Bigfoot Society - Oklahoma Wood Apes Encounters in the Valley of the Apes | Area X | Michael Mayes

Episode Date: August 20, 2022

#144Michael Mayes is a teacher of history and former coach who resides in Central Texas. An avid folklorist, he has long been fascinated by the ghostly tales of historical and contemporary Texas as well as mysteries of the natural world. Mayes has authored three books (Patty: A Sasquatch Story, Shadow Cats: The Black Panthers of North America, and Valley of the Apes: The Search for Sasquatch in Area X) and is the owner/writer of the Texas Cryptid Hunter blog. Michael can be reached via email at [e-mail] or via his website at Michaelcmayes.com.Episode Resources:For more info on the N.A.W.A.C - https://www.woodape.orgMichael's website - https://www.michaelcmayes.comMichael's blog - http://texascryptidhunter.blogspot.comMichael on Twitter - https://twitter.com/tcryptidhunterMichael on Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100063254106625Michael's Books (affiliate links)Valley of the Apes - https://amzn.to/3K9KflLShadow Cats - https://amzn.to/3Ck1LliPatty: A Sasquatch Story - https://amzn.to/3PEkCL3FOR MORE INFO ON THE VAN METER VISITOR FESTIVAL:https://www.facebook.com/vanmetervisitorfestival/_____________________________Join us over on Patreon! Get access to more info about what happened recently with the N.A.W.A.C at Area X in the After Show, a whole library of extended shows, exclusive merch like a membership card and stickers, watch me interview guests weekly live on video, a Patron-only Discord and more.https://www.patreon.com/thebigfootsocietyPick up a Bigfoot Society shirt to rep the podcast!https://www.etsy.com/shop/BigfootSocietyTune in every Saturday at 5 pm Central for new episodes of Bigfoot Society!https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8Qq45W6iaTU8FE9kelxT7QIG: https://www.instagram.com/bigfootsociety/Full links: https://bit.ly/bigfootlinksSupport the show

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They looked up and there was a monkey man. And the monkey man jumped down out of the tree. It started running away. And suddenly they're right in front of the car. He slams on the brakes and manages to stop. He's skidding because it's not quite, you know, grappling. And literally for about a second and a half, they just stood there because they don't know where to go and you tell them panicking.

They're like, their face is like twitching. Welcome back to Bigfoot Society. This is your host, Jeremiah Byron. Every week I talk to different people in the cryptozoology field. You never know who's going to be on next week. If you'd like to sponsor the show, head on over to patreon.com forward slash the Bigfoot Society. You get access to a ton of things there, including a close-knit cryptic community on Discord, where you can connect with like-minded cryptic researchers and enthusiasts, weekly bonus content, the ability to hang out with each week's guest after the main show. exclusive merch and much, much more. In this episode of Bigfoot Society, you get to talk to a new friend Michael Mays, author of Valley of the Apes, all about what's really going on down there in southeast Oklahoma in good old area X. So this is an interview you won't want to miss, sit back, relax, and thanks for listening to another episode of the Bigfoot Society podcast.

All right, Bigfoot Society. I have the privilege of talking with a new friend Michael Mays coming at us from the south down in the great state of Texas, correct, Michael? That is correct. Central Texas, yeah. Oh, man. I am super excited to talk to you tonight. I mean, we've all been reading your book, Valley of the Apes and the Patreon Book Club. last five, six weeks, we've been focusing on that.

And it's been just a super, super fun experience. But let's start out with a quick bio about yourself so that listeners know what you're all about. So I'm going to go ahead. So Michael Mays is a teacher of history and a former coach who resides in central Texas, an avid folklorist. He has long been fascinated by the ghostly tales of historical in contemporary Texas as well as mysteries of the natural world. Mays has authored three books, which are Patty, a Sasquatch story, Shadowcats, the Black Panthers of North America, and Valley of the Apes, the search for Sasquatch and Area X.

He's also the owner and writer of the Texas Crypted Hunter blog, Texas cryptidhunter.com. So welcome to the show tonight, Michael. Glad to have you on. Well, I appreciate very much. Thank you for having me. You got it. I always think that we'll start by chatting about folklore. I always think folklore is just fascinating.

But I'm really curious to get your thoughts on it. Why is it so important? Do you think that we focus on making an effort to preserve the stories of the past? Well, it's our shared history. You know, it's and woven into folks. or at least in my opinion, often there are seeds of truth where something spawned that story. And as fantastic as some story might seem, there's often a grain of truth in it that you can, if you can trace it back and get down to it, I just find that completely fascinating.

And it's something I kind of came into, you know, almost as a secondhand thing. you know, when I started the blog, it was mainly going to be based on cryptid-related things. But I do have a wider range of interest than that. Yeah. And it kind of blossomed out from that because a lot of the historical accounts of out of place animals or what were they creatures, kinds of things, are they're hopelessly entangled with folklore, you know. when you get into the earlier 1800s and things like that. And to try to weed out what might have been the truth, you know, in that story,

something I just, you know, it's like a detective of a job or mystery. You know, you try to figure out. So mostly I just am a guy that has always loved a good story. And just from that standpoint alone, it's just very enjoyable. And like I said, it's part of our shared history. And it would be a shame if all those, you know, died and went away. So I tried to keep them alive. Did the love for folklore come first?

Or was it something that kicked in after you became a history teacher? I'm not sure I can separate them. Because like said, they're kind of tied together. And now the interest in kind of offbeat. topics, that's something that's been with me since I was a kid, you know. And I've said this before to other people. I grew up in a kind of a golden age of Bigfoot in the 70s. You know, it was on TV. There were specials, the Yeti, the Abominable Snowman, Block Ness Monster, all that stuff. You know, there'd be a special come on. And my brothers and I, we'd be all over it. And when Bigfoot made an

appearance on the $6 million man, I think. think my fate was sealed. Oh, man. So good. And I just, I guess I never completely lost interest, even as an adult. There was a gap in there where I didn't pursue it very much. I was trying to get through school. I got married, had a family and all that. But as the Internet started to really develop and take off, there were all these ways to gather information and read stories.

and hear about things that you'd never heard of, the information that could be shared was so much greater than, you know, three or four books in your local library, maybe. And with the advent of that, you know, just exploded. Now, I learned you have to navigate through a lot of silliness to get to the serious stuff, you know. Right.

