Homey was nosing into our sockeye trip to Lake Wenatchee. “So, that’s where your brother Brad saw those ‘Bigfoot’ guys years ago, right? And that’s your interest, right? And you guys were at the head of the lake, near the White River, so didn’t you really go to look around? So… Did you see any tracks? You went to look, right? When are you going to write about them—the Yakamas’ ‘stone throwers,’ huh?”
I so badly wanted to tell him of some secret mission up our sleeves, and crank up his blood pressure a bit. I hated to disabuse him of the notion that Brandon and I were chasing Bigfoot, but I just didn’t have the time to properly exploit his interest. “Sorry,” I finally said. “We were just fishing.”
Still, I certainly have an abiding interest in Bigfoot and the rapidly growing body of both serious and silly research surrounding its existence. The TV series, published research and dozens of YouTube videos about the critter surround us. I grabbed my current files.
If you have thought about this stuff at all, you probably know about Jeff Meldrum, an anatomy and anthropology professor at Idaho State University. His Pocatello lab arguably holds North America’s biggest collection of footprint casts, hair samples and other associated evidence. He often says that the Bigfoot work came to him—he was not looking for it. His lab did extensive animal testing for species identification, so maybe it was inevitable at some level.
His interest in the Bigfoot mystery was triggered by an apparent hoax involving footprints near Walla Walla at the end of the last century. He returned on his own to the tracks in question and made casts of other nearby sets of prints. With the eye of an anatomy pro, he found unique marks on his plaster casts which suggested the tracks were not part of a hoax.
Then Jimmy Chilcutt, a crime scene investigator from Conroe, Texas, heard the story of Meldrum’s foot casts, and came to look for himself. Chilcutt was a prints guy, with an expertise in fingerprints developed over an 18 year career. He had, for several years, been studying foot prints of humans and primates in hopes of developing new tools for distinguishing individual footprint patterns. After Meldrum turned him loose in the foot cast collection and left, Chilcutt quickly decided that the prints were indeed from some actual primate—not faked.
Meldrum, with a bit of trepidation, started down a serious Bigfoot research path, with Jimmy Chilcutt as a strong and expert ally. Thus, Meldrum’s very thorough collection of footprint casts and hair samples, as well as some body fluids collected from various sightings and interactions.
In late June, Meldrum was in Portland, raising money for The Falcon Project. This project involves outfitting an unmanned and highly maneuverable helium-filled airship with a platform of thermal-imaging and high resolution wireless video gear. The project will feature a sleek, quiet Aurora Mk II airship, able to approach and observe critters with minimal disturbance of their natural behavior. It can survey in dense forest with a vertical look, and can move quickly enough to keep up with a subject. The gyro-stabilized camera mounts and remote operation equipment are specifically designed for such tasks. Given the nocturnal, reclusive and wary nature of the species, Meldrum has high hopes for this novel high-tech approach.
Meldrum has been at his task for nearly two decades. His book “Sasquatch: Legend Meets Science,” was published in 2006 by Forge Books, with a paperback in 2007 from St. Martin’s Press. He’s published numerous papers and now edits an online journal, The Relict Hominoid Inquiry (at www.isu.edu/rhi). He is fully committed to the research.
Others are serious, too. Professor Bryan Sykes, a human geneticist from Oxford is conducting a critical DNA study of hair samples said to be from Sasquatch as part of the Oxford-Luassane Collateral Hominid Project.
You may recall that, in January of this year, veterinarian Melba S. Ketchum reported on her team’s five-year study of more than 100 DNA samples that she believes are from the elusive hairy beast. At DNA Diagnostics, Inc., in Nacogdoches, Texas, they tested mostly hair, but also blood, urine and saliva samples. She is a believer. Based on the DNA testing, her team concluded that Bigfoot may be the result of a cross between Homo sapiens and some unknown primate—a cross that happened some 15,000 years ago. The research is now said to be under the scrutiny of independent researchers. Time will tell.
Robert Michael Pyle speaks seriously of his experience. A Denver friend tells her Sasquatch story with elaborate detail.
Brother Brad is the coolest person I have ever seen under pressure. He has been credited with saving lives on mountains and ice that were about to collapse. He saw Bigfoot crossing the White River decades ago. I would take it to the bank.
The interest will keep growing, I think. Check the web. Happy late summer.
