Sasquatch Chronicles - SC EP:361 Dr. John A. Bindernagel

Episode Date: September 10, 2017

Dr. John A. Bindernagel has agreed to return to the show. I love talking John and when he shares all of his insight. I know he is a fan favorite. Check out John's Youtube channel here. John A. Bindernagel (born 1941) is a wildlife biologist who has sought evidence for Bigfoot since 1963. He published a book in 1998 entitled North America's Great Ape: the Sasquatch. Bindernagel grew up in Ontario, attended the University of Guelph, and received a PhD in Biology from the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He moved to British Columbia in 1975 largely because the region was a hot spot for Bigfoot sightings. Over the years, he has collected casts of tracks that he believes belongs to Bigfoot. He also claims to have heard the creature near Comox Lake in 1992, comparing its whooping sound to that of a chimpanzee. Bindernagel believes that the Bigfoot phenomena should receive more attention from serious scientists, but has remarked, "The evidence doesn't get scrutinized objectively. We can't bring the evidence to our colleagues because it's perceived as tabloid."   https://sasquatchchronicles.com/

Black thing go from left to right, and I thought, I'm going to die out here and no one's ever going to know. I couldn't believe what my eyeballs was showing me. I'll never forget how evil the eyes were. It was horrible. I mean, I've never seen nothing that evil. It ran towards me at a rate that I can't even explain, turned and stared at me. And this look of, I just want to kill you. I want to say it was human, but it wasn't.

He was yelling at me to grab a gun, grab a gun. I was like, for what? He said, just grab a gun. And there's footprints all the way to the door of my house. It had went inside my garage all the way to the door. 9-1-1. What are you reporting? Get somebody out here. What's going on now, sir? That son of a bitch is about 6'9. I don't know.

Do you see him now, sir? Yes, I'm looking right at him. Uh-oh. You're listening to Sasquatch Chronicles. Check us out online at Sasquatch Chronicles.com. If you've had an encounter, email me. My email address is Wes at Sasquatch Chronicles.com. Welcome to the show, everyone.

Thanks for being here tonight. Got a great show plan for you tonight. I'm going to be speaking to Dr. John Bendernoggle, who is from Canada. He's a fan favorite. I know the audience absolutely loves them. Last time I had them on, people demanded I have them back. And it's like I was telling John, you know, you got to give them mob what they want.

And they definitely want to hear from Dr. Benar-Noggle. And so I want to thank him again for coming on tonight. And if you've had an encounter and you'd like to be on the show, shoot me an email. My email address is Wes at Sasquatch Chronicles.com. And I want to let everyone know out there my hearts and my prayer, my heart and my prayer goes, out to everyone on the East Coast, especially in Florida, with the hurricane coming. There's a lot of people that sent me emails, said, please do a show on Sunday, which I always do, but it'll give them a chance to get their mind off things.

And it just meant the world to me that people would email me in the midst of a hurricane and want to make sure that there's a show. So thank you so much out there. Please be safe to the audience listening, especially in Florida. remember possessions can be replaced, your life cannot be, and do whatever you can to stay out of harm's way. My heart's my prayer go out to you. But fresh off the International Bigfoot Conference,

I want to welcome Dr. John Bendernoggle to the show. John, thanks for coming on. Again, I really appreciate it. Sorry. Hi, Russ. Thanks very much. No, no. You're doing it.

How are you doing today? I'm good, thanks. My voice comes on and off a bit weak, but I think I can speak up. Oh, no, you're doing great. You're doing great. Have you been tracking this hurricane coming, John? The hit in Florida?

Sorry. Have you what? Have you been tracking this hurricane coming here in Florida? Oh, very much so. Yeah, and I feel like you, my goodness. Yeah, quite a wall up there in the southeast. Yeah, it's my heart. I've never actually lived through a hurricane,

but I've always said about people in the, in the middle of the United States. They live in a tornado alley. and, you know, a lot of these things, I don't know that I could, I mean, I think I'd freak out in a situation like this. We just had the fires here in the Pacific Northwest, and it was raining ash down like snow. And I feel bad complaining about it, especially since there's a hurricane about to hit, the largest hurricane ever is about to hit Florida. So I feel terrible even complaining about some of the fires. But thank you so much, Sean. I appreciate you being here tonight.

Well, thank you. And I know we're both off the international big. Bigfoot conference. I know you were there. A lot of great speakers. I didn't get a chance to see anything that you presented. I was over in the vendor area. But walking away from this conference, John, and thinking about this conference, what did you take away from it? Well, I'm still processing that because, you know, you go there and, you know, and we had some really good teaching. I guess that's what, I mean, Jeff Meldon always gives a good presentation. But Cliff Barrettman talking about the anatomy of the Sasquatch hands.

based on 13 casts. I didn't know there were 13 hand casts of Sasquatches, and he was very good at teaching and working away on that. And then the other one for me was, well, several, but David Ellis talking and pulling together, all these, I won't call them all vocalizations because some of them were percussive sounds. So David's very good.

He's very conservative. He said, you know, these are recordings that have come to my attention. we attribute some of them to the Sasquatch or Bigfoot. Others were unclear of. And he's doing largely what I think I'm trying to do, bring this forward for the attention, well, in this case of bioacoustics experts, who can say,

oh, that's actually been documented as so-and-so. Here's a recording, let's do comparisons, and let's look at the spectrogram. So that's progress, so that's really exciting. And I guess the third for me was that, gee, David Floyd, coming from my university in eastern U.S., the Sasquatch oil, the hominid images in the literature, and he went way back, and he's dealing, like I have done with Aboriginal accounts, yes, this is embodied in myth, and yes, are we dismissing it too easily as merely a supernatural being

or a hallucination, or should we be taking this as more seriously, early knowledge? or early pointing towards current knowledge. So good stuff, good stuff, yeah. Yeah, I really walked away. I really enjoyed what little I heard of it and so much evidence. And you're right about David Ellis. I know he's with the Olympic project and I'm sure he's listening. But David's one of the best ones to send.

If I had some true audio I needed analyzed, I would send it to David Ellis. I've seen him at work. I know sometimes you hear. Go ahead, John. He's my guru. Yeah, yeah. He helped me a lot. He came early to a conference the other year and spent a whole day with me.

Yeah, that's good. Yeah, I know I do different mixes with audio. And like on the last couple of shows, I did a thing with the ape canyon. And I know people are amazed by it, and I'm like, you should see what David Ellis can do with audio. If you think what I do is good, you should see what he can do. Was there anything that – what was the main thing that stood out to you, though, from the whole conference? Was there one thing you walked away from – that you couldn't stop thinking about?

