Survivorman Bigfoot | Willow Creek California | Director's Commentary | Les Stroud

well it's been a while everyone welcome ah time for another director's commentary as you likely already read in the title i am actually it's going to be an interesting one for me because i've what i want to do is i actually want to walk through all of the survivor man bigfoot shows that i did that's what i'm going to do next for director's commentaries and then i will get right back to doing all the survivorman episodes as well it's been a while since i've done this the reason is that right now travel channel in the united states is airing survivor man bigfoot and uh apparently there's quite a bit of interest going on so i thought okay let's um let's tackle it right now hopefully i've got enough power eighty percent left in the laptop and i am way up north and this is the other reason why this is uh going to be a bit of an interesting one for me it's because i am actually up in northern ontario in a very small little cabin uh in a place where i've had some strange experiences so related obviously to the phenomenon of sasquatch bigfoot or not related at all maybe it was just moose and bear i don't know but there's been some weird stuff happen here so i thought well i'm up here right now just sort of cleaning up the cabin and opening things up for the season and i thought what a great place and time to do another director's commentary this time on a bigfoot episode i went looking to see what i actually had in my hard drives and i found the episode that i shot down in willow creek the hoopa territory which is the area where the famous paddy film comes from in fact uh max and i my cameraman max atwood and i we actually walked down right to the spot where they filmed the the the bigfoot that is actually if you don't know this is nicknamed patty uh which by the way also if you don't know this is apparently a female now right now i've got people watching me going it's a hoax it's crap it's and uh they're talking about that they're saying oh this crowd i can't believe you fell for that crap oh why are you i can't believe you went and hung out with fraud standing uh oh the bigfoot film from roger patterson and bob giblin is a bunch of crap it was a guy i know a and you get that eh like this like no no my uncle knew a guy who knew a guy who said he has the suit okay excellent well regardless of all of that and regardless of the fact that some of you are also going to put on the posts too much talking so this is too much talking during a director's commentary okay so for those of you who need a little help this is a director's commentary meaning i'm going to be talking my way through the film if you want to watch the whole film just head on over to the playlist survivorman bigfoot and have a watch then you can watch the whole film as it is without my annoying voice interrupting you okay shall we get started ah doing this all by candlelight with the exception of the laptop let's see oh it doesn't affect me too much good kind of wanted you to get into the ambiance here of this there's no electricity in this cabin there's no running water there's no solar power it's just candles and a propane stove and a wood stove for heat and that's it and whatever's going on out around me who knows and outside is the amazing northern ontario woods again smack dab in the middle of an area where i've had some kind of freaky experiences that's all i'm going to say until another time about what's going on around this cabin because i want to get to the hoopa story but suffice it to say it's very dark out there and i'm alone well feels like deja vu for me when you think about it but all right shall we get started this is what i get to look at first we interrupt this broadcast to bring you an important message oh shut up let's just scan it right ahead pass the credits the opening slate there we go and a one two three go there's ever a time to have a bigfoot encounter to be right now this is creepy you can see what i can see which is not much because we're in the dark pretty much almost i'm walking in a thick thick blanket of fog i mean it doesn't get any better than this beware the moors and stick to the road i love throwing in uh random pop culture references to see who gets them you know what that one's from uh you can you can put it in the uh in the comments there and a quick comment on what i was seeing there that's one of the things that's always a little bit difficult when you're filming out in the dark and i want to point something out here you go back and watch the survivor man series until i was dealing with the necessity of filming myself alone and filming myself in the dark as much as i had to you don't see hardly any if any night shot night shot camera viewpoint until survivorman came along now let me explain why it's kind of a industry sort of thing when i started using the bells and whistles attached to the smaller cameras i needed a smaller consumer type cameras to shoot survivor man when i started using the bells and whistles or whistles that were attached to the camera like time lapse or night shot well the real cameraman of course i was a real cameraman before that i worked with all the bigger cameras and everything but the real cameraman they would turn up their nose at what they saw as the consumer bells and whistles and so they were trying to do night shot with weird other ways and trying to light something for night and the rest and they you know they just despised time lapse uh used in a consumer camera prosumer camera or a uh or or night shot but i found it as a it was a perfect way to actually tell my story i didn't care about the technology i had a story to tell and so i used those bells and whistles and you can look back from that and see where a lot of shows changed their methodology with the camera gear post survivor man that's all i'm saying [Music] [Music] well this is really interesting i must be looking at a really old version that i have because see that's not that's not the opening you're seeing that's uh that's the survivor man opening which this all got changed in survived man bigfoot maybe it's just in there for the timing i wonder what cut this is this would be interesting this is the hoopa native territory situated amidst beautiful rugged wilderness and home to the legend of bigfoot northwest california is famous or infamous depending on how you look at it but not for movie stars or musicians rather for its abundance of bigfoot sightings it's the location where roger patterson shot his controversial film footage of a bigfoot a claim he stood by until his death and a claim that his partner in the event bob gimlin still stands behind i'll just stop right there um yeah god that's that's such an amazing little town to go i think willow creek i think that was willow bluff willow creek anyway it's uh it's just that they they they did the right thing man they they just said okay if everybody thinks bigfoot comes from here let's just jump on it and there's a big mural on the side of the barn there that has bigfoot like kind of working off to the side with the loggers that sort of thing uh and i bought some bigfoot red wine there oh one taste and then i'm sorry guys but i dumped it on the ground it was horrid i don't know it's probably sitting on a shelf way too warm maybe it was good when it got bottled i don't know but oh my god it wasn't even fit to cook with so word to the wise if you see a bottle with bigfoot red on it be careful it might not be to your liking all right let's just keep watching this is it this is the place 1967 a film was shot here just a few seconds of film footage except the world of fire spiraled down a road of controversy it's still going strong today roger patterson went to his grave swearing by it bob so in this situation right here you can see that someone is filming me with the survivorman bigfoot i would there was no claims or of being alone or even worrying about being alone i didn't need to be alone i was doing something else i was doing a series based on the phenomenon of bigfoot so it wasn't survivor man and so max atwood who worked on survivorman getting like the beauty shots the birds and the bees and the gorgeous sunrises and time lapses well i would be out doing my seven days well he came along on the bigfoot shoots many of them anyway and uh this time he can be there and he can shoot me so we walk down it's a seven mile walk down a dirt road it's pretty