Big Food and On with Cliff and Bobo.
These guys are your favorites, so like say subscribe and Raid.
It Live, Star and.
Greatest on Yesterday and listening watching limb always keep its watching. And now you're hosts Cliff Berrickman and James Bobo Fay.
Hey, everybody, welcome to Bigfoot and Beyond with Cliff and Bobo and Matt and everybody else in the world on this side of the microphone and you on the other side of the microphone and speakers and all that good stuff. Bobo was out squatching until late last night. We have an appointment with him this morning to do the podcast, but he is not here yet, but he did give us a heads up whatever. At least we know he's coming. So we are starting a kind of on time. We
usually do start pretty close to on time. We're just doing it without Bobo. We're gonna see how long it takes him to show up today.
We should make it clear. Bobo told us to start without him. He said, go ahead and start, I'll be in there as soon as I can. And so we're not trying to start without Bobo. We are following his instructions to the letter.
Yeah, yeah, although he did not tell us to do an over under, so I think that we should do that.
For sure, for sure.
So yeah, so over under. Let's see it is. Uh, we started one minute and five seconds ago, according to the recording timer. Do you think, Matt, he's going to be more than twenty minutes late or less?
I'll go less, you're.
Gonna go less than twenty minutes? What number do you think.
Between ten and fifteen?
Let's just say twelve minutes thirty seconds to split the difference between ten and fifteen.
Okay, I'm writing that down. I am not so optimistic or I am optimistic, depending on how you look at these things. I think Bobo will be thirty five minutes late.
Is this like the price is right, like you wager one dollar or whatever?
Yeah, yeah, exactly what. We will play it by those So if he's I think he will be less than thirty five minutes late. How's that? And then you think he's gonna be less than twelve minutes and thirty seconds late?
Got of work?
Okay.
Of course, there's no money on this or anything like that. It's just a good, good natured gentleman's bet sort of thing. Because I think there's a very real possibility that both of us are going to be wrong on this one, but we'll see, we'll see. But that's what membership is for because he'll certainly be here by the end of the hour, so he'll be participating in the membership episode.
And if you want to be a member and listen to a little bit more Bobo on these episodes, you can just click that link in the show notes below. There's other benefits besides listening to Bobo more often. One of those benefits is you gets an extra show every single week where we get a little bit looser, we get a little bit more willy nilly, a little bit loosey goosey on that side of things. But also when we talk about things and oh, I've got a picture of that, you get to see the picture because we
post those things on the Patreon. When there's a discussion that perhaps I covered in a North American Bigfoot Center video, I actually give the video to the members as well. So there's a lot a lot of benefits. And finally, one more benefit of being a member being an honorary pigeon. As we say, you get this episode that you're listening to at this very moment, completely ad free. So go ahead and click that link below, tie your five dollars and become a member because it's cool. That's it on
that side of things. What's going on, Matt? Anything good?
I think you're about to congratulate me.
Oh, I certainly am. Congratulations Matt. Now you need to tell me why.
Look at the screen.
Look at the screen. I see guests. I don't see Bobo yet.
We'll see it appears that someone is trying to log in at as our counter reads three minutes and forty two seconds, so.
We will see.
Okay, since we do have a topic to get into, if Bobo jumps in before we get to that topic, maybe he can fill us in on what happened in the field, so we don't interrupt.
The topic to hear about that, because I do want to here if he had any good look out there.
Yeah, yeah, I think he was one of the bluff creaker thereabout, so I'd like to hear about that as well.
But in the meantime, while this guest is attempting to log in, we get a lot of these great Q and A submissions that are amazing questions that as soon as I see him I'm like, oh, man, we could talk about that for two hours. There's just no short answer to that question, or you couldn't do the question justice with a short answer in the context of like
a ten or twelve question and answer episode. And so we did one of those recently for the members, and you had a funny line at the end because I said, I think we went you know, beyond for this member and answered the question, and you said, oh, I think we went above and beyond. So I thought, oh, it'd be fun to do a little like above and Beyond series. I almost titled the member episode that, and then another one of our members, a pigeon, commented and was like, oh.
You should do these as a series called Above.
And Beyond, Bigfoot and Beyond. So I really liked that idea. And so today we had a couple of those on the table that have been sitting in our Q and A inbox for a while. Address So we're going to do one of those here for the main episode. Obviously, I won't reveal what that is yet until our guest completes the log in process, which is still ongoing. And so now you know, I edit these so it won't
line up with what the listener sees. But now we're at five minutes and twenty one seconds and the guest is still trying to log in, so that congratulations might not have been It might have been premature because it might take another seven minutes, in which case you would win and I would have to congratulate you. Yeah, you don't count your pigeon eggs before they hatch.
No, I'm sorry, I see P equal bracket P minus James. So that's Bobo's call in line. I think you won six minutes and forty eight seconds. Can you hear us, Bobouck, I guess that means yes, you are just in time.
So we told the listeners that you been out late squatching and so you were getting a late start, and so we hadn't even gotten into the proposed topics yet. So this is perfect timing because I'm sure people want to know if you had it, and we want to know if you had any action out there.
Yeah, tell us about your trip, all.
Right, listeners. So there was just you're going to hear some time compression because we had to stop the session and start recording again. And by the time the session stopped, it was at twelve minutes and sixteen seconds, and several minutes have passed since in so I actually lost the bet. Cliff has won the bet. So congratulations to you, Cliff, Thank.
You very much.
I bet I've got somebody else will be twenty minutes.
I said you would be here by twelve minutes and thirty seconds, and you logged in before that, and so I started congratulating myself, but then it didn't work. And so now that we're finally rolling, it's beyond that time. Oh man, inquiring minds, Cliff and myself included, I want to know how was your trip in the field?
Yeah, where'd you go? Who'd you go with?
We'll say that from the members.
All right, we'll give them a little bit of something special. Then.
