Ep. 258 - Q&A - April, 2024 - podcast episode cover

Ep. 258 - Q&A - April, 2024

Apr 15, 202459 min
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Episode description

Cliff Barackman and James "Bobo" Fay answer your questions in this new Q&A episode! If you would like to submit a question for a future Q&A episode, please use the contact form or voicemail link here: https://www.bigfootandbeyondpodcast.com/contact

Sign up for our weekly bonus podcast "Beyond Bigfoot & Beyond" and ad-free episodes here: https://www.patreon.com/bigfootandbeyondpodcast

Get official "Bigfoot & Beyond with Cliff & Bobo" merchandise here: https://sasquatchprints.com/bigfoot-and-beyond-merch/

Transcript

Big Food and Beyond with Cliff and Bobo. These guys are your favor It's so like say subscribe and raid it, Tim starck S and me righteous wish today and listening, oh watching them always keep its watching. And now you're hosts Cliff Berrickman and James Bubo Fay. The mailbox is full. I cannot accept any messages at this time. Goodbye. Of course it is. You know. If I were to leave a message, you would be Bobo. We sent out the link for the podcast twenty five minutes ago. Would you

like to join us? Oh? Bobo? Hey kids, it's a Cliff from Bigfoot and Beyond with Cliff and usually Bobo. This time we have standing in for Bobo. Number seventy four. Matt Pruitt. What's up, dude? Yeah, thank you very much. All right, So, yeah, Bobo is not with us on the call. We don't know what happened to him. We don't know where he is, we don't know if he's awake, asleep. Dead. Rumor is that he's dead, but we deflate those

rumors almost weekly. I got more emails about that just last week actually. But hey, I'm sorry about Bobo being dead because dude, he's not dead anyway. So anyway, yeah, so instead of having Bobo on the line with us live, unless he shows up in the next ten or twenty minutes or an hour, We're just gonna interject little boboisms here and there throughout the episode so you feel like he's there with us. But anyway, yeah, Bobo's nowhere to be found right now. But this is Bigfoot and Beyond with

Cliff and usually Bobo and today Matt Preuitt. So anyway, Matt Prue, how you doing, sir, I'm very good. Just got back from the Path of Totality, where my wife's family is from, so I got to see the eclipse, and I had told you off the air. Unfortunately, the last time there was an eclipse in twenty seventeen, where I live here in Middle Tennessee was right in the path of totality then, but I worked

for evil overlords that told us that we were needed on the phones. I worked as a recruiter, and that if anyone went outside to watch the eclipse, their position would be terminated. So we all missed it. And so now that I've seen the glory of the eclipse, I feel like writing a strongly worded letter to them to tell them that they deserve a place in eternal damnation. Oh yeah, yeah, there are no words strong enough for that. You know. I did not get a chance to see this one.

I had to work. There's a lot of reasons I couldn't travel this time of year right now. But anyway, I saw the last one in twenty seventeen, and actually I saw it with Bobo. If you were here, you could tell us about it. So yeah, Bobo and I were there, Tom Powell was there. I think the b LARTs were out. It was great, man, it was so much fun and Melissa I just had a blast. Tears came to my eyes. It was such a beautiful,

beautiful thing. I think the way I described to you what I saw, Matt, was that the eclipse was easily one of the top three coolest things I've ever seen in my life, and I have no idea what the other two things might be. It was just absolutely amazing. So any scumbag employer, and I don't I can't say that strong enough. Any scumbag employer that would not let their employees step outside to check out one of the miracles of

existence, you deserve nothing better than eternal damnation. Oh, I totally agree. You know, it's interesting too. I got a lot of emails and you probably did as well, from people asking if we were planning to be in the field to see if there are any reactions from sasquatches, And so I just told people like, you know, since so many animals do seem to react to it, that you'd have to assume that there's some degree of

continuity that perhaps sasquatches would react to it as well. But this time I wanted to be with family instead of you know, sasquatches are not very good family. They're very as I've said before, emotionally distant. They never return call, They're never there when you need them. You know, I think about them a lot more than they think about me, and so I didn't feel inclined to enjoy the spectacle of nature amongst such terrible friends as the sasquatch.

Yeah, and honestly, at the end of the day, I mean, Bigfoot is in everything. It's most things in my life. But it is and everything, and as even nerds like us have to put it down at some point and enjoy it. Just what's happening, you know, it's like it's like these people go to concerts and would rather take pictures of the band instead of listen to the music. It's like, what are you doing? What are you doing? There's actually life going on right now. Maybe

you should pay attention to that instead, just for a minute. And I kind of feel Bigfoot in some ways. It's kind of similar, like if you're so obsessed that during any clips you're wondering, no, wonder how bigfoots are, but you're kind of missing the point. Man, You're just missing the point at that moment. So yeah, it's good to have balance.

Like I always have my devoted hours of the day to the subject, whether that's reading, studying, working on this podcast, or other sasquatch related endeavors, and then there's plenty of other things that I use to sort of like turn my brain off of that. And without that balance, yeah, things get You can easily get burnt out on the things, no matter how much you love them, if they just occupy too much time or energy or something

like that. And again, because sasquatches are not very cooperative or rewarding critters, I don't feel obligated to give them any more time than they deserve. I suppose that's a good way to say it. Yeah, because you know, that's one of the things that people coming into the subject who are fairly new. And when I say new, I mean like five years or so. I think that's fairly new at this moment. You know, at least for me, it is. It can very easily throw your life out of

balance very quickly, and things can go awry. And this probably has something to do with that. The legendary curse of Bigfoot or whatever. You know, a lot of cultures in general, like native cultures or otherwise have like, oh, you know, you see a Bigfoot, it's bad news as a curse, or someone's gonna die this or that, you know, And I think there's some truth. There's some truth to that. I mean,

it's not verbatim. No one's going to die, it's totally fine. But things often come to those who maybe see a sasquatch will become interested in the subject early on. It's early on because their life is out of balance, you know. Like I know one guy who was a really good drummer. Now this guy's a pretty good friend of mine, a really really good drummer. He ended up seeing a sasquatch at one point, and then he completely stopped drumming, and then he just was bigfooting all the time, whereas before

