Ep. 309 - Wes Germer!

guests on. I like the Variety and the show. And you know, even with my show being Sessquatch Chronicles, amlingly interview eyewitnesses, and I don't think I'd quite have the show if it weren't for you guys doing finding Bigfoot, you know, with the whole I know, you guys get a crap for finding Bigfoot, but really it was the start of bringing eyewitnesses forward, you guys going out doing the investigations. You guys really were the first ones to start that. Well, I don't know.

totally get that for the most part. But by and large, you know, the show and I don't think any of us as cast members on Finding Bigfoot really understood this right at least at first, you know, it sank and eventually Bigfooters were not the target audience, you know, the target audience or the general public who doesn't know anything about it and kind of introducing them to this whole thing.

Bigfooters all have an opinion, but they also all have buttholes and they all stink too, So like it doesn't matter what they say.

bugs don't shut off. The crickets don't shut off. What's your guys' take on the forest just going quiet.

like that underwater feeling kind of. I think that's they're infrastounding us, and like the infrastund shuts everything down, is what I think. But I'm sure Cliff and metelhouse some kind of scientif an exploation for that is not that, But that's my take.

But as far as I can tell with sasquatches, and I've been around them fair amount, you know, in my opinion, maybe I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure I have. I don't think there's a pattern as far as that sort

of thing goes. If people do describe that sort of thing, especially with some sort of kind of a murky or a fuzzy description of some other sensory input or response, I would agree with Bobo that is probably infrasonic, because as doctor Krantz even noted in his book that many people note the feeling of being watched even before they observed the sasquatch that they later found out was in

the area. So I do think that infrasound is the most likely culprit, so to speak, of all the weird spooky stuff that may or may not even happen around sasquatches, but are certainly prevalent in the stories.

the experiences. But I think one really important insight that I had gained from studying a number of other disciplines was that when something novel emerges, and especially if it's something novel and threatening, you know, we have a hardwired response that's called the orienting reflex, where essentially you involuntarily direct all your attention to the novel thing that's emerged.

So in those cases, all of your cognitive resources get devoted to this myopic tunnel vision assessment of the novel or the threat. And so you'll see this phenomenon in people too that have other frightening, threatening encounters. For example, like if you've ever been driving down the road and someone swerves into your lane and you think you're about to get hit head on, and people will report the

absolute disappearance of all other sensory information. And so in retrospect it's like, well, you know that there was a song on the radio, or you were listening to a podcast or this or that. But you know, I've asked many people like you ever had that experience, and they'll say, yes, I'm big what song was on the radio? And they're like, oh, I have no idea because it's not committed to memory.

It's deemed immediately irrelevant by your cognitive systems, almost like neurobiologically, and so in memory, it's as if there was nothing on the radio. And so I think there's a large

number of these cases, not all of them. I'm not trying to explain them all away, but I think for a number of people going about their business and what they perceived to be sort of explored territory, and then this novel, frightening thing emerges and they direct all their focus and attention to it, again involuntarily, it's against their will. They have no agency in that. In those systems being activated in memory, they're thinking like there was an absence

of forest sounds where they may not have been. It's just that none of those were experienced and therefore none of those were committed to memory. So I think that constitutes a large number of those cases. And there are, to your point, like a handful where people say like they observed first that the forest went silent, and then observed something. But in all the people I've interviewed, that

tends to be on the rarer side. Most people just have this frightening, shocking experience and then you know, describe like the absence of sounds and all very often like, well when did you notice the absence of sounds? And oftentimes it's like during the event or in the recollection of the event. So I think that constitutes a big portion of it, if that makes sense.

just kind of slowed down. In that car accident to where I. You know, you would think I would hear the crash, but I really don't remember hearing the crash. Is it like fear, do you think, Matt? Is that what you're saying is it's your brain chutting down the things you don't need at that moment.

