Finding Bigfoot (2011) s01e07 Episode Script

Narrator: Tonight, in a special event, the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization led by Matt Moneymaker returns to Oregon to look back at the first six expeditions of "Finding Bigfoot.
" Gathering at Oregon's famed Bigfoot and Beer, the team speaks publicly for the first time about their unprecedented discoveries.
Soon as we end up there, that's a 'squatch.
Narrator: You'll hear the inside story about the many challenges of chasing the elusive Sasquatch.
I immediately ran after it.
I didn't there wasn't a moment to lose.
Here's what doesn't make any sense to me.
First off, we are a team.
We got to work together.
Narrator: The team also shares some never-before-seen footage from their harrowing expeditions.
Right now! With a car coming at you at 55 miles an hour, it's hairy.
Narrator: And they will answer the important questions.
If the Sasquatch is indeed real, why haven't we found any bones? You all do bigfoot calls.
Who has the most effective call? Narrator: All tonight on "Finding Bigfoot.
" Weirdo.
[Laughter.]
It was impossibly large.
It definitely wasn't human.
I've been tracking Sasquatches for 25 years.
These animals, in fact, are real.
I've seen them.
They're here.
I'm having a really difficult time finding an explanation for this.
There's something on the hill.
[Roars.]
I do think there's a 'squatch in these woods.
Matt: My team and I have returned to the town of Leaburg, Oregon, to once again participate in one of our favorite Sasquatch events Bigfoot and Beer.
And we've invited fellow bigfoot fans to join us and to give them an opportunity to ask questions about our time in the field, what they saw on our expeditions, and what they didn't see.
Plus, it will give us plenty of new ideas as we continue toward our ultimate goal finding bigfoot.
Hello, folks.
I'm Matt Moneymaker, the head of the BFRO.
It's great to be back here in Oregon at our favorite spot, Bigfoot and Beer.
So, the first thing we'll do is we'll give you sort of a recap of what happened on the first expedition we did.
And that was in Georgia.
Georgia was an interesting case mainly because we were able to get our hands on dash-cam footage taken from a police squad car.
We wanted to re-create this unique footage, so we had Bobo step in to help.
We're rolling.
The plan was simple.
He was gonna run across the road as we drove a car at him.
We're at 40.
And to the guard rails.
100 feet from the first mailbox.
Now.
Luckily, Bobo survived unharmed.
But right away, we could tell that he was nowhere near as fast nor as graceful as the figure in the video.
That led us to believe that it was probably a Sasquatch and the location was a place that we should check out.
This gave me a chance to show off my vocal chops.
[Shrieks.]
That rocked.
That sounded like a real bigfoot.
I practice in the shower.
My neighbors hate it.
My neighbors may hate it, but the bigfoot seemed to love it.
[Distant wood knocking.]
Did you hear that? I do think there's a 'squatch in these woods.
I was fairly confident as well.
But if you really want to know where one is at, you have to talk to the locals.
It was fairly dark.
I had my headlights on it, and it just froze and looked right at my car.
I knew what it was.
I have these pictures that my husband took.
Cliff: I thought all the stories were good, but since I'm a track nerd, I was all about the footprint photos.
This was about the spot.
Right here? And while we were out there What are you seeing over there, Cliff? That looks like toes.
Gentlemen, we have prints.
They found prints.
I was ecstatic.
No pun intended, but these prints are very impressive.
Whatever made them could still be around.
This was an area we needed to search.
We are ready to get a 'squatch.
We thought this was the perfect place to use our roof-mounted thermal cameras.
And to give us a helping hand, we called in the local chapter of the BFRO.
Wagons ho! Our thermal caravan was moving down the back roads of the Chattahoochee National Forest when we got the call.
Come over here and check this out.
Oh, my god! Despite a two-hour chase, the figure we saw in the thermal imager got away.
However, our experience in Georgia will stay with me forever.
This place is a hot bed of bigfoot activity and also the location of my first pristine footprint finding.
I don't think that there are bigfoots in this part of Georgia [shrieks.]
I know it.
[Roars.]
Those were the best and clearest footprints I have yet to see on the ground.
I found other things in my career, you know, about the same size and shape that I'm pretty certain were Sasquatch impressions.
But this is the first time I had seen toes.
Ranae: There was electricity that was coming out of you.
And you were speechless.
You were trembling.
Your eyes I could read it.
I was giddy first for you and then a bit for myself.
Yeah, people were asking was I messing around, pretending I was so happy when I got to see Cliff.