But even that, to a degree, is enjoyable. just again it's like a detective story trying to to get to the bottom of things oh i know man like um i've started to do that myself with like iowa uh cryptid history in like 1970s iowa bigfoot stuff that's a different story though that's another podcast but it's fun dude once you get once you start pulling that threads and you're like how far is this going to go and are these people still alive can i track them down and it's wild it's like everyone should should should take a swing at and see what they can uncover. It's a fun time. Curious, you know, trying to discover these folklore tales, these forgotten tales,

have you found that there's a best way to try to find all these stories of the past? How do you usually go about that? Well, sometimes you just find out about them accidentally while you're actually looking for something else. For example, when I was doing the research for the book on the Black Panther phenomenon, Shadowcats, I was looking for historical accounts of long-tailed black puma cougar-sized cats or larger in Texas. And when you throw that net out there, sometimes you catch unexpected things. And for one example would be the Little House on the Prairie books, which are considered biographical. They're stylized biographies.

But, you know, Walder wrote those. Those were remembrances of her childhood. and there's a story in there about Grandpa and the Black Panther that she relates. And, you know, that's, I never would have expected to be going down to the city library and checking out a Laura Ingalls-Walter book as part of the research on that particular topic. But there it was, you know, and it was just, that was just, you know, really fun to find that. And it just spoke to the fact that people were aware of these cats all over the country and believed them to be real, even back then. And she didn't have any idea she would be writing about something that would become controversial. It was just, it's like where I grew up in Southeast Texas, Black Panthers were just another animal.

They weren't common, but they were just another animal that lived out in the bottoms. Like a hog or a coyote or something. And so nobody thought much about it. But to go out there and to find that, that was pretty cool. There's a great collector of folklore in Texas. His name is Jay Frank Dobie. He's probably the king of the folklorist in Texas. It's just volume after volume from the Texas Folklore Society.

And, you know, I could spend all day just going through there because every story is a great story. Now it's not always connected. to what I'm looking for, but, you know, sometimes it is. And, you know, the legends of, oh, the Black Panthers, you know, there's stories called the Cougar Scream or the Panthers scream, or the Panthers scream, rather. And I just did a blog post about Texas' own version of the headless horseman,

El Merto. And that goes back to the frontier days, you know. And it turned out there was truth in it. You know, the writer was real. It turned out to be a corpse that had been beheaded and tied to a saddle. Wow. And turned loose. And it rode around.

And when they finally, no other, ironically, the Texas Ranger who figured it out was a guy named Bigfoot Wallace, ironic name. And Wallace and his buddies, they found this, they found the horse and the rider at the horse will get at a watering hole and they uh they shot at the rider and didn't seem to affect him at all like headless you know and so they so they turned their guns on the horse instead and the horse went down like a like a stone and when they got there they could see that it was a dried out you know uh corpse um almost mummified right right in around out in west Texas for years it was it was full of bullet holes and even had arrows in it were Indians

had taken shots at it. But so this headless horseman was real. His head had been tied to the saddle horn. And so it was real. But there was an explanation. And that's the fun in trying to get to the bottom of things. You know, where's that grain of truth in there? And, you know, like I said, I'm a sucker for a good story.

And that was one good example of one. I love that. And there's so many good stories like that. on that on your blog, the Texas Crypted Hunter blog, it's crazy. And the thing I love is that in all of your post, you have your resources that you use. So if people want to go further and like people normally don't do that. That's really cool that you took the time, you know, to put that in there for people that want to, you know, look at your sources and go further. And yeah, everyone's, I'm going to have that definitely in the show notes.

Definitely check Texas Crypted Hunter blog out. It is a solid wealth of Texas folklore and cryptids. And so much. There's so much going on in that. You alluded to, in one of your posts that I was reading, you alluded to that you actually had a sighting of a Chupacabra. Is that something that you could kind of go into a little bit? Yeah.

And I should clarify, you know, down here in text, you know, the Chupacabra legend got started in Latin. America. Sure. I think the general consensus is it was in Puerto Rico. Right. It's where the genesis of this whole thing was. And it was originally, as described, it was this reptilian,

almost alien-looking creature, right? And it sucked the blood and all that stuff. Somehow, now, I think the story came to Texas in the South in general with Latin American immigration, if that makes sense. You bring your stories with you. You bring your folk. You bring your religion and your culture with you. Now, somehow over the years, at least here in Texas, and it seems to have taken hold nationwide,

what these things are supposed to look like has changed. And instead of being this reptilian, alien-looking thing, it now is a hairless, grayish, I'm like an elephant-skinned canine of some kind. So in Texas, before the chupacabra name really took hold, where I grew up, they were called blue dogs because they had this bluish, grayish skin. And what we always had assumed they were were just coyotes or foxes suffering from sarcoptic mange. and I don't know if you've ever seen an animal that's hair or fur covered that suddenly doesn't have it anymore, but they look completely alien. It's pretty gnarly, yeah. Yeah, it's amazing.

There's a, there's a pretty well-known photograph of a bear with mange. Stay tuned for more Bigfoot Society. We'll be right back after these messages. And there's a meme or something that goes with it, you know. Yeah. You know, you think a bear's terrifying with hair. You look at this one, you know, something. like that.

But, and it is a freaky looking thing. So that is what I and a buddy of mine saw in the Sam Houston National Forest. There were, you know, been quite a while back now. It was just crossing a Forest Service road. And it was, it was coyote sized. It was completely hairless. It was that gray elephant looking wrinkly, hairless skin, maybe a slight bluish tint to it.