like explored territory. So you know, if someone were to send you to a habitable earth like planet that no human had ever gone to, you would know that like, oh, man, I might encounter some life form that no one's ever seen, Like you'd have some preparation, you'd be you'd have that as part of your perceptual system. People just don't feel that way when they're in Kentucky or northern California or

you know, Utah or something like that. And so when something like that emerges, it's shocking because it is completely unknown, it's totally novel, and so that's the sort of first shock, and the immediate response in the face of novelty is the orienting reflex, coupled with the involuntary freezing response, which is called tonic immobility, and so you know, you're basically paralyzed involuntarily. That's conserved across all primates, but especially humans,

great aps, et cetera. And then one of the first things that we try to do is map the anomaly, which is sort of like a categorization exercise. And as you know, like these things when you talk to witnesses, this blurs the lines of so many categories that most people will say, like they spent those seconds cognitively going what am I looking at? Like it's kind of like a person, and it's nothing like a person. It's kind of like a bear. It's nothing like a bear, kind

of like an animal, it's nothing like an animal. And so they're unable to map the anomaly, so to speak, and so that creates a sort of cognitive shock that's simultaneous with the physiological shock, you know, the thing that's instantiated in your body. And then on top of all those things, you have the basic predator prayer response, because there's no older fear than the fear of like the

large intimidating animal, the thing that's bigger than us. You know, we're all here because our ancestors successfully navigated that at least long enough to reproduce, right, And so I think it's a host of things novelty, you know, the unknown in the form of a large intimidating animal that's very

difficult to categorize without a lot of prior exposure. So you know, if you studied sasquatch your whole life and you went into the forest hoping or expecting to see one, you might have a different response versus as you know, because I listen to your podcast and you'll say, like, what do you think about this, and the vast majority of your interviewees say like, oh, I thought it was all nonsense until I saw it, or yeah, I heard stories, but I never took it seriously, and so bam, you

have these multiple systems like failing all at once.

feel like it's being imposed upon you. So I think that explains a lot of it, not all of it. I'm not trying to write everything off, but I think that's a way to bridge the gap between acknowledging that people are really genuinely having these experiences that people want to write off as oh, that's just paranormal, therefore it's

a lie. It's like, no, there's a perfectly normal explanation that says, like, these animals can't exist and these experiences are real, devoid of a metaphysical explanation.

six months? I'm going to give me six months go squatching squad of course, of course, And how much do you think is going to get done during that time? In squatching you're gonna see one in six months? Probably not, But in three to six months, what you can see if you're not going to see a sasquatch, is thicker, fuller hair regrown from Hymns our sponsor, Hymns. Not bad for just three to six months.

If you listen to enough interviews with people with grizzly bear encounters, especially people who are attacked very often, it's because they spook to grizzly at close range, and one of the first things they go into, especially if they're not a woodsman, like not a grizzly hunter or somebody with a lot of experience, they immediately go into cognitive shock and a dissociative state and tonic immobility and bammed.

Then the attack happens, and you know, grizzly bears aren't generating some force that's compelling the person to respond that way. It's just the normative human response.

And I thought it was interesting because he said right away a voice came into my head said you need to get out of here now. And I always bring that up with people who claimed telepathic communication with sasquatches. Is that are we to believe that grizzlies can do this as well? Because that happened to that man. I thought, I always think that that's really interesting as far as some of the stuff that you're talking about there, Matt.

But also back to the original thing about noises and no noises and stuff of it's not exactly it's not exactly in response to the question necessarily, but I do think it's worth pointing out that number one when we were on Finding Bigfoot, and you know, I learned a lot about finding sasquatches on the show, of course, because Moneymaker is very good at it. You know, I will

say that till the day I die. You can talk whatever smack you want about the show or mat or anybody else, but Matt Moneymaker is one of the best in the world and actually finding where sasquatches are. And one of the things I learned from him is always you know, it didn't take long to figure it out. A lot of this stuff out, of course, but always look for where all the animals are, because the forest, just like the ocean, is largely empty.

