Would you, should you, shoot a Big Foot?
7October 12, 2012 by kittynh
There is a lot of debate in the Big Foot and skeptic communities about shooting Big Foot. Crytozoologists, hunting for Big Foot, often don’t like to be lumped into the “paranormal” pile. They feel Big Foot is a creature just waiting to be found.
Body armor might be a good plan for Big Foot
I should note that Big Foot hunters tend to believe in Big Foot, they aren’t searching for something they don’t believe exists. They site evidence, that for them, is enough to convince them there are communities of Big Foot living in almost every state in the US. What is to be found yet, is proof that will convince skeptics like myself. That’s why I have been, in the past,very much in favor of shooting Big Foot. When Big Foot proponents ask me, “What would it take to convince you?” I answer “A corpse.”
Historically, a corpse is what it has taken for a mysterious animal to be accepted by science. When the first Platypus showed up in England scientists searched for signs of stitching. It had to have been cobbled together! No stitches meant the animal was real.
The reason I no longer propose shooting Big Foot is I fear the Big Foot corpse I drag in would have not only stitches, but also a zipper.
Let’s take the gorilla, an animal often sited by Big Foot hunters in the hope that there are still large primates to be found. It was not known, world wide, until fairly recently in history. I like to think that the people living near gorillas knew all about them. They are just new to Western culture. The first report by non Africans about the gorilla appeared in 1847 in the “Proceedings of the Boston Society of Natural History” in an article by Thomas Savage and Jeffries Wyman.
Still, it wasn’t until a dead specimen was brought to the UK by Paul du Chaillu in 1861, that they all doubt about this animals was gone. As I often tell Big Foot hunters “You have all this bad evidence, foot prints, sightings, vague photographs and footage, yet just one bit of good evidence would convince the world.” The biggest pile of foot prints can never equal just one body, or even one strand of DNA.
Science has progressed to the point where we don’t even need a dead Big Foot. A bone, a bit of hair, or some Big Foot scat would do. That’s all it would take.
There is also no reason to “cover up” Big Foot. I can understand, if only briefly, a government conspiracy to cover up advanced alien technology. I can understand why someone might think a perpetual motion machine would be suppressed by the oil companies. I even for a moment can entertain the idea of “big pharma” covering up miracle cures. But why anyone would want to cover up evidence of Big Foot evades me as much as Big Foot has evaded his hunters. Big Foot is just simply proving very hard to find.
Since Big Foot has proven so elusive, I was for many years an advocate of “Shoot!”. Big Foot hunters can be very passionate about their belief. I am open minded. It’s sometimes hard to convince the Big Foot crowd skeptics would love for them to exist. How exciting, to find a living creature so large, so elusive, and also so gentle. No one has brought in anyone purported to have been killed by a Big Foot. Their tolerance for humans, especially those on reality TV shows, is alone worth study. I would love proof of Big Foot, dead or alive. Dead seemed to be the only real choice for hunters of an animal that seems to simply disappear after a brief sighting.
That is until I discovered how many people like to engage in Big Foot hoaxes. Randy Lee Tenley was hit by two cars and killed while wearing a camouflage hunting suit, he was pretending to be Big Foot. I watched one monster hunter type show where the native “guide” points out to the camera crew a disturbance on a nearby mountain. No one noticed but the “guide” who with his superior eyesight knew just where to look (and when) for the distant large creature. The creature was too far away for the crew to catch whatever it was or to get a clear view. I thought “If I had a high power rifle I could take that baby down!”
That’s the problem. I could, and probably would, have killed a friend of the guide. A friend simply trying to give the camera crew of a television show some nice footage.
I recently joked about making my own Big Foot hoax in front of my neighbors trail camera. My skeptic friends talked me out of it, simply out of fear I would be shot. It didn’t matter how comical I planned to make the costume, they figured Big Foot is fair game.
I would still shoot Big Foot, but only if I knew it was a Big Foot. Sadly, ones best chance would be not a close up shot, but one from afar. Big Foot is nothing if not a shy creature. Unless I could be 100% positive it was not a costume, and some costumes are pretty darn good, I think I’ll pass on the chance to make history. Though if someone else shot a Big Foot, and it isn’t cousin Elmer dressed up and just having some fun, I’ll be as thrilled as everyone else such a creature has been proven real.
Meanwhile, enjoy the Big Foot that visited my daughter’s birthday party. (Yes, she was a big fan of re runs of the TV show “Alf”, so I supposed we could say this was a Big Foot/Alien!) This Big Foot was lucky the neighbors are peaceful, and it wasn’t hunting season.
Yankee Skeptic 
That is the best bigfoot video yet.
Great article Kitty. I had not thought about the risks of hoaxing. Especially in areas where people are likely to carry.
So are you a good shot?