It was clearly not a healthy animal. It was... All right, quick quiz for the hiring managers out there. What's worse? Being understaffed or being poorly staffed? Well, that's a trick question, because both are recipes for chaos. Either way, just say to yourself, this is a job for indeed sponsored jobs. You'll get matched with candidates that meet the skills, certifications, and everything else you're

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Finally, it did start to kind of creep away, but it just did not, it was not a healthy animal. It was not a well animal. And to me, that kind of solidified that at least those particular versions of the story, what you're seeing are sick, mange-ridden canines of some sort. Interesting. Now, I've heard that some people, you know, there's a lady in Texas who shot one, had it mounted. And I've been told that they did some DNA testing on it and stuff, and it came back as part Mexican wolf and part. Oh, wow. Coyote is something else.

But I haven't actually seen those results myself. I've been told of them. Right. So I can't absolutely say that that's for sure. But I don't know if it's some kind of, I don't know why even if it is a hybrid between, say, a Mexican wolf and a coyote or why it would be hairless, you know, like that. But that's what I saw. was one of these interesting

yeah man it's something about I grew up in New England and we've got our legends of the coy dogs and up there the half coyote

half wolves and it's just it's weird it's like Americans love our weird dog coyote legends I think I don't know but moving on to

I always love talking to people that have that have written children's books just to get like they're thinking behind it. And you've written a book about Patty, of course, you know, the famous Bigfoot sighting from 1967 that we all know and love. But I'm just curious, you know, why did, what was your thinking behind? You know, I've got to take this, this important Bigfoot tale and put it into a book format for kids. What was the

thinking behind that for you. Well, it was kind of an epiphany I had. I was actually at the Texas Bigfoot Conference in Tiger, Texas when it kind of dawned on me. There's been a lot of talk, a lot of questions asked about why were, why was Roger Patterson and Bob Gimlin? Why were they, why did they pick that spot? Why were they there at that perfect moment? And you know how people are. Right. No, I know. Yeah. You know, of course, I always counter my saying, who's more likely to find something, someone who's looking or someone who isn't looking, right?

So, but. True. But anyway, there's been a lot of questions by people through the years, skeptics and such. And, you know, why were you there? Why did you pick that spot? How did you know to go there questioning their motives and why they are in that location? Sure. But it just kind of dawned on me.

Well, Why was the animal there? Right? And so that's something, I don't know, it's probably just not a normal person's thought. I don't know. But, and so that was the seed of it. What led her, you know, Patty to be there at that time when those guys rode up?

Interesting. And over time, it probably rolled around in my head for close to a year, kind of thinking of a backstory and, you know, what letter to be there and all that kind of stuff. And why were these guys out looking for her and things like that? And like I said, I thought about it for quite a while. And finally it seemed to kind of kind of gel in there. And I sat and I wrote it in an afternoon. Oh, wow.

Yeah. And a friend of mine, his name's Robert Swain, a great artist out of Arkansas. saw, he did the, the illustrations are amazing. He did watercolors that were about three by two feet each. Those, that's, those are the originals. Those are the prints that we use for the illustrations. Each one, you know, when you open a book, it's, you get the spine in the middle. Yeah.

It's one big portrait across both pages. And it's beautiful. You know, I told him, I wanted something colorful, bright, something that was really striking. You know, like, and the book I referred to from my childhood was where the wild things are. Something like that, something like that would really be visually, even for a little kid who couldn't read yet, who just wanted, would like to look at it. And he just really nailed it. And so we put that story together.

And then together, we came up with an appendix that we put in the back of the book. and he helped me too with this idea we kind of hid little insider things in the illustrations oh that's awesome yeah in the back of the book we talked about we called it the saskatch insider and you know here are the little hidden secrets that if you know these things you'll really be a that's awesome insider you know so just little things like um for for For example, there's an illustration where Patty's peeking out from behind a tree, and she's watching a bulldozer, you know, clearing a road. And this, of course, alludes back to the Jerry Crew stuff. Exactly.

And stuff like that. And, of course, you have the big oil drums sitting there. And that's a very famous part of that story about how something was coming around at night and flinging big oil drums and tires around. And so we sit on this page, you'll see this oil drum. Here's what happened in 1958, you know. That's awesome. You know, why does the footprint look kind of humped up in the middle? You know, talk about the mid-tarsal break and things like that.

And even the names of some of the other characters, the bully, Sasquatch, that gives Patty a hard time. His name's Jacko, which is a very famous, you know, a story in Sasquatch lore. And we named her father Giganto because the prevailing theory is Sasquatch is a descendant of gigantopithecus. And so we talk about all that stuff in there to kind of in the back. We kind of reveal those things in that appendix. And I think that might be my favorite part of the whole thing. That's awesome.

So the adults are going to get something out of the book as well. Yeah. So, you know, little ones are going to like the illustrations. Young readers will like the story. and then even as you get older, you know, you read that appendix and, you know, you can pick up some things. And so, and Robert did an outstanding job. It's worth it just for the illustration. I wish the writing was as good as the illustrations.

That's a wish. I'm sure that is. But, yeah, but it was a lot of fun. That's awesome. That's awesome. Yeah, the more kids' books can be written about cryptozoology themes, the better is what I think. because that's and they're starting to come out i mean stm is is uh starting to they're going to be coming out with a a few um i know a vegetable man from uh west virginia is is the first one

out for their kids series very cool um let's start chatting about uh valley of the apes so i'm going to assume that most of our listeners will know but i may ask you a few questions that I know the answer to, but I don't want to assume all the listeners know. There could be like some people that are just into like, you know, dog man or thylasey and they're like, what is there area X?

