Texas Bigfoot Research Conservancy

A recent article on the ScienceDaily website discusses the results of a study on the activity level of orangutans (Pongo pygmaeus). It seems that Homo sapiens sapiens is not the only species to have “couch potato” tendencies.

The article, written by Neil Schoenherr, looks at a study conducted by Washington University, located in St. Louis, in which researchers studied the activity levels and energy output of orangutans living in a large indoor/outdoor habitat located at the 230-acre campus of the Great Ape Trust in Des Moines, Iowa. What they observed was fascinating. The researchers found that these captive orangutans used less energy, relative to body mass, than nearly any other eutherian mammal ever measured. This would include comparisons to sedentary humans. What makes the results even more interesting is that the activity level of the orangutans studied is very similar to that of their cousins living in the wild.

Herman Pontzer, PhD, is the assistant professor of anthropology in Arts & Sciences at Washington University and was the lead author of the study. He is quoted in the article as saying, “It’s like finding a sloth in your family tree. It’s remarkably low energy use.”

Dr. Pontzer and his team studied the daily energy expenditure of these great apes for two weeks and discovered an extremely low rate of energy use not previously observed in primates. The results seem to dovetail nicely with the slow growth and reproductive rates of orangutans. Dr. Pontzer speculated that this low metabolic rate might be an adaptation in response to severe food shortages in the orangutan’s native habitats. It is pointed out that the rain forests of Southeast Asia, Borneo, and Sumatra all go through periods where the availability of ripe fruit—the orangutan staple—drops drastically. The study suggests that orangutans have adapted over time to become the ultimate low-energy specialists, decreasing their level of activity, and thus, the number of calories required to function, to avoid starving during these forest cycles when food is scarce.

Once again, a discovery regarding a known great ape species may make an argument moot that is often proposed by skeptics to refute the existence of the sasquatch. These skeptics have a pretty standard arsenal of talking points which they use to refute the existence of the species. They claim that if the sasquatch were real it would have to spend nearly every waking minute eating in order to sustain its huge bulk. This study should surely give pause to those who subscribe to this theory. If the sasquatch is a type of great ape, it is not outlandish to think that they could share certain characteristics with their orangutan cousins; maybe this ability to slow down metabolism and limit energy output to the bare minimum is one of them. The ability to do so would be very valuable and could explain occasional sightings of the sasquatch in atypical locales, like the arid scrub land of West Texas, where food would be much more difficult to come by than regions where rainfall and vegetation are more plentiful.

Another typical argument used by skeptics is that if the sasquatch were real the species would be seen more often. The findings of Dr. Pontzer and his team might help explain the paucity of sightings as well. If the sasquatch does possess this low energy output trait then they probably are not moving around much at certain times of the year when food is harder to come by. The less an animal moves around, the less likely it is to be seen by humans. Also, it is implied in the study that the low-energy output seen in orangutans helps explain their slow rate of growth and low reproductive rate. If true, and if the sasquatch shares the same trait, then it is reasonable to assume that it has a low reproduction rate as well. This would keep the population of this rare animal low. Obviously, the fewer of them there are the less likely they are to be seen.

It seems the more we learn about the documented species of great apes, the less fantastic the possible existence of the sasquatch becomes.

This article was originally published at the Texas Cryptid Hunter blogsite. It has been modified for the TBRC website.

Read the ScienceDaily article here.

“The perfection in the balance of nature is empirical evidence of the creative genius of God.”

- Geraldine Watson

The Big Thicket National Preserve of Southeast Texas has become world famous for its biological diversity. It has been called the biological crossroads of North America. What many do not realize is that if not for the efforts of one Geraldine Watson, the Big Thicket would have disappeared long ago.

Geraldine Watson grew up in Southeast Texas. Her father and mother loved the woods and took her for long walks during which they taught her the names of the plants, trees, and flowers that they encountered. It was not long before she, too, came to love the woods and all of the plants and animals that lived there. She was a country girl who likely would have lived a simple, quiet life if the timber companies had not shown up and started cutting down her beloved woods in the years after World War II. However, they did show up, and Geraldine Watson’s life took a fateful turn.