So the loudest place, you know, the place for the animals are crunching around doing their thing and moving and making noises and all that owls we always use owls as an indicator species because if owls are in the area, that means the rodents are in the area, and then the food chain continues from there, right So, And I'm not sure which way to go in this either because at the same time, on the other side of the coin, the very coin I'm talking about right now, I have

found that some of the best sasquatch spots are places where it's deadly quiet all the time. So it's a little bit of both as far as noises in the woods. And I know that's not in direct response what you're saying, Wes, but I do find that there's a certain dichotomy here.

woods themselves is not a visual observation. I mean, it's nighttime, for example, and you know the forest is thick, you can't you just can't see very far. I think that the vast majority of their observation of their environment, of the animals, including humans in their environment, is by listening, and therefore I think that they gravitate towards those really quiet places so they can tell if something comes in or out very easily.

everything went quiet, even the cricket shut up. And it makes me wonder sometimes. And you know, you might be right, Bobo. With the infrasound, it's really hard to say it's that. And I've always been fascinated with when people say that feeling of being watched, and you know, I don't. I'm not saying that's anything paranormal. But I interviewed Rocky Elmore, who's a border patrol age, and he told me what they would do is they would sit on the side of a path in the bushes and they would hear

the people coming through on the path. And it's funny, because well it's not funny. It's interesting that the government actually has instructions on not to look at the people as they pass by, so they're trained to actually look at the ground as the people are going by. And I asked Rocky why, and he goes, because people know when they're being watched. They absolutely know when they're being watched, and a lot of times they'll look in the direction

of them being watched. And so I've been fascinated with that since too as well. I'm kind of getting off track, but.

doging me from across the rooms. Like I don't know what I did, but I wasn't even facing his direction, you know, when I kind of like felt compelled to turn around and see what was going on behind me because I felt something, I just didn't know what it was. And they go, oh, the why is that guy staring at me? And then it kind of occurred to me.

it's interesting, like I've experienced. I can't recall a memory involving insects, but like many times because I'm out in the summertime a lot, and you have a lot of tree frogs and frogs and all the pools of collected water on roadbeds or just anywhere on the ground, and there's been like plenty of times that I've been walking through a loud forest and I've made a noise, whether I'm like stepping on a stick that breaks or something like that in the dark, and all the frogs go quiet,

and like the proximal ones start first, and then it's like this wave of silence that extends out beyond you. Like the frogs at the distance maybe they didn't hear the stick break, but they heard the other frogs go quiet,

and so they go quiet too. That that might occur in some of these cases where proximal to the sasquatch moving or being seen, like critters go quiet and then it just extends out as other critters noticed the silence, and there's got to be some beneficial adaptation of like, well they go quiet involuntarily for like self preservation, and so it'd be good for all of your species if you notice that your your buddies are setting up that like, oh,

I better shut up too because something's coming, you know. So there might be something to that. At least maybe that extends to insects or birds as well.

a timer. And I go, what do you mean they're on a timer? And he goes, listen to crickets. They will do their noise for like thirty seconds and then they'll stop for ten seconds, and then it'll turn back on for thirty seconds and then they'll stop. And if you notice, they're all in in sequence with each other. And it was kind of fascinating because this creature would only move when the cicadas and the you know or whatever it was, the crickets would be loud, and the

minute they would stop, it would stop moving. He could hear it stop moving in the forest and I thought that was kind of fascinating.

So whatever percentage of their diet consists of animal protein, you know, if they're grabbing prey, they would just never eat if they constantly, if they were like generating something that let everything know like, hey, I'm here all the time versus you know, these these other examples. But yeah, that's that's an interesting one for sure.

if that was the case. But I think that if if a sasquatch says it finds us camping in their zone and they're saying this isn't cool, they might they might be over there growling, But I would agree that they certain in my opinion, they almost certainly do not know that we cannot hear any infrasonic noises that they emit in the same sort of way that I'm convinced that they don't know that we can't see in the dark, because you know the thermal imaging shots that are available

out there. They're all hiding, you know, Like, why would they be hiding from us if they know that we can't see them in the dark. Right, So it's like when I was in fifth grade and somebody told me that dogs are color blind. I couldn't really wrap my head around that because I wasn't colorblind. I think that they have the same sort of intellect, you know that outside of their experience, it's really hard for them to

figure that out, you know. So why would they be making noise if they can hear it and we can't. They wouldn't know that we can't hear it.

