Bigfoot at 50: Evaluating a half-century of Bigfoot evidence

2. Footprints

Bigfoot tracks are the most recognizable evidence; of course, the animal's very name came from the size of the footprints it leaves behind. Unlike sightings, they are physical evidence: something (known animal, Bigfoot, or man) left the tracks. The real question is what the tracks are evidence of. In many cases, the answer is clear: they ate evidence of hoaxing.

Contrary to many Bigfoot enthusiasts' claims, Bigfoot tracks are not particularly consistent and show a wide range of variation (Dennett 1996). Some tracks have toes that are aligned, others show splayed toes. Most alleged Bigfoot tracks have five toes, but some casts show creatures with two, three, four, or even six toes (see figure 1). Surely all these tracks can't come from the same unknown creature, or even species of creatures.

Not all prints found are footprints, though. In September 2000, a team of investigators from the Bigfoot Field Research Organization led an expedition near Mt. Adams in Washington state, finding the First Bigfoot "body print," which-if authentic-is arguably the most significant find in the past two decades. The Bigfoot, according to the team, apparently made the impression when it laid on its side at the edge of a muddy bank and reached over to grab some bait. This of course raises the question as to why the animal would make such an odd approach to the food, instead of simply walking over to it and taking it. As the log of the expedition reads, "One explanation is immediately apparent-the animal did not want to leave tracks...." (BFRO 2000). This explanation fails on its own logic: If the Bigfoot (or whatever it was) was so concerned about not leaving traces of its presence, why did it then leave a huge fifteen-square-foot imprint in the mud for the team to find?'

3. Recordings

The Patterson Film

The most famous recording of an alleged Bigfoot is the short 16 mm film taken in 1967 by Roger Patterson and Bob Gimlin. Shot in Bluff Creek, California, it shows a Bigfoot striding through a clearing (see figure 2). In many ways the veracity of the Patterson film is crucial, because the casts made from those tracks are as close to a gold standard as one finds in cryptozoology. Many in the Bigfoot community are adamant that the film is not-and, more important-cannot be a hoax. The question of whether the film is in fact a hoax or not is still open, but the claim that the film could not have been faked is demonstrably false.

Grover Krantz, for example, admits that the size of the creature in the film is well within human limits, but argues that the chest width is impossibly large to be human. "I can confidently state that no man of that stature is built that broadly," he claims (Krantz 1992, 118). This assertion was examined by two anthropologists, David Daegling and Daniel Schmitt (1999), who cite anthropometric literature showing the "impossibly wide" chest is in fact within normal human variation. They also disprove claims that the Patterson creature walks in a manner impossible for a person to duplicate.