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And now your hosts Cliff Barrickman and James Bubo Fay.
Hey, everybody, welcome back to another big Foot and Beyond with all of us on this side of the microphone. We have a fantastic episode for you today, I mean normally at this time, Boba and I catch up a few minutes. We talked about what's been going on in
the field, what we've been up to. But we're not gonna waste any time with us today because we have one of our favorite guests on of all time back for a second dip in this pool, our brother from another mother, one of our best friends and colleagues for many many years now, mister Matt Moneymaker. Matt, how are you doing today? Thanks so much for on our little podcast here.
I am quite well. It's good to be back on your great show. It being better than so many Bigfoot podcasts out there. I won't diss them all.
Go ahead and disc I mean.
Tell you want Okay, good.
Well, well, it's very very nice of you to slam everybody else and prop us up. We really do appreciate that. I'd like to think that anything that we do here, whether it's the podcast or my museum or my fieldwork or anything that I'm doing personally and with anybody else, is something that I personally would like to see that I don't see out there anywhere else. And we are kind of a lighthearted yet serious podcast here, which we really appreciate you coming on because we have so much
to talk about. We've got you and Bobo and I have been friends since I don't even know how long. I mean, I met you guys back in two thousand and four or five or something like that, and you guys are already friends before that, so we have quite the history together.
Yeah.
Absolutely, And that's one of the reasons, as you know, I think why are show worked well was because of that chemistry.
I do hear that a lot like people would tune you know, at the very beginning. I think I was a little foolish, a little naive, perhaps, said I thought sasquatches were the star of finding Bigfoot, but it wasn't. I mean, people tuned in, Yeah, the Bigfoot stuff was tangential, but I think people tuned in to watch us, you know, do our thing. And because we're kind of strong, weird personalities, a lot of us, you know, and all of us really, and they liked seeing us do all these things out
there that they wish they could be doing. And I think it was foolish of me to think that was more about Bigfoot than us.
And then I remember the realization a couple of times when I had with that, and I kept it kept happening,
and I was like, no, this can't be. We'd be in a town hall, and after a town hall, of course, there's lines of people coming up, wanting autographed, wanting to talk to us, and I like would get like a group of people there and it would be standing sometimes not just like what are the time, but a group of people, and I would start talking to them about like, okay, where do you live and there's an area nearby you
and dad, da da da da. I would talk, you know, I would talk about bigfoot stuff and and and it didn't I could see the expressions on their faces that they weren't really keen on that as I expected they would be. And I would finally say well, you know, I just figured, you know, you guys are into bigfoot that much, you probably want to know like where the hot stuff is happening around you. And then finally I
would get like a comment back. People would see my puzzle and just say, well, we want to know about you. And that's when I realized, Yeah, there was so many fans of the show where we assumed they watch you just like you.
You and I.
We all thought the only reason they were interested in us is because we were really into bigfoots and we were kind of a bridge to bigfoots. But the bigfoot thing was the thing that they were most interested in. And then we'd come to find out, well, they're not really tear that really interested in bigfoot stuff, certainly not as much as us, And they were more interested in us.
And of course we're sitting there thinking us like we're in like compare the the you know, the gravity of interest about us compared to bigfoots, you know, just like how could we be more interesting than than bigfoots? But yeah, but for a lot of people, that was us. They were they they wanted to know all about us, and you know, and and get close to us and and uh, you know, get close to the person they saw on TV.
And so after a while I was like kind of like, okay, well, it's like I have a whole lot more to say about bigfoots than I do about myself.
Yeah, I personally don't find me be very interesting, you know. But uh, but it was a it was a shock to me because my curiosity about sasquatches is endless.
Yeah, because I get shock you right now, money, Remember remember my my big encounter up in ball Hills, right my first encounter where it came up and I was with fraid Us and all that. My buddy and I watched it with the night scope.
What's that road that little spur off a ball to road called Johnson.
Yeah, I totally remember this.
That was twenty four years ago. In two days.
Oh my god, I need to be.
Shocked because I was shocked when I was like twenty four years my god.
I can't believe it.
I know, but that she tells me, We've had a lot going on in our lives, and it feels like it all went by so quickly. But yeah, we've been doing this for a long time. And some people look at that and say, see, look you've been doing this for a long time, and you know, have you caught bigfoot yet?
It's like, yeah, I guess you don't understand.
You know, we're we're learning about these things, and so we're not measuring our success or failure based on whether we've caught bigfoot or quote found them. And then if I have somebody there, then I have to say, okay, let's drill down as to what you mean by fine. You know, when you mean fine, are you really what you're really trying to say is do we have one in a bag you know or you know? Or is it by our measure that we figured out we're some where we got close enough to them to at least
hear them. Definitely, so we found you know, an area where some are around, which is feels like a pretty big accomplishment when you're there and you were just trying to guess it based on reports and a map. But of course that doesn't satisfy the people who were not there and didn't hear it with their own ears.
Yeah, you know, when you were saying, yeah, that shows we've been doing it for a long time, at what the thought in my head was like, Yeah, it just shows that we're old men.
Yeah exactly.
I think I told you that that funny story about how I had a producer. They were thinking they wanted to do a show. They were asking me about different people that could be in some kind of show, like a one off or something else that they were trying to develop. And they always want young people. They want young energetic.
That's why I was there.
You go all ton monsters who goes around and like interviews people all over with a place and and has talked to all kinds of researchers who at least call themselves researchers, you know, And and said I said, O, Kate, like tell me give me that, like your a list of like young energetic bigfoot researchers from which they can maybe do screen tests and stuff like that. And the guy was an Alex, No, it was it was one of the guys just said, uh, young and energetic.
H that's a tough one.
I mean you told me that everybody's old that it's involved in and stuff, and it's just like, yeah, I mean, it's an older crowd that does bigfoot stuff. But our show did help bring like a younger group.
