SOME THOUGHTS ON CALL BLASTING, PROS AND CONS, TECHNIQUES, AND THE LATEST EQUIPMENT
For years now, researchers have been using a technique known as “call blasting” in order to attempt to elicit a vocal response from sasquatches. But is it recommended… or effective?
As far as I’m concerned, the jury’s still out on call blasting, and there many things to consider before you go tromping out into the woods with a ghetto blaster and your favorite tape of bigfoot screams. :)
THE EQUIPMENT
Since the whole idea behind call blasting is to get a response and, hopefully, record it. With that in mind, you’ll need some equipment.
First of all, you need a broadcasting system with some sizable power. If you’ve got a beefy stereo in your 4X4 and a decent CD player, you’re golden. Unless.of course, you want to get off the logging roads.
Ideally, you want a portable predator caller. My FOXPRO is programmable (the programmer is sold separately) and I’ve uploaded purported bigfoot sounds into it, as well as injured animal calls representing potential bigfoot “prey”. It’s lightweight, LOUD, and the battery lasts a long time. I just click on the “track” I want and it blasts it out. The remote is nice, too, if you want to run around like a commando in camo and hide in the bushes some distance away. Which isn’t a bad idea, considering what you may be calling in. *grin*
You also need something for recording. My recommendation is the Olympus DS-40 digital voice recorder. There are cheaper digital voice recorders out there (and I have a couple), but they don’t have the built-in quality that this one has. The feature that really does it for me is the built in STEREO microphone. It seems to record a quality far beyond what I used to get out of my cheapo Sony recorder with an external wand mic.
The next thing to consider is the recordings you’re using. Let’s stop for a moment and think about this…
THE RECORDINGS
If bigfoot communicated through screams, yells, whistles, grunts, howls, moans, garbled sounds… and you’re broadcasting something that does turn out to be an actual bigfoot recording… what are you saying to the Sasquatch who happens to be within hearing range?
Well, let’s take a look at that first. RANGE, that is.
Of the many vocalizations described and reported by eyewitnesses, there seem to be several types, designed to carry over varying distances:
Screams, yells, howls and other long, loud-drawn out sounds would tend to carry over long distances. (Which, incidentally, is likely why we have so many recordings of these types of sounds. They carry farther; therefore, there would be more “witnesses” in the path of the sound, breathlessly holding recording devices and exclaiming, “What in the heck is that?!”)
Whistles and whoops don’t carry quite as far. I think of these as mid-range vocalizations.
The grumbling, mumbling, snarling, growling and gibberish you hear on the Sierra Sounds – and that is reported by witnesses – would be more of a close-range communication.
But we still don’t know what they’re saying.
What good does it do to get up on a ridge top, set up your predator caller with a nice assortment of Sasquatch sounds, turn that puppy on, and blast something that is the communicable equivalent, in Bigfoot-ese, of, “Hey, all you Bigfoots out there! Beat it! The humans are here… and they’ve got guns! Retreat!”?
Hence, the reason the jury’s still out on call-blasting.
So how do you go about it - if you don’t know which recordings are attractive, and which ones are likely to be repellent?
THE TECHNIQUE
First, choose recordings that you think sound non-threatening. There are some long-range vocalizations that are more “interactive” than aggressive. (There’s a whole library of sound recordings over in the media archives.) These would be good for broadcasting from a ridge line, to carry over a great distance. Use your predator caller, the sound system in your vehicle… or, if you’ve got good pipes and can imitate them well enough, use your own voice.
The use of mid-range vocalizations might be adviseable in an area where you’ve got activity. Whoops and whistles are certainly more interactive-type sounds. I like to mimic a particular whoop that is recorded on the Sierra Sounds, but it’s difficult to do. There is a “break” in the whoop, similar to what a yodeler does, that requires some vocal training or natural ability. For whistles, I generally whistle through my fingers (like you would at a sporting event or concert). It’s loud and it carries well.
Finally, if you’ve got a Sasquatch breathing down your neck (I can’t think of a more enjoyable way to spend my free time, which means I probably need to get out more… HA! ), you might try some of the garble-gibberish on the Sierra recordings.