So what's, is there an elevator pitch that you give to people? And you're like, uh, when you, when you mention like, what's a wood ape or what's area X? Like is there even possible to do a shortened version of that,

you know? Well, a wood ape is just, we came out with that name. I wish I could tell you there was some deep scientific meaning behind it, but the North American WoodApe Conservancy, this is the group I'm the chairman of and the member of. And our working hypothesis is that this is most likely,

this animal is most likely a descendant of giganticus lackey, the giant ape that we know existed in Eastern Asia. we believe it's not outlandish to think it could have crossed the land bridge during the ISA, and come over with like a lot of the other species did. And what we're seeing now, what people are referring to as Bigfoot, it really is a, it checks most of the boxes physically for what people describe. We believe it's a flesh and blood animal. and undoubtedly it's a primate

of some kind based on descriptions hair covered mammal primate looking animal and we think it's basically a North American ape that lives in the woods

hence wood ape that is also actually in East Texas that's a historical term there are all kinds of local colloquialisms for Bigfoot But, you know, when I was growing up in East Texas in the Piney Woods area,

there were stories out in an area that we called the Big Thicket of a wild man, a hair-covered wild man that lived out in woods and left barefoot tracks and ran around. But the term Bigfoot was never used. And that was starting to come into vogue. You know, the Patterson Gimlin footage was, what was, what, 67, I think. Yep. And so I'm in the mid-70s. So it had been out a while.

So Bigfoot, you're starting to hear that term, but as a kid growing up, that's not the term we heard. We heard Wild Man, Old Mossyback was a term that was used for this thing. You know, it looked like it was draped in Spanish moss, which makes me think of like, you've seen these big male orangutans with like almost like dreadlocks hanging off of them, things like that. So you had these regional names. And, you know, that's all across the south in the country, you know, moment. Mo, the Missouri monster, and you could go on and on. You know, the woodbigger, you've heard stuff like that, deep, deep south.

And then, you know, the Boggy Creek monster, the Chambers Creek monster, these are all flaps that took place over the years. And the term Bigfoot really wasn't used. Wildman was used a lot. And I was really embarrassingly old before I started to think, well, maybe. what people are talking about seeing locally, regionally, might be the same animal. They're talking about seeing in the Pacific Northwest. And, you know, like I said, I was embarrassingly late to that party, probably. But that's kind of how we started to put that all together.

But, you know, just the interest was always there. And so, but that's where the name WoodAke comes from. That's another local term that we. You'd hear bush ape, you'd hear bush ape and bush monkey. And you're like, this is Texas, man. They're not supposed to be monkeys or apes out of here. Exactly. That's what people want us to believe.

But they're, you know, you read books like Valley of the Apes. And I mean, you've got these locations like Area X and Southeast Oklahoma and the Wachita Mountains. It's almost like there's this lost world that gotten trapped in there or something. It's very interesting. I think the biggest reason people have a hard time buying into this phenomenon is that most people don't believe there are wild places like this left. Or if there are, maybe the Pacific Northwest, maybe somewhere in Africa, I could believe. in the deepest, darkest jungles or the Amazon. I could believe in it.

Maybe Alaska, you know, maybe. But Oklahoma, you know. And I think the province, it's kind of like the way people think of Texas. They think of Texas that they see in the old John Wayne Western movies. It's a dry, dusty desert. Right. You know, you ride by the same rock 50 times when you're on horseback, you know. And there are parts of Texas that certainly are like that.

And they think of Oklahoma as just this flat grassland prairie, endless sea of grass kind of a deal where the buffalo used to roam and things like that. And certainly most of the state does fit that description. But the eastern portion of both those states are heavily wooded. And as a matter of fact, there's more acreage of forest when you compare East Texas, East Oklahoma, West Arkansas, and Western Louisiana, that four state area. Stay tuned for more Bigfoot Society. We'll be right back after these messages. The forest that is still left there is bigger than the entire state of Washington. Whoa.

So there's a lot of forest land there. And it is a little more segmented and parceled up than the Pacific Northwest. But it's also a much richer environment. These are deciduous forests with fruit-bearing, nut-bearing trees, incredibly rich environments. This is why we have such a big hog problem down here because there's just so much for them to eat. In the Pacific Northwest, you've got...

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There's really not a lot of food stuff there. And so an animal that isn't trying to make a living, in either forest, that same animal would require less a smaller home range in our region than it would probably require up in the Pacific Northwest, just because the forest are so much richer. And so, but people don't understand that. You know, most people don't get off the concrete much anymore. Exactly. Even hunters, they tend to not get more than a couple hundred yards off the four-wheeler trail or something. Because if they kill something, they've got to haul it out, right?

You know, so you don't want to be five miles into the swamp, you know? And so people just don't realize those spots are still around. Now, they're getting smaller and they're getting more difficult to find, but there's still something out there. This book is, it's fascinating. So it's such a fascinating book. I mean, first I want to say, like, you did such a good job. this is not just like, okay, this happened, this happened. Like it's actually written like, like part two especially.

It should be a movie the way that it's written. Like you do a really good job, Michael, of like the whole time I'm reading it. Like I read the entire part two in a day. I was like, oh, I'm getting into the area X stuff. The first part is awesome. It's all the history, right? It's leading up to it. Part two is like, oh my goodness, it's like they're getting, they go into the Watchtown

mountains to the different areas, the area X, and it's like they get out and like stuff starts happening like crazy, you know, like stuff getting thrown on top of cabins. They, they start to see stuff and it's just, it keeps going and going. It's like it doesn't let up. And then, man, my favorite parts, I got to ask you. So like, Darryl Collier, right? There's a lot of parts where like, and I've got to talk to Darrell because it's like, he sounds like he's the coolest dude, but like he gets really into it.

It's almost like, it's like, and I mean, it's a compliment in like the movie Predator when like Schwarzenegger's like, come on, do it. And it's like, yeah, he gets like very, very emotional. And just the way it was written. I was like, oh my goodness, this is like intense. I'm loving it. Was there a, is there a part or an experience when you're, you know, researching in this area where do you remember one of, I mean, you've seen. what apes multiple times in area X, right? I think you call that out in your blog,

or is there a story that you wouldn't mind sharing of a time that really sticks out to you in your memory? Yeah, now, the best sighting of one I ever had was actually in Texas in the Sam Houston National Forest. Sure, yeah, yeah, sure. But as far as X goes, I have been lucky enough to get just a couple of flashes. I haven't had that big.