To the table, oh for sure.
But it is it's different than the old group because the younger group is just absorbing stuff purely through the internet for YouTube, and through TV and stuff like that. And back way back when we were watching you know, documentaries and in search of and stuff like that, but there was also written stuff. We were aware of the authors. We were aware of Brover Krantz and John Green and and all those guys who were really were going out
and doing stuff and and putting information together. And the young group is just like, you know, you can hear some kids personally, Oh, he's the he's so into bigfoots. It's like he lives and breathes this stuff. And you know, i'd say so, so you must, you know, what do you think about John Green? And they're like, who's that?
Oh?
It was aggravating, right, aggravating when it's I want to pull my eyes out, right.
They were the celebrities before TV kind of stuff. The celebrities were John Green and anyone that wrote books, and Bob and Roger.
Right exactly, anybody wrote books. And then there was like the only kind of new scientist who was like coming to.
Take the reins was Meldrum.
And you would have hoped that there would have been like at least as many of you know, form new horsemen, you know, to make up for the four horsemen that were fading away that were at least scientists, you know that we're to universities. But it's I know, there's a
lot that are out there. I mean, at least according to Darby, there's there's a lot of them that are out there that you know, just kind of keep their interest under their hat, but they're very willing to quietly help the North Carolina effort and and and be involved in stuff like that. So there is a rumbling of interest in scientific community, and in large part it's I think it's because of our show, because that's what allowed
the conversation to open up. People could broach the subject in an academic environment by saying, you know, not sounding crazy, just starting off saying, so have you seen the show
finding Bigfoot? Like you know, and then approaching it from that way, and that made it like enabled people to have a conversation about it because I think they didn't immediately hit the stumbling block is they're talking to a person who's been who's been that it was a brainwashed or misinform that Bigfoot is this one lonely creature, that supposedly phantom thing that keeps popping up here and there, and they're speaking to somebody who understands it a little
bit more on a little more sophisticated level.
You know. One of the conversations we had many years ago, Matt, when we're on the show and you're absolutely You're absolutely right then, and you're still right about it now if you still think the same way, is that our show could have been on any network basically, but we ended up on Animal Planet, and I think that that was a big deal. You know, if it were on Discovery, I think it would have the same effect. But a lot of these smaller networks, even though they're maybe all
owned by Discovery Networks or whatever the parent company. I think Animal Planet had that sort of machine to it, or things on Animal Planet would be taken serious because of all the other naturalists and such that were featured on that on that same channel, And I think that that really helped the Finding Bigfoot show have a have an air of credibility about it.
Yes, And you know, I don't have a cable tier anymore that has Animal Planet on it, so I don't know what they're showing these days, but I'm wondering if it's gone full like Treehouse Masters, just like the the non animal related stuff that just like happened. They happened to be able to get, you know, good advertising stuff for but it did. And I was excited when it was coming out of an animal planet for exactly the reason that you described, because it gave it the air of respectability.
And I think people were just like they it was still there even after Mermaids and meg Ladon and stuff like that. It's still people still thought it was. It was legit kind of like tour in the arena of national geography. At least, you know, that's what we and and that's all we want.
Stay tuned for more Bigfoot and Beyond with Cliff and Bogo. We'll be right back after these messages. So three to six months doesn't seem like a long time right in bigfoot Land. It's not very long because we've been looking for sasquatches for decades and decades and decades. But when you think about what can happen in three to six months, like what would you do in three to six months? I'm going to give me six months go squatching squad of course, of course, and how much do you think
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I think all of us on the on the call right now would probably agree that finding Bigfoot did a lot of good for the bigfoot community in general, brought a lot of new people in, put some new eyes on the subject, brought got some scientists who are quietly involved or at least interested in the background. Do you think that finding bigfoot did any harm to the subjects?
Not at all.
But if I'm on like on a forum, or I post something in a forum or comments, there's always some income poop who's going to pop up and say, oh, yeah, it did damage to the whole scene and hurt real researchers. And I'm just like, you know, I used to reply to that, but now I just kind of hold my tongue. But what I'm thinking is, and what I used to write this, Who the fuck are you? You know, real researchers,
What do you do? You know, I've never even heard of you, And what kind of real research are you doing except posting online?
You know?
And so yeah, it's it's the nobody's who've never done anything will be very critical about us getting a lot of attention for what we've done.
And and and I.
Think some of them have just seen other people write that, oh yeah, they did more harm to the subject than good, and it's just like, oh yeah, you're like and you don't want to dignify it because they just want an argument that's gonna make them.
You know.
It's like the young kid coming to town with his gun and saying, you know, challenging the fast just gone in the West, because that's gonna make him somebody, you know, even if he gets wounded.
You know.
So I just look at this and say, you know, I'm not even gonna do You're such a nobody trying to sound in some way morally or intellectually superior, and you're just not. You're inferior. You're a nobody. You've never done anything, shut up and go away.
Well, you know. One of the concerns we all had, I think on the show is that when when it was on, we were worried about people going out and doing too many calls and not doing them right and knocking at the campfire and cluing in the Bigfoots that we were onto their tricks. And I don't think I
don't really see that as having panned out. I mean, some areas might be a little blown out, like Salt Fork or something like that, but for the most part, I don't think that that our fear has really come to fruition.
It has happened to some degree that people would go out and they'll howl and they'll knock, but they're doing it just like.
They're not doing it in a systematic and continuous way.
It's like something they do once time and like they maybe here's something, but we hear about it because so we get some reports sound reports where people are mentioning that they had seen the show and they did a couple of howls or knocks and what they heard seemed to be in response to that. So I get that every once in a while. But yeah, I remember we had the fears that so many people would go on and do it and then the trick wouldn't work anymore.
