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If you think the PG film is a real Bigfoot, surely you would want to blanket the area where it was taken with trail cameras?
 
I can believe in Tulpas but I want to know how one can leave footprints?
 
A more probable variation on this `mixed scenario` is simply that Gimlin was/is sincere and was not in on the hoax that had been set up by Patterson. Gimlin is by all accounts a quiet spoken credible man, quite apart from the his more shady associate, and has only recently has crept into the limelight. There is at least one written interview with him - damned if I can find it now - where he does concede the possibility that he himself has been the unwitting stooge of a prank all these years.
I quote myself (once again) from the Patty At Fifty article. There are only four possibilities.
If it's fake:

..was Gimlin complicit? If he was, then it's perfectly possible that there were multiple takes of a man in a suit, with all day to get it right, the only risk being someone else catching them at it (or indeed a real, short-sighted randy male bigfoot..) In fact - do we even see Gimlin in the film? How do we know it's not him in the suit? He wouldn't be then lying if he said he was there..

..or, if Gimlin wasn't complicit, it would have involved a lot of set up, an actor in a suit sitting around for hours on his tod (a suit at least good enough to be convincing to the naked eye of an experienced woodsman, so probably intricate to get into and certainly difficult to don alone), located in a remote area, just waiting for Patterson and Gimlin to come ambling round the corner. Not impossible, but a one-take deal.

..or, maybe neither were complicit, and both were pranked by a third party - but see above for the logistical likelihood of that (see also long lines of prints found in snow miles from where anyone could be guaranteed to see them before they melted - hoaxing relies entirely on reaction from an innocent party otherwise it's utterly pointless.)

Or - it's real.
I am not an Occulms Razor kind of a guy (you could have never predicted Quantum mechnics, for example with Occulms razor) but there are times when it has its uses - and this is one of them!
Occam's Razor, on the other hand, is very useful when applied correctly. See above.
 
Whoa! That may have been an offhand joke - but I do believe that Analogue Boy may just have provided a valid explanation of why Patty is female - despite the silliness of doing it that way and the extra expense it would have incurred. The femaleness of Patty has long bothered me - and I believe it still constitutes a major reason as to why so many sane people still insist on the picture showing the real deal.

Think about it in local and contemporary cultural terms.Had Patty been male then it woulkd have needed the correct appendages to be believable to zoologists - which would have meant a visible, and probabaly quite large, penis. Now in 1967 such a thing would have been quite `ooer missis` and would have lead to the the circulation of the film being restricted(it would not have been showable to minors, for example, and would never have been broadcast on TV). The only way round the censorhip and restricted viewership that a male bigfoot would have been subjected to would be to make the creature a female of the species. All very shrewd - and perfectly understandable withtin the cultural context of its time.

Not necessarily. A fully grown adult gorilla has an erect penis length of 1.25cm.
 
Lovely smile, though. Are chimps and orangs along similar lines (I'm not Googling it)?

Penis size: An evolutionary perspective

Today, the average erect gorilla penis is 3cm (1.25 inches)long, the average chimp or bonobo penis comes in at around 8cm and the average human penis stands at around 13cm. Most primates, including chimpanzees, have a penis bone and achieve erections through muscle contraction.2 The human penis has evolved the unusual system of vasocongestion to achieve erection, making the erect organ far more flexible than that of other primate species.

This unique adaptation is thought to have been selected through female mate choice, and by the time Homo erectus arrived on the scene, the hominid penis was significantly longer, fatter and more bendy than our ape cousins'. It has even been theorised that bipedalism evolved in humans to allow the fashionably new, larger, flexible penis to be displayed to discerning females.3

If relatively large penises are a related to bipedalism, then surely the same would apply to Sasquatches etc?
 
Three comments:

1) If it was a hoax and all participants were in on it, why did they go so far into the wilderness to film it?
2) For those who enjoy spending time in the bush/wilderness/forest, how often do you see dead bodies of any animal? Where I live there are so many kangaroos etc as well as feral goats, yet I have never seen a dead kangaroo or any other large mammal in the bush, I think we underestimate how quickly predation and decay get rid of any evidence of bodies. Plenty of roadkill, but you could hypothesise that these creatures are either have enough road sense not to get run over, or possibly have enough culture to bury their dead.
3) For those who dismiss the PG film because Roger Patterson was a bit dodgy, to paraphrase Jerome Clarke's comment on the Desverger UFO Case, possibly this was a Cryptozooligist's worst nightmare, a real event that happened to an unreliable individual
 
1) If it was a hoax and all participants were in on it, why did they go so far into the wilderness to film it?