Well, in our effort to go above and beyond bigfoot and beyond for some of these listener questions, we got a great question from a pigeon recently named Angela, and she had asked, I've been doing some unrelated research and was reminded of the observer effect in quantum physics. How do you all think that relates to bigfooting ie field research?
And I think that's a great question, and there's definitely no short answer to it, So I thought that'd be a fun topic to discuss for the next hour with our listeners here, especially those who are aspiring or active field researchers.
Yeah, and of course, I think probably the best way to start that conversation is to define what the observer effect is, because it's mostly used in physics, you know, and particularly quantum mechanics. I think the most common terminology for it would be the Heisenberg and certainty principle. I think that's a version of this real simple it's much much, much more simple than that. It's basically that by observing
a situation, you change that situation. Now that is true everywhere, you know, Like, for example, I know that in the morning of if Melissa is working in the kitchen and I go out and I just stand there and look, she's going to go, what the hell you're looking at? Like, what's your problem?
What are you doing?
And it's going to weird her out, essentially because my observation of this situation changed that situation. That's a very obvious example of the observer effect, you know, but there's many, many others, and I think for this conversation, we're obviously talking about sasquatches release the context of sasquatches, So we're looking at wildlife. And again I see this every day
as well. Melissa has taken to feeding the birds, and for a while she's feeding the squirrels and chipmunks, but I kind of discouraged her from doing that because they are rodents and they will live in our walls. We already have one in the wall somewhere. I can hear
it scritch scratch around at night. But I don't necessarily want to gather rodents to a safe haven in my home, right But birds are way cooler in that sort of way, although I still don't trust him so and I know in the morning, like Melissa goes out to you know, check the feeders and all that sort of stuff and do what she enjoys doing, and by her being out there, the birds act differently, the squirrels act differently, everything acts differently.
The observer effect. So clearly that's true of sasquatches as well. And I've I've been kind of ranting about this a bit because a few years ago I heard a pretty prominent bigfoot researcher say that what could another footprint cast possibly teach us and I was just aghast at that, you know, just like what I'm not a ridiculous thing to say. And because you know, when if somebody is lucky enough to see a sasquatch, they're most likely their observation of the animal is going to last two to
three seconds or so. Yeah, not very long. Basically, So I've been arguing very loudly for years that the only way to observe a sasquatch and its natural habitat without changing its behavior, which comes back to the observer effect, is by tracking them. That's it, because if you're lucky to see one for two or three seconds, you're not
going to have a long look. Almost certainly the sasquatch is going to realize as being observed, although that's not always true, and then it's going to change its behavior, most likely by assessing the threat, which is you, and
or walking away and leaving the situation. So the only to me, the only effective way of observing sasquatches in their natural habitat without changing their behavior is by observing the stuff they leave behind their spore in other words, the footprints, forging sign, whatever else is behind them, hair, whatever, and then trying to decipher that trying to read the tracking essentially, which is why I'm so gung ho about it, because I'm deeply interested in the animals themselves. Yeah, I
don't know, maybe that's it for me. What else you have to say?
Well, as you had brought up, it applies heavily to wildlife. One of the examples that comes to mind is that, as I understand it, during the initial observational field studies that Jane Goodall conducted in Gombay, there was a lot of criticism because she was introducing food and so it wasn't necessarily the observation of natural behavior of chimpanzees in their natural habitat. But you know, in attempting to have closer observations of living chimpanzees, she enticed them with food
and that of course changed their behavior. So she's still observing chimpanzees. But you know, to split hairs, you could easily say, well, that's you're not observing natural behavior, you're influencing that behavior. Airgo, you're influencing the phenomenon that you're trying to observe. But obviously her contributions are great, and you know, I think those criticisms might have been warranted in the day, but we've all benefited tremendously from her methods.
But it did raise questions.
I guess that there was some degree of aggression that was first documented by Goodall that you know, sort of shocking and paradigm shifting to the idea that chimpanzees were these sort of like gentle animals that were non violent, you know, as opposed to us their violent cousins, and so a lot of I think that early criticism was that, well, they're only violent because they're competing over this food that
you introduced. Ergo, you know, we have to question whether or not they are naturally violent, which now that's been soundly put to rest. They are very naturally violent critters, scarily so. But I think it does apply to the
field in a lot of ways. One of the analogies I've used before is that, you know, if you could imagine that you were a police officer who was getting a call frequently from a local resident who said that there was a prowler coming to their property every night and jiggling the door handle, trying to break in, peering in the windows, and you wanted to see if this prowler existed and if so apprehend them, how would you
conduct yourself? Well, if you were to go out there in your cruiser and park in the driveway, you know, in the front yard, right in front of the house, and leave your blue lights on and observe no such prowler, would it be fair to say, well, the phenomenon this claimant is describing doesn't exist, because I went there, I searched, and nothing appeared to me that would empirically prove to
me that this phenomenon exists to be observed. And I think anyone would say, well, no, you change the environment, because a prowler likely isn't going to approach the house when there's a police cruiser with the blue lights on in the driveway all night. The reason I use that analogy is I think that applies to a lot of what sasquatch field research is is that if you're trying to study this phenomenon that people describe, so you take
those testimonies and what is it that they're describing. Well, what they describe approximates a living animal, and based on the sort of overarching patterns of all the interactions, observations, and behaviors, it seems to be a very wary, elusive, furtive animal that flees from human contact and tries to avoid human detection. And so if you're in the field, if you don't conduct yourself as if that's the kind of thing you're trying to observe, you might be influencing it.
So if you're hoping to observe a living sasquatch and
you're being very loud, very visible, you know offensive. You know, how many times have we seen people go out and slam the car doors and smoke half a pack of cigarettes and talk loudly and then cough and clear their throat and then do a bigfoot howl expecting that they're going to trick a sasquatch into responding back because it thinks there's another sasquatch in the area, Like it wouldn't have detected all of the indications that there was a
human involved, or it's not optimum, it's not optimal. Well, my point is that so many people might go into the field that way and then when nothing happens, say yeah, there was never anything here to begin with, just like the cop might say, yeah, this person's lying, there's no prowler.
