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Showing posts with label Manitoba. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Manitoba. Show all posts

Monday, 4 June 2012

Eastern Bigfoot Portrait Sculptures

http://www.floridaskunkape.com/2010/05/09/bill-dayholos-sasquatch-bust/

Bill Dayholos Sasquatch Bust


Originally submitted to Coast to Coast AM with George Noory in 2005.
My name is Bill Dayholos. I’m 53 years old and and call Manitoba, Canada my home. I subscribe to your Streamlink and have enjoyed listening to your program for 10 years now. I have been a Remote Viewer for 9 years now, all starting form one of your shows that introduced it to me six months prior. I’m currently writing a book on my research with Remote Viewing and other tools at my disposal. I have been actively researching a 5000 year old native site here in Manitoba.
Upon making trips into the remote archeological site I found myself crossing the path of a strange creature call sasquatch. My experiences with this creature allowed me to access it via Remote Viewing, which revealed a lot of interesting information about "its ways". This includes a model for communication between the species. I have been sculpting for three years now and during Remote Viewing sessions of watching two different sasquatches I decided to sculpt one of them.
Bill Dayholos Sasquatch Bust featured story articles other hominids bigfoot art
I had seen the examples of other artist renderings and was not impressed by most images showing them as evil beasts. The one I became familiar with is very soft looking and appears gentle. She is very old and has gray hair. The famous Patterson film shows a black sasquatch with long hair on its brow. I have watched for this many times and there is very little on the one I sculpted, if it is there, it is very short and dense. I also believe that it could be because of her age.
Bill Dayholos Sasquatch Bust featured story articles other hominids bigfoot art
It has been recognized that there are more than one species (east and west ones) in North America. I believe this and also believe that there are regional and "family" differences in appearances. The bust shown is 10 inches high and my next sculpture is R V’ing Cleopatra. It will not be finished for a few weeks but you can see it after it is done at dragonfly-studios.ca. I also found it quite synchronistic that when I was sculpting the sasquatch and listening to your program at the same time someone phoned in and asked the guest if anyone had remote viewed a sasquatch.
Bill Dayholos Sasquatch Bust featured story articles other hominids bigfoot art
Bill Dayholos
About the Author
has written 105 stories on this site.

4 Comments on “Bill Dayholos Sasquatch Bust”

  • Bill wrote on 25 September, 2010, 8:49I have seen the drawings of countless bigfoots and I believe that Bill Dayholos is probally the closes to the real bigfoot I have yet seen, according to native american accounts the bigfoot is a gentle person unless prevoked and more manlike than an animal, others tend to make him out as a beast because it sells more press
  • Dale Drinnon wrote on 15 December, 2010, 10:30I had done a similar-looking sculpted clay bust reconstruction for Eastern Bigfoot prior to 1980, it has since then been destroyed. My research leads me to believe the Eastern Bigfoot is more of an American Almas than the West-coast variety, which is larger and more bestial-looking. This bust here would be a pretty good reconstruction for some of the fossil Neanderthal skulls from the Old World: some of them have that kind of contour along the top. I would like to reprint photos of the bust if possible.
  • virginia jarvis wrote on 2 August, 2011, 2:31Bigfoot or Sasquatch seems pretty human to me, They are mentioned in the Bible Deut.2:20, and in the book of Joshua which describes his military exploits. Also the story about David and Goliath could be an encounter. I have done a fact based jokebook with illustrations to try to let people see they have more human than anmial personalities. Colorfully done pictures and jokes Examples @ http://www.saveoursasquatch,com [the link is dead-DD]is dedicated to letting our kind realize they may even be just Hairy,Stinky,Giants and could even be reasonable and rational in a social way if we gave them the chance. Tho it seems we have to show we are first.
    I’m looking to prove they exist by refering to the Bible. Other religions books have mentioned them as well. Other societies give them credence. Our US society is pretty backward in many ways. Please don’t kill them to prove they exist. That is soo counterproductive..
  • apehuman wrote on 17 November, 2011, 10:18I can’t beleive I am just discovering yur work! I too, after perhaps 70 nights, about 25 trips, into remote area of SW came across “bigfoot.” And fairly quickly (they seemed to like me and developed a bit of bond and trust) realized they must be human…perhaps relic, perhaps sub-species, perhaps just wild. I began to refer to them in correspondance as Homo indomitus because I too feel the “Sasquatch” image is too burdened with too much bad data for too long! I am working on a little guest post about one of the main reasons I quickly beleived human even though they remined hidden. A “whistle Serenade” – too long here to describe..but the guest post will be an attempt to open the Bigfoot Hunter mind…that these are humans and not beasts…etc May I use the images of you work along with my post?
    I will link back to your blog. Thanks so much in advance for your response either way!

--In this case although the artist called the sculpture a remote viewing, I think in more practical terms we could call it an artist's impression based on the local media descibing Bigfoot (although not consciously remembered and recalled as if a "Psychic impression") in other words I find this to be a good artistic impression in agreement with other individuals of the Eastern Bigfoot type.

My own destroyed clay bust was something I had a drawing of, though, and here is a copy that I had sent to the SITU around 1982 (later returned to me), scanned and coloured over again (because the scan destroyed all legibility of the colours)



Alex Evans just came out with a Bigfoot bust which she is offering commercially. The bust would count as her impression of the many reports in the area in and around Indiana and Illinois. I am adding that part in here because it seems to me that both busts are trying to express approximately the same sort of facial anatomy.The primary difference would be that Bill Dayholos was trying to represent a female with a thin growth of fine hair and Alex Evans was representing a male with a full coat of coarse hair and a large beard that runs into the chest hairs. That last description is rather common for the Eastern Bigfoot. This is what Alex has posted on her facebook wall:


The size of these sculptures is a nice size for a shelf or desk being 7 1/2" high and 9" across. The width is 5 1/4" They weigh approx. 6lbs also. If someone would want a wooden base, let me know and I can have one mounted atop a stained and finished base for you.......a bit more but if it's what you want, we can get it for you!