But I kept falling back on. And then of course there was those areas like you know, West Morris Campground and Yuwari, a couple of places where the locals found out like our honey hole, and they were going there trying to get something going. But there was just a handful of spots like that. Salt Fork would be another place that people just went in and tried to do
so much stuff. But what I kept falling back on is there's so many locations of where there's bigfoots around that it's not you know that they're not going to be able to blow out all of them. And the best reactions responses comes from, you know, when you're finally going to a place like real remote spot or someplace
it's no but no bigfoot's ever gone before. And it's that that's why it's so important to do it right, to make the sounds and do it properly, because it's that first response where you're going to have the best chance of getting a good sound recording or getting you know, getting some thermal footage or something else. And then you have to rely on after that. Like up at bumping, they're still curious enough to come around, but that would be like in a case of bumping, it's because they're
up in that valley anyway. And I say that openly
about bumping is because of the fires. I know, it's it's changed up there quite a bit, So I don't know if the same kind of stuff would still happen that used to happen, even though we bring you know, lots of people up there, and and and and but people would like with Bart still had a pretty damn good close encounter even though We've been doing expedition, like a dozen expeditions up there in the summertime prior to that, So it doesn't always ruin things, but it depends that
that's the place the Bigfoots are already around, and the forest is such that they can get It's thick enough where they can get pretty close to watch you, especially at night, and not worry that you're gonna, you know, race on after them and you know, or line them up with a spotlight. They'll they'll still have that you know, curiosity combined with the boldness that comes from having good cover.
In this situation.
But yeah, there's still still a whole lot of good places around that even we don't know about yet. I just found out one just two days ago about you know, hearing about this daylight encounter that happened yesterday morning, very close to the shore of Lake Erie, about halfway between Toledo and Detroit. And when I looked at the map, I'm just like an area of photos. I'm like, what this place? Because it's on the outskirts of a town, it's on the Lake Erie, but it's not like there's
big vast forests around it. That it's a Midwest situation where you have railroad tracks coming out of farmland passing by basically in between the town and the edge of the lake, and it brushes up against this very big marsh, and the marsh area is full of deer because it's so close to town that it's a no hunting area. And now I've seen that on a couple of occasions.
I saw that with Omaha, Nebraska, and a couple of the areas where there's sidings where you find out where it is you're going, My god, that's awfully close to town, and then you find out, yeah, but in these woods that are very close to town number one, there's a railroad bed that comes out of the farmland and goes right through there and number one. But also it's full
of deer because hunting isn't loud. And that's especially an element in the Midwest where it's flat because they it's no hunting because they don't want bullets traveling into the neighborhood, you know. So but yeah, so there's pockets like that in different places. And I just found out about that one yesterday, and I would have thought there's no way, and then I started looking up. Sure enough, there's reports going back to like nineteen sixty five in the same area.
And I post the reports on Facebook, knowing that, yeah, that's probably going to kick up other information. And sure enough there's other people popping full popping up, including some local researchers or one guy saying, yeah, I got a research area near there, but it's the other side of town. And then another one pops up saying, don't listen to him. He doesn't know what he's talking about. I'm the one
who does the best research right here. Okay, I guess that tells me there really is some action around there.
If the bigfooters are dissing each other.
Yeah, at least it tells you there's big researchers dound now there because they're dissing each other, right.
And then yet another one pops in, trying to show that he's superior in knowledge to the other two by just laying it all out, like everything he knows. And I wrote back saying, Okay, that's great, that's like, you know, don't just say you're a better researcher and this you know stuff. It's like, no, say what you know?
What do you know? What do you know?
I mean, you don't say because that reminds me of the way it used to be in Ohio. People would get this information and they were very guarded about it
when they would get it back in the day. And and you know, this is before the Internet, and they wouldn't just like willingly post or publish information, especially with like location information, because they was so worried about some other researcher coming in there and basically stealing their thunder or taking credit for them, and so they are just
like very protective of it. And so when I was out there, I'm just like, no, I mean, it's like, let if you got information, let people know, because that tends to bring in more information and more recent and none of that's going to happen if you just like kind of keep it all close to the vest.
Yeah, that's a problem with that. But you know, you brought up this new area as something that you kind of picked up just recently and kind of learned, And I was while you were talking, I was reflecting about how finding Bigfoot for me at least, was kind of
like like Bigfoot College in a lot of ways. I mean, I've been around for a long time before the show started, but traveling the United States and really the world and seeing the various habitat that sasquatches lurk around in and what their needs are and the commonalities and the differences really taught me a lot. And one of my big takeaways was Sasquatches don't give a darn about your expectations. They go where they want to go, and they are in a lot of places that you wouldn't expect, just
like this location you just mentioned. Do you have any big takeaways because you had been big footing, you and Bobo had been big footing longer than I had when the show started, and you know, and I learned a lot from both of you guys, But are there any big takeaways that really you look back on the finding big foot years and say, Wow, going in, I hadn't expected that, But coming out, of course that makes sense. And now I carry that along in my briefcase and knowledge.
I'd have to think about that because there was so I'm always thinking geographically, and so I was aware of the geographic places where they had been seen, but I guess there was still there was lots of parts of the country that I thought you would expect there to be a lot more forest around because you're comparing it in your mind to like places where they're seen in the Northwest and solid forest where it's way more forest
than you know, either farm or development. And then finding out like you know, we were in South Dakota and you're you know, you're just like on the Pine Ridge Reservation.
You're near the bad lands, and you're looking out just basically across grassy hilltops and it looks like there's only a few scout sattered trees on ridges here and there, and then but you see it in the aerial views that, yeah, all it takes is there to be a ribbon of woods along a creek in between some of these hills, and that's enough for them to be able to get out of the sun and get out of view during the day and so and that's exactly what the deer do as well.
So I had to.