I looked. It's like, well, did you really look.
You know, you have a hypothesis, which is that the phenomenon exists, and how do you conduct the experiment? Well, you have to, at least in this case, which I think makes it sort of unscientific. You have to behave as if the phenomenon does exist, Like you have to conduct yourself as if sasquatches are real animals for the most part, if you're trying to conduct that experiment.
Stay tuned for more Bigfoot and Beyond with Cliff and Bobo will be right back after these messages. You know, Bobes, squatching season is in full swing and I can't help but notice you're wearing that goune squatching hats. But are you wearing that hat to support your favorite hobby or to hide.
Your thinning hair bom. You don't have to answer that, Bobes, because HYMNS offers access to a range of prescription treatments that are awesome out in the woods while you're squatching for hair regrowth, so you can see results by the time that you actually hear that vocalization offers convenient access to a range of prescription hair loss treatments with ingredients at work, including choose oral medications, serums and sprays for
sure Doctor trusted clinically proven ingredients like finasteride and monoxidel can stop hair loss and regrow hair in as little as three to six months. YO get started from the comfort of home, Fill out an intake form, and a medical provider will determine if treatment is right for you. If prescribed, your treatment is sent directly to you for free. Classic The process is one hundred percent online, which means
getting started has never been more convenient. HYMS has helped hundreds of thousands of men get their confidence back with visibly thicker and squatchier hair. Start your free online visit today at hymns dot com slash beyond.
That's hims dot com slash beyond for your personalized hair loss treatment options.
Hymns dot com slash beyond.
Individual results may vary based on studies of topical and oral monoxidyl and finasteride. Prescription required see website for full details, restrictions and important safety information. You have to behave as if the phenomenon exists that you're testing to see whether or not it exists.
Does that make sense, Well.
Yeah, of course, I mean it's like you know, money maker would always criticize people for doing woodknocks wrong, and he was absolutely correct, by the way, even though the people who are like, what, how do you do a woodknock wrong? Well, it's the context. The context of the situation dictates whether you're doing it correctly or not, because you know, hitting the tree with a bat, there's only
so many ways you can do it right. You can choose the right place in the tree and choose the right kind of wood and tree and all that kind of stuff. There's things you know can't you can affect right. But one of the things that people do, the civilians generally do this is they roll up to a campsite, they get everything out, they're making them some noise, and at midnight or something, they step slightly away from the fire and do tree knocks. And that's the wrong way
to do it. That's the wrong way to do it because your fire is there, you've been there for a couple hours generally making some noise. Every sasquatch, every bear, every deer, every elk, every every critter with an earshot knows you're there, and you're just training the sasquatches that, oh yeah, yeah, this is a human thing doing this
is something humans do. Now, they probably don't get that they're doing it for them, because, oh, that's just more weird human noises, because humans make weird noises, you know, the correct way to do something like that, if you're having a bonfire or having friends.
That's an assumption. Clue that they don't know we're doing it for them.
It is. I think it's a pretty safe assumption, the same way that I like deer necessarily know that we're doing we're banging on a tree for or whatever. You know, like I think that animals, that's true. That is an assumption. But I think it's a pretty safe assumption that that any weird noise coming from a human camp, I think is just going to be interpreted as a weird noise coming from a human camp.
Well, I think they know that, we admit it. I think they know we do knocks and whistles and calls we do. Especially since the show came out so many people have done it all over the place. I think they're pretty aware of it now. They don't get they don't get us fired up when they hear it at first, now, like they don't have to come charging in hardly. Ever, if you do knocks and calls, like the first time you do it somewhere like like ever then they jabbed some places.
It doesn't seem like it's changed their behavior at all. I like bumping, Yeah, like bumping, you know. So I don't know, I have no idea. I guess I don't know if it's it's best to assume that they think that we're after them or not. But I think hitting a tree with a baseball bat at the edge of the fire, I don't think it's any sasquatch would assume, Oh they're doing that for me. I think, oh, just humans do weird things, and there's there's yet another weird human noise coming from that same camp.
Well, they know they know we make knocking sounds, that everyone's split in wood and stuff like that. And I think when they hear it in the same place and bumping is don't exact like salt fork still get stuff going on. But I think, yeah, I just think they're smarter to know, like, well, I don't think they would
someone's it was trying to attract them. But I think if it's like you know, for instance, soal Fark can probably where people go there and do calls, all the time, and they still come around and they'll answer sometimes that's like that's more rare than it is normal.
Yeah, I think the correct way to do those things is a step away from camp a few hundred yards.
Oh totally, Well, the best way to get even I think the best way to do is hike in a couple of miles and then do it. Hike it before we gonna start where I get start, and then do it in the middle of like get off trail and do it there like yeah, way better chance of it response.
Yeah, yeah, exactly. So it goes back to the observer effect again, is that general, generally speaking, they're going to change their behavior based on your presence and whether you're observing them or not. I guess you're trying to, and I think that's an element of the observer effect that probably needs to be addressed. Trying to observe them, for them would be the same thing as being observed.
You know.
Well, you know, if you know someone's looking for you and you haven't been found yet, that changes your behavior too.
If you think about it.