I really was that excited for Cliff.
Like, yeah, he finally got to pour a cast in the ground with toes.
Because it's so rare to find I've only seen it a couple times where you see toes in a track.
And for Cliff being a foot or cast buff, whatever, he makes a lot of molds of other casts that he gets from other people, he had yet to make his own cast with toes.
So I was pretty excited for him.
I wasn't really I wasn't screwing around with the camera.
I was stoked for Cliff.
No way.
Let's see it! Oh, man! Cliff! I know.
I know.
Check them out.
- I have the cast, actually.
- Let's see it.
Oh, good.
Here is the first impression that we found.
It's nice and solid.
It was about an inch and a half deep in the ground.
From here to here is 141/2 inches.
There were two prints.
This is the first one that was in the ground.
And the first thing we looked at when we saw the tracks on the hood they brought them to us was looked closely at the toes to see if the toes were in the exact same position.
And they're not, which means you're talking about organic toes that move, as opposed to you know, like a stomper sort of thing.
But what it really tells us is that a living foot made this.
These are first-generation copies.
And in fact, you can see the Georgian soil still coming out of that.
I feel like a "Price is Right" model right now.
[Laughter.]
You look like a "Price is Right" model.
Yeah.
So, Ranae, what do you think now? Do you believe they exist? Here is what I will say to you guys.
I'm having a really difficult time finding an explanation for this.
I had a question on the dash cam.
Did you ever contact the police, and, if so, what was their response? After it happened, they really didn't do any kind of an investigation because there was no crime committed.
There was no police report.
And it wouldn't be any different than seeing an animal crossing the road, like a bear or a deer or anything.
There was just nothing for them to do.
We did some diligence after the fact.
We never could find anything else about it.
So what we have we have the footage.
That's all you have to go on.
Do you know what I found the most amazing, though, guys? Is how fast Bobo moved.
I was so surpri I was scared.
This was a dark country road.
I'm matching the speed.
I've got a light in my face.
And I've got my buddy about to pop out at any second.
And I was wearing logging boots, so I wasn't as svelte and swift as I normally would be about re-creation.
And another thing that wasn't shown was that we also had Cliff take a swing at it or a run at it.
I did it twice.
Bobo did it twice as well.
And Bobo got on the screen time.
I did not.
- Wish me luck.
- Good luck, Cliff.
Just hope Moneymaker's not driving.
Oh, yeah.
Seriously.
Matt and Ranae, this is Bobo.
Cliff is in position.
He is ready.
Signal me when you're coming.
10-4.
We're rolling.
And coming up, almost to the mailbox.
And right now! Matt: Wow.
Man, that was a little close.
Bobo: That's crazy.
I don't know about your Bobo, but that scared the crap out of me.
Like, with Ranae luckily, Matt wasn't driving, 'cause Matt drives southern California driver.
We would all be dead.
But Ranae was driving.
And with a car coming at you at 55 or 60 miles an hour on that road, it's hairy.
I mean, it's just hairy.
I've run in front of cars at night before, but I was always naked.
Hey, Cliff, do you really do Sasquatch calls in the shower? Yes.
Yes, I do.
Sure.
You know what I do? I do it when I'm driving as well.
'Cause, you know, most of the people that turn on the tunes and they sing along and stuff and, like, hope nobody is looking and stuff.
But when I do it, I turn off the tunes, and I do my screeches, I do my howls.
And I like warm weather.
Because I can put down the window, look at the people next to me, and then let loose.
You know, and they don't know quite what to do.
Weirdo.
[Laughter.]
Some people sing in their cars.
I do bigfoot screams.
My question was about the BFRO and how one call you've got all of those cars coming and how big is the BFRO? The BFRO has you know, it's been around for 15 years.
We've gotten contacted by hundreds and hundreds of people over the years who have offered to help out if we ever need any help.
And so we have, you know, a few hundred people who are active investigators, you know, looking into sighting reports.
But we have thousands of people who are just, like, in our rolodex of people that we can call and ask for help if we ever need it.
So it wasn't a matter even of getting, you know, how many people in Georgia we could get together.
It was a matter of how many people we could get together really quickly.
Narrator: The BFRO team has returned to Leaburg, Oregon, to talk about their recent expeditions.
Now Bobo looks back on their journey to the swamplands of northern Florida to help a couple that believed that bigfoot was harassing them.
So, when I heard about this case in Florida, it was a no-brainer we had to go there.
You got one house getting multiple visits consistently over the last 10 years.