I agree about the hoaxers. Spike TV just increased the chances of manslaughter in the mountains. In fact due to the controversial nature of Bigfoot they’d likely be complicit in that manslaughter.
I am very ashamed to admit that as a “Card Carrying Skeptic”, that over a period of many years, I had unmercifully ridiculed everyone I met that had opinions contrary to any of my views on the subject of Bigfoot or Sasquatch. I did everything to insult their lack of intelligence and rampant stupidity
Eventually, my curiosity was the cause of many years of research that followed, as I became much more knowledgeable about this subject. For hundreds of years, Native American peoples, along with many other eyewitnesses, have been ridiculed, harassed and scorned because of their personal or cultural belief in the reality of Sasquatch! I used to live very near the Ogalala Sioux Indians in Nebraska who were believers.
In searching the 42 linguistic groups of Native American languages, I stopped counting after 500 or so. Each of these linguisitic groups had numerous names for what we call Sasquatch, (which is actually not among those historic names). The name “Sasquatch” was coined by J.W. Burns, an American schoolteacher in British Columbia in the 1920′s, and is derived from “Sesqac” (c=ts) , which was a Chehalis word meaning “wild man”, (in the Chehalis dialect of Halkemeylem).
It is sadly a time honored tradition of Mainstream Science to refuse to rarely ever believe the testimony of the many Indigenous Tribespeople worldwide regarding the fauna that are present in their environment.
Well, in this case, Dr. Melba S. Ketchum has put that refusal firmly in the garbage heap along with the flat earth theory, after she submitted the three samples to the University of Texas DNA Laboratory for Next Generation Sequencing on the Illumina Platform by their experts.
That successful effort resulted in sequencing three Nuclear Genomes that possessed consistent homology, although their DNA samples came from three individuals, from three areas, and submitted by three different researchers. This fact is very much more convincing than any proof that has ever previously been available. The Genomes that came from a Blood sample, a Saliva sample and a Flesh sample all had DNA that was judged to be high quality, very pure, and totally uncontaminated.
Now there is no sane person alive who can truthfully say that there is no scientific evidence available for proving the existence of Sasquatch.
I believe that the Sasquatch Genome Project data has been been made available to none other than the esteemed Bryan Sykes, a Professor of Human Genetics at the University of Oxford, who is collaborating with Dr. Michel Sartori, Directeur Musee de Zoologie, Switzerland, who are now in the process of collecting and studying cryptid DNA samples under the banner of the Oxford-Lausanne Collateral Hominid Project.
I suspect their findings will surprise us all, and will definitely vindicate Dr. Ketchums work. Her efforts will go down in history for all time!
Congratulations to you and to Dr. Melba Ketchum and her colleagues!
I would say, how long do you think this will take? That’s the problem. I don’t see a large collection of “sane” scientists behind Ketchum’s work as it’s just not carefully done. In other words, scientists are kind of picky about “how” a paper is done.
I hope this new DNA work, which I hope will not be as delayed as Ketchums was, will vindicate her. However, it has to be done well, the references should be able to be checked (she claims she threw in a bogus reference on purpose), and scientists should be clamoring to recreate the findings. That’s what science is, it can be proven or disproven. People want something clear they can check, written they way they are used to. Ketchums forensics background hurt her, as she was perhaps less familiar with how biologists like things done!
Still, as soon as a good paper comes out, with the biologists mentioned having written it, it will be widely accepted. But until then, her paper is a bit wobbly. She needs good strong biologists to come out with “look we have the same data” as soon as possible! Until then, science is still unsure what to make of her paper.
Sadly, not all of Ketchums samples were collected using the methods our local Bigfoot group uses. We carry gloves with us at all times, clean collection bags, we GPS and photograph the sampling area, we even are careful to collect samples from the ground or area a sample was found. We also include DNA and samples or our own hair and tissue! We want our DNA not to contaminate any samples we collect. (we store our samples using an approved protocol also). With more Bigfoot groups learning proper collection methods, there will be less cross contamination.
Ketchum would not have a doctorate if she didn’t know how to write an academic paper. true scientists will not throw in an invalid reference to “test” the community..It shows she did little actual research to have missed that.
I know because these Doctors have to go through a mentorship for their thesis. those mentors are picky for a reason. Academic papers must be accurate though they may represent a different or unpopular point of view. The Scientific community is not the problem here. Ketchum’s lack of valid research is the issue. She cannot guarantee all samples were handled appropriately since she has not trained personnel collecting it with the same procedures across country. This leads to contamination.
having a daughter that last year just got her PhD from MIT, I agree. It’s tough to get your doctorate. That’s why I expected so much more from the Ketchum paper. If other scientists get great results to back her up fine. however, nothing makes other scientists not even want to touch your paper than one not well done.