But like generating sounds in order to get responses, you know, what we're trying to do is just confirm the presence of sasquatches, but in a way you could make an analogy between that and any other sort of measurement. That's one of the things about the Heisenberger uncertainty principle that people get into the minutiaw about is that it's not even necessarily in some cases that the active observation changes
the phenomenon. It's that the act of measurement changes the phenomenon, And so good analogies would be if you use a tire pressure gauge. You know that has a certain set of parameters and psi, et cetera. But in order to measure the pressure of a tire, you have to let out a little bit of air. So if you had a sensitive enough pressure gauge that could get into like the most minute decimal points, you would find that the pressure of the tire is actually different before you begin
to measure it. Or if you had, you know, a tub or a bucket full of water and you insert a tape measure or a ruler into it to measure the depth of it, you're actually raising the level of that water by displacing it with the tool. Now, those measurements we consider them to be sort of inconsequential because we're looking at sort of a macro like centimeters inches, whatever the case may be, or again psi pounds per square inch. But actually we are changing the phenomenon by
the act of measuring it. And if we're measuring sasquatch activity by generating sounds or by baiting with food or in any way, we're changing the phenomenon in that way too, Because who's to say that what it is that we're hearing or observing is not natural behavior but is a
stress response. You know, a naturally occurring animal that was in a baseline state is now displaying a stress response or an avoidance behavior, or an aggressive response to intimidate, and so so many of the things that we observe that we think are normative behaviors might actually be more like stress responses, etc. So we're measuring the phenomenon and undoubtedly having an effect on it each and every time.
Yeah, I think whenever there's a human in the vicinity of a sasquatch, that probably heightens the sasquatch's stress levels. And there are reports that you can see evidence of that in whether it's reports of sasquatches smiling at the observer because you know, smiling for an ape is a is a negative thing. It is a stress reaction. They're kind of showing you their knives, so to speak, their teeth, you know, in humans it doesn't mean that, But we
can't interpret other animals based on human nonverbal communication. We have to kind of look outside of that. When you look at all the other ape species, when they're smiling at you, like generally speaking, that's not a good thing. You know, they're bearing their teeth or any other animal for that matter. Also, I think, like we talked about this recently, I think on another recent broadcast that the smell might be associated with a stress reaction in sasquatches
as well. Out in the field, I've seen broken trees quite often, very odd oddly broken trees, and I think that these are probably stress reactions as well, because so far they've mostly been located on roads or trails where humans are, so that the presence of humans in that sort of way does elicit I think that the evidence is there that it does probably elicit a lot of stress and sasquatches which completely changes their behavior.
And how much of what we were recording, you know, because the observer effect falls back on the observer, because there's observer bias, and so you know, if you have pre existing biases, which we all do, there's no one that's immune to that. You know, if we're going through the research notes or the claimant eyewitness testimony, you know, how much of what's being quote unquote observed is actually like selectively edited in the moment, maybe even involuntarily to
fit some presupposition. And so even the data that we're seeing, as long as it's testimony or anecdotal, is still going to be biased by the observer. And so there's an observer effect there, or even the differences between a range of observers. You know, what's relevant to what person to one person might not be relevant to another, and so things are noteworthy and some aren't. And so I don't see how this field couldn't be influenced heavily by it.
And that just has to be true of any and all wildlife observational studies, which I think if we're looking for models, at least as it pertains to capturing visual evidence, you know, trying to see one photograph one, get video of one. Then it's like, well, I really like to read the travelogus and nature writing of hunters and wildlife photographers.
Even though I'm not hunting one, I kind of am with a camera and it's like, well, what methods do these people use to have extended observations of wildlife and to document those observations? And that's a lot more relevant than what are sasquatch researchers doing in a lot of those cases.
Well, yeah, you know a lot of this conversation reminds me of something that Tom Powell mentions a lot and his presentations, And of course Tom's very paranormal and stuff, but he does have some really good points about the sasquatch phenomenon in some ways. And one of the things he really hammers is that we should be focusing on gathering intel versus gathering evidence, because evidence is scarce and it's hard, and it's not going to convince very many people.
But he thinks that we can actually get a lot further, a lot faster by gathering what is essentially intel, you know, like from a CIA perspective sort of thing, Whereas if we're going out and we're trying to find you know, observations and behavioral patterns and consistencies within witness testimonies and that sort of thing, like basically anecdotal sort of things is you know.
It's all anecdotal because it's all their.
Perception, right right. So that's his point that it doesn't amount to scientific proof or real evidence in any sort of way. It's more intel, and he thinks that we can get further that way than gather trying to gather the evidence. I agree that, but so far, that's what most of the Bigfoot history of the subject has been focused on, is intel, and it's gotten us here, and we've kind of stalled out I think here for the
last thirty or fifty years or so. Maybe intel. I mean it's it's a good way to go, and it's a good way for most hobbyists and stuff like that, but really pushing the ball down the field, I think that you have to go pass that and just focus on the evidence versus intel, and I think the evidence itself. When you go to a level of evidence, I think that that's when you start leaving the observer effect behind.
You know, if I gather a footprint cast, the Sasquatch is likely did not know I gathered that cast unless it was in the area which and I don't know how often they're in the area, essentially, And also you remove that evidence from the environment and you can you can analyze it and give it to other people who have no idea about the context and see what they think about it, and all that sort of stuff kind of removes the observer.
I think those are great points. I mean, in terms of gathering intel. To me, that is the path to evidence, and so I'd have to see exactly what Tom said or what he intends by that. But I don't think that you can abandon evidence to prefer intel, because the path, too, ever is by following intel. You know, Matt made that point.
Matt money Maker made that point in our members only episode with him, is that you know, by gathering testimony that might lead you to the evidence that then leads you to conclusive proof.
And so there's a.
Sort of a series of steps that have to be taken. But again, I think if we look at the legacy of methodology that's successful for hunters and wildlife photographers, everything they do in the field is to you know, negate
the observer effect. They're trying to negate all of those effects by employing stealth and camouflage and scent control and a whole host of factors to make themselves, you know, undetectable so that the observer effect doesn't happen to the extent that they can at least document observations or in the case of hunters, collect the animals that they're after. And there's there's a lot to learn from there, and
it's not easy. I mean, you know, I spent years basically carrying out like the sort of expedition protocol A because I like sploring and looking for sign and then B because it's a lot of fun to be out at night in the dark trying to get responses and trying to see things with a thermal image or have experiences like I still do that. I enjoy it. I just don't have the expectation that that's going to get
me great visual evidence. To get great visual evidence, you kind of have to behave like a hunter or wildlie photographer, and it can be really tedious and very boring and make for a lot of long days where nothing happens. And I still know in my mind that it's the right thing to do, but of course my heart wants the adventure, you know, But all of that really is predicated on negating the observer effect.