And combining that with my contacts in the Seminole tribe, we got to go.
We went to northern Florida to help out Bill and Carolyn Bridges.
They were the couple where all sorts of strange stuff was happening around their house.
One night, I'm awoken by this growl.
[Imitates growling.]
This thing sounded monstrous.
Bobo: But what really scared her was one night she believes a bigfoot reached inside her porch door and left a hand print on the inside of the glass.
To me, there's no doubt about it.
That's a 'squatch print.
We still want to check around the property and see if we can get anything to come around.
So we put Ranae out in the woods.
We did some howls.
We were hoping to draw in some 'squatches.
[Howling.]
And that's when it happened.
[Bleep.]
I took my tumble.
[Bleep.]
[Groans.]
But the worst part was it was pretty loud.
And if anything was around, it took off.
But to get a better perspective, on what's going on in Florida, we need to go talk to the people that have lived here alongside these creatures for centuries, the Seminole Indians.
Luckily, I'm friends with a Seminole elder named Herbert Jim.
He let us come down to the reservation, where he and his people shared their experiences about the Sasquatch.
Tell them not to look at them as a pest or animals.
Look at them as human beings.
Bobo: So, after talking with Herbert and the other Seminoles, we knew exactly where we wanted to go to conduct our own search.
But the everglades are pretty gnarly.
You can't just go walking through them.
So then we came up with a better plan.
We were gonna go over them.
Whoa! I've really wanted to use one of these drones for the last 25 years.
And the thing worked like a charm.
It showed us two great spots to check out.
We got something behind us.
Listen.
It's in the wood line.
We got something over here.
Oh, there it is.
- You have it? - Yeah.
There's a whole deer herd right there.
It's not what we are after anyway.
Yeah, that's for sure.
Bobo: While Florida might not be as well-known as the Pacific Northwest for bigfoots, there are definitely some down there.
And as long as you show them respect, you won't have major problems with them.
They're not gonna hurt you.
They just don't want you there.
They've been there thousands of years, and they just built that house there 10 years ago.
It was an old Indian village site.
They'd planted certain it was a really nice place to be.
It was shaded.
- What was that kind of tree? - Bay trees.
There was bay trees and different kind of nut trees.
Saying about the bay trees is because they had bay trees everywhere, and it's a natural mosquito repellant.
So it was like this place you know, it's swampy, full of mosquitos.
And when you're at that property, there wasn't really much mosquitos.
It was a nice place to be.
And the 'squatches had always been there, and all of a sudden, these people came and put a house right in the middle of it.
And one thing to me that was very it just struck me very strongly as to why they'd be coming up around the house and harassing the people when I went inside the house, I saw something in there that I realized I saw in every single other house where this similar thing happened.
And that's you see these deer heads, all this taxidermy stuff on the wall.
It was all over on the inside.
I think there is a correlation.
[Roars.]
Man: Is it possible that their dogs left that print? Mrs.
Bridges said it was oily and had hair on it.
Well, she saw the outline of the hair on the fingers.
And she is a federal law enforcement investigator.
She knew what she was looking at.
Ranae: I could see the outline of a hand and maybe see the outline of a forearm.
It wasn't a dog rubbing up against it.
She specifically saw there was no drag mark.
It was a straight impression.
Before that print was on the window, something had been standing right there and made this titanic scream.
That's what made them observe it and even think that this could be connected.
It's because something had been on that porch making that sound.
She is a canine investigator.
Well, she is a canine arson trainer.
I think if there's anybody on the planet that would know it was a dog smudge, it would be her.
Yeah.
It looked similar to a human, but it was just too large.
I have a question for you, Bobo.
What exactly happened when you fell? [Laughter.]
[Bleep.]
Whoa! [Bleep.]
[Grunts.]
We usually work in teams with the thermals, but since Ranae was out by herself, I was by myself.
And when you look through those thermals, it this really bright screen, and you're in pitch black.
I couldn't see anything.
And we heard a noise on the other side of the house coming from down the driveway.
And Matt and Cliff heard it.
And they're triangulating me, going, "It's that way.
" And so I'm running down the steps, and I thought I was on the last step, so I kind of went to take a big step and jump and there was still five more steps.
[Laughter.]
So it wasn't just that he stood up and fell over.
This was on a staircase and went, "Wha! Boom.
" The miracle about that whole situation for me, at least, is that I happened to have honestly radioed at that moment and said, "Bobo, what's your position?" Hey, Bo, what's your position right now? My position is straight on the ground.
