>> Editor's Note:

We've been spending quite a bit of time in the woods lately, in a spot we'll call "Area X". There have been recent sightings here... it's on the edge of a remote rural area and the terrain is perfect habitat for our large barefoot friends.

For now, research consists of late-night drives around the area. As the weather improves and my schedule lightens up a little, we'll be doing some camping/fishing excursions there as well. (That's the best form of research... a little R&R in the woods! Grab your pole, head for a hotspot and keep your eyes and ears open.)

There's lots of great stuff in the newsletter this month. Take extra care to check out the "In My Mailbox" section... there are some fascinating emails from readers there!

EXCITING NEWS! An old favorite, Bigfoot Casebook Updated: Sightings and Encounters from 1818-2004 by Janet & Colin Bord has JUST been released by Pine Winds Press. (This is the same company who will be releasing my mother's book, Valley of the Skookum, soon).

This book is a MUST HAVE for any serious Bigfoot enthustiast. It was the first to list sightings in chronological order, and still one of the best books on the long, documented history of Bigfoot. There are encounters from almost every US state and Canadian province and territory.

Autumn Williams
Oregonbigfoot.com
Your comments are always welcome.

The legend lives.

Wildlife group claims proof of Bigfoot colony
Says it will release 'scientific evidence' of creatures soon
(thanks to Pete for this one!)

(Editor's note: Keep in mind that this "group" may or may not be credible... just like with U.S. research groups, there are those who are and those who are not. :))

Johor bans foreign ape man hunt

Fresh footprint of 'Bigfoot' found in Kota Tinggi jungles

A joint collaborative effort by the University of Texas San Antonio's Institute of Texan Cultures and the Texas Bigfoot Research Center. April 7-July 30

Do you believe? There are many documented sightings of Bigfoot right here in
Texas! You are invited to join us as we explore many theories on the existence
of Bigfoot. This exhibit will feature unidentifiable hair as well as foot and body
casts of a being that many believe can only be Bigfoot. Guest speakers will also
lend their expertise to both sides of the debate.

At the end of your visit, we'll ask you to vote: do you believe Bigfoot really exists?

April 8, 2006, (Saturday) lectures from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m.

* Daryl G. Colyer, field researcher for the Texas Bigfoot Research Center, former
Airborne Cryptologic Russian Linguist for USAF Intelligence.

Daryl G. Colyer will examine the history of Bigfoot research in Texas. Colyer is
a field researcher for the Texas Bigfoot Research Center. He has investigated
hundreds of reports and continues to lead field research efforts in Texas and other states. It is Colyer's assessment, based on hundreds of interviews, that Sasquatches are indeed real and do inhabit parts of Texas.

* Kathy Moskowitz-Strain, forest archaelogist and Heritage Program manager at
Stanislaus National Forest in Sonora, CA, and presenter of paper titled: Mayak datat: An Archaelogical Viewpoint of the Hairy Man Pictograph.

She has worked extensively at Painted Rock on the Tule River Indian Reservation,
where the only known Bigfoot pictograph in California was discovered. Her primary research involves the traditional Native American stories of "Hairy Man," as well as the application of archaeological methods to the study of Bigfoot. Moskowitz has been researching a project for the Texas Bigfoot Research Center for the last six months, compiling the legends, folklore, and traditions of the Native American tribes of Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Louisiana. Her presentation will be based on that research project.

* Peter Byrne, executive director of the International Wildlife Conservation Society
and author of The Search for Bigfoot : Monster, Myth or Man? (Acropolis Books,
1975, 1st ed.). Peter led the Tom Slick Expeditions to the Himalayas in search
of the Yeti. He ran the Bigfoot Research Project in the 1990's.

* Catherine Cooke, former president and CEO of The Mountain Istitute, former
executive director of The Mind Science Foundation, one of Tom Slick's foundations,
for a decade. She is Tom Slick's niece and author of Tom Slick Mystery Hunter
(Paraview Books, 2005).

Book signing by local writer Catherine Nixon Cooke. Cooke, the niece of Tom
Slick, will be signing copies of her recently released book, Tom Slick, Mystery
Hunter. Slick, a local visionary, philanthropist, and entrepreneur, funded expeditions to the Himalayas in search of the Yeti and to the Pacific Northwest in search of Bigfoot in the late 1950s and early 1960s before his untimely death in a plane crash in 1962.

May 6, 2006 (Saturday) lectures from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m.