This brown Sasquatch is made from an original I sculpted and I am offering them in different colors/finishes. They will be a limited edition of only 250 made, signed and numbered by me. Since they are hand painted individually, no two will be exactly alike. I am offering a few color combinations and for an additional fee, can customize one for you in your face/hair/eye colors. They are made in the U.S.A. and are of a high quality poly resin. For now the cost is $148 each (plus shipping). Message me with any questions, I have more views of each of them and will be adding more : ) Thanks for looking at my sculptures!

Friday, 16 March 2012

I Shot Bigfoot (Repost)

I had heard of this report from some time back but this is by far the best telling of the account I have seen. The creature that was shot sounds very much like the Minnesota Iceman but it is twenty years earlier and there is no possible direct connection. Still, it makes you think.

Best Wishes, Dale D.
[PS, Thanks go to Candy Sasquatchwatch Canada for alerting me to this posting of the account]

FROM: http://squatchwatch.weebly.com/i-shot-bigfoot.html



This report was brought to my attention by Pat Barker of Ontario Sasquatch, very interesting story.
Report # 9552
(Class A)
Submitted by witness on Saturday, October 16, 2004.Moose hunter shoots "bigfoot" to deathYEAR: 1941

SEASON: Fall

MONTH: November

DATE: 16

PROVINCE:Manitoba

COUNTRY:Canada

LOCATION DETAILS: Approximately 15 miles west of Gypsumville, just southeast of Basket Lake.

NEAREST TOWN: Gypsumville

NEAREST ROAD: #328

OBSERVED: This report is submitted by BFRO member, Curt Nelson, and is based on two visits to and many phone conversations with the witness. The body of the report can be seen below.

OTHER WITNESSES: No

TIME AND CONDITIONS: Mid day
Clear conditions
Patchy snow on the ground

ENVIRONMENT: Thick bush

Follow-up investigation report:

At the beginning of May of 2003 I took a trip into Manitoba to stay with a man with whom I’d been in telephone contact on and off for about a year. He was interested in sasquatch. Sasquatch in Manitoba, Canada, that province above western Minnesota and eastern North Dakota, which stretches north along Hudson Bay where polar bears make their living. It’s hundreds of miles of bush laced through with lakes – including the giants: Lakes Winnipeg, Manitoba, and Winnipegosis. In the winter it’s no place to be without a good plan, for keeping warm and fed and out of trouble, and the means to carry it out. Manitoba’s position in the upper middle of the North American land mass is too far from any reasonably warm winter grounds to imagine it as anything but the year-round home for animals found there, including sasquatch.

The man, “Peter,” had become interested in sasquatch because he told me he knew for certain they are real, and that they live there in Manitoba. He knew this for sure, he said, because he had a chance to look at one up close, after he’d shot and killed it: he flipped its hand over with the toe of his boot to have a look at its palm. It was very large and there were five fingers – one a thumb, like a man’s hand, he said.

The following account of the event came mainly from two visits I had with Peter: first in early May of 2003 when I stayed with him for three days, and in September of that year when he put me up again for two days. We also talked about the shooting incident several times by phone, before and since my visits. The word-for-word questions and Peter’s answers presented here were mostly from the May visit; we sat together in his home where he lives alone now. I taped our conversation. The reader will note a leading tendency in my questions. The prior discussions, I believe, are the cause of this.

It happened the first week of November, 1941, 62 years ago, when Peter was 17 years old. He’d gone hunting for moose with two friends around Basket Lake, a small lake about 15 miles west of Gypsumville, the town near where Peter grew up and has always lived. The two friends hunted the east side of Basket Lake; Peter wanted to go to the west side, which he knew was good for moose and elk. There was patchy snow on the ground and Peter found ambling moose tracks criss-crossing the area, indicating feeding animals.

The spotty snow made tracking difficult but he moved ahead: “…Sure enough, I did see one in the willows feeding with its head down, and it was a cow moose – no calf, I didn’t see a calf, and no horns, so I knew it was a cow. At that time the bulls still have their horns. But, in 1941 yet before the major fires, there were bush and willows so thick that you couldn’t believe it. So you had to shoot through willows, there’s not… you didn’t always have an open shot, so… take a chance. So I did shoot, because I knew… take one or two steps and… [It would be gone].”

Q: Where did you shoot, where did you try to hit her?
P: In the chest.
Q: Was she broadside to you?
P: Pretty well, but not fully broadside… and I did shoot, fired a shot… and I walked slowly and, yes, there was a little bit of blood on the right side, you know, as it’s running, you could see where it sprinkled a little. It didn’t look good; I could see I didn’t hit it properly. The bullet deviated from the brush. But I had no choice, then, and the blood made it a little easier to track it. There was blood here and there; you could tell you were on the right track. So I tracked her slowly, I’d say for a half hour, but very slowly.

And… I looked in the willows… again, and I could see all this hair, so I thought to myself ‘Well, I’ll slow you up,’ and I took a good aim and I fired. It disappeared… looked like I got it, so I walked up to it slowly… It wasn’t far, 45 yards, only – ‘cause that’s about as far as you could see in that stuff – if it was that far. But I took my time, because when you approach a big game animal you have to approach carefully. You carry your gun across your chest with your hand on the breach, ready to fire. If it wants to jump you, you have one good shot, point blank. Don’t raise the gun to your shoulder, just turn it and pull the trigger. That’s the last chance you got. Because a big game animal, he gets you, you’ve had it.

So I looked, I could see him… what the hell is this? Holy buckets! He’s lying there and one foot was up, you know… So I nudged him in the foot and slowly walked on this side, still hanging onto my rifle like I was supposed to, and I picked the hand up with my right foot, to see the bottom. And I walked around and I could see where I hit him, in the back, high in the back, between the shoulder blades, right in the back. It must have been bent over… because – to look at the moose track and the blood or something like that – I didn’t see a head.

I interrupted here, and to find out just how the thing was lying, I lay down on Peter’s kitchen floor and, according to his instructions, adjusted myself to match the creature’s position: I was on my right side with my right arm and hand pinned under my body. My left arm lay along my side and bent at the elbow so the hand was palm down on the ground in front of my belly. My face was pointed mostly at the ground but the left side showed fairly well. And my legs lay with the left foot’s sole showing (the foot was caught and held that way by brush, he said).

