Sasquatch Chronicles - SC EP:46 Blowing up Sasquatch

Episode Date: August 31, 2014

Bigfoot witness-turned-researcher, Todd M. Neiss, has been an active investigator for more than 20 years. Born and raised in the Pacific Northwest, he grew up hearing of these legendary creatures, alternately known as Bigfoot or Sasquatch, but gave it little credibility beyond that of Native American lore or a good old-fashioned campfire tale designed to frighten young campers. All of that changed for Todd in the spring of 1993. As a Sergeant in the Army's 1249th Combat Engineer Battalion, he came face to face with three of the elusive beasts in the temperate rain forest of Oregon's Coast Range while conducting high-explosives training. His sighting was independently corroborated by three fellow soldiers who also witnessed the creatures. We will also include an interview with an aggressive Sasquatch a man had in Colorado. This encounter borders just short of an attack.

When I had come down this hill, I had seen this creature cross the road. They would have ripped my locked door from my truck, extracted me from my vehicle, and there wouldn't have been a damn thing I could have done about it. Look, this thing I got to notice in his eyes. His eyes was real, real evil, real sinister looking. You know, the look it was giving me. What are you reporting? Somebody out here.

What's going on now, sir? That's the son of a bitch is about 6'9. I don't know. Do you see him now, sir? Yes, I'm looking right here. Uh-oh. Welcome to Bigfoot Hot Spot Hot Spot Radio, Sasquatch Chronicles. I'm your host, Wes, along with my brother Woody, and researcher, author, and friend, William Jeffey.

Let's start the show. Tonight, we sit down with Bigfoot researcher and witness Todd Nees, founder of the American Primate Foundation. Visit www. Americanprimate.com for more information. You can also like us on Facebook at facebook.com forward slash Bigfoot Hot Spot Hot Spot Radio to get updates, links to upcoming shows, and to see the full uncut video of this interview.

Well, let me just start by saying this. The signing I had is what it was. It was an event that took place over the course of 25 seconds of my life, and it's really the genesis of the next 21 years. So, I mean, that's why I'd like to certainly touch on the siting and then maybe go on about, you know, where I am today, how I got to where I am and some of the things I've done in the last 21 years as well. But, and then what's coming up in the future. Yeah, and I want to get to that. I know we're talking with Todd Neath.

Your website is Americanprimate.com? Correct. Yeah, and it's one of the cooler sightings. I know you can't choose your siding. You can't. It kind of is what it is, but it really is one of the cooler sightings I think I've heard. Go ahead. We'll let you take it away, and then I will ask questions as we go.

If that's all right with you, Todd. Sure. Sure. Thank you. And I appreciate you guys having me on. What I'd like to do first, Todd, is ask you prior to the siting, what were you guys doing? You were in the Army at the time, right? I was, and I continue to be today.

I'm currently serving Act of Duty for the National Guard in Oregon. Okay. But, yes, at that time, that was my first stint in the Oregon Army National Guard. I was a combat engineer. Part of what we do as combat engineers, we utilize explosives considerably, And once a year, we had an opportunity to go out into some private timberland and conduct explosives on a level quantity, if you will, that we could not do on the base itself. This just happened to be one of those times.

Yeah, I'm familiar with some of that. I was a 19-Del in the Army myself, so I got to put it with explosives too. Fun stuff. It is. So you were out doing demo and tell us what happened. Well, this was April 3rd, I believe it was April 2nd, excuse me, April 2nd, excuse me, 1993. an unusually nice day for spring weather in the Oregon Coast Range, which is where we were. We were situated between the town of seaside on the coast and a state park known as Saddle Mountain State Park.

Saddle Mountain is a large mound. It was described by Lewis and Clark, in fact, and they may have actually named it, But it is saddle-shaped, if you look at it north to south. It's approximately 10 miles inland from seaside. And so we were kind of right in between, again, on private timberland. And I will say, because I lived in that area at the time, that this timberland is very well secured. The company that purchased this land was well aware of a number of losses.

that were basically they bought with the deal where, you know, if they allow public out there and people get hurt, they roll over their four-wheel drive or they drown in the river, you know, they look for the deep pockets. And so I only say that so that you realize that access to this area is, for civilians, is very, very difficult. And that's on a normal day. Now, you can imagine when we're up there doing what we were doing, we had a secondary layer, if you will, of security. And even though we came in and out one main road, one main line into that area, by protocol we had to have security on all three main lines that accessed that area. So basically the bottom line is we had to make sure we were keeping civilians out of there.