Twist and say, Okay, it's we're looking at areas that are squatchy, but then we have to look at places that we would not consider squatchy but for the fact that there's a ton of deer around. And so, yeah, deer will end up populating in a lot of places, and their predators will end up going after them in this case, you know, bigfoots are you know one, you know,
one of the predators. Now that kind of replaced what was a bigger predation scene because the only other predators, like in the Midwest for them would be like groups of coyotes, because the big cats and the water were eradicated a long time ago, and the bigfoots have, i think, have taken advantage of it. Not that they were preyed upon by those species, but those species were going after and putting pressure on the deer and affecting their moods
as well. So it's I think over time it seemed as though, yeah, the population of bigfoots, it really does seem to be like their numbers are growing rather than diminishing, because we're just getting more and more reports and from places we didn't expect, and these also happened to be so many of them are places where there's like a deer over population problem, which is we wish we had in California but we don't anymore.
I was specifically thinking about South Dakota actually when I asked that question, because that's one of the places that really blew my mind that like sasquatches are here, but there's no trees, you know, or very few trees, or the farmlands in Minnesota, you know, where everything's formed out, and that you only have these ribbons of trees in between the property lines, you know, basically along the property
lines and the creeks. Those places, especially in the early days of finding Bigfoot, really surprised me that they held sasquatches so consistently and there's so many reports around. So that's kind of exactly what I was thinking when I asked that question.
So yeah, nor North Dakota came to my mind. And then the Oklahoma when we kayaked there outside Oklahoma City, like those are the spots that were like, wow, there are these places that's really tripped me.
Yeah, in Oklahoma City, like inside the city limits. Really I think that that wasn't that preserve technically in the city limits. If it wasn't, it was right outside of it.
Yeah, yeah, it was within the city limits, and the simil limits on some of those Midwestern towns like extend out a long way the farm land. But yeah, there is another one where theyre could get right up close to cities and get people would say say, that's the look on the aerial photos that looks like it's real close to town like under the assumption that they're going to try to be as far away from towns as possible. And I was at the point out what it's like.
You know, there's tons of deer in that area and it's a no hunting area, so they could be in there, and if the terrain is like swampy enough or difficult enough, then they could be in like islands among the marsh that people and dogs are never going to get to, and you you just wouldn't know it. And that's why I'm thought, okay in those places. That's why you know, if it's got the right kind of trees and stuff and the leaves fall off in the winter, then a good drone might be useful in.
A place like that.
But the price of thermal drums has not really come down far enough for them to be as widespread as I would wish. And yeah, you're still talking about for a therm, a good thermal drone, you're still talking about it around five thousand bucks. That's one of those things you have a place, and you have technology that could apply to it, but unless you know, you're not going to have a lot of people doing it on their own unless the price tag comes down quite a bit.
Stay tuned for more Bigfoot and Beyond with Cliff and Bogo will be right back after these messages. You've really taken to droning in general. You have a thermal drone yourself. I know when you attend your expeditions for the BFROL you often take it with you. What is the strategy that you're employing with the drone.
The strategy would be like if we knew a place in California, Sierra's where it was a little bit like bumping that even though we had done expeditions in this area year after year after year at the same time of year, the bigfoots would still come around, like they're going to be up there no matter what. But they
would still come around. And that was great because people coming on the trips, they'd get to see them or hear them, or see glowing eyes and sometimes people would get like, well, you know a little like either thermal stills or you know, a little thermal e clips and
things like that. And so the strategy we would employ is I would try to get up at a high spot, high up as possible, like on a rock ledge so that if I flew, I could fly the drone way out over the valley and still have line of sight with the drone because you can go so much further with those and still have green transmission, and then you're not have to worry about it like it's beyond the trees, and then eventually you're losing your signal and then it
just goes into return to home mode and it flies right back. So yeah, so I would get up at a high point, I would know where the people are, and I'm just kind of up there waiting, or I have a couple of groups spread out waiting for some of them to say, Okay, we've got something going on here, come and take a look, et cetera, et cetera. But the experimentation of that showed some of the limitations, and
because we've did that a few of the places. Number one, the big bugaboo is if you're in a place where there's a tree canopy and there's a lot of and you can't really see through it that well to even spot your own people down there. And then in the Sierras, it wasn't as much the canopy because it was conifers and they're spread out a little bit. But you've got so much granite boulders and outcroppings and everything, and in the summertime they absorb so much warmth that freaking everything
is glowing. And you know, I remember I was. I was blown away and kind of disappointed. At the same time. I've got a group of people around me with the drone.
We're on top of the big rock granite rock outcropping, and I'm having trouble discerning the people are that are out a distance away, out like by this pond where they've had these encounters before, and I don't spot them, and I'm like, Okay, I'm going to try to calibrate the heat sensitivity on people's What I'll do is I'll fly back over me and the little group of people that are surrounding me on top of this granite outcropping, and then calibrate it the right way so the people's
heat signature is going to pop out. And I bring the drone over and I get it above us, and we're looking down this big granite slab and where of course it's it's getting a little chili, so we're all wearing you know, jackets and stuff like that, and it turns out the granite is warmer, releasing more heat than we are. You know, we're covered up with jackets and pants and stuff, and the ground that everything around is warm, so you can't see us unless you're like down within,
like with fifty feet of us. Can you discern that, oh yeah, there's some people moving around down there on top of that big warm blob of granite, which just completely it just makes it so you can't discern any details, so that it's like, okay, well that it's only really going to be good in a place where there's not a lot of exposed rocks and at a time of year where the leaves are off the trees, or there just isn't a lot of trees around. So that means
you're ruling out like the whole big good areas. You're not going to be able to use the drone. It's not going to be as useful as like handheld thermal for example, on the Olympic Peninsula where it's just like or in the Redwoods where you've got such big heavy tree canopy that you know, somebody says, oh, I've got one over here. It's only about like one hundred feet in front of me send the drone over, and you're sending a droneover and like, okay, well where are you?