At the end of the day, stay tuned for more Bigfoot and Beyond with Cliff and Bobo will be right back after these messages.
So what's the best way for the standard Joe, you know, like our listeners us, what do you think the best way to deal with with eliminating the observer effect to observe sasquatches in their natural environment without changing their behaviors.
I think using those methods like trying to be visually undetectable, whether that's you know, wearing camouflage at the very least earth tones so that you're not wearing something you know, bright red or bright blue or something that completely stands out that makes you easily visually detectable. Because apes, you know, primemates are visual animals, and apes we have the best vision,
or at least as far as mammalia is concerned. So trying to be visually undetectable, trying to move as little as possible because motion is very easy to detect, so you know, being stationary in a place where you have good lanes of observation, trying to be still, trying to be quiet because you know, as a secondary sense. Our hearing is pretty good, and as is the hearing of other apes. Typically, the ape behavioral response to a novel sound is to immediately try to investigate it visually, so
they are always listening. I know we've talked about this quite a bit, but it's just not as sexy to say, like, we'll get out there, hide, be still, be quiet and keep your eyes and ears open, because it's not as fun as exploring and moving and trying to make contact and have interactions.
And I still try to do those things.
So I'm not detegrating that approach, but I'm just saying, like, I don't expect that that will lead me to observing a sasquatch in its natural environment, exhibiting its natural behavior as much as those wildlife photography or hunting methods, and just having done field research as long as I have
around the country, almost known is doing that. I didn't even start doing it until I started to spend a lot of time with Darryl Collier and a couple of other NAWAC members who were doing that and who had had observations using that method, And so I try to be more committed to it now, despite how boring it can be.
Yeah, that's not really my take on. I mean, you're absolutely correct. If you want to observe a sasquatch and for thirty seconds or a minute or something, or having like an extended observation of a sasquatch, that's probably and without it knowing. That's got to beretty much one of the only ways to do it except for blindly stumbling upon one that doesn't happen to notice you, or.
Put out cameras at a pretty like a spot that's a hot spot and like have like you know, military grade or even like you know, not even not high, but better than what we have. Like the guys from a study sasquatch bar and those guys, what they're doing with those long distance therms. I think that's gonna be way more productive than anything else.
Maybe have you got multiple If you got multiples, have you.
Got if you got you know, a couple of dozen of them?
Yeah, I mean, I guess it depends on what they get. I just I just don't have a lot of faith in that a thermal imaging video will show us much.
Oh, like one of those one of those new high tech like it's a digital thermal and filmed, all laid over each other, all three you've seen you see those, right, No.
I don't pay attention to I'm not really a tech guy like that, you know, because I don't think it's going to do it. But so I don't know. I mean, I don't. I don't pay attention to that stuff.
You know, these will do as long as you trust a source and don't think can say it's trustworthy source, these things will definitely be able to show it no problem. Yeah.
Well, now, Bobo, we've talked before about how we suspect sasquatches might be able to detect electronics in some sort of way, whether it's a sound or an EMF thing or whatever else, and we don't really know. Don't you think that will come into play here?
Well, their units are all self contained in like these ammal cases that are the MF that are totally the MF proof. They put a shield up around the whole thing barrier, so it's all self contained, so there's no EMF detective detect They're setting them up at several hundred yards away too, well.
From where they hope it's going to walk. But you can't really control where a sass which is going to walk.
No, no, but if you've got enough of those things out, you're going to cover pretty much all your avenues. You know, if you got enough resources to cover all your avenues, then the matter of them actually walking in. But yeah, you never know what You never know what they're going to do for sure.
Yeah, well, I guess we'll see, you know, we'll see if they get anything. You know, I know it's been going on for about a year now, right, Yeah.
Well they got held up because of the Terra stuff and all that stuff come out of China and this and that. Like, I know, they got held up because of that.
So it's not it has many year because the terrorist have not eve been affecting a few months here, so it's been a lot less.
They have they have five they are going to build ten more, but they don't they don't have all the parts. Shit.
Well, well hopefully they get something.
So if the goal is how do you get thermal imaging video of a Sasquatch, I think they're absolutely correctly pursuing that goal.
You know.
If the goal was like, well how do you find tracks, then it's like, well, don't worry about what clothes you're wearing.
You can wear bright blue or bright red or whatever.
Because none of that has to do with you know, trying to spook or not spook the animals. You need to have your eyes and focus on the ground and documentation materials with you, whether that's camera and tape, measure and casting materials, et cetera.
So it's all goal dependent.
I got. I'm just saying, yeah, I mean you need like a sniper, like a military, like a green Bridish sniper. It's like super came out, like you got set block on, so like guard dogs not smell you or you know, I mean, like you got to go all the way to be real discipline and how you littlely you move all that kind of stuff. Like you know, those guys have like those you know, pea bottles so they don't
have to get up from their position. They can just go to the bathroom right there, like like that stuff. I thinks it's gonna take to get some squash fage, like if you want to get consistent footage or more than once, if you need kind of that kind of approach.
Well, I think if the goal was like to personally capture footage, you know, if the goal was just footage in general, then yeah, with enough money, you just put up the right kind of surveillance or game cameras or whatever the case may be, in high enough abundance or cameras on a house like the Ericson project, and then you don't even need a human who could sit out in the field for hours or days at a time. So it's really that's what I mean by goal specific.
Oh for someone, Oh yeah, you're right, you're right. Yeah. Yeah, so yeah, just be do what you can on your budget and time, and yeah, be being like yeah nature for a hundred Just take the precautions and be out and be out there as much as you can in a good spot quiet, be quiet and unobtrusive and.
