Sasquatch Chronicles - SC EP:500 Survivorman Les Stroud

Episode Date: December 22, 2018

Join us in celebrating Sasquatch Chronicles' 500th episode on Friday, December 21. We'll be welcoming Les Stroud to the show, and he sits down to talk about his journey as Survivorman and what lead him there, what he's up to now, and of course, Sasquatch. Les will share with us some never before heard experiences, his opinion on what the creature is, and will give us some firsthand insight into some of the most memorable moments from Survivorman: Bigfoot. Les Stroud is a Canadian survival expert, filmmaker and musician best known for his hit television series "Survivorman," where he uses his skills and knowledge to survive completely alone in the wilderness for up to 10 days with limited or no ready access to water, food, and supplies. He is the "only producer in the history of television to produce an internationally broadcast series entirely written, videotaped and hosted alone." Les began his rich career as an outdoorsman in 1990 as a guide for Black Feather Wilderness Adventures leading canoe excursions into the Northern Ontario wilds. The time he spent there would lead him down the path to creating his first documentary, Snowshoes and Solitude, which was named "Best Documentary" at the Muskoka Film Festival and Best Film at the Waterwalker Film Festival. Stroud would go on to produce a collection of "specials" for The Discovery Channel Canada which laid the groundwork for "Survivorman" as a full-scale series, spanning 7 seasons and inspiring a long list of subsequent "survival"-themed television programs. His interest in the "Sasquatch Phenomenon" (as he likes to refer to it) began at a young age and continued to grow as he spent more time in the outdoors, especially in remote locations which offer few, if any, concrete explanations for some of his more mysterious experiences. Stroud dedicated an entire season of Survivorman to the mystery surrounding Bigfoot. He started the journey from a skeptic's perspective – equally questioning and open-minded – in the pursuit of bringing legitimacy to the discussion of whether or not Sasquatch exists. He remains actively interested in the subject, subsequently conducting a handful of interviews expanding on his beliefs and divulging details from some of the unexplained encounters he's had while out in the wilderness. To find out more about Les and what he's currently up to, connect with him here: Website: www.lesstroud.ca Facebook: www.facebook.com/thereallesstroud Instagram: www.instagram.com/reallesstroud Twitter: www.twitter.com/reallesstroud YouTube: www.youtube.com/user/lesstroud Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/0LsCXk6IVrhkR4bTjP5qG5 Soundcloud: www.soundcloud.com/les-stroud-music Periscope: www.periscope.tv/Survivorman/1gqxvqyYPgqJB

Black thing go from left to right and I thought, I'm gonna die out here and no one's ever gonna know. When I had come down this hill, they'd have this place. Five, five, four, four, three, three, two, one, one. 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 they wouldn't have been a damn, thing I could have done about it.

This thing I got to notice in its eyes. Its eyes was real, real evil, real sinister looking. You know, the look it was given. Everyone was reporting. See him. Hello. Get somebody out here. What's going on now, sir?

That son of a bitch is about 60 foot. Yes, I'm looking right at him. Uh-oh. Welcome to Sasquatch Chronicles, a place where people share their encounters. Let's start the show. Welcome to the show, everyone. Thanks for being here tonight. plan for you tonight. Episode 500, and that was my old intro you heard there. I did a little

mix up there and played my old intro. I hope you enjoyed it. I know some of the new listeners are probably wondering what's going on. People who've been listening to the show for a long time, know that's my old intro. I thought for episode 500, I'd bring it back. I also want to give a shout out to Paul McDonald from Canada. He's one of my listeners and it's his birthday. Happy birthday, Paul. And I also have Tony Merkel here from the Confessionals podcast. Go to the Confessionalspodcast.com. If you listen on your iPhone or your Android, you can go to iTunes or Stitcher and download the Confessionals. Tony, thanks for coming on for episode 500, ma'am. Thanks for having me on, man. It's an honor to be here, for real.

The honor is mine. It's crazy hitting 500. I know you listened to the Les Stroud interview before when anyone else did. Can't even talk tonight. And I was curious, what did you think? Oh, man, listen, I really enjoyed this episode. It took a turn that I didn't expect. Let's just put it that way. I expected we were just going to hear your traditional Bigfoot ideas and different things like that and just keep it within the quote-unquote box. But Les took it in different directions.

I think caught you by surprise, too. But it turned out to be a phenomenal interview. And I'm really excited for people to hear this. Yeah, I appreciate saying that. Yeah, it did take a turn, but I'm glad Les opened up and he shared. A lot of times people don't. They don't open up with everything. And he was really forthright with what happened to him. And, you know, Les kind of surprised me. He's actually a really super nice guy. He's super humble, really down to earth. I know he'll be listening to the show. I'll tell you the one thing that really surprised me about Les was his sense of humor. I kind of pictured him being kind of a serious guy. and he's got a fantastic sense of humor. He's hilarious. And I really appreciate Les coming on for episode 500. This is a milestone.

It really is. I mean, 500 episodes, that's a lot of work. That's a lot of manhours that you put into the show and stuff for a very long time. I mean, I'm at episode 104 next week, and I'm like, man, that's two years of work, you know? And you've been doing this for 500 episodes. Kudos to you, man. You've been doing this for a long time. Yeah, I really appreciate that.

Yeah, it's like you and I were just talking before we went on the air, you know, when you do a show like this, you kind of, you tend to live in a bubble. And you just kind of live in this little bubble. You're constantly worrying about the next show like some freak. And rarely do you ever stop to kind of look back at what you've done. And, you know, this week I've kind of stopped. I haven't really done much online. Just kind of look back at everything, how the shows come along, how it's progressed, how the quality. of the show's gone up, you know, the audio quality, the quality of gas. And it's been a hell of a

ride. I'm really proud of the show. And I'm happy to have you here. Yeah, let me ask you a question. I mean, with everything that you've done with the show, I mean, you've done, you started the memberships and you started just basically everything from ground up. I mean, there had to be a lot of like learning curves and trials and failures and stuff. Like, what are some of the things that you that kind of stick out in your head is to, that you picked up along the world? way that you feel either benefited you as a person or you grew from individually as the show went on. Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of things I could say. I think the biggest thing, you know, when I first got into this, you and I have talked many times off the air, and I just didn't know what I was doing.

I didn't know how to do a podcast. I didn't know how a podcast should sound. I always hated the audio. I mean, pretty much any episode under 300, I hate the audio. It sounds terrible. And I've always wanted to improve that, always wanted to improve that. To this day, I'm still not happy with the audio. But I think learning how to deal with people, learning how to listen, because you know, when you do a podcast like this, I know a lot of people listen and they think, oh, that sounds easy. West just sits there and doesn't really say much and just lets a person tell the story.

Well, that's the whole point, is to have the eyewitness be the star of every show and to learn to keep your mouth shut when someone's talking. because there's so many times where I intentionally mute myself out and I want to jump in. I want to go, whoa, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. But I think you learn over time, it ruins the flow of the show. If I were to jump in every time I want to jump in, I listen to a lot of podcasts where they do that. I think it ruins the flow of the show. So I think learning the flow of the show, there's a lot of different things that I've learned

that's hard to like articulate. Like just learning the flow of a show, learning to keep a show going, keep it moving, keep it moving, keep it moving. Don't get too tight up on one certain thing or don't go off in too many different tangents. And learning just how to deal with people. You know, there's a lot of times where I talk to people off the air and they're in tears. They're in bad shape, you know, and learning just how to deal with people and how to talk to people. I really think that's the heart of podcasting is learning how to talk to people. You're absolutely right. And that's something that I noticed from your show very early on, before we ever started talking. I mean, I came onto the show probably around episode 50 or 60, around that time.

And listening to your show, one of the things as a listener before you and I ever talked, this is years before you and I ever talked, listening to your show, I really felt like you let the person tell their story in completion. And that's something that you don't get with TV. That's something you don't get with radio shows on FM radio and a lot of podcasts where it's getting cut off. It's cut into pieces and you don't really feel like as a listener you've got the whole story and the motion behind it. And you were kind of setting the groundbreaking things there when it came to this podcast thing where you let people come on and just share your story, you know? And to be honest with you, that's how I learned how to do it myself and stuff.

I mean, I'll tell people a story about you, Wes, if you don't mind. But like when you, you know, we started this podcast and I'm listening to your show and everything, never thought I'd ever talk to you. You know, it's not something that was on my agenda. And this is a kind of a testament to who you are as a person, you know. Like, everybody listens to you on a weekly basis, and they think they know who you are because they feel like they get to know you after 500 episodes. I mean, they feel like they're part of your inner circle almost.