I can the drone can't even spot you, so I can't figure out where the Bigfoot is from there. So that's why I'm like hopeful in places there's going to be in a BFR expedition later this summer in Arizona, very close to the New Mexico border, and in that place, the trees, the ponderosa pines and stuff are spread out, you know, with one extreme being like rainforest where it's
the canopy is like shag carpet. It's just solid and compared to like parts of the Rockies where the trees are further apart, you can actually see down through the woods a whole lot better. So you know, I'm hoping that I can make it to that, and I would certainly want to bring, you know, a lot of gear
to that. But that's that's a good location, a piece of private property that's grandfathered into national forest, and it's one of the most remote places you've ever seen, like down by the Gila And I think Bobo, you went through the Gela Mountains and I always remember you talking about how blown away you were, I think if we drove through it with your dad, yeah, yeah, yeah, And so what did you think going through the Gela Mountains.
Dude, They're they're there.
Yeah. I mean, I can't believe I haven't been back because when I was there, I was like, this place is insane. I got to get back here.
I went back there.
I've been back there, but I wasn't like equipped enough enough, you know, a good gear.
Yeah, but yeah, it's it's it's it's popping.
Yeah, and it's full of wildlife and it's like one of those places because it's in southern New Mexico, so your mind isn't picturing like how alpine it is when you're up at nine thousand feet, even though you're in the southern you know, the southern end of a southern state. But yeah, you get up high enough and it's wet, especially in the key part of the year, which is you know, the summer, when it would be just absolutely baking hot everywhere else on you know, the Lawer elevations.
But up high they're getting rain. They're getting like monsoonal summer rain. So between that and then what naturally happens in the winter, it's like, yeah, place is very green, even though we're closer to the Mexico border than we are to the Colorado border, so that that that's so. Anyways, they're gonna do a trip in a place like that. But anyway, I'm rambling on.
No, No, it's great and it's all good information.
What have you seen on your therm or recorded that? Like was the squad because I know when we were shooting in West Virginia, we had that had we had stuff on drone and those guys were so nervous about flying their new thirty five thousand dollars drone they wouldn't Like we kind of blew it because we I think we had them, We had them right there on camera, and then we we flew away too quick. We didn't have a backup.
But have you seen anything like that? Sense you did anything happen like that where you think you were on them?
No, because we haven't. We just simply haven't done the drone enough compared to just like people with handheld therms, so they haven't got and plus and then you can't keep the drone up in the air that long compared to people on the ground with handheld therms. So I think if there was a thermal drone on every single trip, every single Bigfoot expedition, then I think we'd have more.
But there is handheld therms on every single expedition, So it doesn't surprise me that people are getting you know, I'm hearing back after expansion. No, we may have got something, and then you get something back and it's just like it's too distant and too blobby, and I say, you know, it really may be a Bigfoot, but it's not going
to impress anybody. But what I was envisioning at some point is that we would popularize the idea of using a thermal drone, and that way so many more people were going to go out and get them and start doing it themselves. But you know, not everybody can lay down five grand for a therm for a thermal drone, and a lot of people are scared. I mean I tell people like, listen, you can get just like kind of a trainer drone, you know, for one hundred and fifty bucks and then at least get over your fear
of flying a drone. And they have fear that they're going to crash it immediately. And I just and that's why what I've had one of the most important things I've done when I've been on a trip and had my drone is just like force everybody to get a little bit of experience flying it and so that they're they're at least not afraid of the dam things. You've got the fear that they had that the mixes in with the price point, that tends to deter.
A lot of people.
And but yeah, now people are warming up to there's a lot of people buying handheld thermals from us, and I think that may be like the next step is they see the usefulness of thermal technology if nothing else.
For you're a lot more comfortable going out in the woods when you have a handheld therm so you can look around and see, you know, if there's something big in the woods, when you hear some you know, move into the leaves and kind of the next step from that, the step up from that is to being able to have that kind of imaging up in the air above it and it will you know, I really like it.
If if the drone prices, I mean it was a dramatic jump for the drone prices went from twelve thousand to five thousand, five to six thousand, and that was the same company that was DJI, And I was hoping that price trajectory was going to continue such that like thermal drones would eventually then come down to about two thousand dollars. But what's happened is the drones themselves the price for those. If it's with regular cameras, like daylight cameras,
those prices do continue to come down. They come down, but when you add the thermal element to it, it's still expensive.
You know.
It's it makes the drone cost three times as much as it was if it just had a daylight camera.
Whichmalld use Matt I.
Have one that it's the Mavic DJ Mavic three T And I was I should tell you about that. I was thrill the other day because I was I saw these incredible prices for drones on Temu, and of course the advertisement look great. It's got three sixty obstacle detection and four K and like all these superficial things, and I thought, yeah, I mean, if they're going to be that cheap, I'll buy one for every single BFRO organizer. And then I start looking into it, and of course
all those cheap ones. Yeah, they might have a four K camera, but it's wide angle and it doesn't zoom in. And then I've used AI like rock and Chat GPT to tell me like what drone? What? Which drones have the best color, like daylight, telephoto ability I'm not even
getting into. I'm no, I'm not going to get a cheap one with thermal, but at least to have something so telescopic that you can zoom in on something from so far away that it's not going to hear the drone and it turns out, Yeah, those Temu drones, no, they only have wide angle. And then one of the problems is even if it comes with two batteries, you might want to get several more so you can be flying around for a while and then maybe have enough.
