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Seeing Cryptids: The Problems

foxholeatheist said:
I wanted to ask you because of your experience in the North:

Do you ever find bear carcasses? That's a oft repeated bigfooter claim that they never do but my woods experience has generally been in low-density bear areas. I'm sure that in an area where there are bears you would.

In Eastern WA I once found a bear's jawbone.

You are correct sir: Many times I have been picking mushrooms or looking for a tree stand site or just walking through the woods and you get that death smell from somewhere. Once my wife and I were trout fishing along a stream in Missouri and caught that scent. The water was falling after a good spring rain and the browns and bows were biting good. Up on a gravel bank upstream from where we filled our water bottles was a massive bloated dead cow on the bank.
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Dead bodies don't last as long in the wild as people think. Up near Tehachapi, CA a dead cow won't last 48 hours--meaning that the time between the cow's death and there not BEING a cow is two days. Leaves very little time for finding dead things. Also, you've got to have fairly sharp eyes to spot them. I've found innumerable bits of bone and things from all sorts of critters in the desert, but that's because I spend a good deal of time looking at bits of bone and so have trained my eyes to see them. Someone like, say, my father, who's a civil engineer and doesn't look at bones outside the diner table, isn't going to see a quarter of what I do.
 
I've spent a lot of time hiking in bear country in Colorado and Alaska and only seen a couple of skeletons, and they were deer. I think Bigfoot eats dead bodies, bones and all, he's the zombie of the animal world.
 
A Tragic Misidentification

In the book Lake Monster Mysteries by Radford and Nickell, in an appendix on Eyewitness (Un)Reliability, Radford mentions a tragic event that demonstrates just how erroneous eyewitness identifications sometimes are.

In January, 2004, a man named Dennis Plucknett, his two sons, and a friend went hunting in northeastern Florida. Breaking camp early one morning, the hunters separated, with Plucknett's 14 year old son Alex sitting in a ditch over 200 yards from his father.

Someone called out "Hog" and Dennis grabbed and aimed his .308 rifle with scope at a hog in the distance. Mr. Plucknett then shot the "hog," killing his son Alex with a shot to the head.

Writes Radford: It was an accident, a terrible mistake, but there was more to it than that. The elder Plucknett mistook his son's black toboggan cap for a boar. This longtime hunter couldn't distinquish a piece of cloth less than a square foot wide from a living, full-size animal. Dennis Plucknett had years of experience, good vision, and a rifle scope. He believed he had a boar in his sights, instead of his son's head. Because someone called out "Hog," Plucknett's mind was searching for a hog, and his expectations clearly guided his perceptions. A small black cap became a hog in his mind. (p.162)

Radford goes on to make several points, including this: A similar process occurs in lakes and woods where mysterious creatures are said to lurk. Waves, large fish, and logs are thus turned lake monsters; bear, elk, and other creatures are turned into Bigfoot. The process is well documented, but many cryptozoologists insist that eyewitnesses are more reliable than they are. (p.162)
 
The case above reminds me of one in Maine 20 years or so ago, in which a woman who was hanging laundry in her backyard while wearing white mittens was shot by a hunter who was convinced she was a deer. To the dismay of many, the hunter was acquitted as having simply misidentified his target.
 
And yet the hunting community will tell you they're all safe hunters. I used to have to run hunters off my land - they would come right up into my back yard after deer. My uncle has had them shoot his cattle, thinking they were elk (the old joke is that Texans think cattle are slow elk). They even shot one of his horses once. Hell, they even shoot each other, as the tragedy above points out.

So why would footers be any safer than actual hunters (and a number of footers seem to also be hunters). Especially when the adreneline gets flowing.
 
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Well there isn't a "hunting community" in any organized sense. Anyone with a gun and the application fee is a hunter.

I do understand how misidentifications can happen. Every time I shot at a stripper it turned out to be a moose, caribou, deer or something.
 
In my experience hunters who are members of clubs hunting on leased/private land are much more responsible than those who are out on public land.

I don't know if this is due to the higher financial investment ,or the fact that they risk being ousted or risk the club's leases...etc But almost every stupid accident that I have read about was yokels out on the public land.
 
Ben Radford writes said:
Waves, large fish, and logs are thus turned lake monsters; bear, elk, and other creatures are turned into Bigfoot. The process is well documented, but many cryptozoologists insist that eyewitnesses are more reliable than they are.
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Radford doesn't actually know that people are seeing bears and elk and then misidentifying them as being Bigfoot. You see, the alternative to a misidentification is an outright fabrication. He can't know which is which unless he is standing next to a person who says "Look at that Bigfoot!" and it is actually a bear and Radford sees that it is a bear. Even then he doesn't know if the person actually believes what they are saying.

IOW, nobody really knows if "R. Jacobs" actually believes that this bear is a Bigfoot. This person could be lying, and thinks that it is a bear just like the rest of us.
 

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The arms always looked too long to be a bear's and the head from that perspective looks to be the size of a watermelon in proportion to the body. I have no idea what I'm looking at and neither does anyone else.
 
This is what I see (roughly) on the jacobs photos.

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William Parcher said:
It's almost as if you haven't left Bigfootery behind at all.
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I make a distinction between being interested in cryptids and the offal promulgated by other people interested in cryptids. That would include you, by the way .
 
The Shrike said:
Emphasis mine. Objection mine. I know darned well that I'm looking at a bear in that photo.
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Do you? How? Refer me to anything already posted that you agree with, unlike some, you actually seem to know what you are talking about so I'm willing to consider it.
 
Jodie said:
I make a distinction between being interested in cryptids and the offal promulgated by other people interested in cryptids. That would include you, by the way .
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I don't know what you are saying here.

But I wouldn't mind if you think I am full of crap. If that is what you are saying.
 
River said:
They're all time stamped.
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OK, so I guess there was enough time for another bear to enter the scene. So the head curled under could be a second bear.

Two little bears wrasslin' round with each other could end up looking like a single bear about to do a headstand. Eh?
 
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