I keep bringing up the Sierra Sounds for several reasons. One, because if they are authenticthey are the clearest and most detailed recordings to date of a purported Sasquatch vocalization. Two, because the sounds themselves, and the circumstances in which they were reportedly recorded, are non-threatening. Finally, they’re just plain damn FUN to listen to in the woods at night. If you’re anything like me, and you enjoy the creep factor of Bigfooting, that is.
Most “bigfoot recordings” are not very high quality. They contain a lot of background noise or tape hiss. These sounds translate when you’re broadcasting, though the high-pitched screams and whistles tend to echo and carry farther, while the constant hum of background noise peters out sooner. The reason I like the Sierra Sounds so much is for the clarity, though the recordings don’t contain any good examples of long-range sounds (since the eyewitnesses, with whom the creatures were reportedly interacting, were right there nearby), so they aren’t very good for ridgetop broadcasting.
USING OTHER SOUNDS AS ATTRACTANTS
There has been some discussion about using other sounds as “audio bait”. Recordings of children playing, babies crying, howler monkeys, chainsaws, gunshots (can you say, “Bigfoot dinner bell?”), music (either recorded or live), infrasound(be careful with this… it can cause physical reactions)… all of these are suitable methods to experiment with, in my opinion.
Just be sure you have your recorder going BEFORE you begin. Most times, if you do get a response, it’ll happen within the first few broadcasts.
THE LATEST GADGET?
I want one. Unfortunately, I spent my last $1600 on Cheetos and Sudoku puzzles.
OK, I’m kidding. I don’t know how to do Sudoku.
Idaho’s calls of the wild help improve ‘howlbox’
Tests here last summer led to a new version of a wolf-tracking device and new interest from others who are researching wild animals.The “howlbox” works.
“It seems like if wolves are in the area, it detects them, and it detects them pretty quickly,” said Dave Ausband, a research associate with the Montana Cooperative Wildlife Research Unit, who is supervising the howlbox development.
The device, which broadcasts a recorded wolf howl and then records responding howls, was developed by Cooperative Wildlife Research Unit researcher Teresa Loya with the help of her family.
She hoped it would be more reliable and less expensive than the current methods to count wolves – which include radio collaring, pup counts and aerial surveys.
Loya deployed her invention 11 times in Idaho last summer. In every case, the box recorded a response howl within two attempts.
“We were able to detect and get a response within 12 hours,” she said.
The resulting recordings, when represented visually in a spectrogram, show individual adult howls at different frequencies – letting researchers identify the number of different wolves that howled back. When Loya compared the number of howls she counted on the spectrogram with the number of wolves she had seen in the area, the accuracy rate of the howlbox was 75 percent.
Pup howls, which are higher pitched and choppier, are more difficult to count.
“It’s just a bunch of yipping and yapping,” said Loya.
Loya learned some important things from her experience last summer in Idaho:
® It is best to place the howlbox up high, out of the brush, ideally on a ridge overlooking a valley. This allows the sound to carry farther to and from the unit.
® The howlbox unit itself had limitations when it came to battery life, user interface of the software and portability.
So Loya overhauled the unit and gave it a new name: the Remote Animal Survey System, or RASCAL. Among the improvements are a new microphone, a software interface that is more user-friendly, a lithium ion battery and solar panel, weatherproof case and more powerful speakers.
The RASCAL, which sells for about $1,600 per unit, has the potential for use in research on species other than wolves.
Since last summer, other researchers that have expressed interest in using the RASCAL include wolf researchers in Alaska and the Wildlife Alliance of Maine. Loya even received a call from an individual interested in using it to track Bigfoot.
Nathan Svoboda, a Ph.D. student at Mississippi State University, just received the RASCAL unit he ordered last week. Svoboda plans to use it to help count coyotes in Michigan’s upper peninsula. He’s trying to determine if the coyote population is having an adverse affect on deer populations in the area, and an accurate coyote count is important to his research.
Tracking and trapping coyotes doesn’t yield especially reliable results, Svoboda said.
“Especially with the tracking, it’s difficult to determine individuals,” he said.
Svoboda hopes that the RASCAL will be more accurate and require less time and expense.
“It’s something we can set out there and let sit and do its thing,” he said.
BY JOE JASZEWSKI
Copyright: © 2009 Idaho Statesman
Published: 07/24/09
http://www.idahostatesman.com/localnews/story/843699.html