And excuse me, it's what are the criticisms we sometimes get. You guys see these things all the time and you've got no pictures. And the window of opportunity is so fast. They don't hang around. I think the Patterson Gimlin footage, if it's done, if there's anything bad about it, it's giving the false impression that these things roam around out in the open all the time. and that's just not the case. It's just not the case.

And there's not many open spots out in that particular region anyway. It's very rough and tumble and rocky and steep and heavily forested. And not just the trees, but the underbrush, greenbrier and poison ivy and stuff everywhere. It's just, you know, it's just incredibly difficult to maneuver in. And so to try to chase them is folly. I mean, you just can't happen. So we're dependent. You know, we try to lure them in sometimes, but basically we just try different things to, if they're primate, they're intelligent, intelligent animals have a curious nature.

Sure. And we try to do different things to try to bring them in and hopefully we can get a glimpse and, you know, get the proof we're looking for. It's personally the most intense experience I've had was an audio encounter. I didn't see it at all. I and a fellow member named Tony Schmidt, we were sitting in camp. We were running, one thing we tend to do is run what we call a cold camp.

We don't build fires. And a guy in Washington, I was on camping trip in Washington a decade ago, kind of shame. He said fires in the summer were for people who were scared. So from then on, I just, it's like a bad gumming. I guess I can't build a fire anymore, you know?

So, but we, you know, we tried to. We tried running a cold camp. And what we found is when they were around, they would, they were hanging around camp, keeping an eye on us. Why? I don't know. I guess, you know, they don't have YouTube. They don't have Netflix.

Yeah. Totally. Yeah, right. And so the less light there was, the tighter they would have to come. I think they probably see better than we do at night, but they're not like, you know, seeing like the predator does, for example. Right. You know, primates are very side-oriented, and their eyes are bigger.

They're going to capture more ambient light and see better than ours do just based on size alone, probably. But they did have to come in a little closer. And so that's the reason we were sitting there. you know, we're just talking and observing, listening, and try to give you the layout of the camp. We've got a small hunting cabin. We were right in front of that near a fire pit that was, you know, there's nothing lit in it.

To the west of the small cabin, we have what we call it the hooch. It's basically a metal carport, basically. It's got the metal top, and on one side it's got a wall that comes all the way down to the ground. The other three sides are open, just poles, supports. And the cabin and the hooch both back up to a mountain slope. And we get a lot of weird noises and rocks flying off the mountainside, you know, from that slope. and there's a little dead spot from where we were sitting between the cabin and the hooch. There's a little area kind of offset because that wall comes down to the ground where we were sitting,

we couldn't see that little spot. Okay. And so suddenly we hear this something. It's like it's got a big club or a big log or stick or something. something and it just starts beating the hell out of the ground. Wow. Bam, bam, bam, bam. Oh, man.

And whatever it is is swinging this whatever it had so powerfully and swiftly. If you've ever watched a golf tournament on TV, you know the sound it makes right before contact with the loss. You hear that. Yep. You hear it cutting the air. You could hear whatever it had in its hands. cutting through the air the instant before it struck the ground. And it just bam, bam, bam, bam, bam.

And we just, it was shocking. You know, we, now both of us have been in the group for a long time, and we've experienced a lot of strange stuff. But that, we hadn't experienced that. But we were, okay, hold your ground. Don't get up. We had a thermal unit. We scanned, but we're blocked, right?

We can't see. hold your ground maybe it'll creep up a little closer and we'll get a look at it a few minutes later it does it again and it does sound closer oh man okay and this time it sounds like it's right under that metal structure 20 feet from us now it's pitch black right it's just dark as it can be and this time it starts beating the ground again bam bam bam bam bam bam bam and i mean it was even louder. It was even, you had the impression it was mad, whatever it was, you know, right? It's, uh, we speculated initially. Is it maybe trying to kill something to eat? Is it, you know, or something like, but the second time it was closer and it seemed like classic

kind of intimidation. Okay. Okay. So it sounded so close and I could not, we could not see it on the thermal units. So I'll be honest with you. I thought this. thermal unit's broken. It's right there. This thing is not working and this thing's about to be in our lap. So we lit up the hooch, the carport area. And we use it to keep equipment and things dry because it rains a lot up there. And we expected to see it standing right there. And we hit the lights, nothing. There's nothing there. We got up, we looked around the corner of the blind corner, nothing. We can't see anything. And no eyes shine up on the mountain. And of course, we didn't hear it retreat, whatever it was.

So we're like, okay, let's do this. We're going to go up onto the porch. And we have a system of observation at night we call Overwatch. We learned years ago that these thermal units can see through black plastic. like garbage bag plastic. So we create these panels to hang down off the porch so that whatever's out there cannot see us sitting on the porch, but we have eyes with the thermal looking through the thin plastic, and we can see a thermal image of anything that comes by. So we go in, we opened and shut the door, pretending like we went inside, and we sat on the porch. And I'm sitting right on the edge of the porch.

We had not been out there, but just a couple of minutes. And it sounded like it was right next to me. It came back again and back. And I mean, this time it was just going to work, beating the ground. And so bam, bam, bam, bam, bam. And it was faster and faster and faster. And then the last thing we heard is something hit the metal wall of that hooch. So hard, it rang it like a bell.

And it just reverberated for two minutes. after the fact. I don't know if it threw something or whatever it had in its hand that was hitting the ground with it, turned and hit the wall of that, you know. And again, we burst out, you know, try to catch it to get a look at it, and we saw nothing. And there's something about knowing there's something there, but not being able to see it. Yeah, I bet. That was really intense.

And now that was the last time it visited us that night. but you know you're like it was clearly powerful strong and if you think about it for something to use a club or grab a log and beat on it it has to have hands a bear can't do that and so that's a pretty sobering thought to have that it's right here somewhere and we can't see it and now Maybe it was a little farther away than it sounded like it was. If it was, then it was even stronger and more powerful for that sound to sound like it was that close, you know. And maybe it threw something down off the mountain to hit the hooch, the last sound. I don't know. But it was crazy. It's probably the single, well, I don't know.

