The Confessionals - 462: The Bigfoot Hunter | Aleksandar Petakov

Episode Date: July 26, 2022

In Episode 462: The Bigfoot Hunter, we are joined by Aleksandar Petakov, a filmmaker and bigfoot hunter. He is notably known for his series through Small Town Monster entitled "Bigfoot Beyond The Trail" where he is actively boots on the ground searching for the elusive cryptid. Working with Small Town Monsters, Aleks has been able to stay true-to-form and avoid network executives trying to manipulate his tactics or videos for the purpose of selling a product. On Episode 462 we discuss places he has gone, his general thoughts on cryptids, and back-and-forth bigfoot banter.Aleksandar Petakov: petakovmedia.com Get your tickets to the 1st Annual Dogman/Cryptid Conference: https://bit.ly/3MXCnnuBecome a member for AD FREE listening and EXTRA shows: theconfessionalspodcast.com/join SPONSORS GET Cerebral: getcerebral.com/tony GET SIMPLISAFE TODAY: simplisafe.com/confessionals GET Hello Fresh: hellofresh.com/confessionals16 Promo Code: "confessionals16" for 16 FREE MEALS!!! Get Emergency Food Supplies: www.preparewiththeconfessionals.com Get Beard Oil: bit.ly/2FbOhN5 CONNECT WITH US Website: www.theconfessionalspodcast.com Email: [e-mail] Subscribe to the Newsletter: https://www.theconfessionalspodcast.com/the-newsletter SOCIAL MEDIA Subscribe to our YouTube: https://bit.ly/2TlREaI TikTok: @theconfessionals Discord: https://discord.gg/KDn4D2uw7h Show Instagram: theconfessionalspodcast Tony's Instagram: tonymerkelofficial Facebook: www.facebook.com/TheConfessionalsPodcas Twitter: @TConfessionals Tony's Twitter: @tony_merkelOUTRO MUSICVanTesla - ShutUp N DriveYouTube: https://bit.ly/3yH4kvGApple Music: https://apple.co/3nDfsU1 Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3nErEUI

Merkel Medios This was all circulating around the base that a giant had to kill but no one was supposed to talk about it I saw three long, boning fingers reach up underneath the door curl up to grab it and then disappear

When he came over to me dude he slithered over to me and this giant comes out of the cave and they're all frozen and he starts running and firing at this giant. Well, the giant move. He's got a spear in one hand, and he's running really fast. And spears, Dan, holds him up like this. Somebody else, shoot him in the face, shoot him in the face. They basically decapitated.

Feel something pulling at my leg. And I look over, and there are two small gray entities. And they're literally, I'm getting pulled off the bed. I reached my hand into this bush, and I touch air. Couldn't breathe, and it couldn't move. because I know I'm seeing a monster. Welcome to the show, everybody. You're listening to The Confessionals. I'm your host, Tony Merkel. Thanks for being here.

If you've a crazy, wild experience, you want to share with me on the show, go ahead and shoot me an email. My email address is The Confessionals at the Confessionalspodcast.com. That's The Confessionals at the Confessionalspodcast.com. Or go to the website, theconfessionalspodcast.com. Hit the contact section. You can reach me that way as well.

Either it works for me, just get a hold of me. If you want to hear more shows on a weekly basis, go to the Confessionalspodcast.com. hit the join button and become a member today. That gives you access to all the membership content on the website and the app that includes the Thursday members shows, the Tuesday shows ad-free, and the overtime segments from the Tuesday shows all right there waiting for you as members. So go ahead and check that out if you're interested.

Also, friends, check out the prepare with the confessionals.com. That's prepare with the confessionals.com. Get yourself emergency supply food. That will last you up to 25 years on the shelf. I don't think you're going to need it 25 years from now, but just in case there is no emergency between now and then, you are still good to go at prepare with the confessionals.com. And before we get to this week's guest on the show,

let's talk about the first annual dogman slash cryptic conference right there in Paris, Tennessee. It is going to be a fantastic venue for you to check out if you are into all things dogmen encrypted. There's going to be some great speakers there, including Nick Valde. Lente, Jody Cook, Steve Stockton, Ron Murphy, Nick, Redford, Tony, Merkel, Josh Turner. The list goes on and on, my friends. And it's going to be hosted by Ken Gearhart. So if you want to go and meet all these speakers and have a good time in Paris, Tennessee, August 13th, you're going to want to go in the description of this episode.

Hit the link for the tickets and get your tickets today before they are gone, my friends. Okay, today we got a great in studio guests coming up. We have Alexander Pedikov in studio with. us, the Bigfoot hunter. He actually has a series on YouTube called Bigfoot Beyond the Trail through Small Town Monsters. He is legit. And he comes on to talk about all things, Bigfoot, including how he got into hunting Bigfoot, some of the other things that he thinks about at night that keeps him awake. And what would happen if he had mindspeak out in the woods after having a Bigfoot encounter? Would he admit it? Would he talk about it? We get into all that

kind of conversation on this episode. Let's get to Alexander Pedikov right now. All right. We want to welcome Alex Xander to the show. Alex Xander, Alex. Listen, I wanted to talk to you about something before we even get going here. How do you pronounce your last name? Petikov. Pedicov? Yeah, it can be a little tricky. What is that? Spanish? Yes, definitely, definitely. Straight from Spain. Yeah, because I was actually looking at your online profiles and stuff. on your Instagram because I'm only on Instagram. Right. And I'm on other platforms, but I only hang out on Instagram.

Yeah, Instagram's fun. And your profile says Alex. And then in the videos, you were saying, Alexander. So that's why I stumbled there because I'm like, we got Alex Xander on show. It can be confusing. Yeah, a lot of people struggle with the Alexander because the way it's spelled. Yeah. It's not what they're used to.

So I just go with Alex because, I mean, people call me Alec. I've heard of Alexander before. I'm like, how did you misplace the letters? That's like, it may be a different issue there. But yeah, so I just stick with Alex. Okay. That's just the easy way to do it. Yeah.

It's always confusion. I tend to shorten people's names to begin with. So it's one of those things where, you know, like, I'm going to call you Alex anyways. Sure. That works. I'm also known for butchering intros. Actually, last week's show, I butchered our guest's last name. And I actually took that out because I was so embarrassed by it.

I actually took it out. But I mess stuff up all the time. But anyways, we have Alexander here, Alex, whoever you want to call him. And let's just start off with telling people who you are and what you're all about and stuff. Where can they find you online? Because obviously you're somebody notable. That's why you hear in person. Yeah, of course, right?

No, my name is special, guys. Awesome. We can make it work. Yeah, so basically my kind of spiel is I'm a filmmaker first and then a cryptozoology researcher. So I've been into all sorts of different cryptids over the years. Mostly Bigfoot now. People probably would see me in the Small Town Monsters series Beyond the Trail on YouTube, as well as some of the other Small Town Monsters feature films about other cryptids.

But usually the Bigfoot stuff. So mostly Bigfoot stuff nowadays. But I've done stuff on Mystery Big Cats and the Lake Champlain Monster and other stuff as well. So you've got to go all over the place, but right now you're doing a lot of Bigfoot. Yeah, well, the thing is I like what I like about the Bigfoot topic, is whenever I travel somewhere, especially in North America, I mean, chances are most places you go, there's going to be a local Bigfoot story or variant, whether it's the skunk cape or the Mogion monster or the Wood Devil, you know, wherever you go. Whereas if you're looking into something like the Lake Champlain Monster, it's just completely geographically stuck to one area. It's a lake, right? So Bigfoot's cool because it's open-ended. I can always put it down and then come back to it if I'm in another area. That's what I like about Bigfoot. But we've been focusing pretty heavily on Bigfoot now, especially with Beyond the Trail, just because of Well, I should say Bigfoot beyond the trail. We've kind of amended that to include the Bigfoot,

just because it's a combination of a lot of stuff that I'm into in terms of being out in the woods, being in some of these really remote places. We do a little bit of, you know, kind of the survivalist sort of stuff, a little bit of bushcraft, and then that research out in the field. And so that's why I kind of like going back to Bigfoot, because as fun as it is to be out on a lake or, you know, a sea coast somewhere looking for sea monsters or something. It's just not as a doable, I think, on a repeatable scale as, big footing is where you can really just take a pack and go off into the woods, go to the

smoky mountains nearby, and just go for a few days and come out. You don't really need a lot of specialized kind of equipment like a big boat or some sort of an expedition vehicle. Anyone could really sort of do it. That's what I kind of like about it. You know, that's kind of how I am too in the sense that, so we're doing these films and everything, but also me and Jack like doing these kind of like action vloggy kind of things. It's like we're, yes. Like people who watch our film, I'm like, I'm not the one producing that guy. It's like, like, I have no idea what I'm doing with Adobe and all that stuff. That's why, like, you know, me and Jack, if you see me and Jack produce something,

it's real like, you know, it's vloggy. It's YouTubey, you know? And we, him and I try to go to places, though, that have a lot of different types of the lower. That way we're not box into one thing. Sure. And so, you know, like, we'll go to, like, we went to the Michelle State forest and we went because there's a specific location we knew we could get to that had a story. It was an old World War II prisoner of war camp. Nazis killed Nazis there. Great storyline.

Let's go. But also, they have Bigfoot sightings in this forest. They have dogman setting in this forest. It's a haunted forest. So there's so much there that we went with, we know we can get to the camp and we can do a whole thing about the camp. But we can also have all this other stuff as underlying things. If something else pops off, we can run with it, you know? Yeah. And And so that's kind of how we did things with that and stuff. So I totally understand that. Now, you're going out, you're looking for Bigfoot, all that stuff. I'm assuming you didn't wake up one day when you were like four years old and say, I'm going to be a Bigfoot hunter one day, you know, like, or maybe you did. I don't know. Like, I have a four-year-old at home. He has the audacity to tell me Bigfoot's not real. My four-year-old. My four-year-old. He hasn't seen the evidence, man.

Like, you're four. Just listen to what I tell you. Okay? You know, so like, I don't know, maybe you grew up just wanting to hunt bigfoot. Where did this all start for you? Because, I mean, you were talking about the big cats and all that stuff. Yeah, I mean, I don't know. It's a kid of the 90s. I was just really into dinosaurs and nature and all that kind of stuff. And I was told the story of the Yeti in the Himalayas when I was a kid on a family ski trip. And, you know, that story sort of cemented in this sort of mystique. I remember looking up at these mountain peaks and thinking, wow, there could be something up there. hiding. There's all these stories and that sort of thing. And then I started diving into the documentary side of it. And I was just consuming anything I could on that topic. A lot of the old school shows and in search of and Animal X, Monster Quest. That was kind of later on. X-Files, of course, you know, non-sort of documentary shows. So there was a lot. And I think that influenced a little bit of me wanting to become a filmmaker. So I initially started getting more into film, not on the encrypted side of things. I wanted to do other types of films and that

sort of thing and study communications. So that was kind of all within my alley. I really liked the documentary filmmaking format and what you could do with it. And it wasn't until actually going to Loch Ness after I got out of school. I was over in Europe for a little bit. And I went to Loch Ness. It was kind of like a bucket list item, go to Loch Ness. You know, it's one of the most famous cryptid creatures in the world, Nessie.

