I recently returned from a week in the NAWAC’s primary study area. This area, dubbed Area X years ago, has proven time and again to be a place where odd things happen. The NAWAC is firmly convinced a number of wood apes make this mountainous region of southeastern Oklahoma their home. Events of this past week did nothing to change my mind.
I, along with two other NAWAC members, arrived on site on Saturday, July 27th. A fourth member joined us the next day. Saturday afternoon and evening was spent getting settled into camp and prepping for the week’s activities. Nothing of note took place and we managed to all get a good night’s sleep.
Sunday, we took several day hikes in the hopes that any apes in the vicinity would take note and become curious about what we were up to. In the past, day hikes seemed to have enticed apes to follow members back to the camp site where all manner of behaviors have been documented. Nothing unusual was noted on any of the hikes, but we were hopeful that, if nothing else, any apes in the vicinity were now very much aware of our presence.
One of the strategies we planned on utilizing during the week was to conduct overwatch on a nightly basis. Basically, overwatch consists of half the team staying up all night and scanning the area around camp with thermal devices in the hopes of spotting an ape. It would be a dark camp, no fire. We had heard a loud bang up on the mountain slope earlier in the evening and were hopeful that it was a sign an ape was observing us in camp. Shortly before midnight, the two of us on overwatch duty were surprised to hear a loud sound just to the west of the camp’s small hunting cabin. The sounds were quite unlike anything I have ever heard in the woods before. It sounded like someone beating the ground repeatedly with a large stick. You could hear the stick – or whatever it was – cutting the air just before striking the ground. This went on for nearly a full minute. My partner and I stayed in place and scanned the area from whence the sounds seemed to be emanating, but could not see who or what was responsible.
A few minutes after this initial flurry of activity, the sounds started again. The maker of the sounds had changed locations slightly to the northwest in the area where a metal carport-like structure, nicknamed the hooch, sits. The hooch is open on three sides and provides a protected area for people and equipment during the frequent rain storms that occur in this corner of Oklahoma. I would have sworn that whatever was making these sounds was under the hooch and mere yards from us. The impact sounds were louder this time, as if the striker was swinging his “club” even harder than before. Whap! Whap! Whap! Despite how close the sounds seemed, we could still not see the sound maker through the thermals. The impacts went on for about 25 seconds and seemed to be increasing in intensity. Finally, I hit my head lamp, firmly convinced I would see an ape underneath the hooch. Instead, I saw nothing and the impact sounds stopped.
We were astounded that we could not see whatever was making these sounds. Literally, it sounded like it was RIGHT THERE and uncomfortably close. We were more frustrated and amazed than shaken at this point and decided to move on to the porch area of the cabin. The hope was that whatever it was, it would think we had gone inside and might be emboldened to come in close enough for us to catch a glimpse of it. We did not have to wait long. Within 2-3 minutes of our sitting on the porch, the impacts started again; however, things had really intensified. I find it difficult to express just how loud and powerful the ground strikes were. Over and over again, the impacts were repeated. Finally, something struck the side of the hooch with terrific force. We were stunned at just how loud the impact was and how the hooch reverberated for several seconds afterward. We came off the porch immediately, scanning with thermals and then white lights. Nothing. Whatever it had been was now gone. How it could have been so close and yet remained concealed was something we just could not fathom. The remainder of the night was quiet.
While I cannot say for sure an ape was responsible for the noises we heard that night, I simply do not know what else it could have been. Something was swinging a heavy stick or log and beating the ground and hooch with it. A bear cannot do that. A cougar cannot do that. Even playing devil’s advocate, I cannot think of an alternate explanation that is not more outlandish than the possibility it was an ape. Some will say it must have been a person, someone messing with you. Two things on that. First, I do not think a person could have pulled these incidents off without being seen in the thermals and heard approaching and retreating into the bush. Second, anyone who tried such a stunt would be placing themselves in serious danger. We were heavily armed and ready should trouble arise. To pull such a stunt would be suicidal. I believe it was an ape, bigfoot, sasquatch; whatever your favorite term.
Later in the week, one of my teammates had a likely visual. I will not go into the details of how we were attempting to lure an ape into view, but will say that our efforts seem to have been rewarded. He saw a 5 1/2 – 6-foot tall figure covered in black hair peaking up over the bank of a dry creek bed. The animal was standing in the creek bed and seemed to be looking up the trail at something at the level of the forest floor. My teammate watched if for a minute or two, but it did not move. He could not make out a face or other distinguishing characteristics. He could only tell it was lean, upright, and covered in black hair. My friend decided to change his position in an attempt to get a better look at the animal. He hoped a new angle would allow him to positively identify it. In the process of moving, he lost sight of it for a few seconds. Those few seconds were all that it took for the animal to vanish. He did not hear it leave. Was it a bear? We talked about it, but it did not seem to act like a bear. It was quiet and still. Bears tend to roam about sniffing and seem to care little about being seen or heard. This animal seemed to be attempting to stay hidden and quiet as it peaked over the edge of the creek bed. Maybe bears do this, but if they do, I have not heard about it. Make of this visual what you will, but personally, I have serious doubts that what my friend saw was a bear.