Well, it keeps going back to that same old thing. There, I just talked about your two real, basically tutorials, lectures, especially Cliff and David. And at the same time, the skepticism persists. I come home into what I call the real world. You know, that was kind of a three-day, almost in isolation there. I come back to the real world. And, you know, so that, to me, that's difficult because I don't have to back way off.

from, I don't have to, but it seems that there's a necessity to back way off from, say, Cliff talking about the hand there, to this, but does this thing exist or not? And you know, all the emails I dealing with and all the, oh, gee, apologetic emails I'm dealing with now saying, gee, I can't, I don't want you to use my name, but here's what I saw, you know. And I got a real good one from BC the other day, and I'm actually thinking of heading up there, because It's recent two weeks, good sighting. You know, but the guy didn't have his cell phone. I don't fault people.

No one's expecting to see wildlife that needs photographs. But, you know, I had this distressing thing, and I might have blown it. We have a CBC Canadian Broadcasting Station found out that I was down there at a U.S. conference, and they're right here in Vancouver, B.C. And they called to do a 10-minute radio interview from the B.C. coast area. And I said, well, great, love to do it. And gee, ah, and I should be more, I should be ready. But the woman, very, very good journalist who interviewed me, he started off.

So you're at this gathering of believers. And I thought, oh, gee, that is, that, she doesn't know how effective that is. She doesn't know how hot a button she's pushing. And so I tried to say, we actually don't consider ourselves believers. You know, we actually consider ourselves investigators, and we work on evidence-based investigation. But I'm afraid it got my backup, and I haven't actually heard what came out.

It seemed okay, but I said to my summary, I think I might have sounded a bit ranty. You know, well, that's what so-and-so thought. It was a bit of a rant, Dad. Oh, shucks! I mean, with you and your listeners, I think you understand why I tend to rant, and maybe it cut me a bit of slack.

But here's this journalist expecting a nice review of what the Sasquots looks like and what sort of evidence really is there. And I'm thinking, oh, we are so far past that. But then that makes me sound delusional. You know, either ahead of the curve or delusional. Well, you know, the easiest answer for that one. So, anyway. Yeah.

So I'm still working through that. But, you know, but that's good. It's good when that happens because I'm kind of out of the loop here. And I need to know what's bothering people. And, you know, can I address it? Yeah, no, and I'm glad that you came on. I asked the listeners for some questions, and there's definitely some great questions from the listeners. But, you know, there's a lot of skeptics that show up at those conferences.

I talk to many of them, and I love skeptics. I absolutely love them. They have some of the best questions. They don't have any preconceived notions about anything. And I actually like speaking to skeptics, not so much like, you know, someone who's just down on the topic that wants to tear apart everything you say. I'm okay having an argument with someone like that. But the skeptics themselves, you know, the people on the fence, they don't really have a dog in this fight. They haven't ever seen one. And they're kind of on the fence. They don't really

believe, but they don't really disbelieve. Those are my favorite people to talk to because, you know, you can share so much with them. And then they tend to walk away and go, wow, I didn't know that there was not much evidence regarding this creature. And I didn't realize that many people had seen this creature. That's the other thing, too, when you talked to a lot of these skeptics. There's shocked that many people have seen them. I guess they see the Patterson Gimlin film and they think, well, that's pretty much all that's happened in the last 50 years, but a lot's happened since then. No, gee, that's good, West, because you're right about skeptics. Yeah, I mean, gee, anyone who turns up at a conference. Now, that's open-minded, healthy skepticism. That's what we encourage. You

have questions, raise your questions. You have doubts, express those doubts. We need to address them. Can we address them? You know, so really a lot of people who consider themselves skeptics are really agnostic in the sense that they're not saying, no way can't exist. They're saying, I haven't seen enough evidence, or I haven't been convinced, or I need to learn more. You know, and this, see, it comes back to my rant, but I don't see a whole lot of scientific colleagues there saying, gee, these people may have something to say to us, and we may be missing it. But anyway, let's cut that one off right there. Yeah, I wanted to ask you about the hand. I didn't get to hear that presentation.

I just had a gentleman on, and I want to come back to it, Richard, I had on Friday night's show, where he had a good look at three of these creatures, a young one and two adults. And remind me, I got a question for you about that letter. but he was talking about the hand. And as we were talking about the hand, he said, you know, Wes, the thumb isn't exactly in the place where our thumbs at. It's actually a little bit lower. He said, but their hands are like catchers mitt. He said, this thing could walk up, scoop up water and drink out of it.

And it was that thick of a, that deep of a hand when he looked at it. What was it about Cliff Breckman's presentation or him talking about the hands that stood out to you. Well, you mentioned that, that the thumb is not positioned like it is in the human. It is down up towards the wrist. That scoop-like aspect of the hand that you were talking about, that's come up in reports. And there's a, gee, I know one eyewitness drawing, it's actually from Ohio, very much shows a scoop-like hand, large scoop-like hand. Yeah, you mentioned the size of a catcher's mitt. Gee, there's that report from the 60s from, with an eyewitness drawing, a prospector from British Columbia here. And he actually, this thing was standing across a pond from him, sort of

rocking back and forth, upright, hands and arms swinging slowly. And he said, and the hands were like canoe paddles. I mean, they really impressed him. So it's not just big foot, it's big hands. And in the sense of maybe being disproportionately large compared to a human. And Cliff mentioned in another thing, like sometimes the fingers appear short. And he said that's probably webbing at the base of the fingers, where we have a slight webbing. We as humans, there seems to be more webbing. Yeah, you know, it's stuff and it's coming forward like that. Yeah, and then seeing the actual hand track, you know, I stopped and talked to Cliff,

and Cliff was actually a really nice guy. I've never actually talked to him before, and I was a little taken back on how, I don't know why I was taken back, but he was actually a really super nice guy, and he was kind of show me some of the different track casts. And one question I want to ask you, Doc, is, you know, I had Richard on Friday night's show. And I'll send you a copy of it if you want to listen to it. I know you're on the site too as well. But he had talked about seeing this young one and it looking like a monkey.

He said it looked very much like a monkey in the face, except for a human nose. Now, he had actually seen the female had actually walked over, crossed his path. They were out hunting, crossed him and his friend's path, walked over to the tree, and actually got the baby out of the tree, and it climbed on the mother's back. But one thing he said is the mother's face looked very human-like. The other one was a little, the male was a little bit more scarier, a little bit more dirty, a little bit. And he went into details about that. But the part of the encounter I found fascinating was he talked about the young one looking very much like a monkey. And as the adults looked very much human-like.

And I almost wonder if they grow into their face or not. I don't know. That isn't the first time I've heard that. I've heard that about four or five times off the air from other eyewitnesses that have seen the young ones and said they look like monkeys. And then the adults look like humans. What's your take on that, Doc? No, that's good. That's good.

And you know what's one of these questions. But, you know, it's interesting. If you get reports of like, well, infants or juveniles, they, you know, maybe still spending most of the time on all fours, not totally upright as to be. come as sub-adults. Yeah, and I've got a report from here, and he said baby chimpanzees. So that was his tag. Again, very monkey-like. And, you know, it's interesting.