And I had a new Canon camera that I picked up. And I was like, hey, I'm just going to interview some people, shoot some shots and see what happens. And then I was like, well, you know what? There's all these cryptod documentaries that I've loved growing up on and watching. Why don't I just do my own? And then I wanted to do a feature film on Bigfoot. And I realized that the topic was just so broad. I had kind of had, you know, armchair researcher days where I was really into it in high school and that sort of thing. And then life happens. You kind of lose interest. You come back to it sort of thing. And when I came back to the Bigfoot topic, I realized how big it had gotten. And that it was sort of that

finding Bigfoot era where the Bigfoot topic is really blown up. Finding Bigfoot really put Bigfoot, I think outside of the Pacific Northwest in places like Ohio and Florida where previously those are the only areas where you really thought Bigfoot's there, right? Nobody thought, well, there could be Bigfoot in New Hampshire, like in my state or in Maine or Idaho or all these other places where there may be some stories, but nothing is mainstream. So in that post-finding Bigfoot sort of climate, there's much more of a renewed interest in Bigfoot just nationwide. mind. So I realized this is probably going to be more than a feature film. I can do, you know, one documentary, just about one researcher I know in New Hampshire. Then I could do another one about Bluff Creek or whatever. So I started just doing open-ended kind of documentaries, putting them on YouTube and eventually linked up with Seth Bredlove and small-town monsters. And I did a champ miniseries about the Lake Champlain Monster, kind of harkening back to the Loch Ness interest that I had just because I really like the Lake Monster stories. They're very fascinating. And I I think Lake Champlain, too, as a lake is very mysterious. And there's a lot of other weird stories with the lake itself. But this champ myth just seemed more credible in a lot of ways to even lock nest.

I kind of, after looking at a lock nest, I kind of was more skeptical of it, actually. I thought, well, maybe if there was something, maybe it's extinct or maybe it's not there anymore. Just that that lake is not as conducive biologically as a place like Lake Champlain. It was 120 miles long, you know, 12 miles wide, 420.20. feet at the deepest with underground, underground, underwater caves, and one of the most biodiverse lakes in North America in terms of fish species. Yeah. And it used to be part of the ocean. And a lot of the fish species in there are prehistoric looking fish that essentially adapted from salt water. I mean, you've got landlocked salmon in the lake and other

animals that you normally see in, you know, a marine environment. So the theory is maybe this Lake Champlain creature, if it exists, is some sort of descendant, you know. And the, The size descriptions were only, you know, 10 to 20 feet long, which is much more realistic than, you know, 30, 40, 50 foot long monster. You know, any confined body water, you know, 15 feet. That's, you have got crocodiles that are reported on that length as well as great white sharks can get up to 20 feet long. I mean, that's not that preposterous. So that was really interesting and I got to do a mini series on that. And then from there, like I said, I did, you know, Bigfoot here and there.

I would kind of jump back and forth in the Bigfoot topic. I've just done that ever since and between doing other things as well. So, uh, lockness, I, I, I kind of envy you because I have never been there.

It's the place that I always wanted to go to. It's what for me launched me into anything like this. I, uh, was a kid and I was like, lockness monster. Holy crap, that sounds amazing,

you know? And, uh, we were going to go hunt a lockness monster when I was a kid. But, um, so when it comes to these creatures, let's just call them that,

whatever they are, right? We can get it, we can go down the rabbit hole for sure. for sure. Do you feel, and maybe this is the leading question into the rabbit hole, I don't know. Do you feel like, for instance, what you just described in Champlain sounds very natural? It just seems like, you know, it's undocumented, it's maybe not seen very often, but there's a perfectly natural explanation.

Do you think that that's the way it is for a lot of or all of these cryptids? Or do you think when you look at like Bigfoot or Dogman or something like that? Like I don't even know if you believe in Dogman, but like it's this idea. Like do you think like there's something mysterious about these? Like they don't belong. They're there's something other. They're not just a normal natural creature out in the woods kind of thing. How do you approach the topics?

I think it's almost a spectrum. I mean, if we're talking about kind of the cryptid label, I think there's a spectrum. And on one side you have how to place animals or things like the Thylacine, you know, the Tasmanian tiger, which there's nothing kind of supernatural reported about that. It's just an animal that's thought to be extinct that people are still seeing. Then the mountain lion topic, you know, you have the entire eastern United States where mountain lions were exorpated, essentially made extinct. Their range is now, you know, the Rocky Mountains and westward. Those animals moving back, you know, that's, that is on one spectrum where it's totally biological.

Then the other extreme of the spectrum is stuff like mothman and maybe the flatwoods monster, things that to me at least seem more connected with, supernatural or paranormal, even extraterrestrial, stuff like Mothman. There's a lot of UFO sightings and other things associated. So I don't know if I would consider that an animal. I mean, a lot of people do call that a cryptid, right? It's just kind of a part of that kind of wheelhouse. So you have that on the other spectrum, and that leads you into the whole kind of paranormal conversations.

And then you have stuff in the middle. And I think Bigfoot, to me, is more in the middle because a lot of what I've seen personally and stories I've heard in the vast majority of eyewitness encounters that I've been told about or been privy to hear people's encounters, it's acting in a way that seems biological. There's nothing weird, but there's a minority reports, maybe 25% or less,

at least from what I've seen, where it seems like there's other strange things involved. Maybe there's UFOs involved. There's orbs. There's other weird things. So in the past, a lot of researchers have completely written that off if it didn't fit sort of a flesh and blood agenda.

I personally don't like to do that. I mean, I may not necessarily believe it's paranormal, But these people have had legitimate experiences. I've been told by very credible folks that, you know, saw an orb and then had, you know, a rock get thrown at the screen in front of their face in conjunction with sort of Bigfoot activity. So I think Bigfoot is one of those things that, you know, while I do lean to it being more flesh and blood, I think it can lean either way. That's why it's more in the middle, whereas it's not solely on that biological spectrum, at least from, you know, like I said, just majority reports do seem to lean that way. And then you have other cryptids that might fit in there, something like the Lake Champlain Monaster. It seems like it fits more squarely in the biological section.

Lockness, maybe a little bit, maybe 25%, you know, into the sort of between Bigfoot and the completely natural spectrum side of the spectrum because there's this whole story of Alistair Crowley and a lot of the weird stuff going on. And people have talked about other weird stuff at Loch Ness. Is that necessarily connected to Nessie? I don't know. But it's, I think the spectrum, it can move. You could move stuff down. You can move stuff along. but that's just the way I kind of view the cryptid topic, so to speak.

And like I said, a lot of that stuff on the other extreme of the spectrum isn't even necessarily cryptic. You know, you're not looking for mothman as not, you know, a biological entity that you're really looking for. It's clearly connected with other sort of strange things that were going on in that time period in West Virginia. So if you, so the way you feel about Bigfoot, where you're kind of like in the middle with it and stuff. So there's people out there, and I know you know this, but we're just talking. Yeah. There's people out there that are die hard. It's something not natural.

It's interdimensional. There's people that are die hard, the opposite direction, right? Yeah. Now, you kind of, you view it in the middle, and so you probably lie in the middle on it. You can go both ways, I'm assuming. If you had an experience, now you're a Bigfoot hunter, you're good. I don't know if that's disrespectful to say, but I'm just saying. Yeah, that's fine.

Alex is a Bigfoot hunter. He's with small town monsters. He's speaking at the smoking. You call me a Bigfoot hunter? Like he's speaking at the Smoking Mountain Bigfoot conference this weekend. And by the time people hear this, it was the previous weekend. But so say you're out in the woods and you have a Bigfoot encounter. Like you're like, it's right there.

I'm looking at it. And at the same time, I'm hearing a voice in my head. If you had an experience like that, would you talk about it? Or do you think you would have a hard time talking about it because you're like, man, because it's the peer pressure. Like you and I were talking about an upcoming show. that I have coming where, like, I have some serious, uh, uh, reservations on airing it just because I know there's going to be like, I can't believe you would, you know, talk about this and all that

stuff, you know? And so like, it's that kind of attitude. Do you feel like, uh, going into that, or coming out of that experience? Do you think that you would have reservations to admitting that experience publicly? Probably. I think just in general, disregarding even the voice being heard, just seeing a big foot in general, I would probably, because, I am somebody that's, you know, I like to look for Bigfoot. I'm out in the woods and, you know, we're looking for Bigfoot evidence. We're talking to people who have had encounters. I think that automatically makes people skeptical. Oh, they had a Bigfoot encounter. Of course you're looking for Bigfoot, which is really weird if you think about it. It's like, well, we're out there looking. You know, we want to see it. Like we would like to get some sort of evidence to be able to document it. But I think as somebody in that position, because, you know, the burden of proof is essentially on me to prove what I saw. And if I have nothing but a story, then just like every eyewitness, essentially, it gets disregarded by the mainstream or by more skeptical leaning folks, which, you know, I'm fine with skepticism. I think we need it in terms of these, you know, kind of fantastical stories. I would try to vet myself in the sense that I would

put myself up against people who don't have an emotional attachment to my encounter. So, you know, maybe myself and my friends saw it. We're both emotionally invested in that encounter. And a lot of times what happens is when people have either evidence or things they've encountered and somebody counters it with a different viewpoint that maybe not aggressively. They're just coming at it from, well, did you think about what if it could have been this? They get aggressive and that's just an emotional response because we're invested in what happened. I would like to try to be as sober mind as possible and have people sort of vet and ask me questions about to make sure I really saw what I saw, that it wasn't me just, you know, in this pursuit really projecting something or wanting to see something so bad that that glimpse of a bear really quick became a big foot. If it's something completely unobstructed where you're like, there's no doubt of what it was.

I'd like to be able to at least talk to some folks who are not at all invested in the encounter and have them. I don't want to say interrogate, but I've had other folks, other eyewitnesses who have described going through this kind of process where because they don't want to be seen as crazy. They're not into the Bigfoot topic. They're not a researcher publicly. They have so much trouble talking about it because people think they're a joke. Oh, you saw Bigfoot. Look at this lunatic. It may have been a traumatic experience.