about that. Oh. I had this guy on the show one time and he I always used the Finding Bigfoot illustration. I'm like, you know, and he watched the guys on Finding Bigfoot how it looks like they're lit up when like Cliff or Bobo or Renee, they had their cameras right in front of their face, and I was like, they're actually walking around there dark. That's actually this infrared light hitting them. And I know a lot of people have wondered if Sasquatch could actually see that infrared light.

Obviously I don't know, but this is just an illustration of what someone told me. But he had these things on his property, right, and he was trying to get them on video. And he goes out there one night and he's up on this hillside and I know the camera camera ed was a cannon. It was a night visioning camera where you press a button and that infrared light kicks out. Well, without that infrared light, you just

have starlight to kind of see. And he sees these two guys down below him while he's up on this ridge and it looks like they're talking to each other. He's like, is that my neighbor? Is that my neighbor on my property? And you know, he totally threw bigfoot out the window for some reason. He was like, it's got to be one of my neighbors. And he was on the starlight portion of the camera. Well, he clicked

that button. And I know the camera because I used to own one as well, But he clicked that button and that infrared beam comes out, which really lights it up when you're looking through the eyehole of the camera. The minute he hit that button, it was two of these creatures. They both turned and looked right at him, like he had turned on a flashlight or something and

shined it right on them. And so it does make me wonder, you know, if they can see in these different spectrums or hear in these different spectrums that we can't.

below the human ability to detect. And so I had a number of pictures from these stationary cameras where animals would walk right by them during the daytime and never look at them all seasons, you know, so summer you could assume it'd be noisy with like insects sounds the day and night in the wintertime when it's totally dead and quiet, and during the daytime they'd walk right by, and at night they'd stop and look right at the camera.

And so I don't think it was that they were hearing it or that they were smelling it, because then you'd think, well, hearing and smelling are not light dependent, because the camera's not firing that ir flash during the daytime, and you know, if they were hearing it smelling it, they should be just as interested in it as day or night. But it was only at night that they'd stop and stare and look right at that flashing light.

And so most mammals that operate at night, can see into the infrared range or the near ir range at the very least, So to me, it would make perfect sense that these things could too.

a little bit at least into the for red. And number one is the Kentucky pancake video, which I think is legitimate and its attributed again to Matt Moneymaker, was part of the Ericson project where the lady put out the thing of food in that infrared spotlight and it did not enter the spotlight when the sasquatch came up to grab it, it stayed at the edge of the spotlight and reached in and picked up the plate and sat there at the edge outside the light and ate

the thing, which I thought was interesting. And also the case when Bobo and I were out at the water spot and we had sasquatches there that night. It was one of the crazier nights I've ever experienced, and I think Boba would probably back that up. The thing was making as much noise as it possibly could to scare us away by splashing in the water of this swampy area that we were camped next to. That's what we call it, the water spot, and it was just going crazy.

It's going like bananas. And then I had one of those Sony night shot cameras because this is way I don't even know what year, Bobo, what do you think, like two thousand and two or three or something. I've no idea. You're five six, I have no idea.

got to be you know what is that, Bobes. You're good at distances one hundred and twenty yards or something like that.

went dead quiet. So I've got two data points to sup support my hypothesis on that one. I do think they see in the infrared.

this guy set up his camp. And the next day he decides to go for like this long walk and he comes back to his camp and all of his stuff had been gone through like a person had gone through it. And I'd asked him if anything was missing, and he said that this guy does road construction. And he said that his bright orange vest, anything bright orange, was taken out of his bag. And so he really thought someone was screwing with him that night or during,

you know, the whole time he was out there. Well, that night he falls asleep and he heard this huge crash through the bushes, and this thing sprincester his camp and as it ran by his tent, it actually ran its hand across the top of the tent, or what he assumed was the hand across the top of his tent. And so now in his mind, you know, this is someone. So he jumps out of his tent with a gun, and there's nothing, and he talked about the force being silent.