I have heard skeptics say things along the lines of, “You guys seem to see bigfoot behind every tree,” and “All these visuals, but no video or photos.” Truth be told, we hardly ever see anything at all. Take this last week, for example. Four men stayed in Area X for six days. That is a total of 144 man hours or 8,640 minutes. Out of the entire week – combining the weird ground striking sounds and the visual – only an estimated 25 minutes of high strangeness took place. That is only 0.2% of the time on site. To be clear, that is not 2%, it is 0.2% of the time spent in Area X. That is a miniscule percentage of time. This despite our best efforts to annoy, irritate, and embolden the apes of the area to react to our presence. As you can see, the reality is that the vast majority of the time in Area X nothing out of the ordinary is going on.
Other than the two events discussed above, the week consisted of hikes, conversation, and dehydrated camp food. Oh, and sweating. Lots of sweating. As always, Area X gave us enough to make us want to get back there as soon as possible, but nothing more. It is a beautiful, wild, and unforgiving place. A place which I believe will yield the evidence necessary to officially document the wood ape.
Following is a short interview I did with a young lady who claims to have had an encounter with a large, long-tailed black cat on her family's property outside of Greenville, Texas. A more extensive interview had already taken place, which prompted my visit. This brief conversation took place at the actual location of the sighting.
*NOTE* : I made an error when I said the incident took place along the Trinity River. The incident took place along the Sabine River. Getting this video uploaded was surprisingly difficult so I did to want to redo it. The important part of the video is what the young lady had to say and not how I introduced the interview, OR I'm just lazy, lol.
I did an audio only interview as the witness is very young (7th grader) and I did not want to put her photo or likeness up on the internet. I'm sure you can all understand why. Her account is very simple and matter-of-fact. Her older brother and a friend had an encounter of their own later while out hog hunting on the property. He was away at college when I visited so I could not interview him on video or audio recorder.
I thought it would be interesting for some of you who are following these reports to hear an actual voice associated with a sighting. I should be checking the cameras on the property in the next month or so.
If you would like to know more about where black panther sightings are taking place in Texas, visit my interactive black panther sightings distribution map. More than 150 credible sightings have been charted. If you would really like to dive into the topic pick up a copy of my book on the subject titled Shadow Cats: The Black Panthers of North America. It is full of color photographs and, at 240 pages, a fairly quick read. You can pick it up at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and anywhere online books are sold. Click one of the links above or the photo of the book to the right in the margin, if interested.
This past weekend, I had the pleasure of traveling north to Lexington, Oklahoma in order to promote my book Shadow Cats: The Black Panthers of North America and to give a couple of presentations at Glen McDonald’s Anomalist Books & Brews bookstore. The gathering was small but I had a great time and had the chance to meet some really nice people. If you get the opportunity, I would encourage you to visit Glen’s store; it is a charming, quirky, and all together cool place. There was an added benefit to this trip as well. I stayed with my good friend and NAWAC Chairman, Alton Higgins, at his home in Oklahoma City. I have been pestering Alton for years to take me out to Concho, Oklahoma in order to visit the site of the infamous “casino footage,” allegedly captured on Cheyenne-Arapaho lands in 2002. My visit this past weekend finally provided us with the opportunity to do just that.
It has been a while since the Concho flap took place so I will do my best to summarize the series of events that have become so well-known among those who are interested in the bigfoot phenomenon. It all started when footage shot by security cameras at the Lucky Star Casino in Concho captured a very large and dark figure approaching and passing by a dumpster-style grease trap at the rear of the building. I will tell you right up front that I have never seen the footage. I do, however, know several who have and they all give pretty much the same description of it. Basically, a very dark, tall, and bulky figure appears in the back parking lot and walks up to the previously mentioned grease trap. A lot of people say the figure paused and rummaged around in the grease trap, but people I talk to deny this. The figure may have slowed its pace a bit as it arrived at the trap but it never stopped. There is a security light on a pole right next to the grease trap. The most popular version of the story is that the figure had to duck in order to walk under the light. Others say only that the head of the creature was very close to the bottom of the light. Either way, this subject was immense in bulk and extremely tall. No details regarding anatomy or facial features were able to be gleaned from the video as the black and white footage was too grainy. Below is a recreation of the footage that was made for a television special a while back. I am not sure how close it comes to the real footage but it gives you some idea of what we are talking about with the incident.