And I think that's important as the story goes on. This particular day we had three blasting sites. The first one we did practice cutting charges, taking C4 and slicing steel eye beams in half. We had at the second site a mock minefield, if you will, that we had to reach a lane through. And then the final, the third and final site was another rock for, these were all four. were all quarries, where we practiced a cratering charge. You're probably familiar with that. Right.

And so it was this day that we had blasted the first two sites, and we had just set the charges at the third and final site. Our standard operating procedure was to, you know, ignite the fuses. We always dual-primed our explosives. and then get in our vehicles and convoy down to a safety staging area. And it's at that point that we would stand around until we heard the report of the explosion and then go back and check our work. And so everything was pretty standard up until we got in the vehicles.

We're coming down the hill, heading for that safety staging area. a couple miles away. And I happen to be sitting in one of four vehicles. We had two Humvees up front, a deuce and a half, two and a half-ton transport truck with troops in the back of that. It was covered, by the way. And then in the very back, we had the commander's Humvee. So here I am sitting in the second vehicle, sitting behind the driver.

So I'm on the left side. I've got the window unzipped. Because, again, a fairly clear day for April for sure. And I did what I always do when I'm out in that area. I'm scanning the countryside for deer and elk because, like I said, I hunt that area quite a bit. So anyway, as I'm glancing about the countryside, we come around this corner, and I came inside of the second quarry, the one that we had detonated, oh, maybe an hour, maybe even less than that earlier, I'm looking at this fory and standing right out in the open,

right in the middle of this pori, are these three jet black figures. Immediately I knew, you know, something wasn't right, that, you know, these were, you know, they were jet black. They were living. I can see some movement, so I'm, I'll think, okay, what am I really looking at here? And the first thing that came to my mind, I'll be honest with you. you know, what the hell are those people doing down there? They were certainly standing on two legs.

There were, again, three of them, but they were much larger than humans. The silhouette that they presented was nowhere near human-like. When I say that, I mean, their shoulders were clearly, they appeared to be, you know, five feet across. The head sat squarely on the shoulders, no visible. neck. But what really stood out to me, other than the fact that here's these three huge creatures down there, was the length of their arms. Their arms went well below their knees. Their arms were incredibly long. I've said in the past, it's kind of like, I don't know if you remember those old stretch armstrong dolls we had when we were kids, where you could kind of pull the arms and the legs

and kind of reshape them. It looked like he had one of the those and maybe it had popped the head into the shoulders and then stretched each arm way down below its knees. It just proportionately, it was completely wrong to be human at all. So I'm staring at these things in complete shock because I'm really trying to get a grasp of what I'm looking at. One thing I distinctly remember is that one in the middle, the one in the middle was a full head taller than the two that flanked it on either side.

But that one stood like a rock. There stood there like a statue and didn't move at all. But it was the behavior of the two on either side of it that was rather unusual. They both almost simultaneously were shifting their weight from side to side from foot to foot, rocking back and forth, if you will. And in the process, you can literally see their arms swinging back and forth and below their knees. So, you know, this is what I'm looking at as I'm traveling down this road. So I would estimate that I had about a 25-second window of viewing time, which doesn't sound like a whole lot,

but 25 seconds seeing what I was seeing certainly seemed like a lifetime. So you've been 100-year-old life. You've been in the woods. I'm sure this isn't your first rodeo with blowing an area up out on the Oregon Coast. Oh, no. We did this every year. Yeah. And so you see something like this.

And what goes, how are you feeling at this moment? What was going through your mind at this moment? 25 seconds is a long time. It is. It certainly is. Like I say, it seemed like a lifetime. You know, in very rapid succession, I have to tell you, I went through a chain of emotions. You know, at first I was in shock, almost in denial, if you will.

I tried to explain it away in my mind. It's got to be anything but what I'm looking at. You know, am I looking at three bears standing up simultaneously? Did you know anything about the subject of Bigfoot prior to this? That's a good question. Frankly, no. I never watched the TV shows. I never read the books.

