2/2/17: THE WANTED DEAD W/ DON MCDONALD AND PETER VON PUTTKAMER
THE WANTED DEAD
MONOLOGUE WRITTEN BY CLYDE LEWIS
As many of you already know, last year was a particularly active year for Bigfoot sightings in the Northwest and in other parts of the United States. There was even controversial footage of a Bigfoot taken 27 miles outside of the California’s Sequoia National Park. The controversy was over whether or not the alleged Bigfoot in question revealed its anatomy accidentally while trying to destroy a security camera.
Of course, this report garnered a lot of snickers and laughs but beyond the jokes was a very serious refocus on getting the Sasquatch out of the tabloids and into the mainstream again.
It doesn’t matter if you think the Bigfoot is like a Unicorn or a Jackelope, the creature has become an important symbolic resource through which many people here in the great Northwest have defined their identities and considered their place in the natural world.
Native Americans in the Northwest have increasingly situated Bigfoot within traditional belief systems as beings with deeply rooted cultural significance. Tribes in coastal Oregon related Bigfoot to ancient tales of “wild men” who lurked near villages and left immense tracks.
One of the original terminologies for the creature is the “stick Indian” provided by the Nehalem Tillamook, members of Plateau tribes in Oregon.
In the traditions of many Salish and other Northwest Indian tribes, Stick Indians are malevolent and extremely dangerous forest spirits. Details about Stick Indians vary from tribe to tribe (they are described as large, hairy bigfoot-like creatures by the Salish, and as forest dwarves by the Cayuse and Yakama.) In some traditions Stick Indians have powers to paralyze, hypnotize, or cause insanity in hapless humans, while in others, they merely lead people astray by making eerie sounds of whistling or laughter in the woods at night. In some stories, Stick Indians may eat people who fall prey to them, kidnap children, or molest women. They also take aggressive revenge against people who injure or disrespect them, no matter how unintentionally.
Not too many traditional legends regarding Stick Indians have been recorded, in part due to taboos related to these deadly creatures. “Stick Indians” is an English euphemism; saying the actual Salish names of these beings in public is considered to be provoking their attacks in some tribes, a belief many Native people still adhere to today, choosing to refer to them only in English.
I learned about the so-called “Stick Indian” back in 2012 when I was asked to head up an investigation into the reports of a howling beast that was recorded on the Umatilla Indian Reservation, east of Pendleton, Oregon.
We attempted to conduct an investigation with Northwest Ghost Recon, but were told to stay away from the area where the screams were heard. We were also advised there were 18 inch long footprints that were found near the swampy area where the screams were heard.
Residents there avoided the word Bigfoot or Sasquatch since the creature was heard laughing manically and screaming near a swamp.
That didn’t stop the media from calling it Bigfoot and it also didn’t stop the supposition and speculation that this time the creature was terrifying and that perhaps it was time for documentation.
While UFO researchers are looking for disclosure or confirmation of the phenomenon, few subjects, it seems, produce as much controversy among those with an interest in the Bigfoot phenomenon as the documentation question.
In hunters speak, documentation means killing a creature for examination. Those who are in the “no kill” camp believe that in lieu of a specimen, securing compelling images is considered a necessary precursor in the species documentation and validation process.
Skamania County is in southeastern Washington State, just south of Mount Rainier, and includes Gifford Pinchot National Forest and Mount Saint Helens. Skamania County has a long history between white settlers and the elusive Sasquatch. I saw my first Bigfoot near Mount Adams which sits within that limits of the Skamania, Yakama and Klickitat region in Southern Washington State.
It is unlawful to hunt Bigfoot in this region.
Although the ordinance presents the possibility that Sasquatch is a real creature, and needs to be protected from hunters, it also presents protection toward innocent people mistaken for Sasquatch. It specifically notes the publicity surrounding Sasquatch has led to an increase in investigators and hunters to the area. Although Sasquatch stories had been circulated by wire¬ service news agencies starting in the late 1950s after large footprints were found in the Bluff Creek area in Northern California, national Sasquatch fervor came to a head in 1969 because of the Patterson¬-Gimlin film. The highly recognizable film shows a female Sasquatch walking along a creek bed in Northern California.
Last year in Kennewick, Washington, I interviewed Robert Gimilin about the film and he told me that Roger Patterson told him before he passed away that he wanted to go back to the area where they sighted the creature and perhaps hunt for it and provide a valid specimen for study, he said he had the means available to capture one.
He died the next morning.
It isn’t surprising that Patterson wanted to capture one. There has been tons of controversy surrounding the video and even bogus explanations that the hairy creature in question is some alien creature rushing back to its saucer or that it is a dimensional being.
For the longest time, there have been indignant researchers that have demanded the government speak up about the creature. Once again, the political crowd demands answers from a government that couldn’t even figure out who really killed Kennedy.
Even though there is mammoth skepticism about the creature, that doesn’t mean there hasn’t been an earnest effort by scientists to find clues about the creature and what it may be.
Three years ago, scientists started to gather clues about the creature, but it wasn’t the monkey or wood ape the investigators were expecting.