The video footage was just the beginning of the weirdness on these tribal lands in Concho. Around this same time a young man claimed to have come face to face with a wood ape outside of his home which sits approximately a mile from the casino. The story, investigated by Alton Higgins and others, is that the young man was outside in the backyard of his small wooden frame house. There was an infant inside the home that began crying. The young man, who had been left in charge of watching the baby, went inside and retrieved the infant. He then carried the baby, still crying, with him back outside. As he emerged from his backdoor the young man saw a large, hair-covered creature matching the classic description of a sasquatch approaching him. The youth fled back into the house and the creature left the scene. Many have speculated that the ape was attracted by the cries of the baby, something that has been discussed in other incidents throughout history as well. Investigators located a trackway in the soft tilled-up soil of a garden in the area near the home. They also found what appeared to be a massive handprint on the top of an old junk car near the property. Investigators thought so much of the handprint that they cut the top off the old car and took it with them to be analyzed. What happened to this evidence, I cannot say. The trackway and the handprint on the car were found between a heavily wooded area and the house. If one were to connect the dots – wooded area to handprint to trackway to house – the route would have formed an almost straight line.
The strangeness was not over yet. Later in the fall, a work crew was cleaning up following a tribal function in a heavily wooded area. A member of the crew named Russell Lumpmouth snapped two photos of what appears to be an immense and hair-covered figure in the nearby tree line. The photos might be the clearest ever taken of an alleged wood ape. The first photo shows the subject facing the camera with its body at about a three-quarter angle. The face is partially obscured by a leaf in the foreground, but a deep-set right eye and a possible protruding brow ridge are visible. The second photo, taken after the subject has turned away from the camera, shows a low-set head tilted down in a manner I’ve seen in other alleged wood ape photos and videos (this is particularly noticeable in the famous Freeman footage). The chin seems to nearly sit on the chest of the figure. The face appears quite flat but specific features are hard to discern. The figure exhibits a massive barrel-shaped torso and thick buttocks that would be characteristic of a habitually bipedal hominin. According to Mr. Lumpmouth, the figure walked away once it realized it had been seen. NAWAC Chairman, Alton Higgins, wrote an article on the photos that was submitted to The Relic Hominoid Inquiry that broke down the photos and described the on-site investigation. You can read an abridged copy of that article on the NAWAC website.
Alton was kind enough to play bigfoot tour guide for Phil Burrows – also a NAWAC member – and me and showed us all of the spots where these events took place. One extra item of interest was our collection of some hair samples from an old barbed-wire fence near the spot where the handprint was found years ago. For the most part, the hairs were a deep auburn, almost orange. There were a few very long black hairs mixed in as well. The hairs seemed too long to be cow (Alton said he did not believe the tribe kept cattle) and too fine to be hair from the mane or tail of a horse. It could be absolutely nothing, but we figured nothing ventured, nothing gained. I will be submitting the hair for microscopic analysis soon and will announce the results once I know something.
Between my speaking engagement in Lexington, my visit to the site of some historic wood ape activity in Concho, and getting to visit with friends I do not get to see nearly often enough, it was a great trip up to Oklahoma.
After months of working on and finishing up my book, then
arranging various types of publicity to support the release (radio and podcast
interviews, speaking engagements, etc.), I was thrilled to actually get out in
the field yesterday.
A while back, a reader of the blog and Facebook page
contacted me with a black panther sighting report. The family owns
approximately 300 acres of hardwood bottomland along the Sabine River in Hunt
County northeast of the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex. The area is rich in food
and water resources. Not only does the property sit along the river, it
features a large tributary creek that winds through the land before emptying
into the larger Sabine. Feral hogs, white-tail deer, foxes, coyotes and various
other possible prey species are present in abundance. The property provided an
absolutely perfect habitat where a large cat could remain virtually undetected.
The property was so large that it presented a problem for me. I have only two
game cameras available at this time and the entire area looked so promising it
was difficult to pick spots for them. I finally chose a spot where wildlife was
clearly crossing the creek and passing through a break in the brush into a more
open area on the other side. It was a natural funnel and I expect to get a lot
of photos from the camera posted at this spot. Hopefully, one will be of the
cat I seek. The second camera was placed on a tree that stood at the
intersection of three different game trails. The trails formed a “Y” and the
tree that I posted the camera on was in the middle of the v-shape at the top of
the “Y.” The trails obviously are heavily traveled – mostly by hogs, no doubt –
and this camera should provide a lot of photos.
The landowner and her family could not have been more
hospitable. They are good folks who love and know their wildlife. They told me
that they have seen two mountain lions on the property in the last 5-6 years
and that what was seen a few months ago was very different. It was very large, had
a very long tail, and was solid black. The family member who saw the cat
initially spotted it about 10-feet up in a tree. Upon being seen the cat leapt
down and ran toward the Sabine. The family member got a good look at it and is
sure it was no cougar. The family feels a real sense of relief that the cat
chose to run away and that no confrontation took place. They just want to know
what prowls their property and I hope to be able to provide some answers.
