Survivorman Bigfoot | Skunk Ape Lives | Full Feature

[Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] on november 6 2011 my life changed forever that day i had an encounter with something that i thought would never be possible i had an encounter with a skunk ape and it completely altered the course of my life now i have been interested in bigfoot since about the age of six but i never thought that i would come within a few feet of one the shocking realization that an undiscovered primate still roamed the woods of north america and currently was standing within 20 feet of me threw me into an obsession with proving this to the world at that moment i knew what many others already did that these creatures are in fact real over the next eight years i dove headfirst into the rabbit hole speaking to every eyewitness every expert and digging up every piece of information i can find on the internet what you're about to see in this film is the fruits of my labor a collection of the best eyewitness accounts and evidence that i came across on my journey so i invite you to listen to this with an open mind and at the end i'll ask you this one question does the skunk ape live this good gib is a regional name for a sasquatch or bigfoot in the state of florida florida skunk cape can be told in many different ways from the florida native americans to appalachia the colusa the creek it was called the sand people domingo people the wild men and of course the skunk ape it could be anything from a relic hominin uh to an unknown creature most people expect it to be an unknown animal at the typical cryptid but many of my colleagues feel that it could be some human species that which would mean like a neanderthal or a homo erectus or a homo heidelbergensis or something along those lines that has survived over the years i personally don't really have an opinion as to what it could be even though i have seen it i can't tell you for a fact what i think it would be absolutely it wasn't until the 1940s that the name skunk ape was coined and believe it or not the foul smell of the beast wasn't the reason for the name there had been a creature spotted in the panhandle that had a white stripe down its head just like a skunk and the term skunk ape was born however it wasn't until the 1970s that the skunk ape made it into minds of people across america when an encounter involving police made national news and left residents looking towards the tree line back in 1974 two sheriffs with the west palm beach sheriff's office claimed to have shot a skunk ape off of the c-14 canal ernie milner and marvin lewis were both out on a call after midnight they went into a field where they were followed by two skunk apes they saw them both and one officer turned around and just blindly shot towards the eyes that they saw staring at them the creature yelled it ran off they followed it on foot as far as they could the next day they went back they saw that the creature had run through a barbed wire fence that they were able to obtain hairs they sent the hairs to their lab and it came back as an unknown creature they at that time decided to send it to the fbi lab in miami to see if they could come up with what it was and interestingly the lab specimen disappeared now these two sheriff deputies were not the only people to ever have claimed to shot a skunk ape in 2013 i met a man who claimed he did just that hi i'm marcus morgan i'm from perry florida i'm jim grimes i'm from taylor county back in 1983 i shot a skunk cape [Music] me and my buddy decided we was going to go for a ride out here in these very woods we left right just well it was good before dark and we decided we was going to go fishing we brought our boat and we come down here to the river was going to set out some cat lines we went down put the boat in we went down the river was setting out lines jim had told me that he kept having this feeling that something was watching him and he kept hearing stuff started hearing footsteps stuff around me and felt like i was being watched so i didn't think nothing else about it but i couldn't see anything or anything didn't hear it no more so the day progressed and we got back here fooling around throwing the football and messing around waiting until dark till the fish started biting and stuff and we were just goofing off and um it got dark and i decided well hey man i said why don't we go full rides if we can you know see something i said cool man you know we got the gun let's go check it out we were coming close to you can see a curve coming up and there was something in the middle of the road me and jim just kind of looked at each other and we're like what is that we got out went around to the front of the truck and we're kind of looking and that's their gym he goes uh dude look at this i look down and here's this track this like really i mean it was a whole lot bigger jim's foot's always been a lot bigger than mine and whenever he put his foot next to this track it like dwarfed his like big time i wheeled around and said get the gun get the gun get gun rolled around grab the gun walk stepped out in front of the truck and shot boom and it just started rolling and screaming and i turned and started running back to the truck and jim he was there i thought i was gonna leave him because he was still looking down that way and as i was standing there i was a big male whatever walked across the road and went right out out in the woods we can't jump back in the truck terrified that's whenever he had saw the other creature come out of the woods and was going over toward the other way well we got in the truck and we took off back to the camp we got back here to the camp and we had the doors locked winter's up and this here was in you know kind of warm and we're sitting in the truck and it was like got all fogged up and we were sitting i said jim's like man we need to go and i was like dude i'm not leaving with my boat we got to get the boat we rushed down and whenever we was getting the boat that's whenever we heard this big splash whatever it was throwed something in the water soaked me about drowning me and it just soaked him and then they just just loud growl and we just took off with the boat to the truck we got to the truck threw the boat in the truck and took off went all the way back over to my cousin's property where it had a big flood light up you know we just sit there in the truck with the doors locked