Growing up in the Pacific Northwest, you can't help but hear about it, you know. But it was not a subject that really interested me at all. I had pretty much relegated it to, you know, Native American folklore or just a campfire story, boogieman story kind of thing, but I'd really never given it much credibility. In fact, I think it's safe to say that I was one of the biggest skeptics out there, to be honest with you. What kind of distance are we talking about here? I know you're driving, it sounds like you're driving down a fall and let you describe it. How far away do you think you were from the creatures?

You know, I don't know for sure. I can't say for sure. I'll tell you this. I was not close enough to make out facial features or gender or anything like that. I was close enough to make out the body silhouettes and the hair color and the fact that they weren't wearing any clothes and the activity that they were engaged in. You know, we in the military, on a rifle range, we routinely fire on a 300-meter range. the farthest targets being at 300 meters.

Estimating could have been as far as 300 meters, at least far enough distance that I didn't feel threatened, and frankly, I don't think they did either. I think they felt safe enough that even though they were watching us, I think they felt comfortable because there was a ravine between the two of us. This one port was over here, and we were coming down this road on this side. So I think the distance was probably to my advantage and theirs as well.

I mean, I can see it like it was yesterday. It's something that once you see, you never forget. Yeah, it's burned into your memory. It is. So what happens next? You're heading down. You have a view of these creatures. What happens next?

Like I say, about 25 seconds into this. this viewing, or Hummi took a corner and that's when I lost sight of them. Immediately after losing sight of them, I have to tell you, there's this, there was this very overwhelming emotion, you know, on top of trying to just absorb the fact that these things have been out there every time I've been out there hunting, and I just didn't even know it, you know, things like that, things like, I just saw something scientifically and historically important. Somebody needs to know this.

Who am I going to tell? And then, of course, the ridicule factor, even at this particular point in my life, not only was I, you know, a non-commissioned officer in the Army, but a family man raising, you know, married with three kids and, And my civilian job was, at that point, I was a vice president of a shooting company here in the Portland area. And you kind of tend to put that on a scale of the importance of getting that information out versus, you know, putting your reputation on the line. Those are the kinds of things that were going through my mind as we continued on down to the staging site. And those are the kinds of things, you know, after a couple of times.

decades of interviewing people, I found I was not alone and those emotions, those thought processes, and I completely get the whole ridicule factor and firmly believe that nine out of ten people don't talk about it. What you just said is I think that goes through everyone's mind. So you guys get down to the stage, you guys get down to past the state. area from where you just blew it up. And do you have a conversation with anyone, or does anyone else in the party see the creature? Yeah, well, at that point, when we got down there, I kind of, well, the rest of the vehicles were

coming in, I kind of ran back up the road a little ways, hoping to get to a vantage point where I could get my eyes on them again. But after going back, I don't know, probably 150 yards up the road, I realized that there was There was a hill that kind of blocked my view. I am standing there with my hand and my forehead looking off in the distance. This caught the attention of another soldier, Sergeant Martin. I've worked with Jeff for many years, another combat engineer. And so seeing me look off in the distance like that, he approaches me and yell out, hey, niece.

And I looked over, and he goes, I said, yeah, and he goes, what are you looking at? And I said, oh, nothing, which was factually true. Anyway, Jeff continued to walk up to where I was at, and he's smoking on a cigarette. I can just, I can remember this vividly. He walks up to me, and then the trucks are coming in behind us still. He kind of looks around, make sure there's nobody an airshot, and he goes, so I don't suppose you saw what I saw back at, second blast site. And of course, at that, I'm like, oh, please, you know, tell me he's thinking what I'm going to

say what I hope he's going to say. And not being the one I want to say it, I said, I don't know, Jeff, what did you see? And he takes a drag off his cigarette, and he looks at left and right again and make sure nobody's in airshot, and he goes on to say, well, I saw three huge haircoversy. and he goes on to say, Bigfoot. And, of course, at that, I, you know, I knew I had nothing to lose, and I was, you know, I was certainly relieved, and of course I concurred with them.

Yes, I saw them too. But it should be pointed out, too, that, you know, being National Guard, we're drilling, we're doing our exercises one week in a month, and it was at the very next drill, in May that two more soldiers came forward and also admitted to having seen these things. So what did, so what did Jeff say he saw when he said, hey, you know, I can picture the conversation he comes down. You guys are both looking out.

