Ep:174 Bigfoot Forensics with David Zigan

I'm looking down and I see a red floating light down in the bottom bottom of the valley, and it's moving kind of like a drone wood, just super slow. There's no bobbing, and it was just slowly moving. And then it dawns on me. Cra, crap, crap. I forgot about the person behind me. I turned around and I look up, and then I glanced back down and the red light's gone. So I put my back to a

tree and do that old turkey hunter patients thing. And I sat there for like fifteen twenty minutes, and as soon as I take my first step, it starts walking with me again.

a half ago. And I did it right. When I first started that interview and interrogation process, I actually had a mentor, and I belong to the International Association of Interviewers, and the whole premise was you need a mentor because once you start getting into that world of being able to detect deception, you start having well I didn't know it at the time, I understand now, but you start thinking like everybody's a liar, right, and you start getting

angry and you know you can't trust anybody, And honestly, the mentor is there to help reel you back in and say focus, focus, Remember you have to ask this question every single time that you think you're spotting someone lying. You have to say, what is the intent? And that can help answer a lot of questions if you're open minded, mainly because a lot of people don't. Their intent is

not to defraud, you know. You know, it's kind of the example I like to give is you're sitting around at dinner table with a bunch of people you don't know. Everyone's telling stories. Everyone's going to be embellishing those stories because they want to fit in, they want to be liked, right. Their intent is not to deceive you, not to pull one over on you. And then the same thing with eyewitnesses.

They want to be helpful. And a lot of times what happens is when you sit them down and you start asking them the hard questions and they realize that they really didn't see much, they'll start to embellish because now they feel silly. For sometimes they feel silly or feel like a crap, what am I doing here? I really didn't see as much as I thought I should have seen, you know, to be helpful, so they embellish a little, you know, so it doesn't look like they're

wasting someone's time or or something like that. So those are all things you have to keep in mind. Is you know, what is the intent here? I can tell they're being deceptive, And at what point did the truth stop and the embellishment start? You know, because a lot of these people they saw something right. But then you have the confirmation bias. You know, all these people, you know, they want to believe so bad and they want to have finally had that experience that they may overlook some

key details and they'll even fight you on it. Once you're able to like prove no, they'll still fight you. But it's what you decide to do with the information, how you decide to act during the conversation. You know, there's all kinds of things. But I almost stopped listening entirely to some podcasts just because of that, where you can hear that, oh, that's full of shit. You know, that's crap. I don't want to hear that, you know,

I guess a waste of my time. I'm trying to learn stuff, and I can automatically tell you're lying, just knock it off. And then there's the others where you go, oh, that's interesting, that's interesting. This interesting. Wait crap, now they're adding you know, but I mean, you can't prove all that either. That's just you know, experience. But yeah, in general, yeah, I mean, I keep an open mind. I've had stuff happen to me in the woods so that's kind of where a lot of this came from.

sexual assaults, things like that. So I did that for a long time, and then finally a spot opened up in crime scene and that's where I quickly found out that I should have been doing that all along. It's almost a you know, a part. Now you're like, are you kidding me? You're paying me to do this? You pay me to read research, go to classes, learn as much as I can, and it's it's something that I should have been doing all along, and I fully embraced it. So I got the pleasure of going to the National

Forensic Academy in Oakridge, Tennessee. Sometimes they call it the body Farm. Right then I became a certified crime scene investigator, a certified latent fingerprint examiner. I got the pleasure of going back and acting as an adjunct instructor sometimes, but that passed right after COVID, the the guy who actually taught a lot of my my beginning classes in the fingerprint world, he actually took a full time job there.

Some like there's no reason for me, I have to go back, and I was, it was jokingly telling like, damn it, man, you're killing me. You know. I was enjoying being able to do that. But so, you know, the story continues, and then so as it progresses. My my work colleague, he's working on his doctorate in bloodstained pattern analysis, and it would turn out that we both

have similar interest but focusing on two different worlds. So he's focusing focusing on bloodstain, I'm focusing focusing on latent fingerprints, and uh, but we both do crime scene reconstruction, shooting incident reconstruction, and I'm cross trained in his field. It's

just not love, he's cross trained in mind. And lately, within the with the past couple, I would say lately the past now three years, I've been heavily focusing on being able to uh understand the distortion and recognizing the context within the actual friction image patterns that we are collecting, you know, like understanding the movements what was happening while

they were being deposited. Then it became a thing where I was working on that, and then I ended up you know, as you progress in your field and you know, start testifying in court. If you're good, you're good. If you're bad, people know that too, right, So our lab ended up being one of those that were helping train local csis around us and giving instructions, classes, teaching as well.

I act as a verifier for several agencies around that's probably about seven, and I work fingerprints for about five of those agencies on a full time basis, not just my own. Uh So I see a lot of fingerprints.