I will be refreshing the cameras – and hopefully adding more
– in 5-6 weeks. Keep your fingers crossed.
On March 3, 2015, the North American Wood Ape Conservancy released the Ouachita Project Monograph (OPM), a 213-page work detailing four years of research by NAWAC members in the Ouachita Mountains Eco-region of southeast Oklahoma. In all, NAWAC personnel spent 12,000 man-hours in the field between 2011-2014. The observations and experiences of these men and women were meticulously detailed in journals and field notes. The OPM is a collection of the more notable thoughts, experiences and impressions recorded by scores of NAWAC team members who spent between 1-2 weeks at a time in the study area known as Area X.
The OPM has received criticism from some people who claim that the experiences related by NAWAC members are simply too fantastic to be believed. Some of the criticism comes from people who have, rather obviously, not taken the time to actually read the OPM while others dismiss everything in the work based simply on their belief that wood apes do not exist. In the minds of these critics, if there is no such animal, everything in the OPM must be false. My intention in this series is simple. I plan on breaking the OPM down into small sections – focusing on one observed behavior at a time – and attempt to point out that what has been described is really not that outlandish and, in fact, fits in nicely with behaviors exhibited by the known great apes. My hope is that these posts will intrigue those who have not taken time to read the OPM enough to do so as the behaviors discussed are explored in infinitely more detail in the actual monograph. The observed behavior I will focus on in this post is rock throwing.
From the time the first teams of investigators arrived at the main study area in June of 2011 through the departure of the final team in September of 2014, observations and documentation of rock throwing was almost constant. Every team that was deployed - who each stayed on site for a minimum of 7 days - recorded rock throws. Some teams observed more of this activity than others but no team, to my knowledge, failed to record fewer than a dozen rock impacts during their stay, mostly caused by projectiles ranging in size from a quarter to a baseball. Some teams documented in excess of 100 rocks being thrown during their week in the study site. Some of the rocks were directly observed by team members flying through the air before striking the roof of the cabin or a satellite structure or landing on the ground right beside them. Other team members saw rocks whiz through the air directly in front of them as they hiked or, after hearing a loud impact on the cabin or shed, watched a rock roll down from the corrugated metal roof and land virtually at their feet. Rocks do not simply fly through the air on their own and the physical location of the main cabin and its satellite structures made it impossible for any dislodged rocks to roll down the slope through the incredibly dense foliage of the nearby mountain and land on the roof. NAWAC investigators conducted multiple experiments in an effort to see if rolling rocks coming down the mountain could, indeed, reach the roofs of the structures in camp. They were simply unable to get any rocks that were manually dislodged to get anywhere near the cabin as their momentum was always stopped by trees or brush prior to reaching the building. The handful of dislodged rocks that did manage to roll through and clear the brush all rolled to a stop short of the cabin itself and never came anywhere close to reaching the base of the structure, much less the roof, as the cabin is not sitting directly under any sort of cliff or overhang. The only rocks that reached the cabin roof during these experiments were those that were purposefully thrown in an overhand manner by team members. Even using an overhand throwing motion, it proved difficult for NAWAC members to reach the cabin roof from more than 20-25 yards away due to the incredibly dense foliage and forest canopy. The experiments satisfied the NAWAC that rocks were purposefully, and willfully, being thrown at the cabin either from close range or by an entity strong enough to remain at a safe distance and hurl the projectile with enough force to penetrate the foliage and strike the cabin or a satellite structure.
The sheer number of rock-throwing incidents would also seem to eliminate dislodged rocks as the explanation for these impacts. Rocks do not decide to come loose and fling themselves into the air. Rocks dislodged by animals or erosion would not occur in the numbers documented and, as mentioned previously, could not have reached the roofs of the cabin structures even if they had. Too, the high number of rock impacts seems to have caused some people to doubt that wood apes could be responsible or that the incidents occurred at all. I can assure you that the rock-throwing incidents did occur but understand the question of whether or not something, or someone, else besides wood apes could be responsible. Let us look at who, or what, native to the area, could possibly be responsible for these rock-throwing incidents. To be sure, the number of possible suspects is extremely limited.
Suspect 1 – Black Bears: Bears do not throw rocks, period. It is possible that a bear could dislodge and roll a rock while foraging for food but, as noted above, the rocks thrown were, for the most part, quarter to baseball-sized. These smaller rocks simply could not roll down the heavily wooded slope and reach the cabin roof. Bears are certainly strong enough to flip and roll larger rocks but larger projectiles were rarely observed and, certainly, nobody would attempt to cogently argue that a black bear picked up and threw, tossed or flipped a basketball-sized rock with enough force that it cleared all of the foliage between the top of and base of the mountain in order to strike the roof of a structure or whiz by the face of an investigator. In my mind, black bears are out.