Is Yeah, if your goal is to observe one in its natural habitat without it knowing.
I have to jump in here. I think that the conversation here is confused footage with observations.
Are you're right?
Footage is not the only way to observe a sasquatch. Yeah, I think that's an important thing here, Like footage is a different game. That's a different game that they're playing. If you're trying to get footage, and of course the footage will help us visually observe a sasquatch for however long it's in the viewfinder. You know, I understand that. But there's other ways to observe the sasquatch. You can observe their presence by listening and hearing for knox or vocalizations.
I routinely observe their recent presence by looking at footprints and finding foraging sign and other spore that they leave behind. Observing a sasquatch is much different than filming one, is my point here, So I think that we shouldn't confuse the two. I mean, everybody wants to see a sasquatch, and the cool thing about footage is that you can share your observation of it. That's why everybody loves a PG film because that might be the only sasquatch most
of us ever get to see in broad daylight. Right. But Roger and Bob are the ones who observed it, and they're just sharing their observation with us by sharing the film. But there's other ways to observe a sasquatch, And I think when and I would, I would argue that the tracking method which I regularly employ has yielded more results than any of the other observation methods, except with the possible exception of vocalizations. But we don't know really what's making some of these vocalizations.
Certainly, Yeah, I mean, I guess I would restrict if we're splitting hairs like visual observation is the way I interpreted the question about observing a sasquatch and its natural habitat without annoying it's being observed.
Yeah, see, I didn't. I didn't even think. I mean, that would be cool, that'd be the cherry on the cake. But to me, I wasn't even thinking along that because I have observed evidence of sasquatch behavior before, like move logs aside and foraging and breaking apart tree stumps and
breaking trees and all that sort of stuff. I've observed plenty of indirectly observed plenty of sasquatch behavior just by doing what I do, going out once or twice a week to the areas and spooping around and see trying to find stuff.
Yeah, I mean, that's where I would say, again, if the goal was to observe the living animal versus to observe the consequences of the animal's interaction with the environment. Those are two different things that have two very different methodologies.
So my answer was.
Specifically about like visually observing the animal and its environment versus the consequences of its interaction with the environment in the aftermath of its having passed through, etc.
I would argue that even on finding big Foot, going out and getting the vocalizations, which is a pretty low hanging fruit, it's a much easier thing to do than actually putting your eyes on a sasquatch that's also an observation of a sasquatch, But also we had changed their behaviors as well, you know, the observe effect was in full bloom and finding Bigfoot of course, and all these episodes.
Oh certainly.
I just think, to my broader point, like, if most people are trying to see one in the environment, learning from people who do so successfully with other wildlife and seeing that almost everything they do is predicated on negating or at least accounting for, the observe effect is worth trying to replicate.
In your own experiments.
And I think that's where most people go wrong, and myself included, I've done it many times where I've just made the mistakes and have gotten home and nothing happened. And then, if I'm being honest, I have to go, well, did I really do my best.
To be undetectable?
Now I probably could have done better, And so is the silence and the absence of evidence that I experienced proof that there was nothing there? Or could that have been because I actually influenced the environment because I was too noisy coming in, or I slammed my car doors too loud, or you know, I got up and moved
around too much when I should have stayed station. I'll never know, but I think to be responsible about it, I have to go, well, I didn't quite properly conduct the experiment the way it should have been to have any certainty that there was never anything there, you know what I mean?
Yeah, yeah.
And the hard thing about this field, I think for anyone, is like, we don't know how to interpret negative data because I hear a lot of people say things to the effect of like they know we're here and they're choosing not to respond. That's their interpretation of like getting no responses. Versus my I'd be like, well, there's not any around, you know, and who knows whether either of.
Us are right or wrong?
Because it's unverifiable and unfalsifiable. Right, So most of the time, what you're left with is negative data, is the absence of responses or the absence of sign and people can choose to interpret that in whatever way best fits.
Their narrative or their again, their biases.
And so I think you have a lot of people that say, oh, well, we conducted an experiment quote unquote, we knocked this many times and nothing happened. And so it's definitely the case that that was too many times. Maybe if we had knocked fewer times, they would have chosen to respond.
Where it's like, well, you're.
Assuming that there was even one in earshot to hear your knocks in the first place.
We don't know that.
People are still trying to like decode you know, what all these things mean, or they're they're always looking for the panaceo, you know, the magic bullet, Like what is it that is irresistible to them that they will respond to every time predicated on the assumption that they're there in the first place hearing the stimuli and electing not to respond.
You know, that drives me crazy. You know people that are like, oh, there's it's like to you don't know one heard it. You don't. You don't know if it heard it and ignored it or didn't hear it. Yeah, we don't know. But people say that all the time. But there's times like when I was out my buddy from Pennsylvania that you guys know, we left all those recorders out one and up in the Redwoods. We didn't
know they were there. We played the record in the next city, or knocking doing real loud knocks in the last loud knocking right next to the recorder. So it's like they're there. They knew we were there, they just waited till we left. But we didn't. We wouldn't know that unless we had an auto recorder running when we left.
Does the insertion of electronic recording devices like long duration recorders or game cameras or these long distance therms and whatever that bar those guys are doing, How does that affect their behavior? You think?
Well, everyone, everyone seems to say that audio doesn't seem to bother them. The auto recorders. It's the cameras. For whatever reason, Because I know a lot of people, like I've heard firsonal ones at least set out where sometimes up in funnels around the krons then puts it back down and you hear it a walk away. I mean, so you don't hear like I think they mess with game cameras sometimes, but they usually don't mess with cameras too much like they do the auto recorder.
It seems like, yeah, or they're just not close enough to the audio recorder you didn't even know it's there.
I mean, I'm talking abou when they pick it up and sniff it and stuff.
Like that, right, right, But you know, if an LDR is just sitting hanging on a branch somewhere and it's it's a quarter mile away the Sasquatch, it's not going to know it's there. There's no way.