he was in like four or five bands. Now I think this gentleman's personality. And again, I like this guy a lot. He's a good friend of mine. This guy's personality is one that swings pretty widely. You know. The pendulum goes really far one direction, then really far the other, almost nothing but drums, and then all of a sudden, I saw a sasquatch. So I'm doing nothing but bigfoot. There is so much room in between. There's plenty of time for drums and bigfoot metaphorically speaking, and the

bigfoot subjects somehow captures people and just brings brings that out. It's like, I'm gonna just do this. I'm there's nothing I'd rather do the be in

the field. There's this, only this, only this, only this, you know, And you look at the carcasses along the side of the road behind these people, you know, and you see a lot of things, like you know, jobs and marriages and friendships and relationships in general just just thrown aside because of obsession or lack of balance, you know, and myself

included I've gone through that, Absolutely have I gone through that. But I'm also thirty years deep into the subject at this point where I've learned a few things from my time, and I can say that with complete confidence that balance

is probably more important than bigfoot A thousand percent. I would agree with that, and I've experienced that too, And I tried to include a section in the book, especially the last chapter, is sort of an optimistic call to action maybe or at least some general guidelines about what I think is the proper way to move forward. And the first thing that I lay out is you

have to realistically define your expectations. And I think that's where a lot of people go astray and get burnt out very quickly and experience a lot of headache and heartache because so many people start out with the expectation like, oh, I'm going to either prove this to the world or I'm going to be a

part of this community that proves it to the world. It's like, well, you know, if you're setting that goal for yourself, you've got a really, really hard road ahead that no one has been able to navigate for seventy years of this pursuit. And so for the people that want to just prove it to themselves, it's like they're going to have the most fun because

they get to be the arbiters of what constitutes proof. You know, if they choose to interpret a divot in the ground or a bump in the night as absolute proof that the Sasquatch exists to themselves, well great, you know they've set the standard and they've met it, and they can move on or

continue to do so. The second you want to prove it to other people, well, now you're playing by their standards, because maybe the person that you're trying to demonstrate something who doesn't accept divots in the ground or bumps in the night, And so if you expect them to see the same value in these sorts of experiences that you see, well you're setting yourself up for disappointment.

And then if you want to prove it to the world, while we have to look to these institutions that we sort of designate to arrive at truth, and now you've got to play by their standards, which are much much higher than any given individuals for the most part. And so I think that's where a lot of people get frustrated with the subject is that what constitutes proof

to them hardly does to another person. And of course, who do we spend the most time with, while it's our friends, our peers, our colleagues, our loved ones, and so it can be really deflating to those people if they're going to the people most proximal, the most immediate in their lives to say, look at this proof that I found, and they're saying, hey, I'm sorry, I don't see what you're seeing in that. That's not proof at all to me. And then people become bitter and resentful

and angry or disappointed. And it's a tough gig for sure. Yeah. I don't know about anybody else. I don't even really know about me sometimes, but it seems to me that my I don't have a goal. People

ask me that, and you know, it's kind of frustrating. Even last night, I was cleaning up my desktop on my computer and going through this and putting this PDF and this file and you know, doing that kind of stuff, you know, housekeeping on my computer just literally last night, and I ran across it's a digital version of a magazine that I was interviewed for a number of years ago, and then I said, I remember this.

I never did read this, you know, so I kind of glanced because again, I don't watch the things I'm in the TV shows and what.

I don't read the articles that are written about me for the most part, just because you know, I already know what I said, and I don't want to see how the interviewer screwed it up, because generally speaking, it's not quite the what I not quite what I intended it to say, but but I have I just kind of glanced this one over and right there at the beginning, it was like, you know, I I it said, it cast me as a person who is intent on proving the species, and

I'm just not. I'm just not. I know they're real. I'm totally I'm completely convinced they're real. I mean, I'm going to call that. I know they're real. I've had lots and lots of they things happening. I Mean, my sighting wasn't the best in the world, but I think it was one. I could be wrong, I mean, I'm open to that, but I'm pretty confident it was one even nowadays. You know, this last week, I went to a location out in the woods that nobody

knew I was going to be there. I wasn't even sure I was going to be walking that road and I found footprints. You know, that says a lot to me, you know. I mean, I'm completely convinced these things are real. Why do I need to prove it to somebody? I don't care what other people think, you know. I mean, so people

ask me like why am I doing this? You know? And I can always come up with reasons that I guess, but there is no driving reason because despite what culture says I should do, or should be or should have, I don't really have goals. I'm not a goal driven individual, you know. I don't try to reach this pinnacle, this point, this skill level, this whatever. I do things because I enjoy them, you know,

just like going for a walk. If I leave the house to go for a walk, it's not to get somewhere because it turns out I always come back home. It's actually just to go out and experience the thing itself, the actual walk, And I view Bigfoot and playing guitar and most things that way. But anyway, so yeah, this goal thing has always kind

of eluded me. I just don't really adhere to that mindset, so I'm not out there trying to prove it, despite what that magazine article said said about me, which I guess is a danger of being a public figure because you're constantly mischaracterized. Yeah, well, you've got to play a certain role. You know. They want to interview a character, and so they're going to fit you into that character role, whether whether you fit into it naturally

or not. But you know, I think we all have goals that are hopefully reasonable and attainable, even if we put them just out of reachion, even if that goal is just like I'm going to go out in the field and see what I can see. And goals are a little bit different than expectations, I would say. If you're saying, like I expect to go out and find evidence, that's a pretty tough proposition. Let alone, I'm

going to go out and acquire proof for the world. And so you know, I certainly have goals, but I think they're as realistic as I can make them, and certainly some are loftier than others, Like I would love

to have the experience of seeing one. I was in communication with the gentleman who read the book and had an interest in starting a dialogue and we're sort of talking through some of the points, and you know, he leans more that the psychological hypothesis is the more likely, and obviously I'm arguing that I think the biological hypothesis is simpler and therefore more likely. But you know, I do agree that there's a psychological phenomenon occurring, whether or not there's a

biological route at the base of it. But I had brought up, you know, of all these years of wishing to see one and hoping and mentally preparing myself, like I've never had that experience, and not only that, but I've never even had one in my dreams, Like I've never even had a a sighting of a sasquatch and a dream that I can recall. And so that's why I kind of giggle a little bit when certain skeptics or cynics would say that, oh, well, the sasquatch is just a wish fulfillment,

it's just a desire people see what they want to see. And I always joke like, well, if that were true, I would have seen one hundred of them by now. So if it is simply a psychological phenomenon, whatever portion of the human psyche produces such images, I must not have it, And I said that could either be a blessing or a bummer.