I'm super super busy, and that's what made me want to honestly you know when during the distortion UH studies is when I became interested of you know, can I find some good dermal ridges inside these casts or inside some pictures of the impressions in the ground, and you know, could I help, you know, if I can't be out in the field doing this, maybe I can help spread the world on how to collect evidence and you know,

do that properly. But also maybe I can help look at some of these things to help determine authenticity as far as friction ridges and dermal ridges and things like that.

he roosts in a different in a different tree. So if you're there when they go to roost, then you know their location, So that means in the morning you can sneak back in while it's still dark and be between them. And then when the tom comes down and the hens come down, and you know the basically you're in the way at the top, so now you've got

them coming towards you. That's the whole goal. So there are several times where you know you're there for them roosting, so that means it's the evening, it's getting dark, and that means you're, however far away from camp you are. You know, you got that walk back alone in the

woods by yourself. Never once, you know, out of the years that I was doing that, that I ever feel uncomfortable think there was anything else out there until I had a couple of weird incidences which at least i'd never attributed and I still don't attribute it to Bigfoot, but I do. I can't explain what they are, which opens my mind to the possibility for the other. So my my sergeant and my other cop friends who are leasing this property. My sergeant in particular is really big

into Bigfoot, the shows. He was already looking at Bigfoot mapping, probably Jax, you know, b Fro all that kind of stuff, and it became a like a conversation piece around the campfire. Then us kind of bonding over it, and it just kind of organically grew from that point to where we're sitting around the fire having beer, watching all the big Foot shows, you know, laughing at some of the silly stuff as cops, you know, go oh, that's a bunch

of crap. Buy in that dude's line, you know, saying silly stuff like that, while we you know, we have our own commentary. But that's how it kind of grew. It just kind of grew naturally to there. And then, like everybody at work knows, you know, I started getting Christmas ornaments, you know, like Bigfoot Christmas ornaments, you know, hanging on my door at Christmas times. Stickers, coasters, coffee mugs,

you know, stuff people were picking up. So it hadn't been a really bad thing for the most part, absolutely accepted, mainly because the things that I've done, you know, like we were talking before, I'm pretty much pretty much bound to what I can and can't say, just like everyone would expect, you know, since I'm still employed by them, right, But I've been told that as long as I keep it professional and anything that I write, as long as it's on the same level as what I would put

out professionally, then it's fine. So that's well. I've been like writing, like I've written several friends or reports for a couple of people on some you know, big name casts and stuff like that, so they could see it. So that's been fun. So now I have a couple of people sending me some like really nice casts for me to take a look at and right, and that was really my main goal. But you know, besides trying to help everybody else, I was hoping I could start

actually analyzing stuff, which is now started to happen. So that's pretty neat.

need to read this book. This anthropologist wrote this, you know this anthropo, you know this scientist wrote that about the subject, and then you read it and you realize that a lot of this is for the entertainment industry

instead of furthering the research. Now, I almost stopped completely because of that, But then I ran across several people who are actually really serious in the field who kind of gave me a different direction to go on and started helping me, you know, with casts and kind of saying, hey, stop stop stop thinking that way. You know, here's some stuff. I've seen some casts that were, you know, like big

time cast that I call bs on. Then I've seen some casts come across recently that, you know, have me a little perplexed. I'm not finished with one particular one. I go ahead and say, Cliff Barrettman sent me one that I'm actually a little perplexed on right now, and I'm hoping that I don't find anything that makes me

say otherwise. You know, that's always the hope. Yeah, But I treat each one like it's hoaxed and go from there right and or misidentified or you know something, because honestly, I don't have what we call an exemplar, you know, an actual bigfoot footprint or bigfoot cast that we know for sure we watched a big foot make it, and I can say that is actually from the foot, right.

We don't have anything like that. We have speculation and we have good, you know, contextual evidence and things like that, but nothing definite.

like and what this looks like. And that took me down a whole other road, because now I'm in the middle of a big bear research project. I figured I couldn't speak authoritatively and say something made it looks like a bear and a cast if I don't know anything about bears. Oh my god. You know, you just kept on going down in a rabbit hole.

from the past as exemplars. So my first thought was, well, let me take a look at it. And luckily enough, I have some first generation copies of these things, you know, with those minute little details in them, and I'll go ahead and tell you that, uh, you know, and I think we allude to this before it's hard to talk about intent as well. You know, so many different things can happen when people find, you know, find an impression.

You know, so if you actually found a real bigfoot track, you know a lot of things, you know, especially Cliff likes to bring this up. People like to put their hands in it and go, oh my god, look at this, and they touch them right, you know, right then is not an intent to transform or manipulate that impression in any kind of way. It was just a I'm not thinking and oh my gosh, look at this and they touch it. You know. It's unfortunate because later it's hard

to prove the intent. You know, you can't prove what they you know, what happened unless there was a bunch of people there. But then even so, at this point in the game, I didn't even matter if there was a bunch of people there. No one's going to believe you. So and then you have you know, and then I'm finding with my bare study that during certain times of the year, bear paulpads when to get deposited into certain types of soils and substrates. There dermal ridges can look

like and sometimes mimic human friction ridges. So it's going to take more than like a patch of dermal ridges here and a patch there, because you got people accidentally touching the cast before it's dry enough. When they're pulling it out, they're depositing it unknowingly, you know. So there's all these things are like I speak to like, I'm not gonna if I find something like that, I'll never talk to say it was intentionally manipulated as a hoax,

because we just don't know that. There's so many different ways that friction ridges or dermal ridges whatever can't or that pattern itself can come to be in the bottom of a cast because a lot of times they're not even in the in the substrate there, you know, Like I said, they're deposited while someone's pulling out a wet cast.