I just ate it coming off the porch.
I didn't have any light.
[Laughter.]
Like, that wasn't planned at all.
I just got lucky.
Yeah, you got lucky.
[Laughter.]
Narrator: At the Bigfoot and Beer event in Oregon, the BFRO team speaks publicly about their investigations.
Matt reflects on the group's adventures in North Carolina and Mike Greene's thermal footage.
North Carolina was a very interesting case because a BFRO member was able to get some of the best thermal footage we've ever seen.
Matt: I've known Mike for years through the BFRO.
So I was thrilled to finally get to go out to the site of his video and give it the proper examination that it deserves.
Okay, Bobo, come up to the stump and reach and grab the Zagnut bar while keeping your eyes just over the top of it.
Right there.
Look at that! Matt: The Uwharrie Forest is renowned for its bigfoot activity.
In fact, I've gone on several expeditions here myself.
So I knew we had to go back through these legendary woods and see what we could scare up.
Who is that up there? There's something on the hill.
Unfortunately, the team and I didn't exactly see eye to eye on this one.
You're not gonna catch it.
You're not gonna catch a 'squatch running in the dark.
There's no way.
Running rogue in eight different directions is gonna get you diddly.
Ranae, I've been doing this for an awful long time.
I know exactly what the [bleep.]
I'm doing.
But in the end, we were always a team, and we are here to do one thing determine if there are bigfoots living in this part of North Carolina.
And as we've come to learn, the best way to do that is to talk to the people that live here.
We went backpacking off of West Morris Camp, and the entire night, just rocks being pelted at us.
Matt: Hearing from all the eyewitnesses, we were able to define an area that we believe gave us the best chance of finding concrete evidence of a Sasquatch, and it was right along the Uwharrie Trail.
There was only one problem.
The area was massive too much for just the four of us.
So we got on the phones, and we tried to call in some help.
And to our amazement, help came out in droves.
Well over 200 volunteers showed up to assist us in the largest bigfoot search ever.
It was truly amazing.
I didn't expect that many people.
All right, folks.
Try and stay in a line.
Continue on walking into the woods.
And we found what I suspect is a legitimate bigfoot kill.
[Whistle blows.]
I could tell based on the type of fracture on the front leg.
This foreleg here has been snapped clean.
That was twisted off.
That's what a Sasquatch does to a deer.
But I could counter this by saying that, you know, a group of coyotes or some wolves or a bear rolled it down the hill, and it could explain it.
Do you see any teeth marks on that? No, by rolling it down the hill an animal could break its leg spinning down this hill.
This is steep enough to break a leg.
I do think this was a 'squatch kill.
When you take all the evidence together, the loads of eyewitness accounts, along with what you saw and heard out there, I have no doubts that there are bigfoots in the Uwharrie Forest of North Carolina.
Bobo's thermal re-creation footage looked a lot like the original.
Why do you think that was? I think that the original figure in Mike Greene's footage was similar in size and shape to Bobo.
I got to say, we go out.
We do these re-creations, which to me is fantastic, a wonderful opportunity.
I'm having a great time.
Except I got poison ivy.
You did.
Poison oak.
This is the re-creation to me that I keep hearing, and everybody I know that works with thermals they're so hard to fake.
We faked it dead-on.
I want what we can't re-create, where I'm like, "Can't do it.
" That was easily done.
If this is a person, then this person really likes candy bars.
Because they snuck in they snuck in off trail, up river and then waited for Mike to leave to get a candy bar.
Crawled through poison ivy.
Yeah, crawled through poison ivy to get a ca man, those candy bars are good.
I'm not buying it.
We re-created it.
Let's move on.
Team seemed kind of mad when you ran after the creature.
How would you react if any of them had done the same? See, the thing is, I was looking at that thing for a while.
There was no doubt in my mind.
So I immediately ran after it.
There wasn't a moment to lose.
Here's what doesn't make any sense to me.
First off, we are a team.
I'm out there.
We are all four individuals who bring unique skills to this.
And we got to work together.
The one thing that was said ahead of time is, no matter what, if you see something, we communicate.
And I just the frustration for me, Matt, was the rogueness of it running off on your own and not communicating.
That's what I was trying to say to you.
Whether that thing was a Sasquatch or a person, we'll never know.
But what that does show us is that in the circumstances that we're working under, it's difficult to film anything out there.
Who is that up there? There's something on the hill.
How did you get all those people to turn out? Matt: Well, we have a lot of volunteers in North Carolina and South Carolina.