I suppose, And what I meant by that, it's like, it's still a matter of faith for me that people do have these experiences, because I've interviewed many people, many of whom are great friends, who claim to have seen a sasquatch in broad daylight, unobstructed and I believe them. And could I be wrong, well, sure, but I do believe that they've authentically had that experience. But it's still an act of faith because I can't say

that I know that such experiences occur because it's never happened to me. But I do think those are authentic experiences. I think that the most likely source is something exogenous to the observer and not something indogenous and strictly internal. So I would say, of all the big goals, that's the big goal that is totally out of my reach, is like I would love to see when maybe that never happens. But the more proximal goals like oh, well,

I'm going to get out in the field for four days. I'm going to explore, I'm going to see what's there to be seen. Maybe I'll have some interesting wildlife encounters. Maybe I'll find something really cool or historic or interesting. Like the last time I was out in North Georgia a couple of weeks ago, found a really cool old homestead, like the remnants of a foundation and a chimney all stone and a really remote drainage, And so I love

finding things like that, and those are like little mini goals. Well, I accomplished something. I found something cool, and you know, do a lot of searching online and I don't see that anyone else ever found this, or if they did, they didn't post pictures of it on the internet. And so goals and expectations should definitely be put in their proper place, you know. Yeah, that's it sounds like you're describing like capital G goals and

little G goals. Yeah, because little G goals are I mean, I guess, I guess I do have some of those, but I don't think of them as goals. I think I think of them as like, uh, that would be cool, you know, and that's really about it, you know, like I'd like to see one that would be cool, but that's not really the goal. I mean, that's not what I'm doing here. You know, I'm just I'm just enjoying it. Stay tuned for more Bigfoot and Beyond with Cliff and Bogo will be right back after these messages.

Yeah, And I'm sure you get a lot of people reaching out to ask for advice, and you know that's that's usually the response that I give is to find your expectations and you know, try to conduct yourself accordingly to those expectations and do your best to make them realistic expectations. I think when most people reach out for advice, they want to know, like what audio recorder

do you recommend, or where specifically should I go? And I think, no, there's something else that undergirds all that that needs to be grasped first. And once you grasp that, then you can move on to the next stages of making purchases or you know, going wheels up and putting boots on the ground in places. But if you have a strong foundation and what it is that you actually hope will happen, that you expect will happen, that you would like to happen or like to achieve, then everything else can be

very enjoyable. But like you said, I've seen it really consume a lot of people and destroy relationships from professional relationships to friendships to marriages, you know, and it can be really sad. But I'm sure the same is true and a great many other endeavors. It's just that this one is so much harder for the average person to sign on to because a lot of it is experience dependent. We've had our own experiences, and so that certainly fuels and

informs a lot of our desire to move forward. You know, if you had never found a track, if you had never heard a sound, you know, it would probably be a lot more difficult to find the motivation time and time again. But expect to describe that sound to another person to have them go, hey, I'm totally on board. Like that's just not going

to happen in most cases. And so I think that's where people get so frustrated, is that they want the values that they see in the subject to be immediately conferred to another person and that another person will see it, and it's just not the way our interests work or the way that our brains are wired. And so getting that firm foundational grasp is really a necessary step if someone wants to have any longevity because I cannot tell you, and you probably

ten times more than me. I cannot tell you how many people I've encountered since two thousand and seven, let's say, when I started speaking publicly about it and being involved with BFRO expeditions that were brand new to the subject, just total neophytes who had like the temerity, like this abundance of confidence to say, oh, I'm going to get this thing figured out in a year. And ninety nine point nine percent of those people I have never heard from

again. I've never seen their names anywhere. They just completely engaged. It's like they were so certain that they could take down this foe, so to speak, they could slay this proverbial dragon. And I think they realized pretty quickly how difficult it is. And they don't even back off. They just walk away completely. You know. Yeah, when people ask me advice, I always got to know where what angle they're coming from. But my first advice is basically rewording what you said. It is like, go for a

different reason. Go to the woods for a different reason than encountering a bigfoot, because you know, if you go for another reason like camping or fishing or mushroom hunting or hiking, you'll come back successful nearly one hundred percent of the time. If you go for Bigfoot, you will come back unsuccessful nearly one hundred percent of the time. Then they they kind of laugh, and I go, well, oh, wait a minute, hold on, hate

to interrupt this conversation, Hey bobs, what's happening? Man? I just got all of Texas eighteen Texas some different people last couple of days. I didn't know about the pot waiting to hear something. Anyways, I'm on the bridge, all right now, all right, well, give me a call when you're back on your computer. Okay, Well, actually the link has already been sent. Go ahead and click it and join us. All right, talk to you soon. But well that's good news. Oh bobo,

oh bobo. You know, oh bobo is a palindrome as long as you don't as long as you don't spell oh h Anyway, what we were going to say, I was going to say along those lines of giving advice because there are so many new people. Do you remember when you were new, Like, is there any advice that stuck out with you that still holds true to this day that you're grateful you received in those early days? You know

what. The earliest days I was alone because you know, I'm, as most of our listeners know, I'm a pretty like you know, crippling introvert. In a lot of a lot of ways, I'm a professional extrovert. I'm good at what I do. But you know, I really did this alone from two thousand, I'm sorry, from nineteen ninety three or four up until about two thousand and two thousand and one. That was my first branching out into the Bigfoot land. So I was doing it for six or seven

years alone. So I didn't have a lot of advice. It's just kind of fumbling in the dark. But when I did finally get to a certain point, probably what's stuck with me more than anything is advice or modeling. I guess by Kathy's train and Tommy Amarone basically of documentation about the evidence is very, very important because I went on a little field trip I guess with Kathy and Bob and Mantra and all sorts of people were there. That's where

I met. I already knew Tommy Amarone. He was there and a bunch of good people were there, and it was a weekend workshop of documentation of evidence and I think that that obviously, I mean, if you know who I am as a bigfooter, I think that obviously left an indelible impression upon

me. That evidence is really really important. When you combine that early influence with my general introversion and you know, and low tolerance for extended social interactions, you can see why I don't put a lot of emphasis on siting reports, but I really put a lot on physical evidence. So I don't know if that counts as advice or not, you know, but it's certainly influenced who I am today, you know. And that was twenty something years ago,

twenty five years or twenty three twenty five years ago or something. So yeah, those early influences certainly talent, I suppose. Yeah, I would agree with that. The first minds that I communicated with were in book form on the subject, you know, because I was alone for those early years too, and so I think there was a lot to be gleaned from that.