Did he see the same thing that you saw? Did he see them standing down at this in the quarry? Did he have the exact same sighting? He saw three of them standing there? That's a good question. And in fact, at that time, I assumed he did. I assumed he must have seen them while we were coming down in the convoy. Over time, I would come to find out differently.

What I didn't factor in was Jeff was part of what we call the heavy junk section, and that's a heavy equipment that was attached to us as combat engineers. and we had two separate parties out there. We had this heavy jump section. These are the guys that stayed one step ahead of us. So before we got to that first site and did the cutting charges, they stopped there first and dropped off a couple steel eye beams so that we could simulate dropping a, you know, blowing up a bridge, for instance.

It's kind of funny because I don't know if you guys know Wolf Ferenbach or Hennar Ferenbach, as he's known. I know who he is. Yeah, Dr. Ferenbach at the time lived in the Portland area, a scientist, a primatologist, he decided to put on a couple of classes at Portland Community College and had asked me if I would be willing to come and talk to the class, basically give my eyewitness account.

And then he also asked if Sergeant Martin would join me since he was an eyewitness. And so I said, I don't know, I'll get a hold of Jeff and I'll see what I can do. And Jeff said, yeah, I'll come as long as you can give me a ride. So I showed up at his apartment. I don't know how we got to the specifics about it, but we decided to take out a piece of paper and a pencil and draw a map. So I mark on the map where I saw these things. and basically this this this this this this pori had two levels and between the two levels there was a diagonal road that cut down to the lower one we were doing our demolition down here in this lower quarry when I saw them they were actually standing these three were standing on this diagonal road and they stood out like a sore thumb I have to tell you this is basalt rock that they would poury gravel from the gravel the roads that they cut in And so, like I said, when I saw them standing there, Jet Black against that light gray rock, there was no mistake in what I was looking at.

So I put this little mark on the map, and I said, yeah, I saw them right here. And then Jeff takes the pencil and he goes, no, I saw them over here. And he saw them actually a good hundred meters to the west of where I saw them. and then he goes on to talk about seeing them, actually witnessing them walking. And it gives us very classical, graceful, gliding kind of motion. And he watched them walk out of the quarry and into the woods. And I said, wait a minute, okay, so when I saw them, I was in the convoy. That's where you saw them, right?

And he goes, no. He said, I was with the heavy junk section. When I saw them, it was before you guys even came up to that. third site. He said, we were up there digging that starting hole, and we were just about done with it, and I walked over across the road to have a cigarette, and that's when I saw them. I'm like, okay, so you saw them at the second site before we got up there, and shortly after we had, you know, blew that gory up, and he goes, yes. And he said, the other thing for me was that, I was that, I was able to see you guys down there when you were setting your charges,

able to make that comparison, that distinction between human-sized people down there in uniforms with helmets on versus these large jet black creatures. So, I mean, I think that's important that he was able to have that view of us early on and then seeing these things. So what that means is these things apparently walked out. they were, I assume out of curiosity, investigating this area that we had just blasted in, but then for whatever reason, retreated back into the wood line,

and then later as we set these other charges and were convoying down, now keep in mind at this point, Jeff's already down at the staging area, waiting for us, they came back out. Do you think the blast or what attracted them? Oh, absolutely. Absolutely, absolutely, you know, and I think that's important, too. You know, a lot of people say, well, you know, it doesn't make sense because you'd think if you set off 200 pounds of explosives in the woods, and I can tell you, at that second site, we'd literally put up a pretty good mushroom cloud when I witnessed it from a distance.

It's a pretty big bang. Most people would say, well, it only stands a reason that animals are going to vacate that area. They're going to go 360 degrees in the opposite direction of that blast. And I do agree. Herein lies, I think, an important distinction. These preachers are intelligent, and I'm convinced of that, and I think part of intelligence is based on wonder, on curiosity, and especially in the face of something as,

unusual is this, that their curiosity was piqued to such a degree that they were willing to risk coming back out there. And I think a good analogy, let's say you're sitting there eating your dinner one evening, all of a sudden, an aircraft, a good-sized aircraft crashes in your neighborhood three or four blocks away. Tremendous explosion, flames, fire, smoke, you feel the ground actually shakes. of course you're going to have this immediate shock of what the hell was that

