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How much time do you get to spend out in the wilds. I don't know, in a duck blind or I don't know, just in the stomping around in the woods.
Much as possible, Like I got woods around my house. I love the fly fist, So I'll grab my fly rod three or four mornings or evenings a week and get out for an hour or two out out in these little little slews and things like that. And We're about to do an expedition with our kids program in Colorado, so I'll be out in the mountains then. And I don't go as much as I like because I'm in the media business and that means I'm in front of
a computer screen a lot. But man, every time I get especially with my family, I try to hit the woods.
And how do you when you're investigating these big Bigfoot claims, Bigfoot sightings, how do you balance let's say, the need for some kind of scientific rigor with, let's face it, the inherently speculative nature of investigating a cryptid like Bigfoot.
That's a great question, you know. You know, one of the things I try to do is just I captured the story. So whatever I'm being told, if it's an eyewitness account, I get their story in there, whatever they perceived of what happened. And then a lot of times that's all it is, is just compiling those things together. And then I see a pattern form, and that's really what I look for, patterns. And the cover of the
book you can see the bigfootsalut dot com. The cover of the book has a gray colored creature crossing the road, and that came from a pattern. When I first published a book that exists till now, of no less than five sightings within about a ten mile stretch of road, three of those sightings were in front of the same sign free social media. Didn't know one another, and they all said they just saw this thing, a great colored
bigfoot crossing in front of the Nickels Creek sign. And so when I see a pattern like that emerge, that's really what I look for. And then I start kind of chipping away at that and asking questions. But things like that got me interested in this to begin with.
You know, I tell I put what people see here experience, and then when I dig deeper into a topic, I just look for those patterns, and sometimes you find nothing, and sometimes you find some like this weird gray bigfoot phenomenon of all these sighting in one place, you know.
Uh, any instances of hoaxing or deliberate misinformation within the bigfoot research community. If so, how do you how do you navigate that?
Okay, Yeah, there's there's been a ton of that over the years, and I think it's actually gotten worse because of social media and YouTube and stuff like that, because people have a place they can put it out there really easily, you know, and navigating it's interesting. So when I if I go out and I've done an investigation, I have never one time announced I'm going to do an investigation. I've had major media covered reports fairly near where I live and I didn't even get into them.
I don't care about that. I'm more interested in that person that's not looking for media attention, and that's Hey, I saw something strange. I think I might have seen a big So here's what I saw. Because I've noticed that there's kind of an increase in people wanting notoriety or fame from this stuff, and I kind of avoid
all that. That's kind of my method of it. I avoid the media circus stuff and I kind of go for those more real things that hit me at the gut level that people that aren't seeking, you know, necessarily any kind of notoriety, because unfortunately that's become a thing. And like I said, people can back engineer reports. You know, twenty years ago, no one unless you experienced it, probably ever heard of a tree knock or a wood knock or some of these things. And now everyone that watches
a television program can know about those things. So if someone comes up and says, hey, I was out in the woods and I saw a bigfoot, and I heard a tree knock, and then the three rocks, and then I found a limb twist, and I found a whatever, I'm like, they're just recycling something or trying to prove something, and I'm more or less looking for those people who are sincere. And as a journalist, I tend to think I have a pretty decent idea of who that is. Did you mention?
Do you just say glyphs like where they take Bigfoot reportedly will take little twigs and vines and tie them into little shapes, maybe representing their their language and leaving them for people is that a thing.
Well, I know that I've seen stuff before where they were like weird looking formations and a lot And I even took a photo of myself one time in an area. It was in the middle of nowhere where there were forks of trees and it wasn't on a trail or anything, and they were about every fifty yards and a fork of another tree. There'd be a tree laid right in the middle of a small tree, all kinds of point in the same direction. Seeing stuff like that, and then
I've had people so many photos of things. And another interesting thing is that someone reported that they had these creatures eating in a deer feeder, which is a corn dispenser that lures in deer, and they had seen tracks and they had a fighting themselves around it, and then they kept knocking the feeder over, so they finally just started corning the spot without the feeder there, and they said they would they would find sticks in it, and they would like the corn was raked with the stick,
and they'd see it raked over to the side and the stick would be laying there, and then they would like take that stick away and come back and the next day there'd be a new sticks inside of it, you know, stuff like that. It's really interesting. I mean, who knows, but that's weird stuff. H I'll say.
One of the strangest accounts I think over the years, and I've been doing this quite a while, involving bigfoot and livestock. It was a rancher who I can't remember all of the details, but claimed that at night some younger bigfoot were coming into his corral area and riding his ponies. Ever heard anything like that that.
I haven't heard that one, but I have heard of people who said they saw them like with horses, like harassing them, like in you know, a pastor with horses of fence pastor and like running around with them and like, you know, almost like they were trying to spook them
or whatever, like they weren't trying to attack them. But they're weird, you know, and it seems but you know, it would make sense that there would be I don't know about riding a horse, but it would be so you know, you think there has to be a lot of livestock interaction because it's always livestock around wooded areas
and things like that. So but you know, Richard, you hear a lot of stuff like that, Like I haven't heard that personally what you heard, but you know, you hear things sometimes just make you go, what's really going on here? You know, like is this really an ape or what's going on? You know?
What about law enforst law enforcement? Do you do you have any eyewitness accounts from highway patrol or I don't know, just rangers.