In the late 1940s and well into the early 1960s, the timber industry was in full swing in the Piney Woods of East Texas. The lumber companies cut the old-growth forest. They took the hardwoods and the long leaf pines. In their places, they planted neat rows of slash pines. Watson saw her beloved forest disappearing before her eyes and decided she needed to buy some wooded property while she still could. Even this little parcel of woods became affected by progress, however, as the property fell victim to eminent domain and was bisected by an overpass built to bypass state Highway 96. This event was the final straw and prompted Watson to join up with Lance Rosier and his fledgling Big Thicket Association in an attempt to save what was left of the woods of Southeast Texas. She had no idea what she was in for.

Taking on developers and the mighty lumber industry was going to be tough. First, the members of the newly formed Big Thicket Association would have to iron out their own differences. To over simplify, there were basically two factions within the group. One group wanted to save acreage in the traditional Big Thicket, which was made up of densely-wooded thicketed wetlands. The other faction wanted to save acreage in what was dubbed the ecological Big Thicket. This group placed a premium on preserving the diversity of the Big Thicket and wanted to save as many varied habitats as possible. This would mean the Big Thicket would be split into small islands, or units, that were non-contiguous. Ultimately, the members of the group reached a compromise and got to work.

The group needed allies to take on their powerful foes and they knew it. They started with a grass roots effort to win over the “Dog People” who lived in the woods and bottoms of the Big Thicket. The “Dog People” were not full-blooded Native Americans; they were the descendants of Anglo settlers, some of whom had come to the area during the days of the Empresarios prior even to the birth of the Republic of Texas. Pioneer life proved too difficult for many of the Anglo women and quite a few died. The men they left behind would often take Native American wives who proved to be made of heartier stuff. Their descendants became known, due to their penchant for using dogs to hunt illegally, as the “Dog People.” These people wanted nothing more than to be left alone. They wanted to hunt, fish, and trap. They had a deep distrust for government and corporations and were convinced to join the efforts of the Big Thicket Association when it became obvious to them that they were going to be barred from using the land being gobbled up by the lumber companies. They would prove to be surprisingly powerful and effective allies. Geraldine Watson was key in winning their support.

“One’s fondness for the area is hard to explain. It has no commanding peak or awesome gorge, no topographical feature of distinction. Its appeal is more subtle.”

- Big Thicket Legacy, University of Texas Press, 1977

Next, the members of the Big Thicket Association won the support of Senator Ralph Yarborough. Senator Yarborough was among the greatest friends the conservation movement in Texas ever had. He was instrumental in securing protected-park-lands status for Padre Island and the Guadalupe Mountains, and he co-wrote the Endangered Species Act of 1973. The Senator’s vision for the area was to turn it into a National Preserve modeled after the proposed Big Cypress National Preserve in Florida. Senator Yarborough’s support proved vital to Watson and to the Big Thicket Association. Also jumping on the bandwagon was Senator Charlie Wilson of Lufkin. It was widely assumed that Wilson was pretty much in the back pocket of Arthur Temple, who was one of the giants in the timber industry. Only Wilson’s fondness for the “old folks” and the "rednecks"—as he called the “Dog People” of Southeast Texas—as well as his fondness for being reelected swayed him to the side of Yarborough and the Big Thicket Association. He told Watson, “I’m going to take care of my rednecks. They are going to come first.” Thus, the Big Thicket Association had two powerful supporters in the U.S. Congress.

While Senators Yarborough and Wilson labored on behalf of the Big Thicket in Washington, Geraldine Watson and the Big Thicket Association continued to work in Texas. Soon, two lawyers from nearby Silsbee, Texas, became involved in the cause. Houston Thompson and Gene Berrington published a small weekly paper called The Pine Needle. They were firmly in the camp of those who wanted to change the political climate of Southeast Texas by taking the power from the timber industry; they wanted to save the Big Thicket. The pair gave Watson a column in their paper in an attempt to educate the locals on all things associated with the Big Thicket. She wrote on the history, geography, and ecology of the region and touted it as a priceless treasure. Thompson and Berrington were instrumental in organizing the support of some locals who lived in the Neches River bottoms. These people had, for decades, hunted the area but were forced out by the timber companies. Berrington provided legal representation for people from the area who had been forced off their land by the lumber companies while Thompson continued to enlist more support from the “Dog People.”