Suspect 2 - Squirrels, raccoons and/or other small mammals: Squirrels will occasionally drop nuts or objects onto tents or even passers by but these projectiles always fall straight down. NAWAC team members have directly observed rocks and other projectiles, like tree limbs, flying through the air in a horizontal fashion. Squirrels lack the dexterity and strength to manage such a feat. The same could be said for raccoons. Though the paws of a raccoon are incredibly dexterous and “hand-like,” the most they could possibly manage would be to toss small pebbles in an underhanded motion. It is simply not feasible to think squirrels or raccoons are responsible for the rock throws recorded by NAWAC observers in Area X.
Suspect 3 – Humans: On the surface, this explanation seems to be the most plausible. After all, it does take hands to throw rocks and other objects. Could the NAWAC members be the victims of a hoax? Could humans be responsible for the rock throwing incidents documented in the study area? For various reasons, my opinion is no, humans are not, and could not be, responsible for the rock throwing incidents documented in the OPM. Certainly, humans are physically capable of such an act, no one is arguing that point; however, once the entire picture is taken into account – and to do so, one must actually read the entire OPM – it should become clear to all but the most unreasonable of skeptics that human intervention is, at best, extremely unlikely if not impossible. Area X is miles from the nearest human habitation. Miles. It is amazingly difficult to find the study site, as the road in to the area does not appear on maps. Actually, calling the way in a road is generous. The path is incredibly rough and treacherous and numerous NAWAC members have suffered multiple flats and vehicle damage as a result of attempting to traverse it. I, myself, have left parts of my truck somewhere along that brutal road to go along with multiple incidents of tire and body damage. Nobody with any sense would travel that road for any length of time unless they knew exactly where they were going. The area itself is heavily forested and filled with all manner of dangerous wildlife. Ticks, canebrake rattlesnakes, cottonmouths, mountain lions and black bears roam the area and have, on more than one occasion, caused NAWAC members some anxious moments. The terrain is heavily wooded with amazingly dense underbrush. Thorny plants and poison ivy are rampant. In addition, the area is easily the rockiest place I have ever seen. I have never been anywhere where just walking was so difficult and treacherous. The area receives 50+ inches of rain per year and downpours are not uncommon even in summer months. The heat and humidity become very difficult to tolerate and only the most hardy and determined of people would make a conscious decision to stay there even with a full compliment of camping gear. The idea that a person, or multiple people, would sit out in such an environment for weeks on end, without setting up some kind of camp, to torment NAWAC members with thrown rocks at all hours of the day and night is absolutely laughable.
Suspect 4 – Wood apes: The NAWAC’s hypothesis is that wood apes, or sasquatches, are responsible for the rock throwing incidents documented in the OPM. When the rock throwing incidents are considered in context with other unusual observations documented by members, including, but not limited to, wood knocks, mumbling faux speech, howls, powerful smells, loud bangs and/or slaps on metal/structures and, finally, visuals of an agile, hair-covered and bipedal animal, the wood ape hypothesis does not seem so incredible. Further, when the documented behaviors are compared to known behaviors observed in the great apes of Asia and Africa, they seem less fantastic still. In my opinion, a point has been reached where the explanations offered by skeptics of possible hoax scenarios are more fanciful and unlikely than the possibility that there is an undocumented animal in the region.
Following are excerpts from the OPM detailing some of the more notable incidents of rock throwing observed my NAWAC members.
On the night of May 10th and into the early morning hours of May 11th, 2012, a team of NAWAC investigators made up of Daryl Colyer, Rick Hayes, Ken Helmer and Paul Bowman experienced several strange events and heard multiple odd noises/vocalizations. The highlight of the night, however, was the exchange of thrown rocks between the team and an unknown assailant perched somewhere on the mountain slope to the N-NW. The incident became known as the “rock war” among NAWAC members. Between the hours of 7:44 p.m on the 10th and 2:30 a.m. on the 11th, the men heard multiple rock impacts on the cabin and its satellite structures, heard rocks or other projectiles crashing through the dense foliage of the mountain slope, saw, heard and felt rock impacts in their immediate vicinity and heard strange vocalizations including an “OOOOO” sound, faint “chatter” and, off and on, smelled a powerful equine-like odor similar to what might be encountered in a horse stall.
While most rock throws experienced by the group are believed to have originated from a spot close to camp or to the members (20-50 yards), more than once, NAWAC investigators reported rock throws that are estimated to have carried amazing distances. One such incident, which occurred on July 3, 2013 and recorded in the OPM, follows.