And so you have these ideas of who Wes is as a person and stuff. And I'll tell you, like, after getting to know you for the last two years on a very personal level. I mean, we're really good friends. You are who you say you are, period, and the story. And to tell the people a little story here, you and I never talked before. And one day, I get a text from you over a Facebook messenger. And you asked me if I was ever on the show and I told you no, because I never had a Bigfoot encounter. And then I hadn't heard back from you for like two weeks. And I was thinking, okay, whatever, you know, no big deal. And one day, I'm a truck driver. And I backed my truck into the dock at work one day. And all of a sudden, I get a video phone call from

you over Facebook. And you and I sat there. I'm in my truck at work. And we talked for like 45 minutes. And you were just reaching out to say hi. And it was just like being nice and kind. And during our conversation and stuff, you knew that I had the YouTube channel and things like that. And you encouraged me to start my own podcast. And you know, you didn't know that I had experience with audio production, things like that before. But you were the biggest motivating factor for the confessions to really get off the ground and get going. with a podcast form because I really didn't even think about it a whole lot before you encouraged me to do that. And that was something that were complete strangers. I mean, I think

that was in our first conversation. We never talked to each other before. And here you are somebody you don't know. You don't know if I'm a jerk or not. And you're just encouraging me to do something that, you know, and you know this for a fact. When I first started the show, you had people emailing me, emailing you saying, why are you helping somebody to compete against you? You know, so like, that's how people typically think about it. But that's not the way you think about it. And you know, you just encouraged me. And we started the podcast and, you know, my show's going great now and everything like that. But, you know, it really wouldn't have gotten off the ground if you didn't help me birth that idea of starting my own podcast. And so I

want to say thank you to you. And for the listeners out there and stuff, that's the kind of person you are, you know, you're just a kind guy. And I really appreciate your friendship. I appreciate that, man. It's turning into a, uh, I know. I appreciate you saying that, though, man. And, and I just believed in I thought you do a great job as a, and that's a funny thing. A lot of these other Bigfoot podcasts, they're all in competition. They all got to, why? What's the point? If you listen, people that listen to Saskatchewrachronicles listen to the confessionals.

You know what I mean? They just do. And I'm sure they listen to other podcasts do as well. I just thought you had a lot of talent. And I thought that he had a great voice, great presentation. And I just thought you'd do great at it. I really did. I really, I wasn't looking for anything from,

you. I wasn't looking to, you know, I just saw you do a great job at it. And you have. I mean, I, there's a lot of times where I listen to the confessionals and I pick up on a little things that you do, you know, your transitions, how you, and I'm like, God, I want to steal that. I want to steal how he does that. I want to, and that's a testament to your, your show and what you do, man, and you should be proud of what you do. And I appreciate you saying that. You know, it's funny that a lot of times people think that they know you. And I, you know, sometimes I, you know, sometimes I wear with my heart on my sleeve and sometimes I'll do shows and I'll get emails from people and they'll be like, you okay, you seem kind of down. You seem kind of and I'm like, really,

you could tell that through the podcast? Like I don't, I really, you could tell. And so I just have a hard time being fake on the show. You know, if I'm, if I'm down, I'm down. If I'm up, I'm up. You know what I mean? I just have a hard time putting on a persona. Plus, I don't think personas is listen, the audience is too smart to figure out. They're way too smart. They know when you're full of it and they know when you're putting it on and when you're not. So why not just be yourself? You know what I mean? Sometimes I'm down when I do the show. There's not much I can do about it. Sometimes I'm up and I just try and produce a quality show. And it means so much to me when people email me and say, hey man, you know, I'm in a hospital or my father just passed away or

this time of year or around the holidays. I struggle because, you know, my family or this and that. I listen to your show. It's a getaway. I get to forget about everything for an hour and just listen. And that means a lot, man, that it means that much to people. That means more to me than anything else. The fact that it, I don't even know what I'm trying to say, that it means so much to people. Because like I said, you do live in a bubble.

You just go from show to show to show to show. And that's why I laugh sometimes because the listeners will be like, Hey, remember on episode 328 when you said blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, what show was that? Did I have that guy on? What would? What was that encounter about? And it's like the audience knows the show so well.

But you do get a relationship with your audience. You do have this relationship with your audience. And that's something I've always appreciated very much. Yeah, absolutely. Couldn't have said it any better. That's why I'm doing 500 with everyone, man. I've been getting emails all day long. Are you going to be, is it just going to be a member only show?

No, I'm celebrating with everyone, man. Everyone's listening. I want you guys to enjoy this moment as much as I'm enjoying this moment. And members, non-members, I want everyone to enjoy this moment. It's a milestone not just for me, but for everyone who's been with me from the beginning and has seen the progression. And I'd be a real douchebag if I was like, well, it's going to be members only, 500. You got to sign up, blah, blah, you know what I mean?

I just don't have it in me to do that. Yeah, absolutely, man. I just want to say, you know, and I'm sure I speak for the rest of the audience and stuff. Thank you for putting on the show because the show, even if you don't want to say it's you, the show definitely inspires so many people, whether it's just to look into the topic or the imagination that it sparks in people's minds of thinking about what is possible and what if this is real and all that stuff. I mean, this show really has placed a stamp on the quote unquote Bigfoot culture.

And from me and the audience to you, just want to say thank you, man. Thank you, brother. Well, let's jump into it. Let's start this interview with Les Trowd. Take a listen. Lesz Troud to the show, Survivor Man himself. We are down here in Oregon. Lesz, thanks for coming on, ma'am.

My pleasure. You're very gracious to invite me to your home, and I just want to thank you for that. No, that's called laziness, because it was either this or I have to go somewhere. You had to come somewhere. No, that's great. I wanted to ask you, I want to start out. I know we're going to be talking about Big, foot, but I kind of want to talk about you and your show. What, what in God's name was going through

your mind when you decided to go out and survive and film it? I mean, it's hard enough to go out and survive, but let alone film it and have it be something really cool. How did you get started with that? Well, as you can imagine, it's not a matter of waking up with the light bulb above the head one day and going, oh, I should create this series doing this whole survival thing. there you go how's this do I sound better you can adjust that if you want I'll move it I don't know how to work with microphones

yeah right there there is this nice and sexy if I do like that and that was something I had to learn along the way was film production and audio and all the rest but it the answer is really within what happens to all of us in terms of just life and that is I believe that

things just fall in on like all the skill sets that we get all the things we do it all starts to fall in on on us and at some point you're left there with an amalgam like a collection of what you can do with all these skills you put in your toolkit so to speak

so for me it starts from childhood loving loving nature and just starting with a joy of watching Jacques Cousteau and Tarzan movies and then fast forward to mid-20s and becoming an outdoor adventure and a guide and then eventually

taking survival training and then becoming a survival guide and instructor and 15 years of that long before Survivor Man. But along the way, see my life's always been on two tracks. One has been in Wilderness Adventure and the other one's been in music. So along the way they've battled each other. They've won for the center stage or they've worked together. And when music was winning, that's when I learned editing and filmmaking because I was working on rock videos. And so when Adventure won, somewhere along the lines, I thought, huh, this is really cool stuff what I'm doing. I should film this. Like, I could do that. I could film this, you know? Yeah. And so one thing led to another, and I started filming my adventures until I realized that

the survival component of what I did as an outdoor adventurer was pretty unique. Nothing like it was on TV. There was one guy, Bushtucker man, had a really interesting show that I liked, but he wasn't surviving. Survivor series on the CBS network began, but that wasn't survival. That was outward bound meets a game show. And so nobody was doing. And so what did I want to do? I wanted to teach skills. That's all I really wanted to do.

I mean, in the 80s, I thought I would be doing this and making home videos to teach how to do the fireboat. But when it finally all happened, no, the opportunity to make it a television series. And I want to talk about that more. One question I've always wanted to ask you, have you ever been in a position where you think, I'm in real trouble here? Hang on, do you want me to get my dog to be quiet? Is he like freaking you out? Oh, he's fine. It's cool.

So for the listening audience, if you hear weird sounds in the background, I have a chocolate lab puppy who is playing around our feet. There, that explains it. And that's all you have to do. It's like in filmmaking, you can't. watch somebody and hear running water if you don't at least get a glimpse of the running water because it freaks your mind and eye out. You're like, I don't, why is it sound like, I can't cut to rushing streams 17 feet away. Oh, I get it now.

And now it's all acceptable. So there you go. Now your audience knows there's a dog playing around our feet. Explained. It's a good dog. It's a good dog. It wasn't Bigfoot after all. Sorry.

What was the question now? My question is, have you ever been in a position where you've thought, I'm in, I'm in real trouble here? If I don't get out of here, I'm in, I'm in. This isn't going to end well. Well, I mean, non-survivor Man, yeah, chased up a tree by a bull moose in the running season up in Canada. If you Google Lestroud, my favorite story, that's still online. You can listen to that story. But on Survivor Man, two occasions.

And it's not the sensational stuff. It never is. You know, it's not, I got chased by Jaguar. Okay. I got treeed by a tiger. Okay. Those sound, you know, pretty like, whoa. But really it was heat stroke in the Kalahari Desert on that episode.