I have a law enforcement officer who reaches out to me about every six months here in Texas, and multiple of the deputies in that department have seen them and he asked me a lot of questions and kind of give me reports about it, and he's you know, he talks very straight that they're real and they know they're
real in that particular department. And also the late Rob Riggs who wrote on My Trail of the wild Man about the Big Siket with a friend of mine, he had a National Force Service employee that was feeding him a lot of information and was a source of his and and work with the guy for the years gave
him information here in East Texas. So you mean, it's almost like if you're working for an agency like that and you're like out in the open about it, you're probably gonna get heat or just hold to shut up. It's because I think embarrasses some people. But if you get people down where they know you're not going to necessarily give their identity out There are a lot of
people that work in different departments. They may not necessarily have a report to give you, but they'll tell you like, well, you know, working in the wildlife management area, one of the hunters come in and said he solved this, you know. So there's a lot of that out there, and not just skepticism. There are a lot of people who are like believers out there in law enforcement, and I can say I have a law enforcement offer the context me about every six months.
Obviously, still a huge stigma with reporting this sort of thing. Do you think everyone talks about UFO disclosure? Do you think we need bigfoot disclosure?
I think as soon as full on you know, obviously the UFO, and I'm not a big follower of that. I'm not can't talk too intelligence you unfortunately, but I know that we take a lot of steps toward disclosure in recent years. If that's ever disclosed fully, I don't think it'll be too long before this is disclosed because I do think there's something to this more than just people's stories, because you've got to think about this. This
is what really cheeks me interested in it. I mean most of the work I do now with this with the kid. That's why I steeldn't say involved. But it only takes one report for it to be real one and there are thousands. So I think if there is a UFO disclosure thinking, I don't think it'll be too long after that There'll be some kind of disclosure because I can't imagine that there isn't some a federal, state, provincial, or tribal agency that's sitting on information that would rock the world.
Any advice for aspiring researchers or enthusiasts who are, let's say, interested in exploring the world of bigfoot encryptids.
Yeah, I love this question because you know it gets people outside. I think the number one thing to do is approach it as fun. There's a lot of hate in division in this in the crypto world, so don't go out there trying to change the world. Go out there for fun, but take it seriously. And the first thing you need to do is learn what native wildlife is, what the track of a black bear, the front pallpad, the black the back pall pad, what sound owls make
and coyotes making elk make it. Learn all of the native known creatures. That way you can eliminate them from any encounter that you might have or any investigation. And then when you go start if you want to like go out and maybe to a campsite or somewhere and ask people. Do not ask them if they saw bigfoot. That is opening yourself up to a lot. What I suggest is say, hey, you know, look, tell them the truth. I'm investigating unique wildlife phenomenon. Is anyone here or have
you ever seen anything unusual? And a lot of times they'll say, well, there was just one time I was squirrel hunting and they go off and tell the story. So kind of keep a low profile. Learn about the native wildlife first, get an appreciation of that, and then go into areas where there have been you know a lot of reporters as the BFRO database at gcbrea database different ones you can look at and get an idea of some maybe some public land around area is with a lot of historical reports.
We're approaching the bottom of the hour. We've got about five minutes to have another harrowing big foot encounter you'd like to share?
Yeah, man. So there was a lady I interviewed, and she was near a little place called Rayburn, Texas, and in the early nineteen eighties. She was in her mid twenties living alone in an old like, really old like Victorian style house. And she would come home and there would be the door open, the kitchen ransacked, and the
foul smell. One night, she comes home and she walked on this long hallway and they have one of those attics that had you could pull down a cord and a ladder would come down, like a live in attic. And it was pulled down and she heard rumbling up there. She walks up to it and this seven foot tall hairy thing looks down on her trips and falls on the ground in front of her. Well, it stands up and she's five feet away. It pushes her against the wall and runs out. Yikes. Yes, I'm moving at that point.
I'm guessing you have over the years developed a pretty good BS meter. What's I mean? What about that story seemed credible to you? I mean and not having not setting the BS me.
Call it a big one? Off the start off, and she caught her a wild man, and that's the local name in that part of Texas. She would hear. Uh, she never we went into this little community because someone else had a sighting and they said, I think my neighbor had had something happened when she was younger. She wasn't seeking attention. She wanted her name kept quiet. She was very sincere about it. Didn't call it a big
foot or sasquatch. She taught her a wild man when I talked about it, are you talking about like what people will call it? Big? But she goes, yes, Sarah, that's just what they were kind of called back in the day. And uh, she seemed very sincere, and you know, a lot more sincere than a few other reports. I've had people try to give you every big Foot detail known the man, you know, and my bsmeter did not go off with her at all. Wow.
What do you hope readers and enthusiasts are going to take away from the new expanded second edition of Bigfoot South?
You know? I hope that they come away with a greater appreciation for nature and realize we need to conserve wild lands and wild places, but also know that there are still there's still a really big mystery out there. And if what I said, if one of these reports is true, there's something out there incredible, interesting, and maybe even a little bit spooky. That's what I want to take away from the book.
Do you, knowing what you know and having heard those disturbing vocalizations, is it advisable to go into the woods without some sort of a fire.
It's a great question. I don't go into the woods anywhere without a firearms that's legal for me to carry because I do that podcast called Dark Outdoors about true crime in the outdoors, and there are nut jobs in the woods. You know, there are bears, there are feral hogs, there are things. But here's the thing. If these things are real, and I think there's definitely something out there,
we truly don't know all about them. So carry a firearm to be safe anyway, and if one of these things were to get out of hand, just be prepared like you would if it were a bear or a feral hog or anything else.
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