Peter explained that when he shot the animal he thought he was looking at the rear end of his moose (Peter's view of the animal: http://www.patbarker-art.com/1lores.html) and that, given that shot, he tried to put the bullet just above where the anus should be. He said it’s the only shot in that situation; the bullet travels above the gut just under the spine on up into the chest cavity where you want it. The creature had stood with its back to him; apparently it had been looking down (at the wounded moose’s trail?) because he didn’t see its head. And the big shoulders and back… he thought he was looking at the moose’s rump. His bullet, meant to enter and travel just below a moose’s back bone, had hit the animal between the shoulder blades, killing it on the spot. And this 1941-vintage 17-year-old who never heard of anything like a sasquatch looked upon the creature he had slain and wondered, and worried, and then became frightened. And he got out of there.

Q: What did you do then, did you literally run out of the woods?
P: No, I walked very fast… with three foot strides, I can tell you.

Q: What kind of gun were you using?
P: 38-55 Winchester.
Q: Oh, do you still have that gun?
P: No… in fact the RCMP man bought it for repairs because the barrel was wore out.

Q: An elk is real hard to turn over once it’s dead – to turn it over to skin it. It’s a lot of work. What about this creature, how big was it? Could you have turned it over?
P: Well, there’s a knack, like you say, about turning an animal over… It depends on how the brush is, but… I always carried a piece of stiff cord, good cord, where you could tie the leg up to a willow or a tree, one leg… and you could roll him over like nothing. In a half an hour I’ll dress a moose for you - not skin him, but ahh, gut him.

Q: So how big was this creature?
P: He was very… between… I would say… like, I’m a straight six feet, and he’d have been a foot and a half to two feet taller than I was – you know, just estimating.

Q: How about heaviness, I mean, could you have turned him over?
P: I didn’t try it – oh yeah, I could have turned him over but I’d have had to cut some willows to do that… See it’s very hard to estimate the weight when he’s covered with hair. I walked around him and thought, ‘Holy God, what the heck am I gonna do now? If there’s anymore of these things around I don’t want to be here.’ And I just got the heck out of there so fast you wouldn’t believe it. I don’t think I spent more than, maybe, eight minutes with him.

Q: You’ve seen a picture of the Patterson creature; do you think it looked about like that?
P: Very much so… well, I can describe his body. He has a big round chest. Huge! He’s got a big chest – really big.

Q: And there’s no skin showing?
P: No, I didn’t see any bare skin except a little on his face, on the side.
Q: What about the palms of his hands?
P: They were bare.
Q: And the bottoms of his feet?
P: Yeah [they were bare]… but they weren’t white… well, let’s see… he’s not a very hygienic creature, you know, he doesn’t wash or anything, so his skin is dirty and a little brown, but white like my dirty hands. Not only a little dirty… and heavy fingers, and big palms, and… opposed thumb. And a big palm, like… when I close my hand like this and cover my face…

Q: Really, so his palm was proportionately bigger than a human’s palm? That’s what you’re saying?
P: Yeah, it’s longer and deeper like it’s a big palm.

Q: What about the foot, does it match the footprints people have been casting?
P: Absolutely. The foot had five toes… on it, and the foot looks very flat foot, like, I have a high arch, you know, and his is completely very flat. And the foot… well I’m pretty good at estimating the lengths of different things – or at least I was – because when you’re a carpenter you get used to that. And I’d say his foot was around fifteen inches, fifteen and a half.

Q: So, did his coat look warm, his fur coat, was there a thick, dense, good undercoat?
P: Most animals have a underfur… and I didn’t notice that on that animal… that he had short fur underneath – of course I wasn’t… didn’t touch him and didn’t look at that.

Q: Witnesses always say, whenever they talk about it they say, ‘it was covered in hair,’ and I think, well you’d never describe a bear as being covered in hair, you’d never say that. You’d say it had fur. So why do people always describe bigfoot as being covered with hair?
P: Because it looks like hair.

Q: Well, that’s what I’m trying to get at… is why people say that, because it’s an animal, it’s covered in… fur, and yet for some reason, I don’t know, because it’s shaped like a man or something, they describe it as hair. And, you know, one of the characteristics of fur that makes it fur is that undercoat, that makes it dense. And if it didn’t have that undercoat you maybe would refer to it as just hair.
P: Well… it looks like hair, not like fur.

Q: I think that’s curious, that a northern animal like that, that has to survive here wouldn’t have a coat that was essentially like a bear’s, you know, with a good undercoat… that’s good and thick.
P: Well… you know what? You’re talking about a humanoid animal… But, all I can say, it looks like hair… not fur. You know, like a man lets his hair grow straggly and… you know, long… well that’s what it looks like, a hair. That’s why I say it’s hair, because it looks like hair.

Q: I think you told me before that the hair was about eight inches. Is that right? Maybe you can just tell me something about the general appearance of the fur – or hair, as you describe it.
P: I would say it wasn’t that long all over. But the hair hangin’ from his head, you know, and down his shoulders… and down his arms were quite long. You know when he was laying, like, sideways, well the hair from his head kind of covered the side of his face right down to his shoulders, you know.

Q: So how long would you say that that longer hair was?
P: Well, I would say it has to be six to eight inches long. I didn’t measure nothing… but it looked fairly long. You couldn’t see an ear of any kind, you know, but I still could see part of his face on one side.

Q: And then describe the hair on the rest of the body, was it uniform in length?
P: Well, no, not really. It seemed to be kinda long on the arms, you know? It was hair down the top of his hands, you know, and partly down his fingers, but shorter, you know, half inch to one inch, I would say roughly, but not right to the very tips, you know… But the top of the hand was covered… But… it was fairly long hair down the arm, too, you know, four, five, six inches, you know.

Q: Do you think it was also four, five, six inches along the legs and the torso of the animal?
P: Yeah, down the legs, too, you know, it was fairly long, about five to six inches, and it was… I noticed on the, the one leg that was up a little, you know, well, it was right down low, you know, to the bottom of his foot, the hair.