4:33 a.m. – McAndrews and Horstman heard what they first believed were independent wood knocks, but then realized they had heard one single object (a rock) thrown from the east to the west along the slope of the mountain. The rock apparently struck wood four times before it succumbed to gravity and fell to the earth, perhaps, providing the final knock sound. McAndrews and Horstman were in disbelief when they realized that the object had been thrown an estimated 100 yards along the slope of the mountain.
4:53 a.m. – Another rock was thrown and landed somewhere to the east in the bottleneck area. After that, many rocks were launched. It seemed that rocks were flying in every direction. The men found it was impossible to document them all. McAndrews and Horstman wondered if the rocks were part of some kind of hunting activity.
5:00 a.m. – Horstman and McAndrews heard another throw of incredible velocity and accuracy zip through the trees from the southwest woods. It cleared the base campground and then blasted the roof of the base camp cabin. It sounded like a gunshot going off in the night. The men estimated that the rock had been thrown from no less than 60-70 yards away from the southwest. McAndrews wrote of the incident, “I am unnerved for the first time in the overwatch tent. Make no mistake, there is an animal out there that can throw powerfully and accurately in pitch darkness. Wow.”
Over the four-year survey period, NAWAC teams physically collected over 60 rocks from the roofs of the base cabin or other roofed structures on the property. The rocks varied in size and shape and were, on average, golf ball to baseball-sized.
Other incidents, while less spectacular than the first two noted here, are considered just as significant by the group. One such incident is recorded below and shows that rock throws did not take place only in close proximity to the base camp cabin and satellite structures, which are all situated reasonably close to the base of the mountain, but also in flatter areas some distance away from any kind of slope. The incident is taken from the after-action report of Operation Persistence Team Delta of May 26, 2012.
4:30 p.m. – Daryl Colyer and Travis Lawrence deployed in the ghost blinds to the south side of the creek bank on relatively flat, but rocky, ground.
5:30 p.m. – The first of several rocks landed just below where Lawrence and Colyer were deployed. The rock was baseball-sized and landed a few feet from Lawrence. It hit the rocks below him and loudly bounced around. Colyer and Lawrence exchanged rock throws over the next half hour with the unseen rock thrower to their E-NE. The culprit was concealed behind a wall of dense vegetation and forest debris.
Individual members seem to have been targeted by unseen rock throwers, two of whom were actually struck by projectiles. Paul Bowman, Kathy Strain, Travis Lawrence, Jerry Hestand and Mark McClurken were all buzzed very closely by rocks – within inches or a few feet- or, in the case of Baron Meadows, actually struck on his boot, during the summer of 2013.
11:01 p.m. – As Hayes walked around the cabin toward the fire circle, a rock popped the base camp cabin roof.
11:03 p.m. – Another rock, seemingly thrown from the mountain slope, landed on the ground between Strain and Hayes.
11:30 p.m. – As Hestand stood by the east shed, a rock loudly blasted the roof of the shed, greatly startling him. He believed the rock had been intended for him.
The incidents shared previously are but a few that are documented in the OPM. While incredible in their own right, these incidents are far from unique. Native Americans have long believed wood apes throw stones and sticks in order to drive human interlopers away from their locations. John Bindernagel refers to once such report in his book North America’s Great Ape: The Sasquatch.
“An account of the giant, hairy ‘bushmen’ of the Yukon River in Alaska reports that, in addition to being good swimmers and throwing rocks and sticks at people, they (sasquatches) steal dried salmon from fish camps.”
Bindernagel also recalls a recollection of John Green in Chapter 15 of his tome.
“John Green also recalls hearing people from Klemtu, a village on the central British Columbia coast, tell about rocks being thrown at them from the adjacent forest when they attempted to dig clams on certain beaches. The Klemtu residents assumed that ‘apes’ or ‘Bukwas’ (sasquatches) were trying to dissuade them from clam harvesting on those beaches.”
Bindernagel believes that the throwing of rocks by wood apes can be almost benign in nature, maybe no more than an attempt to elicit a response of some sort from an interesting human. In some cases the hurling of stones may be a way to deter people from entering or occupying an area without the need for more aggressive displays. To illustrate one of the more benign incidents, Bindernagel recounted the experience of a mechanic on southwestern Vancouver Island in his book.
“In this situation, two small stones – under two inches in diameter – were thrown separately onto the hood of the mechanic’s truck while he repaired logging equipment at night in a remote location on a logging road. After the second stone landed, the mechanic walked around the vehicle to investigate. He got there in time to see a ‘big hairy, apelike man’ stride quickly up the steep cut-bank on two legs.’”
Bindernagel also shares a few accounts where the rock-throwing intensity seems to have been taken up a notch and is an attempt to intimidate or frighten humans into leaving an area. The following incidents, recounted in America’s Great Ape: The Sasquatch, highlight this behavior.