"Hi, are you making a film? Am I interrupting? Who's the bloke in the gorilla suit? Do you mind if I take a picture? What do you mean, no I can't?!"
 
If I had a suit and wanted to make some fake footage, I have some ideas how I would do it.
I don't think it would involve 1 minute of Bigfoot just strolling by.
 
1) If it was a hoax and all participants were in on it, why did they go so far into the wilderness to film it? ...

The scene (Bluff Creek) wasn't arbitrarily chosen by Pattersion from 'out of the blue.' He selected it based on the most recent (late August) report of a sighting from a fellow Bigfoot fan in California. He indicated to Gimlin that the October trip was motivated by a desire to check the latest sighting scene ASAP.

There remains a pesky problem with timelines. At various times over the decades there have been allusions to Patterson's having visited and filmed in the same area earlier. It's known without question that Patterson had visited, scouted and filmed in the very same area the previous summer. Even Gimlin (years ago) was unclear about both (a) how long they'd been there prior to the alleged encounter and (b) whether they'd visited the same area some weeks earlier (possibly as early as late August, immediately following the most recent sighting).

Given a decently robust vehicle (like Patterson's VW van or Gimlin's larger truck) they weren't all that far into wilderness. They drove in via logging roads. The reason for the long difficult evacuation the day following the filming was because rains had swollen the creek to the point they couldn't ford it on their inbound route, and they'd had to take a longer and more arduous high road / high water route to get back to the main highways.


3) For those who dismiss the PG film because Roger Patterson was a bit dodgy, to paraphrase Jerome Clarke's comment on the Desverger UFO Case, possibly this was a Cryptozooligist's worst nightmare, a real event that happened to an unreliable individual

Patterson's dodginess may have helped motivate the October trip and filming in the first place. He was already long overdue in returning the movie camera he'd rented months earlier. He supposedly first learned the cops were looking for him when he phoned DeAtley from California, but he had plenty of reason to suspect he was in trouble prior to that.

The bigger issue of dodginess relates to the issue of whether Patterson was playing some or all the folks in California and certain fellow Bigfoot fans as fools.

As discussed in detail earlier in this thread, there's never been a coherent explanation for how Kodachrome film exposed in the California backcountry Friday afternoon, and not dispatched back to Yakima until Friday night, could have been developed and available for viewing back in Yakima 48 hours later when people assembled to see it at DeAtley's place. The only defensible explanation (based on evidence to date) is that the Bigfoot footage presented on Sunday wasn't shot as recently as two days earlier, and it may have been in DeAtley's (or Patterson's) possession prior to the October trip.

This suggests (a) the famous footage presented later wasn't filmed on Friday and viewed on Sunday (i.e., it was a separate film) and / or (b) the footage shown on Sunday had already been available but never advertised with all the ballyhoo Patterson generated 2 days earlier (and may have simply been an outtake from his film project rather than an un-staged sighting).

If the October 20 sighting and filming was "real", the audience at DeAtley's place couldn't have seen the result on the 22nd. If the audience was told the film they were being shown on Sunday was shot only 2 days earlier somebody was deceiving someone.

This still leaves room for the October 20th sighting and footage to be authentic, but for some reason(s) Patterson and DeAtley seem to have already been pursuing a plan to convince interested parties they'd finally captured the proof everyone had been seeking. If Patterson had unexpectedly obtained such proof one must ask why they didn't defer the Yakima showing until the film had been developed. What would have motivated them to show their audience fake (documentary) footage knowing they had the real thing in process?

IMHO there's a stink on all this, and it can't be eliminated until and unless DeAtley comes clean about what was really going on in October 1967.
 
Occam's Razor, on the other hand, is very useful when applied correctly. See above.
I have found my Gillette Razor has proven most handy nearly every day of my adult life. And I’m ever careful to apply it correctly, especially now it comes with three blades.
 
The scene (Bluff Creek) wasn't arbitrarily chosen by Pattersion from 'out of the blue.' He selected it based on the most recent (late August) report of a sighting from a fellow Bigfoot fan in California. He indicated to Gimlin that the October trip was motivated by a desire to check the latest sighting scene ASAP.

There remains a pesky problem with timelines. At various times over the decades there have been allusions to Patterson's having visited and filmed in the same area earlier. It's known without question that Patterson had visited, scouted and filmed in the very same area the previous summer. Even Gimlin (years ago) was unclear about both (a) how long they'd been there prior to the alleged encounter and (b) whether they'd visited the same area some weeks earlier (possibly as early as late August, immediately following the most recent sighting).