steep steep downhill all the way down to the spot uh where i guess we have it right here where this film was taken giblin is still with us and he still holds that it was true that he stood there with roger patterson while he filmed that big hairy creature we come up the creek roger in front of me come around this big downfall tree and the creature was standing just about 30 or 40 feet on the uh on the other side of the creek and so roger's running across the creek trying to get focused and my first thought was yeah these things really do exist and then roger runs across the creek and he stumbled and fell down then he jumps up and runs over to a log and gets his elbows down on the log and starts stabilizing his health to get better picture just gonna stop her right there and say that this is actually the first time that that uh the pre-footage has ever been used people never show the pre-footage and i wanted to show that early footage we only ever see those few seconds when the creature if you will is walking but there was you saw them on the horse there and so there was this whole lead up to uh what was actually going on there and i don't know why no one else has ever shown it um i did speak with um i guess it was mrs patterson and uh got got the uh the permission and the rights to to utilize it and uh i thought it was thrilling to be able to show something that no one had ever seen before actually this is obviously bob speaking to me we went and we met with him real nice man had a great time he's uh he's a cowboy and he's still alive and doing well and i hope lives a very good long life and still stands behind this story so call him a fraud if you want call him anything you want he doesn't care he knows what he saw and as the saying goes that's his story and he's sticking to it i see this thing walking slow but it's covered a lot of ground quickly she got quite a little ways up there and i i said well roger i want to follow her and he said don't he said don't leave me here and then he tells me later why because the three different sizes of tracks down there and he thought that the other two might be right there well i wasn't thinking about the other two or nothing i just wanted to see this thing again to make sure you know to make sure i knew what i was saying there's two things here classic either they're telling the truth or it's a hoax there's no in between it's one or the other i've had my strange and weird occurrences out here but i've seen nothing that i can claim is a bigfoot i've only heard some strange things that i cannot explain and that keeps me digging deeper i'm not here on behalf of roger and bob i'm here on behalf of my own curiosity what the heck have i heard when i've been out in the wilderness on so many different occasions when i want answers i go after them and the answers are out here the native residents of the town of hoopa have been extremely gracious in allowing me to film in their area i'm just going to stop that right there by the way i also see some posts seems like i'm annoying a lot of you guys i don't know but i see some posts going why is he always going to talk with that dramatic voice it's filmmaking it's fun it's it's you know every time i've done a series i've gone into the uh the vocal booth to do my narration and i kind of pick a different voice why to go with the flow of the story i'm telling so with um funnily enough with survivorman uh i needed to kind of capture the same voice i had when i was out there you know what i used to do go into the vocal booth and scream into a pillow till i blew up my voice then read my narration and that way i had that rough area voice and don't sound as nasally as i sound right now with bigfoot my whole idea behind how i narrated bigfoot was i wanted to i wanted to be whispering in your ear uh i wanted to be really close to you and and speaking like this because it's an interesting phenomenon and kind of i think this kind of sound was going to work and for beyond survival it was a different tone all together so there they understand that i come here with deep respect for their traditional and spiritual belief systems up here everyone takes it for granted nobody nobody doubts its existence up here they all just it's here they've all had their experiences and if they haven't their aunt has their cousin has their uncle has somebody's had some kind of experience that they believe of a sighting of a big walking hairy beast and isn't it interesting that there are so many other towns you have the same thing clem 2 is exactly the same way they don't care what you think but almost everybody has some kind of crazy experience or their aunt or their uncle their mom or their dad or their sister their brother uh to do with this phenomenon and uh it's i don't want to say creepy let's just say it's compelling when you when you get into these small towns and you see the people's faces in their eyes they have nothing to gain from you and they just say hey you know this is my story take it or leave it for a long time i was like i didn't want to really talk about it didn't tell anybody he said i wanted to think i was crazy or nothing as i dropped down right here i turned on my high beams when it caught my eye and by the time i actually got my car to it it was already over and then going down my cousin came back the next day to look for any kind of prints or any kind of things he can see because i was pretty freaked out about what i saw i don't like to be in the woods at night not because i'm i just no [Music] dial so what do you do with that something like that she says what she saw she saw and maybe i'll do this here and now here's the way you have to look at something like that let's just say that um the person that is telling you they have some sort of crazy experience is a conservation officer get lots of those and they're a teetotaler so they say oh i was out there on the trail 15 feet away 10 foot tall hairy dude you know and then he walked off the trail and and left me there and this person is like a nose bears inside and out knows what a wolf looks like or a moose looks like what they sound like all of that and you know maybe it's it's your uncle or something and then i've heard people say my uncle said this and then they'll follow it up with something like yeah but i don't know i always want to stop you right there and go what do you mean you don't know well i mean come on i don't know if i believe it okay so then let's call up your conservationer conservationist uh conservation officer t toddler uncle tell him he's a freaking liar well you just said you don't know he wasn't high he wasn't drunk can't be mistaken identity he knows his animals now one of the comebacks is well it's delusion you can't argue the delusion thing i've said this commentary before by the way in other bigfoot uh commentary director's commentaries you can't argue the delusional thing because when someone says you're delusional the argument's over there's nothing to discuss they're not they're not going to see anything else other than you're delusional so i guess tens of thousands of people and hundreds of indigenous cultures are all delusional okay so fine we have to take that delusional comment and put it on the shelf you can't really answer that one if somebody thinks you're delusional that's the end of the story so mistaken identity nope um high or drunk nope delusional put that on the shelf and uh you know you're what are you left with well they're either lying or they're giving you an accurate representation of what they saw it's one of the other there's no in between they're either lying or they're telling the truth and they saw what they saw and so you have to step back and go but there's hundreds of them or thousands of them and then these indigenous cultures as well well okay well then either they're all lying or something's going on out there don't go into the woods at night the shadow man will get you that's what many native cultures have taught their children is there a real substance behind the warning or is it just a scare tactic to get their kids home at night pouring down it's calling for a lot of heavy rain over the next few days and i'm just trying to go in deep into the forest that's that's not good basically i'm just going to take myself down these uh these access roads for a few miles i gotta i gotta get in deep into the forest and start to put myself in the path of potential interaction with something at the very least