A lot of times it is. PTSD, I mean, with some of these encounters. But like I said, as a researcher, I think I would need to have extra scrutiny cast upon me simply because of that. And if there was some sort of a mind speaker or another kind of component to just physically seeing of Sasquatch, I would also then have to question myself and my sanity essentially, well, is it me? Is something going on neurologically? I don't know. That's a really good question because I don't really know how I would address that.

aside from putting myself up against, I think, a gauntlet of, you know, folks that are just asking tough questions because I think tough questions need to be asked if you're making a big claim like that. Yeah, you have to be surrounded by people who are willing to ask those tough questions, you know, because, I mean, even for me, I've gotten better with this over the years. I mean, people are never going to hear on this show me debating my guest. You're never going to hear me say, well, you're wrong and here's why, you know. But in the early days, I would nervous to ask certain questions that were like people in the early days would say you always ask the questions that I'm thinking I'm like that's great but I don't feel like I ask the questions that I'm

thinking I'm thinking I'm thinking somebody I don't want to offend somebody I don't want them being like oh this guy's just thinking I'm crazy no I'm just being curious you know yeah and as times going on I've gotten better with that where now I'm just like listen I think I'm almost 500 episodes in people know my heart they know they I'm listen we're just having a conversation here right and so I ask questions and stuff but I think in if you were to have that kind of experience, I think you personally, for your own sanity and judgment, would have to trust the people you have around you that they're going to actually ask you questions that might be a little uncomfortable. That's exactly kind of my point. It's more

so for myself because, like I said, I am putting myself in this position where I'm actively looking for Bigfoot-related things out in the woods. I want to be able to kind of show myself, okay, I actually did see what I saw, or especially if I have another person. person with me, we can corroborate. We can independently go up against this sort of, you know, questioning and see how our responses differ because you got to take into account. You're out there in the bush. Adrenaline's pumping. You get tunnel vision. Things may happen. I mean, in all kinds of high intense, high stress moments where something happens like that. I mean, you would probably misremember details of seeing a mountain lion or a bear out there in the woods, you know, where you're kind

of in that fight or flight, let alone something that isn't supposed to exist, right? So I think, I don't just for myself, like you said, I think you summed up pretty good. I would, I would just be trying to kind of put myself up against that question. I think that's a similar approach I take to evidence, too. I mean, we have a lot of things that we've had happened or sounds that we've heard, things we've found out in the woods. And I think one of the most important things, especially in the Bigfoot kind of world is because there is so much bogus stuff out there. There's a lot of evidence that is bunk, unfortunately. Heresy. I think, you know, I always like to send it to people that I know and I trust that they

can give me an opinion that I know they're not just telling me this because they're my friend. They're like, oh, well, you know, it's a bear, but maybe it's a big for, no, I want them to be, well, it's absolutely a bear that you got there. That hair sample is bear. Okay, perfect. I'll thank you. Send it to the next person. So you have people who are not, again, invested emotionally in that piece of evidence analyzing it. I think that's what we need more of. We need, especially someone who might be in the bigfoot community, they're probably kind of used to this sort of stuff, but even reaching out to people who aren't into it, you know, without leading. Hey, I got Bigfoot audio in the woods. Can you tell me what this is? You know, email a biologist, say, what do you think this is? And just to see kind of what their response is. I just think you're kind of vetting your evidence and you're putting it up to, I don't want to say peer review. It kind of is, but it's not like a formal journalistic peer review.

You're basically just putting it out there and getting feelers and what people are thinking about it. Because sometimes you can be totally wrong. And if you can admit it, that's great. I mean, we have one example. When we were in Colorado last summer, we were on a property that's, had a pretty extensive history of what I think is legitimate Sasquatch activity. I mean, they had a lot of really weird stuff happening, rural property owners, and they didn't really know what to make of it.

Well, they had found this strange hair sample and a clump of them kind of up on a barbed wire fence, and they'd given us a sample of it. And we were like, oh, wow, this looks pretty interesting. You know, initially through photos to some people, they said, that looks pretty promising. So we send it off to somebody who does, you know, kind of microscopic analysis, and it came back as a raccoon hair. which is obviously, you know, kind of disappointing, but that's fine because we're able to then say, well, hey, look, we got alleged evidence that turned out to be raccoon and we can say this is all part of the process. If you get something that's truly curious, unknown primate or just human like or something along those lines, that's cool too.

But I think just the transparency of being able to say, well, yes, I think there was legitimate Sasquatch activity going on on that property. But we have to be careful of just because something may look interesting and it's going on with these other. circumstances, it might not be related to that. So I think it's just about, you know, kind of being aware of those sorts of things. And that's the sort of approach that we really strive to take. And I personally like to. And I think we just need a little bit more of that because the outside world is not too kind to a lot of what's going on in the Bigfoot world. Then, you know, maybe justifiably so in some cases. But I just think we need a little bit more of that kind of scrutiny and willing, the willingness to put your stuff out there, you know, without fear of

ridicule and being able to get, you know, unbiased opinions. You know, it's being honest with yourself and it's, it's really comes down to the heart of the individual on the topic. So, uh, you small town monster guys, the people who are doing this, it seems like you guys, you're not interested in, uh, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, we just want the truth. Whatever the truth is, we're, we want to accept that. Uh, and, and that's kind of like, I think the best way to go about it with this kind of stuff. Like, you know, like, you're not going to, like, you're not going to, get Bigfoot on video every time you go out. And there's that peer pressure, especially the content creators that are strictly YouTuber type stuff. They're like, oh, Bigfoot in this

video, 40 minutes, you know? Boom, put it up on my channel and get the views. And it's just like, you guys are trying to be more honest with yourself and being honest, and you just want the truth. And I totally get that. I mean, there was, years ago, there was a similar situation that happened in the podcast community where on the back end of things, they count stats a certain way, these podcast companies. And then the industry, as it got older, it got more advanced technology-wise, and there was new ways of doing things.

And so they switched the way they count people's downloads and became much more strict and authentic and real and true. And a lot of people, everybody, saw their numbers go down. And there was a good handful of podcasts who's like, oh, what's going on? They're messing with the algorithms and they're killing my show.

No, nothing's changed with your show except for what you see is more of a real true number of what's a reflection of your show and you should be excited about that because you know exactly what your foundation is and where to build from. And so there's that difference in mentality

where it's like people like me who are just like, cool, it is what it is. This is the information. This is what I want. Now we build, just like you guys with the video stuff. And there's other people who's like, I just want the fantastical, you know?

Yes. And that's the fine line, I think, between, you know, creating something entertaining, but also I try to be educational. So, I mean, you can spend time out in the woods and just learn so much about the woods and how it works. And, oh, this plant does that or, oh, this area has these types of animals and all that sort of stuff. And people love the stories, you know, and I love them too. I mean, who doesn't like a good Bigfoot encounter? You know, the vast majority of Bigfoot eyewitness or any sort of cryptid eyewitness, they have no other. secondary evidence to follow up on that. Usually most of the time, they're, they're not expecting for this to happen. You know, they're camping. They're just driving on a country road. You know, they're doing normal things and they have this seemingly fantastical thing happen. So all they have is that anecdotal story. And a lot of people say, well, that doesn't constitute evidence. I mean, sure, it might not. But once you start putting, you know, especially you're able to vet sightings and figure out which ones are, you know, absolutely legit. Because there are people that make stuff up. But, yeah, I don't think that's, that's the vast majority of people.

are not just pulling our legs. I mean, there's tons of people who don't really want to be out publicly with this kind of stuff either. But once you start plotting some of these sightings and maybe you'll start seeing patterns, maybe you can, you know, let's say there's a fresh sighting. You can go out and find, you know, secondary evidence, maybe tracks or hairs, something that helps, you know, corroborate that sort of story. That's happened in other, you know, topics in terms of wildlife research as well with

other species. So I think that's something we can take from, you know, I don't want to say legitimate science, but, you know, biology, you know, wildlife research and use it in Bigfoot research. Another one, and actually, it's the shirt I'm wearing is my buddy Scott. He runs the Bigfoot mapping project. You know, he's a GIS guy. He does mapping stuff for work, and that's all he kind of does. But he's basically taking the approach that a lot of conservation agencies and, you know, nonprofits and groups that study like mountain lions or study different types of animals, they use certain data points and map it all out to get an idea of where animals might be moving around.

And so you're essentially trying to take that approach and apply it to Bigfoot. You know, obviously most of what we have to deal with in the Bigfoot subject is eyewitness stories. We don't have a lot of other stuff. Yeah, there are tons of casts, tons of hair, tons of audio, a lot of video and photos, and a lot of them are dubious. But, you know, you've got a handful of that sort of stuff. But the over, like, 90% of what we have is eyewitness encounter. So if you can start plotting those out and using them and it's not, you know, there's been Bigfoot citing maps that have been done in the past. But I think, you know, parallel we've used as in Florida, you have a species of a mountain line.

Well, it's kind of a subspecies of mountain line called the Florida Panther. I mean, previously to their extinction on the eastern seaboard, mountain lines were everywhere, essentially, and Florida no different. They were one of the most adapted species in North America. They were living in swamps of Florida to the desert to the southwest, the Appalachian Mountains to the Rocky Mountains and everything in between. They were all over the place. And one of the populations that still exists in the east of the few is the Florida Panther. And there's maybe three to 500 estimates are kind of off. But essentially what the Florida Wildlife Commission does is they use crowd source data about sightings.

People get a trail camera photo in their backyard. They find a track. They see one crossing the road in the National Park or they're just outside of town and they see one. They can submit that biologist can look at it and say, okay, yeah, this is definitely mountain line. Let's put it up. And then you can go on that site and they have an interactive map. You can click on every little dot and it'll pull up a photo or it'll pull up a track, you know, and that sort of thing. So they're using that data trying to help triangulate where these things might be and where they're heavily seen.

And a lot of times they're seen in people's backyard, a lot more than the middle of, you know, 500,000 acre national preserve because there's more cats and stuff to munch on in people's backyard. So that, but my point in that is that, you know, for example, we found a mountain line track out there in the big Cypress preserve. and it was amazing to find it, you know, as somebody into that topic, and I'm able to then send it to the Florida Wildlife Commission. They put on their website, it's now part of that data pool, and we can extrapolate from that. So if you can use that with the Bigfoot topic, I mean, you can start maybe seeing patterns in certain areas of the mountains. Are there sightings that are happening in higher elevations in the summertime where maybe elk or deer or other animals are moving into higher elevations as opposed to the winter? Are they falling food sources, that sort of thing? I mean, you know, that way we're not just grasping at straws here.