There's been a lot of crazy up there. But that was probably the most intimidated I've ever found. Okay. If you like that story, literally, Valley of the Apes is full of, it feels like I would read hundreds of stories like that. I mean, just like the book has, and the cool thing is that you go to the website and there's sounds that you can hear that go along with. There's the appendix in the back and the sounds are just incredible. But I want to make sure I get this question in. the end of the book, it states how there's a pivot in the mission of the NAWAC.

You're now, you're realizing, hey, let's try to gain this photo evidence, this track casting, the stuff we haven't gotten so far because we've been focused on other things. How has that change in focus gone for you guys? Has anything come out of that? Stay tuned for more Bigfoot Society. We'll be right back after these messages. we have gone back and forth over what kind of evidence do we think will be sufficient for mainstream science to recognize this as a real animal, document it, move it from folklore and myth to the biology, zoology section of the library, right?

And we tried years ago, we had a big camera trapping project. We called Operation Forest Vigil. camera traps and the Big Thicket National Preserve in East Texas, and we had them up in here in Area X. And I should tell you the story of how Area X got its name. It sounds really creepy and cool. I wish I could tell you it was thought out. It was like X-Files, but it really wasn't. We had three study areas, and we called them areas X, Y, and Z. All right, quick quiz for the hiring managers out there. What's worse? Being understaffed or being poorly staffed? Well, that's a trick question because both are recipes for chaos. Either way, just say to yourself, this is a job for

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to help your job get the premium status it deserves at Indeed.com slash podcast. Just go to Indeed.com slash podcast right now. Indeed.com slash podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need to hire? This is a job for Indeed Sponsored Jobs. The Starbucks iced torchata shaken espresso is back for the

summer. Crafted with cinnamon, vanilla, and nutty notes of toasted rice, hand-shaking with smooth blonde espresso, and finished with oat milk for a creamy touch. Made for summer. Only at Starbucks. Today, every dollar counts. Make yours go further with AARP. For just $15 for your first year with automatic renewal, an AARP membership delivers benefits and savings you can use right away. You can also access trusted resources and tools to help you stay healthy. protect your money and plan ahead. And with a second free membership for someone in your household, you'll receive AARP benefits for two.

Go to AARP.org slash IHeart to join today. We could have just as easily called them areas A, B, and C, but we didn't. We called them X, Y, and Z. Exactly. Our permit to operate in the big ticket, that was area Y. That expired. A new superintendent came in,

and he told us we couldn't go back in there anymore. So area Y, you know, we got kicked out. Area Z was private land in East Texas. And that turned out to kind of be a bust in hindsight. I think it was probably the whole thing was probably a fabrication. Okay. And that we weren't getting the real story. Sure.

And so that left Area X, which was this area in southeastern Oklahoma. So I said it sounds really creepy and mysterious. And it is, I guess. But that wasn't the intent, you know, when I started to call it that. But it doesn't make a very good story. Maybe I should make up a story for the naming of it. I don't know. But the story is in the book.

Yeah, it is. It's fun to know the history of how you get to that point. That's very cool. The book was, the idea was a warts and all kind of thing. And I wanted to write it like a story in a narrative kind of style. That's one thing that I thought when I looked at the other book. on the on the topic a lot of real scholarly works you know and and really some of them are kind of dry like if you ever read any of Grover Krantz's stuff it's a lot of data and stuff and it's it's

fascinating but you got to be really into it you got to focus yeah right yep and so I wanted to write it in you know like a narrative you know like a story but it's a it's a true story and So that was the goal. And I want, you know, because I wanted it to be fun to read, easy to read, but be telling the real story. Exactly. And so that was kind of the goal. But back to the original question, the camera trapping project was a bust. We had a handful of images that were, I guess, intriguing, compelling, you know, but certainly nothing that.

would have suffice as any kind of proof. And over the years, we really started to doubt whether any photograph would be good enough for that because with the advent of, you know, the continuation of development of technology, you can go down to Office Max now and buy Photoshop. Anybody can do it. And we started to talk among ourselves.

You know, here you've got the Patterson Gimlin footage that regardless of what people, some people say, It has never been successfully debunked. Broad daylight, color, a minute of this thing walking. You see muscles flexing. You see the mouth moving. You see the fingers flex. You see the toes kind of flex up as it takes its step.

And these are things that don't match up to costumes, especially in 1967. Right. And we just started talking and we thought, you know, I don't know if any picture will ever be good enough. And now it might even be less valuable because of technology and the ability to manipulate photo evidence. And so we shifted away from that for a while. And, you know, the truth of the matter is, and it's not a pleasant thing, but I think it's going to take a specimen to prove it to science. It's going to take a holotype. of specimen. And so we focused our efforts on that. It was nothing anybody relished, but the thought was science, you got to think in terms of populations, not individuals. And the thinking was, and we got this from reading John Green's book. John Green was a big proponent of this. You know, if we can take one, prove it's real, now we can save them all. We can't go to the government now and ask, hey, can you rope off the Washtas and make it a sanctuary for what is? We might as well be going in asking them to create a unicorn sanctuary.

Yep, right, as far as they're concerned. So they have to be proven real. That's an unpleasant reality, I think. And so we concentrated our efforts on that. We really hoped we'd stumble, you know, the best case scenario. We walk on one that's old and gray was 100 years old and died of a heart attack of natural causes. That would be nice. You know, it lived his full life and yet we had the proof we need all that.

Yeah. But we really did concentrate on that. Now, while doing that, we had several opportunities that are documented in the book. Near Mrs. we call them. Oh, yeah. But there were other times where, you know, in all these years, only a handful of shots were ever taken. And, but there were many other times where our guys had in a thermal scope. In the sites.