this is some of the densest black bear habitat in california a lot of commentary about uh you know if you put a map up of black bear territory and a map up of uh bigfoot sightings they just mirror each other you know perfectly same thing for uh what am i looking for not rainfall but i guess rainfall same thing for rainfall if you look at a rainfall chart of north america and a bigfoot sighting chart in north america they tee up with a certain level of rainfall and oh where was i oh yeah and the other thing that you hear an awful lot is nothing ever happens when it's raining it's been true for me too when i've been out there and it's been raining nothing ever happens maybe they don't like the rain i don't know it'd be interesting okay so here this is what i know to be much more classic bear scott it's obvious as soon as i see it interesting here is it right beside it there's a small bit of scat it's different different consistency different color and then this big bear scat here which one came first i don't know but usually in cases like this it is it's all territory marking someone goes poop in one spot someone else comes along and goes okay well i'm going to poop on the other side of that log and there you go it's we can we can share this area or i'm just letting you know i'm here so though it's definitely two different types of scat side by side and i'm quite confident that the large pile is is bears cat you know you want to track anything in the wilderness start learning how to track animals it's one of the best most fun most exciting things and being able to determine to determine the age of a track is always one of the most important things i think including if you find scat poop you can you know be able to determine its age once you start paying attention and uh you know for example if it's steaming that bear is pretty close i don't know what the other pile is it's not mine pretty sure max had a lot of fun filming this yeah he's coming along the road here except for the rain all ready to see the tracks i mean hard to tell i mean whenever they're kind of big and toe print like they become suspicious right it's like okay got to be bear tracks of course you'd think but then you don't see any claw marks it just gets weird it's a track here the thing is like there's one track down there and the next track is is six seven feet away and that's a definite track ah wow i i hate how my own imagination gets to me in these times but i mean i can see what looks like toe prints power of suggestions got to be careful you know the front part of a foot digging as you go up the hill one of the individuals that a track may have been made by a sasquatch it's the distance between the strides it's often as long as five to seven feet that's key right however if it's in the snow is it something huge and bipedal making seven foot spans as it walks or is it a rabbit snowshoe hair jumping gotta know your tracks the thing about this forest i find interesting is at least in some spots travel through it it's not all that difficult let's face it any time i i've gotta shoot something to do with survival or or the phenomenon of bigfoot if the forest is wet and misty kind of adds to the ambiance big spaces between the trees flat ground there's something about this forest i can say seems to affect your psyche though i mean just it just it's felt weird being here ever since the day i showed up it just felt weird but feeling oh i was just about to say but feelings aren't facts and i do say it this aren't facts although they might be indicators just what do they indicate that's the mystery what the heck i think i can tell you see now check this out in terms of the power suggestion so we know why i'm out here right i see this tree and look at the way the the limbs are gouged and broken off i looked over here look at this it's the same thing again limbs all broken off to the very same height instantly i know that that bigfoot researchers are looking at saying that's a sign that's that's definitely you know a sasquatch breaking limbs maybe even ticked off but then i step back a bit look at the big picture a little bit and you know what i notice is that along the road there's this swath and it swoops right along there and then goes back out on the road and to me that could simply tell the story of there was a big truck here it was muckier than he thought it was going to be so he had gunned it and as he gunned it was like crack bash bash crack break and then the next tree same thing and then oh back up on the road so you see there are many answers to strange looking things that's the key here and that's what i have done with all of the surviving man bigfoot episodes is say let's just stay if not a skeptic but certainly a skeptic an open-minded skeptic let's just try to look at everything with wide open eyes and go wait a minute okay what else could it be that is normal that we know of but either human or bear or moose or wolf or what have you what else could it be and if you come up with serious answers of what else it could be well then you know you don't have much other than yeah it was probably a truck that came along and skidded in the mud and knocked those branches off all of the same size and i'm i'm suggesting that is exactly what was going on there but i'd like to show that out so that if if you do see something that you can't explain now you've got something max my second camera operator usually leaves me alone for these tricks but he's joined me to help increase our chances of filming whatever might be out here before we get far we spot what is considered to be by many a sign of sasquatch all right well i got to do it i got to stop and look at this huh uh the only rank oh nice cut right there got to hand it over to barry farrell my editor for knowing exactly when to cut something dramatically and we're back hiking on the back roads of northwest california max and i are off looking for signs of sasquatch and it doesn't take long so that's what's called a uh uh oh what is it called i must be tired all this fresh air in any event when you come back from commercial and you show what happened before before the break kind of thing i will tell you something when you see television shows that do that a lot like coming up next and you get 30 seconds and then you come back from the commercials before the commercial and you get like another 30 60 seconds that's the sign of a lazy producer a lazy director when you i i don't really like doing that i actually had to put that in after an argument with the network and i kept it very short and very minimal because your content should already be great enough powerful enough that you don't need to tease everybody of what's coming or relive what just happened before the commercial break it should it should be a trajectory that is rolling and and people just can't stop watching that's the sign of a good film producer anyway just my opinion tree brick this tree is broken off exactly the same way so many others have been ah the tree breaks there's nothing on the ground here to indicate a log or a branch coming down it could be a tree tree right beside it is unaffected would a human have done this not for what purpose a trapper there's none here rhodes department no snow load well this happened this summer this did not happen throughout the winter last winter this happened very recently you know there is another possibility of that tree break there hoaxing somebody doing it for fun somebody watching a lot of tv and reading up and hearing about things like tree breaks and saying hey let's break some trees i mean my prediction is that you know fake tracks and tree breaks and tree structures are going to start occurring all over the place which is unfortunate yeah you know i think if you were looking at video footage from several years ago the the the motivation wasn't there to hoax by so many but after finding bigfoot uh which just turned you know the whole phenomenon into a cultural punch line it became a thing so if you're around a park around los angeles to panga canyon or someplace like that it's pretty hard to think of anything you see tracks and stuff like that what when it becomes special is when you do a fly-in fishing trip to northern quebec and you land on a lake and you get out and and there's 18 inch barefoot tracks with six foot spans just in the middle of nowhere okay nobody went up there to put those tracks in the sand like a scene from the movie help by the beatles