We're on a quick recharge. You could actually get some of them recharging, but they're the problem. You buy off of Temu, then you're not gonna It's not like buying from Dji, where you could get like the exact accessories
that go with that drone. You can't do that for stuff off of Demo because it's like really shady who's making these different drones And you'd have to get in touch with them and to just kind of believe these people in China that the batteries that you're paying for actually, you know, match the drone that you bought from them, and good luck. Yeah. So I'm just like, no, it was I had high hopes that, you know, I was going to be able to get at these good daylight
telescopic drones for everybody. But no, no, it's it's just wine angle, which is only good for landscape shots.
You know, It's not you got a wine angle on a drone.
You're not gonna see anything, you know, on the ground unless it's like a person in daylight in the middle of an open field.
Stay tuned for more Bigfoot and Beyond with Cliff and Bogo will be right back after these messages. Drone technology is certainly promising for getting some sort of footage, and of course the closer you are to the Sasquatch, the better the footage is going to be. But also the
more probably afraid the Sasquatch is going to be. There's gonna be some issues I think with certainly the first couple pieces of drone footage, unless that's already been obtained, in which case I think I'm right anyway, because I haven't heard about them, and there's probably issues with them. Maybe you can't tell what it is, or you know, it's too far away, it's too ambiguous as sort of thing.
But you've actually gotten footage of Sasquatches before. I mean, you're responsible for the pancake footage in Kentucky, for example, and I think it would be instructive to our listeners the lengths that you had to go to go through to get that footage. I mean, it's ridiculous when I tell people, like what you actually had to do to obtain that footage. It's astonishing how paranoid I guess Sasquatches are that you had to do that. Can you talk a little bit about that for us?
Yeah, the little clips one of you know, the best one I don't own because I was paid to go get it, and that was for the Kentucky project. But I also got to another one in another very brief one in Wisconsin, and then one at Wellsville at like the same place where I got the Ohio how recording. I mean, we're like the surveillance camera was actually mounted on the very same tree where the microphone had been mounted.
Months before that got that recording. And yeah, so in all three cases, it wasn't you know, it wasn't with a handheld camera. It was always the case where you had ones that were coming back over and over, and
it was setting up a surveillance camera uh. And and but surveillance camera at the right place uh and then letting it roll and having it aim the right way and then getting some kind of you know, some some footage that would impressed Bigfoot researchers and the people who know us and and yeah, so it was in in the for the Wellsville the place where the Ohio recording was gotten, it was doing a lot of stuff with sound hearing, getting those distent recordings, but also hearing these
things come up very close to the microphone on a number of occasions. And then had to go back then. I mean, remember the technology was so different back then, like in the mid nineties, so you didn't have the
cheap stuff that you could buy today. They would have they would have illuminator like like covert illuminators in I are I basically had to just like cobble this stuff together myself and use illuminators that weren't very covert and that affected, you know, the behavior of the bigfoots, because if they see any kind of little red light on it could dramatically, you know, make them a lot more
cautious than if it's completely dark. And so in Kentucky we heard that there was these big poots coming around this particular property. We figured out why they were doing it, and that was at first because these people were putting catfish into this, like this pond that they had dug specifically in the purpose of holding catfish that they had caught in the river. And they would throw their their
leftovers into this pond to fatten up the catfish. And and that's when they noticed that there was big footprints coming around the edge of the pond at night, and and something was going in and grabbing those catfish. So there's a lot of a lot of legs to that story. But basically we talked about it on the group discussion and Adrian Erickson said, hey, listen, you got to go out with this is a kind of a rare circumstance. You've got to go out there and get some footage.
And here I'll send you some money so you can go out and get and get the right kind of you know, get something with kind of surveillance equipment, because we knew we could use infrared. So I went out there and we set that up and and it worked right away. I mean we got well, I think the first time we set it up and it's like stopped recording and it didn't work. But we knew that one comer came around because it had taken the plate of food, and it was the.
Very next night and we had it working right and it was we had it.
I learned the past is if you want to try to get it with a surveillance camera, the best way to do it is have a camera that can be at a distance away from the spot where you think it's going to come to and kind of zoom in so there's not a camera like right there on top of them, but a little bit further away. And then I had to I remember, I figured out I had to get an illuminator that I that would not be as visible. There'd be no glow. And of course people say, oh,
I think they can see in for red. But with the pancake footage taught me was because I had a nine like like a covert little illuminator that was like about the size and shape of a hockey puck that I had hanging basically down from a tree, pointed straight down to the plate of pancakes. And when we got the footage and we saw that this thing that which was so skittish about not wanting to come into the light, came and sat down right on the berm, right underneath
this beam of light. And I'm like, Okay, it clearly does not know it is being illuminated by something, because it wouldn't be. This thing was so careful about not stepping in any light that it obviously doesn't know. So then I knew then, okay, covert ir especially in that angle, because I think it might have seen maybe if they can see into the infrared spectrum a little bit better
than humans can. And of course now we know chimpanzees can see a little bit further into the infrared spectrum in humanizements.
I thought it avoided the beam of light when it sat down. I thought it on the edge, like just off the edge of the light.
No, it sat down right where it usually set to. I mean it was on the edge when it was still Like, if it wasn't illuminated by the light, you wouldn't have seen it at all in that video, so it was it wasn't avoiding it. I mean, if it would have sat down, it wouldn't have sat down directly underneath it, because it would have fallen off the edge
into the into this pond. But the beam wasn't just like a very tight cone, you know, there was some peripheral illumination around it, and the thing definitely got within that cone of illumination and didn't stay away from it.
So it one thing was it didn't look straight up, and maybe if it had looked straight up, it might have detected a little bit of a dull, faint red glow, but it didn't look up and notice anything, so it couldn't It certainly couldn't see the illumination on the ground around it, like you could see through the infrared surveillance camera that we had aimed at it, And so the infrared illuminated and could certainly see better infrared better than the bigfoots could see. That was pretty obvious to us.