Q: And the color, the color of the hair… I think you told me was, ah, was reddish, didn’t you?
P: No, it was a dark brown.
Q: Dark brown. Okay.
P: Yeah, a dirty dark brown, I can’t say, but a dark brown, and it seemed to be a little… had some… the tops… well, I can’t remember exactly where… ah, had a, like a reddish overtone, you know?
Q: Oh yeah, okay. I understand.
P: Top of the hair in places, not all over, but in areas, you know, it was... looked to me it was kinda reddish.

Q: I need you to comment, again, about your thinking in not telling anybody about it. I mean that’s a very important point, and it’s an obvious question that everybody has.
P: Well, for one, I was very shocked… to see this thing. And, it was during the war years – World War II – and the thing was, people can be very funny, if you talk about something that’s out of line… right away you’re crazy, you’re not all there, you know. And I did a lot of thinking – myself, I could not place an animal in my brain, like that. Was it half human, half ape, or something like that?... The thing is, just a year or two ago people were calling me stupid in believing in such a thing… ‘you’re crazy to believe in those things’… Today! Never mind sixty years ago.

Here Peter told me how for a while he’d worked aboard an aircraft outfitted with skis, and traveled all over northern Manitoba where he talked with a lot of aboriginal people. From them he heard stories about something they saw, something that sounded like what he’d shot (“…and from their stories… they were seeing this thing, too, what I shot, I could make out…”).

Q: Okay, go back, though, to immediately after the killing occurred. Were you, ah, somewhat afraid of being prosecuted for killing something like that, or was it mostly a matter of, um, being thought crazy for?…
P: Not only that…
Q: But of course, Peter, also you have to… anyone would say that anybody that would have called you crazy… you could have brought them to the animal and proved that you really did it, that you weren’t crazy. So I need you to discuss why you didn’t do that.
P: Well, in the first place, I was with two older people. They were hunting going in a different – in the opposite direction. And it was not easy to do at that time, (Peter means it would not have been easy to show his hunting partners – or anyone – the animal since it was far from where the other two had gone, in a very remote spot). But, for one, I was hunting illegally. Do you know what I’m talkin’ about?

Q: No. In what way were you hunting illegally?
P: Well I had no license to hunt for moose.
Q: Oh, uh-huh.
P: I had no license… I may have had, I don’t remember, a deer license. But I didn’t… wasn’t fussy about shooting deer because they’re a small animal and you don’t get very much meat for a day’s work. You know what I mean?
Q: Sure, yes.
P: So I go… as long as I could get in the bush – well there was days I’d get two-three. Well, for a large family (Peter had 10 brothers and sisters) it was enough to supply meat for the winter... But I was strictly hunting illegally.

Q: So you didn’t want to reveal that fact by…
P: No, that fact alone. But, another thing, you hear these weird stories, especially in old days, about these guys living in hermits in the bush and… all that stuff. So you don’t really know what to think.
Q: So you thought, in some corner of your mind, you considered the possibility that it was one of these… one of these hermit-type people and you might have killed a…
P: It was a, a cross or something, one of these hermit people, people used to talk about. I didn’t want to be charged with shooting a hermit, or something human.

Q: So you thought that it was a possibility that it was something like that and that you could be in legal trouble for revealing it, is that right?
P: That’s right. See, because, at those days nobody talked about a Sasquatch or… or a, a Bigfoot.

Q: So when you walked up on that animal and you were looking it over and stuff, did you determine where its tracks came from, whether it had been tracking your moose?
P: No. It would be hard to see tracks, because there were small amounts of snow – hay and everything… and I didn’t look. I was too scared.

Q: And so… it was done breathing, it was not alive?

P: Oh no, it took me…
Q: Do you think you shot it through the heart?
P: Well, the bullet didn’t enter the body at a ninety degree angle… He had to be bent over because when you hit a animal on a angle it will shear part of the fur before it will enter. And that’s what it looked like to me, of course it was so much hair it was so much harder to tell.

During a recent phone call Peter said: “The bullet had to go through the spine, because it was dead center in the back. And when a bullet hits bone like that it expands and it would have gone into the chest and done tremendous damage.” The creature was “stone dead,” lying crumpled where it had been standing when he fired.
(How the creature looked: http://www.patbarker-art.com/2lores.html)

Q: Can you still go back in your mind and remember that scene in your mind’s eye; is that memory still vivid for you?
P: Oh… certain things in your memory – it coulda happened yesterday. You don’t forget things like that. The most shocking part about it is the sheer size of the animal.
Q: Really?
P: Yes. It’s just unbelievable because anything that big should have been seen and reported and in books and everything. You think you’re on a different planet or something.

Q: Was it a male, do you know?
P: Yes, it would be a male, because I’d have seen the breasts.
Q: Did you see genitals?
P: No, because the way he was laying on the side, kind of folded up.
(Front view of creature: http://www.patbarker-art.com/3lores.html)

Q: So tell me a little bit more about the appearance of it, you said it had a real big chest, barrel chest…
P: Big barrel chest. A human body, like yours, the chest, you know, well it’s flat in front to back. But theirs is big, round, barrel chest…

Peter was just shy of his 79th birthday (he’s just 80 at this writing) when I visited him. The next two days he took me around to show me places where others have had bigfoot (or windigo, as some of the natives call it) sightings. Two of the witnesses were women, residents of the Fairford Reserve, who had had recent sightings – one just two days prior to my arrival and the other about three weeks before that.

In the late sixties/early seventies, after the Patterson-Gimlin film brought bigfoot into the public consciousness – and into Peter’s consciousness – he realized what the animal was that he had shot. When he saw the hair covered creature in that film he immediately knew that what he killed in 1941 was the same kind of animal. It was not some strange hybrid person, a thought that had occurred to him as he looked, puzzled, worried, and then frightened over the huge man-like creature his bullet had cut down. No, it was the same kind of animal as the one in the film taken by Roger Patterson in northern California. That’s what it was! A bigfoot.