But I got very lucky that I met people early on when I did start interacting with other people who were kind and friendly and reasonable and not jumping to conclusions and not everything was a sasquatch, And so I look back, and I'm like, that's kind of winning the lottery in a lot of ways,

because it could have easily gone another direction. And so having a sort of a firm series of interactions with those people before I started meeting other people who were a little more loose with their standards of evidence straight on to people who were just completely outlandish or just total liars and hoaxers. I'm glad that I met the right people first, and a lot of those people are still

my friends to this day, thankfully. But yeah, I guess, yeah, the models for emulation are just as important as any words, you know, any like axioms, or aphorisms or adages that you might encounter. But some of those are helpful. But there's also the case that you can tell a young person anything and it just goes in one to ear it out the other. Like that certainly would have happened with me, as I would have

probably not taken as much of the advice as I should have. Yeah, young people, you know, I was young once too, couldn't tell me anything. Yeah, but you know, one of the other pieces of advice that I give because I know what they're asking, you know, when they say what advice do you have like for it? Want to get out there and do field research. And they're out they're asking what you mentioned earlier,

you know, what kind of gear or something like that. So I always sideswipe him with the go for other reasons and you would say, you know, temper your expectations. But realistically, one of the first pieces of advice that I give is look where they've been seen before. I mean, it's as simple as that. Look where they've been seen before, and look for

clusters of reports. And you know what really drove that home is when I was on Finding Bigfoot, you know, because finding Bigfoot was an incredible, incredible education in bigfoot and big footing and all sorts of stuff, and a

lot of amazing lessons came out of that. But money Maker would if there was a report from an area where we happened to be that week, if there was a report from say a campground or something like that that he liked, he trusted it, Maybe he trusted the investigator, maybe he spoke to the witness like something in flats And of course, if you don't know, FLATS is the behind the scenes BFRO database of citing reports. If there was

something in flats that that really tickled his brain for some good way. He would go to that same campground and camp in that same camp site, and he would get activity a significant percentage of the time, you know, like twenty thirty percent of the time or more by doing the exact same things and the exact same places as previous witnesses did. And I think and that really drilled at home. I figured, you know, at the time, it's

like, yeah, animals or are creatures a habit? You know, you go to the same place where they were at a certain time, maybe there's a resource there. But he would do like the exact same camp site and he would get good results a significant percentage at the time. And that really started drilling at home. And now, of course nowadays, as I talk about all the time on the podcast, you know, we're finding footprints within ten feet of where we has them before. So that has really been solidified

in my psyche. So just finding local reports where there's a cluster of reports like maybe two to three four reports or so within five miles, that tells you all you need to know. Go there. Yeah, simply being there in the right environment is a huge step in the process. And I do think because I felt it myself when I was young, and I encounter it with people now that people sort of assume that, well, there's a goal and so therefore there's a path, and so if you take the right steps

in the right order along the path, you'll hit the goal. And so people will say, like what should I do? Like do you knock once or do you knock twice? Do you knock once and wait five minutes? Do you knock three times, wait twenty minutes, as if you know there's some secret code or some combination of actions you can take that will result in Oh, one will definitely show up if you do these things in this specific

sequence. And it just doesn't work that way, and it can get deflating for people because there's really nothing better that you can do than be in the environment and keep your eyes in, the ears open, and be prepared if you have a camera or whatever the case may be. And it feels like inactivity. Oh, you're telling me I should just go camping and sit out

there. That's not very active, it's not very involved. And I suffer from that too, because I'm a pretty kinetic person, so I usually have a hard time sitting still, and I want to explore and walk around and see what's to be seen. But I do know that, like no, the best thing you could do is just be in the right habitat and be still and quiet and very very observant, pay attention, pay close attention.

But it's just not as romantic as the notion of trying to establish communication or you know, mimicking them, emulating them using some secret code that they'll fall for every time. And so I get that part of it, but I think a lot of times that's what people are looking for, is what things should they do that would be surefire ways to summon them in. You know, like Daryl always says, you know, there is no panacea, there

is no magic bullet, and you know, you just get lucky. And the only way, you know, in a right place, right time equation. You try to be in the right place for as much time as you can, and maybe you'll get lucky, and that's really the best you can do. Oh yeah, I totally agree with that. I've been interacting with this one gentleman who wants to throw money at the and there's and I keep telling them there's really no place to put that money. You're just wasting it,

you know. I mean, you could send somebody out with twenty bucks and get the same result as twenty thousand if he's if that person's in the right place at the right time. That's what it comes down to. It's not a money thing, you know. And of course people with a lot of money aren't used to hearing that that your money is no good here. That doesn't help in any way. It's just a matter of luck and perseverance. That's that's really it. So these people don't like to hear that because

people with money think that money can solve anything. And for a lot of things, yeah, it can solve things like debt. It can solve things like I need a vehicle or something like that. But for the most part, with bigfoot, you know, if you're out there, but you know, boots on the ground, you're suddenly your money is no good. You know, your money's not good for anything at all when you're walking on a trail. So it can make you a lot more comfortable and well fed while

you're sitting waiting for something to happen and nothing happens exactly. It can help you pass that time more quickly, but Yeah, that's what I think. That's one of the things I like about the woods. It's like when you're out there, you're off trail, your bottom of some river, river valley somewhere, you're you know, you're going over logs and stuff like that.