* Jeff Meldrum, associate professor of anatomy and adjunct associate professor
of anthropology at Idaho State University, researcher of Sasquatch in the north
Cascades and southern Colorado.

* Jimmy Chilcutt , forensic consultant, retired Conroe police officer with nearly
two decades of fingerprint and crime scene investigation experience, and developer of unique latent fingerprint procedures requested by federal, state and county agencies.

* Rick Noll, long-time research of Bigfoot, principal member of the expedition group that found and collected the Skookum Body Cast in 2000, involvement in about a dozen documentaries on the subject, including Sasquatch: Legend Meets Science and Giganto: The Real King Kong.

June 3, 2006 (Saturday) lectures from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m.

* Loren Coleman, World-reknowned cryptozoologist and adjunct associate professor of "The Documentary: Its Social, Political and Emotional Impact" at the University of Southern Maine. Author of Tom Slick: True Life Encounters in Cryptozoology (Linden Publishing, 2002), Bigfoot! The True Story of Apes in America (Paraview Pocket Books, 2003) and The Field Guide to Bigfoot and Other Mystery Primates (Anomalist Books, 2006),

* Benjamin Radford, managing editor of The Skeptical Inquirer and Spanish-language Pensar, author of dozens of articles on urban legends, mass hysteria, mysterious creatures and media criticism, and director of publications at the Center for Inquiry-International in Buffalo, NY.

July 8, 2006 (Saturday) lectures from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m.

* Daryl Colyer, field researcher for the Texas Bigfoot Research Center, former
Airborne Cryptologic Russian Linguist for USAF Intelligence.

Daryl G. Colyer will examine the history of Bigfoot research in Texas. Colyer
is a field researcher for the Texas Bigfoot Research Center. He has investigated
hundreds of reports and continues to lead field research efforts in Texas and
other states. It is Colyer's assessment, based on hundreds of interviews, that
Sasquatches are indeed real and do inhabit parts of Texas.

* Alton Higgins, field biologist for the Texas Bigfoot Research Center, wildlife
biologist and associates art advisor and assistant professor at Mid-America
Christian University, presenter of several papers on Bigfoot-related topics.

* John Kirk, RCMP (Royal Canadian Mounted Police), founder of the British
Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club, editor and publisher of the organization's
quarterly journal, and founder of Cryptosafari (a field research organization involved
in the exploration and search of unknown animals of West Central Africa)

Craig Woolheater
Texas Bigfoot Research Center
www.texasbigfoot.com

Hi Autumn,

I was just wondering if you had seen the Ely Sasquatch Video and what you thought about it? I'm not expert but to me the figure in the video looked too
clumsy and awkward making me think it was just a man in a monkey suit.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SY0czCO8dL0

Thanks,
Doug

(Editor's note: This appears to be a person in a suit. Notice the stovepipe arms and legs... these suits are available for about $100 on eBay... fortunately, they're VERY cheaply made and aren't terribly convincing. :))

Yes i do believe in bigfoot. There has been sightings in and around our village. We live in a small village located on the northcoast of British Columbia. The name of the village is called Port Simpson. There have been foot prints taken, moulds casted all to the size of around 17'' long and 5-6'' wide. In the last five years the have been about 7 sightings. - Anonymous

Hi, my name is Kevin, and I have been studying cryptozoology in my own time. I had seen your website, and that you were asking for reports on any sightings of Sasquatch. I wanted to tell you about something that happened to me 24 years ago when I was 14, if you are interested in a report this old? I am from a Navy family, my Dad is a retired Lt. Commander, and back in the early 1980's, we were stationed on N.A.S. Meridian, Mississippi. This base was used for flight training, and for SAR operations, that's Search and Rescue, and my Dad was the head of it on this base. The base was divided into different sections that were connected by roads through the woods. To get to base housing, there was a two mile long road through a wetlands that the Navy had set aside for wildlife. That was from the part of the base that had the Commissary, gas station, movie theater, skating rink, arcade, and so on... The flight line was separate even from that. I want to say that this event occured in the Fall of 1981. It was just a little cold then, not like in the middle of winter, but you needed a jacket. It's funny, I don't remember the date, but I'll never forget what happened that night as long as I live.