you're probably going to get on the phone and call people turn on the TV see what the heck you're going to look out your window and see the smoke and flames I think in short order when you realize that there's no more planes going to fall out of the sky and that this traumatic event happened in your neighborhood that

over time your fear and shock of what just took place is going to be overcome with curiosity, and you're going to start walking down the street and heading toward that wreck and maybe just had a morbid curiosity or maybe to see if there's something you can do to help. And that's pretty much the hallmark of all primates, is that intelligence and curiosity. I'm kind of curious, Todd. When I realize there's security protocols that you guys follow to make sure no people are in the area

before he blasts area. And when Jeff saw these three creatures, he saw it before the blast run off, didn't he? He saw them while they were, no, he saw them after the blast went off at the second side, which is where they appeared at. He did see them after they had dug that starter pit and then left that to go down to the staging area.

So he had seen them, oh, probably a good half hour before we got up there to set those charges. But again, I think I know where you're going with this, but to him, clearly these were not people. And I think maybe you're suggesting that he might have felt tempted to call off the blast. Yeah, yeah. And again, you know, think about it, the ridicule factor and the fact that he knew these weren't people. you know, imagine you're a non-commissioned officer and you run up to the commander

and you say, we need to call a halt of the blast. There's three big foot over at the second time. That wouldn't go over to you will. That would be your career, I think. Speaking of that, now, did any of the commanders from the unit find out that you had talked about these in this incident? Oh, in time, indeed they did. Yeah, that was something that also concerned me, and I think for a while, prevented me from going public about it.

What was there a reaction to that? Well, I have to tell you this one story real quick. When I heard that these two soldiers at that next drill had seen these things, between the second and third drill, I actually got on my computer and I did up a very crude drawing of a big. Bigfoot and made a poster, actually I made two of them, that said, gosh, I've probably got a copy somewhere. It's been yours, obviously 21 years. But it basically said Bigfoot investigation. If you've seen anything, call this number.

I didn't put my name on it. But there were two bulletin boards in the armory. And I very discreetly tacked one up on each of those bulletin boards, and they just as discreetly disappeared before the end of the day, probably within an hour or two. And I don't know if anybody linked that to me. As far as anybody in the military knowing about my sighting, I didn't go public as far as the media is concerned until 1994.

So it'd been a full year. I, in that time, was fortunate enough to meet up with really a pioneer in Bigfooting Peter Byrne and have had opportunities over years to work with him in the field. But he had asked me, he said, Todd, we're going to do this show with Unsolved Mysteries. And I would like for you to be on it. And I hadn't done anything like that before, and really hadn't considered it. And I feel honored, you know, I'm thinking, all right, Robert Stack, I'm going to meet him, which I found out later. He does a narration from Hollywood or something.

But, yeah, initially I just, I go, yeah, sure, I'd love to do that. And I have to tell you, I almost backed out of it. I really struggled with, again, the, you know, I kept my story within a very close circle of friends and confidence. and even then got a lot of patronizing responses from them. But, yeah, when that hit the air, when Unsolved Mysteries came out, yeah, I heard from a lot of people. You know, I saw you on TV. But as far as being a detriment to my career, it really hasn't.

And in fact, I would dare say I've had some support, or at least some implied support from, people in my chain of command and other people that have known me. I mean, the fact that they do know me and they know that I'm not prone to going off and making up wild stories like that certainly helps. But I really have never been questioned by the military. I mean, if that's answers your question, or had my career called into question or my sanity called into questions.

So far so good anyway. Was it mainly the unsolved mysteries is what kind of made you. I guess at that point it's hard to keep quiet about what happens since it's on TV. But have you been back to the area, Todd, that you had your sighting, and have you had any more sightings in the area? Well, to answer your first part of your statement, yeah, the genie was definitely out of the bottle at that time, and no putting it back. And I don't have any regrets.

I've been involved in probably a couple dozen documentaries, TV shows, and continue to do so. I've got some projects in the works now. Oh, definitely. In fact, when I contacted, at the time this project that Peter Byrne worked on was called TVRP, the Bigfoot Research Project. was actually funded by the Academy of Applied Sciences out of Boston, Massachusetts. The tune, I understand, of almost $3 million, involved some real heavy hitters, some great forensic scientists, and Peter was involved in that.

