Tribal Bigfoot – Comments on Chapter Two: “The Bigfoot Map Project”
Review by Linda Martin – @2009
Reading group homepage for this book: Tribal Bigfoot
Re: Chapter Two of Tribal Bigfoot, “The Bigfoot Map Project.”
David Paulides spent all of chapter two writing about the statistics behind his Bigfoot sightings map of four Northern California counties. It is a short chapter – only eight pages, which includes charts. He compiled a list of over 350 sightings (from the 1800′s to 2008) that took place in those four counties and arranged with the California State Automobile Association to use their map for the project. The map features sightings in Del Norte, Humboldt, Trinity, and Siskiyou Counties.
I live in Siskiyou County which includes Happy Camp and Mt. Shasta, so I found the statistical information of interest. The chart on page 53 credits Siskiyou with the least number of sightings per square mile but this is a large county and the eastern part has less forest. Happy Camp, where I live, is in the western section and is surrounded by the Klamath National Forest. According to this chart, Del Norte has one sighting per 17 square miles compared to Siskiyou County’s 1 sighting per 134 square miles. I’m suggesting that’s not because we have fewer Bigfoot, but because our county is more than six times the size of Del Norte County and our population less than twice as much as theirs. Most of Siskiyou County is uninhabited (by humans) forested land.
One could analyze the data provided by Paulides to guess that Bigfoot prefers the coastal mountains and forests, but then he also wrote that “A vast majority of the sightings fall into our elevation theory, sightings in California predominantly fall into a range focusing on 2400 feet with the majority 1600- 3200 feet.’ (See Blog # 47) Compare this with his statement that “69% of all the listed sightings/incidents logged on the map are within 40 miles of the coast.” (Page 59 in the book.)
The elevation of Happy Camp is only 1085 so I think it is safe to say that the area between here and the coast are not at the 2400′ level except for hilltops. (There’s more discussion of the preference of Bigfoot for coastal areas in the book.) Personally I’m not putting much weight on the elevation theories he’s coming up with (there’s also something about two huts at 350′ elevation mentioned on one of Michael Rugg’s videos – see episode #25) but I’ll keep my mind open in case something substantial is proven about Bigfoot and elevations.
He lists population density in his chart but doesn’t comment much on that aspect. If there are more people, then it makes sense that there will be more sighting opportunities. In Humboldt County there are 128,330 residents according to his chart.That county correspondingly has the highest number of sightings of the four counties analyzed: 124. That is one sighting per 1035 people. In comparison Siskiyou County has less than half the population – 45,091 people – with 1 sighting per 959 people for a total of 47 sightings.
Out here in the western section of Siskiyou County, in the Klamath National Forest, we’ve got about 2,182 residents in the Happy Camp census district. Happy Camp had 1277 in the year 2000 census but the census district includes residents of Seiad Valley and others up and down the Klamath River Highway. With 8 local sightings (according to Paulides – I’m aware of more) that’s 1 per 273 people. This rivals Trinity County’s 1 per 231 people.
There are also tourists to take into consideration – they are a great source of sighting reports. They tend to congregate on the coast — very few decide to make the long trip into the heart of the Klamath National Forest.
So there are a few more statistical considerations for the area of this Bigfoot map project. Perhaps you can come up with other ideas for analyzing the statistics that I haven’t thought about.
…
Tribal Bigfoot – Comments on Chapter One: “Historical Bigfoot”
Tribal Bigfoot – Comments on Chapter Two: “The Bigfoot Map Project”
Tribal Bigfoot – Comments on Chapter Three: “Associations”
Tribal Bigfoot – Comments on Chapter Four: “Extreme Sighting Locations”
Tribal Bigfoot – Comments on Chapter Five: “Santa Cruz County”
Tribal Bigfoot – Comments on Chapter Six: “Amador County”
Tribal Bigfoot – Comments on Chapter Seven: “Trinity County”
Tribal Bigfoot – Comments on Chapter Eight: “Siskiyou County”
Tribal Bigfoot – Comments on Chapter Nine: “Del Norte County”
…
- Tribal Bigfoot – Comments on Chapter Three: “Associations”
- Tribal Bigfoot – Comments on Chapter Six: “Amador County”
- Tribal Bigfoot – Comments on Chapter Five: “Santa Cruz County”
- Tribal Bigfoot – Comments on Chapter Four: “Extreme Sighting Locations”
- David Paulides interviewed for the Eureka Times-Standard
Whoops and Whistles – What Did I Hear?
By Linda Martin – @2009 – http://www.bigfootsightings.org
My van was concealed behind these trees
at the time I heard the whoops and whistles.
Yesterday I was writing in my journal while sitting next to the Klamath River a few miles outside of town, about 11 am, when I heard a couple whoops, then a whistle, then a brief silence, and then more whoops and whistles. That was all. The whole thing lasted less than a minute. The whoops and whistles didn’t sound like any animals I know of in the forest near here.
I just spent some time listening to various Bigfoot sound recordings on the internet. I finally found something that sounds like what I heard on a BFRO page of Bigfoot/Sasquatch related sound recordings. The sound titled, “Whoops and Knocks” from California in 1974 has a very similar whooping sound… very short whoops. And further on down the page there’s one titled, “Growls and Whistling” that has similar whistling sounds.