Suddenly you know your bank account has absolutely no bearing on anything whatsoever, nor does the type of car you drive or how you dress, except for you know, you might be cold or warm. That's really about it. It's a great equalizer. Certainly agree with that. Yeah, anyway, so I thought these conversations I've been having a couple couple different people with who Someboddy tucked

away. I find them enjoyable because I think I'm correct in this. I know that Bobo took a disagreed a few weeks ago or a month or so ago when we were talking about the same thing. He thinks that gear and whatever else will solve it. But gear can't put you close to one. You know, if you're at the right place at the right time, then maybe your fancy pants gear will help, but maybe not, because you only get a couple of seconds worth of observation to make it happen. So stay

tuned for more Bigfoot and Beyond with Cliff and Bobo. We'll be right back after these messages. Oh, speak of the Devil himself, Bobes, can you hear us? Yeah? I got you? Hey, Bobo? How you doing? Man? All right? Sorry that dude. I was driving. I was pulling up to the stoplight to go over the bridge, and all of a sudden, my phone just went So I just started. Message after message after message came through. I tried to call on Prus. I

wouldn't even dial out. Earlier I was trying. I was going, I'll thought we'd do something booked by now, and then I was like, oh, I haven't heard anything. So I took off and I just got back. Should we should we put the screen grab of when you agreed to do this podcast up on the members section What's up? A couple of days ago. It looks like on at ten oh five am on Monday, you said that we were gonna you were okay to do this podcast? Uh? Well,

the last one I saw said two there Wednesday's best for us. That I'm wide open then anything else okay. Yeah, though the one right after that, I guess it says, okay, let's do Wednesday. It doesn't matter. We're here now. Well, Boba, now that you're here, we were planning on doing a Q and A at this moment, but Matt and I are just kind of shooting the poop about various topics and subjects, et cetera. But since you're here, we have time for a couple of

the submissions. We're gonna save the voicemails for next time, So we're gonna go straight to the written submissions this time and see how many of those we can get through for this month, and then we'll head over to the Patreon section, the member section, uh to answer all of those questions? Sound good? Yeah, okay, it's tough to be the Bobes. Also, you don't get this on any other podcasts. This is gold. Everybody loves this about you, not me. I kind of have a love hate relationship

with it myself, honestly. But all right, well, anyway, let's go on. Let's take the first question for our Q and A this week. This one comes from Brandon cowboc Hey. Guys, Patty's height was calculated by comparing known casts of her foot to the PG film. Are there any other examples of this? And if so, what height did they determine the animal to be? Ooh, I know this one. Take it, yeah, the Freeman footage, now do you take it close? Well, now,

this was not done with the Framan footage, because we don't. The Patterson Giblin film, to my knowledge, is the only piece of bigfoot footage that we have that we can see the entirety of the underside of the foot, the entire planter surface is called, and you need that in order to make a determination using the casts. And of course that is rife with error, by the way, just because of the fuzzy outline of the foot. And it's not because the film is fuzzy and out of focus. It's because

of the granular size of the footage itself, of the individual frames. So there's at least a half inch variability half inch margin of error on the side of each of those footprints, or on the side of each of the pictures of the feet. And you know that stacks up, say six times well six times one half. I mean that that kind of adds up pretty quick, man. So we're talking a pretty big air on either side of the foot. That adds like maybe six inches or subtraxi. So we don't know

exactly how big Patty is. We do have a range, though. The range I think it's this point can safely be said between six and seven feet. I like just to say six and a half feet because with that plus or minus six inches there it adds up. Now somebody's out there saying, well, clip six times one half is three. Yeah, but there's two sides of the foot, right, so don't forget about that. Don't forget about that. So the give or takes six inches there. So I say

six and a half feet tall because that seems pretty safe. Now the model we have in the NABC, because we have a full size picture of Patty with the cast placed right next to her foot to show that they are pretty much the same size. When we did it here at the museum, she only clocked out be like a like right at six feet if I remember right now. Of course, that's very conservative. It's probably the smallest that she is reasonably construed to be. But at the same time, the point of

that exhibit here in the NABC is how massive she is. She's not very tall, but she's you know, thirty one in shoulders or something like that. She is absolutely she is a barrel walking on two legs. She is absolutely huge, even at the smallest expected height of the animal. But to my knowledge, to get back to Brandon's question, there are no other examples of footage that we can do this with. Well, probably the closest would be the Freeman though. I mean, like, you know, seeing the

subject and the footprints right there. Yeah, but you can't use the footprints to measure the height of the figure, right, No, that's true. Did it come in close to being Patty's size your estimations? Right? Yeah, Yeah, the work I've done at the site of she's probably about six six and a half feet tall, that thing, that the Freeman's thing, the Freeman figure. But you know, we also don't even have measurements of the footprints in the ground. Paul didn't put a tape measure down in front.

Also, they're measuring no, no, no, no, Paul just filmed them and kept going. But we do have two casts from that footage site though, Paul cast one. Actually, Paul and West Summerlind both cast, and most people don't know. West cast one of those things, but not the same day. Paul and Wes came back the next day, on the twenty first, of August nineteen ninety two. I'm gonna say that again. By the way, I've seen once again, there's this a whole rash

of misreporting the date of the Freeman film as nineteen ninety four. That is, that is not correct. Some bloggers are out there putting it out there. I saw it on Twitter last week. I kind of held myself back from correcting it. But it's nineteen ninety two. Everybody thinks it's nineteen ninety four because Doug Hichek made that mistake in Sasquatch Legend Meat Science. He put that out there as nineteen ninety four. It's nineteen ninety two. August twentieth

is when they filmed it. But anyway, Paul and West came back on the twenty first with a local TV station camera crew and they cast footprints at the site. There's actually photographs of Paul casting these footprints, and we have that cast, and then there's a much lesser known cast in the Summerland collection taken at that same time in same place. I wish they would have cast

another ten. They should have cast another ten. In my opinion, I would have, but you know me, I'm a little obsessive about those things. But anyway, we do have those, but are they the same animal? Almost almost for sure ninety nine percent, But there's always that margin erring.