I mean, we do have these discrepancies, especially the nose when it comes to facial features. Some say ape-like, some say much more human-like. Okay, and then this thing about the nose, some say, oh, very flat, simply to outward-facing nostrils, like the face of a gorilla. And others say, oh, no, a definite sort of structure, more like a human nose and downward-facing nostrils. So is it variation that's going on or just misinterpret, not misinterpretation, but differing interpretations? I don't know. But, you know, I actually went to something because you asked the other day when we were just talking a bit about nomenclature, rules of nomenclature.

And see, the group I use is, it's called hominoidia. Well, first of all, primates, since we're all primates. and then hominoidia is apes and humans. And now that's as far as I go. I don't want to go further into making it, calling it an ape or as others do call it a human, because it gets us into divisiveness within ourselves, and that's, I don't think we need, we don't need any more divisiveness.

So I back off from great ape and say, if we can say anthropoid, that includes. And it leaves room for these human-like features without saying, if it's got human-like features, it can't be an ape, or if it's got ape-like features, it can't be a human. We're not there yet. Yeah, I think even, you know, if I look at chimpanzees, and it's kind of crazy I'm in this field because I'm not a huge fan of primates,

they creep me out for some reason, Doc. I don't know why. They just do. Like when I go to the zoo and stuff, they just kind of creep me out. It could be what? The actual, like, when you look at chimps and apes, they kind of creep me out. Because there is a lot of human in them. And even with great apes, the known great apes, and with chimpanzees, there's a lot of human-like behavior with them too as well.

Oh, yes. So I don't think there's a big difference in the primate world since we're all primates. Yeah. Well, you know, I got an invitation a few years ago to speak at a local university in the class was primatology. And it turns out that the students were in what is called early childhood education, and they were being taught. primate and including ape behavior to understand kids, you know, hitting out and intimidation behavior. And I thought, whoa, that's pretty broad-minded because, you know, we're usually not very willing

to learn much about humans from apes. But, I mean, you know, most, well, say, most scientists, certainly anthropologists, do not, well, physical anthropology, do not draw that bold line between humans and apes any longer. You know, this is kind of a continuum. But, you know, we get into trouble when we start to kind of catalog, because I'm reminded of a really good investigator I spent time with back in Ontario, central Canada. And he kept saying, and I was calling them mammals. And I said, gee, and he said, oh, sorry, John, I really can't go with you on mammals.

It's definitely, you know, well, he was very human-like. And I said, well, Mike, even if it's a human, it's still a mammal. We humans are mammals. Oh, okay, okay, then. But I mean, you see, this is the problem because we, again, the rat, because we haven't engaged our scientific colleagues who could really speak eloquently like Jeff Meldom does on the subject. People, you know, they're out and they're kind of missing some of the basic stuff. We should not be arguing about mammals if they got hair and then warm blood of their mouth. That should not be controversial.

So that's why I'm reluctant to take it down too far. within primates. Yeah, no, and I understand that. I understand that. I think that there's a lot of behaviors you can draw between the Sasqu— You know what shocks me, Joan. I know you're a wildlife biologist. The one thing that surprises me the most about Sasquatch is you will find it acts very animal-like

in a lot of situations, very much like an animal. And then there's other situations to where it acts very human. like. And I can't really, and I'll give you an example. The guy had on Friday, Richard, probably one of the best encounters I've ever heard. And this female Sasquatch had walked over, grabbed the young one, taking it out of the tree, put it on its back, and it just looked at him. And I was telling Richard, I said, you know, if that would have been a black bear, if that would have been any other predator on the planet, you probably would be dead because they don't, you know, bears, chimpanzees, I mean, any known predator out there is not going to tolerate

you being that close to a young one. They're just not. And the fact that this thing didn't attack him kind of threw me off. He reached for his knife. I'll tell you, John, he reached for his knife. And he said the female Sasquatch gave him a look like, don't do that. And that really stuck with him. And that's very human-like. I mean, that is very human-like to get a look. from a creature, and know right off the bat, it's a look like, don't do that. And so that throws me off with the Sasquatch. What are your thoughts with the behaviors being human-like and animal? Well, you raise very good point because we, and this is this thing about,

we draw this line between humans and apes, I think, without a very full understanding of apes. And I include myself in that, you know, although I worked in parts of Africa and did see chimpanzees, I should have gone to observe gorillas in the wild, and I didn't. I didn't know I was going to get into this area of research. But anyway, yeah, humanly, if those primatologists who study ape behavior, they see human-like, well, what we would, you know, popularly describe as human behavior all the time. And this is what Jane Goodall keeps emphasizing, you know,

these apes, they need this kind of social stimulation and psychological stimulation. You can't just put them in a cage and inspect them to thrive because they don't. There's this strong maternal instinct stinks. There's assistance with each other, a lot of stuff going on. And so we have this unfortunate popular conception of apes as knuckle-dragging brutes, you know. And as she, Jane Goodall, it's one of the ones. We must get over that.

You know, they're much more human-like than we realize, but it's not maybe quite as widely known as people like her realize. Yeah, no, you're absolutely right. You've looked at that Coco, the Gorilla John, haven't you? Yeah, yeah. Coco. There's a famous, and I watched this on the video, and I was really blown away by it. And it really opened my eyes as far as, you know, my dog, for instance. I love my dog like my son.

And there's nothing I wouldn't do to protect him. There's nothing I wouldn't do to, you know, make his life easy. But, you know, a lot of times as humans, we look at animals and we think of them just as like animals. And I remember Coco was smoking one time. Or no, she was trying to get out. She was actually, she was halfway out the window. And the people had stopped her because she was living in this enclosure with the people. They had stopped her.

And they said, what are you doing? and she said, I'm going out for a smoke. Well, she was breaking out to leave is what she was doing. But the fact that she signed back to the humans, I'm going out for a smoke. She had watched the humans go out there for a smoke. It blew me away. It completely blew me away. It made me stop and go, well, what is human?

What is it that we're, what defines us as human beings? You know what I mean? Well, you see, no, see, that's good. And I think part of that defining. And, you know, oh, and it comes up in cultural anthropology, just like you talked about your dogs as animals, but the implication is we're not, we're human. Well, this is the same thing. Again, we are animals. You know, I mean, we're mammals.

But no, anthropologists, cultural anthropologists keep getting, well, I won't say they get us into trouble, but they're interesting. One of their really popular cultural explanations is that we humans have a need to separate. ourselves, and they say from animals. What they really mean is from other animals. And we embody this in the Bigfoot or the Sasquatch, which bridges that gap with what they consider animal-like qualities and behavior and human-like behavior. And so that sounds good. And then other scientists, oh, thank you very much, cultural anthropologists.

I think we now understand how we have Bigfoot in our culture. That's a good explanation. No, no. I don't know if we humans have this need or not, but I don't think it is a very good explanation in light of all the physical evidence we have, you know, the tracks and the eyewitness descriptions that you're describing, the vocalizations.

But we kind of allow it ourselves to be stuck there. And I wouldn't like to say it myself, but I heard others say, yeah, scientists being intellectually lazy. Well, maybe that's it. Just take the easiest. and make that a conclusion and say, that's it. So it's me going on a bit. No, no, you're absolutely right.