He said, everything was dead silent, no crickets, nothing, and we kind of talked about that earlier. But the next day he goes out, decides to go hiking again, and he leaves. And every time he went hiking, he was

there for a total of three days. Every time he went hiking, he would always leave the same way and come back the same way, and same thing he would he took off, he went hiking, he came back to his camp and his tent was actually the stakes were pulled up and the tent was turned one hundred and eighty degrees away from the woodline. And so again that

night there's weird things going on. He said he felt like there was pebbles being thrown at his tent and he couldn't really and he would yell at whoever this was. He was like, you know, I got a gun, I'm gonna shoot you, and no response back, nothing, And during the day it would be quiet. It seemed like it only happened at night. He couldn't really figure out how this person unless they hiked in, because there's really nowhere to kind of drive into where he was at well.

The third day, he gets up, he goes for a hike and he leaves the same way he always leaves to go for a hike when he you know, exits the camp and on his way back, he kind of got turned around and he couldn't figure out exactly how to get back to his camp. So he takes a little bit of time trying to get back to the camp and he comes back from a completely different route. And when he came back to camp, he said he was kind of coming in quietly in case this person

was in the camp. He was going to confront him. Before he left. That morning, he actually put his fire out, and you know sometimes those fires kicked back up if you really don't dump water on them, or you know a lot of winds going on, those coalsl kick back up. Well, this fire had kicked back up, and he had thought he'd put it out, but when he walked into camp, what he saw was like this four foot tall creature and what it was doing is it was grabbing the logs out of the fire and it would look at

him and drop one, grabbing another one. Look at it and he said it would make it was making really odd noises like ooh ah. And it was really the expressions on its face, he said, reminded of him, well love like a kid, you know, a kid in wonderment or a kid that's amazed. And one time he had reached in and actually grabbed one of the logs and he sitting there watching this from the woodline. He described this whole creature. It was black, it was covered in

kind of a reddish blackish hair. The last time I grabbed a log, he thinks it burned its hand because it dropped the log and it screamed. And when it screamed, he said, it was like almost like a pain scream. But he said it was so loud, just the sound of saying coming off. And he goes, this creature really wasn't that big. He goes, I'm talking four four and a half feet tall. But when it screamed, he goes, I felt the scream. I felt like my organs felt

like they were shaking when this thing screamed. And it ended up running off and he packed up and got you know, got out of there. But I've had a I had a guy run out of Bumping Lake, this older gentleman, he was in that area he was camping and he had called me. He doesn't believe in Bigfoot, by the way, he said, it was some ape, but he had pulled into He was actually camping on the lake.

He had pulled in set up his camp. He said the sun was just going down and he was starting to light a fire when this ape looking thing came crashing into his camp and he said it looked pissed. He said that the face on it was pure rage, and he didn't know what it was. He didn't know why this thing was pissed off. He told me he thought it was an ape that probably escaped from the zoo. But as he described it, I mean, this ape is eight feet tall. It's huge. I mean, there's nothing about it. It

sounds like an ape. But it had actually picked up his cooler and had thrown it. And he goes, when I talk about it, and he goes, this cooler was full of water, ice, all my food. He goes, I was going to be there a week. It was a heavy cooler. He said, this thing picked it up like you and I would pick up a shoe and just toss it. And he said it had white teeth, had teeth like a man. He said, had big, square teeth, and it was just pissed. And he thought that this

thing was going to kill him. And he said it would growl and it would mumble, and he said, you know, my little dog does that. He goes, when my dog's growling, it almost sounds like it's like it's grumbling to itself. He goes, that's kind of what this thing was doing. It eventually left, but before it left, it screamed at him, and he goes. The weirdest part about it screaming, He goes, it almost like did a bow, but its head wasn't facing the ground. It was facing me. And he said