We have volunteers.
We have members.
And the members in the group, the investigators, were able to make calls to different groups and different people, and so it was like a phone tree.
We called the people who were in the group, and they called a lot more people, and they all showed up.
And it was certainly more than we thought there would be.
All right, folks.
Try and stay in a line.
Continue on walking into the woods.
If Sasquatches are truly real, why haven't we found any bones or a body? Every tribe around the country will tell you that they do live in family groups.
We know that.
That they carry out their dead and bury them.
They're not gonna leave a body out there to be found.
They're gonna take it off every tribe will tell not every tribe, but lots of tribes will tell you that they bury their dead.
I have a question for Cliff.
On the show, you said this might have been the first time you've seen a bigfoot.
When did your interest in bigfoot begin and why? Well I have always liked monsters.
You know, I think every 5-year-old boy probably digs monsters to some degree, right? And as I kept growing older, I just kind of got weirder, I guess.
And then one day I ran into the anthropology section in my college library, where I ran across a book of scholarly papers written on the Sasquatch.
And it just kind of snowballed from there.
And I just got more and more possessed by the subject.
And I've always camped my entire life.
So I started going out to the field then with a specific goal in mind of "bigfooting" whatever that was at that time.
And it's just evolved since.
Wow, did I just see a Sasquatch? Narrator: The team has come back to Ike's Pizza for their second Bigfoot and Beer event to share their personal experiences from recent expeditions.
Now Cliff recalls the team's foray into Oregon's bigfoot country and the McKenzie River footage that brought them there.
The Oregon case was my favorite one to investigate, because not only is Oregon my home state, but we got to look into some video that I found very compelling taken by fly fishermen.
I recognize you.
The footage was captured accidentally by Chris Daughters and Matt Stansberry as they shot a video for their fishing blog.
It shows a dark figure standing in the background as they float by.
And as we've come to know, the best way to break down a video is to just go out and re-create it ourselves.
Even though our re-creation gave us no clear conclusion, there was one thing that was very clear.
We were in the heart of bigfoot country.
[Growls.]
On our first trip here to Bigfoot and Beer, we heard a lot of compelling eyewitness accounts, with most of the encounters happening in the Molalla River corridor, an area well-known in the bigfoot community.
The story that intrigued us the most was Mark, Steve, and Orey's.
And it involved a bunny.
The rabbit starts running around really fast.
It's like, "Something's out there," you know.
See a shape of this big, huge hand going right in front of the cage really slow.
It comes back again.
I've wanted to try this method out for years.
The rabbit's up in the cage in the tree.
We've got glow sticks all around.
- It looks amazing here.
- Yeah.
And it paid off when I heard three distinct tree knocks.
[Distant wood knocking.]
- You heard that, right? - Yeah.
Clear as day.
So we had a pretty good hunch there was at least one bigfoot in the area.
Now we needed to draw it out.
And I had just the plan.
[Animal howling.]
We broadcasted recorded howls out of a 500-watt speaker system over the Molalla River Valley.
And it wasn't long before we got a response.
[Faint howling.]
It's behind you.
That's a 'squatch.
We got actual bigfoot howls on tape.
That was a fantastic score, and that just confirmed what I already knew.
Oregon is home to the big fella.
Ranae: It was creepy.
I mean, that's the one instance where I was sitting there and, you know, we're standing there in the pitch black.
And you're hearing that off in the distance, and I'm like, "Wow, that's creepy.
" As soon as we heard it, we go, "That's a 'squatch.
" Of the entire time out here, that night, that vocalization would keep me coming back.
- It was epic.
- Yeah.
That's why we've been doing this for 20 years.
Y'all seem pretty divided about the video evidence that was found and whether the 'squatch was on the other side of the river or not.
Bobo looks just as big, if not slightly bigger.
Matt: This figure was one solid dark color from head to toe, which made it very plausible that it was a Sasquatch.
This video is not as high quality as ours.
I have no doubt in my mind that this is a human.
Have you got a chance to analyze that further? So, I went back and looked more closely at the film.
We always assumed that it was getting up from a squatting position.
What I think happened is that whatever it was in the film crawled up on the rock.
Then it turns around, and if you look closely, there is a dark head moving behind the other rocks going to the same place.
I think that it was a human getting up on the rock, turning around, and started bending over.
And I've noticed that the head in footage is really low.
I think that the "creature" was actually looking down and thus appears to have a lower head on the shoulders.
And I think it was turning around to help its friend on the rock.