You know, we did not see we did not get a footprint cast from where that animal was seen walking, So there's always that was it was there two cents of tracks there too, right, No, there's only one, just one, although Paul did say, oh, I guess there's two of them now. He said that, And I've had long discussions with Michael Freeman about this. We don't know why you said that that. There's a couple possible explanations. Okay, maybe he heard two of them at the same

time. Maybe that's true. We don't really know, can't tell him. The footage now, my recreations at the site indicate that Paul almost certainly lost sight of the thing because when the thing walks in front of the trees over to the left, you know, it pauses behind the trees and looks at Paul and goes over to the left. There's a cut in the camera by the time Paul gets up there. Again. We don't know how long,

how much times happened there. We have no idea, there's no way to know that when Paul gets up there to where the animal actually walked across the road, he's looking in the wrong direction from where the animal went. He's looking back a little bit further by that big stump. He's not even looking in the right direction. And then he eventually finds the animal walking away where

the possible baby lift happens and all that other stuff. Right, So, I think Paul lost sight of the thing and thought there might have been two of them there. But also Michael tells me that when he saw the animal, and of course there's some discrepancy in a story too. I think Michael and I have talked about this, and we think that he kind of chickened out. And for such a big dude, he was like six foot four, two hundred and eighty pounds, he was a big, big dude who

wasn't afraid of anything. You know. His initial report had something like the sasquatch was being aggressive at him, like charged at him or ran at him or did something like that. And we don't know if that's the case for he's cover and for his he kind of chickened out, honestly, is what happened. We don't really know what the thing was, Yeah, because I saw footage. I saw some footage that way back when the right after that

happened, like right around the time it happened ninety two. That was supposedly I think it was, Yeah, ray Crow had it. I think it was ray Crow had it. It must have been some kind of fake or something. Maybe it was a gorilla from Africa footage. But it was like some giant black thing in the brush comes charging a guy tearing it up and he falls down and goes, oh, you know, it starts like kind of crying. You're like going, oh no, Like it looked real.

It sounded real. I mean it was pretty intense and I've never seen it since. But we talked to Michael Freeman. He said, no, that was definitely not his father. Yeah, there's I don't, I don't. I'm not aware of any footage, and I'm pretty aware of the Freeman stuff at this point. It would have came out by how Yeah, there's there's the first Freeman footage. Freeman got footage. I believed the previous April. I have to check the date, but I think it was previous April,

not that far away. And then he got the stuff at d Duck Springs in August, so he did get two pieces of footage. But that first piece of footage really doesn't show very much. It's with the same camera or the same kind of camera. Certainly I think I think it was the same camera. I could be wrong about that, but it really doesn't show very much. There's a couple of footprints in the ground, and really that's about it. That the second one is really stellar compared to the first one.

But yeah, but anyway, when the thing, Paul reports seeing the thing, and Michael says that he remembers his dad talking about a weird hump on its back, almost like it was miss miss mouth shaping, you know, of some sort. And now we're kind of wondering, well, maybe that was a baby, you know, if the thing is picking up a juvenile, maybe that that's what Paul saw, and maybe that's what he meant by

there's two of them, but we don't We just don't know. But the footprints at the site that are on camera, the stuff that we can take to the bank, the stuff that's actually on camera seemed to be a known individual, and that same individual is represented in the footprints that Paul and Wes cast the next day. So that's what that's what we can take. That's what we know. We'll take that to the bank. That that seems to be the same animal that left the Prince and the fine Duff, which is

almost certainly the same animal that Paul filmed. But we digress from Brandon's question. Sorry, it's all right, that's what I think they listen. I think a lot of people listen to this podcast in order to hear us digress. This is a question that comes in a lot, and I know it's been addressed before, but it's been a long time since either of you have addressed it. So this would be good for newer listeners and fans of the show. From Steve Lancaster, when you were getting activity in an area on

finding Bigfoot, why did you guys go to another location? Because we had to book everything in advance, and you had to have film permits for certain days, and because you can't just show up and like get eighteen hotel rooms and six SUVs in some small podunk, little regional airport like we're usually be based out of somewhere like that, and it's just logistics. So it's strictly

logistics because we were We couldn't believe it at first. We were like, we got in here, let's go, well, let's go get them right now while we leave them. But yeah, it's it sounds it sounds like stupid, but it's reality is you had to do it that way if you're going to be on the road. Yeah, every one of the episodes that we filmed what was being planned to some degree for at least three months before we put boots on the ground. They generally tried to get together a day

by day schedule. But after the first season of Finding Bigfoot was done, and you know, we kind of you know, got things going in the Bigfoot direction as opposed to just making television, which is kind of what they were expecting, I think for a long time. You know, once they started seeing and we both both parties, the Bigfooters and the TV production company, once both parties started seeing what the other one needed, they became much

more flexible with us, and we really appreciate it. You know. Of course, you know, we still butted heads and stuff like that, but I think that we made a great show because of that, because the production company was willing to set aside what they normally do to make television and be a little bit more flexible. But generally speaking, things are planned out day by day. You have a certain number of days to be there, and

there's a ton of money writing on that episode. I mean, I don't know how much they cost, but several I think it's safe to say that each episode probably costs several hundred thousand dollars then about four and fifty thousand per episode. But half of that was supposed to be for like post you know, all the editing and sound and all that stuff, right, right, So whatever the number is, it's huge, right, So, and our

production companies are scared because they're there. Their network overlords have given them this giant chunk of money to make them happy. So everything's planned out really well. Now. Of course, the finding Bigfoot thing, because we were so stubborn and because the Bigfooters were just so disagreeable and personality, we kind of had our way a little bit more than perhaps I think a lot of other TV shows. If you're filming in a house somewhere you know, or in

like a ghost show, for example. I have no idea if there've been on a ghost shoot, I don't know, but we had our way a

little bit more. So we eventually got softened softened up the production company to the point where, say, like at a town hall meeting, if somebody showed up with a picture or a footprint, cast or some amazing story that we're super excited to be involved in, they would actually let us do those things instead of the one or two ringers that we had in the audience in case nobody else could showed up, because no matter what, we had to