And so we got that and I think that's still probably the longest clip that they got out of that. And I kind of extracted myself from that situation because it was kind of a conflict in between, you know, my approach to trying to get it versus theirs. And I thought, if they try to get the camera right down, because of course, when you see the footage, you thought, oh, I wanted to be more clear, more crisp, and so you'd only get that if you brought the camera closer.
But if you bring the camera closer, then the thing might see that and it might be deterred by that. And of course that's exactly what happened.
Now, how far away was the camera and how did you hide it from the Sasquatch?
It was about one hundred feet away. And get this was in at a shed, kind of a glorified shed. I mean it was a place. It was like a work shed that was attached to a garage up on a hill, up on a slope, about one hundred feet away. And we'd go in the shed where people you know, usually aren't in there, and the camera was in the room, not at the window, looking right out from the edge
of the window. We opened up the window and I installed the camera at the back of the room, up in a little dark cubby inside this dark room inside the shed. So it was aimed out through the open window across the room and then looking down the slope. So there's just no way in hell it could see the camera. It would know that there was a camera looking at it, and the only risk was whether it
would notice there's an illuminator there. But then you know, if the illuminator had been like down a ground level or an eye level looking at outsideways, it might have noticed that. And that's what people would do. They put the illuminator kind of close to the camera, so it's like aimed out in the same direction of the camera.
I knew that that was a mistake.
I knew that the camera, I mean, the illuminator had to be shining from an angle that the bigfoot wasn't gonna immediately see that that illuminator when it walked up toward the food. And so yes, the illuminator was up in a tree about just like as much as high up as I could get it where I could still reach it, and then just aimed straight down, so when it approached, even if it could see even better into the spectrum, it just wouldn't have noticed, and it didn't
notice that it was approaching that light. And contrast that within Ohio. When I got that footage, that was with the biggest, like the only illuminator that infrared illuminator I could make back then in ninety four was one I had to build. I mean I literally got like a six inch disc that was Israeli Army surplus infrared glass.
Uh. And then that.
Was big enough about six inch in diameters. So I then had a machining shop make the housing for it so it would slip into this six inch diameter kind of cylinder, so imagine something that looked like a cylinder like a bucket. Put the illuminator the glass in that, and then put a flood lamp behind it, a white flood lamp. Well, when he did that, and if you looked directly into it, then you'd see a big red cloud.
I mean, it wasn't enough so that it would like light up everything, but it was just like you'd notice this kind of illumination that was like kind of a dull like charcoals on the fire kind of.
Level of illumination. And the Bigfoot did see that.
And so when it comes up to the bait box in that footage, it kind of leans out from a tree and it's it's just so frustrating because it's so close to the camera and the illuminator is so bright that all you see is a white silhouette, a white silhouette of a big, tall thing leaning out slowly from behind a tree, leaning over to look at what's in the bait box. And so that was definitely footage that
was definitely a bigfoot. It wouldn't impress anybody else, though, like unless you were there, because people would look at it and say, you would have no gauge of knowing just how big that thing was and knowing, you know, how all the other things that had happened there. But for me, it was it was great, and I knew obviously the thing was it was so cautious about just leaning over and then leaning back that it was smart enough to know that, oh, yeah, this is there's something
something not right about this that you know. It wasn't encountering situation like that, here's this electronic and this round illumine you thing that glows and then there's like a camera there that's on a tree. So I think those are like the best bets still situations, And of course
I look for those. I look and listen for those where there's a bigfoot repeatedly coming around of private property over and over again, and you have competent home owners that like you can send some gear to or who will be able to buy it themselves, and then who will follow kind of your rules of caution about it, like and and and and make it so that like, not under underestimate how smart the bigfoots are, but set it up in such a way as if they're almost
like trying to catch a human burglar or a human power. Making it so it's that concealed.
Uh.
And then if you're going to do that nowadays, doing it with even cameras that do infrared illuminators, it's so much to do that now. But part of one of the dynamics is in those situations that the human dynamics is people who've got a bigfoot coming around their property all the time and like stealing dog food or coming to a chicken coop, they don't want the bigfoot coming around. They're not happy about it. They want the contact us
because they want us to make it go away. You know, they're not delighted like, oh there's a bigfoot, maybe we can get some footage. And you have to try to put them in that frame of mind that like, look, they're lucky, they're not in danger. They're actually fortunate, and there's an opportunity there, and so that's not always the case,
and that's only rarely the case. And then they have to be you know, confident enough to say, okay, I'm going to set up this surveillance equipment, you know, thing to get it, because they have to think, okay, well, what happens if they succeed and if they get some footage of a bigfoot on their property and and people see the footage and they get all excited and word gets out about it, and they know who the you know, they hear the people's names, and there then they can
figure out where the location is. So there's all the those kind of complications that you don't think about when you're a bigfooter in California trying to tell somebody in Michigan, like what they need to do to get footage of this bigfoot that's coming around. They have their own concern where they're like, I don't know if I should be doing this, you know, leave out food for it now, No, no, no, we want these things to go away. I'm afraid for
my wife and my kids. So there's considerations that you you don't at first think about, but you always have to do with them. So you're looking for that gem of like say, an older guy who's very brave, who knows enough about the Bigfoot subject to know that they don't attack people, and who's technically savvy enough where they can set up something like that. And then the other thing is then they got to check the footage kind of on a regular pattern, so they you know, they
know if they actually did get something. And so there's just there's a whole lot more than you would think about it. But I'm minimizing like all the months. I mean, the Kentucky thing came together and happened pretty quick. The Ohio one took a lot of time. Wisconsin we had one set up, and still there was a lot of trial and air about where to set up stuff so that it would get it. But yeah, so my footage and I know people they there's some guys out there.
And usually the guys who are who.
Didn't like didn't prefer the idea of setting up a surveillance camera and getting it that way in a place of coming around because their fantasy is the brave guy like the Roger Patterson with the camera who runs up to it and he gets the footage and it becomes the because he was brave enough, you know, to get it handheld. And that's a lot more macho than just like setting up some equipment and coming back and getting you know, seeing what it got later on.
