Kindle version of Notes From the Field, Tracking North America's Sasquatch

I wanted to let everyone know that the price of my kindle version of my book is now $3.00. I have two new books being published soon and will announce this as soon as they are released.

Sasquatch interacting with their surroundings

I have viewed numerous photographs of things attributed to Sasquatch's. There is much as yet unknown about this, but from historical references we know that the Sasquatch will mangle young tree's from time to time. I have not seen things like them arranging tree's in any particular fashion, and wonder what use this would be to them. However I do find young tree's that have been mangled as described in historical references, and associated with other evidence of their presence in areas. 

  

The photograph above is one of the first I found of this sort of damaged caused by a Sasquatch. This and six others just like it we found in the Washougal River watershed in 1991. Once inside the upper watershed area, we climbed 2200 feet up the northern boundary and inside the closed canopy, we found Douglas fir trees like the one here photographed broken at 90 degree angles, which measured 8 feet above the ground and the tree where broken measured three inches thick. We followed this sub-ridge horizontally finding more of the same kind of trees broken approximately 100 yards apart. I am sure we would have found more, but the terrain was very difficult to navigate, and I took enough photographs and measurements for my files. This area had a long history of Sasquatch activity, I myself saw one of the creatures near this place in March 1988. I have many reports and associated footprint and feeding behavior from this watershed also. Native American friends told me that the Sasquatch does this for territorial marking. 

The photograph above is a close up of the kind of breaks we found in the Washougal watershed. I began watching for this in other regions where I conduct my field work, it is not something found often and can easily be mistaken for weather breaks. Many people are enthusiastic today and think they have found vegetation that a Sasquatch has done something to, but unfortunately they are mistaken and photographs I have viewed are nothing more that weather related. However, one should not get discouraged because this evidence can be located but the searcher must be critical about evidence.

  

The photograph above is of a tree that  measured also three inches thick, it was twisted as someone would wring out a wet towel, tremendous force was used to do this. I measured this at 7 feet above the ground and was otherwise undamaged except this portion of the trunk.

All of the trees I photographed here I found in mid summer and were damaged less than two weeks prior to my finding them. Weather was not an issue as it had been sunny and nice for weeks before I went to the locations. Many times I found such things inside a closed canopy. There were always trees close by of the same age, and none were damaged in any way. They were always in places difficult to get to, and not where people would easily find them if they were faked, reason would have it that a hoaxer would want them found?

Pacific Coast Sasquatch Investigation Team

I have seen numerous groups that have been created to look for evidence of the Sasquatch. I wanted to post something about the group I originally created in 1975. After meeting John Green and Rene Dahinden that summer, and being part of their investigation into the "Puyallup Screamer" incidents they asked me to assist them in my area. My friends and I had been searching the forests near our homes since the winter of 1972 after finding dozens of footprints made by three Sasquatch's.
I thought we should organize to better search for evidence, I wanted to help Dahinden and Green as much as possible. I called our first group the "Pierce County Sasquatch Investigation Team". The name was simple, it denoted where we were generally looking, it said what we were looking for, and what we were. After graduating high school, the ten of us who were involved in the original group went on to our adult persuits, and we dissolved the group. In the mid 1980's after I moved to Vancouver Washington, many friends expressed interest in becoming involved in my work after I was involved in a project by Knott's Berry Fram regarding the Sasquatch. One friend worked out of the Washington State governors office as an advocate for handicapped children, and had extensive knowledge about creating organizations. We created a mission statement that our goal was to collect credible evidence to prove the existence of the Sasquatch.
We established a board of directors, and constitution to govern the activities of the organization. We filed and became registered as a non-profit corporation dedicated to proving the existence of the Sasquatch, and to this day remain the only group to ever be stated and registered as such.