We're trying to at least use because we have so many eyewitness stories. And especially if you really, like I said, vet them and get those good ones, you can start mapping it out. And then it can assist you. I mean, we use it all the time. We have the app on my phone, the Bigfoot Mapping Project app. And a lot of times before we're heading in the woods, I'll pop it open and I'll click on my location. And I guarantee you I can open it now. And there's probably going to be a few sightings in this immediate area.

That's cool. So that's just, you know, kind of part of it, the smokey. What is that? It's called the Bigfoot mapping project, or Bigfoot map on the App Store. Scott's a really cool dude. He does some, like I said, GIS stuff. And he does a lot of graphics too on his Instagram and Facebooks where he'll put up, you know, data comparing between different primates and, you know, kind of supposed Bigfoot kind of behaviors or places they've been seen. You know, obviously most of Bigfoot sightings happen in areas that have a certain amount of precipitation yearly.

And what's really interesting is you can take a map of, say, annual precipitation in the United States, an overlay with alleged Bigfoot sightings, and they completely match up. I mean, one of the highest concentrations of sightings, Pacific Northwest, it's that rainforest that goes from basically coastal Alaska down to Northern California, and everything in between. Then you've got the Rocky Mountains. You're not getting random sightings in the deserts around Moab, Utah, where it's not much great habitat for anything, let alone a hair-covered primate. Then you've got sightings in the south, up and down the Appalachian mountain chains from right around here in the Smokies, up,

to my neck of the woods in northern New England, New Hampshire and Maine. The sightings are basically parallel to those mountains down in Florida, of course, where it's a tropical, semi-tropical environment. The kind of places that are conducive to life and lots of other species, that's where the sightings are happening. They're not happening in cornfields in Iowa, for the most part. There's a few, but not as many as, you know, the Rocky Mountains or elsewhere. Is there an area, speaking of locations of these settings with Bigfoot, is there an area

that ever caught you by surprise? like, because I mean, you have to have opinions on certain spots and stuff like that. Yeah. Is there an area? And you just mentioned about vetting stories and stuff like that. So is there an area that you heard a story and an experience that somebody had that you're like this? I really believe this happened. And I'm really surprised it happened here.

Yeah, that's a good question. I mean, I think just in general, Ohio, which I feel the same way. Yeah. And it's so rich in the history of Bigfoot's things. It really is. It's like one. It's one of the only states outside of Florida and the Pacific Northwest, which traditionally, and even now I talk to people to say, oh, well, Bigfoot is in the P&W, right? He's not anywhere else. Ohio is one of those only states in the east and the Midwest that really broke that mold. And I always kind of wondered that. But having spent time there and Seth and those guys have had stuff happen, Seth had a possible sighting out in Ohio and Minerva, which has this really very interesting Bigfoot story.

Yeah. And it's just, it's ongoing. And once you kind of start studying. Ohio in that eastern part of Ohio that's actually the foothills of the Appalachians. That's where majority of sightings come from. It kind of actually makes sense. But initially, I remember years ago hearing it, but I just thought, why Ohio? I mean, it's such a kind of boring state in my view. But they have a lot of these old growth forests in that eastern part of the state. Tons of deer coyotes.

I've never seen more coyote and deer than spending a couple of days in Minerva in the woods. I was in a tree stand at one point at night with a thermal unit just while the other teams were elsewhere, you know, at this cabin where there's been some possible activity. And all of a sudden I start seeing five, six blips on the, on the flur. I'm like, oh, what is this? A bunch of coyotes surrounded me. I never even heard them. They were that quiet.

They came right up to me. And I'm just sitting there in the tree stand. If I had not had the thermal, I wouldn't have known they were there. And they were coming for you? They were just checking me out. They're like, what is this human doing in the tree? You know? And I'm just, I'm 20 feet up in the tree.

So I'm like, they can't, coyotes can't climb. If it was a blackbird. That we know of. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, maybe some weird. Shoot, dude. Non-coyote coyotes, but, you know, the flesh and blood coyotes.

But, yeah, so Ohio is one of those places that, and some of the sightings we got told about just even close to their, I got to do like a recreation, kind of like finding Bigfoot style, where I went out into the field where this lady had seen this creature, you know, she was used to seeing deer and this kind of soybean field they had out there. Big window out of her house. And it was, you know, a winter day and essentially saw this thing that shut with a deer, but it was kind of dark in color and it stood up. And she could just feel it gazing at her. And then it took off into the woods. And I got to go out there and stand out there and recreate it. And I just thought, man, this is a weird place to be. But as soon as I ran from that soybean field into the woods, the woods just, I mean, you could traverse through there.

Nobody would know you were there. Wow. There's almost little corridors of travel. And Pennsylvania has a lot of woods and a lot of sightings. And that West Virginia, a ton of sightings. I mean, West Virginia is the third most forested state in the U.S. That right. After New Hampshire and Maine, which are number one and two.

just by percentage of forests. So West Virginia is a perfect environment. Going into Ohio, what you also have is you have human farms, lots of population, people living rural lifestyles, but they have livestock and other food sources that might be of interest as something maybe passing through. I mean, we've even heard of stories of people saying, well, they come through every August. And that's when we'll see corn missing. Or that's when things happen. We hear knocks in the woods. But rest of the year, nothing else happens.

It's almost like a seasonal thing. So I don't know. Ohio kind of surprises me, but once I started deep diving, it kind of made sense. You know, you talk about the seasonal Bigfoot, and I remember before I was podcasting, I would go out on weekends, hiking in the Allegheny, or not the Allegheny, the Appalachian Mountain. And, you know, I would just do my own thing, you know. I don't even think I was doing YouTube videos or anything. I was just going out there looking for Bigfoot, you know.

Right, just having fun. And I just, I just, I just, I was. was really surprised by like how many sightings were in Pennsylvania and and the people's experiences. And when you go out there, it's just like, yeah, I could see that it happens out here. You mentioned something just a few minutes ago that I just totally forget. I actually had a point of where I was going with that and I totally forget it. So it's one of those things that's just gone. Well, Pennsylvania makes sense too because essentially you look at population density of Pennsylvania.

It's very lopsided. you've got the Pittsburgh area and the Philly area. And in between there, there's a whole lot of nothing. Mountains go through there. Pennsylvania, I believe, as a state, has the highest amount of registered hunters in the U.S. There's still some elk population in parts of Pennsylvania. Tons of deer. So there's just a lot of people in the woods that are actually utilizing some of the skills that our ancestors have used,

being out in the woods and hunting, which is kind of a dying art at this point, or not art, but a dying sort of sport. It's becoming an art because it's so rare. Yes, right, right. Right. But the PA kind of stands out in that sense. So you have a lot of people in the woods. And so that's what we get a lot of encounters from hunters and people that are just out there in the woods foraging. You're using resources from the land because you have that entire stretch of interior Pennsylvania where there's just nothing. There's just little towns and communities. And it's been like that for hundreds of years. It has never really changed. Now I remember what you're going to say. I was going to say. So you mentioned about the seasonal thing with the migrating and all that stuff, right? Yeah. I remember when I was going out doing my thing looking for these things. I had just heard about that. When I heard about that, I was in denial at first. I was like, I don't want to hear that. I don't want to hear that I'm out here in March and I'm just like just looking for nothing because it's not in this area at this time of year. I don't want to, I don't want to hear that, you know? But that comes back to being honest with yourself. And eventually

I had just come to grist and like, all right, it makes sense that they would be, you know, migrating and they would be in certain areas of certain times of the year. And, you know, but that was a hard pill for me to swallow on a personal level back in the day, you know? But I think, again, it makes sense to me once I kind of look into it. And especially if you're looking at, just look at other known species and black bears. And black bears obviously hibernate in the winter. Some people have suggested, oh, do they go into caves? What do they do?

You know, but deer and moose and other elk undulates, they don't hibernate. And they're huge animals. I mean, I live in Moose country. We're talking animals that get up to 1,000 pounds. One of the most dangerous animals in North America. I'm not scared about bears when I'm in my neck of the wood. It's the moose you got to worry about because they are responsible for more attacks than bears annually. In Alaska, too, their most dangerous animal in Alaska, believe it or not, statistically speaking.

But, you know, you see the way they act. Moose in the wintertime will bed in one area. They'll stick to areas that like cedar swamps in New England, which we have extremely cold, brutal, snowy winters. But those cedar swamps are four or five degrees warmer than other patches of the woods or places where there's evergreens. There's more cover. There almost seems to be, you know, not necessarily migrational patterns of, you know, oh, Bigfoot's going from Pennsylvania to Florida, just like all the snowbirds, you know, not necessarily like that.

It's more, it makes sense, like in the Rocky Mountains, very specifically in Colorado, being told about, you know, people saying, well, they're up in higher elevations where it's cooler in the summertime. That's where the elk are moving. They, there seem to be activity up there. Whereas in the wintertime, a little bit maybe lower because it's a lot harsher up there in the mountains, more snow. a place like Alaska, coast of Alaska. We were out there at this ridiculous property out there with a long history of activity, and it's a tempered rainforest.

Essentially, it's pretty consistent there year-round. They don't get as much snow as interior Alaska does, which gets pummeled. So something that was living in an area like coast of Alaska, and this extends all the way down that Pacific Northwest to rainforest, it wouldn't really have to move year-round because it has access to both seafood, you know, salmon, all sorts of things from the ocean, as well as terrestrial. animals. So it's not as having to move around. Another analogy there is to put the brown bears versus grizzly bears. So in Alaska, you have the grizzly bear. Technically, coastal grizzly bears,

they call them brown bears. They get on average a little bit bigger than grizzly bears. And the reason they're called brown bears is because they have access to seafood in their diet. So it just makes bigger and stronger animals. Whereas interior Alaska, grizzly bears are a little bit scrappier. They have to fight harder for their meals. They have to chase caribou. They have to do all these sorts of other things. Whereas in a place like the Kenai Peninsula, Alaska, you practically step in the wrong direction and you're stepping on a food source. That's not the case in other more harsh environments. So you just look at the other adaptations that other creatures have, and it kind of begins to make sense. You know, if Bigfoot is a flesh and blood animal, you'd have to kind of adhere to those sort of biological principles.

If there's something weirder going on, portals or whatever, which I'm not at all saying is the case. I'm down for that. I don't know. But then that throws everything out. And then you could hypothetically have Bigfoot showing up in a park in Brooklyn or whatever, right? Yeah. So, but that doesn't seem to happen. So I don't know.

But I just think looking at, you know, even if there is something weird or going on, there still seems to be reports of people seeing deer being drug out. Hogs being carried out. Mm-hmm. Killed. Footprints being left. So there is a physical imprint being left by this creature. Whatever it is, it's leaving some sort of a trace of its interacting physically with an environment. So just looking at the way other animals interact with the environment, I think is important to it.