Given a decently robust vehicle (like Patterson's VW van or Gimlin's larger truck) they weren't all that far into wilderness. They drove in via logging roads. The reason for the long difficult evacuation the day following the filming was because rains had swollen the creek to the point they couldn't ford it on their inbound route, and they'd had to take a longer and more arduous high road / high water route to get back to the main highways.




Patterson's dodginess may have helped motivate the October trip and filming in the first place. He was already long overdue in returning the movie camera he'd rented months earlier. He supposedly first learned the cops were looking for him when he phoned DeAtley from California, but he had plenty of reason to suspect he was in trouble prior to that.

The bigger issue of dodginess relates to the issue of whether Patterson was playing some or all the folks in California and certain fellow Bigfoot fans as fools.

As discussed in detail earlier in this thread, there's never been a coherent explanation for how Kodachrome film exposed in the California backcountry Friday afternoon, and not dispatched back to Yakima until Friday night, could have been developed and available for viewing back in Yakima 48 hours later when people assembled to see it at DeAtley's place. The only defensible explanation (based on evidence to date) is that the Bigfoot footage presented on Sunday wasn't shot as recently as two days earlier, and it may have been in DeAtley's (or Patterson's) possession prior to the October trip.

This suggests (a) the famous footage presented later wasn't filmed on Friday and viewed on Sunday (i.e., it was a separate film) and / or (b) the footage shown on Sunday had already been available but never advertised with all the ballyhoo Patterson generated 2 days earlier (and may have simply been an outtake from his film project rather than an un-staged sighting).

If the October 20 sighting and filming was "real", the audience at DeAtley's place couldn't have seen the result on the 22nd. If the audience was told the film they were being shown on Sunday was shot only 2 days earlier somebody was deceiving someone.

This still leaves room for the October 20th sighting and footage to be authentic, but for some reason(s) Patterson and DeAtley seem to have already been pursuing a plan to convince interested parties they'd finally captured the proof everyone had been seeking. If Patterson had unexpectedly obtained such proof one must ask why they didn't defer the Yakima showing until the film had been developed. What would have motivated them to show their audience fake (documentary) footage knowing they had the real thing in process?

IMHO there's a stink on all this, and it can't be eliminated until and unless DeAtley comes clean about what was really going on in October 1967.

This is addressed in the Astonishing Legends podcast, I forget the details but I think the implication was that someone was paid "off the books" to process it on the Saturday or overnight Friday. I don't know how realistic that is.

If they are lying about filming on Friday, then why, especially if it makes the story less believable? Did they think the footage being "newer" made it seem more authentic or something?
 
This is addressed in the Astonishing Legends podcast, I forget the details but I think the implication was that someone was paid "off the books" to process it on the Saturday or overnight Friday. I don't know how realistic that is.
It's not just that though, it's the physical logistics. As Enola says, short of helicopter use the timings are incredibly marginal, let alone anybody being given a back-hander to process it (again, how much? Patterson was broke.)
If they are lying about filming on Friday, then why, especially if it makes the story less believable? Did they think the footage being "newer" made it seem more authentic or something?
For me this is one of the most niggling features. There was absolutely no need to lie about it. This was 1967, so no time stamps, no embedded meta-data. A couple of days expansion in the sequence of events would have made no perceptive difference to the narrative and most of these issues wouldn't even arise. So - why complicate it? Unless of course that it's the truth, however illogically inconvenient it may be.
 
This is addressed in the Astonishing Legends podcast, I forget the details but I think the implication was that someone was paid "off the books" to process it on the Saturday or overnight Friday. I don't know how realistic that is.

'Addressed' and 'implication' aren't evidence, they're just chatter. At various times years ago Gimlin has mentioned visiting a post office and / or a local airport Friday evening. DeAtley has vaguely claimed he handled the task of getting the film processed, but he's never specified who developed it and has said he doesn't remember who developed it or where he'd taken it.

The standard timeline of events has it that Patterson didn't call DeAtley and notify him of the Friday sighting and footage until after business hours late Friday afternoon (when he called from Hodgson's store).

How was DeAtley supposed to be able to assure Patterson the film would be available for viewing on Sunday (less than 48 hours away; on a weekend when the necessary west coast Kodak processing facility couldn't accept film for processing) on such short notice? Or did he ever mention planning such a viewing at all when talking with Patterson on the phone?