it just went out. He could see it taking all this breath and it screamed at him and like you were saying bubbo earlier with like infrasound. He goes, I felt like I was stunned, you know, And that might have been fear. I mean, I probably would have said the same thing if something that big was screaming at me. But and he said it went marching off into the forest. It didn't really run off, he said, it just kind

of walked back into the forest. He got in his truck and left, and he called me and said, he told me exactly where his camp was at, and he goes, I left behind thousands of dollars of stuff. He goes, if you want it west, it's yours. I'm not going back. And this guy was like in his late sixties. But he refused to say it was bigfoot because he did you know, bigfoot doesn't exist. He was sure it was some ape that escaped from a zoo or something like that,

which in you know, makes no sense at all. But you guys know that area bumping the lake, don't you.

a hole and I was due to my biz. All of a sudden, I got something ran at me full speed through the woods like big heavy bipeople just boom, boom boom, and I said, damn it, I'm taking a turn, get the hell out of here, and it just stopped. And then later that night, I was with my buddy Jamie Jayden and he had like a nine months old some of them. We were in the same tent and there was two smaller ones going back and forth around, going into the camp and out of the camp, and

like you know, it was dragging. It's doing that whole thing about running its fingers along the side of the tent as it walked by on the roof, and just that mumbling like you can't make out words or language, but it's like you know, something's talking about. You can't make anything out if you're hearing that, like grumbly, low mumbling stuff. And I've heard some screams there, and yeah, stuff's happen when I've been there. Yeah, it's a great spot.

of that. You know, it's ridiculous to me at least because the spots that I'm working, we're finding the same individual's footprints year round, just just a few miles apart. It's mostly an elevation change and that's really all it is. But again, you got to look at the zones, right,

So what is it about that area? It's probably going to come down to well, food, water and cover, and with sasquatches, you have to look a little bit further and think about strategic terrain, what sort what features in that environment enable them to get a step up on whatever animals are going after, or on the converse, using the same skills to create some sort of defensive strategy. What can I observe what's going on and then get

out quickly? And it probably has to do with the steep sides to that, I mean, because it's not all isolated the bumping Lake. I mean, I've seen footprints from a place called Rattlesnake. I think it's a creek just a little bit up the slope from there. The next valley over produces stuff too, So it's that zone. There's a group of sasquatches in that zone that probably stay there most if not all, of the year, essentially just move up and down the slopes depending on what the

weather's doing. But once they are there, and this has been coined as the halibut effect, you can look at locations that were active twenty fifty, one hundred or more years ago, and if the area has not changed dramatically, in other words, been paved or something like that, the

sasquatches are almost certainly still there. Whatever it is about the zone, they stay in the same area and I'm really interested to see that if after Discovery Day happens, after these things are academically accepted species here in North America that you can study using wildlife biology methods and things like that, if there's going to be some sort of like you know, for lack of better terms, almost like a cultural territory where like families have lived for

generations and they just don't leave because that's what they do, you know, because why leave if everything you need is there? And so it's going to be interesting to see. I think that that will be on the table after academic acceptance of the species and maybe has something to you know,

we can look at ourselves. I think when we look when we look towards sasquatches as well as the other ape species, we're holding mirrors up to ourselves, right because we learn about say like the process of grieving through studying chimps, you know, or compassion or warfare for that matter, by studying chimpanzees. Right, Well, it goes two ways. We can look at ourselves and learn and at least hypothesize a little bit about sasquatches I believe, you know, I mean,

they're not humans by any stretchy imagination. But they're in our family. Just like you can learn a little bit about your say, your brother or sister by looking at yourself, you can learn a little bit about their species by looking at ourselves. And the fact that many of us are home bodies and like have seventh generation Oregonian or whatever these people claim, you know, that kind of stuff, you can probably find some sort of parallel behavior in their species based on our own, you know. So, I

don't know, it's going to be interesting. And these areas, there's something about them. They like, everything they need is there, and at the end of the day, if you have everything you want, why leave, you know? And that might be a generational, multi generational phenomenon for all I know.

et cetera. But because resources are paturally distributed, like in a given forest, you know, the fruit let's say, berries, apples, whatever the case, maybe is not evenly distributed. You know, they'll be in patches or you know, certain clusters of certain foods. So there's this spatial mapping that's required to locate and memorize places the most beneficial routes of ingress

and egress to and from those places. But also they're ephemeral because they're seasonal, so they're not always you know, ripening or available, et cetera. So they're constantly mapping space and time for a significant portion of their development, and then they operate within that map throughout their lives. And that's probably a big part of like hominoid cognition in general, and so I think the same would apply to sasquatch.