Well, I think that's exactly why someone like Mike Green was successful, because he pulled himself out of the situation. I've seen there's other footage that I'm aware of that have been taken on surveillance cameras, like home surveillance cameras that that like it's pretty okay, you know, and and wouldn't again, it wouldn't convince anybody outside the bigfoot world. But I know these witnesses and they got one and I think it's real. And they showed me the footprints
that went with it. But whatever, somebody poo poos footage like, oh, that's not very good, or you know, that's that does just look like anything. Whatever. I always say, well, you know, feel free to do better. I'd love to see it, you know, because none of this is easy, right, right, and.
So the benefit people understand, like like in the case of Mike Green, one of the key key things was there is he was camping there hoping many times a thing would come up and you know, come around while he was there where he could get it in handheld mode. And then the way he finally got is he left out the candy bar and he left the campground. He bugged out of the campsite and he was gone and
then it comes up to get the candy bar. So you know, so there was a situation where he had proved it's like it makes a big difference if you can extract yourself from the situation and just let the equipment do the work. And it was people say, oh, that's not going to convince anybody. I mean, remember Mike Green thought that that was going to be like the end all. He was like wanted to hype it is
that's the best thing since the Patterson footage. So he thought it was more important and valuable than it really was. I was told him, listen, Mike, the value of it is is it shows you that there's one there. It shows you that they they do have a thermal signature. It's going to stand out in the woods like that, and it's valuable and then it should give you reason to go.
Back and keep trying to get more footage.
Well, I think the two big takeaways from Mike Green's footage is number one, that they're hiding from us in the dark, you know. I think that's a big takeaway that they they probably don't understand that we who look so similar to them, can't see in the dark as well as they can. I think that's a huge takeaway for us bigfooters. And the second thing, of course, is that Mike did leave the situation because you're a hundred percent right. Everybody wants to be Roger Patterson. Everybody wants
to be the guy or gal holding the camera. But I think that that's a huge takeaway as well as if you can remove your ego from the situation, I think you probably have a better shot at footage, right.
And I took that to the extreme.
It's like, not only am I do I not have to be the hero by holding the camera, but I don't even have to be there. I don't care who gets it. I would tell some some witness who's got some activity and tell them how to do it so they can, you know, get the glory, or maybe some other bigfoot researcher who goes there, but you know, and
the best bet would be the property owner themselves. But yeah, they talk about it with their wife and they're thinking, yeah, we can get some footage on our own property that's going to become famous all over the place. And then we have to worry about people with guns sneaking on our property trying to kill the thing.
You know.
So there's that that that issue always comes up, but it's or very often comes up. But yeah, yeah, the more you extract yourself in those situations and where and thereby raising your odds that you're going to get something, then it really shows kind of like what I saw recently with this thing in you know, between Toledo and Detroit.
There's the bigfooters who want to like gather the information, really want to understand the big pots, and then the ones who are doing it because they want the evidence, they want to be the heroes who gets it, so they could have a YouTube channel or a YouTube video showing how great they are and how brave they are, and and and they think like, unless it's gonna unless the footage is gonna immediately make a folk hero out
of them, that it's not even worth the effort. It's like, okay, well, you know, if those are your conditions, then you're not gonna go very far if you need to be there the one holding the camera, and you're not gonna be idea of just being able to say, yeah, I got it was with a surveillance camera and I wasn't there and maybe somebody else was helping me. If that isn't good enough for them, then you know, the hell with them.
They're just they're just one of these big footers that's really just trying to become a hero rather than trying to document these things and understand them whatever little clues you can glean from it, Like with Mike Green video, like you said, it was sneaky even though it was totally dark there, and the thing was still belly crawling around in total darkness. But yeah, they can't understand that we you know, I think they know that we can't
see as well as they can in the dark. But in that case, it's the thing is belly crawling around even though Mike has left the campground, And I think part of it was they know that at any moment, somebody maybe at another camp site across the way because there was still I think a couple of other people there, I don't remember what he is the only one in the whole campground. But where they're coming around people at night, they seem to be very aware that you might bust
out a spotlight. So it's not necessarily that they can they think you can see them at the moment, but that they could be unless they have something they can get behind or standard cover, that they could be lit up by a light. And they don't want to be lit up by a light, you know. And and so belly crawling through the grass is if they want to come up and grab a candy bar is something that they won't hesitate doing.
Well, you know, Matt, we've been on for a little over an hour now, so and it turns out that when you consented to going on to the members episode afterwards, and we put a little post out to our members and I did, I did mention that we have some of the best you know, follow on our membership program anywhere, I think, and we apparently have been flooded with questions for you for the last hour or while we've been doing the main episode, So we have a lot of
questions in our members episode, So why don't we pop over there and do that episode if you don't mind, then we can continue the conversations over there. Okay, no problem, Okay, So Matt, thank you very much for coming on. And if everybody wants to be a member of Bigfoot and Beyond and join the Pigeons as we call them, just go to that link in the show notes down there that the lovely and talented Matt Bruit has put down there.
And what you get for that five dollars a month is you get an extra hour plus every single week, and you also get this main episode every single week with zero commercials of any sort at all, so regular podcast with no commercials, no advertising at all in it, plus an extra hour that is also ad free. And you also get pictures and videos and other stuff that we put out there for you guys when it has something to do with the podcast that we're talking about.
So thank you very much to our fantastic guests and good friend Moneymaker. Really appreciate your time, my friend, and we're gonna hop over there to the member section as soon as Bobo gets us out of here, all righty, yeah.
Folks, we really think Matt money maker for coming on. We know you've all been excited for this so as we are, were and are, and we will see you all next week and until then, keep it squatchy.
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