How was anyone confident enough of an imminent viewing to motivate Dahinden, Green and McLarin to travel to Yakima that weekend? Or did these 3 simply make the trip without any such expectation? It's difficult to tell because accounts vary as to who notified whom when.

For example ... If you believe Murphy's account of events ... Patterson asked Hodgson to call Abbott (Vancouver) and invite him to come to Willow Creek with tracking dogs. Hodgson did so. Abbott called Green (also the Vancouver area; who had tracking dogs). For whatever reason Abbott / Green couldn't or wouldn't bring dogs to Willow Creek. It was Green who called Dahinden (in San Francisco). Dahinden rushed to Willow Creek the following day (Saturday), met with McLarin there, and the two of them proceeded to Yakima. Meanwhile, Green contacted DeAtley but it's not clear whether he advised DeAtley he was coming to Yakima.

Murphy's account therefore describes a scenario in which DeAtley unexpectedly found himself receiving visitors anxious to see film.


If they are lying about filming on Friday, then why, especially if it makes the story less believable? Did they think the footage being "newer" made it seem more authentic or something?

Everybody presumably knew that Patterson was working on a documentary film about Bigfoot. Anyone who knew this should or could have known Patterson had already filmed segments of the planned documentary during the preceding 5 months (since he'd rented the camera in May). Anyone who knew this should have wondered whether or how Patterson was going to portray Bigfoot in his documentary. As a result ...

Anyone knowing anything about the documentary film project already underway might reasonably question whether newly surfacing film alleged to be an authentic sighting was actually staged footage shot for the documentary.

The most readily defensible way to make folks accept documentary footage or previously undisclosed authentic footage as an authentic sighting was to convince them there'd been an unexpected authentic sighting resulting in brand new footage.

Given the inability to explain how Friday footage could be developed and screened as early as Sunday, generating 'buzz' about such a new authentic sighting is the sole demonstrable outcome of P&G's October presence in the Willow Creek area.
 
53 years ago today and still no definitive answer. My own view is that surely another "specimen" would have come into view by now, and yet the film remains very compelling in my opinion.
 
I have found my Gillette Razor has proven most handy nearly every day of my adult life. And I’m ever careful to apply it correctly, especially now it comes with three blades.

You don't need 3 blade razors - they give an awful shave. Get a traditional safety razor, (Edwin Jagger of Sheffield or Merkur do nice ones), and use Wilkinson or Feather blades.

When you have a shave you'll remember what your face felt like pre-puberty. You never get a shave like them even with a brand new Gillette head.

The key though is to replace the blade after 4 shaves. It still works out cheaper than all this 3 blade with weird strips technology crap.

It's a shame as Gillette make good blades, their Astra blade isn't as sharp as Feather but it's smoother. A good training blade until you get more confident.
 
If you think the PG film is a real Bigfoot, surely you would want to blanket the area where it was taken with trail cameras?
I keep seeing this argument, but it entirely presupposes that the area is still a frequent traffic area. It could well be somewhere almost-never transited now, or even only rarely back then - an equivalent could be setting up a trail cam on the corner of 112 & Pine on Long Island on the basis that I walked past it fairly regularly for a while 28 years ago. You could go as far as setting up a trail cam on the corner of many roads in my own present neighbourhood without ever catching me walking past simply because I have no reason to be there.
 
I keep seeing this argument, but it entirely presupposes that the area is still a frequent traffic area. It could well be somewhere almost-never transited now, or even only rarely back then - an equivalent could be setting up a trail cam on the corner of 112 & Pine on Long Island on the basis that I walked past it fairly regularly for a while 28 years ago. You could go as far as setting up a trail cam on the corner of many roads in my own present neighbourhood without ever catching me walking past simply because I have no reason to be there.
While that is true, if you believe it's a real film then this area has the only proven video of one. While you may not walk down Main Street regularly, if I have video of you walking down Main Street then a trail camera there has a better chance than on 112 and Pine where someone says they saw you, I would know for a fact you walked down Main Street at least once, while 112 and Pine is hearsay and the witness could have seen someone they thought was you but wasn't. You don't have to walk down Main Street every day, I only need one clear video so I can just patiently wait for the trail cameras to get you.
 
But Stu Neville exists and is regularly here to prove it. He leaves a trace even though there are enough visitors here to muddy the tracks.
We’re talking over 50 years ago. What are you expecting trail cameras to capture... some sort of primitive encampment of hairy bipeds mugging off and trout pouting to the cameras?
 