After Peter’s life loosened up some, when the children had gone and he’d cut back on his work and had a little time, his interest in sasquatch developed. He talked freely about the 1941 incident around his community. Others offered their own stories of sightings of such a creature or its tracks.

I’d asked Peter if that early life incident, the killing of such a thing, as frightening and upsetting as that must have been, had troubled him during his subsequent life before he’d come to realize what it was. No, he said. He got married, they had eight children, he worked hard as a farmer, carpenter, and commercial fisherman on Lake Winnipeg; he just didn’t have time to worry, he explained. So for about 30 years Peter lived his life and told no one about the 1941 killing. But he didn’t forget. And when he saw the Patterson-Gimlin film and knew what a bigfoot, a sasquatch – a windigo – was, he knew they were not just in the Pacific Northwest; they were there in the Manitoba bush, too.

We’ve gone over it many times and I’m convinced Peter did what he said he did: he shot a good-sized male sasquatch to death in 1941 when he was just 17. There has been no hint of untruthfulness or indication that he was or is not thinking clearly about that event. If anything, Peter has been understated and overcautious in his statements to me about that day. At first I had a hard time getting him to tell me about it. Instead he has wanted to talk about recent sightings. He just wasn’t interested in it anymore; it’s old news to him. And he has told a lot of people about it (local people, mostly), and the response he’s gotten from them has been pretty negative; he’s been called stupid, crazy, and a liar. That is how it goes for people like Peter who have had a close encounter with a sasquatch – and talked about it. It’s punishing.

Beyond that Peter has the attitude that since he can’t prove it happened, his story isn’t really worth telling, that it’s just another unsupportable claim. (Undoubtedly he has come to that conclusion over the years – because he has talked about it, told the story, and instead of being believed he has gotten grief for it.) So Peter doesn’t care whether or not his story is told because he doesn’t think it matters. What matters to him now are the current sightings, the ones that could yield evidence to prove sasquatches are there, have always been there, in the Manitoba bush.

And recently, when I commented to him on what a remarkable experience it was, how fortunate, (obviously apart from the fact that it involved the killing of such a creature), he was to have seen a sasquatch close up… he said, not really, that it wasn’t a situation where he could appreciate it, and that he was scared. He wishes he’d seen it alive and moving, like the William Roe sighting, he said. But in the more than sixty years since, with all the hunting and time in the bush he’s spent, he hasn’t seen another one. He has seen a track, one good track, however.

That was in association with a 1979 sighting in which several other people saw the creature when it moved through the area. It was near where Peter lived and he got onto it and was able to track the animal’s movements through a strip of bush and out into a hay field where it stepped on an ant mound and left a good impression of the front part of its foot, toes and all (he didn’t cast or photograph it). He tracked the creature to a stack of big, circular hay bales – the rolled type, which weigh about 1000 pounds. Peter surmised that the creature had rested there inside the stack of bales: two bales had been pushed apart and one showed a clear compressed area, as if an enormous back had leaned into it.

The only explanation I have for what Peter says happened is that it did happen. At one point during a conversation about “the sasquatch problem,” when we were particularly struggling with its difficulty, I blurted in exasperation, “Did that really happen?”
Peter replied emphatically, “Yes, it really did.”
I pushed further; “Was there any possibility at all that it was a bear… a man?”
“No.” He was certain it was some other kind of animal, the same kind as what’s on the Patterson-Gimlin film, “a bigfoot,” he said.

In Canada during the period from WWI through WWII there was, and still lingers today, an open prejudice against immigrants from the Ukraine, Germany, and Austria. Under the 1914 War Measures Act Ukrainian Canadians were held in internment camps (1914 – 1920) as "enemy aliens,” as the United States government held people of Japanese descent during WWII. The First World War prompted racist attitudes against Germans and Austrians by some Canadians who saw the war as a defense of Anglo-Saxon “civilization” against German and Austrian aggression and militarism. And Peter’s father was an Austrian immigrant. Therefore Peter’s family fell under this prevailing negative gaze.

He described to me what it was like: You didn’t draw attention to yourself. “As long as you plowed and picked stones and kept your mouth shut, you were okay,” he said. And with regard to his shooting the creature: “You couldn’t talk about it. It was so out of place that… you couldn’t talk about it.” Implicit in Peter’s explanations on staying quiet: You did not announce that you had just shot to death a… man-like thing – not at that time when no one had heard of bigfoot (save the aboriginal population with their windigos, among other things). No, not when you’d been hunting moose without a license, and you were 17 years old. And certainly not when your father was Austrian.

And the other obvious question – Did I go to the spot where Peter shot the creature? – can be answered with a qualified yes. The first time I visited him, Peter told me that the country had changed a lot since that day. There had been big fires, and beavers had been re-introduced after a massive die off (contained in wooden boxes, they were dropped into lakes from helicopters, which they just chewed their way through, Peter explained). Years without their tree cutting and damming left the landscape and vegetation quite different from how it is now, with beavers. And the Interlake area is very flat; one acre looks much like the others. There were simply no landmarks for Peter to mark the spot by.

Of course I wanted to go “there” anyway, and asked Peter about it. “I don’t want to go into the bush anymore,” was his reply. He meant he’d had enough of the bush, that he was feeling too old for it. He said he thought it would be easier to find a new bigfoot than to locate his from 1941. That might have been so; it was really a matter of symbolism for me to go there, at least approximately (maybe exactly), where the thing had fallen – for the feeling of being in such a significant place.

When I visited him again that fall (when he was a few months older), I persuaded him to take me. And we did go… as far down the trail as his four-wheel-drive pick-up could make it, and on foot from there... deep into crazy-thick willows, aspen, black spruce, and cane near the lake: bush the type of which Peter had had his fill. We worked our way to the south-west “shore” of Basket Lake, (a low-water, tall-cane morass, frightening for its clear potential to hopelessly swallow any person who might go a little too far into it – and to imagine it on fire), then southwest a good half mile – about a half mile, give or take in most directions, Peter thought, from the spot. It was the best he could place us.

