypothesized that it is actually an attempt to intimidate and drive off intruders. Perhaps a new theory can now be offered: it is possible, after observing chimpanzees of the Congo pounding bee hives in search of honey, that the wood knocking reportedly heard on occasion in the deep woods of North America is actually an aspect of some sort of food searching activity. Could sasquatches be pounding on trees in an effort to get to some sort of food source like termites or other insects? Porcupines, bears, and other animals strip bark from trees in searches for food. These animals have the benefit of claws to remove bark. Assuming the sasquatch is at least as intelligent as the known great apes, and has no claws, it is not difficult to imagine individuals of the species using crude clubs to hit trees so as to gain access to whatever resources might be found inside. 

With every revelation of newly observed great ape behavior and their incredible cognitive abilities, the plausibility of a rare and elusive species such as the sasquatch inhabiting remote pockets of North American forests becomes increasingly augmented.

Source:

BBC News/Science & Environment.