all night long scared to death and did not move until daylight and that is a true story i mean there is no if but what's about it as i quickly became obsessed with the phenomena i started looking into old news reports to see if there was anything that could help me with my search much to my surprise there were hundreds of reports about the skunk ape it seems that anybody that was willing to talk about the subject was quickly met with a reporter at their door now the most fascinating story i came across was from the late 1800s when a local community claimed to have captured the creature so the ocean wild man in 1883 was first spotted by a bunch of settlers there they saw him swimming around in the pond and it's more or less a cypress swamp that's there they were concerned because he was swimming around wading through the water and they could hear him screaming at night finally after complaining and being concerned about what was happening in the woods there they set up a posse and a lot of men on horses and boats and on foot went and caught this creature they captured this feral type human who was brought forth to the governor at the time william d boxing william d boxman didn't know what to do with this frail looking thing covered with hair they brought it to tallahassee they thought that perhaps it was an escaped a patient from the asylum nearby he was heavily haired he was naked he couldn't speak english and he in all truths and purposes he was a wild man but it turned out that there was no escapee from the hospital they ended up putting him in the hospital he was put in the asylum under john doe and from there the story just kind of goes away so to the best of our knowledge he was probably there and died there which to date i believe is still buried there which nobody knows where so we possibly could have a florida skunk ape and not even know it and interestingly this is not the only time a skunk has been captured back in 1968 a police chief in hialeah gardens his name is ray bennett caught a juvenile in the palm beach area at 20-mile bend it was reported that a small skunk ape was wandering around and at first they thought it was a migrant worker's child it was naked and it was about four or five years old he ended up taking it into his police car and he brought it to jackson memorial hospital and now there's no reports of any skunk ape or migrant child being dropped off now the biggest argument the naysayers make is that there's never been a body presented and i got to kind of agree with them i mean wouldn't a skunk ape get hit by a car and be on the side of the road or shop for being in some farmer's chicken coop every other animal in florida has to deal with these same very issues yet and still we've never had a body presented i spoke with a guy in 2013 who has a very interesting theory as to why that is it was 1998 i was 37 years old i've been working with the forestry department for 20 years now there was a fire knife electrical national forest that summer the fire was raging pretty bad at this point that morning i'd reported the command center allen guard road to get briefed on what was going to do that day so meeting another guy were giving the task and driving around looking for animals [Music] animals would make make it to the road and usually [Music] fall out if they were injured or had real bad smoke inhalation our jobs would pick them up and take them back to the command center the vets would treat them some occasions euthanized the ones that wouldn't make it so we were driving around the area heading south doing about 45 miles an hour all of a sudden saw a black figure run out the woods on all fours ran right underneath my driver's side tire i was driving a 95 dodge ram 4x4 so i knew that the speed had killed it [Music] [Music] immediately we thought it was a bear we got out and picked the bear up put it in the back of the truck upon further investigation we realized you know it wasn't a bear we knew one of us had ever seen anything like it it was about six foot tall had had legs kneecaps like you and me his arms hung about the knee one actually his arm was down by the knee and the other one was up over the head we were looking at this thing and uh i ran over him like went across him and up his shoulder blade and over the back of his neck the creature was covered in hair long hair on the arms legs and then you know on the body and torso it had much shorter hair maybe a couple inches he's uh the muscle definition on this thing was just was just wild he was like a prize fighter ufc or something you know big heavy looking dude so we flipped him over jaw was broken where i'd hit it with the truck we could see it kind of had this like protruding snout kind of like a baboon or maybe like a like a werewolf or something you know but it had eyes just like us kind of looked like a champion z in the face a little we raided in the command center and um they sent a couple fwc officials out to our location they said they'd never seen anything like it so we all picked up the animal and loaded it back in their truck now [Music] it was heavy three or four hundred pounds they told us they'd figure out what it was and let us know so we talked to command center and then they said you know come on back to the command center you know so you guys can make a statement of what you saw so we came back we showed up the command center a little bit later and immediately were brought into the back room so we can fill out an incident report we were about 10 minutes into the incident report when uh we were stopped wait and there was some people to come to see us it was kind of strange so within about half hour 45 minutes two government guys showed up and uh walked us out to the vehicle so we're out here in the parking lot and they asked where we ran over this thing at what's the deal is so we told them where it was and then so they examined the area the truck no damage and there was a black steel bumper on the front so that's what hit the thing they collected a blood and hair sample and put them away and next they asked us if we'd get in their vehicle that they came in so we complied and uh got into the vehicle and left for these guys it was a rather quick ride back out to the spot we hadn't gone too far so they didn't say much at all real uh he had a couple exchanges back and forth to each other i couldn't really hear we showed up at the spot and the one guy he uh we