Quatch: The hunt for Bigfoot comes to my front door

We get some interesting guests up here at Arrowvale Campground, where I spend most of my time outside the farm garden. The average summer weekend produces an entire cross-section of the Vancouver Island tourist population - family reunion-ers, partying teenagers, backpackers, displaced trailer park residents, lost Europeans in rented RVs, and surfers on their way to the beach. By far the most interesting crew, however, were the Sasquatch hunters who recently blessed us with their presence.
“Hunters,” of course, is not the preferred term for members of the Bigfoot Researchers Organization, or BFRO for short. After all, as one told me quite seriously, you don’t hunt Bigfoots. You must lure them in. How? Well, you can broadcast a sound-engineered version of their calls into the forest in the middle of the night. Or, you can entice Bigfoot using his favorite food – pancakes.
Despite the scientific pretenses, the group of thirty or so Sasquatch enthusiasts seemed more into questing for live treasure than documenting data, although they did much of both during their three days here. The international team of wilderness explorers, wildlife enthusiasts, rogue scientists and freelance videographers were loosely organized around the mission of capturing irrefutable evidence of Bigfoot’s existence. And they had chosen British Columbia, specifically Vancouver Island and in particular our little valley in which to complete this mission. Of course, it took me a little while to recognize the honor.
Unlike Bigfoot, I do not possess any remarkable skills in extrasensory perception (more on that in a moment). So, when a man about forty years old rolled up in his fifty-foot RV with Florida plates, I made the mistake of assuming he was another rich tourist checking in for a week of relaxing in his air-conditioned yacht on wheels munching smoked salmon and gruyére cheese. But when he came into the office to register he seemed like an amiable enough person, so I asked him whether he’d gone ahead and installed a landing strip on the top of his gargantuan mobile home. He informed me that he in fact needed the space afforded by this state-of-the-art vehicle in order to store his equipment. What equipment, I asked. Oh, video cameras, microphones, lights, that kind of stuff. I asked if he was filming some sort of reality show.
“Oh no,” he said. “This is a bigger deal than you think.”
“Oh yeah? Should I be excited?” I responded, not bothering to hold back sarcasm anymore.
“I can’t tell you anything about it now,” he said mysteriously. Then he ordered a strawberry-banana smoothie to take back to his RV.

I asked Ann about our mysterious guest as soon as he left. Rather than try to explain, she handed me a business card with an emblem of a large two-legged beast drawn in the style of the Island’s indigenous tribes. “Bigfoot Researchers Organization,” it said, and underneath, “Jim Thurgood, Investigator.”
“There’ll be a whole group of them down there,” she told me, indicating the cluster of campsites in the trees near our house. Jim was the first of the crew to arrive. They were to camp with us for three days, going on three “expeditions” into the nearby forests to search for signs of Bigfoot. Sasquatch. The Abominable Snowman. They were completely serious. And they were literally outside my front door. I couldn’t believe my good fortune.

Jim came back later for more refreshments and I let it be known that I was on to his secret. We chatted about sightings in the area (there had been several promising ones), the best time to spot a bigfoot (at night) and how the group was planning on finally bringing legitimacy to its chosen field of research (by capturing clear footage of the beast itself). My newfound fascination with Sasquatch established, I hinted that because of my extensive journalism training I would be the perfect person to assist the camera crew out there in the dark (actually, I wouldn’t know which end of a video camera is up). He took the bait. Why not come along? He told me he’d run it by the group’s ringleader when she arrived the next day. Meanwhile, he said, it’d be best to do some research. Check out the website and read up on just what it is we’ll be looking for out there.

That night, I called my mom to tell her the exciting news about Sasquatch. She laughed.
“You know, ‘quatch’ is German for nonsense,” she reminded me. Despite living in the US for the past 35 years, my mother has never lost her good German sense of cultural superiority. It was just the confirmation I needed. Anything your parents scoff at is pretty much guaranteed to be interesting.
Next, I followed Jim’s advice and hopped on the interwebs to see if there was anything to his story. Googling “Bigfoot” and “Vancouver Island” actually turned up quite a few hits, but the BFRO's website was, as promised, a gold mine of information. I learned that 2,000-10,000 sasquatches are estimated to exist in North America alone. I spent a brief moment looking over the pages and pages of sasquatch reports and sightings. I also found some useful information on sasquatch identification:
Appearance: Ape-like. Long, reddish-brown to black hair (not fur!). Six to ten feet in height.
Smell: “Intense, disagreeable stench, comparable to the odor of smegma.”
Gait: Averages 5’ in length. Sasquatches walk without straightening their knees.
Top Speed: 40 mph.
Habitat: Forests. They tend to be migratory, though they do build an occasional “nest” out of branches and moss.
Call: A loud scream, roar or howl. Also, “Giggling, laughing and crying sounds have been heard, sometimes in response to appropriate events.”