That was very, very dangerous. And then hypothermia, the other end of the scale, in Norway going down the mountain slopes. I mean, there's things that I said, you know, that I asked my editor, don't put that in the show. Because I was at a desperate state. I was quite worried for my own. you know, safety at the time. Yeah, that's, yeah, I would imagine that. You know, I've always wondered that up because you go out there and the one thing I like about,

and we can talk about some of the copycats that came along, but you don't, when you watch Survivor Man, what I like about it is you look like you've been to Hellen Back by the time the episode's over with. There's a physical drain on you. You see that. And I think anyone with half a brain can go, this guy was really out there with cameras because he's lost weight. He looks like he's been to Hellenback.

And some of these others, and I know they're trying to copy what you do and put their own spin on it. But a lot of these guys climb out of these structures or whatever they set up for the night. And they look like they just came back from the Hyatt Hotel. As because they did. And, you know, like, the makeup, someone just did some makeup. I'm like, I know you didn't sleep in that structure. You would look like hell coming out of that street. And that's what a thing I always appreciate about.

Yours is, maybe I'm not saying it the right way, but you look like, hell by the time the episode's over with. You know, this guy's gone to hell and back. We were talking earlier off microphone about Joe Rogan. That's the first thing he said to me, because I look at your eyes like that, you can't make up that. And I didn't actually have to do anything in that respect because I think what people might miss is like, well, how much do you sleep? Well, you know what? You don't. In a survival situation, you don't sleep. If you get 20 minutes, it's okay, then you're awake for an hour or two. Maybe it might get another 20, but you're cold, you're on a rock, you're being bugged out.

And that definitely shows, I mean, that only takes 24 hours to show up on my face. And, yeah, it would be funny to watch all of the shows that have come along. And, you know, we're going there a little bit now, but, you know, I get some people, oh, that's not very nice of you to say. And it's, you, it feels like. They're copycats. Well, yeah. But the reality is, guys,

And it's a fist poor copy. Well, exactly. When Survivor Man began, when I did everything, that was me doing what you see me doing. And everything else has been acting. And again, I have to disclaimer here, or qualifiers that for those people who are actually who are on alone and naked and afraid, they are really hurting. I would not take away from their suffering. But they're not doing anything that's really wilderness survival.

They're doing what the producer said he needs them to do now. Right. You know, now we need you over here and we need you bickering. So what you saw me happening to me was just, I didn't feel it was boring. I felt it was a true representation of someone becoming bedraggled. Yeah. You know? It makes the show real. It really makes the show real.

And it makes you, that's what I love about the show. I wonder when you first started this, how was it received by TV producers? Were they like, no one's ever going to watch this? That's exactly what they said. That's exactly. In fact, I first played it for two TV producer friends of mine. And they kind of actually laughed me, you know, out of the room. And I respected them and I worked with them a lot. And I remember afterwards feeling hurt. I remember thinking, huh. And then, of course, classic me, I thought, okay, okay, I'll show you. And, yeah, two weeks later, I had the show sign. And a year later, they were both asking me for a job. So, yeah, but see, things have changed. So, oh, is that a frog now? We have dogs and frogs.

At least it's fitting, isn't it? It's ambience, man. I'm surviving with Survivor Man. That's my resident frog. I had literally pulled that frog out of the living room last night and put them back there. I'm not even kidding. When I, when I, the thing about the industries is, it's easy to say words like the industry, the networks, you know. But in the end, it still always comes down to one person.

There's somebody there sitting in the gatekeeper's chair going, I don't like it. Or, ooh, we got something here. And then it's, sorry, I'm going to tangent a little, because then it depends on what type of person they are sitting in that chair. Are they a risk taker? Are they a bean counter? Or are they a hybrid in between?

And the risk takers and the hybrids in between, that's who I love. That's who I get along with. the bean counters I have no time for. So the bean counters, no, we've never, we've never seen anything like this before. So no, we don't have any numbers on this. So we can't prove it out. No. The risk taker goes, I like it.

I like it. I've never seen anything like this. This is really cool. You know, you see the difference. They're saying the same sentence, but the wrist. And so I had a risk taker named Anna Stambolic. Actually, the first one was Jane Menge in Canada. discovery and and I literally phoned her up said the survivor, I told her the survivor man idea and

she said, you know, we were thinking of something just like this and we didn't know who to call. So she took the risk on me and then it hit so well as a kind of a, think of it like a newspiece that we were doing that then when I wanted to sell it as a series, the next risk taker said, what do you mean, what do you mean they passed on you? You're kidding me? You mean you're available? Yes, I want Survivor, man. Of course. All right. Come. Come. Come. You. How quickly can you come down here and sign a contract, and the rest is history? It's cool because there's nothing else on TV at the time when you started. I know we talked about copycats, but when you started, there was not, the show had this

a real feel to it. It was cool. It's like you get to go along the adventure, except for I get to eat at night and lay in bed, you know. But it was cool. I get to go along with the adventure with you. I'd never seen anything like that on TV before. That's what everybody would say, too. They'd say, you know, I was in the hotel room, you know, because a lot of rock stars like

Survivor Man. And I was cruising the dial there and your show pops up but that doesn't look like anything else that's on TV and I couldn't turn away. And that grabbed a lot of people as we went along and I was and I'm going to say, I'm going to put this out there

because I feel maybe it's Braga Docio, maybe it's not, maybe it's just pride, but I can point legitimately to several camera maneuvers and editing techniques that did not exist before Survivor Man. Now, am I a genius filmmaker? No, it was

necessity. I was alone, so the only way I can capture X was to do this. Then come along these other ones with crews and everything, and you look at them trying to pretend to be alone and fake it and like you'll see Bear Grills holding the cameraman's lens as he walks. Really trying to pretend like he's holding the camera as he walks. But which I did out of necessity, So I have some pride in myself and my editor, Barry Farrell, in the fact that because of necessity, we did certain things that nobody else had ever done. And now they're all over the place. Yeah. Even you mentioned naked and afraid. They steal the way you shoot things.

Yeah. The whole show shoots, they steal everything. Oh, exactly. And I like naked and afraid too, by the way. Yeah. So you got to give it up and let it go. You know, I mean, as I said, is it braggadocio or is it pride? Is it humble pride?

I don't know what you want to call it, but I am proud of what we did. And I can tell you, there were lots of occasions where I'd be sitting there going, well, no one else has ever done this. I'm going to do it. And that, you know, and the other occasions is like, that's the only way I can make, I can show this. I'm going to have to do this. And then I, so let me give you an example, a little behind the scenes vision for people

who don't know the film industry that well, TV industry. Back in the day. And this was the, you know, right place, right time for so many things. You're doing this podcast, you know, right place, right time. Well, back in the day, to be able to film myself, we are talking about shoulder-mounted cameras that weigh a lot of poundage called Sony beta cams. You know, you can't film yourself with that, but that's what existed when I started. And then all of a sudden, yeah, there was no small cameras, no Gopros, no nothing. And so I could not have done Survivor Man even five years before the day that I did.

But what changed all that? A piece of gear called the Sony VX-1000. Little handheld camera. And it was just under the wire for being quality enough that the networks would allow it to be broadcast quality. You see, you could have the little high-8s, but they were not broadcast quality. You needed the Sony beta cam, the big cameras. So you couldn't film yourself. Along comes as Sony VX-1000.

Okay. It still wasn't quite there. but here's and here's the cool behind the scenes part. So what they said was, well, you're allowed to use 10% that footage and 90% has to be such and such. Okay. And bear with me on this story because this is how all things come together brilliantly, you know. Well, but at the same time was emerging Final Cut Pro, a new editing thing. You know, this is before Adobe Premiere and these little editing things that I could

do at home and it costs two grand. Avid's cost $300,000 to edit in a big... So now you've got a little camera. You got a little editing suite. You got me going out there shooting by myself and I can... And I'm starting to use these little cameras. So what I did was, I would edit together my show. I'd send it in.

I would lie. I would just tell them, yeah, no, it's 90% big camera. And I would color correct it and clean it all up and fix it up. It looked beautiful. And they didn't notice. and here's the kicker. One day they noticed, and this is literally like season two, I think.

Lots of shows go on. It's a hit. Some QC. Some B counter notice. Some QC, quality control, the other dark side, noticed and said, this show's unacceptable.

So I called up the executive producer. I said, so don't take my show. And it was a hit. And he's just like, yeah, don't worry about this list. We'll look after QA Quality Control. So there I am shooting

with what was supposed to be substandard cameras. So what's the difference? content yeah content that's the difference i wasn't filming in big huge cameras with the high deafness and that and this was back in the standard deaf days i was shooting on these smaller cameras and but the content content was killer that was a long story but there you go no no i'm glad you told it and you're right it is it comes down to content i think you could have shot it with the gopro and i would have still watched it i mean well because it's about content isn't it and i would

you know there there's a few you know allowances i make like i agree good audience is everything. And I would try to talk with young guys trying to do this and I'd say, you gotta understand something if you're gonna spend some money put it into audio.