It's like they seem like they have an intimate familiarity of the areas that they live in and a map of that of space and time, which would include the patterning of human activity. And you think if they were migrating and they were constantly inserting themselves into environments with

which they were unfamiliar. First of all, they have to cross so many roads and interstates, you know, not just the two lane country road that people see them cross, but then also like they would have no idea where the best water sources were, where the prey aggregate, where humans come and go the most often. You know, I think the sidings would be so much more numerous if they were just constantly stumbling into places that they were unfamiliar with.

all of them I talked to you privately. It was this large gray sasquatch that people would describe as being you know, sometimes people say, well they you know, their hair was clean, and this one wasn't like that, This saying was dirty. It was filthy and had a piss poor attitude. But one of the unique features about their creature is had a scar across his chest, almost like you know, like you'd have someone cut you with a knife or something, had this huge scar across his chest.

And eyewitnesses would contact me and again, over to year period, I talked to a lot of people that had run into this creature.

me about it. But what was weird is in the summertime you would almost find it closer up towards Mount Saint Helens, and in the winter time you would find it down kind of off the mountain, you know, near yakole Yale, that it would come all actually come off the mountain and it would do this whole like weird counterclockwise circle. People were even seeing it down near the

Columbia River and it would circle back up. But it seems like the hotter it got the farther up the mountain it went, the colder it got the more it came down. And I don't know if it was following animals or not, but and I don't even know if i'd really consider that migration.

in High Impalm, which is sixty miles away but also on one ridge, one mountain ridge. So right now I happen to have my Google Maps open, we're looking at twenty miles between Mount Saint Helens and the river and the Columbia River, and it's significantly shorter, so I'm that's well within the zone now. But this is also a singular case. And if my model, my hypothetical model of sasquatch social structure, which is loosely based on the orangutan structure,

is correct. If it's a big male of some sort, then they would expect to be ranging a bit further than the other ones, because what I think is going on is a female and its offspring hang out in a smaller area than the male, and that abuts another female in an offspring of abutting another female in an offspring sort of thing, and then the big male moves through and does booty calls essentially with his harem essentially.

So we're looking at twenty mile between Mount Saint Helens and the river versus sixty miles between Bluff Creek and High Impalm with another set of females down there, not Patty, which is what the female was up in Bluff Creek, but a different one in High Impalm. So I think that's well within reasonable range. But again I would even have to wonder, like if it was gray, could that

be an indicator of age? And I'm Matt, I know you've done some work with old, older male silverback gorillas, reading about them kind of returning to places where they once grew up because they were run out of their social group. At some point. You kind of have to wonder if a sasquatch has passed its prime and a younger, a young buck so to speak, comes up and displays them, is he going to be hanging out in the same areas or is he going to be wandering a little bit more widely.

hundred square kilometers. The females cover about four hundred and fifty square kilometers, and so if you apply that to the sasquatch, like it answers so many questions, but it also, like I think the most important one is like, if the males are moving that much and they're straying from defensible core areas and coming more into the periphery of human habitation because we're so prolific, that answers the question

of like, why are most sasquatch sidings of lon males? Well, it's like there's a perfectly normal behavioral ecological reason for that that applies not only to apes but to these other analogous mammals as well.