So you know, I it's it's disappointing sometimes, but because I could, I would hate to find out that you might actually have a real Bigfoot impression that has dermal ridges in it that look to be manipulated, all right, because that would be like the worst scenario, however, because you might actually have a real impression with something that now is written off as evidence because the dermals don't fit all right, so that could be a bad scenario as well.

the technique of documenting it. You know, these things are coming in, I see them, and as soon as I blow it up to look at the ridges or look at the details, it becomes pixelated, right, And you know, and that's a that's a huge problem. That's and I think that's gonna be a huge problem until we start thinking differently about collecting evidence. Because I've been seeing a lot of you know, like a lot of these expeditions, they're following what some people have told them is the

right way. And I guess, and I mean, you know what we've been told this at our own lap too, that we're overkill, that we have such high expectations for things that we should but we're not we're we're not gonna tone it down. We're always going to be you know, like uh, you know, it should always be to a higher standard because, honestly, if we come across a piece of evidence that may actually be a bigfoot, we're talking about an undiscovered species, and it's not being treated as such.

You know, it should be you know, almost to the level of you find evidence. It should be treated like a homicide. You know, you have you have potential, DNA, you have, you know potential you know, friction ridges. There's so many different things that we should be going after instead of just immediately casting it and then holding up the cast as the cast is the proof. And I think that's a problem. It's almost like collecting souvenirs instead

of evidence, and that just honestly needs to change. As far as the people who are interested in actually using science to investigate things, I get it. Not everybody's into that or that's not even their goal, and I totally understand that too. But I think for the people who say that that is their goal, then some things need to change because it hasn't been working for the last web fifty sixty years, right, I mean, right, So something needs to change.

all this cool equipment. I'm going to learn how to do this. So then I go to a crime scene, I do all that cool stuff, and then I spend two freaking days doing reports and documenting everything. Right, That is boring. It's boring. So now we're at the point, for like Bigfoot, that something as simple as just being told how to take the picture correctly. So we belonged to a cold case task force. And one of the things that we immediately noticed is in the beginning when

we first started is we wanted to judge. We wanted to say, oh my god, you know, like, why didn't you do this? Why didn't you do that? And then after doing it for for a while, you start to get into the mindset of the time period. You know, what they had, what they were thinking at the time, not really their fault, that's the way things were done then. And then that opened our mind up to, well, what could we do differently? So we now investigate any homicide

or you know, death investigation as it's a homicide. But if we know for sure it's a homicide, we're going to investigate this and we're going to take it and document it to a certain level that's beyond what we

think is needed at the time. And that's in case the case goes cold, because we never know, you know, if the case goes cold, technology changes, methods change, the way we think changes, and some investigator ten years from now will be looking back and saying the same dang thing that I was saying about the people from the eighties, right, They'll be going, well, why didn't you do this? And

I'm like, hey, I took the whole house. It's all right, you're documented, go forth and from And that's why I won't. That was one of the reasons why I started looking at the older casts. But the basics are you know, when you're photographing, you know, handprint, fingerprint, footprint in the ground. The most basic thing is I mean there's two main things really, but that picture has to be parallel. The camera has to be parallel to the ground. You know,

it's just that simple. If you have the camera angled in any kind of direction, it'll distort size. And there's just that's just how it is. You can make things look larger than what they are. And I've shown somebody this as when we were talking about bigfoot. I took a picture, you know, my own shoe impression, angled the camera just so and said, check out this huge print. And right there when I said huge, I introduced a

little bias to them. Yeah all right. And then they saw the photo and they're like, oh my god, yeah that is big. And then and I showed them the next photo and I was like, actually, it looks like this, and it's the parallel picture of like my size twelve foot and I'm like, it doesn't look so big anymore, does it. They're like no. I'm like that's the problem. Taking pictures at angles distorte things. And I totally get it. People are holding their cameras to the sides and stuff

because the sunlight. You know, there's lighting issues and things like that, and they just haven't been shown how to take the picture properly. But if you want somebody like me or you know, another science person to look at this evidence and actually be able to give an opinion

on something, then it has to be done correctly. So you know, even when I'm documenting things, I'm documenting it in a way for another expert that's not within my field that may see something that I don't, Just like the bigfoot field investigator when they're taking pictures of their impressions on the ground or on the glass, should be taking pictures in a way for someone else who knows

more to be looking at it. So you know, it's you know, it's a full circle kind of thing because you never know what another expert may see if it's documented correctly. And then the other thing is is not just close up pictures of that print, but of the entire area. And you know, people say why it puts it into context, right, you know where you found the foot, And again another expert like a biologist might be like, oh,