It was a five-year-long project that was already two years into it when I ran across an ad, actually, in the Oregonia newspaper, for actually advertising for a field researcher, but what got me was the tagline just said big, big, bold, black letters. And I'm like, okay, got my attention. I was looking like a lot of people I've met, looking for some sort of an outlet, some way to get this off my chest and thinking, okay, I'm going to do this, and then I can go on with my life, never be burdened with it again,

which didn't end up being the case, obviously. but I called this number. It was an 800 number. In fact, it was 1,800 big foot. Go figure. But in the letter of voicemail, I left this message, and I got a call back. And don't ask me how,

but Peter Byrne was able to get the master keys to all the locks for that timber company. He sent one of his field researchers up initially to meet with me and to go out to that site. We drove out there. I'll tell you the first time he went out there, here I met this guy. His name was Todd Deary driving this red CJ7 Jeep. Picks me up, drives me up there, and sure enough, he's got the keys, he unlocks the gate, we go through, lock it behind us, and he says, all right, take me to wear this.

this happened and we got there and we pulled into that that lower quarry where we did the demolition and where I saw them and that the there were actually still craters in the ground where this these C4 charges went off. In fact, they were kind of filling up with rainwater. I was kind of excited to go back and we got up there and, you know, and, you know, He turns off the Jeep, and I pointed to where I saw them on that little ledge there coming down. And he gets out of the Jeep, and I stepped out of the Jeep, and it was just, I'll never forget, it was dead quiet, a little bit of wind blowing. And I was kind of overwhelmed, I guess. Here's me and this guy I've never met in my life standing.

for the first time since on that very spot and the knowledge of those creatures possibly be in there. Todd had started walking toward that road, and I was kind of glued to the spot. He turned around and said, are you coming? I said, yeah, you've got to give me a second, because it was just, you know, I don't know. I was a little shaking, I guess, a little nervous. But he and I went up in that area. I showed him where Jeff had seen where they went into the tree line.

We walked around that area, and he had seen enough to contact Peter, and he came up there on a separate occasion, which is where I first met him, And we went in there subsequently a number of times. In fact, I had two full-blown expeditions in there over a week long. Have you seen anything in there since that first time? Seen? No. Well, we have seen tracks.

That's for certain. But as far as the creatures are concerned, no. But I have to tell you, in 1998, I mentioned five years. after my 93 encounter is when I held this expedition, eight days in duration, and my teammates being Peter Byrne and Ron Moorhead, we dubbed it Operation Enticed Contact, the object being getting established in an area that we know there's activity in prime habitat in hopes of actually attracting, enticing, if you will, piquing that curiosity of these creatures

and getting them to perhaps come to us. I was setting these seismic ground sensors up above our base camp. So here I am up on the hill, oh gosh, probably a good 200 meters or more above the base camp. And at this particular time, it was typical spring weather. We're getting rain and almost snow.

In fact, at this one particular time, while I'm trying to calibrate these sensors, I saw this cell coming in that was a sheer white, and I assumed and correctly so that it was a hail cell coming through. So my two options were try to race back to the base camp and beat it before it came through, or simply go up into the old-growth forest, which was not far from me, up above me, and use those huge fir trees as umbrellas and just wait this thing out.

I figured it would pass in, you know, 10 or 15 minutes. So I chose the ladder, walked up into the old growth. So while I'm up there in these trees, I'm kind of standing between two big fir trees, And I had to answer the call in nature. So I did my thing. I urinated and I'm buttoning up my BDUs, which I was wearing at the time, and just started buckling my belt buckle when suddenly I was,

man, it still bothers me to talk about it. Now, I was by a big foot. I'm not going to even suggest it was anything else. This was about a two and a half second to three second burst of incredibly loud roaring. I've alternatively described it as a roaring bark because there's this, I'm talking 130 plus decibels. I mean, almost hurting your ears loud. roar that at the very, very end of it ended in this kind of a guttural bark. I can't even, and I'm not even going to demonstrate it.

You just have to imagine. Now, you're talking to somebody who's jumped out of perfectly good working airplanes. I had mortars and rockets shot at me in Iraq, you know, swam with sharks. you know, at 100 feet under the ocean, nothing. Nothing in my life has ever put me in a state of fear, the state of fear that I was in at that time. You hear what I thought was just a euphemism being paralyzed with fear. I learned real quick.