And I've talked to people since, now that I have been to that spot, fly fishermen.
People routinely do go to that spot at that time of year not only to do fishing, but also just watch the people going through the rapids.
There's no doubt in my mind that that was a person.
The fly fishermen themselves told us that they've never seen anyone at that spot.
They thought it was out of place.
They thought it didn't look like a human.
And I tend to agree with them.
What I like most about this, guys, is that we all have our different opinions.
We all I love that we get to go to the place, have the scale, match it up and see what we think.
Yeah, we did the investigation.
We did our due diligence.
And that's kind of our job here, right? You all do bigfoot calls? I think we have found a pretty good vantage point.
We're gonna let loose with a call here.
I wanted to give you a heads up.
Hit it, maestro.
[Shrieking.]
[Shrieking.]
[Shrieking.]
[Shrieking.]
[Shrieking.]
[Shrieking.]
[Shrieking.]
What, are you going through puberty? Who has the most effective call? This trip, it was Cliff.
I was known for doing bigfoot calls, but Cliff definitely got more responses.
You know, I think it depends on where you go.
I mean, the ones in Molalla sounded like Matt's call, really.
At other times, I've done vocalization my scream sort of thing and I have heard calls like Bobo's come back at me.
So I don't really know.
I wish I knew what I was saying.
Yeah.
I'm saying, "Hey, baby.
" It seemed to me that Bobo's would get them to approach more and be aggressive, and I could usually get them to respond back.
But they wouldn't necessarily respond back, but yours seemed to, like, upset them, and they would come to do something about it.
Picking up on their chicks.
That's right.
There you go.
I've heard all of your guys's other calls.
Ranae, would you be willing to do a call for us? Absolutely not.
Absolutely not.
- Boo.
- Boo? Boo.
Boo.
Bring it.
Bring it.
Bring it.
Boo! I ate Bun-Bun.
[Laughter.]
See her face? Nice.
I love little Bun-Bun.
Hey, little buddy.
We're gonna put this in there so we can keep an extra-good eye on you.
Make sure nothing happens.
Look at my little bunny.
I'll see you in a while.
I feel guilty.
I am taking this guy home with me, Cliff.
I don't want anything to happen to my little Bun-Bun.
I did.
I fell in love with that rabbit.
I think it was a I don't know if it was a guy or girl, but It wouldn't have mattered.
Well, everyone was trying to pet it, it would go to the back of the cage, and I'd come up, it'd hop up to me and, like, let me pet him.
So I was gonna take Bun-Bun home.
Like, I adopted Bun-Bun.
We bonded.
And we couldn't keep Bun-Bun going on the road with us, 'cause the cage smelled so bad, and plus bouncing up all those dirt roads in the van.
So we put it back for safe keeping back at the pet store, and it accidentally got sold.
Narrator: The BFRO team has returned to Ike's Pizza, joined by an intimate crowd of bigfoot fans as they open up about their recent findings.
Here, Ranae remembers the team's adventures in her home state of Washington and their investigation of Randee Chase's Silver Star Mountain photos.
I enjoyed all the expeditions, but the one closest to my heart was in my home state of Washington.
This is where we got to go up Silver Star Mountain and investigate what I found to be some really intriguing photos.
Ranae: Because of the weather, our journey to the mountain didn't look like it was gonna happen.
But luckily, I was able to score a helicopter, and it was one unforgettable ride.
We landed on a snow ledge between Silver Star's peaks and then hiked the rest of the way so we could do our re-creation.
Randee, what do you think? Yeah, I'd say he's pretty close right there.
Cool.
Whoa! Although our re-creation didn't provide us with definitive answers, our trip back down the mountain showed us some area with some interesting animal-track patterns that we wanted to check out.
[Whistles.]
Did you just whistle? No, but I heard that.
And I'm glad we did.
Because we had a very interesting night.
Okay, here it comes, 10 seconds.
[Whistling.]
Stop, stop, stop.
Abort.
Tell him to abort.
Cliff, hold on.
Copy that.
That's voices, man.
Whatever Matt and Bobo heard, I've never heard sounds like that before.
But we're hoping that some of the locals had.
So we've called a town-hall meeting in nearby Yacolt and invited people to share their encounters with bigfoot.
At the meeting, we were most intrigued by the story from a fisherman who had a terrifying experience along the Lewis River.
As the sound of the footsteps approached closer, I knew whatever it was was standing behind me right there at the top of the trail.
Ranae: Even though his story seemed a bit inconsistent to me, this was still a great area to launch our final investigation.