They had something. Yep. Now, the one thing about, and this is a misnomer, you know, our critics, oh, they're running around the woods shooting anything that moves, right? We pulled the trigger five times in 15 years. Wow. That's, you know. And so that's just not true. And the first thing you learn when you're a hunter,

at least down here in Texas, where it's kind of ingrained in the culture, you must be able to 100% identify your target. And we have put in very strict protocols for that. And so you're seeing something big and it's compelling and it's intriguing. And you think you're 99% sure. That's one.

But you can't pull the trigger on that, right? You just can't. But had we been taking video through a thermal scope, you know, we had a thermal scope, but it didn't take video. So we thought, well, all these years, we've only had these few chances to collect a specimen. And it just hasn't gone our way. But we've had more, not a lot, but we've had more opportunities to get footage. Now, maybe it was thermal footage, you know. but footage nonetheless.

And so we thought, well, let's pivot and let's spend some money on the best thermals out there with video capability. And let's see if we can do that. And let's see where that goes. Now, as luck would have it, that's about the time COVID hit. Right. You saw that at the end of the book. We went about two years where we could hardly get in there because most of us, you know, of our membership lives in Texas.

We've got others as far flung, far away is Maine, you know, in Tennessee and California. You know, they're all over. And it was so difficult to travel during that whole pandemic. And some people weren't working. So the expense, you know, to make that trip and things like that were it was just so, there were better part of two years, two summers where we hardly got in there at all. And it was during that hiatus where we really decided to let's change it up. Let's try something new.

And we're not, I don't want to mislead anybody. We're not against the collection of a specimen. Like I said, one, that's what we're thinking. One to save them all. Yeah, exactly. Yep. But we think our chances of collecting either video, video, be it thermal imagery or photographs or daytime.

You know, we think, you don't have to be sure of your target when you're clicking a camera button. Yeah, or if you're wearing like a police camera on the. Right. So, you know, you know, the whole GoPro thing, we've tried that. That's a box. Oh, okay. The battery's like, it just doesn't last. And, you know, when you do get something, it's that big in the screen, you know?

Yeah, sure. It's tough. So, okay. But, you know, you can fire away with that camera. Oh, yeah. Oh, it turned out it's a bear. Okay, well, nothing's hurt, right? You hit delete and you're done, and that's it.

You can't do that with a rifle. Exactly. And so our guys kind of like the idea of being free to, let's just go to town. We will shoot everything in the forest now, but we're doing it with a camera, right? And so we are given more emphasis to that. We've, we instituted another camera trap project. We called it Hadrian's Wall.

We tried to put this picket line of cameras up around the camp, see if we could catch anything. Hoping that the camera technology had improved since the Forest Vigil operation years before, I'm not convinced it's that much better. But I think we did learn. You know, we didn't get the pictures we wanted, but I think that we learned something from that, too. I think we learned, okay, they're walking the ridge.

They're walking the mountainside. They're not walking the valley floor when they approach us, which there were Native American tribes that called them ridge walkers. And so, yeah, we're like, okay, you know, there's that seed of truth, right? There's that little grain that we were talking about with folklore, you know, these ridge walkers. And we think at least when they're approaching us, they're walking the ridge. They're not walking the valley floor. Now, do they descend the ridge to get closer at times, the slope? I believe they do.

But when we're in camp, I think they know it. And when they choose to come close, I think that's the route they're taking. So I think we did learn that. But so that's the nature of the pivot. it was just we don't have to be nearly as cautious with the camera yeah it's

perfectly true yeah we had a perfect example and it's in the book remember Ken Helmer was then a ghost blind which if you know what that is that's a mirrored kind of blind it reflects the ground around these panels that you put up

and it kind of conceals you and he was looking down a creek bed and one just stepped out and was looking down now it was you know 80 hundred yards away yeah he watched it and it was looking right at him it it took note of the ghost blind it something didn't look right to it and it was trying to figure out i think what it was looking at and it sidestepped back into the woods and he's like dad come was that what i thought it was you know and as he's thinking about it it steps back out again and it's solid black from head to toe, long arms.

And he's, who is that? You know, that's what is that? Who is that? And he's leaning forward, trying to see, trying to figure out what it is. By the time he realizes that's not a who, that's a lot, it steps back in the woods and never comes back again. Whereas if he had had a camera, you know, he's firing away. And, you know, if it turns out to be a game warden or a,

or a teammate or whoever, well, no harm done, right? Yeah, no foul. Yeah, exactly.

But you can't, you can't do that when you're, when you're carrying a rifle. So, yeah. So that's why, that's the nature of the, the pivot and why.

I love it. I love it. Man, Michael, it has been so fun talking to you. I can't believe we're at the end of the hour already. But like, if you,

that was just a small little sampling of, if you like those, Stories you just heard. I'm serious. I'm going to have the book link in the show notes. Get that book today and you're going to find stories upon stories. It's, I would say it's the number one cryptozoology book of the year. And if someone gets bent out of shape, come on, dude.

Well, I appreciate it. Give it a read. Give it a read. Michael, thank you so much for coming on. Can you take a few minutes and remind people of how to keep up to date with what you're doing and the NAWAC. Sure. We'll start with the NAWAC first.

The website is wood ape. org. Now, you had mentioned the sounds appendix in the back of the book. Yes. We have taken that idea that was very popular. People really liked having those links to go and listen to those things that were described in the book. We've taken that and we have not quite emptied the vault of all our audio recordings,

but we have linked now on our site dozens and dozens more audio files that are not listed in the back of the book. So you can go there to wood ape.org and listen. And they're very, very interesting. They're very interesting. I think people will really like that. So visit that and listen to those audios and see what you think. It's a lot of fun. Personally, you know, the Texas Crypted Hunter blog, if you're, it's not just Bigfoot related.

it's all kinds of stuff. It's just whatever weird thing strikes me at the time. It's Texas cryptidhunter. Dot blogspot.com. I'm not as regular. The last couple years, I haven't been as regular keeping it up. I've tried to get back to writing on it more regularly because I've been working on the book project so much.