And just talking about that food kind of chain and what is in there and realizing that us humans, we actually have a huge impact on the food chain. Most of North America is not the way it would have been five, six hundred years ago. You know, pre-colonization and, you know, pre-America basically, it was completely different, especially with the tribes in the landscape. Those environments have been so radically changed and different species brought in like hogs. Hogs weren't really a thing in North America until they were brought in and all these other creatures. So we've altered the landscapes. So, I mean, an example I bring up is in New England. My own state of New Hampshire now is number two most forested in the country just by the amount of forest.

It's ridiculous. We're like 90% forested, 89.90. Woods are everywhere. And there's tons of habitat from moose and bear and deer and porcupines and fox, everything. Well, 200 years ago, a lot of those areas were clear cut because there was sheep farming going on. They just wanted to have pastures, and those environments have since grown back. Well, all those large animals like moose and bear that were kicked off that landscape are now coming back. So they've returned.

So could something like Sasquatch return to an environment? I mean, I have a research area that I know for a fact 200 years ago was basically clear-cut. And you walk around the woods up there and you'll just find random stone walls in the middle of the woods. You think you're in the most remote spot. Well, there's a stone wall. that used to be a property boundary to two, three hundred years ago. And now it's a habitat that supports one of the largest animals in North America, the moose. Wow.

So could something like a Sasquatch return to an environment like that if it was conducive enough to support other things? I don't see why not we're using that sort of biological premise. So we've changed those landscapes, but at the same time, the way our attitudes have changed towards wilderness towards nature, more conservation leaning now at this point. More people are living in cities and being more urban. There's less people living in these areas. So, you know, maybe animals are getting more of a free reign as opposed to 200 years ago when there was, you know, mountain men and trappers and a lot more hunting going on. And, you know, a vast majority of the population lived very close to the land, whereas now we're almost completely separate. You know, and that's actually really interesting.

Did you bring that up in the whole idea of them returning to areas? What we're seeing right now in our society is that people are being. being people are being hurted into the inner cities. And we, like, you know, we can go down the conspiracy realm of all that stuff, right? But the fact is, um, the powers that be, they want you living in the city because there's more control over you there. And so if that is happening, which it is, then people like us living on the outskirts of town and outside of cities, like I have where I live, we're about 25 minutes from where I live

right now and I have cows across the street from me. Bigfoot would be more, if Bigfoot's coming back into an area, I might have more of a chance of having it in my area just because there's so many more people now living in the cities. It's an interesting concept. Now, you mentioned about Alaska. You were just there recently, if I recall, right? I mean, or was it your social media showed you were there recently and you were there? I was posting after the fact, but yes, we were there basically most of the month of May. Okay. Just a couple months ago.

Gotcha. How, like, how was that experience? I mean, I'm assuming it was probably your first time there. I had actually been to Alaska once in high school with my family. We did a sort of touristy thing. And it was, it was beautiful. I mean, but I was an angsty teenager. So, I mean, how much you enjoy.

It was Alaskan girls. So, you know, but I, you know, because we were like, we were on a train. We did very touristy things. And I didn't really grow up camping or doing that sort of stuff. And so now that I have different sort of skills. and I can go out in the woods and actually want to be out in the woods and not be freaked out by everything going on. And it was absolutely amazing. It was, I consider it kind of a true Alaskan experience.

And we focused on this property that has a long history of very strange activity. And the property owner have been talking to him the past year and just some of the sounds and things that have come out of there and some of the stories. It's a remote property. You basically need to take our boat ride from the nearest town just to get there. And you're so isolated. It's the most isolated place I've ever been. been. And we've been to some of the most remote spots in the lower 48, but they don't, you know, they're very remote. You could easily die out there, but they don't hold a candle to this, but just because

simply getting there, you have to take a boat ride and some very gnarly mountains on coastal Alaska, which is, you know, absolutely just drop dead gorgeous. I mean, everywhere you look, every direction, it's ridiculous. So that was just incredible to be out there. And for a week, we were out there, basically eight full days, no cell phone service, nothing. I mean, sat phones are the only things. you've got to go stand on the boat and hold the phone up just to get even the sat phone reception to work. And just being able to have some strange things that we had occur and find a possible handprint on the back of the cabin that was a fresh. We don't know how fresh it was. It was really weird.

I happened to find it while coming back in from outside the woods. I was swapping a battery on an audio recorder we had rolling out there. That property seems to have a lot of audio-based interactions and incidents going on. I mean, long howls. sounds of something like almost like a baby crying in the woods. That's creepy. That's creepy. Well, it's very creepy too because there's stories from southeast Alaska.

Some of the tribes there in that rainforest area that talk about warning their women to not go into the woods when they hear baby crying sound. And a lot of those tribes have stories of Sasquatch being cannibal giants or stealing their women and children. And maybe that's just a classic boogeyman story that every culture tells us to keep their kids and, you know, women from venturing out in the woods and getting killed by a great. grizzly bear. Could be, but maybe it happened once, and that's all it needs to spark into a big sort of incident. So, but, you know, back to the property, like I said, audio, I was coming back from changing battery and I happened to find this weird looking handprint. But it's one of those things where it's a 50-50 shot.

It's either a human being or something primate or human-like. It's not a grizzly. It's not a moose rubbing its face against the back of the cabin. It's dermal ridges that are only found in primates. So humans and non-human primates. you know, gorillas and chimps and those sorts of things. So if Sasquatch is, even if it's not a primate, I mean, it's something human like, it's got to have similar traits.

So, you know, I'm not saying at all that this input we found is legitimately Sasquatch, it may, but again. Yeah, right. That's what you're saying. It's 50-50. It's 50-50. And, you know. In your gut, you wanted to be.

Oh, of course. Of course. Of course. I'm emotionally invested in that piece of it. Yeah. So that's why I, that's why I have passed it off to folks that, you know, I know, take a look at it and pass it to credential folks that, and say, hey, well, this, you know, humans don't have that pattern of the germals.

Because I believe in gorillas and other, you know, larger kind of primates, the swirls and the hands go in a different direction. So, like I said, we pass up. It was it? It was about nine inches from sort of the middle finger to the palm, but you couldn't see a thumb. And it was just this really smudgy, weird, greasy print on the back of the cabin. And it was the only one we could find. It was like a metal. It's like a metal siding, basically.

and you had these kind of steel girders and the print was in. It was just a really awkward angle, try and put your hand. And we tried to replicate it. We couldn't. I mean, with sweaty hands. The only thing I could do was I put lotion on my hand and slapped the side of the cabin. And that, that then stayed. You could see the impression.

But as far as we could tell, it wasn't any of the guys there. So again, 50, 50 shot because it either is somebody, one of the people there having done something or something like that. It's not like finding up there. There's a lot of moss. You know, we found tons of impressions in the ground. That could have been us a few days ago. That could have been the mountain goat that we saw tracks of. You know, just because that's so ambiguous.

It's just a shape in the ground. That could be literally anything. Could be a bare double stepping in its own prints. It's not a perfect crystal clear foot with toes that you can see in the mud. So that's what's so different about something like a handprint. There's nothing out there that's supposed to have hands aside from human beings. Was it at a human, normal human level height-wise? It was a little weird.

it was, there's essentially a window above where that was, where there's a bunk room where three of us were sleeping. And they've had a really weird incident that happened years ago on that bunk room when they were still finishing the cabin. That was their entrance in before they'd put a staircase in the front. And they had kind of, it was just a hole in the floor. And they'd put plywood on there and like a Yeti cooler on top of it. And something had come in and smash the bottom of that plywood. And the Yeti cooler went flying halfway across the cabin. And they thought it was a bear trying to get in. They all start grabbing shotguns and they say that they heard this thing walk up the hill and it sounded bipedal.

So, I mean, that's one of those things. So where essentially this is the same room, this is when we're sleeping and there's no more hole in the ground. It's finished now. But the window is right there. And it almost was like somebody was just pressing up against that back siding of the wall and kind of looking maybe in the window or could be looking in the window. But it was a weird height. It was almost eye level. So they would have had to have been standing on something.

It was just really weird. I mean, we don't know, like I said, we don't know really what to make of it, but it's just one of those things that it could be or it could not be. But it's so, it's just a lot better than finding, you know, general impression in the woods. It's undefined or something like that. So do you do you have any idea when that film's coming out? Yeah, so that one's going to be in probably November. So we have with our Beyond the Trail series, you know, they come out monthly on YouTube. Sometimes we have more than one a month. But Small Town Monsters are going to be releasing in Alaska. a bigfoot film. I don't know the title of it yet,

but that's going to be coming out in November. So we like to try to do is when we do, we've done similarly when we're in Washington State with the Olympic project with kind of the nest sites and all that stuff is we'll put out kind of the bigfoot film through Small Town Monsters and then on the YouTube channel are Beyond the Trail film. So they're kind of companion pieces. You can watch one, you can watch either one of them and not watch the other one and kind of get what's going on.

But if you watch them together, they kind of coincide and coexist. So that's probably going to be in November. November. There's just so much. It was like eight days of footage. So yeah, we have so much to sort through and we have audio analysis and we had heard strange things. So there's just so much it may even be multiple parts. I don't know yet. But, you know, a lot of our other episodes, when we don't have a lot of stuff going on, it's just a lot of us adventuring out in the woods or, you know, sightseeing, seeing some of the famous locations in these areas where Bigfoot's had been reported or, you know, notable landmarks that might be, uh, in regards to diet or, you know, the terrain, why the, the, you know, why the. This place is important to all the species in the area. But with something like this, there's just a lot to just sit down and analyze and we're talking to other people, you know, who are kind of helping us sort through some of that. Yeah, it's funny.

And I don't know if you've had this experience. I'm sure you have because, you know, I'm a filmmaker now, too. So I've had these experiences. But like, and maybe it's because I can't keep my mouth shut. So I tend to talk more than I should. And my team, like, this last trip that we went out to Utah, they're just like, Tony, shut up. for now. Yeah.

They're like, we need you not to give away everything we just did. Right. Wait till we get a little closer. Right. Exactly. And so like, I just,

people, I think are accustomed to me divulging information. And so people, like, people are literally asking, when's the film coming out? I'm like,

I don't know in the fall. You know, like, I'm just trying to be like real short but then, like, I don't know, stop asking me. Because if they keep asking me,

we don't want to say something. Right, right. You know? Whistleblower, I guess. I'll say why not what are they going to do listen like I'm the

like the CEO of the company like you can't fire me so I'm going to say I'm actually I'm actually flying out to Vegas here in the next few weeks to interview a few whistleblowers for this film Oh that's awesome so yeah you said whistleblower you got me going to go Yeah right right well no I mean I think

when it comes to that sort of stuff if we if let's say we happen to capture some incredible video or thermal video of something we believe is a Sasquatch. We're not going to rush to just post it to YouTube and get torn apart and everyone's going to say it's fake or people are going to cling to it and it's real. Again, with evidence, I would like to pass that on to other people. First, get opinions because I'm not just going to put out there and say, we got Bigfoot, you know, that sort of thing. But when it comes to talking about that sort of stuff, if we were to get some video like that, yeah, I'd like to maybe start talking about it having a dialogue about it, you know, ask, you know, maybe getting other opinions from folks. in the public as well.