You're absolutely right. You know, I think as humans, we tend to, and I know there's a scientific term, I think it's anthropomorphous. You know, we tend to put human-like chiroistics on a lot of animals. I mean, I do it with my dog, and so when people do it with Sasquatch, I completely get it. I mean, I'm not too hard on people when they do that because I think my dog understands what I say. He understands my body language.

He understands. And he probably doesn't. He probably has no clue. But I feel like he does. And I think that's more of a human thing than it really is on him. It's more on me. And I think a lot of people with Sasquatch, they do the same thing, whether they think it's an animal, whether they think it's a person or people, whatever people, you know, call them. It depends on your experience with them.

And it depends on how you view that relationship. And so, you know, I'm not too hard on people when they, when they, I used to be, John, I used to be really hard on, I'd be like, no, they're animals. Nothing more, nothing less. And today I'm a little bit, maybe I'm getting soft in my old age. Yeah. Yeah, well, me too. Because, I mean, you know, we can, I think no one should be faulted for their interpretation because it's basically open season on how you

interpret Sasquatches and Sasquots evidence and what do you hear? Because, I mean, it's, you know, since there's so little informed scientific comment available, you feel free. I mean, just, yeah. Yeah, and I think with eyewitnesses, you know, because we don't have one in a cage we can study, I always say I don't have one of my garage I can study, but with eyewitnesses, it's like I was telling Richard on Friday night show, you know, I was asking him what he, you know, I was asking him, his opinion on Sasquatches, and he was like, well, I'm not in a position to speak about that. You're in the absolute position to speak about that. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Most of the eyewitnesses or most of the true fans of the show, probably know more about Sasquatch than most researchers out there. Oh, yeah. Because you can learn so much about the behavior, you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah. And that's why I'm so glad that you're archiving and pulling these reports out of the human population. because we will return to those. You can probably tell the whole focus of my research these days is that, you know, okay, for some of us it's been discovered.

We moved on, just like Cliff and David Ellis, we moved on in our studying hand anatomy vocalizations, you know. But that leaves us so exposed, you know, standing out there sort of naked, looking over our shoulders, saying, what are we doing out here looking? delusional, and maybe I take that on too much. And that's another good thing about these conferences, like you say, certainly skeptics there, but lots of young people, very, very open, not with all the hang-ups that my colleagues have and much more amenable to this. It's still an alternative explanation beyond it being merely a cultural phenomenon. So, yeah, yeah, good, good stuff, Wes. And that's why

I like having you back on the on the show John. You're actually a huge fan, especially with college students. I had a lot of college students contact me, and they were having their professors listen to the show. And especially when you're on, they have their professors listen to the show. They're like, hey, if you won't listen to eyewitnesses, listen to this guy. And you're right, there's a younger generation coming that is more open to take a look at this and not so afraid of, I think the generation of scientists that are afraid to look into this

are dying off. you know what I mean well you know I'm going through this with Jeff Meldrum and and he's invited editorials for his at the journal RHA and you know I'm really I'm not coming out of the closet I'm out of the closet with my acceptance of this but I'm I'm I'm getting a little more ready to start poking at my scientific colleagues for their unwillingness to to scrutinize the evidence And I've been so deferential. I'm, you know, saying, and it's what gets me into trouble. You know, I say, yes, I understand your resistance to this.

Yes, it's partly justified. It does seem like a far-fetched claim. And then I, again, this investigator I work with back. We said, I know I have said this another time, John, I understand your need to appease your scientific colleagues. Well, there's another hot button. I don't want to appease them. I don't want to look as if I'm enabling them to remain silent and uninvolved.

I'm trying to attract their attention. So I saw my little presentation. I was trying to poke a little fun at them in that little sort of satirical cartoon I presented. So that's what I'm sort of going next because I'm encouraged by these younger people. Because we have senior curators of mammals, senior scientists, in physical anthropology, basically pronouncing what is acceptable, what are acceptable subjects for scientific investigation in which are not. And they're absolutely silent on the Sasquatchezer Bigfoot.

And I want to address that because that silence speaks volumes. It says, no, this is not a subject for scientific scrutiny. It doesn't warrant scientific attention. And basically, I don't want to hear any more about it. But behind all those scientists are younger colleagues, interns, grad students, and a minority of people, even my age, like Beldom and I say, whoa, whoa, you're speaking for us, and you're not representing us. And that's when Melden was more successful at this than I am. That's why, permit me to address your next conference so I can illustrate some of this evidence. and not convince you of our conclusion, but show you the evidence

and why we think it warrants investigation. So I'm nibbling at the edges of my cage here coming out of it. We're starting to poke a bit. No, I think it's smart, John. I really do. And you know, a lot of times that's been my biggest complaint, really, with the science world. Hey, whether you believe in Bigfoot's irrelevant to me, just take a look at the evidence. take a look at some of the eyewitness reports. Let's look at some of the trackcasts. Let's listen to some of the audio. And if you want, we can look at some of the video. But let's just take a look at all of the evidence and then tell me what you think. And I think most scientists are unwilling to do that. And the fact that you are, you're a professional, John, I think it holds a lot of weight when you speak. Holds a lot of weight. You know, this show, for instance, people couldn't wait to have you back on. I have a list of, um, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh,

questions for you. I don't know if you want to take a knock at some of these. Yeah, yeah, well, yeah. Eric B. from the website, he said, in your knowledge, and again, John, I realize some of these questions are just opinions or maybe some of your theories, and it's obviously, neither one of us have one in a garage we're studying, so. But, you know, take a whack at them if you want. Eric B. says, in your knowledge, what incident or citing or something he witnessed? sticks out as the best credible evidence. And I'm thinking, you know, because as a wildlife biologist,

I tend to place heavier weight on sort of things that we use as wildlife like tracks, and especially when tracks are cast. You know, it's really very good. And one of the things I've been doing, and I put it up there at that conference, one of my research videos is a field guide entry, which belongs, and mammals of North America, right next page to bears, including upright bears. And so I've got, you know, the sort of field guide representations of a Sasquatch and some kind of a sampling of Sasquatch tracks.

And, you know, one of them, and more and more, I'm finally getting some juvenile and sub-adult tracks. And one of the great sort of take-home things from this trip for me was Ori Innes, who I met a couple years ago at Dodd-Nice's contrary. Well, when I met two down there in Oregon, Ory came up to me with this incredibly clear, sharp, Sasquatch track, but it's only eight. Gee, what's it?

Yeah, I think it's an eight-eat-age track. Caste, beautiful cast. I looked at it then, and we talked about it, but we were all so busy. I didn't follow up, and it's one of these things where it finally sunk in. So I've got back to Ory, and he sent it up to me, and I now have it here ready to make duplicates of it, like first generation really good copies from a really good mold that we're about to begin.

