Tuesday, August 19, 2008

MONSTERQUEST: Legend of the Hairy Beast

History Channel - Original Air Date: 7/31/2008

According to Native American legends, a creature known as "hairy man" lives in the Pacific Northwest.  The creature is supposedly peaceful if left alone.  Is there archaeological evidence that this creature exists?  Ancient pictographs seem to show the mythical creature.  Could these be creatures they actually saw, instead of mere myths?  One woman encountered a creature while camping; though the meeting seems like a dream, she claims her dogs began barking at the thing's presence.  A big game vet heard primate-like whooping in 2007 near Seattle, where there are no known primates.  Naturally, investigating this leads to setting up bait and game traps.  Researchers also go to remote areas and try using calls to lure the beast.  In 2001, similar "call blasting" seemed to generate a response.  Sadly, the researchers had no cameras to take a picture of the creature they believe they saw.  A Native American hunter believes he shot at a creature, but when he and his uncle checked later, they find unfired cartridges -- not spent ones.  Another hunter says he was too scared to pick up his gun in a similar encounter.  He found some huge, mop-like wet tracks, packed up, and went home.

The call researchers are using is believed to be a sasquatch call, though the call's origin is unknown.  (It sounds to me something like a call in a 1970s "true" bigfoot film.)  In 1995, a fisherman was pelted by large rocks, thrown by an unknown animal.  (We remember from other MQ shows that rock throwing is supposed to indicate the beast.)  Primates are known to throw rocks at their enemies.  Researchers find some big tracks, but they prove to be melted out boots prints.  (Prints expand as they melt in snow.)  They set up camera traps near skunk cabbage (food) and by the river (water).  Embarrassingly, another investigative group call blasting on the river runs their boat aground.  As usual, the camera traps turn up the usual, familiar animal suspects, like bear and puma.  Noise analysis of supposed bigfoot sounds from various areas reveal similarities in pitch, but most are of known animals: elk, coyote -- though one is not from a known wild creature.  (Though no one asks if it could be human made.)

Watching this show, it occurs to me that bigfoot hunters/researchers might gain more credibility for their eyewitness evidence by creating a standardized scientific set of background questions for their interviews, such as: 1) How long had you been awake when you had your encounter? or 2) When was the last time you'd had an alcoholic drink? or 3) When was the last time you ate?  Standardizing pre-testimony questions would help determine whether there is some similarity of circumstance for witnesses.  Perhaps some of the more serious researchers could work on a such a set of standardized questions -- similar to the screening tests psychologists use.

This show is another in a series of bigfoot-by-any-other-name shows on MonsterQuest, and it demonstrates a basic problem with the show: not enough monsters.  Once you've done the standard crypto beasts, what choice to you have but to start doing them again?  The MQ people clearly feel that bigfoot is the well that they can go to most often.  I'm losing track of how many BF shows they've done; it's at least a half dozen.  And aside from the "nail trap for bigfoot" episode, most of the others are essentially the same: recounting of legends and eyewitness reports, with little or no testable evidence.  Perhaps it is time for MQ to give bigfoot a rest and move on to other, newer subjects.

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