One night, a friend of mine named Jim, who lived directly across the street from me, and I decided to go to the skating rink. This was back in the early days of video games, and most kids lived in arcades. I was no different, but people on this base also used to go skating a lot too. We stayed at the skating rink, playing video games until about, well I guess it was about 8:30 p.m., and we decided to walk back home. The road that we had to walk along was about two miles long, and at this particular time had been closed to traffic. That was because it had a small bridge that went across a stream that was in dire need of repair. In Mississippi, when it rains, a lot of the time it also floods. Roads, yards, ditches and things get washed out some times, and this stream lead right into the wetlands that I mentioned. Anyway, we got to the part of this road that had a steep hill on it, and a side walk beside it. The road was lit with street lights, but the light did not reach that far out. The woods were pitch black from our position. Just about the time we started down this hill, we smelled something that stank like sulfur mixed with garbage. Kind of a rotten smell. As I remember it, the wind was blowing towards us, not hard though.

We didn't think much of it and kept on walking and talking, about movies, video games and so on... About maybe 20 yards down this hill, we started hearing some thing walking in the woods right beside us, within, well it sounded like it was only about 20 feet away. It sounded heavier than a human, and was making sounds like a gorilla would make, it did not sound like it was in the vocal range of a human. It also made some shrill sounds, almost like an ape trying to speak. A kind of garbled gibberish. It sounded angry, and me and Jim did not have any idea what it was. We could not see it, we could only hear it. We took off down the road towards the bridge as fast as we could, and it started chasing us. We could hear it plainly crunching through the underbrush right near us. It never came out of the woods where we could see it, but it was running right beside us with big strides! I would like to point out here that we were on a flat surface running under street lights, and it was in the dark, running through brush and trees and it kept up with us with no problem.

We made it to the bridge in record time, and we each stopped and grabbed a couple of boards that the construction workers had left laying around, in order to defend ourselves from what ever was chasing us. At that time, the construction workers had bulit another small bridge for joggers to use, to go around the construction site. It was smaller even that this main bridge, but further over in the woods on the other side of the road from where we were. We decided in a heart beat to just run across the one under construction, we were that scared of this thing. Then it did something that I don't think any human in the world could, it jumped across this stream. The loud sounds of a large animal landing on the other bank was a shock! The point where it jumped this stream was about 40 feet wide at that time. We didn't miss a beat, we took off down the road for home faster than I even knew I could run! I could run like the wind when I was younger, but, some days, the wind just doesn't seem to move fast enough. Anyway, about the length of a football field from the bridge that we crossed, I risked a glance behind us, and thought I saw something move across the road behind us. I could not be sure, it was night, but it seemed to be upright.

We made it home as fast as we could, and told my Dad what had happened. He was sure that it was a Sasquatch that had followed us, but he told us not to talk about it. It could have affected his and Jim's Dad's jobs in the Navy. We did what we were told, and kept it quiet. The thing is, right after our encounter, maybe one or two days later, an enlisted Navy man saw this thing in broad daylight on his way to work. He went public with his sighting. I think that there was even a mention of it in the local news. I know for a fact that it made the base news, everyone was talking about it. Me and Jim though, just looked at each other when we heard it, both with a worried look I guess. We were used to going places on the base day or night without fear. Now, as far as we knew, there was something out there that maybe we ought to fear. It had chased us in the dark. And the worst thing was, we were forbidden to speak about it.

A few months later, Jim's Dad got his orders to move up north, I want to say it was to Norfolk, VA at the Marine base there, but I might not be remembering that right. We moved in July of 1982 to Natchitoches, LA. My Dad got a Navy school billet there to get his Masters Degree in Physiology, then on to the next duty station. I have not been back to Meridian in the past 24 years, but to tell you the truth, those final months that we spent there had some sleepless nights for me. I would lay awake at night, as still as I could be, listening to every sound around our house, hoping that it would not show up in base housing. I was afraid to go down that road again by my self. It was hard even with friends. I kept looking into the tree line along the road, even when we drove along it after the bridge got fixed. I don't even know if the base there is operational still or not. The Navy is closing down my home base of Pensacola, FL right now. I'm not happy about that. NAS Pensacola was my home for a long time, and it's where me and my brothers were born. But, I guess it has to be, it's almost 100 years old now and was torn up by Hurricane Ivan two years ago.

I hope that won't mind me telling my story, and I hope that the information will be of some use to you in your research. Perhaps someone else who got chased in the night, will read my story and know that they are not alone. I've only spoken to a few friends about it over the years. I guess that most people don't really believe it when you tell them these things. I have not seen or heard from Jim or his family in all these years either. Military families mostly lead a Nomadic life, we move around a lot and it's hard to keep track of everyone. Take care, and good luck in your research. May the Hand of Christ guide you in all things.

