Survivorman Bigfoot | Episode 1 | Alberta | Les Stroud | Todd Standing

ugh [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] you know for 25 years i've trained in survival taught survival practice survival of course film survival essentially that means that out here i've had to exist i'm pretty much in the same manner as a legendary creature we've nicknamed bigfoot find food water build shelters stay hidden so where do i stand on the subject matter i've seen my share of the unexplained out here but i'm a skeptic i need to see it to believe it and that's what i'm here to do now get as close as i can if that's possible to the legend known as sasquatch this is a remote area in the foothills of alberta a northern paradise crisscrossed with trapping lines survey lines and access roads for hunters i've enlisted the help of a big foot tracker named todd standing he claims to have had multiple interactions with what he believes to be the legendary creature known scientifically as giganopithecus he says they're here i want him to prove it to me thousands of examples of anecdotal references including confirmed dna evidence are not enough for the world to accept their existence and it's not enough for me either i need to see one [Music] the way i see it there's two ways to ask the question number one easy way you believe in bigfoot that's one way to ask the question there's another way to ask that same question do you think it's possible that a bipedal ape or a bipedal hominid species could exist around the world in extremely remote locations or not so remote but thick enough be responsible for thousands of anecdotal references from rock throwings to vocalizations to sightings to supposed film footage do you think that could exist that's a different question that doesn't require belief or faith it requires answers that are scientifically based it requires analysis of thousands of examples of evidence based on years of research it requires an open mind with a skeptic's eye it requires throwing away preconceived notions and starting at ground zero well for me this is ground zero of proving or debunking the reality the myth of the wild man of the forest yaoi yeti sasquatch bigfoot i can come out here full of skepticism that's fine but if i i do believe that if you bring out here the in the intent that you're up against something you know yeah if you're up against them reverses them then it's the wrong way to approach it it's but it's also what i've taught in survival for many years you know you have to respect what you're dealing with you can't fight it you can't fight it you can't fight nature you're not up against nature you are trying to exist within it you're trying to survive and that survival requires respect humility and paying attention and uh it's no different in the quest for sasquatch and some sort of connection or experience whatever that might be it's going to require the same thing on july 27 2007 while filming a scene from my survivorman alaska show i was distracted by noises in the bush about a hundred yards away if you watch me in these scenes you can see times when i momentarily look off into the bush on a number of occasions i was wondering what the sound was i'm used to sounds in the bush so i wrote it off as a moose or a bear and carried on shooting the scenes of making a grass bed for my shelter eventually i finished capturing the footage i needed and shut off the cameras as i walked towards my shelter i heard a hair-raising extremely loud sound that could only be described as something like a great ape grunting at me i've heard many bears grunt and this was nothing like that what's more it repeated it four more times very loud while i stood frozen in my step when i made my move to grab the camera it took off through the bush and sounded like a freight train breaking trees as it covered many hundreds of yards in seconds those sounds have haunted me to this day and then i'll do this opposite direction over here so we've come to a bit of a high ground and by virtue of your whoop we've said hey just letting you know we're here right yeah basically it that's it hooping has been referenced hundreds of times throughout the world when it comes to bigfoot stories todd has a theory about markings found throughout this area where two trapping brothers claim to have been scared out of the forest after visual contact with a bigfoot they refused to return he feels that the systematic and seemingly uniform breaks in trees are signs of communication from giganopithecus they were marking territory for the trappers part acceptance part warning you know i've broken a lot of branches in my lifetime just doing survival yeah i've had to bend over a lot of trees bro break a lot of trees cut a lot of trees yes and i'm just thinking about this and i'm just you know it would need to be a a powerful hand a grip that snaps and breaks like that see i keep trying to excuse this by snow saying well if there's like three feet of snow crystallized on the top and the wind comes in and then snap right but that's not usually how it works you know the trees can bow over and they might just sort of stay like that i've seen that over and over again to be just out in the open like this you know and to be snapped like that yeah it's like it takes hands i'm just actually starting to really feel that now thinking of the different trees i've seen and being able to all of a sudden i feel like i can recognize the difference between a tree that is purposely broke broken off and and put over versus there was lots of snow on the top and it bent over in the winter time well i'll tell you it's going to open up my eyes to uh sorry to tree breaks whenever i'm in the wilderness now every 100 yards or so we find tree break after tree break all pointing in the same direction all very conspicuous and not feeling like a natural occurrence at all they're too systematic yet i have to be careful not to fall prey to the power of suggestion i'm not interested in flirting with conspiracy theories a strong man is not gonna do that i've worked with enough branches and trees to know that ain't gonna happen there's gonna be cut marks in it ax marks saw marks and