walked him through all the stuff [Music] and uh all of a sudden when guy says i'll guess the one that was in charge whatever you know he was saying hey you hit a bear i said sir that's no bear that we hit he quickly interrupted me with uh you don't understand you ran over a bear he then said that you know every time i tell anybody about this story i ran over a beer right i was never a speaker word of what we actually hit that we could face charges my whole retirement could go away he was going to take everything from me so i looked at my partner we had no other choice but to comply on the ride back kind of struck me that this is actual government cover-up we're in they knew what this thing was that we'd hit they had seen other ones before for some reason they didn't want anyone to know they were going to a great length to keep it under wraps fall time in florida it's not too hot it's not too cold perfect time to get out and go backpacking but in skunk ape territory my name is glenn shelt i'm from brooksville florida in september of 2014 my wife and i were backpacking through the green small along the florida national scenic trail the section of trail that we were hiking on was probably about 30 feet wide and there was about three feet high grass growing across it it was probably about five or six o'clock in the afternoon and we were ready to get to the primitive campsite where we were going to camp and i was looking ahead up on the trail to try to find the blue trail which led off to the primitive campsite and as we were hiking along i was looking along and we were going up this slight incline and all of a sudden i saw this tall hairy thing across the trail right in front of us there was a tree on the right side of the trail where he crossed over and i used that as a marker to find the spot where it had crossed when i got up to that area the tree was about seven foot tall when it had passed behind that tree i could still see the top of what i was assuming its head was when we did get to the spot though the the tall grass that was there i could see grass that had been mashed down in footprints and some of the grass was actually starting to raise back up i tried to match the stride of those tracks in stretching out as far as i could i couldn't even do it um we made our way to the campsite um we set up our tents we cooked some dinner we were sitting around the campfire it was probably about 10 o'clock at night and we were getting ready to retire for the night because we had a quite a distance to hike the next day to the next campsite um when all of a sudden we hear this whistle coming back from the main trail and it kind of surprised us since it was so late at night and we actually thought that there was more campers coming out to the campsite but the campers that we thought were coming never did and then we heard a whistle directly to the right of us which was really thick woods and i thought that was really strange and uh i was perplexed for a minute then all of a sudden we just start hearing this shaking and stuff trees and everything and you could hear something like moving towards this weather rather rapidly i told my wife i said i want to see what it is wait till it gets to the clearing and then we'll turn on our headlamps well she was a little more frightened than i was and she instantly reached up and turned her headlamp on and whatever it was stopped shaking the trees and everything and you could hear it running off away from the campsite and it sounded like bipedal you could hear the crunch crunch crunch as it ran away and then nothing else happened after that it was quiet for the rest of the night um was it a skunk ape i can't say for certain but i don't know what else it could have been oh don't mind us all right you ready for yep you're checking her out buddy okay little step there okay back up a step back up step put your hand back up on the handlebar put the cigarette back in your mouth okay let me get around a little bit more all right get the cigarette back in your mouth okay come on around the bike you're smiling right maureen i am me too get a good look best you can there do i have to move can you be a little less creepy [Laughter] okay my name is lucky cole and i'm from here in the florida swamps on loop road in the everglades been here for many many years seen a lot of strange strange strange and unusual things a lot of stories i'm not sure i should tell some stories i won't tell but there is there is one in particular that i'll tell you about uh my close encounter with what i figured was bigfoot my buddy uh ben wolfe and i were out uh south of uh the loop down on what at that time was called pace's dike we'd go down there uh in either his jeep buggy or my jeep buggy spend the day down there fishing having a few beers and uh and working our way along uh the the dike and we had a system what we would do is i would we'd get down there i'd drop him off and he would uh get out of the jeep this fishing pole a couple of beers whatever he needed and i drive about 200 yards down we called it leap frog fishing and he would uh he ben would fish down about 200 yards when i got down to 200 yards i got out of the jeep and i started walking so he got to the jeep he'd get the jeep put his fish in there get himself another beer and drive on down and pick me up we do this it was about 200 yards each time where we could fish the whole area we worked our way down it was in the afternoon early afternoon so we hadn't been drinking very much and uh i'm up in front of ben ben's coming up to the jeep i'm a ways ahead he comes pulling up and as i get up there i see this footprint the dyke was a mound of sand on one side or dirt and rock where they dug it there was a narrow canal there was places where somebody a lot younger than me could run and actually jump over it and every so often there's a culvert where you get up on the other side but it was all grown over so you couldn't drive it as i'm moving along there and in a soft area not super wet but just soft where you're making footprints i come up on a footprint and i just froze in my tracks and look at this footprint i'm looking all around because this footprint was huge and i took my uh boots i had on rubber boots and put those rubber boots i was 13 and that footprint was still sticking out on both sides of my my both ends of my rubber boot and the sides and scratching my head and looking at this i backed up not