This is about the area, he said. And of course I looked at the ground, walked ahead and looked some more… for the skull, the foot bones, the jaw – all of it – any of it. No. I didn’t really expect to find anything, for the bones to even still be there. And I saw that if any of it did still exist that it would be impossible to find… under the forest duff, where ever it was within that square mile or so (or maybe not, maybe further this or that way) of monstrously thick bush. And, yes, I did feel a little bit bad pushing Peter into that, into making him take me there. I fixed him a fabulous roast beef dinner that evening, and he loved it.

Actually we had a terrific time together. One night we stayed up until 1:00 AM talking about bigfoot. Peter is a wonderful old guy: generous, intelligent, and well informed – the kind of person who in different circumstances might have gone far. But Peter has had a successful life by any measure. To feed his family he always grew a big garden (and still does), and for meat they had moose, deer, elk, and woodland caribou, which he provided with his gun. Now Peter is working on getting another 100,000 miles out of his 200,000 mile Chevy truck. I’m betting they’ll both make it.

Thanks to Michelle Baril, who lives not too far from Peter and introduced me to him. Michelle is a dedicated collector of Manitoba bigfoot sighting stories and continues to help me by generously sharing all that she has learned.

And thanks to Pat Barker, the Canadian artist who made the painting of the creature Peter shot, which are included in this report. Pat traveled a long way with her husband to visit Peter at his home, where they spent the day while Pat made sketches with Peter’s feedback to try and produce an accurate picture of the slain creature. Pat and I compared notes and discussed our impressions of the scene, and both Pat and I had follow-up phone conversations with Peter about things we wanted to understand correctly. I must say that Pat extracted many details about the creature’s appearance that I did not. Those are conveyed by the exquisite paintings she made in which she endeavored to accurately depict all she gathered.



Thanks to K.C. Charnes for introducing me to Pat Barker and for his help in preparing her painting images for display.

And finally, thanks to Peter; my friend. Thanks for telling your story, for enduring all the scornful treatment it has caused you, and for keeping your enthusiasm for this mysterious creature despite it.

The included photograph is of Peter showing me construction detail on a shed built by his father.

Tuesday, 11 October 2011

Manitoba Bigfoot Encounter

http://www.psican.org/alpha/index.php?/20110206542/Cryptozoology-News-Articles-Investigations/Renwar-Manitoba-Bigfoot-Encounter.html

[This is made available for reprinting so long as all the original attributions are left as in the original and all credit be given to PSICAN. I have no problems with that and I freely give full credit, they are asking for what sounds like my normal policy in any case. My main concern is with the description that the witness gives and which I think is important enough to be reproduced here. This sounds very much like what I have called The American Almas. I am simultaneously submitting the email to PSICAN my intention to reprint this here.
 --Best Wishes, Dale D.]

[Alaska "Bush Man" Mascot at left, Photo from Flickr, Iron Dog 2011.Only the rear of the costume, unfortunately.]


Manitoba Bigfoot Encounter
 Cryptozoology - Cryptozoology News Articles & Investigations
 Written by Robin Pyatt Bellamy
 Renwer Bigfoot, 1960
 Archie Motkaluk is a Canadian born to Ukrainian parents, although much of their immigration paperwork says “Austria Galicia”. His father immigrated in 1903 and was already married. Archie is one of 11 children in this family. The family farmed near Renwer, Manitoba, which is about 20 miles from the nearest “larger” town, Swan River. Swan River had about 3000 people in 1960.

 Archie’s father had arthritis and found farming quite difficult. All of the children were expected to help. After his high school graduation, Archie spent two years mining in Thompson, Manitoba. Thompson is about center in Manitoba, while Renwer/Swan River is near the Saskatchewan line and further south—at about the same Latitude as Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. The farms were laid out east to west about a mile wide for each property. The property then extended several miles. Archie recalls that there were about 8 farms, and all backed onto the “Crown Land” Boreal Forest. This forest separates the tundra of the north from the deciduous forests of the south. It is about 1000 km wide and stretches from the westernmost part of Newfoundland through to the Yukon/Alaskan border. It is a vast amount of Canada’s land mass, yet only houses 14% of the population. The northern part of the Boreal Forest is quite cold and has fewer trees, the size of which gets smaller the further north you go until reaching the tundra.

 The area of the Boreal Forest where Renwer is located is rich in natural resources, and heavily forested. Species populations currently found there probably began about 5000 years ago, well after the retreat of the Wisconsin Ice Sheet. Regions are largely uniformly grown; mass amounts of flora damaged in cyclical disasters like fire or insect manifestation. These naturally occurring events would wipe out widespread areas, then the areas would all regenerate at about the same time. Prior to modern man settling there, the cycles were 75 to 100 years, and in some areas that is still the case. Deforestation due to humans has been minimal across Canada in these regions, although it does occur. Currently, the Canadian Boreal Forest is still 91% of what it was prior to European encroachment.

Source: http://www.borealcanada.ca/research-maps-e.php



Trees native to the boreal include Black Spruce, White Spruce, Balsam Fir, Larch (Tamarack), Lodgepole Pine, Jack Pine, Trembling and Large-Toothed Aspen, Cottonwood and White Birch, and Balsam Poplar.

Fauna in the area include shrubs, mosses, and lichens. Willow, alder, blueberry, red-osier dogwood, and honeysuckle, produce bright-coloured or conspicuous berries that attract fruit-eating birds and provide food for mammals. The Canadian Boreal Forest is populated with thousands of living creatures. It is a breeding ground for over 12 million water fowl and millions of land birds as diverse as vultures, hawks, grouse, doves, cuckoos, owls, nighthawks, swifts, hummingbirds, kingfishers, woodpeckers and passerines. There are 1.5 million lakes in Canada’s Boreal Forest and large boreal lakes have cold water species of fish like trout and whitefish, while in warmer waters, species include northern pike, walleye and smallmouth bass. There are about 130 different species of fish in the area. This forest shelters more than 85 species of mammals, including wood bison, elk, moose, woodland caribou, grizzly and black bears, and wolves as well as smaller species, such as beavers, snowshoe hares, Canada lynx, red squirrels, lemmings, and voles. The snowshoe hare is the most ecologically important as it is food source for many of the local predators (both mammals and birds) and feeds on the forest’s various plants and shrubs. It is estimated that 32,000 insect species are present, although about one third of these species have yet to be described. Several are particularly well adapted to their habitat-- black fire beetles have infrared sensing organs on their bodies that allow them to track the heat of forest fires as they search for freshly burned trees on which to lay their eggs; the white-spotted sawyer beetle use their long antennae to sense chemicals in smoke and charcoal to achieve the same goal. These two beetle species are an important part of the diet of several bird species commonly found in burned forests.