And Cliff had a crazy idea that he wanted to try out.
Bobo: Cliff and Ranae are gonna be in this camouflaged canoe.
And we got an actual camera inside of a floating goose, and we're gonna remote-control right up and down the river and see if we can't spot anything with that.
Ranae: I'm kind of starting to like our little craft here.
I loved this idea, especially the goose cam.
The boat and goose were perfect for concealing us.
And it wasn't long before Bobo spotted something.
Bobo: Hey, Cliff, are you out of the boat on the shore right now? No, no, we're about 200 feet from shore in the lake.
There's just two hotspots on the shoreline.
It could be elk.
Could be deer.
It could be a bigfoot.
As we were investigating that thermal image, Matt heard some howl.
[Animal howls.]
Oh, boy.
Ultimately we couldn't verify the thermal hit or the howls that Matt heard, so we'll never truly know.
But we did hear some sounds out there that I've never heard before, which for me keeps the possibility alive.
I don't think there are still photos that I think are better than the ones at Silver Star.
You see the still frames from the Patterson footage.
Those are still frames, and you can see a lot more detail.
But in terms of taken with a regular camera of an adult, I don't think Silver Star is there's anything better.
You know what's maddening about that is Randee you see the guy with the wizard staff, he was an awesome guy.
Just a great dude.
But I just want to kill him, because he took a photo, then turned around and took photos of the river and stuff, then turned back 30 seconds later, 40 seconds later, then took the other three.
I just don't think he knew what it was initially.
He just thought, there was this figure over there, and he took a picture, and he took some more, and then he realized this was really odd.
But when you guys landed on the mountain, was it sketchy at all? Like, were you guys afraid of falling off the edge? Matt was.
Cliff: Matt gets vertigo, right.
Matt: I got close to the edge up there.
I didn't want to look down, especially you know, you're on a snow kind of cornice edge.
I got close to it, and I'm just figuring, this thing is just gonna break, and we're gonna start sliding down the hill.
So, no, I didn't particularly care being on that snow ridge.
To me, it wasn't sketchy.
It was awesome.
Yeah, it was It was more awesome than sketchy.
Probably the highlight of the trip, at least for me.
I've never done anything so amazing as that.
Narrator: At a rare event in Oregon, the BFRO team discusses their expeditions on the island of Prince of Wales, Alaska, and share a never-before-seen moment with Hydaburg Mayor Tony Christianson and his own personal encounter with a bigfoot.
I was out on a boat, and we were hunting some deer, and we got off on an island and, you know, started to hunt this deer on the island.
And there was this clacking noise.
Pfoo.
Really? And I was like I thought my dad was messing with me, and I could hear him keep walking towards the boat.
And then it did a little whistle.
[Whistles through teeth.]
I was watching up there.
I could hear him start to move down the beach a little ways, and when I looked up, my dad came out about a quarter-mile down the beach.
So I ran down and picked him up and asked him if he was the one messing with me.
And he said, "Let's get out of here.
It was probably the big guy.
" We've received reports from many different native communities in Alaska.
But the highest concentration of them is definitely on Prince of Wales Island in southeast Alaska.
So we had to go there.
Matt: We were contacted by Tony Christianson, the mayor of Hydaburg, a little village on the southern end of the island.
Strange things have been happening around this village, and Tony wanted us to come up and check it out.
Tony introduced us to a young man named Howie Dagg, who stumbled upon some large tracks in the snow and snapped pictures of them with his cellphone.
And once Cliff was able to calculate the prints to be about 17 inches long, I knew they were Sasquatch tracks.
You're talking about one big boy.
I thought it would be a good idea to search this area and to see if there were Sasquatches still around.
And I'm glad we did, because we got some action.
[Crack.]
Was that you? Bobo, was that you? [Bleep.]
That was not me.
I swear to God.
Come here.
Come here, Bobo.
That looks like a footprint.
Holy [bleep.]
Awesome.
With Bobo hearing a loud rock clack and Ranae finding the print, that let us know there were probably some Sasquatches on the island.
But we wanted to know how many Sasquatches there were, so we rounded up as many locals as we could to listen to all their stories.
We came upon this clearing, and we saw this tall, hairy thing, upright, stepped behind a tree.
Matt: But the most compelling witness didn't even come to the town hall.
It was actually a young boy named Osh that the mayor directed us to.
And I turned, and there was about this 8-foot creature just standing there, just staring at me.
[Growls.]