Thank you for your time and attention.

Sincerely,

Kevin

My name is Cynthia and I live in XXXXXX, Missouri. Back in July of 1997 my husband and I decided to go looking for different areas to go fishing in. We ended up near Silas, Missouri. We entered a wildlife conservation spot, called Logan Wildlife conservation. We were told there
were some lakes up there but I couldn't see any at first, then I saw a sign saying no parking beyond here, and the site was numbered #6. So we parked the car and looked down over the hill and there was a narrow path that came down to a nice small lake. It was in the middle of no where, so we went down the slope of the hill to get there, and on the way down I spotted huge bare foot prints.

I was joking with my husband and said wow! look at this foot print, this must be bigfoot. Funny as it may seem, I went and took a picture of it, and the lake. My husband and I were facing the lake, I had binnoculars and my husband had a little cassette recorder and we were checking out the beauty of it all and my husband was recording the nature sounds, birds and locusts. It was such peace and tranquility that surrounded us, very hot I must say I think the temperture was 100 degrees out. S

Shortly after checking out the site, still facing the lake we hear this growling and snarling and heavy breathing going, on along with breaking of branches. I mean the branches sounded to be 3-4 inches in diameter. The growls were very guttural like when I lion roars, how deep it sounds. The breathing sounded very human like except 1,000 times more magnifying. It came from behind us down this slope of a hill in the ravine of it about 30 yards away. The woods here are very dense so its hard to see through them. Right away fear set in and I dropped the binnoculars down against my chest and looked to the side of me at my husband and said " do you hear that?" and he answeared back yes
and were out of hear and just took off running and I said wait for me, he was already up at the car while I was struggleing to get up the hillside.

Its amazing how fear takes over and all you can think of is run, and don't even turn around to see what you were running from. We got in the car and started driving not knowing where we were driving to, and I said did you get those sounds on the recorded and he said I think I did. So I played it and I said " what is that? Don't it sound like a monkey?" And he said a monkey, it
sounds like a f______ gorrilla. I said lets go back and he said " What?" And I said yes, lets go back, and I said where is your sense of adventure? He said, in his pants. Well when we got back, we both were too scared to get out of the car,so we just sat there with the window down, I said I hear something rustling around down there so I took the recorded and started to record. Well from all the excitement, I turned around and recorded over what we already had on there.

Never in my life did I ever experience anything like this. It wasn't your ordinary nature sounds. Belive me I know my nature sounds, for I use to hunt and fish. I was so obsessed over all this, I went home and typed in bigfoot and came upon a website with all siteings in the US. I typed in my state and Lincoln county and sure enough, there were a few sitings of one, in Silas and other little towns around there. I also seen there were many in the state of Washington, Oregon, and California. So for vacation, we went to Oregon and stayed at seaside. Our first evening there
we stopped at saddle mt. and then got a place to stay. Very scarey up there. Then the next morning we ate breakfast at Best Western hotel. The waitress that waited on us asked how we were enjoying our stay and I said well we just pulled in last night and the only place we checked out was saddle mt. She said saddle mt, us locals don't go around there and I said, Why? She said
because of, she paused, you could tell she didn't want to say it, but then she said because of bigfoot. I acted dumb like, yea right, bigfoot. I said why? do you know anyone that ever saw, heard or smelled one? She said yes, she did. She said her and her husband were driving down the bend near saddle mt. late at night and there it was standing on the edge of a road next to a sign. She said they are big and they are real. She told me her dad goes on these logging trails and see's tracks all the time , she said he even has several casts he took of the foot prints. Another area we went to was Mt. St. Helens, another interesting area.

Well I could go on and on. But what we experienced, I truely believe in them and of course if you try to tell someone they look at you like your nuts. And then there is the ridicule. I believe its just a matter of time before we have proof. Sincerely, Cynthia

A quick, easy way to make spending money online!

When National Geographic filmmaker Noel Dockstrader called Bigfoot researcher Al Hodgson with the news that he wanted to create a Bigfoot documentary, it seemed too good to be true. Dockstrader asked Hodgson to gather together those people who wished to share their experiences with viewers of National Geographic Television, but only gave him one week to do it.

Both local newspapers, The Kourier and The Hoopa People Newspaper announced the news, but few responded to the articles. However, six people came to the filming, which Hodgson planned for 2pm Saturday, Sept. 4, at a quiet, shady spot behind Trinity River Farm on Highway 96. One by one, the unassuming, everyday, community members told what happened to each of them.