just to hoax you okay uh those tracks you're finding in the middle of nowhere are real tracks what they are is up for debate but the fact of the matter is they aren't going to be hoaxing tracks when you really are in the middle of nowhere who's got the time or the patience of the energy to go way out in the middle of nowhere to put some tracks in hidden areas by the one in you know 10 million chance that someone might come upon them and think that they're real so when you find those strange tracks or weird things happen out in the middle of nowhere that's the stuff you want to pay attention to not so much you know in a main camping area of algonquin park or golden ears park or topanga canyon or glacier national park not not there no you want to be way out there because it'll make a mockery and a joke of the subject matter more than it seems to already be which for wildlife biologists who want to be involved in serious research on the potential of just such a species it just makes everything really difficult even i myself i'm not ever going on record right now and saying i believe in bigfoot or i know they exist i don't i've never seen one but i've had some very strange experiences and without you know delving into all kinds of crazy theories the closest thing that i can imagine that's affected me is potentially this this species that's why i'm out here just want to dig deeper and find out i called it species i wish i'd said phenomenon because that's how i refer to it now it's a phenomenon it truly is real or not imagined or not delusional or not fake and hoaxed or not either way it's quite the phenomenon and that's what has me intrigued but how deep does the rabbit hole go the scientists should at least be interested because the potential is that if it exists at all this is a species closest to our own it can be a legitimate area of study even if it is mythology where does the mythology come from because unicorns and fairies don't leave tracks in the mud or knock on trees just standing yeah you know that's the thing eh science huh i mean how how imagine people like jeff meldrum john binternagel uh rest in peace you know so many different scientists they so frustrated that their peers won't even give this the time of day and when you have hundreds of encounters with traditional aboriginal indigenous cultures to start with and then thousands of anecdotal references you still got to go well at least debunk it you know isn't the point of science to ask what why how and just say okay to checking something out thankfully i'm not a scientist so i don't feel that peer pressure at all i could care less that's all i guess we're going over the map making sure well i miss this is the road here i don't want to miss the trailer i've got to head off on the right arm clear and distinct tree knock really loud i clearly heard it it wasn't just uh oh i forgot that happened yeah i treated them moving or something it was a it was like a you guys keep watching more wine in the woods which could mean absolutely nothing what's needed is a systematic study of the evidence for the real story to emerge i mean it's just really strange given all the information that i've been given over the time to find these and in this case you've got one going one way and one going the other way like they're they're beside each other and they're both broken in separate directions you know if it's snow load or a big wind storm they're always going to be everything's going to be all in the same direction so let's let's approach this whole tree breaking thing uh originally you know todd stanning showed me so many tree breaks and that's how sort of got into it that way other people talk about it as well and again whether or not you believe uh todd standings word for anything that's that's up to you i don't i don't really care uh all i know is the concept of the tree breaks what was fascinating about it was simply that aboriginal cultures used breaking trees to communicate you know indigenous cultures would would uh first nations people would would break trees in certain ways to say we came this way we're going to the big lake you know that kind of thing was very very simple communication that's what makes it so intriguing that you know if there were species that lived entirely in the forest and was incredibly intelligent incredibly stealthy and but was would communicate that would be a way to do it i've done it myself with people say you know you leave a log a certain way so the tree break thing remains fascinating because it also could be just snow load it could be what trappers do or snowmobilers do there are lots of other explanations for it it's when you find them consistently in a place that's way out there in a in a kind of break format that just seems too perfect to be random you know brought on by weather or snow although many cyclones it's a tricky one fun though that's not the case if i take anything from what other researchers have told me that's supposed to mean you're not welcome anywhere here stay out or maybe i'm welcome everywhere maybe it means that this would be prime prime time to happen upon any kind of larger wildlife thick thickness everywhere the rain so the my scent is down there's no wind and when i head out of here it's going to be pretty much good part of the way in the dark that's one of the things if you're seeking an interaction with a larger especially predator the more vulnerable you make yourself the more vulnerable you are because of the weather the sounds the smells the wind and everything the more likely that they're going to be interested in you interested in you and and come in close that's the crazy thing about some of this especially the phenomenon of sasquatch is you have to kind of make yourself very vulnerable that's something that i did way over in radium springs when i shot over was it radium springs no nordig alberta when i shot over there made myself incredibly vulnerable as a survival instructor didn't like it didn't like it went against every you know sense in my body of how to survive a situation you don't make yourself vulnerable you you want to have the upper hand certainly when you're in an area where there's large mountain lions cougars there's large black bear wolf packs you don't want to be in a vulnerable place and yet if you want to seek out an encounter that's that's what you do you become vulnerable it's yeah it takes some cojones let's just say that as i trek further along the back roads of the hoopa territory further signs of activity catch my attention it's like why is this one tree pulled over was it it's not it didn't just do this on its own and then if you look at the bottom all of the branches at the bottom have been been chewed and like all of the the leaves that's well known that this is a tree that is good for headaches to eat i mean perhaps if one were to conjecture on the wild side one could say well something had a headache and wanted to eat the willow shoots or just wanted to eat the willow shoots period pulled this tree down and nibbled away which by the way a bear could do the way out in the middle but what an area like this would do that moose do it all the time you know maybe just a big big storm see there's a tree break right here that's that's fresh all right see that tree break there that's super fresh that's not very long ago at all and it's got the classic formation of being a tree break and it's it's the size of a tree that i'm not going to be able to do with my bare hands nor any other man and yet how it would have just come down on its own like that i mean it does not make any sense and it's again pointed towards the trail now you know i had to be careful that i'm not drinking my own kool-aid in these situations but uh it's intriguing uh when you have unexplained phenomenon uh in the forest i've seen so many things in the forest they have really quite simple explanations you know wind or uh you know who knows maybe a porcupine climbed a tree and it and it was just not strong enough to take its weight and it snapped over you know or a bear wanted to get the the spruce tips at the top because they're sweeter and tastier and so broken over it's tricky again you look for patterns though of course patterns can be confusing too in my experience as a naturalist i can't really argue that weather or animals have caused these half-broken trees especially when they seem systematic only human hoaxing is an answer but not in the areas where i find