But we try to cover all that stuff in our films, you know, really in depth. Like if we do get some sort of audio or something, we'll show a spectrogram analysis. We'll talk about what some other folks have thought about it. You know, we'll show that analysis. Kind of like what I mentioned with the hair sample from Colorado. That was raccoon. You know, we were able to show screenshots of the actual report written up by the biologist there that did sort of the analysis and show even those microscopic images that she compared to, I was going to say, kangaroo. for some reason.

A raccoon. Why not? Kangaroo. That would have been crazy. Mystery kangaroo man. That's another topic. But yeah, so I think it's just, you know, I don't have problems talking about this a lot of stuff, but some of the stuff that we have maybe kind of on the back burner.

Sure. We just wait until we hear a little bit because a lot of times you make a claim, you know, people jump on it right away and, you know, the ball gets rolling, that sort of thing. But I think it's important to at least, and that goes back to kind of my whole mantra, vetting it and just talking to other people who are not. emotionally invested in, you know, what I might have, I have captured. Obviously, I really wanted to be something, but I got to get some, some nuanced opinions. So I think that's just, that's me trying to be as responsible, I guess, as I can be with its topic. So with the classic

Bigfoot hunting stuff, have you ever gotten a print out there? I mean, because like people, like, it's so funny because I don't know if there's been a transition in the Bigfoot. We were talking about this earlier. I hate, I don't want to call it a community. Let's just call it in industry, right? I don't know what to call it, but there's no unity community. And at the end of the day, I don't, I don't freaking care about the bigfoot community. I don't. Like, like, there's communities within that. Yeah. There's clicks, whatever, people hang out. The way I'm like, I'm like, listen, I'm cool with whoever's cool with me. I don't need to identify with a bigfoot community, you know? Exactly. Yeah. But along those lines, um, it's gone. I just, I forgot what I was saying.

What were we just talking about? It's late at night. It's 10.30 at night. I started out with something with Bigfoot community. Oh, the prince, the prince. Prince, yeah. So I've noticed since I've been doing all this stuff, it seems like it's becoming more prevalent that people are,

they're saying things like, oh, who cares? It's a print. You know, like, oh, big deal, it's a print. Those are a diamond dozen. Do you feel like they're a diamond dozen? Because I don't know. I don't think their time it doesn't. No, no, I think, and again, if it's part of your personal experience, something you had happened, that's really cool.

Like, we found, actually, I didn't find it two of my buddies who had both had encounters in New Hampshire, and they were actually taking each other to their respective encounter locations. They happened to go to one of the guys, Evans' encounter, and they found these prints on one side of the road. There was one print on the other side going up a hill in the sand that they had used for, you know, kind of sanding the roads because of the snow. There was this really weird print, almost like toes in there. And there was like a one, two, right next to each other. I went up and helped them cast it. But, I mean, that was really cool. It was a cool experience because, I mean, was it a Bigfoot track?

We don't know that for sure. Possibly. It's not 100%, but it happened in an area where there was an encounter. There's been other sightings in that immediate area. It was right as the spring thaw was coming in and all the animals are moving around, including the deer. So it was pretty cool. It was very cool to me. And in the Smoky Mountain Bigfoot conference, you know, presentation, I'll talk about that

too. That's one of these experiences. You know, is it definitive proof of Bigfoot? No, but it's something that, again, happened to me that, you know, I was able to be a part of. And that's cool. But yeah, I do hear that, oh, it's just a footprint. And I mean, I don't, I don't disagree because I think there are so many footprints out there. But you talk to somebody like Dr. Jeff Meldrum or Cliff Berrickman or somebody else that has, you know, kind of focuses more on footprints. Yeah. That's like really, you know, obviously Jeff Meldrum has an extensive collection. This is good. Yeah. I mean, my buddies were just over there in his office in Idaho, just literally, I think today or yesterday, I was talking about it. And they said they'd learn one of the guys is MRI tech.

And he's talking about anatomy. And Jeff basically gave him a college level lesson about anatomy relating to the foot and how the footprints that they have found, the alleged Saswatch prints that he has. It seems to be the weight distribution would mean that the Achilles tendon is in a different spot than it is on human beings. And it got on this really like very interesting kind of academic discussion basically. And that's, you know, so if it was, if that footprint was worthless, do you think Jeff Meldrum would be even considering maybe a hypothesis about Achilles tendon or a mid-charsal break or something? So there's still information to me gleaned from that. A hair samples, vocals, a lot of people will throw that out because, I mean, yeah, unfortunately what most people will need is either a dead Bigfoot or, you know, something like the Patterson Gimlin film that they're able to confirm on the spot, essentially. And will that ever happen?

I don't know. I mean, that's a tricky part. But I think those of us in the Bigfoot community and maybe scientists that are more kind of open-minded can look at all that other trace evidence, including the anecdotal stuff, using stuff like the Bigfoot mapping project or other, you know, kind of kind of aggregation of data sites, combining that with possible strange hair samples, audio and those sorts of things. And painting a picture saying, well, there's something going on. I mean, not every single one of these things is a misidentification or a fake or something. Like there's, even if there's a small percentage that means there's something going on. Will we get to the bottom of it? I mean, I don't know.

People have been probably asking the same question since the late 1950s when Bigfoot kind of blew up on the scene and that term became popular. So, yeah, it's a very tricky, I think, subject. But I think people, once they start looking maybe the body of evidence, even if you can deduce and take out a bunch of it as bunk, there still is something to work with. Yeah. You mentioned about meldram. and coming to a conclusion with the displacement of the Achilles tendon, I'm just sitting here thinking, I wonder what,

like, I wonder how that kind of came about. Like, like, I'm just imagining Meldrum, because we, we're all familiar with Meldrum on TV and stuff and his posture and how he is, very professional.

And I, I just wonder if, like, it was a sudden impact kind of thing, like, holy crap, you know, or was it a slow progression where he's just like, you know,

I'm thinking this might be, and he's like driving that on the highway. thinking about more. He's like, I think I might be right on something here. Yeah, I think, and this could be me misremembering it, but I do believe he said that one of his first times actually being taken out to the field for alleged prince was he was kind of going out there with the attitude of, oh, this is silly, it's like looking for Santa Claus. I'll just be able to disprove this immediately. And that was kind of his idea was, oh, I'm going to be able to disprove this, you know, whatever. And he actually went out from it saying, well, this thing showed locomotion

that, you know, a guy in fake feet wouldn't be able to do. It showed something slipping and gripping and, you know, using its body to move through the environment as difficult an environment as it is. So that's pretty intriguing. I mean, you get somebody like that that is able to look at that. And, yeah, I mean, he's one of the best people, I think, on the topic in terms of that specialty, you know, in terms of footprints. Which is a huge specialty.

Yeah, of course. It's very interesting. But there's a lot of other folks in the community. that come from different backgrounds. And again, I'm using the word community lightly. It's just, you know, the Bigfoot world, whatever. Bring different skills. Like I, you know, I'm not an academic or anything like that.

That's why when I, if I do get something allegedly Bigfoot, like, I like to pass it on to other folks that maybe, well, this person might have a police background. So that means they have some forensic background. This person is a biologist. So let's talk to them. And believe it or not, there is actually a lot of people kind of in the background that in sort of more academic or professional positions that aren't just, you know, filmmakers that run around the woods like myself, you know, that they are kind of bigfoot adjacent, you know,

they're not willing to be public about the topic because of the ridicule and the kind of weight it carries, but they are willing to give you their opinions and talk through kind of back channels about, well, hey, this, this might be kind of intriguing. You should maybe have this tested or whatever. So I think, and from where I've heard from Melbourne as well, there's more of that. He says that there's a lot of up-and-coming kind of anthropology students that are kind of secretly Bigfoot fans. You know, maybe something will change. I don't know. I think, you know, once we get down kind of the conspiracy route, it's a whole different story. But I think the more, you know, evidence we can continue to gather, the better, hopefully. And hopefully that includes videos, stuff like thermals and things that are really indisputable. I mean, the Patterson Gibble film is, I kind of feel it's almost a moot point, you know, this time in history, because it's just been mold over so many times. It's been looked at, you know, nothing more than the Zapruder film, the JFK assassination is probably the only thing that's been more analyzed in the PG film, you know? Yeah.

And I don't know what else we can really gain from it. There is a lot of interesting stuff there. But, you know, you could see both skeptics and believers can see things that sway them one way or another. It's kind of like you see what's in the eye of the beholder. You know, that's kind of what they want to see. With the, uh, with the Patty film, it's been around for so long and so heavily scrutinized that we have now like these conspiracy. theories about it, you know, and just like, and like, I'm okay with the people who are saying things like, and I'm okay with anybody, really, because I don't really give a crap what she's saying.

Like, it doesn't hurt my feelings either way. Just like, I mean, I say things on the show that apparently hurts people's feelings. Like, that's not a two-way street there. Like, it is why it is. But people will, you know, they'll say things like, you know, Patty had a baby that she was carrying. Okay, you know, maybe, you know, it's old footage. They cleared it up pretty good, but maybe, and you see certain things, whatever, whatever. I mean, but then they're like, and then you see the 10 or 15 Bigfoot in the background hiding in the trees. I'm just like, the circles. Yeah, yeah, the paradox. Yeah, yeah, lost me a little bit on some of that. And that's, I think, like, you know, in terms of our game, we need to, you know, get rid of that. Because there's so many, you know, you see,

I get this all the time, actually, multiple times from, you know, like a particular episode that we put on YouTube, somebody will message me and say, wow, congrats on capturing Bigfoot. and they'll circle like a bush right behind me. And I'm like, I mean, you know, how do I say this nicely? You know, that happens a lot. You see a lot of TV shows. People say, well, you didn't see the Bigfoot back there. Well, it was probably a crew member, you know, kind of ducking for cover or whatever the case may be.

It happens a lot. And I think, I think that's that sort of wishful thinking, Bigfoot on the brain. Yeah. That's part of it too out in the woods. And you mentioned earlier, you know, how we're kind of being herded towards urban more lifestyles where we're kind of dependent on a system, right? But we've lost a lot of those natural skills that even 100 years ago were kind of taken for granted. You know how to go out in the field and take care of livestock and all that sort of stuff.