And it was fairly bold, and I wouldn't say aggressive as much as just like confrontational, almost like direct confrontation, but without you didn't chase people or scream out a

roar at them, but it would be pretty confrontational. And so if you go back through a lot of the literature, whether it's John Green's database or the things, you find that, like, these grayer ones tend to be very large, not just in height but in mass, because you know, you have these subadults that are almost of equal height, but they tend to darker in color and thin that sort of a lean, lanky basketball player Olympic swimmer build versus like

something of the similar size, but it's just built like a you know, brick crap house, just big, thick and massive. And those gray ones tend to be like pretty confrontational in the sense of like they don't seem to have as much fear or avoidance of people, And so I'm always fascinated by those stories. So that's really interesting.

your help getting ours launched and everything. And and then you know, on a Tuesday or something, I'll get some heckling bust iner butt email or text from you and I said, oh crap, I forgot Wes is even listening, you know, because I forget anybody listens, but they do, and you're one of them. And it kind of makes me up my game a little bit and be extra thankful for our editor, Matt Pruitt. But doing a podcast is hard, man. It's not just sitting down once like

an hour a week or something like that. There's a lot more that goes into this. And God, you're kind of a one man show in a lot of ways. I must how many of these things do you pump? Like in a busy week, are you doing like two or three episodes? And I imagine you take a week or two off or something like are you doing two or three of these things a week sometimes?

guy that just happens to do this. So then we talked about a Bigfoot for a few hours, and he promoted an episode or two of a podcast I was producing at the time, and we had this like massive spike in listenership, and so I reached out to you, Wes. I was like, dude, that was super kind to you, man, to bring people's attention to thank you so much. Wes was like, oh, no, dude, that was all you, brother, and I was like, no, it was not, it was you because it was this huge spike.

that people just don't realize exist, you know. They they just see this sort of like content creators and talking heads. They don't realize, like now, man, there's a lot of people out there who are super interested in this subject. They just don't go around like posting about it.

mean the nicest guys. I saw a lot of crazy people go up to John a lot where I probably would have ended the conversation, but he sat there and talked to them. I never heard him speak poorly of anyone, you know, so it kind of gave me a goal to shoot for. You know, the bigfoot world is ugly enough. There's enough egos, and I try and stay out of it, you know, with the different researchers and everything else. And

with the podcasting world. That's what I and you and I were talking about this Matt at Cliff's house, you know, the podcasting world, I really especially when it comes to like Bigfoot and cryptids and stuff like that. And they're not everyone's like this, but I will say most of the podcasters are really super easy to get along with.

They're really you see a lot of the ego die Dama, and you know, if I contributed to that in some little way, then I mean that would make me happier than anything else, just changing the dynamic and changing the attitude in the room, because you don't quite get the the attitude you get with like in the bigfoot world, that you don't get it with the podcasters. The podcasters generally are pretty cool guys. And it's like I tell people, man, it's hey, if we all help each other, it's your

success is my success. My success is your success.

out with. And if anyone's going to have an ego, you guys should have an ego and you don't, So it just makes it makes it more welcoming for more people to come into this subject, you know, newer people coming in.

his answer on it. And if he didn't know, he would say I don't know, but you know, he would he would put me in check in certain ways to where I would give an answer and John would be like, oh, I didn't know you had it already, you had it all, figure it out, Well tell me more. You know. That was like his old man way of, you know, putting me in check, basically saying you don't know everything. But John was I love John. I did a whole thing

for kind of remembering him. And it was the week he died and I couldn't even get the show out. I tried to record it and I would break down in tears every time I tried to do that remembering John. And he called me right before he died and he was trying to say goodbye, and I wouldn't hear it. I didn't want to hear it, and I would I would tell him John, You're gonna be fine, you know, And I would cut him off, I don't you know. And I regret that now because he died the next day.

But he was calling to say goobye and I didn't want to hear it. So John, John was if I could be half the man he was, I would be. I would call it a win.

your ridiculous schedule to join us. And be on our podcast because honestly, we would not be here in whatever position we have now in the Bigfoot podcasting world without your help. Your instrumental in getting us going and our canntinued success. And we can't thank you enough for that. So I really really appreciate your time and your guidance and your mentorship. Really do amen and your friendship.