make a show. So we'd raid the BFROO database or Bobo's friends or my database, and then we make sure that we had enough witnesses so we can film a show no matter what. But if somebody showed up, that was even better. We'd bump somebody and take them instead. And that is a huge degree of flexibility. But still nothing is so flexible that like, Okay, well, you know what, we're supposed to go to West Virginia next week, Let's just forget about that and stay at the spot an extra few

days. You can't do that. You just can't do that because the money and the expectations, and the fact that all of the production schedule had already been more or less planned out with some wiggle room in there three months ahead of time. So that's pretty much why. Because at the end of the day, Finding Bigfoot isn't bigfooting. It's a TV show about some bigfooters kind

of. That's really what it comes down to. It's a TV show first and foremost made by a TV show network, by a TV show production company for TV viewers. If you want bigfooting, go bigfooting. But we did a pretty good job at it. I'd say, I mean, I I don't like TV, but I mean, I mean I laugh at some of our TV shows now because it's been so long, I don't. I don't. I can't remember like, oh, you know, like Bobo was being a jerk that to me that episode or something. You know, I was

like, I don't think of it like that anymore. You know. I was never a jerk to you. No, No, you never were. But I mean I didn't want to pick on money Maker or Ana either, so I just said you it was most like it was most likely Moneymaker or Renee. I'm just teasing. But but nonetheless, I don't. I don't look at the I'm not close enough to the episodes now that I can look at it and go, oh that that one sucked because of this or something

like that. You know now now they're just funny. They're a lot funnier than I remember them being. You're welcome. Stay tuned for more Bigfoot and Beyond with Cliff and Bobo. Will be right back after these messages. This next question comes from Mike Carey. Hello there, y'all. Love the show, and yes, I am a believer. As a child, my family camped at what I think was tish Tang campground. I remember a fish lake near Hoopa, California. Indigenous people at the nearby store said that they never

go there because there is something odd about it. Do you know this area? Is there a fish lake? Do you know if the Indigenous people have an area they are freaked out by? Up there? Are there areas there that y'all won would not go to. Again, Love the show and keep it squatchy, Yeah, I mean tish Tang's definitely. That's the very southern border of Hoopa. When you go on the reservations coming up from Willakirk. It's a killer campground. I love that spot. It's beautiful. They cleaned

it up a lot. It's anchor. The guy was on the show with us. His daughter runs it and they did a good job of keeping it cleaned up. And it's usually empty. I mean it's usually pretty empty, and you can access there's a killer swimming spot. There's a big swimming hole in a rock you can jump off, and yeah, I love that. And that's also where Al Hotston cast in also nineteen ninety two. I think it was ninety two, Yeah, i'll cast or was it eighty eight?

Shit, I can't remember. It was tier eighty eight or ninety two, but anyways, that was the cast. I got a cast copy from him, and that was the print that the that was the model for my big foot print tattoo on my arm. Was that cast from tish Tang? You have a copy of that print? I did. You don't know what happened to it, that's gone. Oh that's unfortunate. I didn't even know they made molds of it. Then, Yeah, I've seen that cast. Of course it was a sand copy. Oh okay, right, that makes sense.

Yeah, the eighty nine, by the way, I'm just looking it up. That's nineteen eighty nine. Oh okay, yeah. So but yeah, the Indians were afraid to go there for a long time because about three hundred years ago, there was a chieftain. They had like seven villages and that was the furthest one south and the headman of that village. You know,

it was a small little village, a couple of whatever families. They had seven seven I think girls live there, and supposedly sasquatches came in raided the place kidnapped all seven of the girls and that's why Tishtang was abandoned and no one lived there for I mean, no one's still no one lives there. Well, Eager's daughter lives there, but other than that, no one lives there. Beautiful area, the good swimming hole fish Like, yeah,

that's that's definitely squatchy. Ut there's been there's stuff still reported out of there. I mean that's a pretty consistent spot. There's just always people camping. There's the problem, like you just feel a sneaking there in the winter, like when they close the gates because there's like three miles from the road, you can cruise in there and have it all to yourself. But there's always people in there now, Like there's always like illegal campers and people fishing in

there because they stock it. It is a great campsite though. I mean even when there are people there, there are sasquatches around. Just said, I wouldn't go around knocking and calling. It's disrespectful to the other people. You don't need to there either. I think it's counterproductive of that spot. Yeah, there's that road that goes around the whole thing. I'd love to walk that road tonight. I'd never have. You haven't, Yeah, you

have. No, I've never walked the entire around the entire lake at night on that road. I I've done that quite a few times. No, I never have, because I mean, I mean I used to camp at fish Fish Lake if after long like a twelve hour drive up there when I lived in Long Beach or whatever. But nowadays you know now that it's only like seven hours away or something. If there's somebody staying there, I just won't stay there. I know too many other spots in the area. I

don't sit there in probably fifteen years. But it's a cool spot. I like. The whole area around there was great. Yeah, when I was a bluff last time, which I think was a year ago, September or something like that, it's the last time I made it down to Bluff Creek. I did drop by there. I didn't camp there because two of the camp sites it might be there's kind of a lot of campsites. I mean how many boats, probably one hundred or eighty fifty maybe what at fish Lake?

Yeah, I think there's sixty or something like that. Okay, right in there. Yeah, two of them were occupied, and that was too much for me. And talk about history. That that wasn't Irwin? What it was that Guy Erlin? You know, I just found an article on him. No really, yeah, well, I mean he's in the article about Bigfoot. Yeah. I was helping out the Humble Historical Society and we got like thirty five years of back or thirty years of back newspapers from the

time standard. They were getting rid of all their old puplicate copies and there was just a warehouse of this stuff. So I was helping go through those and I found a couple of big Foot articles. I found the stuff from two thousand and seven, the thing we threw it will look quick remember for the fortieth anniversary. Oh yeah, yeah, that was that was in there, and then an article related to that. Irwin was in there, and they had his age wrong and had some of the story wrong. With Yeah,

it's uh, he was. They mentioned him in there and he was talking about fish Lake. That's where he brought up, like fish Lake. I've seen him there twice and I've heard him there many times. So yeah, it goes way back. I hope you saved those Yeah, I did. That's cool. That's really cool. They have a picture of them. No, no, okay, yeah, because as I've only heard of that dude through you. Yeah, but I was spelling his name wrong the whole time. It was E R W I N. Well how cool is that?