Yeah, I like it has any effect having auto recorders out.
But but cameras, you think that they're they're they're pretty wise too.
I think so, I think, yeah, I think the I think the other older ones I think definitely are.
Yeah. I think it's definitely possible for sure. But at the same time, you know, maybe they don't care sometimes too.
Right.
What about how does this how does this whole topic of conversation lead into the idea the hypothesis. I know that Peter Burn put this idea out on a television show many many years ago, that sasquatches are aware of their own footprints and choose not to leave them in certain areas, or choose to leave them in certain areas. I mean, doctor Grover Grantz kind of picked up that ball and curated it for a bit in his excellent
book about the idea of that. So how does that affect what we're talking about here?
Well, I think there are constous of their footprints in certain substrates for sure. If it's not it's hard packed dirt, I think they sometimes you either walk across me the log log landing or landing or something that's super you know, had das and D five roll around, pack it in super tight and the summ you're not gonna leave any evidence, and the winner's muddy, they're not going to walking within the summer.
I think if they have anything like the cognition of other apes. If not, you know, something closer to our level of cognition, because we know that other apes are aware of their own footprints, and you know, doctor Melton detailed some experiments that demonstrated that quite nicely with chimpanzees.
And so if they are ambush predators. As part of their omnivorous lifestyle, they are probably hip to the tracks of prey animals, you know, if they're foraging and moving around and then they see, you know, fresh tracks of their prey animals. I don't think that's unreasonable, because other
predators recognize the sign of their prey. And how would that not extend to being aware of one's own tracks or presence and the desire or ability to try to avoid leaving those because your lifestyle is dependent on avoiding detection at all costs. I don't think that's outrageous at all.
Agreed, No. Doctor Krantz actually notes in his book that if wolves can identify one another by their scent, it doesn't take any more brain power for assas squash to identify another individual by the shape of its foot. And I think that's very a reasonable way for them to navigate the environment and figure out where their ilk have been, you know, like where the other sasquatches. I don't know,
but I saw tracks yesterday over in this spot. They're probably over in that zone there, because I'm also a sasquatch and I know there's food on that ridge, and I know where to find it because I've been there before, you know, I think that would be very reasonable expectation, and it also might I've kind of hypothesized this a bit. I'm not sure if I think it sounds like I've just spoken about this on the podcast recently, but maybe
I haven't. I've often wondered if by when we get to actually study sasquatches for real, like they're real animals. Everybody knows that there's teams of biologists out there doing it, are we going to discover that We're going to learn a lot more about the roots of our natural behavior of tracking, because that's a behavior of Homo sapiens. We track, you know, it's just something that we do. Just like
you know, squirrels climb trees, Homo sapiens track. I bet you we're going to find out a lot about the root of that behavior when sasquatches can be studied appropriately. Stay tuned for more Bigfoot and Beyond with Cliff and Bobo. Will be right back after these messages. I know for my own field work, I will say this, though I have found tracks in the mud on a number of occasions,
and I don't have the exact number. I'm going to make this up, I'm going to say eighty percent of the time, seventy percent of the time, it's always the juvenile. It's always the juvenile of the family group. It's you know, in one area it's a twelve inch eleven or twelve inch, or the other one it's about an eight to ten incher. And in every case, well almost every case, the footprints in the mud are always of the juvenile, occasionally of
the presumed female thirteen fourteen inches long occasionally. And I have never found the big one, the big one's footprints, whether it's either my two areas of the fifteen inch or the seventeen inch, I've never found those individuals' tracks in the mud always and another sort of substrate. And I've kind of wondered about this, and I know that, you know, when my dog Sochi was alive, dog rest her soul, she would have go out of her way to avoid walking in mud. She just didn't like the
way I felt or something. I don't know. I'm not sure what it was, because she certainly didn't care about getting inside of the house dirty, so it must have been something about the way she felt on her feet. And I kind of wonder if that's the case, or if the sasquatches are just aware that they're going to leave a big, old footprint there. It's easy to find it easy to follow. Maybe the big males, I mean, maybe they're tuned into the tracking thing a little bit more.
Maybe that's their job or something, you know, the track down their prey. Who knows. The possibilities are infinite at this moment because we know so little about these things. But I do find it interesting that only the juveniles, for the most part, are found in any sort of muddy substrate. The larger, presumably wiser individuals seem to avoid that sort of substrate.
An interesting thing to think about is that you know ambush predators. And I would again encourage new listeners, if you haven't heard me, make these recommendations to read at least these two books, The Tiger, A True Story of Vengeance and Survival by John Volant and The Great Soul of Siberia by Soyong Park, both of which are excellent books about the Siberian tiger, but they go into great detail about the lifestyle of an ambush predator, and in a way, it's as if their whole lifestyle is built
to account for the observer effect, because they have to remain undetectable at all times in order to acquire food resources, and so all of their behaviors, not only certain innate behaviors, but a great deal of learned behaviors. These really sophisticated behavioral responses that are developed over long spans of time, are all geared towards avoiding being detected by anything in the environment so that they can cesssfully acquire the food
that they need to survive. And there's a lot of intelligence that comes along with especially predators.
That have diverse praise species.
They're not specialists that just hunt only one sort of animal, and so you know, every animal has a different host of senses and sort of perceives the world in a different way. So they live in their own perceptual bubbles that are made up of different sets and combinations of senses, and so an ambush predator has to constantly infiltrate those perceptual bubbles without being detected successfully all the time. And so in a way, their whole lifestyle is about avoiding the observer effect.
So if you think about a.
Big, intelligent animal with a big brain, you know, an ape like a sasquatch, whether they're closer to us or the other apes. You know, set that aside for now that is innately in a learned sense, likely as well acutely aware of the observer effect at a genetic and a behavioral level, like an embodied level. Good li luck observing an animal that way, you know, an animal that operates that way like you're trying to ambush the best ambush predator. You're trying to observe the thing that is
the most acutely aware of the observer effect. And so it makes the proposition really, really difficult. And I don't think it's outlandish at all, especially if folks, if you read those two books, you'll see just how hard it is to predictably and reliably observe this big cat, and from which you know, you can extrapolate to well, what would it be like to have an ape with a similar lifestyle or similar evolutionary pressures, similar behavioral adaptations, et cetera.
