Survivorman Bigfoot | Episode 8 | Texas & Utah | Les Stroud

as you can see there's more danger in these woods than just hogs he's definitely uh feeling threatened at the moment got that mouth wide open every time i take a step a little bit closer he's getting himself ready to strike now if there were predators out here that were as adept as i am let's say at swinging a stick his lunch [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] i've been digging deeper into the phenomenon known as sasquatch bigfoot i assumed i would spend most of my time in the western mountains but the legend persists throughout the entire continent and here near the texas louisiana border i find that stories abound amongst those people who truly spend time out on the land right now i'm in east texas forested area private land as invited by my host jeff stewart he's had some strange encounters including two face-to-face sightings now mind you his experiences stretch over the last 35 plus years sort of teaming up what i know about the wilderness and survival combining that with the last number of months going at all sorts of different places with researchers wilderness enthusiasts and advocates for particular subject of study i've got a good friend of mine wilderness survival and tracking expert alan beauchamp brought him down from canada because i'm back once again in a hot spot an area where hopefully the possibility exists that i can elicit an interaction with bigfoot with each new quest i've acquired more gear and here in texas i finally get a chance to put all the technical ideas into action what we have to leave out there is a number of different methods so we've got 16 hidden cameras let's call them because i've got four fake birds and each one of them has a camera in it deer urine fox urine it's a hollow shot tube and it's very sharp in the bottom we'll have cotton batten and then black tape holding that cotton batten and that collects the dna sample talk to me about placement now where do we want to start setting all of these things up with everything that we're doing if we cause a mass disturbance by this or a huge scent pitcher we left on the ground what i'd like to do laterally sporadically on the last ring around it put them in in spots where they're up against the side of a tree where you've got um maybe a micro environment where there's a good breeze and stuff so the scent is always going to blow by i think the idea of the ozone i think that's good i think that'll work for us i think we've offered um a lot of high tech a lot of low tech all the while we're still in the open with the fire being large okay we're right here the no zone is my idea reasoning that if the species is highly intelligent they may be able to recognize camera equipment even camouflaged so give them one small safe area where there would be no cameras or hidden devices a free space for anything that's curious about me what i've done is i've set a team in motion here i've worked with alan beauchamp to determine what kind of stealth camera gear i want to work with where i want to put it the team is out just deploying everything on trees water and bushes all around so i'm going to be part of that process the good thing about this zone right here is my campsite is is over there so behind you and with this trail that runs right underneath me here right along through here in the bushing behind it's a good zone for something to come up if it wanted to spy on me this is a great spot for it to come and sneak up on me be able to see me but also be able to duck out of the way so i think the way this is going to work for me to set a camera up high in this case shoot down get a nice wide angle so hopefully if something comes from in behind lands in here wants to get a look at me camera will trigger and i'll get a shot of it night or day i'm putting out dozens of hidden cameras dna traps and audio recorders uh i'm right on the trail here scuff this up a bit and uh bury the dna trap if something were to come along here and step on this if it was large they probably wouldn't even feel it there's some blood or sweat it'll go into the cotton as well it's on the other side of this i can take this then get it to a lab and do a dna test so what i've got is i've got the camera up in the tree it's looking down here at me and at this whole area not only perhaps might the apple bring something in might step on the trap but also it's on the runway and maybe just some natural travel and it'll step on the trap all right so this time what i have is a motion triggered light now it's actually on at the moment because i triggered it this is well within the the zone of i'll call it the zone of stealth where we're putting all kinds of cameras and lights and dna traps and i'm going to set this guy up right here so if it goes off i'll know something's really close so pretty straightforward light down here and that will turn off but then it will trigger on again if something moves within this area here so the idea here is really quite simple all around me is what i would call a solar circle the campfire being in the center 75 of it is set up in a sort of entrapment kind of way but then over here in behind me all up in there will be the no zone the safe zone i'll put no cameras a tiny little bit of low-tech with some thread and some gifting but no cameras nothing at all so if i'm assuming and this is what i think i i want to do is assume some sort of major intelligence then this is like saying okay this area here it's all yours yours to play with if you want to sneak up on me you've got this whole zone here you can sneak up on me one thing's for sure if it makes use of it then