them these signs if they can be called that show up again and again and curiously only in places that are claimed to be hot spots for sasquatch curious and curious sir and that's what i was always trying to do make sure that i didn't fall prey to my own as i say drinking my own kool-aid a power of suggestion sort of thing uh but i would always try to step back look at the big picture and and just you have to rule everything out you know it's like ah almost like that scene in walter mitty secret life of walter mitty where uh kristen wiig talks about you know you have to look at all the clues and work backwards i love her funniest actress and uh oh just yeah i have a huge man crush not a manchester i have a huge crush on kristen wink it's said that walking fast roads of sasquatch territory at night is a good way to experience an encounter and that's my plan i'll simply use myself as bait oh it's not that i'm tough or anything like that it's just that you know what i've got faith that i'll be just fine uh and uh you know i've i've run into enough wildlife in my life big game and uh i don't know maybe i'm just stupid but i think you're if you're there with the right kind of attitude it uh makes a big difference we have many miles to walk thankfully it's on on a dirt we're going to be spooky yeah max and i made a mistake on this one this is the walk back from the creek area where the shot the film of patty was shot and this is this big long walk back and yes i actually saw max just uh just last week and i said you know we made one mistake we should have stayed overnight right down by the creek but when we went down we didn't go down prepared at all uh and it was pouring pouring rain so much it was like oh let's walk back so we walked seven miles down and then we had to go seven miles back uphill and that's what this hike is right now and i wish to this day though that we'd stayed there overnight i mean we still went on to have some crazy experiences as you will see now there's ever a time to have a bigfoot encounter to be right now it's been a few hours of hiking back up the hill on the dirt road in the middle of bigfoot hot spot if we see one now we're only going to see a silhouette so hopefully he'll stand close enough that i can film a night vision camera this is creepy you can see what i can see which is not much because we're in the dark pretty much almost i'm walking in a thick thick blanket of fog i mean it doesn't get any better than this beware the moors and stick to the road movies and tv shows create an unrealistic fearful image of the wilderness whether shrouded in mist and darkness or lit by bright sunlight nature is where we all come from sasquatch or oma the traditional hoopa name may represent our link to the earth itself that is not a thing look up sasquatch names and there are dozens upon dozens of them more than a hundred oma is the name here siba i think it is northern manitoba and uh of course sasquatch and and it just goes on so why why do those names exist why is there over a hundred different name different names for a big hairy man that lives in the woods sorry big hairy species let's get that uh correct right now why if there's no such thing why do these first nations peoples who who in many cases did not communicate to each other did not interact with each other why do they have the same lore the same stories over and over and over again describing the same being i guess they're all delusional too most native cultures don't fear sasquatch they respect them that's a great drone shot right there midnight my dogs were barking like heck and uh i just figured it was a bear again so i took my 22 with me walked outside by the way if you want to see this whole interview skip over to the playlist uh survivement bigfoot uh there's two survival bigfoot playlists uh i think one is says like the series and the other one just says survivement bigfoot and his whole interview is there for you to watch and my dogs were literally lined up side by side looking up in this tree barking at this thing he jumped right in into my life right into my light he didn't look at me but i seen his whole body kind of a reddish brownish color kind of like an orangutan color man i'm thinking in my mind what the hell was that because it wasn't a bear it jumped out of the tree bears don't jump out of trees they crawled down i never did say it was bigfoot but what the heck else could it have been you see what i mean what do you want to do call him a liar if you want he did not get paid for this interview he really didn't have anything to gain for it he's not done anything else to gain from his story it's just his story and uh pretty salt of the earth guy so let's kind of take it for what it is let it be what it's going to be half the people watching this right now probably believe in ghosts or angels or demons or god or satan and yet something that's been bantered about for hundreds to thousands of years and shows up time and time again in historical references oh no no that's a bunch of they don't exist so what are you gonna do call all these people liars i guess over the years thousands of people have recognized the big difference between what they've seen and a bear broad shoulders jumping out of trees running on two legs staring them down with a human face that's another thing i know on the joe rogan show he did some stuff he showed black bears running on two lakes yeah but you can still tell it's a black bear you know and and sure they do it for a short distance but the stories of something huge and hairy running on two legs are vastly different by description than seeing a black bear go 60 feet on two legs completely different when a waddle right they're just waddling like that that's a lot different than what people see when they when they tell their stories sorry joe you know a lot of times the question is asked even if there was some sort of bipedal ape slash humanoid big hairy creature how could it live out in the bush and escape our detection i mean we're out there all the time aren't we don't we have roads and logging and things going on well you know what look behind me see that area that's one valley of tens of thousands of valleys that look just like that throughout north america could something live out there there was an intelligent creature who wanted to stay hid and could survive off the land and all it has to offer i could survive out there and so could a lot of other creatures boy i look so young there but the catch here is the term intelligent it would need to have a level of intelligence that is far more than most of us are ready to even consider because if it was nothing more than an upright walking ape well my opinion is yes we would likely have one in a zoo there has to be something more to them exactly if it's just a big ape we'd have one in a zoo they'd be shot and stuffed and all the rest of it there has to be something more to the phenomenon the burden of proof rests on the shoulders of those who claim that these creatures exist it doesn't rest on the shoulders of the skeptics so think of it like someone coming to your your door and claiming a new religion the burden of proof is on their shoulders not yours that's why if there is something that needs to be studied it's got to be studied by people with the skills and expertise the motivation to study it scientifically and not with junk science with real observation-based science that's what's required here yeah who's going to do that though then perhaps people will take the subject matter seriously yeah look at that shot there it was way off into the forest there i mean that's another thing like you know where is there room for them to survive well if you're asking that question because you live in chicago and you never see the outskirts of the city i understand why you'd ask that question come on out to the wilderness there's a lot of wilderness out there even given the logging and the mining and the roads there's still a lot of wilderness out there that's why there's so many ex-convicts out there that are still evading the law because once they learn how to survive in the woods they've got lots of places they can be and yes ex-convicts can also be something that causes various things that we think are sasquatch that you got to throw that into the mix as well i guess that is black-tailed deer and prime prey species in this area anything that's big enough and strong enough and fast enough to take one down and