You need a proper laugh. You need to, I need to hear your voice rich and clear. And now it's changing a lot of shotgun mic stuff, but there's still no substitute when you hear this,

you know, in the camera and I'm going, all right, this has been literally three and a half days. I've got nothing in my stomach and I know that's going to make me sick but I don't really have much of it. When you hear me talking like that,

I bring you into the moment. Yeah, absolutely. But if I'm talking like this, it's been three and a half days. Because the microphone's terrible. And then you don't have, you don't have that. It's all a presentation. Yeah.

So to me, that was something technically, I thought, no, audio is important. But other than that, it's content, content, content. Yeah. Now, we'll get to Bigfoot. I'm just fascinated by the whole Survivor, man. I've always had like a million questions. Do you ever get to the point where you're just tired of it? You're like, oh, God, you know, they're going to send me out here.

And, um. Did you ever do a podcast where Bullfrog was chirping in the background? I love it. I think it's awesome. Content, presentation. Let me know where, let me go, I know where you're asking. The short answer is every single time, every single time on the day, on the third day. Fourth day, I would quit, in my mind, I would quit. And I would think, what am I doing out here?

This sucks. I'm cold. I'm hungry. I'm sleeping on a rock. It's buggy. You know, who cares? Who cares what I'm doing out here with this? and worse than that, I would have what we call a a B-roll team, a beauty footage team of camera people that would go off and film the birds and the bees and the time lapses, right?

And I know they would be like maybe 50 miles away, maybe five miles away, but they'd be somewhere having a meal. And that would even make me lonelier. So every show I'd had enough. But the motivation came in the form, and I know this is going to sound a little cliche, it's like the Babe Ruth kind of thing.

like I'm going to hit a home run for you kiddo but I would literally think you know what some kid somewhere 12 year old you know is going to be watching this show eventually and they're going to be hanging off every word I'm saying right now while I do this firebow so stroud bring it bring your A game don't phone it in and I never did no it's like your whole harmonica it's brilliant get your mind off things don't get too wrapped up in I would imagine I've never been in any situation. I won't even attempt to act like I have been, but what you've been in. But I thought the harmonic was brilliant because it gets your mind off things. Because the worst thing I could imagine in a survival situation is freaking out. That is the worst thing. You know, I mean,

so technically speaking in survival, you know, what's the first thing you do? You calm down. That's the first thing you do. And then what are you going to do? You build a shelter, you're going to fire? No, the next thing you're going to do is assess the situation. You've got to take a knee, as they say, and consider all of the options. And, you know, know what you've got on your body, know what you've got close by, know what you've got further a field, now make a decision, do I need a fire, do I need a shelter, you know, that sort of thing. When we return, we'll be talking to Les about what he thinks Sasquatch is, and he's going to start getting into his own personal encounters. You'll definitely want to stay tuned for that.

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Empty faces.com slash Sasquatch, and I want to thank Empty Faces for sponsoring the show. Now let's get back to Lestrade. What got you into Bigfoot? Probably the phenomenon itself, if I'm being honest, looking back, I can remember certain things when I was younger, you know, including, you know, some that confused me and somewhere I went, oh my gosh. Like what? Give an example. Well, I certainly heard the screams in the bush that we've, that any Sasquatch enthusiast has heard about, they sound like women screaming like they're being tortured. So I've heard that.

But that, you know, I will say could also be porcupines fighting. It could be mountain lions. and mating. It could be a number of things. But I heard that and I remember it's the only thing that's ever sent me out of the forest was the night that I heard those screams. That was one situation and it was a survival situation. I was practicing survival with a buddy. But I would suggest the first reel where I was like, ah, was my then wife and I, you know my film Snow Shoes in Solitude. I spent a year living in the bush with my wife and my then wife. And during that year, we were camped out by the river at one point and we heard bipedal walking coming straight for the tent and they were walking and it was very clearly not a bear not a moose, not an elk, I know the sounds.

This was two heavy footsteps. We were way northern Canada in the middle of nowhere and it's just, you know, you know, walking. And I yelled out, hey, just like it would with a bear. You know, I was like, I yelled out

right over here. And it literally just stopped. And you just sort of hear it slightly turned and it just, and it walked away. So, oh, that could have been anything, Strout. I was in the middle of nowhere. I know the sounds of my ungulates and my four-footed friends and all of that. And even though bear can, they walk in their own pads. So there's that.

To this day, I would regret not sticking my head out of the tent. But whatever it was put such a fear in me that I didn't put my head out of the tent. Now, I never feel that when I'm around bears or moose or lions. or lions. You know, I don't have that gripping fear, but something was in the air. Hair was up on the bat. So that was a first, that was, that was, that was 1994.

And then there was the Alaskan episode during Survivor Man. When you heard the, the big huge, who, who, who, who, who, you know, that big huge sort of, you know, sounded like a silverback gorilla, but we were in Alaska. And then the freight train sort of sound as it crashed off through the forest. What happened was When that happened On that Alaskan episode

I remember thinking I'm not telling anybody No way Because I'm here to be Survivor Man And I was into Survivor Man Big time Not that I never stopped being But I was peaking

You know And I thought If I tell this story In this episode That's all anybody's gonna ask about And I didn't I was calculated I didn't want that yet

So I just let it be And then four years later Or something I was on the opening an Anthony show in New York City. And I'd never been, somebody goes, hey, did you ever see Bigfoot? And I knew they were joking. But me being me, I can't answer a joke. I can't sluff off a joke question.

Like, oh, yeah, lots of more. I played football with them, ha. And then it's over. I'm like, well, actually. And then I tell the story of being up in Alaska and the whole thing. Well, I didn't know that was going to set off a little mini-firestorm. And that got me thinking about it. anyway. And then

what happened was and I was talking earlier you know, I like to be at the zeitgeist of everything. You know, I was not at the zeitgeist of Sasquatch and Bigfoot on TV. Finding Bigfoot was. But

Doug hijacked did some great stuff with monsters, something monsters. Monster Quest. I thought that was great. You know, that was a great series documentive. But two things. One, I thought, but it's a modern day. There's way better equipment now and we can tackle this story even better. In fact, I talked and hung out with Doug and his great guy and great

stories and we talked about working together. Let's do part two, but upgraded sort of thing. The other thing that happened at the same time was finding Bigfoot hit. All due respect to those boys, I know they really are into the subject. Cliff is a good, I like Cliff. Nice guy. You know, he's the only guy I met. Nice guy. I know they're really into it for real. But they weren't in charge of the show. The producers were. And I'll say this. I've said it before.

As far as I'm concerned, finding Bigfoot was the worst thing that could have happened for interest in the phenomenon, bar none. Because it turned the phenomenon, that's what I like to call it, into a cultural punchline. After that show,

everything about Bigfoot was a punchline. It showed up in a Robert Downey Jr. movie trailer. You know, he plays a lawyer, and he goes, and my content, or my client wants to see Sasquatch. You know, this became a punchline.

And I remember seeing that and I thought, that's it. That's heartbreaking. So, but right at that time, I thought, okay, no, no, no, no. That was my reaction. Doing Survivor Man Bigfoot was a reaction, direct reaction to the miss that I thought, notwithstanding their ratings, the miss that I thought finding Bigfoot was. It was such a cool show, too. The town halls?

No, no, I'm talking about the Survivor Man, the Bigfoot thing that you did. Why did you stop doing it? It was such a cool show. I liked it. Great way to circle back to what we originally talked about. Remember why I said in this industry, it comes down to one person. The network loved it. The ratings were great.

My individual executive producer loved it. And then a new gatekeeper took over that position. And she didn't like what she called paranormal. The first thing she said to me, we're not doing any more Bigfoot less. We're not doing any more paranormal. That was it. Wow. Done.

Gatekeeper, folks. It's always a gatekeeper. and she's gone. And then when she was gone, the new guy came in and said, hey, how come you're not doing Bigfoot still? And I'm like, well, I would have loved to have done more Bigfoot. You want to do some more? And then by then time had passed,

finding Bigfoot's ratings were starting to fall. And so now the new guy comes in, the new gatekeeper, loved it, wondered why I'm not doing it, but the climate was different. And so there it sits. So those 10 episodes, I'm very proud of them. They were awesome. But I'm not done.

I definitely am not done. I do not feel like I finished my cinematic research into the phenomenon. What do you think Sasquatch is less? Obviously, there's no wrong answer because you don't have one in your garage here, and I don't have one in my garage. How do you know? Well, it's true. Well, as I say, I like to call it a phenomenon because I find it fascinating. And because the naysayers have no answer, and the believers have no answer.

Right. One of the things I said in the show was that I learned very quickly that the community, you know, the Bigfoot community it gets called, is a wide spectrum of philosophies and perspectives on what it is. You know, over here is, you know, say John Bitternagle, and it's, and all due respect to John, we've lost John, but is a simply an upright walking ape with a lot of intelligence. over here, it's aliens. And everything in between kind of, you know, meshes and dovetails. So one day I really was trying to take it to task mentally, you know.

