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.

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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”

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