that speaks to me as well that's a different kind of evidence if everywhere else is left alone and there's all kinds of big footprints by large human type shaped feet in the area where there are no cameras and no traps well that's just something to consider something to throw in the mix to try and figure out the pieces of this puzzle for now i'm still in the stealth mode i'm gonna set up this baby [Music] i'll try anything to confuse and conquer whatever might be out here that's smart enough to recognize camera equipment my next step will be to hike around the woods and let everything out here know that i'm here too if anything what i'm doing is i'm introducing the area to me sort of like i'm here here's my scent here's my energy i'm here anything that's here that's paying attention won't miss me i'll stick out like a sore thumb a 900 pound omnivore needs food and there's plenty here to eat in the texas woods hogs are a big concern in these woods they're thick in this forest and they represent two things a serious danger and serious prey if there was something large and strong that wanted to eat a hog he'd have his pickens in a place like this so as you can see there's more danger in these woods than just hogs and the rare cougar he's definitely feeling threatened at the moment got that mouth wide open opens closes slowly you can see the tail just do its little it's almost like a fake rattle because i'm not hearing anything but he's doing it it shows you he blends right in you can step on one of these guys without even thinking about it without even noticing you're walking along wearing thin small shoes thin socks or something like that bang if i put my boot out towards him with the bottom of my boot the closest thing to him if he is going to strike that's likely what he's going to strike at now this is not something i say you should go and do i'm just suggesting that if you're stuck in a situation like this that the bottom of your boot is one of the safest places you have on your body big thick rubber and that's what the snake sees but he also represents one other thing he's a food source for me right now one club bam he's done i've got dinner now if there were predators out here that were as adept as i am let's say at swinging a stick his lunch [Music] several years ago here in east texas jeff stewart came upon something eating a dead hog walking up i could see that there was something there but i thought maybe it was several raccoons wadded up eating the entrails guts as i got closer probably maybe 20 25 feet it stood up [Music] 15 years old 1986 camping trip down on the sabine river in panola county and we caught a bunch of catfish and we'd cleaned them skinned them and everything at this old ham pump well that we had down there on our place cooked our fish that night we ate our fish sitting around the campfire and this immediately you know put me on edge because i'm not thinking bigfoot or anything like that i'm thinking this is somebody that's trying to scare me this is somebody that's out to do no good to a 15 year old kid out in the middle of the woods it looked more primitive and didn't say nothing just looked at me and it takes three steps backwards toe to heel and which is very important because people say oh maybe you saw a bear bears can't walk toe to heel bears can't walk backwards if they do it's very clumsy it's very odd this was fluid this was smooth and about three steps it got into the edge of the woods and it turned and it walked away hurriedly on two legs never went down on all fours just things walking on two legs the whole time i'll just never forget that that smell that sight that and that feeling that i had this was scary exhilarating and makes you doubt everything you ever learned in your life that's real and unreal real or unreal phenomenon or myth either way you can't deny thousands of similar eyewitness accounts do we write them all off as lying and delusional or are we the ones in denial judging from our couches [Music] i think i'm going to start here put out a bit of a low-tech trap i've got some small black thread we're talking really fine thread here it'll be really hard for me to find actually i'll string this across the trees and what i'm going to do is three different lines i've got three different sections so that if something is going to get through this area they're going to actually have to kind of know the threat is there and duck around it well that is anything that's either seven feet tall a bird flying through a bat flying through or a branch falling off a tree all tracking and evidence gathering begins with ruling out what it isn't before jumping to conclusions about what it might be scientific objectivity is not served by ignoring the question of sasquatch by ignoring the mounds of evidence that accumulate year in and year out at some point we've got to do the math and come up with some real answers okay this one's going to strike you as a little bit odd but bigfoot researchers and enthusiasts swear that this this works now you may have heard about gifting with uh food say apples and of course the claims and the stories that the apples are taken or the food is taken so taking a cue from some friends of mine what i have here some marbles put ten marbles here and one of the things i'm going to do here is actually arrange them in a bit of a purposeful design what i want to do is make sure that i photograph them so i can come back and compare and say yeah nothing's moved at all or this is really bizarre all right here's a spot here that is just nice just perfect because it's hidden up in the woods here two four six eight ten i'll get a record of it on film so