The argument for the existence of Bigfoot, an as yet undiscovered member of the primate family as many anthropologists have speculated remains under debate. According to the late Doctor Grover Krantz, Sasquatch in North America was most likely due to Gigantopithecus, an extinct giant Gorilla from the Asian continent who had migrated across the Aleutian Island chain thousands of years ago when the seas had withdrawn. The species according to him had acclimated to the Pacific Northwest. Krantz observed that the only way science would ever take research seriously would be if a specimen were shot and killed saying that capture of these fleet and powerful beings would probably be impossible.

Theories

Doctor Jeff Meldrum, believes from his research that Bigfoot is a missing link in the primate evolutionary chain that has managed to survive in remote areas and keeping beyond the normal realm of civilized human activity. Sightings and other forensic evidence only being left when accidental encounters occur, perhaps even territorial conflicts where human infringement is warned off with rock throwing, barriers erected on trails with large tree limbs, or even blood curdling screams unlike either human or known apes. Sometimes these threats are not enough and even more sinister confrontations occur.

Another take

Lloyd Pye is another expert all his own having devised a number of interesting theories on everything from Sasquatch to UFO’s. He constantly informs college students when giving lectures to forget their previous programming by conventional education and think outside the limits of the box educators have created for them. Pye believes that Bigfoot is merely the last surviving Neanderthals living within the wilderness of many parts of Canada and America. Neanderthal is stronger and more robust than Homo sapiens better adapted at covering ground faster through rugged and dense foliage than modern man. Neanderthals are also nocturnal therefore possessing night vision much like predatory animals who hunt at night. There is simply no way for man to effectively detect or pursue them whenever there is an encounter deep in the shadows of the forest after nightfall.

Idiotic entertainment

We see programs all the time on TV. Either documentaries or actual shows which allow the audience to view amateurs and primate researchers making plaster casts of foot impressions, taking hair samples, blasting the actual recordings of the great apes into the wilderness night as they plod along stupidly thinking they are going to lure a much faster, intelligent creature, who is more powerful into revealing itself to them! These bungling adventurers will never achieve their objectives as they are merely advertising their presence and driving their subjects further away!

Where they occur

Encounters tend to happen quite by accident usually by a solitary group or individual and a normally quiet and rarely traveled region far away from towns and normal traffic. In Canada some of the vastest stretches of wilderness often reveal chance sightings. The famous Transcontinental Highway reaches from the eastern seaboard to the Pacific Northwest and is often the site of the occasional sightings by motorists who report large bipedal creatures running across the road caught momentarily by the headlights. In Alaska the Eskimo or Inuit Tribes report frequent sightings along rivers where they report seeing the Sasquatch foraging for food. Occasionally these people will snooze at night in their vehicles after a long day’s hunting or fishing to rest up before driving home. It is not unusual for an Inuit to report that while dozing he awakes to be startled by a giant man-like figure covered in fur yet having a very human face staring through the car window at them!

Fatality of the unknown

According to the memoirs of former President Theodore Roosevelt that the American Indians often bequeathed large areas they suspected were Big Foot territory as forbidden to trespass into. As much as the Native American needed these hunting grounds they were obliged simply to bypass them in order to avoid confrontations with Sasquatch even though they considered them to be the spiritual protectors of the forest. These Gods of the land as the Indians thought of them were also capable of using their deadly strength to punish those who violated their territory. As was recorded in Theodore Roosevelt memoirs, two fur trappers who, either unknowingly or willfully, violated a forbidden area and began setting animal traps. Days later they returned and after splitting up to gather their captured Beaver and Martins who had been snared they agreed to meet back at their camp fire.

Gruesome aftermath

As the day grew on and sunset began to approach one fur trapper noticed an unnerving silence in the area and hastened to finish up and leave, but upon not seeing his partner the man went to search and made a terrifying discovery. The body of the man named Bauman, his buddy lay close to the banks of a creek in a cluster of huge footprints. His neck had been snapped like a twig. In the dimming light of a sinking sunset the trapper began to panic! Carrying the body and loading it onto the back of a horse in the coming darkness while wondering who or what had murdered his buddy was too much for him to stomach. He quickly mounted his horse leaving many of the animals that would have made profitable pelts and got out of there in a hurry. Little wonder Native American tribes in the area considered those grounds to be sacred.

Credibility

This particular account is one of the first documented in a book and especially by a trusted authority at the turn of the 20^th Century. However in newspapers of small towns in Oklahoma are numerous articles written about disturbing sightings and encounters by local town folk of monsters or creatures out in the dense woods and, at times, on the properties of land owners of the normally small quiet hamlets where farmers made their homes on the edge of foreboding stretches of wilderness. These articles appear on the pages of local newspapers published from the 1930’s and several decades afterward into the 1970’s. Describing sightings as monsters in the night, vocalizations heard by campers, sightings by turkey hunters, and even daytime Bigfoot encounters described by fishermen. Could some of these sightings have fallen under the category of mistaken identity of black bears which were and still are numerous in the region-of course!

Other causes

Black Bears have been observed to walk for short distances but lack the long arm swinging stride of the classic Bigfoot sighting where the entity may leave an incredibly long space between footprints and be able to cross a two lane black top road in three steps. Undoubtedly, the human mind is capable of mistaking other animals, people, or even moving objects when they are obscured by vegetation or shadows in a wooded setting for the legendary Sasquatch. Just as in UFO sightings the human mind is notoriously bad at distinguishing what it is seeing from confusion and then very capable of inaccurately recalling the event as many police and cross examining attorneys will attest to.

In Part IV we will examine what appear to be disturbingly real reports!