to make any new prints walk back a little bit to look and see and there was a little place where it looked like something had was running dug in like a somebody doing a long jump dug in put the next foot down and jumped over that little canal ditch thing and i thought nah you know this isn't possible i laid my gear down so i could find it walked down maybe 30 40 yards where there's a culvert and came back up worked my way back down to where i could see my fishing pole so i knew i was right in line where whatever this was that jumped and didn't really find anything there were some limbs broken it was very rocky so there were no more footprints and by then ben got down to where uh where i laid my stuff down he was sitting there waiting on me i came back around and uh and was talking to him as i was coming back back around off the dyke off the culvert telling what i saw he got out he was looking for his camera there's a one time he and i were down there we didn't have that stupid polaroid camera that he carried constantly taking pictures of every fish we caught and things like that they both sat there and the one thing that we both noticed the most was a smell and there's a smell that i've never smelled before since it was worse than a skunk and uh probably one of the reasons they call it the skunk ape so i have people ask me if i uh believe that skunk cape exists and my answer is i'm not going to tell you it doesn't because you can't prove to me it does doesn't mean it does does or does not exist and one of the other things that i have learned from being out here in the swamps since the uh out here on loop road actually since the 60s 65 is the indians if we had indian friends here tonight and they knew we were doing this they would quietly get up and just leave the property they will not talk about it you don't bring it up and i guess it's just their superstition and they'll even tell you you go to talk about it they'll do like be quiet be quiet and if you continue then they leave politely and they'll just leave and that's just about my only that is my only story i can tell you about uh my encounter with the what would be called the skunk ape so my name is melissa jones and i was born here in tampa florida and this is my story my name is carla gutierrez and i am from tampa florida 1982 my friend and i went to my aunt's house she lived in a city called lando lakes we were outside playing on the trampoline it wasn't dark out yet the sun was going down i guess you'd call it dusk it was about this time of day getting dark um maybe a little darker than this but we were sitting on a trampoline in my aunt's yard and just beyond maybe i don't know 50 feet away was the fence line that led to a swamp and in that wooded area we heard some sticks and leaves moving while we're playing we hear rustling in the woods we hear the sounds in the woods and we're sitting there you know playing on trampoline jumping up and down and then after we hear the ruckus in the woods we start hearing noises and as we turned to look at it and kind of looked at each other like what is that we heard an absolute inhuman noise i mean it was a screech growl howl i can't even explain it but i've never heard it since never heard it before it scared us would terrified us and we looked at each other what was that it didn't sound like a human and it didn't sound like a bear or any kind of animal it was weird you know so of course that scared us to death and while we're looking around it's a very clear night and there's a clearing it's like like the perfect movie shot you'd call you know you couldn't have uh you couldn't have planned it any better as we turn and literally there's a clearing like a v-shaped clearing in the bushes and there it stood and it was at least seven feet tall at least we see the silhouette of a very large being um to me it looked like it was at least seven foot tall okay and it was standing upright it clearly was not a bear or an animal and it wasn't a man either and it made another crazy sound okay and we're just sitting there looking at it and then all of a sudden we both look at each other and we scramble off the trampoline we couldn't get off of it quick enough pretty pretty much scared us to death so we looked at each other kind of screamed and we were little kids i mean i was 10 years old she was probably 12 years old and we ran inside the house my aunt said what was that she heard it too obviously and we said we don't know there's something out there there's something out there then after that we all took off in her car and left and we left it where it was standing pretty much but we got enough a good look at it to where you could actually you could tell that this wasn't it wasn't a bear and it wasn't it wasn't a man and uh i didn't think about it at the time but later i was like oh my god i i think we saw a big we just saw bigfoot you know at that time you know we're probably you know we're scared now i gotta tell you i don't think i would be frightened only because i i don't think that um that they don't they don't harm people i i think that they wouldn't you know actively go and attack anybody i think they just want to be left alone but if you're a kid you're going to be terrified and i was i was yeah it was definitely something um something that i've never seen before and probably will never see again in my lifetime but it was it was a bigfoot for sure the best evidence at this point in florida is track evidence right here we have a print that was found in northern florida as you can see this print has definite toes has a metatarsal break wide heel this was part of a track way and it wasn't just one print we are not too impressed with just one print but we are impressed with track ways there are some hair samples but they keep coming back as other other types of animals or in the case of the hair samples we obtained after the lakeland sighting and had analyzed it was indistinguishable they could not tell what animal it was from what concerns me is that really good evidence keeps disappearing there are accounts of them of the swamp bait being hit by a car and obviously the insurance company in the case of the damage that was done in one case i'm familiar with there should have been tissue blood hair something left on the car it has so happens that that particular insurance company was state farm which is based here in winterhaven and i have contacts there and we've gone