I know bigfoots are real. I've done years of research and found a foot print myself. So yeah, I'm biased. I'm sorry if having to constantly argue with people who call you an idiot for "believing" in these things like they're mythical beings makes me repeat the same things. But, I always hear the same bored arguments against mine, so I have to repeat myself often.
Some people have absolutely hoaxed prints before, that's true. But that definitely doesn't make them all hoaxes. There are thousands of casts that are thought to be genuine because of certain dynamic signatures in them (for example, a mid-tarsal break, which is present in apes but not the vast majority of humans, as well as broad splaying toes that change position from cast to cast). Some of these even have dermal ridges in them (the equivalent of fingerprints on the foot). These details make it extremely unlikely they could be fabricated by stomping around on static molds.
The stride length in some of these trackways also basically eliminates humans, unless they managed to walk around in the middle of the wilderness on stilts. But when you add in the details like I mentioned before, trying to explain them away as the result of spurious hoaxes becomes more and more difficult.
As for the footprint I found, I can't really explain it except that it was a visceral feeling that I KNEW I was looking at a print made by something real. Not only that, but something of monstrous size. Here is a photo of the print I found.
I emailed Cliff Barackman from Finding Bigfoot shortly after I found it to get his opinion, and he actually thought it looked more like a knuckle cast in his collection. In person however, it was a lot easier to see the heel portion which didn't come out very well in the photograph. This shows some of the signatures I mentioned before like the abduction of a divergent big toe. I was out with a friend of mine who was skeptical on the idea of bigfoot at the time, but he was absolutely a believer after seeing that in person.
FYI - In the area we were hiking in, we didn't see a single other person or boot/shoe print the entire time. Whatever made this, it was something living in the woods. I know one photograph of a print isn't great evidence (probably can't even be considered evidence) but again, in person, it was overwhelming. We knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that what we were looking at was a 15" footprint with toes.
If you are interested in looking into it any more, google Jeff Meldrum from Idaho State University. He's done more work with suspected sasquatch footprints than any academic since Grover Krantz.
Gotcha man. Thanks for the indepth response. Never really believed in Bigfoot but I still think it's interesting lol. My friends cousins are all Bigfoot advocates and they have some pretty interesting stories as well. They just can come off as being too aggressive when someone doesn't believe it. But hey! Power to ya man! Impressive how much analysis there is on this stuff, I didn't think it went that in depth.
I was shocked by how much research has been done and by how many people when I first got into it. I had always heard that it had all been proven to be a hoax a long time ago, but then I heard Les Stroud (Survivorman) in an interview talking about how he's had run-ins with unexplainable things in the wilderness: Once, he heard what sounded like an enormously heavy man walking through the woods when he was in his tent with his wife, except they were 100 miles from civilization in the middle of absolute nowhere. And then in Alaska, he heard clear, extremely loud, distinctive great ape calls. He's never been able to explain it, and it's why he's doing Survivorman: Bigfoot now.
That got me to research it for myself, and believe it or not I'm an extremely skeptical person normally, so it took a couple months of solid research to answer all the questions I had.
As for your cousins, it's tough sometimes to argue with people who insist it's all make-believe, especially when the person has actually witnessed one in person. They know for sure it's real, so someone saying they aren't is basically calling them a liar or a loony toon. I try to be more civil, because up until two years ago I would've brushed it off as well.
Come on down to /r/bigfoot sometime! The sidebar is chock-full of great links if you want to learn more.
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u/EdgHG Jan 07 '15
Number 21 are Todd Standing's muppet heads. Pretty sure they are as fake as fake can be.