I see certain trees over here. They might have been there for that food, or I see a path they're heading, you know in which direction? You know that makes sense, there's a water source right here, you know, is you document like a three hundred and sixty degree thing. And then like in crime scene where we might see a car or a person within that three hundred and sixty degree photograph thing that we did, we might see you know, another suspect or a vehicle that may have been involved

in just like a big foottery. We may see a tree branch or a tree structure or something that you didn't notice before that now you have evidence because you never know what's going to be valuable later. It's kind of like when we take a billion photos of a side at crime scene and then you know, the case detectives looking at it and they're like, oh, holy crap, look at this receipt on this desk. You know, we didn't think that they had been to a car wash or you didn't take a car wash that you know

had anything to do with it. But then later it comes into play and we find out we have a picture of it. I know, the same thing. Can you know hold true in this? You know it's technically an investigation. Just two little things context and parallel pictures that would be a great help documentation. Document It always comes down the documentation. You should see. You should see my form I have listened. You know, it comes down to what's the weather like seven days before? What's the weather like

seven days after? What's the altitude nearest food source? And if I'm interviewing somebody, you know, are are you into bigfoot? Were you here looking for bigfoot? You know? And now I'm asking for you know, are there any biasing questions? You know, stuff like that, you know, you know, have you been here before? Is this your first time here? You know kind of stuff. You know, there's a lot of questions that I have, I think I have like

a I made for some people. You know, when I first started crime scene, we had a checklist, you know, until we got used to doing things, you know, like a six page you know checklist basically of you know, don't forget to get this, don't forget to get ambient temperature, accillary temperature of the person that's deceased in front of youew temperature outside, but the humidity like an the insect

activity of so who what when? You know, it just goes on and on and on and so I made some forms like that, for so you heard a sound, so you found something you want to collect for DNA. So you found a footprint of fingerprint. So I got like all these forms for now, answer all these questions.

by someone who's conducted interviews before. And mainly I think the problem I see what the interview is being conducted now are the leading questions, you know, like when a person's telling the story and they pause. Then they start giving them examples of what they could say, you know, you know, like when you say what did the and they're like uh, and then you go was it brown? Black?

And they're like, oh yeah, it was black? Like what? No? No, you you hold that pause and you let them finally speak. You don't you don't offer suggestions. I think that's one of the biggest things that I see, you know, happening. But I would hold the interview and then I would have them show me where the place is, and then I would, you know, depending what I found. You know, we have to judge these things of what would you know,

what evidence do I have them from? If I go over there and it's just you know, a bunch of pine needles and there's nothing, you know, m's you know, let's take a walk, you know, let's go see if we can find anything that's disturbed, you know, because I'm I'm gonna go look right then, I don't know what I'll be looking for, but I'm used to looking for human activity, you know, just from being in crime scene, so any type of disturbances anything really, But then you know,

during that interview is going to cover a lot, so I totally realized in from experience that eyewitness interviews aren't usually the most reliable. But that's pretty much all we have to go on now with this kind of thing. So it's it's really difficult to you know, discern what's really happening, what's not really you know, or what's really happened what hasn't happened. Now, if there was actually something there, you know, like a footprint.

people forget to do. I'm gonna check the weather and I'm gonna find out is anything bad coming that's going to make me not be able to do with this print right now because or or keep me you know, so I want to go and check and see if I can find anything else, because now if I have something, I need to know if I need to expand my scene or if this is it. So now it's time to let me check. And I don't need a bunch of people. I need to do it on my own.

And they give you an example. I can go to a homicide here and me and another crime scene guy are going to be the only one in the house and no one else is allowed in until we tell them they can. And it's really that simple. And once we have figured out what's going on, we will have created a path or created an avenue, and we will like hand walk you through the scene. The detective who needs to see it, we will walk them through and show them stuff and tell them where they can and

can't step. Was like that, and I think, I know it sounds like overkill for bigfoot, but if we're looking for DNA, we're looking for any dermal ridges. We have a footprint, uh you know, we have something. Who knows, maybe there's hair. We don't know any of that until we start checking the entire area, because you can always close it and make it smaller. But once you start contaminating the area around it. It's kind of hard to start again. You know you've already contaminated that area. Yeah.

So interestingly enough, I have found a makeshift solution for some rain to protect a footprint. And it sounds silly, but you know you've seen on TV where they have like those little metal frames that we use for putting around a footprint so we can cast it. Yeah, so we'll put we put that around it and acts like a dam. Well I found on Amazon. It's aumbrella you wear on your head.

Unless it's going to be a monsoon, right, if it's just lightly raining and it may pass, then you might just have to photograph and deal with what you can. But you know, once you get that casting material and you know, fifteen twenty minutes goes by, it doesn't really matter if it starts to rain or not. It's already starting to set and cure. But honestly, if I found that footprint, you know, I check the weather and that would help me determine what I need to do. Now.