“In the summer of 1992, on a remote island off northern Vancouver Island, a group of clam-diggers beached their boat in a bay and began walking up the beach. One of the men spotted an ape-like face watching them from behind a large stump on the shore; immediately after this, the men were subjected to a barrage of rocks and driftwood from this area. A fist-sized rock narrowly missed one man’s head. As they retreated to their boat, a loud whistling resounded from the shore.”
“After a huge rock landed so close that it almost swamped his canoe, a man fishing on Morris Creek, British Columbia looked up to see a sasquatch on a ledge. The animal was stamping its feet and waving its hairy arms wildly.”
“Fred Bradshaw, while a policeman in Gray’s Harbor County, Washington visited a remote area where a boy had reported being pelted with rocks. Soon after setting up camp nearby, a large alder limb crashed into his campsite. By spotlight he was able to see a sasquatch partly hidden behind a fir tree about fifty feet away.”
The accounts above are all relatively recent; however, reports of rock throwing wood apes go back much farther in time. Bindernagel mentions these in Chapter 15 of his book as well.
“The oldest is the 1846 report of a Hudson’s Bay Company inspector who was establishing a post in the Harrison Lake area of British Columbia. During one of several encounters with ‘wild giants of the mountains,’ he and his party were met by a ‘bombardment of rocks hurled by a number of sasquatches.’”
“Another tells of the seven-foot tall ‘wild man’ seen in the Sixes River mining area of Oregon in 1904. In addition to cabin shaking, the wild man was also reported to have thrown a four-pound rock at a man.”
Perhaps, the most famous rock-throwing incident in sasquatch lore is the tale of what happened to Fred Beck and his group of prospectors in 1924 in Washington’s Ape Canyon. The story is quite well known so I will not recount it in much detail here. Basically, Beck and his party were prospecting when one of his men spotted a wood ape and took a shot at it, apparently hitting it. That night the cabin in which the men were staying came under “attack.” The intensity of the attack has been the subject of much debate and, no doubt, been sensationalized over the years. Beck, himself, refuted many of the newspaper accounts in which it was written that large boulders slammed the cabin walls. He did, however, concede that many smaller ones (rocks) were hurled at the cabin. “They did not break through the roof but hit with a bang before rolling off,” he said.
Another modern account of rock-throwing comes from none other than Dr. Jeff Meldrum, a figure widely known by those interested in the wood ape mystery. The following account comes from the introduction of his book Sasquatch: Legend Meets Science. To set the scene, Meldrum and a party were conducting fieldwork in the Siskiyou Wilderness in Northern California. While revisiting a ridgeline where some intriguing tracks had been found earlier in the trip, Meldrum had an interested encounter.
“Along the trail I hoped to get another look at what remained of the tracks we had encountered earlier along the ridgeline. They were in thick timber and relatively sheltered from the direct onslaught of the rains. We paused there for a respite and some refreshment. As I slung my pack off, a softball-sized rock sailed onto the trail a mere few feet away. A slight shiver crept up my spine. There was no high point nearby from which a rock might have been dislodged by the rainstorm. Nor did it simply roll onto the trail from uphill. It had been airborne; it had been lobbed.”
It should now be established that the accounts of rock-throwing documented by NAWAC members in the OPM are not unique. Similar accounts have been recorded from different locales going back for decades or, in the case of the Native Americans, centuries. The question now becomes, are there any precedents for this type of behavior among known animals, the great apes in particular? The answer is a resounding yes.
Both chimpanzees and orangutans have been known to throw rocks, limbs or other loose impediments when feeling threatened. Jane Goodall has catalogued twelve gestures and postures of threat when it comes to behavioral displays in chimpanzees. The displays range in intensity from the fairly benign to the most serious, charging by dominant males. She has noted that this charging display is by far the most dramatic in the chimpanzee repertoire and the likeliest to culminate in an actual physical attack. According to Goodall, this display may include actions “such as throwing rocks or other loose material.” In 1964, Goodall went so far as to say, “the chimpanzees threw anything that was at hand.” By 1968, she had additional data indicating that approximately half the objects observed thrown during a two-year period “were large enough to intimidate baboons and, certainly, humans.”
This rock-throwing behavior has also been observed in captivity. According to a 2009 article in the journal Current Biology, a chimpanzee named Santino routinely collected rocks, cached them and then waited until zoo visitors approached his enclosure. Once visitors were within range, Santino would hurl the rocks at them in an effort to shoo them away. Santino’s behavior proves that one of the known great ape species can, and does, throw rocks when aggravated. Even more compelling, it hints at cognitive capabilities greater than we might have imagined in an ape. Santino always collected his rocks during periods of calm before zoo visitors arrived. He stashed them away until the moment was right and, only then, began throwing them at zoo patrons. This shows at least a rudimentary ability to understand and plan for the future. Who is to say that wood apes cannot, or do not, do the same?