again now we're looking at the age of this as well don't forget the h yeah that's not a moose break and it's not snow either again if it was snow it would be like that because i've seen this it would be march 5th and it's a big heavy snowfall the next day it goes up to plus five the rain comes in but then the wind comes in all those heavy trees just like whoa and then you hear snap crash bang but there's always 10 20 30 50 hundreds of them all down not just one if the thought is what is out there for a great ape to survive on so well grizzlies are massive yeah huge there's lots of them and they're out there surviving on berries and roots and tubers and grasses and sedges and rodents and fish same thing yeah [Music] in 2010 four days into a remote region of the rocky mountains less than 12 hours after a freak snowstorm that provided ideal cover todd was able to record this footage it was this imagery that convinced me to utilize his field knowledge in this quest for answers regarding bigfoot one thing is for certain this image is not a blurry image of something running in the distance it's pretty clear you can see what i see so we're left with only one of two possible answers either todd has set this all up and it's some kind of elaborate hoax and he's a fraud and this is a fake and he's dedicated his whole life to perpetrating this hoax or it's not a fake it's real so what if this is real here in a powerfully beautiful stretch of the foothills of alberta i'm looking for some answers if you look at and listen to the overwhelming amount of evidence pointing to the existence of giganopithecus it becomes hard to ignore at least the possibility but like you i need to see it to believe it todd and i have really only been out here for a few hours we walked most of the afternoon late afternoon deep in checking out signs and uh just getting a read on the area now we're about to bunk down for the night and this time we've got a sleeping bag a pad to sleep on we're gonna sleep out in the open before we can even get settled before the sun set and at this point todd's convinced that we've got not one but potentially two potentially four sasquatch moving in and i heard it too i heard movement in the bush over there i heard moving in the bush over there so we've kind of gone back to our normal activity we just you know if we're being observed if this is the situation well we're just being normal casual we'll see how it goes we got a full moon rising as well the night here is just dead dead calm you could hear a branch break from a mile away right now and it's incredibly bright the the moon is full and just i mean it's nearly as bright as day out here todd has uh gone into the truck to sleep for the night and uh i'm just left out here alone just to see what else if any other instances of of sound or activity occur nothing's happened it's been just calm all night there is one incidence of uh supposedly of a man who was uh actually picked up by bigfoot in his sleeping bag carried off and uh spent two days with the bigfoot family and uh and escaped something to think about why do so many thousands of trappers hunters and conservation officers and the like claim to have seen a bigfoot are they all hoaxers are they all delusional the answer no matter what it is is out here essentially today what's gonna happen is todd and i are gonna head off in another direction do some basic tracking any kinds of marking signs tracks that are different from what you'd expect there really is only one way to truly get in and track wilderness creatures of any kind and that's to get in there i think the key here is in my situation if i'm looking to survive i look for the same things and this this is a fertile area it's a really good place for survival and that's why there's grizzly moose cougar wolves and according to my friend mr standing sasquatch we'll keep looking right now over there a tree structure that is so significant i don't think you could have made it without big equipment or ropes really as a human being all right so we'll go have a look you see it already we'll go investigate it okay i'll show you why okay it's so significant as we approach the structure it really isn't something you'd notice if you were walking by there doesn't seem to be anything exceptional about the area it's not high ground or low ground there's no nearby creek or specialty food sources of all the places why build a structure here i need to see if todd is on to something that few if any before him have discovered [Music] let's give giganopithicus the benefit of doubt for now it would be the closest thing to a human in intelligence that we know so why wouldn't it make markings and build structures to communicate so the first thing you'll notice is the cross section is about 14 13 feet in the air all these trees are from a different direction but some of them like this one right here that's thrown upside down ever seen a butt of a tree 15 20 feet in the air like that and even better than that if you look at this one over here on the left it's suspended in the air look at the butt two feet off the ground it doesn't happen naturally this this structure is over 30 years old probably more like 50. that road that we walked in on is 10 years old you know how far it was to get in can you imagine this being here 30 years ago when there's no road this tree is bent in it's actually physically been bent and twisted into this structure to play skeptic i'm trying to say okay let's throw the bigfoot notion out the window okay let's say natural occurrence and um i i yeah i can't think of a natural occurrence to pull this in all we really have to work with out here is the weight of the snow and wind storms and rot the snow couldn't have done this i know that wind wouldn't have done this i know that rot wouldn't have done this i know that there is one missing link there is one last thing that could be left here and that is what about human or humans well i work with trees all the time i maneuver trees around i use dead trees i use live trees i put them in the position i make shelters i make signal fires i make markings as a man i could i could build this the issue is the level of difficulty