i know what it looked like the way i left it i can check later to see if it's changed if sasquatch is only mythical then shouldn't the description of it vary as widely as the hundreds of different names given it by the native cultures of this continent the comanche of texas called them pianupits described as a terrifying cave-dwelling ogre that's very tall hairy fowl smelling and has big feet in fact a lot of bigfoot researchers disagree on so many things but one thing they don't disagree on is that the best thing to do is just to act natural be in the places that are reported to be bigfoot hot spots or seem like they should be but when you're there don't do anything special because 90 of the interactions take place happen by accident [Music] okay so here's the deal i'm to stay in this tent alone and quiet the whole tent i was cutting on the outside of the tent so i've got holes all the way around so that i can see out of every side but not much can see me and wait and listen pay attention to the forest around me become very alert to all the nuances of my surroundings my team is a few hundred yards away they got a campfire going now they are taking the role of a normal bunch of campers sitting around by the fire talking telling stories but they're also monitoring a seismograph a parabolic microphone night vision cameras and so they're taking care of all of the stealth equipment it is raining that changes things blankets a lot of sounds but what it might do is give something [Music] let's say uh more guts make something less timid it might come in even closer one of the greatest blunders of researchers who try to have some kind of interaction with a sasquatch is that they are not scientifically gathering data the documenting of information might be the one action that actually interests mainstream scientists without it someone's word or going on anecdotal references is not going to convince anyone that all of this is anything more than delusional nonsense one exception is the olympic project in washington state for the past seven years they've been collecting data based on in-depth field research the olympic project is an association of researchers anthropologists investigators biologists and trackers committed to documenting evidence of sasquatch through scientific methods through comprehensive habitat study dna analysis and game camera deployment their goal is to obtain as much information and empirical evidence as they can with the hopes of one day achieving actual species verification even with 50 different camera setups we got nothing all night which doesn't prove or disprove anything i've been told that i'm fiercely determined well then i'll use my determination to get to the truth out here big hairy monsters don't scare me and no one group of bigfoot advocates or naysayers will make me their poster boy i'll stand in the line of fire and turn this into a race for truth between me and sasquatch where i stand in all of this i stand right on the fence between skepticism and acceptance trying to expose both worlds not to debunk them or slam the bring or bring them down but to say look let's look at everything honestly it's truth that we need here i'm searching for the truth of this subject matter the phenomenon of bigfoot becomes being just as much about all of the characters within this scale that are researching it as it does about bigfoot itself and i think that's actually unfortunate because then the focus is taken off the subject matter and put on to the people who are out there messing with it bigfoot is absolutely a contradiction it's a 10-foot monster that we can't find you know advocates are looking at markings on trees and in the ground and simply wanting an answer and it's right to want an answer to what these different things are what this phenomenon is all about those are good questions to ask why not it's not like unicorns or leprechauns anymore unicorns don't leave tracks in the ground leprechauns don't leave blood on the trees and hair samples but bigfoot does science needs to take a good look at that and question it as well in a real way with real science we need a combination of empirical science and evidence-based science but the evidence has to be scrutinized in a very tough fashion the subject of study is legitimate because if it's all mythological where did the mythology come from what's it mean in the end bigfoot symbolizes the power of nature it's kind of like the equal messiah it's like the ultimate ambassador for green spirituality if bigfoot survives nature survives every myth reveals a truth about the culture that created it what does sasquatch reveal about us [Music] after a couple of uneventful days trying out all the stealth surveillance equipment in east texas near the louisiana border i've opted to move to another area location where there are similar stories to the ones in texas but in some of these stories the bigfoot encounters are less than benign and sometimes even dangerous often boasted that where i'm headed is in the top three of the most beautiful places on the planet it behind the beauty lies a dark secret legends of bigfoot encounters that end fatally for the humans involved through all my searching for sasquatch a handful of places stand out as more dangerous than the others oregon is one and also here just south of the uinta region of utah where the shoshone have a name for it too so beats meaning cannibal giant there's something different out here some odd things up here happen in fact right here we've had sounds it's just you can't explain a lot of times like a baby crime and screams that just uh make the hair stand up on your head you know it ain't really