And I, in, this is the cool thing, in filming Survivor Man, Bigfoot, the example I gave you about my time in Alaska, well, times that by 10 now of experiences, all sorts of crazy things were going on. You know, the night on the top of the mountain and went out with the controversial figure Todd Standing, all that stuff. Lots of stuff went on. So I started changing my own tune. And what I decided to do was say, okay. You've asked a crazy question, so it's a long way around answering you. But this is, you can't answer it shortly.

A tangent. I'm at a party. Dude, said you believe in Bigfoot or what? Conversation's over. Not going to answer. answer that question. Matt, a party. Listen, what do you, tell me what about, like, what is it about that thing? Like,

what do you think it is? Okay, now we have a conversation. Let's crack a Guinness and sit down and talk. Yeah. So, I started to look at the attributes of this phenomenon. What are the attributes? Well, it's a collection of attributes that are eyewitness

stories and telling, you know. And what are they? Well, man, they are so numerous, you know, and so what are the ones that carry the most weight? What are the ones that keep repeating themselves over and over again? Let's look at those. And what am I hearing now?

A cricket now? It's Pink Floyd. Yeah, you're stressing too much. Sound guy. I am hearing something, though. Yeah, I think it's an anomaly. See, it's a government. That's what's happening.

There it is. We're going to turn this into a conspiracy show, for sure. There's so many incredible attributes. to this phenomenon. And then I started thinking, wait a minute. What if we do, as Joe Rogan would say, Occam's Razor, what instead of Occam's Razor, we use what someone taught me was the alternate of that, which is Hickham's Dictum, which is instead of it being, it has to be this thing, why can't it be all of these things? You're trying to figure out a disease, oh, it's this because of that. Well, actually, but it also could be this or this, you know, and maybe it is all three, you know. So then I looked at Bigfoot. In the same thing. same light, you know, well, why can't he have this skill or that skill set or this attribute or that physical attribute? And I'm very open-minded. We'll put the alien connection on the shelf for now because that feels like something, that's a whole conversation in itself. So let's put that over there on the shelf. So notwithstanding the alien connection thoughts, you still have

a plethora of attributes that are unique and powerful and many of which you can attribute maybe one at a time to actual physical creatures that exist on the planet, whether it be cloaking, you know, or infrasound. These things the scientists like to say, oh, infrasound, yeah, lions can do that to gazelles. Then there's the other side of things like psychic ability and stuff like that or mind speak as it gets called. What about scientific research into that sort of thing? Oh, it turns out there's been, you know, this and that. And they, you know, certain humans show this. Okay.

So let's take all of those and put them together. I'll tell you one of the more fascinating things that I think. And I love the guy. He's a cool guy. He's a nice guy. Chris, I think you're great, but you could use some polish on how you present your theory because I think his theory has got some merit. And what if we took all these attributes?

and we placed them on a species that also was severely autistic. And you think about, you know, autism in the world. What autism, a severely autistic person can do is mind-boggling. Like, okay, how did the human camera look at the skyline of New York City for three seconds, turn around and draw it to the street light? You know, right? That's just got to be impossible. not in that man's mind. How does this boy who's eight years old and his autistic gift is hiding in a room and you can't find him?

That's weird, you know, but powerful. And Chris's thought is what if the species is inherently severely autistic but with, we'll call him powers. He'll call him superpowers. Christopher Noel. Chris Noel, yeah. Sorry, I should have said. Yeah, Christopher Noel. I think there's merit in that.

So if we take all of these and put them all together, we have what I like to call the phenomenon. And that's what I find the most fascinating. So I don't sit in the camp where it's a big old ape. And I don't sit in the camp where it's descended from aliens. I sit in the camp where I think something's out there, something's going on. I will say that. I'll go on that limb. But what it can do and what it is, I don't know.

But that, I've never, I didn't even answer your question with a definitive, but that is the question. I don't question is it. I question what is it? Right. Exactly. And that's the thing no one really knows. I mean, people who say it's an ape, they don't know. People who say it's in Neanderthal, they don't know.

It's like when I ask that question, sometimes people come back and say, well, it's an alien. You could be right. You know, it could be 100% right. It could be all of the above. Could be all of the above. The fear on the, on the ape side of it is, honestly, is the fear of acceptance from their peers, scientific peers. There are a lot, you know, Jeff Meldrum, brilliant. Love the man. I would love to. He doesn't, he's a wonderful, gentle human being, and he doesn't partake of alcohol in any way.

I'd love to slip him a couple of beer one night and go, come on, come on, tell me what you really think, Jeff. Because I have a feeling, and I know Jeff will hear this, and I love the guy, but I have a feeling that in his heart of hearts, there's pieces of them that are like, yeah, I don't think it's just an ape. Yeah, I think there's more, you know. Even John Bennernernerigle said that to me. He goes, I don't, I used to think it was an egg. me. It was right before he died and I was asking him about, him and I talked all the time and I asked him, I said, what, what do you really think it is, John? And he goes, you know what? I used to say it was an ape. I don't, I don't think it's an ape. I'm happy to hear that because he and I actually got in a little bit of an argument on it. And I just, I just knew, and that's part of where I'm getting this is John was very, we've got to get these other scientists to accept that. I was like, why? Why? Do you think, you know, I'm watching a wonderful series on National Geo, graphic right now called genius. And so far they've done Picasso and Einstein. Those two didn't care who accepted their crazy theories.

They just went for it. And I wanted John and Jeff, you know, to kind of go the same way. Jeff is an incredible scientist with incredible research. But I want them to go, come on, man, let's entertain the concept of a telepathic kind of thing. Let's just do that. For sake of the argument, you know, that's where I'm at. And I'm at that because I experienced it. Yeah, really?

Yeah. Tell me about that. Well, wow. If you want to. I don't mind. I don't mind at all. I mean, I don't, you know, like I'm always just me. I don't really care.

You know, I've taken enough slagging over the years. Well, you know, I've had a lot of, I don't mean, cut you off your story, but I've, I've had a, the show is mainly witness encounters. People come on and share their encounters. And the more people share, the more you can start putting pieces of the puzzle together. Like you were saying, you didn't answer. is a question on what you think Sasquatch is because you don't know. No one knows. Despite what everyone says, no one knows.

And actually, anybody who does know, that's not the person I want to hear from. Exactly. You've got to be more open-minded than that. Well, if we're going to go experiences, I mean, certainly, and there was more than than just what happened during the filming of Survivor Man

Bigfoot. I'll tell it from that one, though, that perspective, because that was the most dramatic. It's been more than once now. but very rare just the same. And so I don't consider myself to have anything psychically or anything like that. I was filming the Smoky Mountain Tennessee episode, and I was with Scott Carpenter,

really, real nice guy, cool guy. Love is interesting, the phenomenon. And he also floats around what it could be and what it might not be. So he took me out to his hotspot, as we call him. and everything was cool. I went out and I said, okay, here's what I want to do. And you can watch it on the show. You can see it on the episode. Just leave me out here, and you leave, and I'm going to stay out here until it gets dark.

Everyone knows that's the creepiest time to be out in the bushes as it gets dark. Middle of the night's not that big of a deal with a flashlight, but for some reason, as it's getting dusky and into dark, and of course, it was a stormy night. So the wind is blowing and all that. and I sat out there alone in the middle of this spot, which was his favorite place, and where he has most of his encounters, so to speak. And I thought, eh, you know, well, I'm going to walk back.

And I said, I'm going to walk back in the dark now. And I was literally like tempting fate, trying to tempt fate. So if you watch the show, you see me say, you know what, the hair just went up on the back of my neck. Let's just see what happens. So I'm, like, taunting the situation. Ah, I'll show you guys. Let's just see what happens.

So I'm, you know, filming myself as Survivor Man does. And I think we cut to commercial, come back, and we just moved on because nothing much happened. It's not the truth. Because what happened, I wasn't ready to share. Not a chance. Not that early in making the show. And why not? Because the gatekeepers wouldn't have been able to handle it.

They would have said, no less, you can't. Whoa, whoa. Hey, whoa, TMI. No, no, no. Well, what happened was the hair went up on the back of my neck and I was gripped with this whole sort of thing. Again, I'm, you know, heck, I jogged 200 yards from where we're sitting right now and did not have that feeling and was stalked by a mountain line the whole time.

And we ended up budding, you know, we were 15 feet across from each other looking at each other. But I just understand wildlife well that I don't usually get that fear factor. I'm like, okay, I'm 175 pounds, cat. You better make this a good jump because you're not as big as me and I'm not a 12-year-old. I'm not an eight-year-old kid. And the cat, and I just yell at the cat, he takes up. So that's all to explain the fact that with wildlife, I'm not instantly gripped with hair on the back of my neck sort of instinctual stuff because I'm trained so much with wildlife. Right.