they go he's going to consider them prey and just what would a sasquatch eat well according to researchers good question just exactly what makes sense wild edibles berries fruits nuts and seeds mushrooms deer elk squirrels rabbits pretty much whatever a bear would eat right i mean just put some common sense into a common wilderness sense if you will again not knowing what the species actually is but assuming that it is biological and needs to feed and eat and defecate and procreate and all the rest then what's out there to eat well all of those species and fish too i should have put fish on that list as well makes sense and if they're super super stealthy powerful forest creatures then they catch what they catch they dig up what they dig up they pick what they pick and the hoopa area is incredibly rich with plant life and food go there you sources just in vancouver vancouver island for example part of the season is the island of blackberries they can't live off of just blackberries and they're delicious but you can fill up valley it's just covered in berry bushes and so you've got a season upon season upon season where different berries like these are wild grapes and blueberries and blackberries and gooseberries whatever's here they'll all come into their own at different times and if you're a large creature and you just want to pig out on berries this is the valley to do it no wonder there are so many bears here now they don't hunt the bears in the hupa reservation that's another reason why they're here but the main reason is to eat food like this for a long time get big and fat so anything as big as a ford a 650 pound bear can survive here there's got to be some serious food around 650 pounds i'm probably pushing him oh i found this load only yarn we stopped that right there uh 650 pound i think that's actually like the maximum record bearer i could be wrong about that maybe somebody can post about it the maximum record black bear and i think it was in manitoba about 650 so i should have probably held that to about 400 pounds and then i found this poop on the road this was the freakiest thing it's from the wild grapes [Music] and it's far too big to be human if there is such a creature a sasquatch existing in significant numbers in this area as the residents believe then this big pile of poop could actually be sasquatch feces well it kind of could so don't so stop laughing it was probably black bear it's just it was really weird on the road and it just didn't look like bear poop at all and it was massive right so uh if i remember correctly i did take a sample of it and then the sample got kind of what you call it destroyed and it just it didn't it didn't i didn't keep it properly yeah that's why i wanted to show that quickly in the show but i did take a sample of it it just didn't keep properly and there was no point in doing any kind of dna test with it by the time i'd sort of gotten it home if you will yeah you see that in my carry-on luggage yeah i don't mind is i got some sasquatch poop with me in northern california hides a small community a native territory called hoopa the residents here claim they live amongst beautiful wilderness wildlife and sasquatch this area up in here right over here this is the site of uh fairly incredible story this woman up in here alone she looked out her back window and saw what will only be described as a bigfoot a large hairy creature with one in each arm he had some of her bags from that that heaping pile of shed there and she she noticed him she called the cops cops came right away and as they came back here right where i am right now look into the forest here they said they could feel the ground shake with each step that the creature took one of the police officers drew his gun came walking into here stood right here right where i'm standing right now looked down into here and said he was overcome with just an intense feelings it was the the creepiest scariest feeling that he'd ever had in his life the hair up on the back of his neck one researcher asked him well did you did you look up and uh he said i didn't want to look up and those were the haunting words of a police officer it's a good story again talking police officers now right so uh was he lying a trusted member of the community he's far from alone there are many others with stories yeah i was scared of it but what are you gonna do you're going to start running running the where there was tracks there bigfoot tracks there and then some hunters went up there and turned their hounds loose on this one of the dogs got killed there was a bite marks on it but more or less twisted and torn too that one always freaked me out the most when the guy goes basically he's talking about his dog his dog was twisted torn in two and again that guy has nothing to gain and nothing to lose we just heard he had a story reached out to him he agreed to talk to us and that was the end of it he didn't get paid for that and uh man i'll forget i i remember that one that was a i was i just can't get that image out of my brain of them going off to see their dogs uh being grabbed by a a big hairy beast and being twisted and torn into yeah think about that when you go to bed tonight i had a really close encounter when i was um seven years old right here on this so this is anchor but i see my tape's about to run out so hang on gotta switch the tape on this flat when i i was going to the bathroom on 9 o'clock in the evening and our bathroom was relatively small but our window was like you know it's probably six feet up off the floor i looked up into the window and i seen this humongous arm reached right in and it almost touched me and arm was this i mean it was massive huge and um the skin was like not a black color but a really like a really dark tan color and i fell to the floor and i i couldn't holler i was like i was paralyzed and i laid there and and all of a sudden i like hollered for my my dad dad dad dad and he can run into the bathroom and he goes what's going on son and he see me laying on your pitch so you kind of pick me up and i go at that thing try to grab me dad i think try to grab me and so he runs back into the room and he hollers at uh you know my mom he goes hey see daisy give me that gun he goes my father ran from right here he ran out to back here he said he stopped and he said he looked at this thing he was standing about right at that plume right there that flume line right there but that was that was an old wooden flume line it was all open where you know the irrigation used to go through there and he said that thing turned and looked at him like that and he cocked his gun he's by the time he cocked his gun he said the thing was already down by the creek he said it was running that's something that you hear over and over again is the the speed is unbelievable when people have these experiences that they can't fathom how this this these things can uh move so quickly through the force so you know what i'm just looking uh i hate when that happens there's a moth flying around my candles and it just committed suicide oh no there it goes i hate when moths commit suicide my fault for having the candles there but his fault for being inside if it's a he i don't know how do you tell the sex of a moth anyway if there's an entomologist out there perhaps they can answer that question but i digress when anchor's speaking you gotta remember he's relating the story from childhood and again he has nothing to gain from me i didn't pay him you know he's not looking for notoriety or fame and it's one of those things where he tells the story as if it was just like yesterday and how many of us have stories from our youth that we can tell as if it was just like yesterday he said it took one jump and it jumped the crick all the way across over the top the creek one jump to leap that creek and that crick is a pretty big crick and um it ran up the side right there and by time my father got there it was already gone anchor was a good guy nice guy what are you doing thousands of people credible respectable people with nothing to gain sometimes much to lose by coming forward and telling their stories of sasquatch encounters are they all lying delusional the continued and increasing eyewitness accounts are going to be a problem for the skeptics but people make mistakes imagine things and once they become terrified they can deduce that bigfoot is the culprit inker was taught by the last existing hoopa shaman and