Bryan Sykes, an Oxford University geneticist well-known for his research on human evolution said that hair samples found in the Himalayas gave researchers hope that what they found was the Yeti.
Now as with all so-called “evidence” I always put forth the argument that when scientists want to prove that Bigfoot is real they never say what they are looking for to prove its existence. It is logical to think that Bigfoot is more or less a lost species of animal or an as of yet unspecified creature that may have the same basic DNA structures as a human, ape, or even a bear.
Species on this planet vary wildly, but on a molecular level we are all part of a one big family of earthlings. Both beast and human we share so many things. We all use DNA to encode genetic information. We all use RNA molecules as messengers to transfer the information from DNA to cellular factories called, ribosomes, which then build proteins, which in turn drive our metabolisms and form the structures of our cells. In short, every species seems descended from a common ancestor whose attributes define what life is.
I can only assume that these scientists are looking for strange DNA markers to say that this creature is something otherworldly or beyond the scope of science.
The Oxford study on the Himalayan hair samples point to a possible new and mysterious species: a bear roaming the Himalayas that may be related to ancient polar bears.
These hairs, both brownish in color, perfectly matched a short stretch of DNA once extracted from the jawbone of a 40,000-year-old polar bear. The hairs did not match modern polar bears.
Of course, scientists said that it is not a yeti, but a strange and rare species that has not been put in a zoo, therefore, it is a cryptid just like Bigfoot.
Not Bigfoot – but rare and alive somewhere out there like Bigfoot.
The researchers’ best guess is that the hairs are from either an unknown bear species or a hybrid of a brown bear and a polar bear. Such hybrids are known in the Arctic, but genetically resemble modern, rather than ancient, polar bears. If there’s a Himalayan hybrid, it might have descended from a different, long-ago liaison between the species.
The findings are promising because it means that there is still a chance that a hybrid monkey and bear or monkey and human or some other species hybrid, could be the smoking gun.
But still, the unfortunate way to find out the truth is to have documented evidence of the Bigfoot creature in the flesh. This means that one may have to be killed.
If a Bigfoot is hunted down and killed, it needs to be done humanely as possible and in a way that allows the scientific community a viable sample to be used for classification. Ideally, a team looking to collect a Sasquatch specimen should include an experienced marksman/hunter armed with a weapon that will allow a clean kill with minimal tissue damage.
In the wake of the race to find a valid Bigfoot sample there are hunters out there that have decided to organize events to track and to hunt down a Bigfoot.
There have been reports all over the gulf coast of creatures that look like Bigfoot in woods and swamps. These are aggressive creatures that attack farm animals and destroy property.
These creatures are known as either skunk apes, or wood apes.
Gulf Coast Bigfoot Research Organization (GCBRO) has a very specific and controversial mission — to find and kill a Bigfoot in order to prove its existence to science.
This organization believes that these creatures are real flesh and blood animals, not part of some paranormal government conspiracy.
The GCBRO keeps a log of sightings by county in Texas and other states. Researching an area consists of looking for sign like footprints and twisted limbs and listening for vocalizations.
The group has even found some hair samples. Primatologists who examined the samples said they were from “no known animal.” One came back as matching alleged Bigfoot hair gathered in the Pacific Northwest.
However, the GCBRO believes that the southern species is a bit more aggressive and faster moving. It is attacking people’s homes, farm animals and pets. Destination America, a cable television network whose programming is mostly about the paranormal, will be airing KILLING BIGFOOT, where a camera team will be following the GCBRO team around Louisiana looking for the creature.
The members of GCBRO come from vastly diverse backgrounds including civil engineering, IT and corporate technology, and private investigation and surveillance. The team also includes former cops, National Guard and military veterans, a medical tech, and even a coroner’s “body removal specialist.”
GCBRO’s main goal is to help those frightened by alleged recent encounters with Bigfoot, but however well-intentioned GCBRO’s mission may be, their extreme objective to kill even one Bigfoot puts them at odds with many in the crypto-zoological community who do not want to see one dead.
People take for granted that all species have been identified and so the idea of a great ape species living in North America is an absurdity until the “body of evidence” is exposed to the world. Even if it was exposed, the reality of such a creature could be as mundane as an endangered ape or gorilla that somehow found a way to cross continents and remain elusive from hunters and investigators, only to show up unexpectedly and witnessed by deep woods campers.
The whole idea of new and mysterious species being discovered and categorized is academic to serious researchers who realize that even in recent history animals that were once thought of as products of mythology have suddenly appeared and have been categorized by scientists.
The difficulty in capturing an undeniable picture, video, or even hair or scat samples of the Bigfoot has caused a number of people to dismiss outright the possibility of such a creature existing.
It appears the eulogy for Bigfoot has already been written as many scientists have given up on finding this elusive cryptid and others place him in the category of myth.
Perhaps the real eulogy can be written when the wanted dead Bigfoot is packaged, bagged, and ready for study.
However, the anomalous creature may be just a tad too big to fit under a microscope.
https://soundcloud.com/groundzeromedia/he-wanted-dead-w-don-mcdonald-and-peter-von-puttkamer-february-2-2017