I honestly thought I was gonna die.
It was bad.
Osh's story really touched us, and it gave us another piece of the puzzle about these creatures.
Drawing upon everything we had learned so far, we were able to pick an area that we believed gave us the best chance of capturing footage of a bigfoot.
We think we have our spot.
- All righty.
- We do.
Matt: We picked an area where deer congregate at night, and we set up laser trip wires at 6 feet high.
If anything entered the field, we would know it.
[Beeping.]
- Hey, Matt.
- Yeah? We just got a hit on perimeter 4.
- That's near the road.
- Yeah.
Cliff, Ranae, why don't you guys work your way back towards the road? We'll meet over there, see what we get.
Matt: Our encounters in the wild reliable eyewitness testimony with all these factors together, I believe that Prince of Wales Island, Alaska, does, indeed, have Sasquatches.
If a bear and deer can swim that channel to get to that island, then it shouldn't surprise anybody that a Sasquatch could do the same.
There's actually a huge number of sightings between Ketchikan and Prince of Wales Island that have been documented.
They swim.
They swim.
They're swimming in a frog-kick manner.
Like, eyewitness report of them, they swim like they'll have their arms at their side, and they kick with their legs like a frog motion.
You guys found what seems to be a juvenile footprint.
How long do you think Sasquatch lives? Using all the other great apes gorillas, orangutans, chimpanzees, bonobos, and human beings because we are great apes we all live about 40 or 50 years in the wild until generally dental death takes hold of us.
A dental death means we lose so much of our teeth that we can't eat anymore.
We starve to death or infection happens.
And that's basically what kills most, I think, large mammals in the woods.
Which is all the more reason to floss.
- Yeah.
- Right.
All the reason to floss.
The Native American community seems to be very secretive about Sasquatch.
Why do you think that is? We are named after this tall, hairy man.
That's where we originated from.
That's how we got our name.
We followed this tall, hairy man up the river.
I can only tell so much.
The elders don't want me to tell the story.
It's very common for them to be reluctant to talk about the subject.
And there's more than one reason for it.
There will be different reasons for different tribes.
But the reasons that you'll hear most commonly are they're afraid that if they talk about it that people will come there to hurt them.
You'll hear that very often.
Well, Matt, I can tell you that in my field studies, first of all, when I go into it, I am told point blank it is disrespectful to bring up Sasquatch.
And it's only once you're kind of accepted in it has been my experience do they begin to share their stories.
You've got to gain the trust.
So, if you guys were to catch a bigfoot, what would you guys do with it? You know I'm gonna catch ya! I'd let it go and apologize.
[Laughter.]
We are not trying to catch I don't think you could catch one.
I mean, no one has really tried.
There's never been a concentrated effort.
It is really difficult to photograph them and to film them.
Then it's not gonna be any easier to catch them.
What, are you going to tackle one? You know what I mean? - I mean - You tried.
Yeah! [Laughter.]
Bobo, how old were you when you saw your first bigfoot? You know, it was just 10 years ago last month that I saw my first one.
But I got to say, it you know, looking for all that time, you know, I was expecting to see something big but, I mean, I saw something bigger than this.
This thing was so thick.
It was so thick this way and so wide.
I mean, its shoulders were as wide as the Toyota truck.
And we were like, "Oh, my god.
" And the tree that we thought was like this big like, its head was behind, we thought it was a tree like that.
The tree was like this.
And its head was like that big.
It was pretty amazing.
Yeah, it just floored me.
I had just goose bumps and chicken skin for, like, three days straight.
It changed my life.
Like, I was kind of a bigfoot nut before that.
And then I just went off the deep end on the 'squatch after that.
Bobo, how do you feel about being the bigfoot stand-in all the time? Flattering.
I do a lot of training for that.
All right, Bobo, give it a shot! No, not even close to that.
He is out of shape.
Can you try to hunker down like you're a rock? That's a weird position.
We're at 40.
Now.
That was awesome! I didn't know Bobo could move that fast.
I'm just wondering what are the hot new reports, and where do you guys think you're going next? As a matter of fact, starting from the east, I know we're gonna do New York and Ohio.
New Mexico.
We're doing New Mexico.
Colorado.
Colorado, Texas.
Back to Oregon.
Yeah, back to Oregon.
[All cheer.]
Thanks for receiving us so well.
We're so happy that Bigfoot and Beer happens here.
And we hope it will go on for a long time and you guys will keep making this place that's welcome for people to come and tell their stories.
[Applause.]
[Roars.]