he's my guide into the hupa territory into areas considered to be sacred and like so many natives i've come across on this quest to find the truth about sasquatch he reveres them and he's in awe of them most north american native cultures are not laughing at bigfoot they're waiting for their return hmm yeah that's the thing you do run into difference of opinions amongst native cultures some do fear them and they say leave them alone stay away others would like the connection to happen again most of them i think actually that i've run into say you know let's just leave them alone you know just stay away but one way or the other they all still don't question their existence or reality [Music] deep in the heart of the hoopa territory in northwest california i'm hiking the back roads and trails in search of answers trying to find one more piece of the puzzle called sasquatch i started out looking for what i was told was a big ape now i'm not so sure anymore yeah you know i made that comment because i changed while making this series you know i went out looking for a big smart ape and i went through a metamorphosis from experience to experience to experience that was led me away from that pretty quickly and that's what you have to wrap your head around if you keep thinking oh are they talking about a big smart ape well we would have had one in a zoo you're right that's why that's not what we're talking about tracks like this it's a relatively small track so it could be just something from you know the boot of a human but still when you take a look at it and look at the shape of it and and i try and stop it i miss that hat i lost that hat and anger gave it to me right now so if there's ever time i should be able to make a good strong impression to be right now my there's the other it's too close to tell that's a good thing to do as well when you're tracking is to try to make a track beside the track and see how deep down you can get when you make that track and if you if you can't get down at all then perhaps the track was made by either something very heavy or when it was raining so it might mean that it's an older track or maybe you can get down just as much as it uh so something to do as well is to try to make a track beside a track and that helps in the aging of a track that really is probably just a boot print it's just that it's got an odd curvature to it that doesn't necessarily signify boot but maybe it does it's full-on needle in a haystack when it comes to looking for it so it's kind of like you gotta you gotta kind of jump into the haystack and hope that you land on the needle so you just don't know how it's gonna happen when or where that's nothing you know what this whole phenomenon can't be forced it that's that's what frustrates everybody you can't force it it either happens or doesn't it is or it isn't it's going to happen the possibilities are many that's right i stole that from never cry wolf it's that moment you feel absolutely fine the whole way and you get this feeling something's watching you so this next little bit here got pretty freaky max was with me an inker and it got strange i saw as i said i saw max last week and we we actually remembered it and we talked about it because i'll get to it because some strange stuff happens that to this day we can't explain recently i was quite a long ways away from here in northern manitoba canada and there they call it sabe in northern manitoba the seven teachings that they have each animal represents a different attribute perhaps one animal might represent courage you know that sort of thing and and there's wolves and eagles and bears none of them are mythological there's no thunderbirds they're all regular standard animals that you have in the forest well one of them is right alongside wolf and bear eagle raven and the teaching is associated with sabe is honesty i find that interesting because for those people who claim to have seen a sasquatch they have to often say look i don't care what you think i'm being honest this is what i saw yeah i always loved that uh the sabe and dave cochin uh northern winnipeg northern manitoba uh that's their teachings is is uh you know say wolf means you know whatever courage and beaver means you know whatever and and el eagle means whatever and then there's sabe like in the middle as i just said there like it's in the middle of their teachings it's it's in the seven animals but they're all just animals that exist there's no thunderbirds or crazy mythological creatures just animals that existed in the middle is isabe representing honesty this is old teaching of theirs why is bigfoot mixed in with beavers and ravens and wolves bears i don't know but they are and let's get something straight by the way i still have people saying well where is he uh with the thought that it's only one thing this is not the loch ness monster we're talking about here uh we're really exploring something that people estimate could be as many from as as five to thirty five thousand when i say people estimate i kind of meant me that's what i'm estimating in the species others have said no no they're like 65 000. but think about it if there were 35 000 of these living in north america but they lived in groups of ten super smart super stealthy living in the forest well there's sixty thousand black bears in ontario alone you know uh and and how many tens of thousands of mountain lions and cougar you ever seen one you know i've seen them in fact i bumped into a cougar once but it's all incredibly rare now if sasquatch species is only 1 20th of that for all of north america living in small groups and units that bury their their dead and communicate and are highly intelligent that's how they could be out there that's what we're talking about so we're not talking about one creature here one one guy yeah that's the other thing is if if you're stuck on like where is he or it's one bigfoot well that's that's once you get into the phenomenon you get past that one really real quick if you're not past it uh i don't know go watch tick tock videos or something walking around photobombing everybody so in case you were still stuck in that mode now you know for many native cultures sasquatch is a spiritual being and a real flesh and blood creature it's both but it's much closer to the human than an egg with abilities beyond what most scientific researchers are willing to even talk about i just want to talk about finding the truth the whole thing that's the only way that's the frustrating part you have to let them come to you if they exist you can't go find them this tiny pond is a site of great spiritual significance to the hoop of people they often come here to do ceremonies and they feel they are never alone the sasquatch are said to be here with them always there have been many reports of loud strange screams heard here so what are we talking about an ape a neanderthal a race of humans something paranormal quantum physics or just one big myth looking for answers is a slippery slope there's an old adage don't ask questions you don't want to know the answer to as we work on shelters in the rain max and i find much of our camera equipment failing in ways we can't explain humidity normally just shuts things down but our gear is malfunctioning in ways we've never seen many researchers claim sasquatch have the ability to affect electrical signals and then as if on cue inker comes running from the forest after hearing some loud knocking i have to yeah this whole circumstance was weird you know i i'm i'm happy to write it off to the storm it's just it was strange you know and was incar playing us could have been could have been for sure uh to what purpose i don't know just to get a rise out of us and make it look funny on camera i'm not sure but he came running in and you know you look at somebody's face you know either they're fantastic actors or uh they really heard something and he heard knocking and this is me going over what i did here and this is my style you say there's something over there okay let's go look when anchor said he had that feeling in the back of his neck i didn't but i'm getting it now so our camera equipment continues to fail this was the weird thing for max and i we've we've had cameras in the rain a hundred times over you know and uh they shut down from humidity but we were getting these strange electrical interferences that's what i will tell you we've never experienced before or since while the knocking also