back into the files looking for the evidence kit from that accident it's not in the file it disappeared while evidence is very scarce in this field researchers mainly rely on the word of eyewitnesses and every now and then something comes across the table that completely blows your mind here's a smaller palm then pull it out of the ground you can you just can't make out the roots all the roots are sticking up out of the hole then you can see the you can see down the bottom the palm phones here which are running out of and if you look you can see where it's um all the roots are poking up out of home it that hole is probably three and a half four inches in diameter palm bulb there's all grass around the whole outer edge of it so there's no way to see any tracks around it but you can see the palms were bit right off of the end of the bulb all right i'm bernie null i grew up in lakeland florida and i've uh got a hunting camp up in english that's just yankee town north of the across florida barge canal hello my name's kevin i live in lakeland florida lived here my whole life most of my youth i started working in a guy's body shop that started taking me to his hunting camp up above crystal river in a place called golf hammock where there's to get there there's no road access we used to have to park the vehicle and get in the jeep and load all our stuff in the jeep to get out to his camp so there's no road access or no way anybody easy to come and go and my step dad went up there early one friday morning a few years back and it's about a 45 minute drive from the road to the camp so he went in real early get camp opened up and next thing you know he's called me on the phone and says get here as early as you can and bring your camera and i said why he said i ain't talking about it on the phone he hung up so i had no clue i was thinking the worst i get up to the uh his camp and he's all excited and he takes us out there and shows us uh by the swamp buggy trail by this little tidal creek that's on the back side of the um uh camp um shows me this footprint and it was a partial footprint and then a whole footprint and it was pretty obvious that it wasn't none of ours being uh like 17 inches long and i could put my whole shoe and everything inside of it so get up there and we run over by the jeep shed and look at these giant prints that were in the mud so at my age i was very intrigued by this and took went down by this uh the creek bed that is right behind the swamp buggy shed because that's where the footprints the directions they were coming from and we found uh the footprints across the bottom of the creek bed to where you know i'm 6'1 if i put rubber boots on and went out and tried to make the stride that these footprints made coming across their uh i couldn't even do half of it you know with you sinking in the mud and dragging your boot out and trying to make the next step but these were like three foot stride even coming across this mud creek bed and when it stepped up out of the creek bed you could even see like a scratch mark where a because it's all coil rock on the sides of this creek bed to where it was like a toenail or something that's crashed it when it stepped up out of the creek and then we started doing a little investigation that um something had come through the creek which is 25 yards or so behind the jeep shed and it had took in the mud probably two feet deep of mud it took 12 14 inch strides for most of us guys at five and a half six foot take three or four inch strides then it went through the creek came out the other side by a jeep shed all this time there's a bridge right there a four-wheeler bridge that we could uh drive our four-wheelers over and walk now while this thing went through the mud i have no clue so then it came by the jeep shed and then it went on up by our cabin passed it and we lost track of a little bit because of the grass and then we did a little homework spread out and uh went to the next cabin which was quarter mile away and then it went on around that and we saw some prints where they drove and then they got it over to the other cabin a third cabin walked right past it and went up to the fourth cabin and that place also has a bridge and it didn't go over their foot bridge it went right beside the bridge we tracked it a little further and it went up into the hard ground lost track so we went on to the property line the barbed wire fence was knocked over seven or eight posts were just pushed forward like you drove over with a jeep and then there was uh some hair like a ball of hair on the barbed wire and the property owner at that bridge there was a state investigator for a county south of here and he took the hair and just took it in just like whatever he didn't tag or anything he just said run this so they had it while they brought it back and said no match is found later that day we started going out through the woods and it disappeared you know to hard ground and up to the north heading towards cedar key up that way so with uh seeing these things we have plastic plaster casts of them again i'm still very intrigued i was i wanted to quit doing everything and go up there and just live for a month and go and try to follow these tracks and trail it and see where it did where it went and what it what it did as uh as most people think when they see them big tracks there's a name that goes with that which is bigfoot and so i um the next morning i wake up and i uh strap a 357 on my side and had a gun on my back and had my rottweiler with me so i started doing uh just doing little intervals going back and forth from the creek and around and getting wider and getting wider trying to find more tracks or where it went or which direction it went and i get out the outside of this tree line there was uh like a couple hundred yards to a a hammock that runs along the freshest water creek bed there it's called tangerine hammock there's no real trail to get into the uh to the hammock so i'm walking around the edge of the hammock just looking for footprints and and i decided to crawl in a deer trail so i crawled in one of the deer trails where it's you know it's real low i had to crawl in on my hands and knees and my rottweiler of course shot in in front of me and as soon as we got inside the hammock this my rottweiler starts making this whining noise that i've never heard it make before and uh and it runs straight to this hole that's dug