That I just know what to do. It's a different approach. But there I am, stormy night, middle of the bush, Tennessee, Smoky Mountains, and all my instinct and, you know, Neanderthal man instincts are on high alert. And so I stop. and then it hit and I've never experienced this I'd never experienced this before in my life and

this is and I've heard other people describe this it was like it was right in the middle of my head right inside my brain the strongest ever voice that was not my own and just said if you want to meet us

stay the night creepy and I just stood there gripped in fear I was like I was like I know just like stammering and then the second line was

and the funny thing is before the second line was in my head I felt this already I felt like there was something standing right over there on that hill so there's a gully and then a hill and it felt that's all I can tell you feelings aren't facts

but I felt like it was a big prime of his life sort of male and a smaller young one and the second voice said, the second time it said, you know, we're over here on the hill. But you have to stay. And I literally, this is a survivor man talking now, I literally, in my head at some point I thought, I got to answer. And I just, in my voice, just thought, I'm not ready for this. I can't.

And it was literally, okay. And it turned and walked away. It turned and walked away. The feeling went away. The hairs went down on the back of my neck. It was gone. It was over. And it was so weird, I went and actually talked to a counselor and said, listen, what's schizophrenia?

Because, you know, and of course, which she said, first of all, if you had schizophrenia, you wouldn't be asking me if you had schizophrenia. And so it was the weirdest thing ever. Now, I've experienced that about three other times. And as you can tell now, I take it kind of casually because to me I thought, well, it's just telepathy. A lot of people talk about scientists study telepathy. Maybe, maybe that's an attribute because they don't have our larynx and our vocal cords and all that, although they make noises and all the rest. Maybe that's their language. Maybe they're born with the strong.

What if we were all born with the ability to use telepathic communication? We wouldn't be talking like this right now. We'd be thinking it. So maybe that's them. I don't know. I'm making that up as I go along because that's what I. I just try to reason out, make sense of it. But that's what I felt, you know, call it mind speak, call it whatever you want.

All I'm saying is that's what I experienced. I share that with very few people except now your millions of listeners. And we'll keep that between ourselves, folks. No, I'm glad you did. I mean, I even recently had a state trooper tell me a very similar story of it. He was out hunting, actually. And he had the, he never saw the creatures. But what was fascinating is he was telling me about this,

mind speak, about something talking to him. And that worries me a little bit. I don't know if it's like religious background, but that kind of worries me a little bit. And you really stopped and think, if that's what these things are, like, I understand what you're saying about telepathy, but what is this thing?

Like, what the hell is this thing? Well, again, forget the keeping religiosity out of it. It's just a thing. I mean, a lion, a tiger or a Sasquatch. A small example. Up in northern Saskatchewan, they have seven teachings, and the seven teachings are based on truth, honesty, you know, whatever, strength. And so you've got, you know, the beaver represents this and the wolf represents that. And as a matter of fact, honesty is represented by Sabay, Sasquatch.

And it goes on to the eagle. We'll step back for a second. Look, it's seven creatures. None of them are mythological. It's not the thunderbird, you know, or the ghost thing. It's beaver, fox, wolf, Sasquatch, eagle. go, you know, and so demystify it. You know, demystify.

This could be an attribute and nothing more. I've taken it so casually. I mean, one time literally, I swear I was going, and it was Grizzly Peak in southern Oregon, and so now I do this. I'll go out and lots of times, and, you know, I don't even, you know, I won't tell who I'm with. You know, I'll just, but in my mind, I'll just put it out there. Hiking through your hills today, if you're, if you're around, you know, be cool. would be interested in meeting.

Do that all time. Nothing ever happens. Yeah. One time I did. Brilliant. Oh, that one time. Yeah. No, no.

Another time. It did. I got, this is what I got back. We're sleeping. That's what I got back. It was just like a hammer to my head. Boom. We're sleeping.

Do you wish you could have gone back and stayed the night that night looking back now? Of course I do. Yeah, of course I do. But I wasn't ready. I didn't know anything about that. I didn't know about the telepathy thing. I didn't know any minds. speak. That was all. And here's the thing. Here's this. Here's a wonderful, and I'd love for your listeners to

realize this. This is something I've since discovered. So we have all these eyewitness stories and audible stories and experiential stories. All right. So I got a friend close by here, actually, and there's someone that he respects highly and knows her really well and lived with her and rented off her sort of thing. And she told him that she saw a saskatch twice. And a highly respected person. So think conservation officer, your uncle, police officer, friend, teacher, whomever. And he always finishes it with, ah, but, yeah, I don't know.

I mean, really? I'm, I don't know. And this is where I move in. This is where I like to just bring the hammer down. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Hang on a second. So you don't, you don't think it's, you probably don't think it's possible. Well, I don't, I don't really think so.

I don't know, you know, but she says, I said, okay, let's call her right now and call her a freaking liar. You said you respected and trusted her. Now you're saying she's full of it. Let's call her up right now and call her a liar. Well, no, exactly. So I did a thing once at a convention. I said, everybody stand up who's had in a Bigfoot experience. And about 30 people stood up.

everybody sit down if it wasn't visual. A bunch of people sat down. So I was left with about, everybody sit down who thinks, who knows that it wasn't a mistake. Some people sat down. I was left with about a half a dozen people. I said, now, I want all the rest of you in this audience to look at these people. Let's call them liars. Oh, you don't want to call them a liar.

Well, then they saw what they saw. You know what I'm saying? And never mind. So the thing is, the question is this. You're only left with a certain couple of options. Number one, they're lying. Number two, it's a case of mistaken identity. Number three, they're delusional.

Now, the delusional thing is a cop-out for everybody who doesn't want to be interested in the subject matter. You're all delusional. It's a mass hallucination. Well, you got to put that one on the table somewhere because there's no answer for that. People are just, no, you're delusional. Well, let's just throw it out of the equation for the sake of argument that these people are not delusional. So we're left with lying, mistaken identity, or they're giving you a factual representation of what they saw. And if we have hundreds of these, which we do, in fact, we have thousands, combined with the Aboriginal stories over, you know, hundreds of societies who have a regular, you know, yeah, they're there, combined with all these attributes, what are you left with?

The very real possibility that the phenomenon exists, whatever it is. But that's my thing is I defy you to stand and look at your uncle, the conservation officer, and say, hey, Uncle Joe, I was thinking about what you said, you're a liar, right? No, we don't do that. Because you go, wait a minute. But yet we walk away from them and their crazy story, kind of thinking that. So I like to challenge that. And because these are, we're not talking about the wackos that tell their stories. We're talking about real people.

Yeah, I would say I rarely rarely get any wackos. And, you know, I'm talking people from all walks of life. cops. Why is the cops good word? Why is his word so good in any other situation? Not here. Not here. Conservation officer who's a professional, you know, sort of thing. Media, of course, likes to, you know, get some toothless wonder who, you know, backwards person. Well, my grandmother feeds them pies. You know, they do that and it's so unfortunate. It is. And that's the thing I think with my show is when I've had skeptics tell me that I don't believe in Bigfoot. but that guy saw something.

I listened to him, break down in tears, telling you what he saw. That guy saw something. And so I think that's really how you have to approach it a lot of times with skeptics is you can't cram it down people's throats. It's like I used to tell John the same thing with the scientific community. The point I was trying to make is to some of these people, I'll say the scientific community is not interested anyway. So what do you care? It's like what you were talking about with the ape that believe it's an ape. And if you talk about anything strange, well, we can't do that because the scientific community will think we're nuts.

They already think you're nuts. You're chasing unicorns in their mind. So who cares? Start looking into it. You know what I mean? There might be something to it. Like you talked about with telepathy. And I appreciate you sharing that.

Well, I mean, like I said, going back to the problem with series like Finding Bigfoot and a couple of the other ones that spin off off of that, you know, whatever, monster this or swamp that or whatever. is they just made it a joke. And that makes people that now everybody's giggling and people get uncomfortable. I've got family members. I wouldn't dream of talking about this. And I remember my niece asked me one time. And even just asking the questions, you couldn't ask it without giggling, this conversation's over.

Yeah. Like, we're talking about something real. And so when people are listening to something like this, and here's one I love. I'm out hunting every year of my life for 45 years. I've never seen a thing. It's all nonsense. I was like, okay, let's just dissect that for a second. How often do you hunt?

Oh, two solid weeks. So two weeks out of 52 in a year, you go where? You go to this one, this place, and you hunt, and because you've never seen anything, they don't exist. Like, that's just the rationale is haywire. A lot of times with people who they're skeptical, and they don't even know why they're skeptical. But as I say, a lot of the modern media in the last eight years did much to ruin that, you know, by making it funny, you know. What's your take on, you know, when, let's say when a cougar is around or a bear's around, you don't quite get that hair standing up on your neck. However, when these things are around or when you've been in those situations, it's almost like your body kicks in and it's alerting you.