continues and in my mind i'm deducing that it does in fact sound deliberate but i'm refusing to believe inker that it's not just a tree in the wind yet it sounds like something inside the tree hitting the tree whenever i turn away my ears can hear it but the camera mics are not picking it up many of these cedars can be hollow from the bottom to the top that's the thing you know these little cameras are not going to see things in the dark that your eyes see hear things in the night that your ears hear it's really tricky to capture a lot of this stuff on camera that's not an excuse it's just technical truth it's very difficult to capture a lot of this stuff you can hear it but you put the microphone it's like unless it's full on doesn't pick it up same thing with scene you can see put the camera nope can't focus on it and anything large could live inside act i do admit it's a strange sound here i wish you could hear the knocks what are you going to do you got to take my word for it i was hearing them and it was just it was so windy and so rainy that cameras wouldn't pick it up a lot of trees here that's the end of that gopro i'm not normally curious about sounds in the wilderness but this one is different sounds inker was so sure it was a sasquatch i just want to prove him wrong that's what i like to do with all of this let me see if i can prove you wrong probably did the most of that with yes todd standing so eager to see every tree break and every mark in the woods and everything every sound is another hoop by a bigfoot and yeah i wasn't buying that in a lot of situations and i said so on camera and that's the thing i like sort of getting involved with this and and you know if you invite me out because of your bigfoot story you have to be prepared for me to say yeah that's an owl that's a raven you know and if i can't say that i won't but if i can then i will that's a crazy thing i'm hitting on this tree i'm banging on it it was making all kinds of knocking i started banging on it just like i mean my little hand hitting this massive tree and all the knocking stopped wind was still blowing rain was still pouring it should've just kept knocking if there's just like a natural thing going on it just stopped when i was there that's strange i can't hear another single sound of tree noises in the storm only the sound coming from the inside of this tree and the timing of the gnomes sounds deliberate and that was the truth it was weird it it just seemed to react to me you know like i go over to it stops knocking stay there as long long time go away from it starts knocking again i don't know you tell me the last act for now i've backed away from the trinars even though they continue at what seems like deliberate intervals we have more important matters our own survival on this small mountaintop the rain is turning to wet snow at times and without a fire we'll have a miserable night yep it was going to be miserable toilet paper's not burning we needed to fire bad one of the times crazily enough we weren't there for survival but we were getting into a situation max inker and i where it's like we need a fire we need a batter we're going to be in serious trouble it won't even burn no tents wow i don't know man i know they want us here it's not such a flippant comment after all with inker everything in the wilderness is observed and accepted on a spiritual level he believes we're being tested at a skill both of us should be very good at and with the fire failing so much and the relentless reign inker and i and even my cameraman max are just thinking let's get out of here but our internal spirit is keeping us trying anchor scrounges for dry material but everywhere is drenched this is where it gets weird our lighters are empty and i'm running out of matches this is indeed becoming a test of our character i wasn't really trying to be dramatic there at all this was actually going on it was like man we should just go home but it's getting dark and so you know we're kind of stuck here uh and uh it was a real test and let's face it i know how to get a fire going with the tree knocking still sounding deliberate and separate from the storm winds continuing only 100 feet away match after match fails and now i'm out and left with only a small bit of coal and no dry wood to add to it but coinciding with our lowest moment emotionally the reason why i'm even telling this story is because of what happens next and seemingly in the nick of time suddenly only 50 feet from us a massive tree falls down it makes us all jump revealed in the tree fall is a huge supply of dry wood so dry that it powders easily it was raining so hard that water was bubbling up from the ground that's how much rain was happening and yeah it's just conjecture right it's raining of course a tree falls down in the rain it's rotting but this tree fell down in the nick of time when anchor and i refused to give up we were trying so hard it felt like being like we were being watched with that knocking and this tree falls down and provides for us all the fire we need to get warm and dry and get a fire going with the new dry wood i'm finally able to coax out flames the wind continues as does the rain but the tree knocking stops the second i get the fire to take is that drama dramatic storytelling sure but it is what happened all the knocking stopped though the wind stayed the same the rain stayed the same as it had been for hours you get the fire going and the knocking stops inker has his own perspective on what just happened anchor's thoughts were that the creator working in tandem with sasquatch observed us in the testing and blessed us gave us an opportunity to survive it's the kind of perspective that requires an open mind and a big picture view of the circumstances individually many events don't seem so special but when you string them together only then can you see a connection kind of like it's a conspiracy right if you look back you can see the thread through everything when you're in them you can't see them and there's a lot of that when it comes to this phenomenon it's kind of stuff that i can't really talk with joe rogan about because joe wants he wants to be hit on the head by a sasquatch right so if you start talking about subtleties whoosh it's gone he doesn't have time for subtlety and no offense joe but you got to slow down and really deal with the subtlety to see what's going on out there and when we when max and inker and i step back step back and look at all of this you have all these things you piece it together and it's either silly conjecture or something the dangers of hypothermia two skilled bushmen can't get a fire going and so we're tested a test of our character to not give up and just go home there are strange deliberate sounding tree knocks from the moment we arrive and suddenly as if we had proven ourselves worthy a big pile of dry wood is dropped at our feet exactly when we needed it the second the flame becomes strong enough to hold the knocks stop even though the wind and rain did not and our cameras they malfunctioned only from the moment we arrived at the lake and then they began to shut down only to work perfectly fine the next day you do the math are all these events connected do they hint towards something spiritual or within the realm of quantum physics when it comes to bigfoot or just simple coincidences due to weather and therefore meaningless inker doesn't think it was all so meaningless in fact he believes the whole affair was full of meaning what it all does mean will be revealed when the puzzle is completed that right there is what max saw on his camera and i will say again we never had any camera issues before or after but right then and there all through that the cameras were going crazy so if you put all of the anecdotal references together you get the conspiracy answer all i can say is well that's what happened why it happened that way who knows purely coincidental or maybe or maybe not but right now i'm alone in a little cabin on my third glass of wine having watched this freaky version of survivorman bigfoot and i have to go to bed wish i wasn't alone

Channel: Survivorman - Les Stroud

Views: 979,342

Keywords: Survivorman TV Series, Les Stroud, Survivorman, Survivorman Les Stroud, Survivorman TV Show, Survivorman TV, bigfoot, sasquatch, california, roger paterson, bob gimlan, willow creek, survivorman bigfoot

Id: vCN7lf6XdtY

Length: 86min 19sec (5179 seconds)

Published: Fri May 28 2021