Aside from the farmers at the very south edge of the forest, the area is home to about 80% of Aboriginal peoples in Canada. At this point, not much damage has occurred due to issues like population, pollution, flooding for hydro power, mining and drilling, or climate change. These things do happen, but it is usually much localized and the government, both national and provincial, are starting to take steps toward regulation and preservation. One of the most intensive studies is that of the permafrost thaw and how that will affect the peat and wetlands in the area. Additionally, there is recurring drought in some areas of the forest bed, causing issues for plant life there. There are 5.7 million square kilometers of Canadian Boreal Forest and roughly 6% of this is permanently protected. Another 4% is currently temporarily protected. There are 90 species listed as endangered (465 for all of Canada). Aside from a small Provincial Park east of the Renwer area, the Boreal Forest of concern in this report is not protected lands. It is currently considered part of “Agro Manitoba”, the most densely populated part of Manitoba. Some measures are already in place, but the government is attempting to assist landowners with ways of preserving privately owned property for conservation into perpetuity. The Renwer area is home to several animal species, but the only remotely upright animal of significant size is the American Black Bear

Source: http://canadianbiodiversity.mcgill.ca/english/species/mammals/mammalpages/urs_ame.htm
 Although they do have a period of dormancy during the winter, they do not fully hibernate. It would thus be possible for Mr. Motkaluk to have seen one on December 29, 1960 in the Boreal Forest at the back of his father’s farm tract. Realistically, since he had lived on the property for 20 years—all of his life—he would have known well what a black bear looks like. His certainty that what he saw was not a bear cannot be doubted.

What did Archie Motkaluk see that winter day? He saw an upright being, immediately thought to be human, walking at the edge of the woods. He was not under the influence of any alcohol or medication. He was a healthy 20 year old man, in the area to cut wood for the family farm. Archie Motkaluk was one of 11 children who worked this family farm. He knew his way around animals, both domestic and wild. From about age 12 he was included in hunting parties to bring back game for food for the family. He knew how to use a gun, and in fact had one with him that day. He brought it because he knew he would be in the presence of animals, and poor farmers of the 1960’s would not pass up an opportunity to bring back meat if the occasion arose. He did not necessarily feel he needed protection; he simply was prepared for hunting if he saw anything worth bringing home. He had travelled the approximately 3 miles from the farmhouse with a team of horses and a small sleigh for carrying the firewood back. He tethered his horses to a tree that appeared to be dying, and he took his axe to the tree line. The area where the family gathered their wood was a relatively large clearing, about 400 square yards, which Mr. Motkaluk identifies as “about the size of four city blocks”. He had been there hundreds of times in his 20 years. He left the farmhouse at about 10am that day. It was not snowing, as the area had considerably less snow than normal that year. In fact, there were only about 4 or 5 inches of snow on the ground. He also recalls that it was not particularly cold, but in Manitoba that could still mean well below zero. Records indicate that a record high for the area was 10C on December 1, 1960 in Brandon, Manitoba, and the average high for the Renwer area at the end of December is about -10C. Average snowfall for the month of December there is 26cm and no records were set at any date near the time of Mr. Motkaluk’s event. Nearby Swan River historical weather data shows the high was -2C and the low was -14 with no new snow for the previous four days.

 At the far end of the clearing, Mr. Motkaluk saw what he believed to be a man. It stood on two feet, completely upright, and he assumed it was one of the local farmers hunting for meat for the family. The man was walking slowly along the edge of the trees, stopping occasionally to pick and eat what Mr. Motkaluk believes was “cranberries and frozen chokecherries”. Boreal Manitoba native fruit species include the beaked hazelnut, blueberry, bog cranberry, buffalo berry, bunchberry, choke cherry, cloudberry, currant, elderberry, gooseberry, wild grape, hawthorn, high-bush cranberry, lingonberry, mountain ash, pin cherry, prickly pear cactus, wild raspberry, wild rose, Saskatoon, and wild strawberry. It is entirely possible that the creature was foraging for fruit left on the bushes and vines. Mr. Motkaluk continued to watch the “man” as he was chopping his wood. After about an hour, the “man was approximately 100 yards away. It was at that point Mr. Motkaluk noticed something was wrong.

By the time the creature was 50 yards away, Mr. Motkaluk believed he was seeing a Sasquatch. After graduating high school, he had worked for two years in the mines near Thompson, Manitoba. Many of the workers there told stories about the creature, and this sparked enough interest for Mr. Motkaluk to seek out magazine and newspaper articles on the subject. There weren’t many available at the time, but he says he would read anything he found on the subject. Through the stories and the articles, he believed that Sasquatch would only be found in British Columbia. With a mere 50 yards between them, Mr. Motkaluk stopped chopping wood and watched. The creature came to within 8 to 10 feet of where he was standing. Mr. Motkaluk is 6’4” tall and at that time weighed about 220 pounds. He describes the sasquatch as slightly shorter and about 325 pounds; and female. He could not see genitalia, but breasts were clearly evident. The two stared at each other and the creature made snarling, hissing, groaning, and grunting sounds, as well as grinding its teeth. This went on for what seemed like 6 or 7 minutes. Then the animal stopped making noise and they continued to stare at each other for an additional 4 or 5 minutes. Mr. Motkaluk says he felt frozen to the spot, unable to move. Eventually, he was able to take a step back. When he did so, the Sasquatch also took a single step back. They continued this pattern, with each taking two or three steps backward until they were about 20 yards apart. The Sasquatch turned and again began foraging for food, and Mr. Motkaluk returned to his sleigh. Once seated on the sleigh, he began to relax and ate his lunch. He then took his axe—and this time his rifle—and went back to chop wood. The Sasquatch was still there, watching him.