One Native American woman said she saw this "thing" in her headlights at Teigmeir's Beach in '87, a retired California Highway Patrol officer said he was scared when he saw a moving torso and upper leg on Waterman Ridge Road, a U.S. Forest Service employee put his hand in a whole track in the snow and felt the toes of a Bigfoot, a woman saw a "younger one" chasing her son on a motorcycle, and last, but certainly not least, a woman came from Sacramento to tell what happened to her just a few weeks ago on Ironside Mountain when she saw a Bigfoot standing 20 feet away watching her.

Dockstrader and sound man Eli Chessen stayed in Willow Creek all of Labor Day Weekend, better known in those parts as Bigfoot Days. The two were also spotted getting shots of the Bigfoot Parade.

"I've heard the stories and always wondered," Dockstrader said. "I spent a lot of time in the wilderness. I like to backpack and all that, so I find it fascinating and have read quite a bit recently and it intrigued me."

He told those he interviewed he would ask questions he thought skeptical people might ask.

"I will use a journalistic approach," the filmmaker said. "Skepticism with an open mind."

Besides those at the Saturday afternoon gathering, the crew of two also interviewed Rebecca Cape at Brush Mountain Lookout, who found a track. They interviewed Larry "Dud" Orcutt, who found tracks on Blue Creek Mountain in August just before Patterson made the video, as well as Bob Walund, an old timer who worked in the woods and saw lots of tracks, according to Al Hodgson.

The National Geographic guys also had plans to do interviews in Washington State and visit scientists to get their analytical views. The film aired January 31 2005, Dockstrader said.

Those Hoopa residents who were featured in articles published in May 2004 in The Hoopa People Newspaper were invited to the filming, although Pliny McCovey Sr. was the only one able to participate. McCovey shared the details on film of his experience in the dark last October (2003) when he heard what he thought was an adult Bigfoot communicating with a younger one near his home on Mill Creek Road. McCovey also told Dockstrader he thought the Megram Fire was bringing the creatures in to search for food.

Hoopa's Raven Ulibarri, who saw one pack off a bag of garbage, could not be contacted to participate in the documentary, and Hoopa Tribal member Debra Carpenter, who saw one walking down the road in Hoopa, was unable to come because she had her wedding planned for 6pm that day. During the Bigfoot Symposium last September, Debra was interviewed by Cryptozoologist Autumn Williams for the show, "Mysterious Encounters," which still airs on the Outdoor Life Network.

Dockstrader and Chessen left the Bigfoot Motel behind last Monday after a weekend of Bigfoot burgers, donuts, casts and people sharing their experiences.

"These were some of the nicest people I've dealt with so far," Hodgson said.
09/09/04

Bigfoot reports from two more at Mill Creek

By Rita Swanson, HPN Staff Writer

Since the last article in The Hoopa People Newspaper about Bigfoot sightings in and around Hoopa, two more Hoopa residents have reported their experiences in the Mill Creek area.

"The cat's out of the bag now," said Pliny McCovey, who lives on Mill Creek Road. After Ulibarri and Debra Carpenter told their experiences to The Hoopa People Newspaper last month, McCovey decided he would no longer keep his experiences out of the press.

"One night I heard the dogs barking," McCovey said. "It was around the first snow and it was dark. I heard something and thought maybe it was people. They talked in their own language-kind of a growl at first, like to get attention, then there was gruntal talk-different pitches and stuff like that.

"So I sat down and listened for about five minutes. It happens so fast you don't realize what's going on. I know what bear and cougar sound like and this was like nothing I've ever heard. The porch light was on, but it was dark and I didn't get to see facial features or anything. The dogs came back up to the house."
McCovey said he knew there were two, one of which was "huge."

"I walked down there and pulled the brush back and that's when I saw the big one. It growled like a warning. I turned to run and fell down. I thought it would come after me, but it went up the ridge.
"When I stumbled, it took a couple steps and then stopped. Then I got up and started moving again, and then it started moving again. Then I stopped and it stopped. Then I just turned around and walked back up and it moved. It came back to where the other one was and then they both took off. Then I heard the dogs take off (after them). I was maybe 15 feet from it, maybe closer.

"A friend of mine used to stay here with me and he said when he went out there, he felt very uncomfortable and that he felt something was watching him."

About three nights after that, McCovey said his wife was in the bedroom and heard a big exhale. He looked out the window and heard the same growl and heard it take off.