And then I'll feel more comfortable because I feel nervous with some of this scientifically valuable, scientifically valuable original casting material. And that's what I think, gee, sometimes I feel like, well, I'm not the only guy who appreciates that's where Cliff Perrick is doing so well, and Jeff's been doing it. it for years, but a lot of people don't get it. But, you know, those cast, first of all, we can usually refute the hulk, the fabricated wooden feet. And anyway, that's a bit of a story, but we can do that. And now we have this evidence that this is, in fact, a track-leaving mammal. So it just kind of eliminates a lot of the stuff about hallucinations and imaginary

being. So I'll stop there. But yeah, yeah, track evidence right there is for me, as important as films and eyewitness drawings. Yeah, probably even more because it's harder to fake a track cast, I would think, than a video. Harder to fake if you're willing to scrutinize it. And that's where even Jeff Meldon has the problem. He cannot get his colleagues from down the hall at his university to come and look at his cast collection. And just one little aside there that the hoax claims, hoaxes and hoax claims have really set us back. because no scientist wants to look at something and say,

oh, gee, looks pretty compelling to me. And then a week later said, ha-ha, that one he was looking at. Yeah, my brother and I made that. You know, so they're being very guarded and, you know, with some justification, but kind of mess things up. Yeah, and I can understand that completely. Eric B. also wants to know, and I would imagine, too, as a wildlife apologist, John, the trackass would be the most

compelling. They're definitely the most compelling for me, you know, beyond sound. And, you know, there's a lot of things you can fake, but track casts are pretty tough. One of the other questions Eric B wants to know is he says, does the doc believe they only utilize infrasound? If so, to what degree? Yeah. I can't really speak on, I hear these reports. And they're very, very interesting, aren't they? I mean, people are really affected by what being described as infrasound. It seems to immobilize people. And it sounds to me like something you probably need to experience to really appreciate because it's kind of like people who smell that really powerful smell, that odor,

and gone and say, oh, it was like 20 scones and, oh, I almost gagged. And, you know, they were very impressed. and, well, and to some extent, vocalizations, really loud vocalizations up close, you know. But infrasound sounds almost go beyond that, doesn't it? But, no, I'm just listening, and I don't know. Yeah, it's hard to say. I know a lot of encounters when you listen to them, they sound, it sounds like infrasound sickness that people experience.

But you wonder sometimes if that's fear or not. Eric B. also wants to know, does John believe they tend to their dead? There's a huge controversy in the Bigfoot world, whether they buried their dead, they eat their dead, or these things just go off into the wilderness and die. I don't think anyone truly knows, but what are your thoughts, John? No. I tend to favor the last, just because it is remarkably easy for a dying animal to disappear, bearer. even bears, you know, and because I know, oh, I guess, well, probably 40 years when I was still pretty active in, in the field, a lot of it here in Western North America, two bear skulls

only, you know, and there's a lot, these are black bears out there, even deer skeletons, maybe 10, compared to, you know, thousands and, well, yeah, thousands of deer I saw. So, yeah, and, you know, bones do break down, especially here in the Pacific Northwest where we live with our acid soils. and but teeth tend to persist, but then once the jaw has kind of decayed or molded or been chewed up by rodents, then the teeth, I think, probably just sink into the soil and pretty hard to retrieve. So, yeah, trying to get that kind of physical evidence is pretty difficult. Yeah, it is.

And you're right. I mean, I've never come across, I know you said the teeth last a long time. I've never come across to bear jaw. I've never come across to deer jaw or teeth. or anything that's died naturally. Obviously, if poacher gets it, you're going to find the body. But for the most part, I've never come across an animal that died naturally in the woods. I just haven't.

I've spent a lot of time out in the woods. One of the questions, Eric B, he asked, does John believe that Sasquatch would eat a human if the opportunity arose? Yeah, I don't think eat. I think there could be competition, you know, and this comes up. Well, again, it's just kind of orally documented reports, the stone throwing, which comes up so often. Something is, and this is, we would describe as intimidation behavior. An intimidation behavior, and I really got into this in the first book,

because all these reports were coming, these reports of large branches being broken, as if they were intended to intimidate and be a show of strength and spook someone out of an area, Rocks being thrown at or towards people. And yeah, intimidation behavior. And George Schaller was good about this, talking about the mountain gorilla. It basically is to encourage human intruders to leave because there's a food cash or infants or family that they want to protect. And it's not violence. They don't want to eat you or kill you.

They want you to leave. And I think that's going on quite often. And I think that's how a lot of interactions occur. We've almost kind of stumble into an area. Might be a part of their home range that they've decided is like a territory, a really core area that they're protecting for some reason. I, by far as eating, you know, I think Sasquatches recognize us as, have to be careful. Like kindred, kindred, somehow a relatedness.

Here we are upright mammals. walking around. And, you know, there are these reports that I hate to bring up because it sounds again like you're delusional, but these, what Hennor Ferenbach used to call rescuer incidents where a hunter breaks a leg and something large and smelly carries it back to his camp, sets him down, and leaves. A child is lost. Something comes over to the forest, guides the child to the edge of the road, and leaves it there where it will be picked up. You know, there are these reports around. And I think eventually we will come to recognize that, you know, yeah, this does happen, can happen. But then, and Jeff Meldron brought this to my attention again recently, reports from, well, Uganda and other parts of East Africa, chimpanzees actually attacking children, you know, outside, maybe in the evening, maybe not.

Yeah, and apparently there is this, and Jane Goodall acknowledges this kind of what she calls the dark side, of chimpanzee behavior. So, I mean, yeah, I think it's something to be aware of, and I have no idea the extent of it. Yeah, it's interesting. You brought up a couple things there. I have had those reports, like where you're talking about, where people seem to be saved by a Sasquatch. And it's hard to say if Sasquatch is killing people. I tend to think that they do, but it's just an opinion.

But you never hear, you know, dead men don't speak. And so it's hard to, it's hard to know for sure. what happened. There's a lot of people that go missing in the woods and under very strange circumstances. And obviously, every time we can't blame Sasquatch on it, but there is some very odd reports of people going missing. And it really makes you wonder what happened to them. I want to get to Kenny's question. But Eric B, his last question says, it would also like to hear his take on the sexual aspect of Sasquatch. Are they monogamous with their family? or do they have multiple partners like primates?

And before you answer, John, I've actually heard of, I had one report I put on the air, I think it was last week, but I've heard about four or five reports off the air where it seems to be like one female and four or five males, something to that extent, where it's not just one male, it's several males, almost like you'd see with monkeys. But what's your take on it, John? Well, yeah, no, I'm, well, I don't,

No, but I also have compared it. I look at, you know, bands of chimpanzees and gorillas, and then that sort of orangutan situation, which interests me, because that's where you have a solitary male, solitary female, coming together in what they call a consorthip. It's almost like a dating sort of thing. They're together for a while, they mate, and then the male goes off by itself again, and the female and the infant are by themselves. And that last one seems to be the closest model that I hear about.