The photograph above was taken in 1990 in Vancouver Washington, and is of some of the senior staff of the PCSIT. The PCSIT varied over the years of its existence of the numbers of members, but averaged 100 at any given time. By 1998 I moved back to the Puget Sound region of Washington, and other members had similarly moved away, and we dissolved the organization. The PCSIT constitution states clearly in article 2, section 1 that it was organized exclusively for the scientific purposes within the meaning of publication 557 of the Internal Revenue Code of 1987 or the corresponding provision of any future United States Internal Revenue Law.
The only group I am aware of that was created prior to the PCSIT was the Bay Area Group based out of San Francisco in the early 1970's. The PCSIT existed from 1975 with a break to 1998, and was the first organization created to gather evidence to scientifically support the existence of the Sasquatch.

The Sasquatch and the Great Apes

There exists today two groups of people who believe that the Sasquatch is human, while the other believes it is an ape. No one will know for sure until one can be observed and thoroughly studied in the physical context. Here are some interesting feet and hand comparisons I wanted to show, it is apparent in these comparisons that the characteristics of hands and feet that the Sasquatch would be closer in relation to humans than the apes. The images of ape hands and feet are castings of hands and feet, and are not from deceased animals but molded from living apes.

The photographs above show the hand and foot of an adult Chimpanzee.

The photograph above here show a hand and foot of an adult Gorilla.

The above photograph here shows the hand and foot of an adult Orangutan.

The photograph above shows two different adult Sasquatch footprint casts, the top is one of the footprints cast by Roger Patterson and the bottom one was a 17 inch track cast in 1963 on Liard Mountain road above Bluff Creek, CA.

The photograph above shows from left to right an adult black bear hind foot, an adult human foot, an adult Sasquatch foot cast in 1963 by Al Hodgson at Bluff Creek, and the left and right Patterson Sasquatch feet cast at Bluff Creek in 1967.

The photograph above shows on the left an adult human hand, and on the right an adult Sasquatch hand print cast in 1972.

The morphological similarities between the Sasquatch and human is apparent, and quite different from the Great apes. I would not say that the Sasquatch is human, but likely much closer to humans than apes.


There exist large gaps in the hominid fossil record, perhaps the Sasquatch is one species that fills one of those gaps? Creatures like the Gigantopithecus certainly make the existence of the Sasquatch likely since they were similar, and prove that giant hominid creatures did actually exist. The Gigantopithecus was larger than the Sasquatch, so why couldn't the Sasquatch exist as well?

The photograph above is Bill Munns with his reconstruction of a Gigantopithecus.

Native people's and the Sasquatch

There exists an extensive history of the Sasquatch in Native tribal stories handed down through the generations and in ceremonial artwork. I give a partial list of tribes and names in my current book "Notes From the Field, Tracking North America's Sasquatch" identifying approximately 90 tribal groups and twice that many names alone. Nearly all tribal groups across the American continent have at least one, some as many as 5 names for these creatures and ceremonial masks and other artwork representing these creatures. The Sasquatch, often called the "Wildman of the woods" or "Cannibal Giant" are thought of as a much lesser developed tribe and not as animals. They have no permanent homes or language or use of tools. Below are some Native artwork depicting the Sasquatch. These are "Bukwas" meaning "Wildman of the Woods".

Comparison of Black Bear footprints with Sasquatch footprints.

 For many years, people have made the claim that person's finding what they said were Sasquatch footprints were actually seeing overlapped bear footprints. Obviously many people are not aware of what the difference is between the two, both in the past and today. I placed the cast on the right from my collection of a 17 inch Sasquatch found and cast on the Laird Mountain road above Bluff Creek California in 1964, next to three bear tracks of which the top portion of my cast here is actually a front and hind foot overlapped with another hind foot close behind. To an inexperienced eye, the rough shape and size is similar to this 17 inch sasquatch track. The details are obvious though, as the bear tracks show the toes from each foot and often times the claw marks, and even when overlapped each foot is distinguishable. The Sasquatch print shows details as well and look nothing like the overlapped bear tracks. 

 This next photograph is of another set of bear tracks I cast in 2008 in Northern California.