a growl but it's different you know for one of the calves uh somebody mutilated it cut its ears off its eyes out and uh part of it's the back of its head and then they went into the behind in and to cut that out there was no blood around it but the way it was mutilated it was almost surgically you know what i can't see i have a hard time believing but i know there's something there and it's got me uh i'm a lot more leery when i go out i mean really leery this particular canyon local ranchers figure is haunted here ungodly screams is the way they describe it freaks a lot of people out just up here rock paintings there's elk deer there's also strange-looking creatures too strange larger people you can see here things got horns and pretty large feet you know how this creature is depicted in native lore and how it relates to sasquatch or bigfoot you've got to recognize that there are thousand-year-old rock paintings spread throughout north america that depict large hairy upright walking human beings it's you freaked myself out that's just a fly buzzing but it echoed in the rocks here oh brother they are depicted right alongside of normal animals wolf raven eagle you name it bear coyote so something has been going on here for thousands of years long before we got here and long before someone coined the phrase bigfoot i want to find out what's going on here the scary stories don't unnerve me one bit and i've found an ally in kelly shaw a man with a family history of bigfoot encounters like me he's just searching for the truth of the matter here in utah i've jumped from texas to utah in my search for sasquatch this spot here is an area where uh my guide here kelly shaw they casted a massive track and had a what he called bluff charges bigfoot breaking branches just up in behind them just up in here you see any kind of a track in this that's the exact spot we dug up that uh cast last year that's the exact spot so that's what that is that's the divot that's the divot from us digging it up that's exactly where it was at and i was just in shock when we saw this one i mean it was i can see yeah anytime i find a big foot footprint i'm always trying to blame it on something else you know okay is is this a couple of cows or an elk or a moose double triple step in and i couldn't explain it away i had to accept that it was a bigfoot footprint a lot of the ranchers think these all these canyons around here are haunted i for one think that bigfoot activity is being mistaken for haunting because some of the screams are very haunting like a woman in distress the whoops the wood knocks and then when you when you get an intimidation display and it's hard to call it a display because they don't actually show themselves but it's pretty intimidating when they rush the tree line and keep pacing back and forth stumping and snapping stuff off kelly's version of an intimidation display sounds exactly like what i experienced in alaska many years earlier it was how big were the footprints they were 17 inches long by uh almost eight inches wide this was like the narrowest part of this snow okay and it uh you could tell they tried stayed in the dry spot and it crossed kind of like a linebacker sidestepping across the snow okay and then uh headed off that direction um we found a bigfoot was sidestepping right here doing this little shuffle sidestep i've heard of them doing this that is just a massive you can see the toes yeah and you can see my fresh footprint right next to it it's a very warm day today the snow is melting quick so it must have made this when the snow was a little bit colder kelly wouldn't normally camp out in the research area especially not alone so naturally that's what i'm going to get him to do with me we're going to set up in a spot here that the elk like to bed down and all of this area where we are right now is just they've found this has been riddled with uh with sasquatch tracks big ones 19 inch 17 inch 14 inch this branch here this has got that whole sort of break twist thing going on and uh this happened during the nice season it didn't happen during snow load or anything like that this was done uh very physically done in between tracks that uh the team had made coming into here snapped and twisted and and uh pulled down so we're camping just up here i've got the stealth tent this time and then about 75 yards this way you see another depression area where um they call bigfoot highway where they have an awful lot of tracks so we'll let the dark come in and see what happens because apparently we are smack dab in the middle of the hot zone i can't just expect an encounter anywhere the claim to be hot spots are key to having any kind of interaction so right now i'm i'm halfway between where we are sleeping tonight and what they call bigfoot highway down there what i want to do is i've got kelly's permission to test out one of these pheromone chips these are the ones that it's a combination of gorilla sex pheromone and human sex pheromone apparently whatever that means i don't know but it stinks so let's find out what happens oh oh stinks well let's just make it obvious shall we [Music] so something else i want to do is kind of create almost like a like a camera fence i don't have a lot of the trail cams but i put the camera here facing this way they won't like to come past the cameras so i'm told so if they don't like to come past the camera they're either gonna have to go across there or across there which in a way would be better for them because it gives them the height advantage they're up above us they come along here they're down below us and all reports are they don't normally do that unless they feel