A lot of solitary males. But yeah, once in a while, a group. Well, you know, this one we talk about quite a lot, not quite a lot, but somewhat. The name will come. Anyway, it's where there's an adult female Sasquatch and an adult male Sasquatch in Oregon, picking up hibernating ground squirrels, digging up hibernating ground squirrels. anyway, but the situation, so it's an adult, yeah, two adults and a juvenile, but the juveniles appears to keep the female between itself and the male, as if the male is maybe not quite as

welcoming that group as, as it might be. So, I mean, obviously, this is where we do get into an area of what I would call speculation, and I know people say, well, it's all speculation. No, no, It's not all speculation, but here we're reaching. But no, I mean, see, these are the really good questions that one would have hoped that by now we're kind of moving a little closer towards than we really are. So I don't know. But the recent report of a lot, like 8 and 10. And what's going on there, I don't know. Yeah, it's hard to say.

I know Melissa Kay says, Dr. Bendernoggle noticed and noted in one of his commentaries that wildlife biologists, use an animal track as evidence to prove the existence of a mammal in an environment. I was impressed by this because we have some very credible people who've expressed they feel some Sasquot tracks are more likely real based on their experiences. To name a few who to me stand out in their expertise, Dr. Bennernoggle, Dr. Krantz, Dr. Meldrum, John Green, Jimmy Chilkut, with the combined years of experience being about 200, that is an impressive list of men whose opinion should convince anyone. I don't understand why Sasquatch is so taboo or why so many people are totally close-minded about it. What is so surprising about another species of

primate? Just sort of addressed the whole background for my second book. You know, why are, why, that's right, Why is it scientifically taboo? And you know, oh, gee, when would that be? 2007. I had that second book essentially complete, and that's what I met. Oh, gee, Lila, Hadj Keeke. And in Erickson Project, and I said,

and we got talking, she's a Princeton PhD, and I said, gee, Lila, would you be willing to just give a quick review? I pretty much got this book finished. Well, she applied her. herself and basically she changed the book. She gave me three years of editing. And it isn't just, like I was focusing on the Sasquatch as a scientific discovery and still did, but she said, oh, it's much larger than the Sasquatch. It's about scientific discovery. It's about science. It's about scientists. It's about scientific resistance to a discovery claim perceived as far-fetched,

which this is. Well, that was really, it took me three years after that to get the book finished, but it changed the balance, the second half of the book, basically addresses this issue of scientific resistance. And so the problem is, okay, so why is our discovery claim perceived as far-fetched? Well, if I were just an ordinary biologist with a Fish and someone's talking about a seven foot tall, 800-pound, upright, ape-like creature

here on Vancouver Island, and it's not in my mammal field guide. I don't know. I guess I'd laugh and I just move on. And so I'm out there along with a lot of others,

like you, saying, no, no, don't move on. This is evidence based. I know it sounds crazy, but by now, and so,

well, I guess what I've been doing is trying to pull all this stuff together, and what, others are doing and doing a really good job of, except it's all happening under the radar, pulling it together to make sense of the claim. Yeah, no, absolutely. Is that on track?

Yeah, no, no, that's absolutely on track. Daniel E. He said, hey, Wes, a couple questions. And the first one is, does Dr. Benernoggle believe that Sasquatch might be behind the disappearance of the 411 missing cases that David Pilates talks about? We'll skip that question so the author doesn't get his panties in a wad. But the second part of the... The answer is I don't know.

But the second part of the question is, we know the government is trying to keep all this a secret, but in his opinion as to why they don't acknowledge the existence. And that's the question. Why doesn't the government just come out and say that these things are real? Yeah. This is an area where I try to be careful, too, because it can sound like conspiracy theory that, you know,

this is being known about but kept secret. And that may be the case. But I myself, I'm not going to go there because I have come to realize the strength of scientific resistance. And I'm finding that that resistance alone is enough to account for, well, what I'm increasingly referring to as a botched discovery process, where we've allowed ourselves to bog down with a lot of red herrings, well, like holds tracks and sort of, it's not that we've stopped, scientists have stopped any progress.

They never got started. Yeah. Excuse me, and that's what I'm trying not to do. But yeah, anyway. No, no, I understand. I understand. Joseph Kay, I'll come back to the question, but he says, from the information out there, it appears there are nomadic species, with this considered one of the most,

then moved to the question patterns related to hunting, gathering, available shelter, and mating safe, harboring for the birthing and rearing of their children until one is old enough to migrate. His question is, and I've had this question before, I've had people who claim to have these around their property, John, and when they come around their property, I'll ask people, is it pretty much 365 days a year, and they'll say, no, it's only during the fall, It's only during, they'll give you some sort of time frame of when they're seeing these things. Joseph's question, though, he says, I'm curious to know if Dr. Benernagle has looked into researching potential migratory patterns of the Sasquatch. Good, really good question.

And again, it's an area where we should be by now. And see, I look at the Sasquatch as probably having a really large home range, so large that it would appear to be, even though it might be actually confining itself just to a large home range. And then within that home range, there will be, like with black bears, oh, I forget put the term it, but there's a name for it. It's maybe not territories, but scattered areas of concentration where food is, excuse me, food is available in a certain area, excuse it, at a certain time of year. And so there is maybe a regular pattern of movement, except that, first of all,

we're not studying it. And second, it might be quite large scale. But there are some folks working, I go down in Washington on that, trying to remember the people involved making maps and mapping reports. And we'll get to that. We'll get to that. I forgot I had another comment. A very good question.

Not much of an answer. No, I understand. Oh, yeah, there is one more thing. And this was good. And this is, again, the value of these conferences and collegiality. My wife and I cast, we basically got a couple of really good casts, gee, 1988 in Strathcona Provincial Park. And then I've now dug out on another set of cast about 55 miles away.

Gee, what is it, 1993? So about five, six years later, 55 miles away, It looks like the same individual adult. I don't know if it may, but it's a terrible. Gee, what are they? 15-inch tracks, about six inches wide. And when I showed them to clip Berrickman, and Jeff, they'll tell them.

Oh, so you got more Sasquatch, more examples of the track of this single Sasquatch. Well, I didn't think of them as the same individual, but we are now. But we'll clip, well, the Cliff and Jeff and I, this probably is the same. So that suggests if they are, in fact, the same individual, 55 miles for, you know, a home range. Not that we know that this thing was going back and forth, but that it seems to have traveled that distance during its, well, during its hunting, gathering, foraging.

Yeah, and it makes sense. You know, like you can kind of track deer the same way or any other prey the same way. They'll generally come through a certain area at a certain time of year. or maybe not the exact area where you're expecting, but for the most part, they'll come through a same general region. It seems like Sasquatch does the same thing, wouldn't you think? Yeah.

And that's the predictability we're looking for. And that's where we are moving ahead, obviously not as quickly as we could be or should be, but why these reports coming forward and people, you know, reporting this and people like you kind of pulling it together, we're saying, aha, in this area, we might be able to anticipate Sasquatch presence at a certain time of year. And I'm trying to use that again this fall because for two years now we've had vocalizations on a small island up on the BC coast.