in the ground and it's a hole about it was about a foot diameter and you could see dirt was piled on one side of it and there was a bunch of roots poking up like this and and all the automatically i could tell that there was cabbage roots it was swamp cabbage or little palm and my dog is just going ballistic around this whole area around where this uh where this is pulled up so i i actually knelt down right beside it and i actually got a chill down my back matter of fact when i still think about it i still think about i still get a chill down my back thinking i know what this is and i started busting some of this saint augustine grass back away from the edges of it and sure enough there was two feet prints on either side of this hole and you could even see where its toes curled down and it it dug around the edge of the this cabbage palm and you could tell it grabbed hold the cabbage palm and bent the cabbage palms over and then rotated it and snatched this cabbage and it probably was a cabbage bulb of about that big and uh and then you could see then the palms were still laying right there with a perfect bend in them laying beside the hole perfectly green they had not even started to turn brown yet so i knew that it was pretty fresh so i i i stayed kneeling by the hole and my dog's running around now sniffing everywhere and i and this this hammock is a long narrow hammock and i just started studying all the trees as far as i could see all the way expecting something to be looking back at me because that's how fresh this was my name is dan quackenbush i'm from waukee county florida and i've been a resident here since 2003. i have some friends that hunt down off of 98 and flint rock they call it used to be called oscilla and they gave me a call one morning one sunday morning and wanted me to come down and look at something this is what it was it's a spark structure i guess you'd call it some kind of thing put together by we don't know what it is we're assuming maybe bigfoot but um we found it next to his tree stand basically about 40 yards from it it was there on the sunday morning when he showed up it wasn't there saturday evening when he left and so it had you know 10 hours 9 10 hours to build it whatever whatever did it but they peeled it off the tree next to it and uh just more or less woven together it's it's very solid everybody sees it looks like a pillow to them and the guys who found it doesn't they they don't necessarily want to be on camera so i'm their spokesperson i guess and uh this is uh just something that nobody has ever seen we can't identify it from anything else that's been found so it doesn't necessarily say bigfoot to me but i don't know it could be but it just happens to be around the corner from where they had a bigfoot sighting the prior year prior hunting season they actually saw at the end of hunting season and this was at the beginning of the next season so maybe he just likes them and wants to be around them or something now arguably the best piece of photographic evidence of a skunk ape was captured on may 8 2012 by my father stacey brown senior in torrea state park when i watch other pieces of footage i'm always a little weary of their authenticity but this one i know is 100 legit mainly because i was there my name is stacy brown senior on may 8 2012 but i think i fell into skunk it was tuesday may 8th i was at home by myself that afternoon it had been raining all day my wife went to stay with our daughter in town to get up next morning to go shopping with her and i've had the night all to myself and my son had been wanting to use my thermal camera because he kept hearing something in the woods when his buddies would go out camping and i told him that i would i would go when i had a chance and so tonight was the chance even though it was raining it was crappy weather i had called him he had just gotten off work i said get your crap together let's go he kind of complained a little bit about the weather oh man it's raining and i think i said nope we're going tonight that's the only night i got let's go and so we proceeded to toraya state park and we pulled in there there wasn't nobody nobody there it had just quit raining as we pulled up it was hot and steamy and we'd walked the mile or so in there to the camping spot we set up camp he told me he said well this is what happened we started a fire we was cooking supper we was listening to music and he said and then an hour or so something came up and started walking around the tent so we did everything exactly like you said and we put something on to eat and sure enough it wasn't too long we started hearing this uh well i think the first thing we heard was a knock and he said see there that's what it is and i said well you know what's a knock and he explained that to me and he and then in a few minutes later i thought i heard something to sound like a grumble but i thought it was going to be an armadillo or something out there and i said well let's turn up the music to drown out us and let's slip out of here as quiet we can let's follow where this thing was walking all right this battery just keeps dying on me i'm going to cut it off when we're going all right we're hearing the knocks and uh in a growl right over here so we're gonna we'll cut the radio up we got a fire going and we're gonna flip out around this way and go most of the time lights out just enough so we can see beneath our feet a little bit and uh i got this thermal when i can keep it on i can see the trail good batteries going on and off and we'll see if we can't spook something up and and go so go cut the uh we started trying to walk toward it and the way this worked is he was hanging onto my shoulder had a little handicam we had the night vision and i had the thermal and i had to turn it to black heat because that's the only thing we could see the ground with everything was kind of wet and hot and steamy and you had it on white hot you couldn't really everything blurred together and we were worried about snakes snakes were everywhere in this place and so we'd walk toward the sound then i'd stop we'd listen for it again and we'd walk toward it again and so after about 10 15 minutes 20 minutes i seen something on a tree that looked like a little like a little head and i took it for a [ __ ] because it was raising up and down on the tree like this and then i got to look it again and there was one on this side of the tree