The timber industry did not sit idly by while Watson and the Big Thicket Association went about their work. Instead, they fought tooth and nail to kill the Big Thicket movement in its tracks. No tactic, seemingly, was off limits. They stirred up entire communities by claiming that if the government turned the Big Thicket into a protected area, people would lose their homes, land, oil and gas royalties, and the access to areas that they hunted and fished. The office of The Pine Needle was fire bombed and Houston Thompson was labeled “a homosexual” and “a communist.” Berrington died under mysterious Silkwood-like circumstances in a one-car accident at the age of 34. The local Sheriff claimed Berrington had been drunk, but the local mortician disagreed. The mortician found evidence that Berrington died as the result of a blow to the base of the skull; an injury inconsistent with what one would expect to find as the result of a car accident. This and the lack of blood in the car led the mortician to believe that Gene Berrington was dead before the crash ever occurred. No investigation was forthcoming, however. In addition, officials from the lumber companies took out ads in the paper claiming that pine beetles had infested much of the Big Thicket and harvesting the trees was the only thing that could stop the infestation from spreading to private property. Watson vehemently denied this was true but it was an uphill fight.

The battle quickly became personal for Geraldine Watson when the powers-that-be realized she was the galvanizing force behind the movement to save the Big Thicket. In an interview with David Todd and David Weisman for the Texas Legacy Project, Watson recounted some of the personal trials that she and her family faced during this time.

Watson recalled, “It was pretty bad. If I had known then what it would mean to my family, I would have never gotten involved in the Big Thicket. You never go against the powers-that-be in an area that has a one-product economy because they control the schools, they control the law enforcement people, they control the courts. Everything. Nobody is going to go against them.”

Watson and her children were ostracized. Moreover, they were the object of much derision by many of the locals who worked for and depended upon the timber industry for their livelihoods. Watson recalls being cursed, spit upon, and labeled a communist. To her, the worst part was the treatment her children endured. They were shunned, not invited to parties, assaulted, and harassed because of the activities of their mother. Watson recounted their poor treatment in the Texas Legacy Project interview, “The teachers at school are the wives or daughters of the executives of the lumber companies and they can make it real hard on kids,” she said.

Watson went on to discuss an incident that occurred when her kids, David and Eden, were 14 and 15 years old. They were arrested on a fabricated drug charge and jailed. The two were locked up for two days. Eden was locked in a cell located between the cells of two convicted male criminals and endured all sorts of terrible verbal abuse. Meanwhile, according to Watson, “They beat the snot out of David.” The legal issues hung over the kids’ heads for better than two years. The charges were dropped shortly after the bill passed that created the Big Thicket National Preserve, but the damage was done. Eden broke down shortly after the arrest and had to spend time in a psychiatric facility. David held on until he graduated from high school, but he, too, broke down. The constant stress and turmoil took its toll on Watson’s marriage as well. Watson’s husband was a staunchly conservative Republican. The message, touted loudly by the timber companies, that the liberal Democrats pushing for the establishment of the Big Thicket National Preserve were communists, eventually got to him.

She stopped there and the thought remained unfinished.
 

“Land can be restored and ecosystems can be revived.”

- Geraldine Watson

It took roughly 10 years, but the bill establishing the Big Thicket National Preserve was finally passed and signed into law by President Gerald Ford in October of 1974. The preserve has grown in fits and spurts and now totals roughly 100,000 acres spread across 6 water units and 9 land units. The units are not contiguous. The non-contiguous nature of the unit is due mainly to the fact that, at the time of the Preserve’s establishment, the property between the units was owned by the timber companies; however, it is also, at least partially, a result of the original compromise between the two factions within the young Big Thicket Association which called for preserving as much diverse habitat as possible.

Geraldine Watson spent her later years working for the Parks Service as a ranger. She led tours that educated the public on the diversity of the Big Thicket and also spent many days and nights wandering the preserve’s units collecting plant specimens. She became something of a “rock star” to the botanical world when her book Big Thicket Plant Ecology was published in 1979. The book brought global attention to the region. She later published Reflections on the Neches: A Naturalist’s Odyssey along the Big Thicket’s Snow River (2003). The book tells the story of how the then 63-year-old Watson recreated a canoe trip taken by her father down the Neches River years before. She spent the last few years of her life running her own private nature preserve outside of Warren, Texas.