And well, two years, that's the beginning of a pattern. So I'm going back this year with better recording equipment and kind of forewarned and going in proactively in advance of vocalization report to see does this individual or we're going. group or whatever it is, come back to this island every year, and hopefully we'll get higher quality recordings to sort of conclude, is this in fact, are these in fact Sasquatch vocalization, or is it something else? So, yeah, we are progressing. Yeah, these are great questions. I know Mark S. I don't know, do you know about the Miller document, John? Not by that name. Okay. I'll send it to you. It's a document that was, he wanted to

your opinion on it. I'll send it to you. I'll tell me your opinion. The origins of where the document came from are shady at best, but whoever wrote this document definitely knew something about the scientific world. Just some of the terms they use, but they talk about Sasquatch. I'll skip that question. I'll send it to you, John. That way you can... Okay. I might know what you're talking about, but I'm not sure. Yeah, and I'll send it to you. Augustine L. who has about 30 questions. but I'll try and cut him down. He said they have a language. They look like us.

Are they uncontacted tribe of humans living in our backyards? Yeah, well, you know, this is being discussed. Asquatch vocalizations, like what I'm studying at these loud wailing calls. But then there is this, some people call it gibberish, but this chatter that sounds like language. and the question is, is it language or not? I mean, it certainly seems to be communication. But, you know, I mean, we've had, you know, Ron Moorehead stuff there that Sierra sounds for a long time. People have studied it.

I'm not quite sure where we've come to with that. And, you know, there are people who have said, oh, this actually sounds very much like a known human language, Spanish or some other language. I don't know. You know, I don't know about this. But, you know, I think what someone conclude, just the way it's sometimes that it's a back and forth thing is that one, there's definite vocal communication going on. So we may not know the exact meaning, but we pick up things from tone, like, is this an adult admonishing or punishing or, you know, trying to curb in a juvenile or an infant?

Really interesting area. And, again, the more investigators out there, and again, documentation being so important. If we can get more examples of this, it'd be more to study. Yeah, I think the thing with the language is it's not too far off to think that these things have a language. I think every

animal, I'm like an old man, I'll go out and feed the squirrels. I probably shouldn't admit to that, but I do. With sunflower seeds or whatever. And I was sitting out, gosh, probably a year ago. And I saw these two squirrels chatting back and forth.

It was a language. These two things were chatting back and forth. That was my impression, I guess, is sitting there, but I'm thinking these things are chatting back and forth. I don't know what they're saying, but, you know, even if a squirrel can do that, you would think that a primate could, you know, have some sort of language. Whether it be a gorilla, a Sasquatch, a human, a monkey, you know, chimpanzee, not a monkey chimpanzee or whatever. You would think they all would have some sort of language. I think every animal really out in the... the in the woods has some form of communication.

That's the thing. And I think linguists kind of maybe not draw a bold line, but it's communication evolving into a language, which is a little more specific. I don't know. Actually, I don't know anything about this. Yeah, no, and I understand. A lot of these questions, like I said,

you know, the audience is hungry for information, and a lot of questions can't be answered, you know, as far as what they do or why they do it, but we try our best to put together. But you see, this is the thing. It's what we're doing, but very slowly, again, pulling all this evidence together, but then, and this is where I keep getting stuck,

trying to attract the attention of the relevant experts. Like right now, bioacoustics, you know, we've got these great vocalizations recorded in many parts of the U.S., certainly from good stuff from Manitoba recently, the stuff we're getting up the B.C. coast here. But to try to get a bioacoustic, expert to treat this seriously is still difficult in my experience, especially if we make the mistake of admitting that we attribute this to Bigfoot.

Pardon my cynicism, but that seems to shut down a conversation at a pretty early stage. No, it does. And I, you know, I really appreciate being here, John. I know the last question they have is from Ryan. He wants to know, have you ever heard of Bigfoot being in the UK? And have you seen a Bigfoot before? Well, his last part of those questions, have you seen a Bigfoot report or Bigfoot before? And I know we addressed that on the last show.

I guess I'll answer that. John has seen one. He did describe his encounter. But I am getting more and more reports out of the UK, John. And I don't know what to make of that. No. What are your thoughts? Well, you know, I think it's very possible because there's some from the European continent as well.

And that whole was considered a legend in Scotland, I think it's the old gray man. But, you know, I think back not that many years, Grover Crants, was very much a leader academically. We're very skeptical of any reports east of the Rockies. Like he did his work in the West, and he was skeptical about stuff in the East. Well, we don't do that, and we find out a lot of the reports

from the Eastern North America preceded, you know, those from the West, you know. And look what Cliff Barrettman's done with his colleague down there in Indonesia and Sumatra with Arangpan Deck. A great collection of Rang Pan Deck track. See, they've almost jumped ahead of North American Sasquatchez. And then Jeff writing more and more about, you know, like hominids around the world and support for them, like the Air and China. And then we had that conference a few years ago in Russia with some, you know, pretty interesting. evidence from there. So, but,

but you see, I go back to something that Grover said, that, you know, we really have so much good evidence for the North American Sasquatch.

We really should try to wrap this one up, so to speak, or work that maybe a little harder. And then once we're, you know, really convinced that this one exists,

then that one, then we'll say, oh, what about the Yeti and the Air and, you know, and the Russian snowman. Yeah.

So anyway, that's the way I see it unfolding. No, absolutely. And I wanted to ask you, what do you think it'll take to prove it, John? I mean, you know, we have pretty much all the evidence we're going to get at this point. I mean, someone might come out with a video that's better than the Patterson Gimlin film. And I have seen some good videos. But, I mean, what do you think it will really take to prove this to the scientific community, to the world? Let's put all government coverups aside.

Let's put all conspiracies aside. What would it take to prove this to a scientist sitting? I mean, obviously, the really conclusive evidence is the type specimen, which we would call the cadaver. And, you know, Grover made a case for that. He said, you know, we've got all these track tests. We've got a lot of convincing evidence that, you know, my colleagues want a type specimen. And he advocated collecting one, which, of course, is a euphemism for shooting one. And he was absolutely hammered.

I mean, but see, that was quite a few years ago. and I think back to my upbringing G back in the 60s at university, we collected specimens and photographs didn't cut it, almost nothing cut it. It had to be a specimen. Well, we've moved on in some ways, but, but,

but, you know, now I'm going through this with kind of the, you know, the, I've rebuilt woodpecker evidence, you know, there's some pretty good photographic evidence and I witness evidence,

but no type specimen. And what would, what would happen to someone who collected one? So it's a real dilemma. And see, my point is not so much insisting on proof as sufficient evidence to shift this into an area warranting scientific examination by my credentials much more knowledgeable than our scientific colleagues. And that's basically all we're so. It's really quite a, I think it's quite a modest goal.

No, no, that's why I keep in my presentation. I'm simply trying to illustrate evidence to kind of spark their interest. You know, there's something going on here that we should know about. No, you're absolutely right. You're absolutely right. And that's been my argument for the longest time. And people hate it when I say it. I can imagine what Grover Krantz went through.