That's a reality. That it's a real, real thing, and it's a very scary thing because you literally lose control of yourself. Because believe me, deep down inside, all I wanted to do was run. And the most insidious part of this was this thing, the origin of this incredible ear-splitting roar was probably no more than 100 feet away from me, but it never showed itself. it stayed behind this.

There was a pretty sizable patch of scotch broom and Sal Al that's very common in the coast range. A big ticket of it. I knew exactly where it was, but it never stepped out. I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing, but just the same. I'm telling you, two minutes later, a full two minutes later, I had not moved. something very primal, deep inside of me, as much as I wanted to run, basically told me if there's any chance that you are going to survive this, your only hope is to not move. And I don't think I blanked for two solid minutes.

I've never been so scared in my life. That's exactly the right thing to do. Yeah. I've heard that roar before, Todd, so I know. And I was probably maybe less than a quarter of a mile away from it, and I could fill it when it was roaring. God, I can't imagine being 100 feet away from the thing when it's going on. Well, there was no question in my mind, the intention, the intent of that roar was, you know, get out. You're not welcome.

This is the feeling that just washed over me. And I just, I wish I could have apologized, you know, I'm just, I just, I just wanted to go. I just, I just wanted to live. And that's all I can think about. I sometimes wonder if, if the very fact that it witnessed me urinating might have been something that might have set it off, you know, similar to what, what dogs, you know, do, marking territory. Maybe it's in some way saw that as offensive. I don't know. It's possible.

These things are quite aggressive often. They don't particularly like people. No. So, you know, you being in the wrong place at the wrong time, maybe displaying something that it took as an aggressive behavior? I don't want to ever find myself in that position. You know, it's like I can tell people, too. It's like, you know, so many people, I think,

really underestimate these creatures, because for them, it's some sort of fantastical, mystical, and in some cases, paranormal sort of a quest for them. But I'm here to say, be careful what you ask for. That's what I tell people all the time, and I know Wes will agree with me because he's been close. I've stood less than 15 feet in front of two of these things. It's not something you want to go out and search for. Well, you're completely at there, Morris. And should they have any ill intent, they can have their way with you, that's for sure.

A lot of people think the end game is seeing these things, and I'm here to tell you that's just the beginning. And they need to think past that point, what are you going to do if you realize that dream, if you will, it's not a fantasy. It's very real. It's not funny. Nine times out of ten, these animals respond the same way when they realize they've been compromised. They simply leave the area. One question I wanted to ask you.

I know you've been researching for a long time, and I know that you have a lot of different conventional and unconventional techniques for, I hate using the word baiting, but I guess I'll use the word baiting. Enticing, yeah, there you go. And I wanted to ask you, what have you found that works in your conventional and unconventional ways,

and what have you found doesn't work? I've tried some interesting thing. I'll tell you one that we did is kind of like the whole Pavlov's dog kind of thing, where we try to associate taste and color and sound. And again, I won't say this with successful, but I think it's a logical and potentially practical way to go about this. And that is that we would say put, you know, a red apple on one stump, put some corn on another stump, and put, say, oranges or bananas, whatever,

on another stump. All in the same basic vicinity, I mean, not really close to each other, but then we would hang colored chemlights that would correspond with that, red for the apple, yellow for the corn, on an orange glow stick for the orange. And then in that area, we would hang some, you know, very basic metallic wind chimes once we got the bait set up. So the thought is this. Get them to associate the wind chimes, again, a very passive, almost a natural sound, but at the same time not.

you know, just a tinkling sound out to the food, to the bait. And then once they got close enough to get within visual sight, get them to associate the color to a specific bait source. And then the thought would be over time, you know, depending on what they're hitting on, employ the chimes with just the lights and see if that would bring anything around. I mean, those are the kinds of, I think, unconventional things that we do. Have you had any success doing that?

No, I'll be honest with you. We did. But, well, I guess. Does it frustrate you? You never know. I mean, that very experiment we did took place probably about 200 feet from where I got roared at earlier on. So did I have success? I don't know.

What came first? You know, we did have those bait stations out there before that happened. So I don't know. I really don't know. I can't say for certain that the bay we left was ever paid upon. I was going to say it's got to frustrate you. You hear you're blowing stuff up and you run into three of them. And now you're trying all these different techniques

and not having the same type of encounter that you had before. I mean, I realize you're a smart guy. I realize that you realize that's probably not going to happen. But I would imagine that's got to be frustrating. Here, you're blowing stuff up. What keeps you going? What keeps you going in this whole thing? Sounds like TNT's the answer.