Exactly - this was one of my main criticisms of Finding Bigfoot: they had a tendency to throw huge amounts of resource at a small area where someone spotted something twenty years ago. Hell, in one episode (Moonshine Bigfoot) they visited a homestead in Kentucky where the inhabitants claimed to have nightly visits and encounters. So, did Moneymaker and co spend the weekend there, staking it out? No, they went to place thirty miles away where someone had seen something in 1997. Never quite worked that one out.

If Bigfeet are omnivorous apex predators, they could have a range of dozens or even hundreds of square miles, with a central nexus that could be twenty or thirty miles from where they're chance-encountered. This is an observation that can be considered quite apart from the authenticity or otherwise of the PG film.
 
I have heard that known apes are quite unpredictable in their habits.

I think BF should be tempted with food, and got used to go to one area to study.

They dont like dogs and I assume the can recognise a gun, and so naturaly are rather afraid of humans, smaller, less fearsome creatures.
 
If Bigfeet are omnivorous apex predators, they could have a range of dozens or even hundreds of square miles, with a central nexus that could be twenty or thirty miles from where they're chance-encountered. This is an observation that can be considered quite apart from the authenticity or otherwise of the PG film.
That required range and difficulty maintaining a breeding size population is specifically is why I don't believe in Bigfoot. Also, apex predators generally dont hide, since they are, after all, the apex predators in an area and not challenged by anything.

However, I am taking the devil's advocate stance above. If you did believe in Bigfoot, how would you search for it given a searcher does not have unlimited resources? The area of the film is remote, relatively uninhabited and unimproved, and the terrain type is that of many reports. There have been and continue to be reports in the area. If I were a believer, the camera footage of one being the only "confirmed" sighting is an additional piece of evidence that is not present for other possible search locations, making the location the best location to search as it is the location with the most evidence, even if the video is not recent.

I am not a fan of the idea that they would be able to avoid trailcams. Bigfoot would, if they existed, become habituated to their presence, as even assuming as some due that they avoid trailcams because they can see the infrared light emissions of the cams, no immediate harm would come to them from being in front of the cam and thus they would have no reason to avoid one.
 
Wow that was a long and interesting thread.
Having read it all and viewing most links i only have a few things to say, all of them based on what i have seen and read here.

1) people have said that two seperate people have come/been put forward as the creators of a suit supplied to P.

2) someone has come forward saying he wore a suit.

3) P was actively looking for/making a docudrama about bigfoot.

To answer point 1, is it not possible P aquired 2 suits, one male one female? The cost of the suits was mentioned as a factor against P purchasing a suit, the costumer who says he provided a suit also said he supplied affordable gorilla suits to the magician community for use in the girl/gorilla illusion, around $5-600, not overly expensive imo, P did have funds to spend at the start of his project.

The special effects guy put forward by a well know film director, denied it was him saying it would be almost beyond his capabilities, not that it was impossible. He had a career in the film industry and being involved in a proven hoax could have affected his career, of course he would deny it, in hindsight with all the talk about how realistic, and almost impossible to make, a suit at that time, or even now, he probably would have boosted his career, but he wasnt to know that at the time. The costumer said the suit he provided was a one piece, yet there is some discussion that, in the footage it looks like the top and bottom half are seperate.

This brings us onto the guy who admits wearing the suit, he passed a polygraph, not am impossible feat, but why agree to take one in the first place, if he was lying he couldnt guarentee he would pass, a risk he neednt have taken, it wasnt an order made by a law court, he also said that the suit he wore was a 2 piece. Back to point one, were there 2 suits? And people have said the top half looks/moves like it is seperate to the bottom.

On to point 3, P was making a docudrama about bigfoot, he would have recorded reconstructions in the 5 months that he had the camera surely, what else was he doing with the camera for all that time upto the point an arrest warrent was issues for him failing to return it. According to the story he put forward, 3 days after the warrent was issued he decided to go to a place, recommended to him by a fellow bigfoot enthusiast to film some footage and make some casts of bigfoot tracks, whilst there he gets the footage of a bigfoot and some casts of some tracks, lucky guy. I viewed P&Gs cast of the foot print and was massively dubious. In tje footage he filmed the subject is walking at an average pace, heel toe, heel toe, like a normal human walk, the cast he showed was completely uniform and almost completely flat, like it was a foot pressed directly down in to something soft, not in motion, the heel wasnt deeper, as it would be, and there was no distortion around the toes, which there would be, also there is no arch in the print, although this could be a characteristic of bigfoot idk.

I came to this thread with an open mind and i still have one, nothing i have seen or read has been convincing either way.
 
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