I skimmed long explanations about why so few decent pictures of sasquatch have ever been produced (they’re nocturnal, nobody ever has a camera handy, etc.) and learned what a sasquatch eats for dinner (deer, elk, raccoons, beavers, ducks or rodents). But the most interesting section of the website by far is the archive of aboriginal Canadian and Native American bigfoot legends.
According to the site, most Native tribes across North America have some sort of story about “big man” in the woods. Sixty separate terms for "Sasquatch" have been identified among these stories. My favorite comes from the Salish, who inhabit southern British Columbia and the Island.

A Nehalem man was not married. He would go hunting and permit the married people to have the meat he got. One summer he killed an elk, and he saved the blood. He took the elk's bladder and filled it with the blood. He made a camp near there. He placed that bladder of blood near his feet, lay down, and went to sleep. Wild Man came and helped himself to the elk meat.
The man awoke. He was too warm, he was sweating. "Goodness! What is the matter?" he asked himself, looking about. It was like daylight, there was such a great fire burning there. Wild Man had placed large pieces of bark between the man and the fire so the man would not get too hot while he slept. You see, he treated that fellow well. When he spoke to him, Wild Man called the man "My nephew."
The man awoke to see Wild Man, that extremely large man, sitting by the fire. He had the fat ribs and front of that elk on a stick, roasting them by the fire. He said, "This is how I am getting to be. I am getting to be always on the bum, these days. I travel all over, I cannot find any elk. I took your elk, dear nephew, I took your elk meat."
That man stretched himself, he had forgotten about that bladder of blood. He kicked it with his feet, causing it to make a noise. Wild Man looked around; he said, "It sounds as if a storm were coming." (A Wild Man does not like to travel when it is storming.) Wild Man was afraid of that noise, he kept kicking that bladder of blood. He said, "Yes, a storm is coming." Wild Man asked, "My dear nephew, would you tell me the best place to run to?" That man showed Wild Man a high bluff. "Over in that direction is a good place to run," he told him. Wild Man started out running. Soon the man heard him fall over that bluff.

Poor Wild Man, always on the bum and falling off bluffs in the night.
Although many of the stories are similar to this one, describing humans reacting in what might be considered a natural manner (scared out of their boots or angry that sasquatch has stolen some food), it seems that at least some tribes had a more peaceful relationship with the bigfoots. They considered him a “big brother,” an inter-dimensional being (much like a spirit or ghost) that would appear in times of change. According to the introduction, “Some elders regard him as standing on the "border" between animal-style consciousness and human-style consciousness, which gives him a special kind of power.” Another medicine man says, “He is both spirit and real being, but he can also glide through the forest, like a moose with big antlers, as though the trees weren't there...”
That would explain the lack of video footage. It seems that a successful sasquatch researcher must be on the lookout for the paranormal as well as the simply big and hairy. But all the similar stories and detailed descriptions got me thinking. Maybe there was something to this “quatch” after all.

The next day, a few more BFRO Investigators showed up. As I sipped my morning coffee on the deck outside our office, one took a seat at the next table. Ann, as eager as I was to get me on an expedition, introduced us. His name was Ingmar, and he’d come all the way from Sweden, where he worked as an archeologist, to take part in three separate Bigfoot hunts. The first was in northern California; the second on the BC mainland. This would be his last before heading home. In contrast to Jim’s casual, salesman-like approach to describing his search for Sasquatch, Ingmar – with intense blue eyes, a shining bald head and height rivaling the Wild Man himself – was all seriousness. I asked him what made him interested in bigfoot research. He asked me the same question right back. But after warming up a little bit, Ingmar proved an animated and enthusiastic believer in the bigfoots. His interpretation of the available data has convinced him that a “higher primate,” a creature that evolved from the same line that produced Homo sapiens, exists in many remote regions of the continent. By using the term “higher primate”, he clarified, he is not implying that sasquatches are more evolved than human beings. Still, he admits, some aspects of their behavior cannot be explained through traditional scientific knowledge.
“This animal does not want to be found,” he told me. On his expedition on the mainland, the closest he got to a sighting was when he and a partner heard loud crashing in the trees nearby. This experience is typical of those who purposefully or accidentally encounter bigfoots in the wild. Bigfoot always senses a human presence, Ingmar said, and moves the other direction, sometimes taking the time to try to scare off potential pursuers first. While acute hearing, smell and vision might allow bigfoots to remain so elusive, Ingmar suspects they may have a sixth sense about them – perhaps ESP – that tips them off when people are around. But he’s not saying anything for sure.
Later that morning, as I was washing the lettuce we brought up from the garden, the expedition's honcho, Grace, stopped by. She looked about 50, with neatly coifed blonde hair and a tight-lipped expression. Ann brought up the question of my participation in the expedition.
“No, not possible,” Grace said, crushing in one sentence two days’ worth of fervent hoping on the part of the crew at Collins Farm. Many people had gone through great effort, making many sacrifices, to take part in this expedition, she scolded us. Also, there was too much of a safety risk involved in bringing member of the “public” along.