So let's say I expand out and I don't find anything, and I come back to my footprint. Now, I'm gonna don my mask so I don't breathe any DNA into the sucker, and I'm going to get down and I'm actually going to look inside this thing with a flashlight with oblaue lighting. Oblue lighting is lighting from the side, and I'm going to check to see if I have any dermal ridges or any kind of marks or anything inside, you know, details that I know I need to keep.

If it's possible, I'm going to take a sample from inside that without disturbing any of the details. Like I'm going to find the worst possible spot, and that's the spot I'm going to sample. But I'm also going to photograph or film me doing it and show where it came from, you know, like this whole process of you know, a little arrow, you know, my little sticker arrow is pointing to the spot with a label that says like

S one for sample one. I take the sample and that way you know what it is, right, and then photograph with all that stuff, and then you know before and after so you can see where the mark came from. So then when cast, you know that that divid is not a detail that's actually anything to do with the cast or the footprint. You know, as you can tell, this could be a very lengthy process of doing that, that overall picture that you people take, you know, and

then they're done. Back in the day that was that was a great idea. Now pretty much all the footwear examiners and even fingerprinting examiners were working from photographs now, So at the foot level, I would actually divide that up into several overlapping sections and I would actually get closer than just one photograph of the entire foot and I would come in and I would be photographing the interior of that as well. At a more macro level now using openly gliding for you know, to light up

the details. If you're doing that, you're also going to have to do the openly gliding like a three hundred, you know, from all different angles, going around that pression, because if you're casting shadows, those shadows can also cover other details. So it's kind of like a it's a long, lengthy process. You know, you're gonna end up with, you know, maybe one hundred photos just documenting the that foot impression.

And you should be occasionally checking, like blowing in up on your screen just to make sure they're in focus and the lighting is right and you're getting good photos because you know you only get one chance, so then you know you can move into casting and all that kind of stuff. You know, once you've done all those things. That's pretty much what I would do.

not a true zoom. You know, you're just enlarging the pixels, right, So if you're going to take pictures of something of small details, then you need to be moving your phone closer and not zooming with your phone, because as soon as you try to enlarge that on your computer, you know, it just goes to straight pixels and you can't see anything. So it's you should stay away from zooming anything on your phone when you're documenting things, and always just move

further and farther away with your phone. That's that's what you should be doing.

is perception. So people can wholeheartedly believe something and be telling the truth technically, but the manner of how they process the information while this incident was happening, it's hard to tell if that's what really happened. Like, you know, something happened because they believe it, and you know they're telling the truth. Now, what actually happened versus how they

perceived it happening could be something entirely different. I say this because and he makes a very good like example in his book of let's just say, say a bunch of bigfoot people go off into the woods together and they sit in the middle of a field and they're doing their investigation. You know, they're all like clustered right together, almost touching. They can barely see the light they have to the edge of the field. They hear noises, they can't tell what it is. And then something comes out

of those woods. They can't see what it is, it's too dark. But something comes out and it's in the air and it like flies around and comes back, and they come back and now you know, on their way out, they're all trying to discuss what happened. So group think is starting to happen right now, because what's going to happen is before they're DeCamp, they're going to all basically collectively decide what happened. They saw something flying, and let's put this into the wou crowd and say, all right,

we had an encounter with a bigfoot. He came out, he came out, there was a portal, he flew around as he went back into the woods. You take an entirely different group with different expectations, put them out there and let's just say it's a bunch of hunters. The exact same incident happens. They're walking back and so on says, well, how did it go? They're like, ah, nothing, this bat came out of the woods and it flew over us. They never actually saw the bat. They assumed it was

a bat. You know, they just saw something moving. But for their perception, for their reality, that's what it was. It was a bat. And then you can just keep on going down the line for the different belief systems. So the problem is is a lot of these things, I think, except for the you know, like the ones in the daytime, you know, they're like, I actually saw the big Harry saying it was walking right in front of me. You know, all right, if you determine that

person is being truthful, that's something entirely different. But you know, those those ones where I saw something in the woods, I did not sure what it was, but I'm fairly certain I had a big foot encounter, you know, at nights with glowing eyes, you know, things like that that can be problematic. But when they're when you hear them and they're telling that, and you're like, well, they're telling the truth. They saw something, But for me, I don't know what that could be, you know. But all I'm

saying is, you know, there's different perceptions. People process information differently. I don't really know what else to say about that.

everything I thought I knew. You know, it introduces so many more questions. Yeah, yeah, right, it introduces so many more questions. So I don't think that me believing someone's telling the truth and thinking they really did see one technical really means the same to me as if I would have seen one myself, you know, so I'm not calling her a liar, but it feels like, you know, I think she did see one. I do. But at the same time, I don't think it means as much to me as if I would see one myself. If

that makes sense, I don't. I'm having trouble, you know, Like, that's a great question, and I've never really thought about, you know, the juxtaposition between the two. Yeah, I might have to think about that one more.