"Another time I heard it growling and then my cousin's dogs barking," he said. "I think it's human, but a different type of human. I wish the tribe would do something to protect them. I've never doubted what my old people have said. Usually what they say turns out to be true. My main concern is that people don't come in here and hunt them. I will run people off if they come out here."

A 26-year-old Hoopa mother also said she saw something that she couldn't shake "a few months back" in the same area. She wanted to remain anonymous.

"I couldn't really make it out and I wasn't sure what I saw," she said. "All I saw was the eyes and it was just getting dark. I was on Mill Creek Road dropping behind Highway 96 and I was on a downhill slope when I looked up and saw it at the top of my windshield. It was just for a split second. It was already by the trees. I just caught the eyes."

The sighter said she only realized how big it was because she was on a downhill slope and it appeared at the top of her windshield. She said her cousin went back to the area later to investigate for tracks or see if he noticed a smell. He didn't find anything. The area was covered with leaves, making it difficult to see if anything had been there.

Patterson film site identified on trip to Bluff Creek

Tony Hacking, wildlife biologist at the Orleans Ranger District, was the U.S. Forest Service liaison at the Bigfoot Symposium last September in Willow Creek. Hacking went on the tour to Bluff Creek on the last day of the symposium along with Bob Gimlin, the man who was with Roger Patterson when he filmed the infamous Bigfootage. Hacking calls himself an open-minded skeptic.

"A lot of time was spent trying to find the spot where the film was made," Hacking said. "People had stills from the movie and were holding them up to see if the location was the same. Finally, someone noticed a distinctive rock that was in the film over Patti's (Bigfoot's) shoulder. It had a pyramid shape. When Bob saw that, he said it was definitely where they were, but things had changed."

Hodgson said people had started calling the star of the Patterson film "Patti" just a few years ago. After the symposium, a group went back to the site and determined that not only had Bluff Creek meandered around and the trees grown up, it was also graded down as much as ten feet.

Absence of evidence not necessarily evidence of absence

Hacking said he has been a biologist in Orleans since 1986 and has been looking for clues of the existence of Bigfoot, but hasn't found any.

"But, absence of evidence isn't necessarily evidence of absence," he said. "If things this large are living in this area, there should be more evidence. For example, elk were reintroduced in the mid 80s. There's unmistakable evidence. One could argue that elk are herd animals and Bigfoot are solitary animals, so the impact of a single Bigfoot isn't going to make the same impact as a herd of elk."

While Hacking had scientific rationale that Bigfoot couldn't possibly exist, he also spoke of examples that parallel what he called the "Bigfoot phenomenon."

"I was involved with a graduate research project in the Bluff Creek/Blue Creek area where we surveyed for a low elevation coastal subspecies of marten we thought had gone extinct and relocated," Hacking said. "A known animal thought to be extinct was hiding out in that Bluff Creek country unknown to science for over 50 years."

The wildlife biologist also noted that during the project, students had to re-bait a box every two days and that their marks were definitely left on the landscape. Why wouldn't a Bigfoot leave more marks on the landscape, especially when accessing food sources regularly?

Hacking said wolverines are another good example of an elusive creature.

"They're extremely rare," he said. "There hasn't been hard evidence detection in California for several decades, but there's been quite a few sightings of them, like tracks and scat. They are solitary animals, have huge home ranges, and can travel over a hundred square miles, but they use their scent.

"Homonoids don't generally have a good sense of smell. How would they communicate over a large distance? Some say they use sound, but I think people would be more familiar with the sound. I've heard a lot of strange things, especially at night when I'm doing owl surveys. But they are all owls-they have a wide range of vocalizations. I think what people may think is Bigfoot is probably an owl."

Hacking also said he has received sightings of wolves in the area and believes wolves are coming back because of the reintroduction of elk.

"I welcome people to come in and talk to me about interesting wildlife sightings," Hacking said. "I love hearing about people's experiences."
06/30/04

Rita Swanson (formerly Molhoek) has written for the Hoopa People Newspaper since 1996. She lives in Willow Creek, Calif., with her husband and daughter and has been interested in Bigfoot since moving to Willow Creek in 1995. Hoopa is just north of Willow Creek and just south of Bluff Creek (the site of the 1967 Patterson/Gimlin film). She holds a B.A. in journalism from Humboldt State University. The preceding article was originally published in the Hoopa People Newspaper, May 24, 2005 and is reprinted here with the author's express written consent.

Waiting on my next check... where's yours?

2006 Sasquatch Music Festival
(Thanks, Mike)