Something's not right. What's your take on that? I think that that would speak to the essence of whatever a Sasquatch is. It's got to be something powerful, you know. And we've seen, we've been, I've been watching bears since I could watch television when I was a kid, on TV, at least. You know? And so I think that, again, whatever it is they are, I'm not giving them superhuman status. I'm just saying they have attributes that are powerful.

We don't quite understand. Or at least powerful. You know, even if we can compartmentalize the infrasound and the cloaking ability and the telepathy and the strength and all that, if we can compartmentalize all of it, it still kind of comes off as an Avenger. You know, we're talking something powerful. And so why wouldn't I get, you know, the creeps if I'm around? I remember in Bend, Oregon, I had no reason. I mean, I'm a healthy dude. And I had no reason, but I just had this overwhelming feeling that there were quite a few around where I was.

And all of a sudden, for no one reason, inexplicably, I was nauseous. I turned white and almost fainted. And no reason whatsoever. Oh, well, it's what you ate that day. Could have been. Could have been. But I ate like I did every day. And I was healthy.

I was out on a hiking trail. Well, you exerted yourself. Could have. Like, I'm a survivor man, baby. Yeah, but I know I'm self-aware. And that was, so that leads me to an interesting thing. Here's a phenomenon that those who research the phenomenon will recognize. And I don't think it's, I'm certain it's not a matter of the mind.

The more you research, never mind the logistical sense of this, the more things do seem to start to happen. And the more you notice. Maybe that's just a learned response. you're picking up on things. Well, I'm sure that is part of it. But I also think there's a relationship. There's a connection thing that happens. Kind of like when you're staring to the abyss, it stares back at you type thing.

No, no. More relational. More like they've recognized where you're at as a human being and where they're at as a species, whatever they are. They've recognized that you've recognized that you're not a threat, that you're, just interested, you know. So let's fast forward to last year and outside of Portland, Oregon. And I, wanting to do another Survivor Man, Bigfoot, did so for my online Survivor Man TV.com. This time, it's all on my paycheck. It's all on my money. I'm going to go and do this myself. And I thought, good, I want to push the envelope a little more now about this whole telepathy thing and all this other worldly stuff.

So we went up and I went up with a good friend who's had some crazy experiences and I met with a woman who, you know, has what she considers to be a relationship with them. And we'll just notwithstanding all the arguments against that, we'll let it go. Just fast forward to me in the middle of the bush in the middle of the night. And in a zone where these, this species, this phenomenon, according to this lady, this was their area, it was pretty wild. and there's a communication there, right? And I'd felt it from them before, just that mind-speak thing. This was one of those times. And it's kind of like they know you're coming, right?

So I went in, I went out in the bush with my friend, Devin, and we sat up all night with a little fire. And I remember trying to do the Minespeak thing, you know. And then all of a sudden, finally, it just hit. it. And we weren't smoking nothing. We weren't drinking nothing. We were just out there. And it just hit like, yeah, I'm, you know, it was almost like he was saying, my friends are there kind of now, but I'll be coming later. And I literally had a discussion and said, well, I'm going to be, I'm going to be asleep. Like, I'm going to fall asleep here. And the answer was, I'll wake you up.

All right. So fast forward to a few hours later. And, or no, sorry. We'll not finish this moment an hour later or so. It's dark. And Devin says, come here. Come here and look at this. And I walked over. He didn't have to point it out. He didn't have to tell me what he saw.

He didn't have to say anything. I just walked over. I saw it as I was walking over. And as sure as I'm sitting here, first time of my life, never seen it since, I'm looking at two hovering lights 15 feet away in the brush. Really? Yeah. There they are.

What do they call them? Orbs. There it is. Right there. I'm sober. I'm not tired yet. I'm not, hadn't been sleeping. And we're just, there we are.

I'm like, okay. You know? And Devin had experienced this before. He's communicating and you could see one was the size of, let's call it smaller than a CD, the golf ball. The other one was the size of a pie plate 15 feet away, just hovering. There was no refractive. no lights from cars or houses, nothing was bouncing off of a roof,

nothing like that at all. This was half an hour. For a half an hour, they stayed there, and they seemed to move a little bit, you know? And I remember he said, you know, my friends or whatever are there, you know. I can't remember exactly what he, he said,

you know, he being supposedly the Sasquatch. So we go to, whatever, we go to sleep. We sit down, that just fades. and dissolves, if you will, into thin air. We sit down. Now we sleep. So we're sleeping. Croll up on the ground.

And I think... I remember when he said, I'll come and wake up. He said, I think he said, no, no, no. Now I got my memory correct. I'll wake up. Okay, so now I'm asleep. I wake up so quickly that I jump to my feet. Have you ever woken up and jumped to your feet?

That's a rare occasion. We do that maybe twice in our life. Right, right. some weird reason that you could, that you would ever wake up and jump to your feet at the same time. So I'm sleeping in the kind of the fetal position on the ground, a little crackling fire there. What happened was something came along and spun my body over as I slept, like physically flipped my body over. It felt like warm fur touching my calf that did this. I jumped up

and told my friend Evan kind of said but I didn't see anything next day we're walking out and the woman who sort of hosted the area and said you know so how did it go and she supposedly has a connection she says well

she she calls him Guardian she said well I spoke with Guardian last night he said he was going to go to you in the middle of the night and that he touched you. You know, so coincidence, sure, possibly, could be. It's a strange coincidence. Well, you know, like I said, I'm in the bush all my life. I'm sleeping out on rocks by fires all my life.

I know what hallucination is. I know what feeling overtired is. I know what it is to, heck, one of the strengths when I go to Ecochallenge races is that I'm the guy who can last with sleep deprivation better than, you know, I might not have the strongest legs for riding the bike when we're doing that part of the race, but I'm always the guy who's good when we've gone 48 hours without sleep. And I'm out there and this was just the evening, you know, and that happened. And so I forget how I got there, but that was recent. Do you think the lights are related? I film the lights. I know exactly what you mean. I filmed it

with the night vision. And it was a ball, I'll show to you after the interview if you want to see it, but it was a ball of light and it was just hovering there. It was the strangest, it was weird, man. I don't even know what it was. But do you think they're related and what color were they? He said blue? Whiteish. Whiteish with it. You could say a blue tinge, actually, now that I'm thinking about, you're taxing my memory at this point. Well, again, fanciful thinking, maybe. I don't know. I really don't have the answer, but I'm wondering if the concept of astro projection has got anything to do with it. The woman seemed to be implying that, that this is their abilities. Well, let's think about that for a second. See, what do I, here's what I think. You know, what do I think they are? Here's as far as I like to go.

I think there are species that understands laws of the universe that we don't. Now, toy with me with that for a little while. Let's pretend or suggest that we are all vibrating, right? What if we could control that? If we could control our vibrational speed. Can vanish. Exactly. You see where I'm going with this?

So what if this is a species that had an ability to manipulate universal laws that we're just scratching, this quantum physics, but we're just scratching the surface of now, you know, it's apropos that I've been watching the genius series on Einstein. Because again, he's, you know, he challenged the,

he challenged Newton's understanding of the universe and was right. You know, so, so what if they have this ability like, we breathe? What if it's just like, yeah, you just vibrate a little different, you know, and now it's really hard to see me,

isn't it? You know, and, you know, so that is, and I'm not going to get into, you know, souls and all that sort of stuff, I'm just going to say that maybe it's astral projection. I don't know. I don't know. But I saw them.

Yeah, I've seen them too. I filmed them. So, I mean, it's... And thousands of people have. Yeah. Doesn't, we're not just sitting here as a couple of Bigfoot freaks. No. I think people need to realize that these stories, these attributes, these experiences, are shared not by a few dozen people.

Not by a few hundred people. By thousands of people over many, many years, maybe as many years. And generally speaking, they're saying the same thing. Yeah. You can read a report from like 1910 and it sounds like a modern day report. Yeah. Well, they say, well, that's because it's just projected onto what you're saying now. Again, bring the uncle that you respect so highly that's a conservation officer in front of you,

have him sit at the kitchen table and tell him he's a liar. You know, when he's like, I know what I saw. And this is the thing. These are people who have nothing to gain. Right. You know, sometimes to lose. and say, look, I don't care what you think. I know what I saw.

I'm a clean, sober individual. I know the woods that weren't no elk, you know? Yeah. Well, you know, you ask most people that drink and smoke weed or whatever. How many times have you seen a large monkey running through the woods? You know what I mean? Never. The answer is never.

That's right. So it's such a ridiculous argument sometimes people use. I want to ask you, though, just kind of wrap things up. Have you ever seen any UFOs or what's some of the weird? things you've seen out there beyond Bigfoot. It could be anything. Well, it's a connection, though, that I experienced. And this, again, was a thing I wasn't either ready to or able to because of the gatekeepers share on the Survivor Man Bigfoot episode.