that's how it needs to be approached. I personally am of the belief that the issue at hand is we would already have some sort of proof or a much stronger are that these things exist if researchers, including myself in that had been doing things correctly to begin with and had taken the time to learn how to do things correctly. But that's not the case. That's not what happened,

and you can't separate the wheat from the chaff. You know, everybody has the right to conduct things however they want to. There's no guidelines. You know, we've kind of talked about that in post on Facebook before. And you're in this position where you have your professional career and now you're looking into this. So what happens if you do have a bigfoot sighting? Is that something that you would even

talk about? Would you even admit that you had a sighting because of what it might mean to your own professional career. I mean, your investigations and testimony have helped implicate people and put them in prison or keep them out of prison. So what you're absolutely not wrong. What happens if you have a sighting? Or you know, what do you do with it?

about it affecting my career. Honestly, up until just now. I always I was only thinking about it philosophically, until you just well, I mean.

for our DA, our d DA's office, Shenanigan's. But a lot of stuff happens inside our courtroom that shouldn't happen, and only in some I'm not I can't, it wouldn't be fair to say all. But there are certain courtrooms that I'm in that it almost feels like it's a TV show. You know, there's way too much, too much leniency going out to the you know, to either parties honestly, to the prosecution or to the defense, and they're being allowed to, you know, make a show of it sometimes

and that's not how court's supposed to be. But I knew exactly what they were talking about when they came

after when they mentioned the book. It was during a voadir and that's basically, you know, when you're telling all your all your qualifications going through your CV and why you would be an expert, be able to testify as an expert witness and something, so both sides have a chance to ask you questions to basically qualify you before the judge rules yes or no, you can be an expert witness, right, and uh, we had just gone through it and I had talked about my my published articles

and I the book out and.

way too fast. But you know, but that's what I'm always trying to tell people is you know, people are watching, so I have to be careful about what I say. And and sometimes I'm not the most artful speaker. You know, I'll forget, I get tired and I'm hoping I don't do something. But as far as if I had a sighting, man, I don't know. I just don't know how I would handle that because you I imagine just like everyone else.

Do you want to tell everybody you know something exciting has happened in your life.

very long in the woods. And I know that we're talking about an undiscovered creature here and it's not the same as you know, a human body, But just for the sake of conversation, how long does it take a human body to disappear on its own in a typical forest environment in the United States?

the explosive devices. They were looking at what was the the blast doing that, you know, that compression when the explosion you know went off, what was it doing to the bones. So yeah, they were They were like blowing up cars, you know, paint cans, and had like, you know, like dead pigs on sticks. You know, like there were people standing there getting lown up. And that made me go, holy crap, you know that. And that was right before I went to the National Forensic Academy, and I was like, man,

that's so nasty. You know, like how long does that take before it like disappears and you know, stuff like that, because this stuff was already smelling. It's it's really weird. You know, something as simple and I can't remember the temperature, it's like fifty two or fifty three degrees or something as simple as that. You know, a temperature level where the you know, the bottle fly doesn't fly right. So like at fifty four fifty five, I say, I'm right

on the fifty three, it's somewhere right there. But say at fifty four to fifty five degrees, that flies flying around all day long laying eggs, you know, got your maggots going. They're just tearing up the you know, the meat and stuff that's on the ground, and then it drops a couple degrees they stop flying. So you know that alone, right there can change how long a carcass is going to lay there.

limbs are going to disappear. We found a body, sorry, we found parts of a bone from a cold case using cadaver dogs. And basically what happened, well, we found the rest with cadaver dogs stuff like that, but somebody was out collecting moss for like aquariums and stuff like that on this little stream bed and they found some human bones. Now, it turns out that when we went out and found all that we could, they were spread out.

It was almost a half a mile. It was a pretty good It's much further than it normally is, so I'm guessing at some point something just picked up the bone and took it. It wasn't like disarticulated like right there, and then a whole leg was getting traveled. Battle that's a sight. That's a sight to think about. I'm sorry, I'm laughing people, but.

dug Doug, Doug, Doug dog. But then we realized it's been like, you know, four or five years. The bones are gone, they've been in that sandy wet area. They basically just weathered and dissenter the sand. Yeah, they are the sand, and that's what the dogs were hitting on. There were the dogs weren't wrong, they were hitting on the bone. It's just and you know, and the other

stuff that we found was not in the creek. I think disarticulation by you know, other scavengers predators that plays a major role, not just from the insect activity, but when we're talking and you know the other thing. You know, with all of that combined, you think about what a cougar does, you know, the big predator. You don't usually just find them laying around, right, you know. They're just like a you know, a dog or a cat that's

out in the wild. When they start to pass away, they go find a nice quiet place where they're not going to be bothered. So that's that's a consideration. You know, like a lot of bears, they crawl back into a den and pass away and you don't you don't readily

find those. I think the the other issue you might have is we don't technical we know the intelligence level and you know, even elephants are burying their debt, right, So if there's any indication and all signs point to if this creature does exist, it's a lot more intelligent than we're given it, then some are given it credit for and I wouldn't put it past you know, their own burials, So that would be problematic, right, Yeah, I don't see it.

usually by accident. We weren't there looking for you know, for bones. Right, It's almost unfair to attribute to automatically whenever we say missing bones. Usually that argument is with people who are immediately thinking of well, it's just something as you know, not as smart as a chimpanzee, right, right, it's just a missing gorilla or you know, something like that.

