The most tangible evidence of the sasquatch that is currently available consists of footprints. This evidence may be preserved in the form of photographs and/or plaster casts, and I have seen one that was excavated and brought back in its entirety. Personal accounts of people having seen such footprints, but without and of the above-mentioned physical evidence, must remain in the realm of testimony--just as with claimed sightings of the animal itself.
Footprints are commonly found in loose dirt, mud, wet sand, and snow. These surfaces usually make up only a fraction of the area where these are reported to exist. Most of the area where these creatures are reported to exist. Most of the ground is covered, for most of the time, with vegetation and/or forest litter that records only the vaguest impressions at best. Other places consist of rock outcrops or hard-packed roads that cannot be indented by the feet even of a creature of this size. A good animal tracker can follow a trail over most of these types of terrain, but the signs he/she follows would rarely be seen in photographs or show in plaster casts. Dirt roads and stream banks are the primary places from which our best footprint evidence is retrieved for later examination.
The fact that the sasquatch walks on a large, flat foot means that it will distribute its weight over a much larger surface than will an elk or moose of equal size, thus making shallower indentations. Added to this is the usually rounded edge of the foot that does not leave sharp edge-marked imprints. It is also possible that a sasquatch might, at certain times, deliberately choose to walk where its footprints are less likely to be recorded. This last and aspect is returned to in Chapter 6.
Footprints have been found near homesteads and small communities, in plowed farmland, and also in some of the most inaccessible places where human observers are able to travel. Since it requires both an imprinter and an observer for a track to be reported, such reports obviously do not reflect that actual distribution of those making the tracks. Almost any clear track close to human habitation is likely to be seen; in remoter areas, where observers are few and far between, a correspondingly smaller fraction of the existing tracks will be discovered. Any place that is never visited by humans will obviously have no reports, regardless of how many tracks may actually occur there. (Some years ago I saw a movie about a fictional bigfoot hunt where the target area was described as being totally uninhabited and unexplored, yet somehow had the highest known frequency of footprints.)
Another factor in footprint reporting is whether the human is inclined to report the footprints at all. On a few occasions I have been told by witnesses, quite frankly, that if we hadn't struck up an acquaintance or been introduced by a friend, they probably would have denied ever having seen the evidence that they described. There also appears to be a geographical pattern to this attitude, at least in my part of the country. Rural people in northern Idaho are not inclined to tell outsiders what they see; there are only a few sasquatch reports (sightings or tracks) from that area. Residents of western Washington, on the other hand, seem much more inclined to report unusual phenomena. There are many sasquatch sightings and footprints from there. I suspect that the evidence is actually equally distributed between these two areas. I have no good theory to offer about this difference in human attitude toward reporting it, and it may well be a common variable elsewhere. |