Though? That's neat? Yeah, I was stoked. I was like, no way, there's ever one. All right, well, next question? All right, we got our next question from Steve Wood. How the world do you guys separate the wheat from the chaff when it comes to reports? After listening to hundreds, I'm reasonably certain I could put one together. Must be an absolute minefield. Do you have my sympathy? And you were one hundred percent right. It's gotten way easier to write. I mean,

if you want to make a fake report, it's pretty easy. That's why you got to talk to the person a few times and hopefully go to the spot with them. But Yeah, people that just take reports over the internet, it's rough. I mean, even if you go onto the site, you know, there they could be mistaken what they saw and like just talking soults inding like they're absolutely positive what they saw that they really weren't or Yeah.

That's why I guess Cliff doesn't focus on reports too much unless there's footprints or other evidence. Yeah, that's my My approach is that, yeah, okay, so you say you saw one. Great, now what you know and like? And I understand that, you know, seeing a sasquatch is a big deal for the person who saw it, et cetera. But for me, it's just another one of the several thousand people I've spoken to that say they did see one and I don't know if they did. To you

know, to use Matt Pruit's terminology, it's a claim. It's like, all right, who cares? I'd love Tom Powell. Been thinking a lot about Tom Powell late length, by the way, because Tom singers like, oh you saw a sasquatch. Guess what, nobody cares. I love that attitude. I don't necessarily exactly agree with it, because I do think that time and when and where is important has some level of importance to it, but generally speaking, yeah, I don't know if you're lying. How would

I know if you're lying? I mean, body language tells me a little bit, because I did teach ten year olds after a while. I was a fifth grade teacher for a lot of my career, and basically everybody is still ten years old in one way or another. But still, Okay, So you saw a bigfoot, that's great, Okay, when and where cool? I know that spot or I didn't know that spot, And we'll see

if other people corroborate that. Because if a group of Sassquatches is in the area, it is my opinion they stay in that area, and it's also my expectation I suppose that eventually somebody else will see one they're too. We'll see if that happens, and if it doesn't, then that's I mean, that spot may not be something I want to look into anyway, you know, unless it's really local and it's easy for me to get into, you know, in which case I'll be all over it. But I don't know.

You tell me you saw one in northern Washington somewhere. It's like, what am I going to do about it, so, yes, Steve, I guess if the Cliffs perspective is just don't put too much importance on any given sighting unless there's physical evidence associated with it. Anything else to add not really Okay in that case, let's go to the last question of this day. This comes from Gary White. Did you hear about the one hundred thousand

chinook salmon dumped into a river in Northeast Oregon? Sounds like a big foot buffet. I did hear about that? Yeah, I mean too, Yeah, I thought that was kind of interesting. It's say, well, that's what an interesting experiment that might turn out to be, you know, five to eight years down the line, when the salmon are returning. Pretty cool, Pretty cool. I mean, as far as mistakes go, I think

that's a pretty good mistake to make. I don't know if they'd bond that creek though, I mean, I don't know if they would or not. I'm sure they're just fingerlings right like they were planting. Uh huh, I'm sure of it. Yeah. Yeah, So I thought that they're like chemically bonded like a certain creek, Like it's in their genetics, like that's where they're going to head. I don't know. I just I don't know.

I don't know if that's true or not. Yeah, so I guess that's part of the experiment, maybe because there's got to be some marine biologists or you know, fish biologists of some sort that would be kind of fascinated with that question, like if that's true. And I don't know if that's true or not. I mean, I just assume it is for the sake argument. If that is true, how cool would that be to see how many

fish return? Well, I know they've done stuff like that where they took salmon that were from this creek, whatever, stream or river and they needed to replenish somewhere else, like there's an oil spit whatever whatever, I mean, something like that, and they put them there. Then the offspring of them still go to where the parents were spawned, usually like more than not. Well, we'll see what happens when they might have just started a new

salmon run some river somewhere, who knows. But anyway, back to the bigfoot side of this question, do you think a bigfoot buffet or probably more of a bird buffet than anything. Yeah, I think just everything's going to exploit that. Oh yeah, yeah, they they need poor little salmonids that do make it through good luck returning. Hope you do right, Yeah, we'll see. I forgot the end of that creek. Yeah, I forgot it too. I saw a picture of the truck rolled, but I didn't.

I don't don't remember the name of it. Yeah, I think the article I saw, though. I love the way they did it. They framed it as bad news, good news, bad news like bad news, truck accident, you know, one hundred thousand salmon, you know, truck accident, blah blah. Good news it rolled over to creek, you know, bad news like a lot of the fish died. Good news, a lot of them are going to live, you know. So it was kind of a funny way they presented it, right. So that's a last question

there. Thank you for all that, by the way, and we'll get to the voicemails next time we do this next month. Here. Thank you for everybody for submitting questions. If you would like your question answered, If you have some sort of question that's this burning a hole in your mind there that you got to ask Cliff and Bobo, well, feel free to do

so. You can either go to the links in the show notes, here and I'm sure Matt Pruh will provide, or go to the Bigfoot and Beyond podcast dot com and hit contact, and that's the place you can leave a voicemail, you can send us an email. You can do all sorts of stuff over there, including listening to all the various episodes all the time, all throughout all human history. But also of note that seems like we should

mention you get tired of those ads? Anybody out there? Tired of those advertisements that keep popping up and breaking the melodious chain that is my voice in Bobo's voice interact. There's a way to circumnavigate that. Now you can become a member of Bigfoot and Beyond. It's five bucks a month, and for that five bucks, not only do you get completely advertisement free episodes just like the one you're hearing right now, but with no ads, but you also

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button and it'll it'll answer all your prayers, all right. It was a local creek going to the im Naja River in Northeast Ore. Again. Good luck, little guys. Yeah, hope you make it all right, folks. Well, thanks for joining Bigfoot and Beyond with Cliff and Bobo. We appreciate it as always, so thanks for joining us, and we're gonna go hit the Patreon account now and do another episode. So thanks a lot and until next week, you'all keep it squatchy. Thanks for listening to this week's

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