Well, you wouldn't be the first one to guess that. I'm joking, of course. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I don't think it's the answer, but I think it answers some questions, or at least it poses maybe some more. And that is these things, I think it tells us that these things are intelligent based on their level of curiosity. I think that's what separates man from a common animal, willingness, this urge to not just look at things, but ask why and how. I think you're right.

I don't think most people understand that these things are primates, and as primates, you know, all primates. are highly intelligent creatures. And curiosity goes with that, so you're absolutely correct on that. What's the primary goal of the American primate for your organization? What's your guys' primary goal? Primary or ultimate? I mean, you know, the ultimate goal, for me, it's not a question of if they exist. That choice was taken away from me 21 years ago.

I know they exist. So for me, the ultimate goal is to get them protected. We've seen scores, scores of preachers that we know existed at one time go into extinction. I mean, just look up extinction on, just Google it. There is a laundry list of animals that they have photographs of. We know they existed and they're gone and they will never come back. And most of it's either been out of sheer ignorance or in some of it. some cases just greed.

And a few we've saved. And the only way these things are going to be saved is to be officially recognized, which in kind of going backwards from preservation, protection, recognition, before they can be recognized, we need to have knowledge of them, how many there are, where they're at, what kind of habitat to use, what sort of resources do they need in terms of food, what their population is, what their gestations create, all that stuff. And before that, the first step is discovery. So it's really discovery, study to get knowledge, and that's going to be in-field recognition,

which will result from that studying, and then ultimately only through recognition or they're going to fall under the 1972 Endangered Species Act. And that's the way it's got a role. That's the only way it's going to happen. What does protection mean to you? It means, again, going back to the research part, understanding what it's going to take, what sort of range it takes for these things,

and if that involves, and we've done this with other creatures, setting aside some preserves, perhaps. I mean, dear Lord, we've done it with many different types of animals. I think the real challenge in this case is going to be the range factor. I know Dr. Ferenbach, we talked about this, and he did some studies and extrapolations based upon Great Apes and their chloric intake and did some estimations in terms of body size and chloric intake on these creatures. And I think he came up with somewhere around 5 to 6,000 calories a day per animal. And then you've got to look at the resources.

What do we have out here? Well, there's a lot of resources, and many of which I'm sure they share with the North American Black Bear, as well as probably a few other things that they can acquire that bears can't just because of their physiology. But how much of that is in a specific area? And he came up with an estimate of about 60 square miles per creature. So a pretty good patch of land per creature. So if you're talking about setting up some sort of a refuge, you're talking about a pretty large area.

And again, you're going to have to be able to determine what the population is before you can even establish the boundaries of such a preserve. You know, who knows? It may take putting a few if need be in captivity, even if temporarily for the purpose of studying them. I'm not in favor of killing them. I mean, you know, that becomes the real third rail of Bigfoot research, you know. You're either in one camp or the other.

Is it kill, no kill? I look at it in terms of is it specimen or no specimen and really what's practical. And like I say, there are some non-lethal ways to acquire. the type of evidence we need to prove their existence, that's my preference. You know, if a dead animal, if a dead creature is brought in, I would prefer that it'd be done something that's died of natural causes or perhaps an accidental interaction with humans. But the bottom line is, you know, if we're talking about frogs or butterflies or some kind of a squirrel, I don't think we would have this sort of debate at all.

Somebody would say, by all means, we need to bring in a specimen, dead or alive. We need a specimen. But it's the fact that these things are what they are and are so similar to humans that we have this tendency to personify them and to make them this living legend that they've become that makes this a much more emotional debate. Thanks for coming on the show. Oh, thank you for having me. You guys have a good message.

Don't forget to like us on our Facebook fan page under Bigfoot hotspot radio. I'll post a full, uncut video of this interview. Also look for a possible midweek show coming up. If you enjoy the podcast, please leave us a review on iTunes or Stitcher. I'll be reading your reviews on future shows. As always, thanks for listening, and have a great night. It's the country faster than the coronavirus and wagering week is your antidote. I'm Tom Barton, and I'm a veteran sports analyst and respected sports handicapper who will help build ESPN's brand.

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