Despite Grace’s discouragement, I continued to pick the brains of the friendlier BFRO researchers whenever I got the chance. That afternoon, Ingmar brought his photo album up to show us pictures of bigfoot prints he’d found in the snow of the Sierra Nevadas. The way we all crowded around the book and oohed and awed, you’d think Ingmar was a delighted new father. The prints were clear enough, but he only ever found one at a time in the patchy snow along the high mountain road. They were longer than his own rather large feet and twice as wide. As he described excitedly how there was absolutely not another human being in the area to create fake prints and how the measurements fit body proportions calculated from photographs of Sasquatch, I felt myself again being swayed.

The evening of the first expedition arrived. They had picked a site where there had been recent reports of bigfoot “activity”, where they would monitor the area from the hours of midnight to three or four AM. I was beginning to think maybe it was a good thing that I wasn’t going along.
The next morning, a couple of the BFROs showed up for coffee, bleary-eyed. We eagerly questioned them. The biggest event of the night, they reported, was that one of the drivers had gotten her car stuck on a rock.
The second evening, they traveled to a nearby lake, but evidence of Bigfoot there was similarly lacking. Jim speculated that it had been raining too much lately, meaning that the bigfoots weren’t being forced to come to large bodies of water to drink. The group remained hopeful; I heard not a glimmer of doubt among those who waited out the daylight hours around the office. But I was also beginning to sense a continuum of bigfoot fanaticism among the BFROs. There were those, like Ingmar, who dedicated most of their free time (and cash) to the pursuit of Bigfoot. Then there were others, including one father-son duo from Kansas that I talked to, who considered it a good excuse to travel somewhere they’d never been before. Dan and Jason were helicopter mechanics in the Army. Their buddies at work had laughed at them, they told me, but the now-infamous 1960’s Patterson footage (of a bigfoot walking, then turning to face the camera before disappearing into the woods) and other photos convinced them. You never know what’s out there in the woods, they figure. You just never know.

The third evening’s expedition brought “exciting” results. No, not a sighting. No prints or smegma-like stench, either. It was a bigfoot call. A roar, actually – one too powerful to belong to a bear or cougar. They’d caught it clearly on their audio equipment. Sadly, though, I was not authorized to listen to the recording, but they did say they'd put it on the website whenever they decided the public would be ready to handle it. (I’ll update when that actually happens.)
After that, the BFRO researchers packed up rather quietly – and sleepily, I suspect – and went their various ways. I’ll admit to falling victim to bigfoot-mania myself for those three days. I avoided the woods at night and scanned the path to the garden during the day for big footprints. And I didn’t think to look into Grace’s use of the word “sacrifices” until her entire crew went home.
A couple of days later, my BFRO afterglow subsided, and I did a little more digging on their website. I found that in addition to paying for their own travel, lodging and food while on expedition, members of the BFRO must pay $300 a pop to participate. No word on what that fee actually goes to, since the organization doesn’t seem to do any of the normal research-organization activities (advocate for wildlife habitat; or provide money to independent scientists). Plus, the costs of equipment like Jim’s is all covered by the organization’s founder, a billionaire by the name of Matt Moneymaker. For real. And in a final twist of good fortune, Matt – who goes on most of the expeditions but always stays in a hotel – needed to stop by the campground on his way out of town to pick up some items left for him by his comrades.
Matt Moneymaker is a bit of a bigfoot celebrity. He’s been on Coast to Coast, a conspiracy and paranormal-focused AM talk show, and he was interviewed (then ridiculed) by Fox News. Tempered by a lifetime of charming people for the sake of animals, Moneymaker (whose name, he says, was badly translated from the German “Geltmacher” – literally, “gold maker” – when his ancestors immigrated to the United Sates) has adopted a persona that’s a cross between the ShamWow pitchman and Steve Irwin.
He certainly didn’t look as I’ve always imagined billionaires to look when he stopped by that afternoon to get his box of stuff. He was clean-cut but dressed in jeans and a t-shirt, and talked a bit too loud. We couldn’t resist asking him, as we’d asked the rest of the BRFO researchers probably dozens of times, why there weren’t more pictures of bigfoot. He went into Irwin mode, describing an instance on another expedition when he’d been close to a whole swarm of the beasts.
“They were right there in front of me!” he told us, “Like this!” He rose up on the balls of his feet and lifted his arms over his head, bigfoot-style. “I could smell them! They stank! Ten feet away – they were throwing huge boulders and tree branches! We had to take cover!” He continued on a rant about people never believing eyewitness reports because we expect everything to be televised these days, concluding that one day he'll make his documentary about Bigfoot and then we'll all be sorry. At the end, he smiled again, thanked us for hosting the BFRO, and made his escape as we sat in stunned silence.
After he left, Ann commented in her usual dry-as-a-bone style: “Boy, he was a bit defensive, eh?”

So ends the tale of the BFRO at Arrowvale. In retrospect, I’m not so disappointed that I didn’t get to go on an expedition. Bigfoot would not have provided nearly the same level of comic relief and personality as his would-be discoverers. Still, when I go out at night, I keep my ears (and nostrils) open. You never know what’s out there.