And that was when I went up to the top of the mountain with the one Todd Standing in his research area up there. And the second night, I asked him to leave, and I stayed on the top of that mountain alone. and I will, it was weird, because this touches on another thing, and I'll just brief this. And that is, it's amazing that sometimes we don't utilize our best skills in these moments. It's like, why didn't you just take a picture? Right. I didn't even think of it. Right.

And that's happened to me a couple of times. So I'm up on the mountain, and I had a weird thing later that night that just freaked me out. But the first thing that happened was it's dark now. And I casually look over to the right, on top of the mountain, and looking down at the most amazing valley, but I can't see a city. Like, I'm not near Jasper, Alberta, or anything like that. And I look over, and I saw four massive lights. What do you mean four massive lights?

I got to say that if they were airplanes or if it was an airplane, it would be an airplane the size of a shopping mall, because my goodness, the lights were huge, and they looked to be a mile away, and they were just hovering there in the sky, four big, huge, bright, round lights hovering in the sky. And I was like, oh, is that just a jet coming in for landing and it's a weird refraction of the light? And it was like, no, for like 20 minutes. It was up there until at one moment I looked and it was just gone. It just vanished out of the sky. I didn't watch it vanish.

In fact, I got bored with it. Why didn't I film it? I don't know. Why I didn't film it. But it was not in my inclination to film it, and yet I'm standing there staring. And I think, again, kind of like when the Sasquatch thing happened in the Alaska episode, I didn't want to confuse what I was doing with Survivor Man by talking about Bigfoot. Now I'm filming Bigfoot, and I didn't want to confuse what I'm doing with Bigfoot to talk about aliens and spaceships.

I'm just like, oh, a fellow going, not now, guys, you know, but I should have paid more attention. And then that was the night. So that happened for about 20 minutes. It disappears. I go back to the fire. I go to sleep. I wake up. And this part will forever freak me out.

Was it lucid dreaming? I don't know. But I swear to you, as sure as I'm sitting here, I had the feeling like something was sitting on top of me. I'm in my sleeping bag with the pulled over my head like a cocoon. So I sleep when I'm, you know. And because I'm bald and so my kid gets cold. I get cold. Yeah, so I'm doing that.

And I couldn't move. And it wasn't that I couldn't move my left arm that I was sleeping on. I couldn't move my right arm that was free to the top of me. And it felt so much like something was sitting on me. And it felt unmenacing. It felt almost like joking like somebody's going, ha, ha, you can't move. I felt two big buttocks, just a big pair of buttocks sitting on me on this.

Well, finally, it just kind of lifts off of me. and I'm like scrambling to get my head down. I pop out and there's, you know, nothing there. Maybe I was lucid dreaming. Okay, I'll give you that. We put stuff up in the tree. It's 100 feet away. I go down the next morning.

Power bars, apples. And long story short, we'd done it the night before. The camera fell over, blah, blah, blah. So this time the camera didn't fall over. Had a motion camera. The dust in the air was setting the camera off. So I knew it was sensitive. It was picking up things really quickly.

I think it's a three-second delay, that sort of thing. And I showed it in the episode. And I wish people would see just how freaky it was. And I will tell a behind-the-scenes story about Todd in this moment. But I'm looking at everything's gone off. I get up in the morning, everything's missing off the tree. Okay, everything's missing. There's quite a few things.

I look, the camera's still in the right position. All right. I'm pulling out the SD card going, oh my, what is on you? Yeah. You know? Climb down the mountain. I hike down the mountain. Finish filming.

Drop the card, you know, to my editors down and go, okay, Max, show me what's on this. We got to look. And we look, and everything that was on the tree disappears before our eyes. Just gone. One second, it's there in the footage. It's there on the tree. next gone just gone even a mouse climbing up the tree

to dislodge the apple would easily have been seen even an owl who came through quickly and grabbed and remember there was a number of the power bars and apples that were taken would have set off that camera it just disappeared

I have no explanation for that so we're looking at this and Todd's looking at it and this was again goes back to that discussion about why guys who are on the ape's side of the fence do not want to scare people away with big lofty talk. And he's looking and he goes, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, no, no, no, no, that's like, that's like paranormal. You can't show that. You can't show that.

And I said, well, it's my show and I'll show whatever I want. We did show it. Fast forward, here's a great part of this story, addendum to the story. Fast forward to three months later in the edit suite. did you guys get that you know what do you I want to see how we're cutting together that whole thing with the I want to because like just play it the way it is because wow it's creepy and my editor

and junior editor goes yeah and where did you want to put that that that head that pops in the screen I'm like excuse me yeah at the end of the clip that that little head that pops up show me we never saw this

we missed it we were so excited about the Apple's disappearing and he shows me and that's when you see it in the episode. At the very end, there's this, I can only say it this way, ape-like shaped dome, pops up in the bottom of the frame and goes out again.

The bottom of the frame is seven feet in the air. It's not a sheep. Maybe a grizzly, but there were no grizzly ears. How do you come for everything vanishing, though? And I was 100 feet away. You know what I mean? Yeah.

100 feet away, sleeping. I'm on the top of a mountain. There's nobody else there. Mr. Standing did not climb back up and climb up the tree. I mean, I'm right there. You know, it just all happened. Do I have an explanation for this?

Nope. And that's why I find it so fascinating. I'm fascinating with the unknown. I don't really, I just came back from Portugal. The Roman stuff was interesting, the Visigoths, really interesting stuff. I went to the Portuguese Stonehenge. I want to know about stuff that happened 38,000 years ago that nobody knows what it is. Me too.

You know, Machu Picchu and, of course, of course. Yes. I want to know about that stuff. I want to know about the stuff you can't explain. Right. You know, that's what, and right now, this phenomenon can't be explained. So it's still fascinating to me. When it becomes a thing, you know what's going to happen?

If it ever comes out and it's like, yeah, they exist. It's going to be de facto for everybody else. Be like, oh, yeah, we figured. No, you didn't. Yeah. No, you didn't. You know, and that's what's going to happen. Well, the skeptics will scatter like cockroaches when that comes out.

Yeah. Well, we figured, you know, that it was. And so, you know, and then there's a whole other angle down of why, why isn't it public knowledge? And if other, you know, organizations or the government know, why isn't it public knowledge? It's a whole other. Yeah, that's a whole other topic. Yeah. Yeah, I know you're right.

For another time, folks. Well, I appreciate you having me, Les. Very gracious of you. Thank you very much. That's my pleasure. And where can people get your music? I know we were talking about that before we went on the air. Where can you get some...

You do some cool music, man. Well, I've got my fifth CD out now. It's called Bittern Lake. I've got three albums. One is ready called Mother Earth, and another one we're working on. All three produced by Mike Klink, who's famous for Guns and Roses. He created their sound. Metallica, Aerosmith, all sorts of people.

And four independent CDs before these ones that I've done as well. So my music's been going for a long time. I'm performing. I'm about to go up and do a New England tour. so I'm touring the city wineries in Boston and New York and Washington and some places in southern Ontario, Canada. Lestrowd.ca. Lestroud.ca is my website, and everything is there for my music.

Of course, Spotify and iTunes, the usual suspects for that. And the music that I do is, you know, run the gamut from blues and folk to now it's getting, you know, now I'm able to put a little bit more rock. Next album is a full rock album. and the cool thing is a lot of the stuff I'm doing lately it's all about celebrating nature and it's very apropos that I sing to that, that I lyricize and I write lyrics to that.

It works for who I am and what I do. But I'm a hell of a great performance. I love the stage, you know, and I don't mind saying it that way because I try to get people to come out to realize you're going to have a great evening. And you know what's cool? Because of the Survivorment stuff,

I learned not to shy away from Survivor Man. And I learned to simply accept it so that when I do a concert, I'll break in the middle and do a Q&A on Survivor Man. And we'll talk for Survivor Man about 20 minutes. Or Bigfoot. That's really cool. Then it's a very intimate evening. And then it's like, you guys want me play another song?

Yeah. I start rocking out. That's awesome, man. Yeah. That's awesome. Lestrowd.com. Lest thanks for coming on, man. My pleasure.

Thank you. Thanks, man. And that wraps up episode 500. I want to thank Les Stroud for coming on and being so open to share. I want to thank Tony Merkel from the Confessionals podcast. And thank you guys for coming on and just taking the time to listen to the show. I really do appreciate it. Hopefully we get another 500 under our belt.

I want to wish everyone to Merry Christmas. Happy New Year. I'll be back on Sunday for the members. For everyone else, I will see you guys next time. I'm across the country faster than the coronavirus and wait. I'm Tom Martin and I'm a veteran sports analyst and respect. in sports handicapper who will help build ESPN's brand. I've been recognized and awarded by Pro Football Weekly and Gaming Today magazine as the

honest handicapper. Let the other guys give you the same old boring sports talk with the same tired storylines. We'll give it to you straight here every Friday on Wagering Week. Don't gamble with other podcasts. Let SportsGuard Network's Wagering Week help your bottom line.