And, you know, I still work full time and, you know, there's only so many hours. Exactly, exactly, yeah. But I'm trying to get back to it a little more. So that's, again, Texas Crypted Hunter. You can Google, that and find it. I would appreciate it. Personal website is Michael

C. Mays.com. And, you know, I'll list if I'm doing an interview or an appearance, giving a talk, any new book or blog post. It's kind of the catch-all for everything. And then there's also a Texas Cryptid Hunter, Facebook, and Twitter

page. So any and all of that stuff, I'd appreciate everybody's support. Definitely. We're trying to do it right. We're taking it seriously. And it's bare bones stuff. And when we do stuff well, you'll hear about that.

But like, as you know, if you read the book, we screwed up. We screwed up some. There's some learning experiences in that book for sure. You'll hear that as well. And it's somebody else that's out there trying to do the same thing we are. Because, you know, there are other groups out there doing good work. It's not just us. We know that.

But if somebody else can learn from a mistake we made, maybe they can duplicate the experiment and they don't make the same mistake. Right. Because the ultimate goal is to get them documented. I would love it to be us who does it. But if it's the Olympic project, I'm thrilled. Right? Exactly. If it's a logging truck that runs over one in East Texas, and that's how we get this, you know, I'm sorry for that one.

But you know what? It's documented now. It's true. It's documented. So however it happens, I'll be excited about it. And if we can help in that regard by here's what worked, here's what didn't, here's where we messed up, here's what we did well, adapt to your own needs and things like that, and add to it, take away from, you know, whatever you think will work.

You just, my college basketball coach said, you know, tonight we're playing a team that's bigger than us, we're going to throw every rock we got in our pocket, right? So that's what we're trying to do. We're trying to throw every rock in a pocket and see what works. Well, Michael, thank you so much again for coming on. Everyone, I've said it enough times, but I'm going to say it again, go get a copy of that book. I'm serious. It's really good. But Michael's nice enough. He's going to stay on for a little bit longer, hang out with the Patreon group, and we got some more questions. questions for them, but thanks again so much for coming on, Michael. Oh, thank you for having me. I have a good time. Thank you.

Again, a special thank you to Michael Mays for coming on to Bigfoot Society and for hanging out for the after show for the Patreon audience. That after show that happened was probably, I would say, the best after show in the history of Bigfoot Society. due to the questions that were asked by the attendees. I mean, if you're wanting to hear the information about how last summer was for the NAWAC, it came out in the after show. And if you want to hear about stuff really recent, Megan asked a question that hit the nail on the head. and Scott and Alan were asking questions.

My goodness, I'm proud of the members I got in the Patreon. But if you want to hear the crazy stuff that came out in the after show, just check out patreon.com forward slash the Bigfoot Society. You can support the podcast. And I know this is going to be like the third time you hear it in the episode. But I just want you to know there's some crazy stuff in the after show that came out. But thanks. again for listening. Now on to the regular announcements.

Thanks for listening to the Bigfoot Society podcast. Please take a few minutes to review the show on iTunes five stars as it does help us get into the eyes and ears of more listeners on iTunes. That will help us just get bigger and bigger and get even better quality guests for future shows. Also, if you have any Bigfoot encounters or cryptid encounters, please send your stories and audio and photos, whatever you've got over to Bigfoot Society at gmail.com. If you'd like to become more involved with Bigfoot Society and get some extra content, we do have a Patreon where you can get all sorts of cool things. For example, for $7 a month, you get extra Bigfoot Society content,

usually interviews, but other things as well. You get a sweet membership card and a vinyl sticker that I send to you in the mail. get access to the Bigfoot Society after show, which is an extra interview after the main interview with the weekly guest. And usually they are up for Patreon members to be in that extra show segment with them and me. And you get to ask your question live to them and get an answer from the guest, which as you've seen what guest we've had in the past, this could be a really big deal. There's also a private discord where you can get involved with talking to me one-on-one and the community there, and that's always a great time. You can find the Patreon at www.

www. patreon.com forward slash the Bigfoot Society. We're very thankful for all our supporters that we have in so many different ways and appreciate all our listeners coming back week after week to listen to more cryptozoology-based interviews. Thanks so much for listening, and we'll see you next time. The views and opinions expressed are those of the guests and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Bigfoot Society. Any content provided by our guests are not intended to malign any religion, ethnic group, club, organization, company, individual, or anyone.

Thank you. All right, quick quiz for the hiring managers out there. What's worse? Being understaffed or being poorly staffed? Well, that's a trick question, because both are recipes for chaos. Either way, just say to yourself, this is a job for Indeed's sponsored jobs. You'll get matched with candidates that meet the skills, certifications, and everything else you're looking for. Or go a different way and get no traction.

Seriously, sponsored jobs posted directly on Indeed are 95% more likely to report a hire than non-sponsored jobs. It really is a no-brainer. Spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all your boxes. Less stress, less time, more results. When you need the right person to cut through the chaos, this is a job for Indeed sponsored jobs. And listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit to help your job get the premium status it deserves at Indeed.com slash podcast. Just go to Indeed.com slash podcast right now. Indeed.com slash podcast. apply. Need to hire? This is a job for Indeed's sponsored jobs. The Starbucks iced tortata shaken espresso is back for the summer. Crafted with cinnamon,

vanilla, and nutty notes of toasted rice. Handshaking with smooth blonde espresso and finished with oat milk for a creamy touch. Made for summer. Only at Starbucks. Today, every dollar counts. Make yours go further with AARP. For just $15 for your first year with automatic renewal, An AARP membership delivers benefits and savings you can use right away. You can also access trusted resources and tools to help you stay healthy. Protect your money and plan ahead. And with a second free membership for someone in your household, you'll receive AARP benefits for two.

Go to AARP.org slash iHeart to join today. Today, every dollar counts. Make yours go further with AARP. For just $15 for your first year with automatic renewal, An AARP membership delivers benefits and savings you can use right away. You can also access trusted resources and tools to help you stay healthy. Protect your money and plan ahead. And with a second free membership for someone in your household,

you'll receive AARP benefits for two. Go to aARP.org slash iHeart to join today. As When I had Apprented some things like the family

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