Bigfoot: the search for a myth

Archive: Wishful Thinking

Take, for instance, the evidence: Half a footprint here. Mysterious fibers there. Branches snapped at telltale heights, or saplings twisted and bent just so, sometimes .

When you're an investigator, even a part-time one, you find Bigfoot clues where others wouldn't think to look. (“See all those posted 'No-hunting' signs. You know why they're there?” Kulls prods, piloting down snaky roads while playing a CD of sasquatch calls. “Everybody's out looking for the big guy.”) …

Of course, there's no across-the-board consensus on what constitutes Bigfoot “evidence.” One man's definitive print could be the next one's divot-in-the-mud. Likewise, there's no test to pass to become a Bigfoot investigator. They aren't issued badges. There is no common denominator, other than thick skin (and, possibly, a vehicle) and a passion for the chase.

Kulls — a full-time retail fraud investigator and part-time nightclub bouncer — hasn't seen the creature that gobbles up so much of his free time, but he's hopeful.

“In my opinion, people who've seen it are blessed,” he says. … It's been nearly a year since Bigfoot Svengali Ray Wallace died at a nursing home in Washington state, at age 84. It's been nearly a year, too, since his family fessed up about their patriarch's part in the modern history of the North American ape-man legend: Namely, that Dad more or less revived the creature from the obscurity of Native American myth and rumors by strapping on fake, wooden feet and tromping around the muddy ground of a logging camp in Northern California as a prank on his buddies. …

“It defies all logic that there is a population of these things sufficient to keep them going,” says Phillips Stevens, a cultural anthropologist and ethnologist at the University at Buffalo. “What it takes to maintain any species, especially a long-lived species, is you gotta have a breeding population. That requires a substantial number, spread out over a fairly wide area where they can find sufficient food and shelter to keep hidden from all the investigators.”

Stephanie Earls, Times Union: Bigfoot hunting: A true believer sniffs out the big guy's trail in the upstate wilds

See also: $100,000 if you prove Bigfoot a fake, Cryptozoology & Internet Bigfoot sightings, Bigfoot Field Research Organization, The reality is, Bigfoot just died, We couldn't see it, but we could hear it mumbling and growling almost like speaking