In March of 2012, I wrote a blog post about a captive gorilla that featured a large silverback throwing a piece of sod at zoo workers in an adjacent enclosure. In the video, the big male casually makes his way to an area where the turf in his enclosure is loose, digs out a piece and then quickly moves toward the workers using his momentum to make a powerful overhand throw. The thing that really struck me was how the gorilla threw the sod. To say it was a true overhand throw would not be accurate but, to put it in baseball terms, it was at least a three-quarter motion. To see a non-human primate throw an object in a powerful overhand manner is pretty special. Skeptics have argued that only humans can throw objects in such a way. This video would seem to suggest otherwise. While the silverback’s motion is not as fluid as that of a human throwing a baseball, he effectively uses a running start to build momentum and, thus, gain velocity on his throw. What if, instead of a piece of sod, this gorilla had hurled a baseball-sized rock? Said rock would be capable of injuring a human or making a very loud noise if it hit a structure like a corrugated metal roof. Note, too, in the video how the gorilla makes his throw and immediately flees in an effort to avoid detection. Clearly, in this video the workers in the adjacent enclosure know exactly who threw the sod at them but, if a similar incident were to occur on a heavily forested mountain slope, similar to the NAWAC’s main study area, it is entirely possible the guilty ape would escape detection. After all, when a person hears a loud impact, such as a rock striking a structure, he or she turns their head to look at the area where the impact took place. Only after doing so will a person turn to look back at the area from where the projectile might have originated. This small window of time would be enough for even a large animal to retreat safely out of sight.
The title of this post is a bit misleading. I do not believe the Ouachita Project Monograph needs defending. It is a meticulously detailed and scholarly work of which I am very proud to have had even a small part in producing. The events documented in it all really happened. Those of you who have an open mind when it comes to the possible existence of the wood ape, or sasquatch, but doubt some of the content of the OPM need only to do a little digging on your own to find countless examples of similar behaviors reported over the years by people claiming to have had a bigfoot encounter. Too, it is easy enough to look into the current research on known great apes and find similar behaviors to those recounted in the OPM. Nothing documented therein is outside the realm of known great ape behaviors. For those of you who do not believe wood apes could possibly exist, I invite you to download the OPM from the NAWAC website at no cost. Not only can you download the entire OPM, all 200+ pages of it, you can listen to audio of rock strikes captured during our research in Area X.
Go, read and listen. It is worth the time.
Sources:
Colyer, Daryl, Alton Higgins, Brian Brown, Kathy Strain, Michael Mayes, and Baron McAndrews. Ouachita Project Monograph. Vol. 1.1. North American Wood Ape Conservancy, 2015. Print.
Bindernagel, John A. North America's Great Ape, the Sasquatch: A Wildlife Biologist Looks at the Continent's Most Misunderstood Large Mammal. Courtenay, B.C.: Beachcomber, 1998. Print.
I have been out of pocket the last few weeks. I spent a week in the Ouachita Mountains as part of a NAWAC team attempting to obtain evidence that supports our hypothesis that the wood ape (bigfoot) is a real flesh and blood animal. I was home only a day and a half before loading up and heading to the White Mountains of New Mexico. This second trip was more of a family vacation but, my interests being what they are, I just could not help making some forays into the Lincoln National Forest and hiking some areas where alleged wood ape sightings have taken place. While I had no sightings of unusual wildlife (I did get up close and personal with a cow elk and several mule deer) I was struck by just how much richer an environment the deciduous forests of the Ouachitas are compared to the coniferous forests of south-central New Mexico. That is a topic for another day, however, as I would like to take this time to begin catching you all up on what I have been up to the last month or so. I will start with my activities prior to my trips.
I received a message from a gentleman in early June who reported two separate sightings of a large, black, long-tailed cat by a total of three different people on and near his property. I was particularly excited as the sightings were very recent and the property was only about a thirty-minute drive from my home. I had two game cameras available for deployment and the landowner generously agreed to let me place them on site. Once deployed, I let the cameras sit for a month before going out and checking on them. I was disappointed in that I did not capture photos of cats of any kind but encouraged to see the amount of wildlife that does live in the area. Certainly, there is a solid prey base for a big cat to sustain itself upon, at least for a few weeks. Following are some of my favorite photos from the set.
Species other than those pictured were photographed as well but nothing outside of what would be expected in Central Texas (skunks, opossums, raccoons, etc.). Despite the lack of photographic evidence, the witness seems very credible and is absolutely sure of what he saw. I can only hope that the cat in question cooperates by remaining in the area long enough to have its picture taken.
I am due to check the cameras again in the next week or two and will update with new photos at that time.
Posts