Yeah, I figure in that analogy of it's a science question as its whole life, Like a fighter pilot shutdown behind enemy lines, like move on a star. You know, it starts getting twilight lay down on hide somewhere, you know, just be real furtive, like be aware where you stepped on any tracks. Those signs the most possible. That's how big footlet is twenty four to seven.
And then they have the cultural camouflage too, of the fact that most of the population don't believe that they exist, and so that helps them hide pretty well too. That you know, most people in those environments if they encountered sasquatch sign and they wouldn't even observe it, They wouldn't
know what they were seeing or looking at. I mean, cliff to your earlier point about seeing the aftermath of their interaction with the environment absent clear five toed tracks, how many lay people do you think would pick up on what you're documenting?
Oh, zero exactly, yeah or close to zero, yeah, yeah. Because their feet are big, wide, soft padded, they don't leave a lot of sign. The forest substrate itself is just not conducive to leaving sign. You really have to tune your eyes. You have to spend a lot of time out there. And I'll say it again, I'm not a great tracker man, but you know I am getting eight to ten hours or twice that Sometimes a practice every single week, and I've been doing that for a
few years now. I'm not a great tracker, but I have a lot of time under my belt at this point, and if it wasn't for that, i'd be missing almost I'm getting better too, even still, you know. I mean,
I was out tracking with Darby last week. I showed them a track way out at the outer Rim, and I was noticing that I was picking up on some sign that I wouldn't have picked up on a few years ago, which is always nice to see one's progress, you know, whether it's on the tracking or guitar or whatever that you're into that you'd like to be better at. You can actually notice your own improvement, and I've noticed that a little bit lately, so it's kind of cool.
But for the most part, most people would walk right past all of this.
Stuff, exactly.
And so especially if you're thinking about an animal that's rare with large home ranges, and you know the way that they seem to be distributed, at least based on evidence and testimonies around North America, their numbers must be fairly small, so it's like their impact on the environment is undetectable nearly you know, virtually undetectable win compared to scores of elk, deer, bear, you know, all the other animals that are in much greater abundance leaving a lot
of sign out there. And so most people, even if they did detect the subtle sign that you're describing, would likely just attribute it to one of those other animals, and in many cases, to the lay person, it would be indistinguishable from one of those other animals. So to me that it's not a difficult proposition at all. But I do think if anyone is going into the field, I think most people going into the field are hoping that they'll see one. Most of the conversations I have
with people, that's what they're aiming at. That's what I'm aiming at, And so you have to account for the observer effect. I think it's a great point that Angela brought up and something people should keep in mind. And the best way to do that not only read everything that we often recommend about the sasquatch phenomenon, but read about other animals, and especially read about the methods and testimonies of successful hunters and successful wildlife photographers. You know,
if hunting's not your thing, I'm not a hunter. I enjoy reading that stuff. But I know some people might cringe at reading about killing animals, But fine, go read. There's great books by wildlife photographers about what works for them across a range of different species. So it's all very very useful.
There you go. Well, I think that kind of covers a lot of a lot of ground here in this conversation this week, as far as the observer effect goes, some of the implications and just some of the you know, I guess are Rata likes just general thoughts about the subject, leaving tracks, tracking them, you know, a little bit of technology like all that kind of stuff. So hopefully our listeners got a little bit of something out of that. And I guess at the end of the episode, we
always like to plug our upcoming events. I'm going to be speaking at the Hawking Hills big Foot Festival August seventh through tenth, just a couple like a week or two away, right, It's going to be at the Vinton County fair Grounds in Ohio. Tom Powell just mentioned him in the episode. He's going to be there. We have a lot of people. I'm obviously I'm going to be speaking there. Some people I unfortunately I don't know. But the other people I've heard of and I do know
pretty well. Steve Coles, good friend of the show, is going to be there, Mountain Monster folks like the Wild Bill folks, and Turtleman's going to be there apparently. Yeah, lots and lots of good times, good fun. Charlie Raymond and I'm afraid I don't know everybody.
Can't know everybody.
I can't know everybody. They have me speaking on Thursday at three and Saturday at six. Oh. I got to pull a presentation out of my button. Figure out what I'm going to be talking about. Interesting, I better start preparing for that. I'm glad I did this.
Yeah, I forgot that.
B asked me to do that. How funny. Don't worry, be I got you. It'll be awesome.
Just give you the first one backwards right right.
A palindromic presentation by Cliff Berrickman.
And I'll be speaking at the Capitol Library in Bowling Green on Saturday, August two with Murray Mayor Russe coord some of the Mountain Monsters. Folks can't wait to see Wild Bill again. And then there's a new event that's happening in Loudonville, Ohio. That's called the Mohican Bigfoot Festival. And that Moheican Bigfoot Festival is going to be on Saturday, September the twentieth, So I'll put the links to all these events in the show notes.
Nice all right, folks, well 'so other week. Thanks for joining us hit like Hicks Share. I'll tell you about the program. If you like it, we appreciate it. We're gonna go over to the Patreon section up for our members and hope you join us there eventually. If not today then sometime in the future. Until then, y'all keep it squatchy.
Thanks for listening to this week's episode of Bigfoot and Beyond. If you liked what you heard, please rate and review us on iTunes, subscribe to Bigfoot and Beyond wherever you get your podcasts, and follow us on Facebook and Instagram at Bigfoot and Beyond podcast. You can find us on Twitter at Bigfoot and Beyond. That's an n in the middle, and tweet us your thoughts and questions with the hashtag Bigfoot and Beyond
At the same wi out s Ada CONSTI bet