The legend lives, but does Bigfoot?
Of all the mythical creatures of paranormal legend, I’d like to see the Bigfoot proven real, even more so than the goat-sucking Chupacabra, Lake Champlain’s Champ, Loch Ness’ Nessie or Malaysia’s Abominable Snow Man (Yeti) which is a first cousin twice removed to Bigfoot.
I don’t think there are any Bigfoots, Bigfeet, Bigfeets or Sasquatches here in New England because there’s not enough wilderness for one to go unnoticed - and un-shot, especially.
While I’m hunting, I never wonder if one will walk by my tree stand or get up in front of me and take off like a scared rabbit. My trail cameras, and those of thousands of other hunters, have captured countless photos of deer, coyotes, raccoons, flying squirrels, wild turkeys and nearly every creature that walks, flies or crawls on its belly like the Reptile Man - but never one of a genuine Bigfoot.
Do Bigfoots lurk in truly remote areas however? Some people who frequent such large expanses of heavily forested habitat say that Sasquatch indeed lives, offering eyewitness accounts and other unsubstantiated evidence alleging their existence. TV shows have been devoted to the phenomenon of the hairy ape man with Squatching teams attempting to document the beast with no success. Team members claim to know what a Squatch likes to eat, what sounds they make, even what they smell like.
Washington State is the Squatchiest of the 50 states with 2,032 sightings (and counting), according to a list compiled by the Travel Channel and released on March 29, 2019. California was second with 1,697 sightings, followed by Pennsylvania with 1,340. In vast swamps of Louisiana, North Carolina, Florida and Arkansas, Bigfoot has a close relative, maybe a half-brother, or half-sister, also known as Bigfoot, but more commonly referred to as Skunk Ape. The main difference between the two furry brutes is that the Southern strain smells like rotten eggs. It’s said that both creatures are of the same bloodline – and how does anyone know that? Did Squatch and Swampsquatch each send a test tube full of spit to Ancestry.com?
According to a Jan. 10, 2020 article in the Charlotte Observer, “Bigfoot 911, a Marion-based cryptid research group, told McClatchy News that eight Bigfoot sightings have been reported “from around the Jonas Ridge area of Burke County (North Carolina)” in the past five years.” The article also noted that Southern Appalachian Mountain bogs are remote and “a perfect fit for Bigfoot lore.”
I believe that I’d be hunting them if I lived in a place where there are lots of reported sightings, as long as it was legal. I wouldn’t want to get pinched for poaching a Bigfoot. As far as I know there have never been any Bigfoot attacks on humans, so they’re believed to be more docile and secretive than aggressive and ferocious but judging by photos, videos and the size of their feet, the critters look like they could hurt, maim or kill you. Maybe all three.
I’ve pondered which rifle caliber would be ample medicine to swiftly and humanely dispatch such a formidable creature and after comparing ballistics, I would choose nothing short of an elephant gun. I’d want to drop him right in his legendary 16-inch, five-toed tracks - not just wound and irritate him. Tracking an angry Squatch in the gloomy gray light of dusk isn’t high on my list of adventures. He’d probably get a ways ahead of me, then duck behind a big tree and conk me on the head with a Giant Redwood as I came by, hunched over, working out his track. One can only guess what would happen next and I wouldn’t want to find out.
Some places have enacted laws that prohibit hunting and killing a Bigfoot but how can it be confirmed unless someone kills one, ties a rope arund its leg, drags the body back to the truck and drives it to the nearest Bigfoot check station? The Smithsonian would be my next stop. I bet a real live dead Bigfoot would fetch a king’s ransom. I also would want royalties on admissions to the Sasquatch exhibit.
The reality is that you just aren’t going to catch one alive. Do you expect to put some birdseed under a cardboard refrigerator box propped up with a stick, hide behind a bush and pull the string on the stick when the Bigfoot is under the box? Aha! Got him!
They’re reportedly seven to eight feet tall and surely can outrun a human, so chasing one down, tackling and hog-tying it is out. And with that massive sloped cranium, they look way too smart to walk into a cage trap. Besides, they’ve got hands with fingers and opposable thumbs which could unhook a latch, pick a lock with a twig and pry open a leg-hold trap if you happened to snag one by the ankle. They’d also know enough to dig their hands and feet into the bank of a pitfall trap and climb out. Lasso one and you’ll be dragged through the cactus or bull briars, wishing you had thought of something else to do that day.
Think waving a pork chop, a pinch of ape nip, bottle of bourbon or a whole deer and coaxing it with, “here Bigfoot, nice Bigfoot, ‘wanna go for a ride?” might work? Nope. You’re going to have to shoot one dead. Seeing as there are just too many unknowns about the animal’s weight and strength, darting one with a tranquilizer is out. It would be King Kong all over again.
If you snap a picture or record a video of one, some people aren’t going to believe you. There already are photos and film footage of Bigfeets and the “experts” are still arguing over them. It is! Isn’t! You’re stupid! No, you’re stupid!
This may be one of the reasons you can’t shoot them. Some may wish to keep the myth and mystery alive, rather than put it to bed. Towns that capitalize on the elusive hairy hominid will lose business if there’s no more legend. “I’m the mayor of this town and I say we got Bigfeets here. I seen one myself. Y’all might see one too. Be the first to catch one and you’ll be rich. Rich, I say. Rich! Come one, come all.”
If a real Sasquatch is slain, and a verified necropsy performed by a panel of scientists, the quest to prove or disprove the folk tale would be over. No more expeditions. People could be out of work and at the very least, practical jokers will have to dream up new hoaxes. Outfits like Searchingforbigfoot.com, where you can report your personal Squatch sightings and encounters online, probably aren’t going to get many grants, sponsors or donations to continue.
Another reason for the hunting ban could be the strong possibility that there may be some dim bulbs out there, like fictional Merle and Earle, frolicking through the forest like nimble pixies dressed in ape suits, running across roads and streaking through campgrounds, duping people into believing that they’ve just seen a real live Bigfoot.
As a crowd gathers around a Squatch, lying dead next to a picnic table, bleeding profusely from a gaping hole in its chest, made by an elephant gun, Merle, clad in his ape suit, walks over, can of beer in hand, pulls off his mask, nudges the lifeless body with his foot and says, “Poor Earle, we was just funnin’. After we put the suits on, his last words were, ‘watch this.’”
Merle wipes a tear from his eye with the back of his fake paw and feels a tug on the leg of his outfit. He looks down to see a little boy who asks, “Hey Mister, can I have his fake Bubba teeth?”
Earle replies, “What fake Bubba teeth?”
So the myth lives on, at least until one walks by my tree stand, heh, heh. Ka-boom!
End
By Marc Folco