Geraldine Watson had a couple of opinions that those interested in cryptozoology might find interesting. The first involves the presence of wolves in the Big Thicket. She did not claim to know much about red wolves, which once roamed East Texas, but did claim to have seen another type of wolf. She said, “We have what we’ve always called wolves here. What we always called timber wolves. They claim we don’t have them, never had them, nevertheless, I know what I’ve seen.”

Explorer, author, and naturalist Peter Matthiessen, who spoke at the 2009 Texas Bigfoot Conference, was a friend and admirer of Watson. Part of the reason Matthiessen was willing to come all the way to Texas to speak at the conference was the proximity of Tyler, Texas, to Watson’s home outside of Warren. He had hoped to visit her while in Texas, but she died before he had the opportunity. During his presentation at the conference, Matthiessen did mention that he had spoken to Watson about “wild man” sightings in the Big Thicket. While she had not seen one, she related stories told to her by her father about rumored sightings and encounters. She confided to Matthiessen that she was convinced that the undocumented and enigmatic species had lived in the Big Thicket, if not now, certainly in the past.

All who enjoy the Piney Woods of East Texas and the wilds of the Big Thicket National Preserve owe a huge debt of gratitude to Geraldine Watson. Without her efforts, there simply would not be a Big Thicket. She would have told you that she was nothing special. She was just a country girl who loved the woods and did not want to see it go away. To her, it was really just that simple. Geraldine Watson was an ordinary person who happened to do extraordinary things.

We should all aspire to be so “ordinary.”

Jerry Hestand dropped a 25-pound sack of plaster of paris over his shoulder and set a brisk pace for the Red River. The Bigfoot Bounty Hunters had no problem keeping up on an early spring day. They were a pack of kids on mission: Search for the legendary beast and along the way capture footprints of the many critters inhabiting the rolling hills of North and East Texas.

The tasks of the day were to make plaster casts of as many different animals as they could find, retrieve pictures from a camera trap, and replace the camera’s batteries and memory card. The 16 fourth grade students, some parents and younger siblings hiked a mile or so into the field for the operation.

Hestand is a 14-year veteran fourth grade science teacher at Bells Elementary School. And this is not your typical science club. When Hestand uses the words field trip, he’s being literal. These young scientists sport boots and jeans, or camo, and heft buckets of plaster and sacks of sardines (bait not snacks.)

Hestand carried eco-scientist type high-tech gear in a backpack. A giant smile on his face and binoculars draped around his neck, Hestand watched as his students explored the nature as they came upon it. Periodically, one would exclaim “Wow!” “Look!” or “Ehew, yuck!” and an excited group would form around him or her to examine the find.

The more traditional science and math takes place back in the classroom where the students will measure their specimens and calculate the critters’ sizes. They also research what type of animals’ tracks they’ve captured and information about their habitats and habits.

Before loading the outdoor-skids into cars for the trip to the field, Hestand gathers them into his classroom. This is the scene for the ever-necessary lecture on rules of safety in the out of doors.

“What are the rules?” he asked.

“Stay together. Stay within a grownup’s sight. Wear long pants (some didn’t heed this warning and were sorry). Take water and a snack.” “Watch out for poison ivy.”

And he asked them what were they were looking for?

“Animal tracks!” the students yelled.

“And where will we find them?”

“In the mud,” came their reply in unison.

“Any other rules?”

“Don’t climb over any fences.”

They chose companions for the car trip to some land along the Red River, just a little north and east of their school. A private property owner allows Hestand and his young scientists to use his land. On this field trip day, someone forgot to unlock the gate, so the hike in was a lot longer than planned. That might have meant some anxious moments for parents who expected to meet their children an hour or so later.

The event was closer to three hours. Some of the parents who helped with the transport left early to return students who had siblings in track meets or other events themselves — and reassure other parents that everything was fine, just an unavoidable delay. The remaining team seemed relieved when a dad showed up at the end with a truck and empty flatbed trailer to drive them back to the main road.