A lot of that has kind of dissipated. You know, we are very reliant on, you know, this kind of urban system we're now in. So people go out in the woods and they'll find a structure that clearly, I mean, there's some weird structures out there. I've seen some crazy pictures, but I see so many of the composted that are clearly like debris shelters or the leftovers of lean to. I used to do stuff like that when we did bushcrafting, you know, we would build the stuff. And two years later, if you didn't take it down, it would kind of start deteriorating. And somebody could maybe see and say, oh, there's Sasquatch. I mean, even had people tell me they found Sasquatch structures in like a popular state park where I can literally go on a website and sign up for a bush crafting class and do it in that very park.

Oh, wow. And I tell them this and they're like, no, no, it couldn't have been people there. I'm like, people get into some locations. People get in some very remote places. So, you know what I mean? like I think we just need to up our game a little bit in terms of, you know, talking about that. And I get people are excited, but I think a lot of the loss of skills of just being out in the woods, you know, hearing a bard owl for the first time. Very primate like, you know, they can do whoop sounds like, whoop, all that kind of stuff.

You know, being able to kind of learn a little bit about that. Because even, you know, some of these guys that have been studying Bigfoot for decades, you know, they'll say, well, maybe out of all the stuff we've had happened over the years, maybe only a dozen or so are possibly legitimately connect. with Bigfoot, whether it's audio or encounters and that sort of stuff. And the more we can weed out, the more we can, you know, be able to put into that legitimate pile. And I think just adding on obvious bushcraft structures and that sort of stuff into it kind of muddies the waters. And I think from the outside allows people to say, well, it's like it's all, it's all make believe when there's some really legitimate things. And I think it's a disservice to eyewitnesses that have had, as we talked about earlier, traumatic experiences.

Maybe they don't want to go hunting for years after having something that they've been told their entire lives is like Santa Claus. It's a joke. Yeah. And this thing is staring them down when they're in a vulnerable position in the woods and how they deal with that going forward. So, yeah, it's, it's, you know, once you kind of get it, you go down the Bigfoot rabbit hole. There's a lot of routes you can take. And some people like to focus on footprint. Some people like to do the audio. Others, you know, really focus on using the new technology, using drones, using this, using that. Some people, oh, we got to do it the way the old guys did it. You know, how Roger and Bob. Oh, Gimlin would have done it, whatever, all that kind of stuff.

So there's just a lot of their camera start there. You know, I've thought about doing this and hopefully no one jacks my idea now, but just going out in the woods, no modern tech at all and just taking, you know, like an old style camera like they would have had, but then how do you make a video about that? It's tricky. I mean, it's like a silent film. Yeah. I'll have to add narration into it.

Yeah. So it would be. That's something, that's something I've kind of thought about. And seeing if maybe, I mean, because people like, to talk about with trail cameras. Maybe these things sense electromagnetic or they can see, you know, I have footage of deer, literally looking right into my trail camera as it's going off. There's the IR that they can detect.

Maybe these things might be able to. So cutting down on all that modern technology, maybe that might up your chance. I mean, horseback using that to cover your scent. There's a lot of ideas. A lot of things that have worked, a lot of people, you know, we kind of throw different stuff up against the wall and see what sticks. And if it doesn't, I mean, a lot of it is luck of the draw. I think that's again,

going back to the vast majority of eyewitnesses, it's totally random. They were camping and something's throwing rocks at them. They were hiking and it crossed the trail. It crossed the road in front of them. They were not asking for that to happen. Yeah. So what if we're in a situation like that,

but we are ready. We have cameras. We are ready to go. You have a big foot in a person in the right place, the right time. 99% of people in that situation are not prepared for it. Well, what if you are? That's what we hope at least.

That's kind of one of our goals. That's what we try to do at least. You know, get in those positions and hope something happens. Yeah. So on the idea of something happening and all that stuff, have you ever had a sighting or are you like me where you're really interested in? You're on the hunt for it. But you just, you're going to be honest and you never saw anything.

Yeah, I've never seen anything. Sasquatch related. I mean, I've seen things being thrown from the woods. Okay. Rock looking things coming from an area. We were camping in Vermont. I don't know what was causing it, but something hurled eight different objects towards our tent. You know, we didn't have a rain fly on and we could see them coming in an arch pattern essentially from the woods.

Wow. After hearing wood knocks that morning and putting up pheromone chips and, you know, I'm not going to allude to what it could have been, but it was weird. That's the, in terms of visuals. But we've heard, I've heard wood knocks, you know, some of the stuff is obviously natural. But once you, once you've experienced a wood knock that it's just so hard to explain conventionally, you either got a person. in the middle of nowhere in the woods, six miles up a mountain range that's you're above the 10,000 foot level

like we had happened in Utah, where every time you turn your lights on, something takes a tree and smashes it against another tree. I mean, I don't know what, you know, it's like you're, you kind of start exhausting the possibilities. Yeah. You know, I still can't say 100% that was a Sasquatch,

but I don't know what else would be doing that. I mean, if a moose bashing its head against a tree every time we turn the lights on and maybe, I don't know if that's a behavior they would really exhibit, but the things that are seemingly coordinated too and just the weirdness. So nothing, nothing visual, but definitely we've had some, I kind of put in a pile that I have of interesting encounters that I'm happy to discuss and, you know, openly admit, you know, they were obviously they're not proof of Sasquatch or anything. I don't know what they were, but they were weird. They're interesting. You put it in that pile and you can disseminate it and kind of talk about it and, you know, unless you're able to find some other evidence. that you might be able to follow up with, it's just kind of a story. And that's what most Bigfoot stuff is. It's just stories. And most people are not in that position to even be kind of gathering evidence. They're like, because I said, they're just so randomly happening. Just I happen to see a Bigfoot. Well, before I let you go, because I know you got to drive still

like an hour to get to, uh, the guys. Yeah. I'll be meeting up with you guys this weekend. For sure. I want to, this is kind of a little off topic, but not in the sense that we can still stay on topic. Um, Hollow Earth. Now, you've been, and we could go so many different ways that we could do a three-hour conversation, but we're up against time-wise. But you haven't seen Bigfoot. You're on the lookout for Bigfoot. You're hunting for Bigfoot.

Have you thought about those ideas of maybe some kind of like hollow earth theory combined with Bigfoot and that's where he comes from and lives? I mean, I don't know. I don't really know what to think about Hollow Earth. Like I don't, I'm not huge in a gym. So I don't know a whole lot about... There you go, thinking with the... You know... Let your imagination to take you away, man.

Well, for example, like, we were in West Virginia just the end of last month in June, and we went to some of these caves, right? And there's a lot of them that are commercially run, you know, where they put up red lights against this, the lagmites. And it's cool. Like, it's great.

You take your family, but, you know, for us, it was like, okay, this is beautiful. I don't get me wrong, but I want to do this on my own. I want to come in here when there's no, there's not screaming children. So there's over 4,000 documented caves in West Virginia. I mean, all kinds of cave systems throughout the mid to southern Appalachians.

Who knows where some of this stuff goes? I mean, miles in there. We found one cave we could go in and you could just go in and crawl in and opens up into big rooms. There's an entire underground river going through there that we're walking through with muck boots. And it kind of gets you wondering, I mean, could something possibly use these areas to traverse through? I mean, from what I understand, even three days of complete darkness for here. human being leads to some temporary vision loss. So a couple weeks, like you have permanent damage to your eyes.

Yeah. So I don't know. I mean, could something be traveling through there? I don't, I really just like I said, I just don't know because you have so much underneath. We see kind of that surface level. It's like the ocean. It's just unbelievable how much is down there. Most of the world is ocean, right?

And there's just so much there. And most people never even see a fraction of that. How much of that is underneath us, too? I mean, is there, and there's obviously all kinds of crazy. stories about, you know, cults and, you know, strange things going on in these old mines and caves and weird creatures and that's getting more off into like, you know, kind of supernatural sort of stuff or mole people, whatever, you know, all that kind of stuff. I love it all.

Yeah. I love it. Oh, it is so interesting. And that's why I love being, you know, in this part of Appalachia. Yeah. And to, like, West Virginia, you have a lot more caves than in my neck of the woods, the northern Appalachians where it's a lot of more granite. We don't have the karst deposits.

So most of the caves we have, if you can call them that, or like rock overhangs that kind of create a little tiny cave. It's not like mammoth caves or something in Kentucky or these crazy things that you see all around in these parts of the woods. Did you know that Tennessee is the state that has the most caves in the union? Yeah, which is crazy. Because mammoth cave is monstrous. Huge.

Doesn't it go up to New York? I heard it goes, you can stretch all there. Maybe. I don't know. I mean, maybe these things are all connected. That's when you kind of get into it. I mean, Hollow Earth, baby.

There's a real, like, tangible, logical conclusion there where it's like, do you believe in hollow earth? No. Well, do you believe in caves? Yeah. Do they stretch for a long ways? Yeah. So could one say that underneath the surface we stand, it's hollow?

There may be, yeah. There may be, like, gigantic caves. I mean, I'm not saying, I believe that, like, you enter in through some doorway and it just open something that's like giant other hollow and maybe it does. Like in Kong versus Godzilla. Right. You know, they had that whole world

underneath there like where there's dinosaurs still living and. And, you know, they did just find that that forest underground in China. Thailand, those caves are amazing. They have entire ecosystems inside the caves. And that's just what we're like able to get into. But so many of these caves that,

I mean, we're talking openings that are not bigger than a person's head trying, and who knows, you may get down there and that may open up. I mean, maybe you'd be able explore that with little micro drones in the future or something. That'd be amazing. So who really knows? I mean, it opens up into like the land before time or something. Yeah. Dinosaurs walk into the center to the earth. Yeah. I would love that. That's like all my childhood films right there right there. That would be so cool. But yeah, I don't know. Caves to me are really interesting. I get a lot of anxiety when I see those

videos of people going through those ones where they're squeezing through. I'm really, that's like, that's crazy. I'm not a claustrophobic person. And, I mean, you know, we kind of go head first in a lot of these situations. But once it starts getting really tight, I'm like, I don't know if I want to go through there. I can imagine. You panic, you know, it's one of those things. You stay calm.

Yeah, exactly. Spalonging is serious business. Those guys are serious. Because I, we, so I've done some stupid things when I was out. I wouldn't do it now, just in the sense that I have, I have a family now. Right. Right. Yeah.