is extreme there's age to the trees um and that's very very difficult to fake and it's aged in position these trees were in some cases possibly dragged and put in place in other cases pushed where they stood and and the ones that are pushed where they stood i take a look at them and the bottom is old if this was done even within the last two years it wouldn't look like this which which tells me that this thing has been here for uh quite some time and uh which tells me that the the potential for this to have been faked is small i can get close to the feeling of survival in a place like this which means i hope to get close to the reality or the non-reality disproving the sasquatch and when you come and look at a structure like this i'm challenged i'm challenged to disprove this i'm challenged to say ah todd was in here last week he had some buddies they put this all into place this is pretty powerful the whole point of my trip is to attract a sasquatch it's said that leaving them gifts does several important things it lets them know that we're here for them that we know they're here and that this is their home and in recognition of that we leave them the gift all of this is done with the intent of building a relationship of trust and perhaps even getting them excited about our being here todd uses apples as the gift and we place them high enough that deer or elk can't touch them and anything else should leave obvious tracks that's where we're headed and just keep seeking out signs walk through the area be calm and casual in the area and whatever is here be it grizzly be it squirrel be it bigfoot it'll know we're here and it'll make its own assumptions on how to deal with us or not like different examples of the same species of wildlife sasquatch too have reputations that run the gamut from friendly and even helpful encounters to aggressive behavior that includes grunting screaming rock throwing leg pulls and even abduction todd feels that the sasquatch in this particular area must have some affinity to humans since in fact they seem to have accepted the trappers that were here before even if their very appearance alone was enough to scare the men away for me it always comes down to getting right out there deep in the danger zone a place where i am vulnerable enough for a creature such as this to want to attempt contact now we're very clearly following a well-worn trail it's not human trail by any respects it's gonna be entirely wildlife see these are the things to follow we just got this perfect indentation that's one of the benefits of tracking in mosque marks that get made repeatedly stay for a while and give us something to follow here [Music] we continue to explore the trails as well as the unbroken areas of the forest signs of such a controversial subject are going to take a concerted effort to find and i have to be careful i don't want to fall prey to the power of suggestion todd is one of the best in the field but what does that even mean yet he like thousands of people before him swears to have seen the creature clear enough to have no doubt and i just want to erase my own doubts [Music] the tree bricks are still just a theory but like it is when i'm out surviving you have to be out here to get it theory though it may be things do seem to be lining up you feel that um they point in the direction that is they're okay with you being yes but not behind that's right or i'm standing basically that's right don't you go where the point is it's possible that this was a communication of acceptance for the trappers who worked this forest another tree break and again same way hannah big one too well look at that see we have a uniformity here that's actually starting to freak me out a little and get unbelievable because this is clearly a trap line he's cut his trail through here clearly i can see that you know this break just like all the others it points in the same direction it's saying essentially the same thing your side is okay my side's mine don't come this way and this one follows a trap line all the way through to enhance the possibility of our success we continue on the survey and trap lines and we stop and hoop specific calculated points a few minutes after doing our communication hoops we're stopped in our tracks by an answer did you hear that i heard that that was a bigfoot right you said you want to take nothing for granted that was a bigfoot but that was it that was a whoop yeah i heard it very clearly that was not a crow crow that was over that way i heard it that was the bigfoot hmm that's the first time they've ever whooped back to me ever here and that's what i was talking about earlier you nothing is cause we'll always be walking there'll be something going on we'll be talking but you just heard that didn't you no i heard it clear very clear and did we both we both went at the very same time yeah let's just take a look at this from my perspective right now i've come out here with the purpose of skeptically getting closer to a sasquatch and discovering what that means and what's possible and i've done that with bigfoot expert todd standing so we come out here we hike for hours areas we look at tree breaks we do our whoops these are things these are these are characteristics and ways of being that todd has discovered over years and years of study will be effective for connecting or contacting or having experience that involves a sasquatch okay so i'm i'm i'm down with that and we do it we get out to the end we're way up high i mean it's high and we do our whoops three and a half minutes four minutes goes by and we both are stopped suddenly by the uh well what can only be described as a return whoop now the reality is hoax okay how in the hell did todd ever get somebody all the way out there and time it for me to land here and uh and then have them whoop back the way i whoop you know obviously just impossible um was it a bird well potential is always there but we know our bird calls pretty well and just one little loop like that just like mine off in the distance and nothing else that starts to take away the probability that it's a bird so let's just see what happens this time let's just do our whoops