kind of down from it so you had the tree right here you had this this black hot spot in this black hot spot and i said oh well this is you know this is what it is this is a [ __ ] that's all it is and so i went to step to get a pitcher because the [ __ ] was going around that side of the tree and when i did i put my foot out and to take a step and i kicked a palmetto bush and that palmetto mission went pop real loud and when i did that that's when this thing left from behind the tree and just took off and i wasn't expecting that when i seen that i just i just wasn't expecting that at all i went out there thinking that well okay they've been out here drunk or something and they're here and they're hearing turtles and all kinds of stuff running around on the ground and this this fear just came over me because i just noticed that's when it realized to me that that whatever that was what in the [ __ ] it had his head stuck out and it was looking at me it could see me in the pitch black and i mean it was pitch black you couldn't see this bar in front of your face and that fear just came over me so hard that all i could think was that's the way we came from it went that way it's gonna cut us off and it's gonna catch us and i went into panic mode i stopped i said we've got to go we got to get out of here and he was like what's matter what's going on what's going on you see something because he can't see squat he doesn't know what's going on and i'm turning around and i'm leaving going back and i'm trying to find the trail obviously we we came off the trail because at this point uh i had phone or some kind of a little bit of a light where i could see a little bit and i couldn't see the trail and i cut it back off because i didn't want whatever this was to find us and he said the trail's over here come over the trails over here over here what the hell's going on and said well the batteries are dead we got to go we got to go to the battery and see that i see something man big walk out in this stupid house well man i'm not we got to get out of here we got to go change the batteries the trails here man the trail's this way go this way go this way let's go you seen something walk out did you record it yeah we're blind we're we got to the camp and there was no batteries there was no batteries in the truck there's no batteries nowhere i lied to him i said there wasn't there was no batteries i just wanted to get the stuff and get the hell out of there that's how scared i was with this thing whatever it was yeah got it in my hand right now [Music] get your breath man and uh we got all the stuff together and got to the truck and that's when i finally just said look and i said here play this back and he played the video back and he got real upset and so he put cut his tape on he says so what the hell just happened and i said dude i freaked i panicked i said when that thing came out from my tree it scared the hell out of me and i just said i'm not going back down there i'm not going back down there you and your buddies come back down here i'll let you have the camera you can take the thermal camera in the woods because i wouldn't let him take it because it cost so much but at that point i just wanted to drive off and leave and so that's basically what happened that night that uh i filmed a sasquatch or skunk cape or whatever they're calling it it it was right there in that tree not more than 50 yards maybe 75 feet that's my story that's a good girl on may 8 2012 stacey brown senior was out big footing with his son stacey brown jr in torreya state park in florida they had something around them they could hear it in the brush and then they started hearing wood knocks which of course is a good sign for sasquatches at one point stacy brown senior had a thermal imager up to his eye recording when something stepped out from behind a tree and just walked just for a second or so between these two trees and that so far is the best piece of thermal imaging footage of a sasquatch that has yet surfaced the browns didn't quite know what to do with their footage so eventually in august they contacted me for an analysis i of course jumped at the chance when one sees the footage right away some strange characteristics jump out the head is placed very low on the shoulders almost as if the subject is wearing shoulder pads like a football player or something but that doesn't seem to be the case because as the creature walks out from behind the tree the arm trails behind it and you can see very clearly that the arm connects at the top of the shoulders basically where the shoulder pads would be if those were pads i think we can safely eliminate that those are not pads that's just a big old shoulder the head being so low on the shoulders it's also a very ape-like characteristic we see the same morphology in the patterson-gimlin film and a couple other pieces of footage that we believe are authentic even though the footage is not very long there's quite a bit of information in it and even more importantly there are things in the frames that you can measure so we can get an estimate on how big that thing is because clearly looking at the shape it could only be a human or a sasquatch i asked stacy to go back to the location and take a number of measurements but then just a few months later i was given the opportunity to visit the location on the set of finding bigfoot and that's where i took my own measurements the gate of the creature is not human but it is remarkably consistent with the gate of the creature in the patterson gimlin film look at the trailing leg as the thing walks between the two trees the trailing leg bends at 89 degrees almost 90 degrees that never happens in humans the leading leg however is obscured by brush but it is suggestive of what we call a compliant gate in other words when the weight is put on it the knee itself is bent to kind of absorb that much shock of such a large creature when it walks this is seen in the patterson gimlin film it's not clearly seen in the brown footage but it is suggested by the angle of the top part of the leg when the subject in the footage is behind the tree that gives us a very rough estimate of how wide the shoulders must be based on the measurements of that tree i've determined that the creature has a range of possible shoulder widths the on the large side is 41 or 42 inches on the smaller size is 31 inches the average number is 34 35 inches