super comfortable or aggressive and maybe that gives you something to worry about let's put this guy up though all right so strung up along the way i've got four trail cams all right one here this one and they're all i've kept them obvious they're just out in the open and uh it's got one here this one is pointing to this spot right here and i've banged in hammered in the pheromone ship there and then further down there's another camera also pointing in this direction then we're camping then there's a camera pointing in this direction pheromone chip further down and then another camera pointing in this direction so all the cameras pointing in one direction like a camera fence you know so anyone comes along here we'll get it anything that comes along that's savvy to cameras we'll be forced to go up behind the cameras which is all in behind us all where we are right here and as far as the pheromone chip goes i haven't got a clue it's really it's really just trying something anything to see what could happen sun's creeping its way up to the top of the hills so it's gonna be dark soon i've been told that having teenagers or kids around can increase the chances of an encounter with sasquatch the deal is that set up in camp with uh kelly shaw he's got his tent i've got mine in fact i did a little change this time just to shift things up see if anything happens i just heard like up there anyway what i was going to say was i brought my son get a week off school and use them as bigfoot bait see if see if they come in because there's a teenage boy hanging about you know the thing about a situation like this and why i like working with uh kelly is he's not out to change the world he's just simply out looking for answers to his own experiences of which he's had many and his family he comes from a generation of people who've had bigfoot sightings so he's out here just to prove it to himself nobody else kelly's case he's seen things he's seen darting upright furred creatures you know walking these hills this hasn't had a close-up visual encounter and neither have i he's a little further along the road than i am as far as being sure that they're here he's still not 100 sure and that's why he continues in his search this is a great spot it just looks like if you could you know get your eye mine's i look up there you just think oh yeah you see something up there a lot of wishful thinking i think you're gonna look up there and see some eight foot tall hairy guy running down the hill of course if he was running towards you then i don't know how long i'd stay there and watch them if this is a game then it's one that gets us out in the wilderness connecting with nature if interest in sasquatch is getting people out into the forest during an era when it would seem that interest in hunting and fishing and hiking is at a low then so be it in this way bigfoot proves out its reputation for being an advocate for nature for being a symbol of our own connectedness to the earth and so in the absence of the city noises kelly logan and i settle into the forested area of utah's nightfalls otherwise known as the witching hour for sasquatch so we've got a couple of those glow sticks that you crack and then they stay lit for a few hours and we're going to pop them inside our empty drinking bottles we're going to put one out here by pheromone chip and this pheromone chip has a has a has a camera on it so i'm just gonna leave it sitting logan and i are uh holding up in one tent and then a little ways away uh kelly shaw is in his tent and keep our ears wide open while we sleep tonight uh this is the morning we wake up to i myself didn't hear anything last night and needed kelly logan uh actually said he woke up in the middle of the night and heard growling up in this area up in here said he knew it wasn't me because i was right beside him and he knew it wasn't kelly kelly was over on the other side and just heard like that uh two or three times and that was it other than that no real action into the night we were visited during the night by this mountain lion caught on kelly's trail cam he came within a few feet of our tent we're gonna hike around these hills for the day and into the night let the night fall on us see if we stir up anything in both texas and here in utah i'm seeing the signs hearing about the evidence but i'm not feeling any closer to a real experience i'll keep searching trying anything all right so we've uh we've stopped and uh the boys have hit it back on the trail i'm going to give them a good bit of distance between me and them maybe 15-20 minutes i'll wait here it's not on my own i want to walk back alone you know turn myself into bait you know make myself conspicuous looks like a mule deer so something caught a mule deer here could have been bear could have been human could have just died old age but its bones have been picked at so that has this has tooth marks that i know researchers have been looking for the the tooth mars tooth marks that look like human teeth not fangs a definite teeth mark on this i think we'll take this back these are the kinds of research details that are starting to make a difference scientifically once you collect the data and you rule out death by wolf bear human or mountain lion you start to narrow down the answers to the questions of what is going on out here whether or not one of those answers leads to sasquatch is another story that's what you would see when you first got here was more all sort of green we seen it right after it's been made it looked like everything was really fresh and you could still smell um the pine from yeah the fresh snaps right okay so this spot here when kelly and