I’m not saying I heard Bigfoot. All I’m saying here is that I heard sounds I thought were unusual for this forest, and that I thought they might have come from a Bigfoot. On the other hand they might have come from something else, and I’m open to suggestions here.
This is the area where I believe
the strange sounds were coming from
The sounds I heard came from the wooded hillside on the south side of the river, across from where I was sitting. It has been suggested to me that the sounds could have been made by river rafters going through the rapids at the bottom of the cliff I sat next to, but I don’t think so for several reasons. First, they didn’t sound human. Second, there were no other sounds associated with rafters such as laughter and talking. Third, I think that if someone was experiencing a moment of excitement going through the rapids, they wouldn’t give two short “Whoop, Whoop” sounds, then whistle. What I heard sounded feral and animal-like.
If you click on this picture to enlarge it
you’ll see the two kayakers I saw today.
I did not see or notice any river rafters
or kayakers yesterday when I heard
the strange whooping and whistles.
Today I was back in the same place for more journaling when I heard a shout coming from the canyon. I looked and saw two kayaks on the river bank. The owner of the voice was hiking around somewhere. This kind of human sound is much different from what I heard yesterday, so I’m not at all convinced of the river rafter theory, and my friend here isn’t at all convinced that I heard whoops and whistles worth writing about, especially in this Bigfoot blog. What do you think? Should I have kept it to myself?
The only recording device I have is my SanDisk (like an IPod) but the sound isn’t downloadable to my computer. However I will keep it on next time I go to this section of the river for my morning journal writing session just in case I’m lucky enough to hear something like this again. I’d like to at least be able to show my friend what it is I heard.
For the record, there have been Bigfoot sighting reports of encounters on the Klamath River Highway on this side of town, in 2003 (a local teenager) and 2005 (a visiting pastor from a large congregation in Southern California.)
- Whistles and Whoops – Follow-up with the Forest Service Wildlife Biologist
- The Bigfoot Discovery Project Video Archive
- Stocking Hominid Research
- Tribal Bigfoot – Comments on Chapter One: “Historical Bigfoot”
- Tribal Bigfoot – Comments on Chapter Two: “The Bigfoot Map Project”
October 30, 2008
Eureka, California editorial disses Bigfoot research
Regarding 
The Birth of Bigfoot by John Driscoll, published October 30, 2008 in the Eureka Times-Standard…
Hard to believe, isn’t it? The newspaper that published the original article in 1958 about Jerry Crew’s Bigfoot footprint casting from Bluff Creek now has published an editorial that states, “We now know the whole thing was a hoax — or a brash attempt to claim credit for one.”
Rather than being a bit objective and relating facts which you can find in John Green’s seminal book on Bigfoot research, Sasquatch: The Apes Among Us
It implicates Wallace’s brother, W.R. “Shorty” Wallace, saying, “Shorty Wallace’s explanation that no one would stomp around making footprints after work is obvious bunk in hindsight. His role likely was to instill doubt.”
It also implicates a former Times editor, L.W. ‘Scoop’ Beal, quoting his wife as saying, “They were in on this hoax. It was just a fun thing and the fun got out of hand.” Beal, now deceased, can’t give us his take on what actually happened.
Editorial writer John Driscoll’s analysis of the origin of the term, Bigfoot, wouldn’t be so disturbing if he’d taken the time to get another perspective on what happened at Bluff Creek in 1958. You can find what I believe is better information by reading John Green’s book, pages 65 to 82.
John Green, a Canadian newspaperman, saw the story about Jerry Crew in a Vancouver paper back in 1958. He’d been researching the Canadian Bigfoot phenomena for a while. Of course, back then they were commonly called “Wild Men” not “Bigfoot”.
Intrigued by the discovery of the Bluff Creek footprints, Green left British Columbia with two friends to check things out in Northern California. While in the Bluff Creek area he was able to see a few large footprints. Later he went to Anderson, California, where he met Bob Titmus, another Bigfoot researcher. He wrote, “Calling on Bob Titmus turned out to be the most important thing we did on the trip.”
A few weeks later Bob Titmus phoned John Green with a hot tip: another researcher found large footprints on a sandbar of Bluff Creek, and they were not the same as the ones found on the road. He made another trip to Northern California where he and Bob looked for footprints and analyzed them.
He wrote:
“We could not think of any way a man could have made the tracks without the use of some sort of specialized heavy equipment, and there was no apparent way that such equipment, assuming that it existed, could have reached the sandbar. Both sides of the valley were steep and covered with heavy underbrush. Taking a machine down without leaving evidence of its passage seemed out of the question. . . . About the only answer would have been to fly the machine in with a large helicopter, but that could not have been done secretly because at the time the tracks were made there were construction workers living in a camp just a few hundred yards away.” – John Green, Sasquatch: The Apes Among Us
Ray Wallace was the road construction subcontractor that Jerry Crew worked for. It is true that he owned a set of wooden stompers for making fake tracks, but they don’t match the tracks found at Bluff Creek. Also Ray Wallace didn’t claim to be responsible for starting the Bluff Creek Bigfoot story; that was a claim his family made after he died.
More information:
From Wikipedia: Ray Wallace
From the BFRO: Wallace Hoax Behind Bigfoot?
- The Bigfoot Books Blog
- A Bigfoot Massacre? Bloody Nonsense!
- The Believe It Tour’s Willow Creek Adventure
- West Coast Sasquatch
- The Bigfoot Information Project