You got to do first, yeah. Before I had the kids, it's just me and Lindsay, we were married for 10 years before we had kids. And I was always like, you know, if I die, Lindsay is going to be. marry somebody better than me. She'll learn from her mistakes. She'll marry a doctor, you know. But now I had the kids and I don't want to die. But like I know that when I would go into like some these caves and stuff, it's like you start thinking about things you don't think about normally. Like all of a sudden, like you could be walking on the surface level in that area and not one time do you think, I wonder if there's going to be an earthquake today. You go into the cave and

all of a sudden you're thinking about the earth shifting and crushing your chest with rocks between rocks and it's just like all these irrational thoughts are going through your head because you're just like oh my god and that's the claustrophobia probably yeah i mean but it's it's just that confined environment you're used to being on the surface where you know you have this open space whereas down there clearly we're not in charge i mean like you said a rock could fall and dislodge and get you stuck in there stuck in there which is terrifying to think about but being inside a cave in the moment i mean we were walking through this underground river in our muck boots and it was just so cool seeing these formations on the side and like pyrite

fools gold glistening, you know, as you point your headlamp at it. Really cool environment. Also, it was like really hot outside, humid in the cave. It's like 50 degrees AC. So pretty nice. But you get to a point where you're saying, you know, do we go, do we keep going or do we go back? And it's the environments are crazy. So, I mean, just thinking about, you know, maybe hiking over a mountain and saying, well, not even thinking about it, there is literally kind of an ecosystem right beneath you that you maybe can't even get to.

because that entrance to that room is blocked off in another cave. So there could be all sorts of things going on right underneath us. All right. This is my last topic here. So you've been doing this for a while and you've been traveling all over the country. People who say that, you know, no big foot could be out there. We would have found it by now. We've been everywhere.

You know, we're so populated here. Tell us, because I know you and I are the same way with this because I clear. or else you wouldn't be looking for Bigfoot, how vast is this country alone? It's ridiculous. People have no idea. It's actually hard to believe at times. I mean, just the lower 48, some of these places we went into, I mean, just in my own state of New Hampshire, which is a really small state compared to a place like Montana or something. I mean, we can fit 12, 13 times in there. We have places where you could fall off a trail and not be found. I mean, there was a famous case in Maine on the Appalachian Trail. A woman, you know, this was in the

the show Northwood's law because it was the largest search in main history she was hiking the Appalachian Trail she got lost they didn't find her for a few years and they found her body in a tent basically a few thousand feet away from the trail and she was hopelessly lost now she wasn't prepared to be in that environment she didn't have the basic skills to be able to navigate out of it it but it just goes to show that's not you know that environment compare that to Alaska and it's it's just crazy I mean there's just so much vastness and like I said even in the lower 48 a lot of to think there aren't as many remote places. And again, look at a population density map.

There's even places in Florida, of all places. I mean, when we hike through some of these spots in the Everglades, you know, where you're going out in the middle of nowhere and you've got water moccasins and gaiters and all sorts of stuff in these environments where, you know, I could fall into a gator pit and not ever be seen again. You know, and that's not even going into like some of the weirder side of that. It's just, you know, a simple human mistake falling in and just some of these places, Bluff Creek, Northern California where the, you know, Patterson Gimlin film was taken and where those some of those footprints were found that gave rise to the word Bigfoot. That area to this day is extreme. It was easier to get to Bluff Creek in the 60s than it is today. Is that right? The roads, I mean, are in more disrepair now. Every time people, my buddies were just up there a few weeks ago and they had to wait for a guy to come up with a chainsaw and cut a tree that had fallen blocking off. So you have entire sections of the year where people are just not even getting into these environments. Wow.

Free rain. I mean, so Canada, Canada's crazy. If you look at population density in Canada, majority of the population lives basically in the Toronto area and right near the U.S. border, whether it's Vancouver or Edmonton, all these other places, you've got the rest of it is just nothing. Vastness. I mean, British Columbia, Alberta, up into Alaska, the Yukon, crazy. There used to be more people in those environments, you know, when those areas were being settled

or when there were hunter-gatherer tribes that lived in those environments, but that really doesn't exist anymore. And people are now more hurt into cities, as we've talked about a few times. And there's endless wilderness. There really is. And especially with conservation and, yes, there are, you know, forest fires and things decimating forests in certain areas. But there still is a ridiculous amount of space and territories, even in the smokies here, not far from where we're sitting. I mean, there's places where you could fall off and never be seen, you know, and that's happened. And there's plenty of cases of that going on.

I was just, I was recently just told that there's a plane wreck in the smokies that they haven't been able to get to because it's just so remote. Yeah. I guess back in the day, they retreat the bodies, but it just, it's overgrown now and you can't get to it. And unless you're going to bushwhack to it. And so we stick to the trails. That's what we do as humans. Exactly.

We don't go off into the direction where something would want to be hiding, you know? Yes. So we try to do that as much as we can. and it's just crazy because sometimes even getting 100 feet off the trail, it's an uphill battle. You're battling, you know, rhododendron bushes, laurels, whatever. It's like, man, this is a pain in the butt just to get off of the trail and get into the woods, let alone a mile from there where you're away from the trail. So it's ridiculously vast.

And I think the only good to really get an idea for that is to either fly over it and see some of these areas, but more importantly drive some of these roads, get in there. Like that place in Alaska, I said that we took the boat right to. I've seen that, man. I mean, it's just visually one of the most crazy places ever, but just knowing that you are basically the only, you and your group of people are the only ones in the area. And there's every sort of terrestrial animal you can imagine from brown bears to moose to black bears, mountain goats, lynx. We found evidence of all that stuff. Um, humpback whales right in the water, orcas, sea lions, seals, everything.

So truly, we are, our footprint there is so minimal compared to other areas. we are the complete outsider in that environment where the rest of the animals and nature completely controls it. Man, I could talk to you for hours. Yeah, I'm sure we could be here until two in the morning. I'll be like, where'd the time go? Yeah, I know Seth is waiting on you because you guys got to do, I guess, some equipment exchange. Yeah, I'm heading out into the woods and I don't want to leave. Tonight you're going out in the woods?

Well, no, I'm going in tomorrow. I'm hiking in tomorrow. I was going out in the middle of the night? No, I'm not that crazy. I'm a little crazy, but that's, yeah. We'll do it tomorrow in the morning, and I'm doing solo out there, which I'm excited for. I haven't been in the Smokies since high school. I did a survival trip up here.

Two weeks, we hiked much of the Smoky Mountains, and I just haven't been here really since then. It's cool because it's the southern Appalachians. And this area is actually considered also to be partially a tempered rainforest. Yes, I've heard that. I didn't know that when I moved here. And then people told me, the locals told me that. And it was like, so I moved to a rainforest. Mind blowing, right?

Great. So because it's so cool for me, because it's so cool for me, because it's somewhat similar to what I'm used to just the Appalachian Mountains like when I have up north in New Hampshire, but it's so different because we have a lot more pine up there. We have alpine zones that start at 4,000 feet. So you're up at the 6,000 foot mark and you have no trees. You're completely an alpine zone. Whereas here, like Klingman's Dome, you've got trees all the way up until that 6,000 foot mark and even higher. So it's familiar but different. And I love being able to just see the different sections of the Appalachians and how they differ, how similar they are, because ultimately it's the same mountain. It's just, they're just separated by, you know, thousands of miles. It's amazing. Absolutely. I love it. And maybe one of these days we can do this again.

Yeah. You got to come out of the woods with us next time. Hey, listen, if the invitation's there, I'm coming. Absolutely. Like, I can learn a lot from you guys. So I would definitely be interesting that. Before we get out of here, let people know where they can find you, social media, but also the content. You know, what's the next, like, I know you said you do releases on YouTube once a month.

What's the next big release that you guys are doing? Is it the one in November with the Alaskan stuff? Just tell everybody everything you can. We'll have a lot of stuff in between them. But yeah, so basically the best way to find out about me is my website, Petakov Media. So that's P-E-T-A-K-O-V Media.com. And it's got links to all my socials and even all the content. But the other places, just go to small-town monsters.com.

And you can watch all the different films we have. And then our YouTube channel, Small Town Monsters, that's where the Beyond the Trail series is. And I think we've got like 16 or 17 episodes at this point. I don't know. They keep adding on. So essentially we release one to two a month. That's usually kind of what we do. But definitely one of our bigger episodes is going to be the Alaska kind of series,

which will be coming out in November in conjunction with a small toe monsters film about Bigfoot in Alaska as well. So it'll be kind of a companion piece. That one's like a VOD and that sort of stuff, Amazon. And this is more on YouTube. So you can kind of watch them together. And yeah, so that's, we're just going to keep getting out there. And that's sort of what we do. And that's our MO for the time being.

Awesome. Sharing some of these amazing locations with people, because we are truly blessed to be able to get out there. Yeah, absolutely. So everybody, you heard it, go check him out on social media and on his website. And just give him a follow and everything that he's doing. It's really great stuff. The quality is there.

And that's something that I'm real big on is quality. And so you guys are doing quality stuff. and you're not BS in people, which is great, because there's a lot of that out there, too. So anyways, man, I appreciate being on the show. Yeah, thanks for having me, man. It was an absolute awesome time, and I'm sure we could do it a lot longer, but we'll keep a tame this time. Absolutely. Well, that's the show, but I really hope you enjoyed it.

If you did enjoy it, please share the show with your friends. I don't care where or how you share the show. Just share the show if you enjoyed it. That's the best thing you can do to help the show grow. Share the show. Hopefully you enjoyed this interview. Alexander Pedekoff. You can check out his links in the description below. Connect with him. If you haven't seen his stuff, I don't know what you've been doing. You might have been living

under the rock. Alexander Pedicoff is the Bigfoot Hunter. And hopefully, guys, you enjoyed this conversation. Listen, I am working in the studio now downtown. We finally have it renovated, but there's a lot of work to do in here. Got to get some tables and desks. I'm working off a plastic folding table here in the studio right now with still a work in progress, but I finally have my own space. I can really start getting back into working and stuff since we moved to Tennessee, and I'm excited about that and the opportunity it provides. All right, friends, until next week, stay safe. Take care and remember the truth of such a free, but first, oh, piss you off. Bye. We know the crack gone south. So if it's a fair but don't work well, what's the handworm breaking,

was a cartel, push a ball, do I rap, do I sing, do I preach? I don't know. Do I lack anything be a love? No, I don't. But we got to be a warrior too, because that's just what warriors do. Contentiousness For Phoenix with Jesus, I'm a chimera Looking at these gold years flying by by fair and false They cutting it off of the food to Analyptics they used to recruit you Yeah, it's opinion that stands on your sons too

They don't want the individual just to carve and copy You sit in that man Akadi, yeah I'm talking saucy All they want to build is a prison world full of pet Tomogashi They've got me out of body like him Goku SS3 They want to push me to the center like a cell like a cello Svin'em up at the center of the next is me Ya, yeah