We're always using gorillas and apes and things like that as a comparison, which really isn't fair because we don't we if it does exist, we know nothing about this thing. You just don't, so you can't just it's it's like picking and choosing your your evidence for your argument when there isn't.

usually more than one body there. So again, typically whenever people talk about you know, skeletal remains in caves or whatever, a lot of those times those caves are being archaeologically explored, you know, excavated, and that's how the bones are.

it's over. Yeah, right, and then you'll never are you just you know, look into most of the areas that they would crawl up if they weren't as intelligent as I'm giving them credit for, which I think they'd have to be, honestly, but or they would have been seen a lot more and found a lot easier. But I think it's just there's just too many variables, you know. It sounds like a good book, you know, to explain it all, a chapter for each variable.

paper company and leveled. We were releasing a three hundred and sixty three acre lot and we'd go out hunting and stuff out there, and I was coming back during the night, and what I was doing is you've seen those valleys that they're not so deep that you can't see the bottom. You can actually see the bottom, you know. It's like one of those spots where people put deer stands on and they watched the valley and you can

watch the other side. So it's not that big. But I was walking on game trail and it was the trail itself was about a quarter of the way down from the ridge. And as I'm walking back, I hear what sounds like footsteps. Well, no, I heard footsteps there back into the right of me, and they were up on the ridge. I couldn't see anything as dark. My first thought was my friends, and I said hey, you know, that's a good way to get shot guys, you know kind of thing. And I didn't hear nothing. I stopped,

didn't hear anything. I was expecting to hear some laughing or something. I started walking again and I heard the footsteps. So now my mind has gone to there had been a person up there that was messing with our trail cameras. And we know it was a person because I set up a trail camera on my trail camera.

keep finding tracks. Something's wrong with my cameras. Yeah, I was like, damn it, but you know, like it was our little spot, you know, no one that we had never seen any evidence of anybody out there. So there's this guy walking around the woods with the flashlight and he's deleting our stuff. So I'm thinking, it's that guy

up there. And all I have is I carry this little red flashlight that I hook on the uh the strap on my backpack, and when I click it, it just lights up my foot area and a little ways in front of me. And that's it. And I'd gotten so comfortable, you know, with those walks back that I didn't really have any more lighting other than that. I was like, I don't need anything else, you know, it's just me walking back. Now. I did have my pistol,

but that was it. And so it continues. I stop, it continues, and I'm like, man, some of it, I'm like, why is it? Something messing with me? So then I notice to my left, I'm looking down into the valley. Because I'm looking, you know, I'm scanning around. I feel uncomfortable, paranoid, and I see a red floating light down in the bottom bottom of the valley and it's moving kind of like a drone wood just super slow, not moving. I mean,

it's moving, but not like there's no bobbing. When I first thought, I thought it was a cigarette light someone's holding a cigarette, like the cherry of a cigarette, because that's how small it looked. But it was more red and it was just slowly moving. I saw. I'm like dumbfounded, staring at this thing, going, you know, I don't know what I have no clue, And then it dawns on me. Crap, crap, crap, I forgot about the person behind me because I'm staring

at this red thick. Yeah. So I turn around and I look up, and then I glanced back down and the red light's gone. So I put my back to a tree and do that old Turkey hunter patients thing. And I sat there for like fifteen twenty minutes, going okay, well, I know you can't see me, and your patience is pretty good for a normal person. Usually they would have started walking by now. So I was like, all right, I'm out. So I turn and I started to walk in.

As soon as I take my first step, it starts walking with me again, and I was like no, no, no, So I'm walking. I'm walking, I'm yelling stuff, trying to act all like manly, you know, scared. Yeah, I was like, you better knock it off, you know, like talking crap, and and finally I get to uh. And the whole time,

I'm concerning and clueless because we're not close. I'm confused because I don't understand why, you know, Like I keep thinking like if something was going to attack me or this person was going to do something, they would have done it by now, Like what are they waiting for?

And I finally get to the edge down towards the bottom of that finger of that ridge that I'm coming on, And then I was on and I can see the globe in the trees from the fire from camp, and I did something really dumb because I thought, well, you know, I just want to be back in camp. I can see the fire. I know this thing has had any chance possible. Who take me out? I know it's not

a bear. I know it's not a deer. There is a person right there and they had shot me yet, so bye, And I took off coming in hot yep, and that said, I was yellous, like I'm like coming in, coming in, coming in, and they're like, why are you yelling coming in? We're not an ar you know I am. My brain went to you know, when we were doing like those high risk wars and stuff when we come into you know, another room or going in a different area where I'm like blue, blue, blue, you know, say

who I am. I was like coming in camp, coming in, coming in and like what shut up making fun of me. But yeah, so I had that. And then about a year later, around that same camp, my brother brought his son, who was ten at the time, to go camping for the very first time. Thought it would be you know, super easy, safe. You know, there's no one else around, it's our spot. We're leasing it and we're sitting around the camp and all of a sudden, he says, Uncle David,

what's that? And he points past me and I look off into the trees and it's that freaking red light again. Wow, and it's moving. My brother drew his weapon. He's a cop to by the way, and he drew his weapon and I started laughing. He's like, what did you think this funny? What is that? Why do you think it's funny? I said, well, you can go try to find it if you like. I was laughing because I felt relief.