But, you know, I really feel like a body is needed. You know, it's to the point where I think that's what it'll take for. I think there's a lot of closet scientists. I know you might disagree with me, John, but there's a lot I hear about, I get emails from them. There's a lot of scientists that listen to this show, believe it or not. And there's a lot. I'm finding that out. Yeah.

Can I interject your cause? Something came to me with it. And if I still got it, it's gone. anyway. I had a thought. Oh, yeah, yeah. The thought is, yeah, yeah. Getting back to, you know, us trying to attract scientists to the evidence or, you know, bring the evidence to the attention of the science. We are trying to save their bacon. They are going to have to address this down the road when that type specimen does happen, you know, from a roadkill or some hundred decided it's time to, you know, be the guy to bring one in, whatever, whatever happened. there will be that specimen, and we're trying to say, you know, and people are going to say, what did you guys know about this?

Didn't you see it coming? And we're trying to, you know, provide them with the information to say, oh, yes, we've had a pretty good description of its anatomy and we knew a lot about the elements of its behavior. At the moment, you know, with due respect, they're not saying that. They're ignoring what we're providing them with. So I want to get back to that. No, no. No apologies.

I think a lot of them are listening, though. A lot of them are closet scientists because they can't come out. You know, I can think of three professors right now of major universities that listen to the show. And they lay love when you come on, but they listen to the eyewitness encounters. And they've started to kind of look at some of the evidence. And a lot of it is because of their students. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, you know, that was the other comment I wanted to make. And I did mention it to you briefly at the conference because following the last podcast, you and I did, I got this email from a professor at an East Coast university. He's in the summer, early in the summer, he said, I'm doing this honors seminar and we're addressing several subjects shunned by science. And it said, it seems like, excuse me, Sasquatch research qualifies as such a subject. So I've sent him a copy of the book and we're going to get together. but the point is he heard about it from your podcast.

And I thought, well, so you just jump, I mean, you were really pretty high in my book, but you just jump way up, you know. Yeah. But you're right, and I would not have suspected that an academic, but he must be a young guy. You know, pardon me, pardon my cynicism, but I think this is what you're saying. And I think Meldham's more aware of it because he's more in the loop. Yes, there are these, I won't call that. maybe having a closet interest, but an undisclosed interest in the subject. And I'm encouraged,

obviously, very encouraged for that. Yeah, and like I said, when you come on, John, it holds a lot of weight. People listen to what you say. And I think it's, I think a lot of the, especially professors are changing their mind, but I think a lot of it has to do with the younger students that are listening that are like, hey, take a listen to this. This isn't, you know, this guy doesn't make a joke of things, you know, it's eyewitness encounters. And I'm always amazed by that because, you know, for a professor, you know, I have a primatologist that listens to the show all the time. And he'll email me maybe once or twice a month and say, hey, on this episode, you guys were talking about this. I want to let you know how it relates to the known primates. Here's kind of what I

see. And, you know, that holds, that means the world to me that someone would, in that position, would email me and say, hey, listen. I listened to the last couple shows. And here's my take. I think that's what I hope people like you and I are doing and your people who phone it. We are trying to make it safe to report a big foot, make it safe to bring this evidence forward. This is a positive thing. It's a necessary thing. And I would say it's almost a responsibility, but I don't fault people who hold back. When it comes to responsibility, I lean a little more heavily on the responsibility of my colleagues to acknowledge those.

reports and address them. But you know what I'm going with that. Yeah. No, I know exactly. And John, it's always an honor to have you on the show. I know you've written two books, and I want to mention them real quick. Back in 1998, I know you wrote North America's Great Ape, The Sasquatch, and then in 2010, you wrote the discovery of the Sasquatch. I know people can find them on Amazon, but where else can people, where would you prefer people buy your book from, John? Yeah, we're turned out not to be very good business people or book marketers. So, yeah, Amazon has the second book, which is the one I keep recommending. We're finally getting, we're only a few hundred copies of the first book around anymore.

We're getting it on to Amazon.ca because the books are all here in Canada. So we'll be out there. We do try to ship from here, but we're slow. Yeah, well, I appreciate the fact that you would look into it, John, and put your neck out. Dr. Benernagle, a wildlife biologist who's willing to look into the subject. You're a hero in my eyes, John. And I really do mean that.

That's not just lip service. Careful, Wes. Thank you very much. But I love talking to you. I know you and I chatted real quick at the International Bigfoot Conference. And I was so happy to have you back on. Like I said, there was, I thought there was going to be a riot if I didn't have you back on with some of the emails and stuff. No, no. My pleasure, and I don't want to wear out this welcome, because obviously this is a shot in the arm for me, hearing what's bothering people, so that I can say, you know, do I know anything about this? And can I provide any information or opinions? So, thanks again.

No, thank you, John. Thank you so much for coming on. Okay, bye for now. And that's it for tonight, everyone. Remember, if you've had an encounter, shoot me an email. My email is. address is Wes at Sasquatch Chronicles.com. I actually want to take a moment and give a shout out to Ronnie. It's Ron Ney. He's on my Facebook. I know he's been a listener to the show for a long time. And Ronnie says, today I'm heartbroken. I lost my little brother, Michael Joseph knee. Rest in peace, my little brother. My fishing buddy and my close friend. You're in good hands with the Lord now. And I will always love you very much.

Please say a prayer for my little brother, and thank you in advance to my Facebook friends. And Ronnie, you have the prayer and you're my thoughts. Thank you so much for, you know, Ronnie's normally this easygoing guy. He always leaves me a funny comment. And I was heartbroken when I saw it because I know the love of a brother. You know, there was seven of us. I lost my older brother. I won't go into it.

But, you know, I was completely heartbroken. and, you know, it's, you know, when your hero dies, it, uh, it cuts you up. Um, and, and my heart goes out here, Ronnie. It's, uh, brotherly loves a hard thing. I know a lot of people listen to me and Woody on the show. And, uh, it's kind of a interesting dichotomy between two people. Uh, there's certain things Woody can say to me that he'll get away with, you know, if someone else said it to me, it'd probably knock their front teeth out. Um, but, um, it's something, you know, my young, brother, Greg, I love him to death. You know, I probably don't say it enough. But, you know,

my heart goes out to you, Ronnie. It's, brothers are a funny thing. You know, it's, you can, I can call my brother an asshole. Sorry, audience. I got to talk turkey to this guy. You know, Ronnie, you can call, brotherly thing is a funny thing. You can call your brother in a whole, but if anyone else does it, they're in trouble. And it's this weird relationship you have with brothers. I don't think most people get unless you have a brother. Am I rambling, Ronnie, I apologize for rambling. But my heart goes out to you. The closing song goes out to you. It's one of my favorite songs. And keep your head up. The sun will rise tomorrow. May your brother rest in peace. Thank you so much for listening. You're in my heart.

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