wide which is huge way outside that of human range we know that the shoulders have to be that wide because the diameter of the tree is 27 to 29 inches at that height and yet the shoulders stick out on either side so here we have a figure with a human-like shape with shoulders at minimum 31 or 32 inches wide probably in the 34 35 inch range one of the easiest ways to determine the size of a subject is to put a human being of known height in the same spot and photograph them using the same camera i did that with stacy brown jr as it turns out the subject in his footage dwarfs stacy in that footage stacy's five foot nine and this creature is just a lot bigger than stacy is in fact in those comparison shots you can see that the five foot nine inch tall human being comes to underneath the shoulder level of whatever is in stacy brown's bigfoot footage when calculating the height of the figure i got a range on the very very smallest side of that range is about 72 to 74 inches just six feet tall however on the very largest size of that range i got over nine feet somewhere like nine and a half feet i think both of those measurements should probably be thrown out and the other measurements in the middle the average of those two it's probably closer to the truth which puts that figure somewhere in the range of seven and a half to eight feet tall seven and a half or eight feet tall jives very well when you look how small stacy brown was in the comparison photographs clearly whatever stacy brown captured with this thermal imager is huge just a massive animal compared to the human in these shots the creature takes one step from its hiding place behind the large tree in the left over to the brush on the right hand side it turns out that i measured the distance between the two trees that stepped between to be 72 inches using that one simple measurement i've determined that that one step was four feet eight inches in length four feet eight inches one step and it didn't look like it was struggling at all that's another indication that whatever that figure is it is big so whatever that figure is in the footage it has the morphology of a sasquatch with the lowly placed head the high shoulders the long arms the big hands it walks like a sasquatch with the bent knee gait and the trailing leg approaching 90 degrees upon step off the location is highly indicative of the sasquatch as well because so many sightings come out of teresa state park and in fact i myself long before the brown footage was obtained at that location got a recording of a beautiful whoop whoop at the same location literally a hundred twenty hundred thirty hundred fifty yards away from the very spot the browns were standing when they filmed that thing that location is red hot for bigfoot activity and i see no reason to discount the footage based on where it was taken the brown footage is a great example of why we need to work together as a research community stacy didn't quite know what to do with the footage so he brought me in for help and i love doing this sort of stuff so working together as a team we've done pretty much everything one can do to validate that film is showing a sasquatch i think stacy brown's footage is by far the best thermal imaging video of a sasquatch that has yet surfaced nothing even comes close to this it is big it looks like a bigfoot and it walks like a bigfoot it's probably a bigfoot well with pseudoscience aided with cryptozoology firsting science fact and a true confirmation of a hypothesis that's going to be hard and the evidence we have is the evidence of hundreds of witnesses from all walks of life from all types of education that claim to have witnessed these creatures i know what science requires for it to determine that an animal actually exists and i'm caught in a very difficult position because i've seen the animal three times i know what i've seen and i believe what i've seen many times people are convicted of murder with no body because of why because of the amount of evidence it can't all be misidentification we do have bears in florida but not that many these people are seeing something and what they're seeing is a skunk ape i know what science requires and i would never ever ask science to accept my word for having seen the animal it's just not done i know what evidence needs to be there dna by itself is enough proof if it can be related on my own personal experience i have seen things that can't be explained do i believe i am convinced that the florida skunk game exists and out of those hundreds of witnesses i too am one of them as a matter of fact i've seen on two occasions of skunk game one on a thermal image which was up in north florida and another one in the deland area i was called into an investigation and i was able to get there within 24 hours of it being reported and lucky enough myself and the witness were walking down a trail and the skunk ape came from behind a bush and ran away from us that's why most people say you gotta have a body because you can connect all the evidence you've got to the body that's laying there on the autopsy table or in the case of this animal necropsy but that's one of the problems and that's going to be a problem until people learn how to properly collect evidence and properly prepare a chain of custody and do all the steps that are necessary in order to be able to establish a new animal that's why it's so much easier on other types of animals because it's not so controversial after watching this film you still may not be convinced that the skunk ape exists and that's fine after all i'm the one making the outlandish claim that there's an eight-foot tall harry hominid running through these woods so ultimately the burden of proof falls on me that's all right you see there's others out there like myself currently searching for that one piece of evidence that's going to prove to you that skunk ape lives so you

Channel: Survivorman - Les Stroud

Views: 1,390,712

Keywords: Survivorman TV Series, Les Stroud, Survivorman, Survivorman Les Stroud, Survivorman TV Show, Survivorman TV, bigfoot, sasquatch, skin ape, stacy brown jr, survivorman bigfoot, paranormal, florida

Id: i1PznuAPnx8

Length: 66min 28sec (3988 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 13 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/[deleted]]

The Skunk Ape is probably a good deal more genteel and refined than most of the swamp people in this video.