and sit quietly for three or four minutes just to see and if not we carry on i'm just going to wait quietly here for a couple minutes and see if we get the same reaction we did last time [Music] hoops in the forest will not be enough for me i need to keep pushing i need to go in deeper i need to stay out here overnight and alone i need to see this for myself the answer is out there sounds i've heard in alaska ontario alberta british columbia washington are they all birds and bears or something else as we travel we find more and more evidence of things that at the very least seem very much out of place for the natural forest okay i just want to show one thing you know this whole thing about todd showing me these structures it reminded me of something and it's this i had spent a lot of time in northern quebec working with cree elders teaching kids wilderness survival methods and one of the things they showed me was that in fact they utilized branches and structures to indicate a lot of different things especially traveling they might set up a branch in a certain way another one would be leaning against it like this and you come along and you go oh okay well jimmy came this way and he's suggesting that over that way is where the good moose hunting is or depending on where it exists on the branch everything indicated something different it was a way of telling a story to the person who comes along behind you so when you think of this that humans have been doing this for a couple thousand years here in north america this was their methodology to take branches break them bend them in certain ways so that people can behind them can get a message it starts to make the tree structures that we're looking at as ways of ways for for a sasquatch species to to indicate something to give a message a lot more plausible is it so far-fetched that an intelligent species an upright bipedal walking hominid might do the same thing and that all these tree structures that todd is talking about are part of that process everything is normal looks as it should look in a forest and then you come upon something that just seems abnormal like snow load her rot didn't do this so what did no i know todd's gonna tell me absolutely this is a tree structure the base is clearly old nothing fresh start from the bottom right so we've got the single tree up the middle and it's still alive okay it has a whole bunch of trees tangled around it twisted around and yet it's younger than the trees that are around it tune number two uh gets a snow load and falls like that okay acceptable all right tree number three is gotta be the suspended one okay if it was snow load then tree number three fell um before anything else was there right it fell i don't know how it could have fallen i mean it'd have to fall in between the fork branches and then it would have to be here long enough to rot off the pieces on either side and remain there suspended and tree number four is likely to be the big burnt one that goes across but it's more like it's shoved up through right if that's the case then why not these other trees they're just the same size why aren't they snapped over so taking into account the fact that the tree up the center's new or like it's still alive and then you place all these other branches i'm just trying to i can't imagine the complexity it would take for a winter storm you know it's march it's heavy it's wet the wind is blowing to make all this happen it's like it'd be like throwing puzzle pieces in the air and they land in the form of the picture they're supposed to make various structures here are less than two miles apart why are they even here what purpose do they serve to whomever or whatever made them and how many more of them are there the age of the trees and their positioning removes the possibility that todd set these up as fake let's call this sasquatch csi well so far the evidence suggests that something not humans not weather not rot not and made the structures but what back at base camp we prepare ourselves for a night that starts out calm but we'll end anything but there's no wind tonight it's perfect you could hear a mouse moving if you listen closely but that's not what we're listening for and at the moment todd and i are just sitting here by the campfire kind of telling campfire stories and uh sure enough just heard a good solid sound you can tell it's wood sound not far just a few hundred yards from us likely i heard that yeah holy [ __ ] i'm gonna turn the camera so my microphone's pointed that direction three there's three [Applause] okay we're not hearing just one thing it wasn't just one thing now we've heard what what it just sounded like someone hitting one against another todd popped his mouth a couple of small gentle hoops so i've got you positioned here at the camera so that the long shotgun mic is pointed in that direction i got chills going up my spine something big yet stealthy is out there and it's no bear it's no moose and there's more than one at least three creatures make noises of swishing bushes and tree branches little knocks and pops deep thuds in the ground that you can feel even though you can't quite hear them why is there no better footage of these supposed creatures i'm a filmmaker i have the gear skill set and experience to capture what needs to be captured but like survival itself you have to be out here to get it to know what it's like to hear a small sound that makes you turn or a large sound that makes you jump yet you don't catch it on film and leaving the camera on non-stop pointed exactly in the right direction is not an option so i'll wait look and listen but to what at this point i can't explain but there is something out there tonight i can think of how many times i've heard those sounds i've heard them before perhaps not is all as it seems in the vast wilderness areas that still cover this earth perhaps the confirmed dna evidence of unknown ape species found in north america the sounds and sightings and the prevailing native lore actually mean something after all if there were only a few dozen or even a few hundred and they were intelligent enough to hide they could certainly do it out here [Music] now we're gonna head off into the woods here and uh investigate where we heard the three sounds last night look around see if we can spot any prints at all i mean the sounds we heard were distinct there was no wind there wasn't creaking trees it was definitely not a grizzly or cougar or anything like that no ungulate no hooved animals now what we heard was something else we're gonna go in and see if we can find some tracks you kidding me the apples are gone damn we might have new prints here and no signs of the apples at all they were here apples are gone i'm seeing new impressions because that looks to me like a big foot track right here come here and look at this truck heel impression and then there's like holes oh yeah okay so we start back here and it ends up here gosh it sure does look like an impression it does doesn't it my foot would have made that in your foot wouldn't have made it and if we do the depression test it's the same shape but really slender but look at the size of it it's huge that's not a hoof it's not a hook print no that's bigger than anybody's footprint would be checking out the uh tree structures places where we put the apples just to see if anything's been taken and indeed they're gone from down down at this one this is the one right across from our base camp the apples are gone and prince maybe i know the print that i saw in the in the sphagnum moss was far too big for a human to make was definitely not an english it was not a bear actually the only shape that it had was the shape of a large human-like foot you don't have the shape of a bigfoot beauty of tracking right now with this kind of sun is the sun is hitting the ground on such a sharp angle that any tracks any impressions they just pop out at you really easy to see the shadows okay this is kind of freaking me out here i recognize that the camera won't capture the look of this track the way my own eyes do but no animal i'm aware of could have made it and there's no reason for the moss to grow indented in this manner that's freaking me i thought this is the way it goes it's got a definite shape like a human foot and then the the toe end of it there's literally holes i see the exact same track here as i saw over there look slender heel what the hell is going on long right toe holes and look how close he was this is close you know he was looking right at us those tracks were not there the day before it's time to go in alone that's how i do my best work anyway where i'm going defies all of my usual logic for a good place to survive and be stationed it's a small deep little pocket of a place far from our base camp the last place i'd want to be if i wanted the upper hand but then that's the point to make myself as vulnerable as possible so that whatever is out there that might be interested in me feels safe enough to come in and check me out whatever's out there i want contact the way we're setting ourselves up and i i understand where where todd's coming from it's the opposite of what i would normally do i mean purposely placing ourselves in the position of vulnerability i mean this is this is this is a the kind of positioning i would not put myself in in an area like this when i'm concerned with uh good healthy population of grizzly bears black bears and of course cougar but every once in a while i gotta just stop and think man what am i doing what is this anyway but you know what i know what i heard yesterday and i can't explain it not within normal explanations uh you know i think i think it's oh you know ravens can they can kind of make whooping sounds that's very true they can they're also somewhat masters of mimicry but um that's not what i heard yesterday now i heard my whoop give him back at me three or four minutes after i made it and last night by the fire yeah there's no explanation for what we heard last night by the fire i don't have one and i spent most of my life out here i start to think back to all the different sounds and things that i've seen and heard when i'm out on survival missions especially what happened to me in alaska and also what happened to me in northern ontario i know the sounds of moose wolves bears birds and these other experiences they aren't any of those so what are they we're following dozens of very strict rules set out by todd one mistake and these elusive creatures could disappear into the vast forests without a trace in 1995 i spent a year living in the wilderness and on one occasion i listened on a calm dark night to two heavy feet walking closer to my shelter my wife at the time heard them too we sat and listened until it came so close that we called out just as we would to scare off a bear it could only be described as sounding like a very heavy man walking but we were in the middle of nowhere with no one around for many miles the walker stopped when we called out it turned and just walked away i didn't see it but i know it wasn't a moose or a bear so what was it if it happens again tonight i'll be ready this is the strangest version of being out here i've ever done that's for sure surrounded by grizzlies cougars who knows what else here i am you know this is absolutely by far the last place that i would normally leave myself for the night the last place completely vulnerable right at the bottom of a bowl everything around me is high ground cougars love high ground the whole point is that coding mr standing so do sasquatch and we're giving them that i'm giving them that i'm giving them i'm giving [Music] [Music] you can put out trail cams use infrared technology to spot one even hunt them if you want you might get lucky but i doubt it i'm looking for contact if there's something out there i'll find [Music] it [Music] you

Channel: Survivorman - Les Stroud

Views: 1,338,718

Keywords: Survivorman TV Series, Les Stroud, Survivorman, Survivorman Les Stroud, Survivorman TV Show, Survivorman TV, Survivorman Bigfoot, Bigfoot, Alberta, Bigfoot encounter, uncover the truth, fictitious creature, Bigfoot researcher, Todd Standing, beasts of the wilderness, sasquatch, survivorman full episodes

Id: b52-6Eg2Ajo

Length: 43min 53sec (2633 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 10 2020