Because of the close proximity, Mr. Motkaluk was able to get a quite detailed description. He says the Sasquatch was covered in very fine hair, dark brown in color. The hair was no longer than one inch and was shiny, much like a domestic house cat. It had a light brown face without hair, although the hair did continue onto its neck. Only the back of its ears had fur. He describes the visage as that of a “middle aged aboriginal with a stern face”. Its teeth were wider than normal human teeth, he estimated about 5/8 of and inch wide. There were no distinct canines (or fangs as he described them) leading Mr. Motkaluk to believe the Sasquatch was strictly a vegetarian. The soles of its feet and the palms of its hands were grey, and the tops of each had the same fine hair. Mr. Motkaluk said it “looked very human” and nothing at all like a monkey or other primate. The arms were proportional to the body in the same way as a human. The fingers were a bit fat, but not disproportional to the overall size of the animal. He likened it to photos he has seen of Neanderthal Man[Emphasis added by Dale D.] There was no distinct smell of any kind. The animal appeared very clean and well groomed. Its face was distinctly human. The nose was slightly larger than average, but definitely not flat like a primate. There were eyebrows of a darker color than the face, as well as very human looking eyes. He believes they were brown. Ears were clearly visible and looked human. He jokingly said what he saw was basically a 325 pound hairy woman.


Museum Reconstruction of a
 Neanderthal Woman, Museon
http://www.museon.nl/en/node/1057
Mr. Motkaluk said that many enthusiasts describe Sasquatch as having no neck but that is definitely not the case. What he saw had at least a 3 inch tall neck and was able to look from side to side without turning its body. He did say that he does not believe Sasquatch is capable of running, at least not fast. He describes the gait as a side to side wobble, again much like a large and heavy human woman or perhaps a child who is just learning to walk. He also said that from time to time the Sasquatch would have difficulty picking up the small berries from the ground or the bushes. The Sasquatch stayed in the area with him for a total of about 4 hours.

[I feel I must add that what Archie is describing is not a Sasquatch at all but what the Athabascans call a "Bush Person" or "Nuk-Luk"-DD]

 Mr. Motkaluk finished his wood chopping and loaded his sleigh and returned home. He is certain the Sasquatch was still standing there watching him when he left. Archie Motkaluk returned to his family farm at about 4pm. His father reminded him to groom and stable the horses, and after that Archie went into the house. His mother was immediately concerned and asked what was wrong, saying he “looked white as a ghost”. Archie assured her there was nothing wrong and retired to his room where he wrote the whole incident down. He had no “regular” paper so he wrote it on brown paper bags. When he returned to his mother, she would not let up and urged him to tell her what was wrong. He told her of the sighting and she had him draw what he saw. His mom was an avid reader and knew of Sasquatch and never tried to tell him he was mistaken. He took his writings and drawings and put them in an envelope, where they stayed untouched in his basement in Winnipeg for nearly 50 years. Mr. Motkaluk was raised Ukrainian Orthodox and still considers himself of that faith. He has had no other events in his life that he would consider paranormal. He has had recurring nightmares of the encounter, and for the first 10 years after the sighting he sought medical help to get to sleep. Otherwise, he doesn’t think the encounter has changed anything.

He was watching Outdoor Life Network (OLN) and was interested in a show about Bigfoot/Sasquatch. There was an “expert” from the Pacific Northwest who said that the phenomena were not real but rather a product of overactive imaginations. Mr. Motkaluk was outraged. He decided that his story needed to be told; until that time he had told nobody except his mother because when he would think about it he would become upset. His wife of almost half a century did not even know. He talked to her, and then he rewrote his notes into an article and attempted to get it printed in the Winnipeg Free Press. Because it was 11 pages long, they refused to run it so he took it to the Winnipeg Sun. They questioned him for two hours about what he had seen and finally decided he wasn’t lying. They promised to run his article, but in fact ran only a small human interest piece based on the interview. Since then he has been on the radio once, and was promised to be brought back for a call in show. That never materialized because the station felt it had become “old news”. Mr. Motkaluk is clearly frustrated with media and is not seeking any fame or recognition with his sighting experience. He has not attempted to “sell” his “story” in any fashion. He said he had been contacted by researchers from all over North America, about 200 people in his estimation.

 I spoke with Mr. Motkaluk for well over an hour on a Friday evening via telephone. I found him to be very likeable, of at least average intelligence, and very proud of his “farm boy” heritage. I saw no signs of mental illness, including Alzheimer’s, nor do I believe he manufactured his sighting. I encouraged him to protect his original notes and drawings and to carefully select someone to receive them when he is no longer able to keep them. Although his exposure to discussion of Sasquatch prior to his sighting is somewhat problematic, what he describes is not typical media information.

Mr. Motkaluk’s testimony is compelling in its detail and the supporting possibilities—dense forestation, minimal human population, abundance of vegetation for subsistence—makes a good case for the acceptance that the Sasquatch phenomenon is real. I’m convinced that it is definitely real for him, and likely for his family members who now know the story.

Robin Pyatt Bellamy Toronto, Ontario 2011
Resources: Journal of Ecology. 1978. 66(1): 199-212
 Conservation Biology. 2003. 17(5): 1435-1439
 http://sfm-1.biology.ualberta.ca/english/pubs/en_pr.htm
 http://www.borealcanada.ca/research-research-data-e.php
 http://manitobawildlands.org/maps/mb_PA2009_lg.jpg
 http://www.farmzone.com/statistics/precipitation/cl5040fj3/mb022
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boreal_forest_of_Canada
 http://www.hww.ca/hww2.asp?id=354
 http://www.prairie-elements.ca/heritage1.html
 http://www.climate.weatheroffice.gc.ca/climateData/dailydata_e.html?timeframe=2&Prov=CA&StationID=3849&Year=1960&Month=12&Day=5
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