It wasn't really laughing thinking it was funny. At the moment, it was more of a oh, thank god, I didn't imagine it. My brother is seeing it too, and his son is seeing it, and it's the same thing. So I told him, I said you, I said market, did you market? And for us, I don't know how other agencies do it, but when we both worked in the Albany, Georgia area, and we would say things like that to like a like an when we're training, somebody or someone else is in the car, you know, and we tell

them the market. So what they would do is, I don't know if you've ever been driving at night and you think you saw something and then you try to drive up to it and now you're not sure if you're in the right spot or not. Yeah. Right, So when we tell them the market, they pick a landmark and they keep their eye on that landmark so we can focus on driving. And then when we get there, you know, he says, stop, stop, stop, it's right here.

Then we know for sure it's right there. So I told him to market and he says, I got it. I got it. So I said, all right, So I got up and just kind of casually walked over. It's gone already, it's gone. It's just kind of floating for a while and then disappeared, and I was like, you got it, and it's like yeah. So I walk over. I'm shining my light up and I'm like, all right, where where? Tell me where? Tell me where? And it was about eleven twelve feet up. So I said, all right, well,

can we see the tree? And that's when I was going to say rigelie, because I was thinking maybe it was just a plane going by, you know, and we could see the sky right there. But it turns out the ridge was much much higher. That hill was much much higher in the background, so it was down below and closer than we thought. Actually, because it was so small, our perception of it was that it was further away, but it was actually a lot closer than we originally thought.

So that meant that that thing was actually pretty tiny. But it was just a red, like a not like a fire engine red, more like a maroon ish red. And it was just kind of just moving really slow. And then my friend, the last one, I'll tell you, my sergeant friend of mine, he called me late uh, well not late one. I was just in the evening.

He was up there camping by himself. He was doing some scouting and putting out corn and stuff or deer, and he called me to tell me that he just wanted to be on the phone for a little while because basically, something just yelled across camp. Oh okay. He said it was so loud that he could feel it in his chest. And I said, well, dude, what are you doing still there? He's like, I just I just need to be on the phone for a minute. I said,

where's your truck? I said, where's your truck? He goes, and this is so like him too, and it's so true. I said, where's your truck and he goes, oh, it's right over there. I'm like, how far is there? Man? And he was like it's it's right there. I'm like, so it's close by and he was like yeah. I said go get in the truck. And he goes, well, there's blind spots in the truck. And I was like, oh my god, he's not wrong, you know it's not

He's like, oh, I'll be good. I'm just gonna hang by the fire for a minute and just thought to you for a second. So I started asking more questions, like I don't know it was just it was on the edge of the feel that comes into our camp, which is only about, you know, seventy five yards away, and he said that it was such a low like it I don't know. He said it was like a man, but wasn't like a man, and it was really deep and you could feel it resonating in his chest area

and he was a little startled by it. And then about a year later they tore the trees down, and so yeah, yeah, so with those kinds of things, you know, and I'm not going to get into any paranormal stuff, but so when when I when I look at those things and those experiences, you know, I don't know what those things were. I don't know what was really happening. But who am I to say that this other thing that people say they're seeing didn't you know, I can't say that they didn't see it. So my mind is

open for that. Plus I've seen a I'm hoping I have, you know, some stuff on my desk right now that I don't end up finding out something differently about. But I really hope I want to know the answer. I want to know the answer. That's basically where I'm at. I want to know, and I know other people right now, you know, or when they're listening to this, they're gonna

be like, well, I know. I'm like, well, that's good for you, but I need to know, and I would like to I would like to definitively go, hey, check out what I have, like forensically, you know, even DNA. I think DNA is going to one or two things are going to do it for me and it's good or three, and I don't want the third one to happen. I don't want anyone killing it. Obviously. That would be proof.

If I can get me an extra large footprint, you know, like a side fifteen sixteen with ridges going all the way across that are uninterrupted, then that will mean something to me. But I really think in the end it's going to be DNA that that doesn't.

that's the one I've pretty much been going by. I started Bigfoot Forensics on the Facebook group, and I was, like, you know, in the beginning, I was a little nervous about people knowing, you know, what I was doing. But then I pretty much have started going back over to just using my name. And don't forget to check out the book called Casting Bigfoot Evidence, what I alluded to earlier. That's on Amazon. It's basically a small little guide on

how to take those pictures properly. I have like a whole chapter about how to document it rights, and then a chapter designated to like each type of soil and substrate. So you want to know how to collect the cast in mud or in wet sand or dry sand, there's a chapter on that in there. The right way, the right way.

for some of their baby csis, So that's nice. But they're like hiding it because it says Bigfoot on it, so that's kind of funny.