his team were researching this area earlier it was during the summer so snow load is ruled out and you can see right up at the top you've got branches broken off i mean and nothing broke them off there's no you know cliff rocks that have come down or super large tree that knocked them down and and the ones beneath them are not broken off so that's really odd down here all gathered together like this and when they were here you could still smell the evergreen boughs sort of bedding sites that people are claiming belong to sasquatch when one researcher takes you to a so-called tree structure it's easy to be skeptical but when they start showing up in wilderness everywhere it becomes a curious find indeed same same thing again what you've got happening is they're almost like woven at the top the bottoms are not root structures there's no root structures at the bottom yet they're still shoved down about six inches into the dirt and lined up in this strange manner now get to see these sort of structures in different places this is the first time i've seen them sort of like this either way this is a deliberate structure these didn't grow like this and they didn't fall here like this and it's not snow load none of those elements will do this this is more deliberate that doesn't say what it is it just says what it is the meaning of these structures is really just complete conjecture it's hard to figure out and know why they're put like this so why are they here and if they are indeed done by a species claim to be sasquatch bigfoot then uh what's their meaning territorial are they marking something are they sending a message these structures are popping up all over the place what's going to have to happen now is going to have to be careful that humans aren't doing the structures and that's where it's going to start getting confusing so it's going to be about trying to discern the jokes and the hoaxes from real deal what i've decided to do is a bit of a it's a bit of a night hike a different hollow here this is one of the main ones that ranchers that's haunted they hear quote unquote ungodly screams coming out of this place naturally that has my interest peaked my curiosity set on fire here so i'm gonna walk up it four ways walk out in the night time i'll go a mile or two up the hollow and wait for the dark to come in i'll keep facing this search head on until i experience an encounter with what who knows but i'll be ready seems sufficiently creepy with the desk coming in so i'm going to uh i'm going to wait it out wait for it to get dark and then a couple miles in so i'll wait for it to get dark and then i'll slowly make my way out a lot of this seems to be about going into a spot trying to stir something up and then seeing what happens a lot of the stories come from that people go on a basic hike and they walk out and on the way out they start getting hassled rocks thrown at them tree branches thrown at them something shattering them 50 60 yards away in the bush just out of sight that can throw rocks uh all the way to the parking lot all the way to their car that story repeats itself all over north america let's see if something follows me out of this haunted canyon it's a haunted hollow i guess that sounds cooler anyway the haunted hollow what throws rocks out of the bush at people what screams in the night what are thousands of people seeing that is over eight feet tall with massive shoulders covered in hair not fur and runs upright like a large human these questions persist regardless of the couch skeptics when i walk all i hear are the crunches crunching my boots on the snow have to stop and listen and this is the tricky part you know sometimes you're sleeping in the bush at night and i'm laying there and i'm trying to listen to the sound trying to see if i hear something and then oh oh i hear something all of a sudden what's what's happening is you know what i'm hearing i kid you not i'm hearing my beard rub on my coat but if i'm half asleep and i hear that it sounds like something moving the bushes 200 yards away easy to fool yourself out here it's getting dark enough i'm going to need to put on my headlamp soon can't really see where i'm walking at this point not really sure if headlamp will help to attract something to me get a sasquatch interested in me if they exist or scare things away or let a mountain lion know exactly where he needs to pounce on me [Music] it seems everywhere i go has its its own set of crazy stories running the gamut of seeing big hairy apes to alien abductions out here in the wilderness wilderness is a place i like to call home so i think what i'll do is i'll keep coming out here i'm comfortable out here alone and in in deep and dark in remote places if there's something going on out here i'd like to see it i ain't quitting yet let's see what i can find jeff stewart of texas knows what he saw kelly shaw believes his father and his father before that wally is like me he's heard some strange things out here so go ahead and sit on the couch and cry out skeptic you're not out here this is where the action is and who knows maybe someday something big and hairy will throw a rock at me and i'll get a glimpse at whatever it is that's causing all the fuss and then i'll finally have my answer whatever that answer might be [Music] so you

Channel: Survivorman - Les Stroud

Views: 1,829,260

Keywords: Survivorman TV Series, Les Stroud, Survivorman, Survivorman Les Stroud, Survivorman TV Show, Survivorman TV, bigfoot, sasquatch, texas, utah, Survivorman Bigfoot, survivorman full episodes

Id: HvuXc2CNUN0

Length: 43min 44sec (2624 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 18 2020