But first the group fluttered across the landscape, finding tracks, carcasses, ant hills and many prickly plants. They hit the mother lode when they reached the Red River. They found a place where the animals gathered to take a drink where the river slowed but wasn’t stagnant. The wildlife had worn away the plants and provided the perfect mud field. Hestand demonstrated how to mix plaster of paris to the perfect consistency for casting tracks.

They mixed the white slop enthusiastically, so much so that their clothes were decorated with it.

Their excitement obvious by the hopping up and down and nervous chatter, the youngsters contained their enthusiasm enough to keep from stepping on tracks at the edges. By the end of the day, they successfully had cast “beaver, raccoon, possum, turkey and large water birds, probably blue heron,” Hestand reported in an e-mail Monday.

Students on the field trip were far too busy exploring the wonders of nature to submit to any interviews. But their interest was evident.

After their exercise of casting prints by the river, the group hiked east across a field to a ravine that held a tributary creek to the Red River. This was the site of their first camera trap. Hestand and some of the fathers helped students negotiate the steep bank, about 25 feet high, to reach the camera location. Some found it necessary to test their waterproof capability of their field boots in the creek. Others explored “better” routes up the embankment.

Students who had picked up skeletons and poked at carcasses, showed total disgust as they opened the tins of sardines used to bait the camera traps. The bait has drawn families of wild hogs, a large boar and a doe and her fawn in front of the camera’s lens, Hestand said.

Bigfoot Bounty Hunters came about when students found out Hestand had appeared on the television show “Monsterquest” which airs on the Travel and History channels. The series features scientists investigating mythical creatures and tales. Hestand said he has been a Bigfoot investigator since 2001, when he became a member of the Texas Bigfoot Research Conservancy. His non-fiction interest grew from his love of classic horror tales, in this case “Legend of Boggy Creek” and “Creature from Black Lake.”

When students heard of his television fame, they often asked him about what he had seen on his trips into the woods and swamp lands.

“I told them a few stories during free time and some of them started to look up some of my investigations and contributions to the TBRC,” Hestand said. “Some of them wanted me to take them on an investigation, so I decided to have them meet me after school one afternoon so they could start their own group with my help.”

About 25 students showed up for the first meeting and they’ve gathered every Monday ever since. The students named their group The Bigfoot Bounty Hunters. They had a contest to design a logo, which now appears on T-shirts. The Bounty Hunters set some goals: They want to find an undiscovered animal, be on television, go on campouts and visit different places where Bigfoot sightings have been reported, learn to hike and canoe.

“We want to learn how to use a GPS, use the Internet to research, learn animal sounds and learn how to make a fire,” Hestand said.

Some of the students have accomplished almost all of their goals — and more. On numerous field trips, they have collected dozens of plaster casts of animal prints. They have set up camera traps (digital cameras with night vision lenses that capture images of animals drawn to the area with bait.) They have watched and helped replace batteries and download pictures from the cameras to laptop computers.

“Three students went with me on a trip to Fouke, Arkansas (Bigfoot sighting central and the setting of Legend of Boggy Creek.) and traveled the bayou at night,” Hestand wrote recently. "We found two huge alligator carcasses that poachers had probably shot for fun (lesson in ecology). We have started a skull collection and we go to the Internet to identify the animal. So far we have found coyote, deer, cow and horse.

“We are working on a Facebook page and we plan to have an end of year camp out.”

Parents support the effort with seven accompanying one field trip and others designing the T-shirts. One father on the field trip said he is just so happy to see his kids out in the fresh air and excited about learning.

The students are selling their T-shirts and field guides called “Critters of Texas,” pocket-size books picture animals and their footprints. The funds go to buying camera equipment and other implements for their scientific inquiries.

“We are planning to award ‘merit badges’ next year, example: Bone patch for finding and identifying bones,;(a) track badge, casting excellent track and identify animal; report badge, write an interesting report about a subject related to our research including pictures or illustrations,” Hestand wrote in an e-mail.

Hestand said the fourth graders, as they prepare for promotion to fifth grade, were worried they could no longer be Bigfoot Bounty Hunters.

“I assured them the group would be open to students interested in nature and they would continue to be junior investigators as long as they were willing to spend their time learning about the world around them,” Hestand said.

What are the limits to learning when the whole world is your classroom?

Original article in the Sherman Herald Democrat.

 

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.