 This is part of a line of bear tracks I photographed near Mt. Adams in Southwest Washington in 1995. Adult black bear hind feet are typically around 7 inches in length, and the front and hind foot prints are approximately 12 inches apart in this line.

 I took some of the footprint casts from my collection here to show the actual size relationships of A- an adult human male foot, B- this 14 inch Sasquatch footprint cast near Bluff Creek California in 1963, C- are the 14 inch Sasquatch footprints cast by Roger Patterson in 1967 at Bluff Creek after he filmed the creature, D- are black bear tracks I cast near Bluff Creek in  2004,  E- are Elk tracks I cast, and F- is a deer track.

The photograph above is a closer look at the bear tracks I cast at Bluff Creek in 2004. Bear tracks are nowhere as long or wide as Sasquatch footprints. Distinguishing one from the other is very easy.

My face to face encounter with two Sasquatch's

 (The photo here is of me in Los Angeles in 1988 helping promote Knotts Berry Farms "Bigfoot Rapids" attraction they built that year, and I was technical consultant to)

My face to face encounter with two Sasquatch's in the fall of 1974 was a very traumatic experience, and it would have remained just between my friends and I had it not been for one friend recording the experience and sending the information to John Green without my knowledge. Here is my account of the events that would propel me to become involved with the founders of the issue, and my continued search today:

The middle of December 1972 in Graham, Washington was very cold. Temperatures had been in the teens with a few inches of snow covering the ground. I was 14 years old then and found something that Saturday morning of December 16th that changed my life.

My friend Mark Barshaw had come over to spend the weekend, and that Saturday morning we had planned to go visit another of our friends, John Adams who lived a mile or so away. Normally we would have used a trail through the stand of forest between our homes, but the snow prevented us from finding the trail. So we decided to walk down the road to a Burlington Northern railroad line, this would take us right to John's house.

We got about half way along the railroad tracks to John's house, when we spotted something between the rails. As we reached the spot, we found animal intestines lying between the rails. The intestines were roughly the amount that would come from a medium size dog or coyote. What we couldn't figure out was how they had got to where they were?

Now the railroad company had used a bulldozer the previous summer to build a rough road along both sides of the tracks for fire access. This portion of the rail line ran alongside of a hill. As we walked to John's house, the uphill portion was to our left, and on our right was downhill. We could see very well on the fire road below us, and the snow was undisturbed there. There had been no footprints of animals or people the direction we had come, leaving only two possibilities, directly ahead of us or on the uphill area to our left.

I told Mark to check ahead where we were going, while I climbed the ten foot embankment above us. When I got to the fire road above us, I found footprints everywhere! I yelled for Mark to hurry up and get up there. What we found were human looking bare footprints, but much larger than a person’s feet.

We looked at the prints, and saw that something very large had sat on the edge of the embankment and had evidently used a closed fist to help it sit down, I put my closed gloved fist inside the impression and there was an inch between my fist and the outline of the fist impression in the snow. Mark and I suddenly remembered that the intestines below were not frozen yet when we found them, and since it was 17 degrees out that morning we realized that whatever made the footprints must still be very close by! This really scared us and we began running the rest of the way to John's house.

When we got to John’s house, we ran onto the front porch and pounded on the door. When it opened we rushed in and John and his brothers and sisters crowded around and we tried to tell what we had seen. It was very confusing with everyone trying to talk and ask questions, then John’s father interrupted and said “boy’s, take me to where you found this”. He got his camera and .45 pistol and followed Mark and I, and John and his two brothers and two sisters to the place we found the strange footprints.

When we got to the place, John’s father took quite a few pictures. We measured the footprints, the largest was approximately 18 inches long, and the smaller prints were 15 and 16 inches long. John’s father then told us what he believed made the footprints. We had never heard the term “Bigfoot” up to this day, and being 14 year old boys, the thought of real monsters inhabiting the forests really excited us!

We met at John’s home every weekend for months after that day and after hours of talking about these creatures; we would go searching the nearby forest areas for more evidence and the creatures themselves. We did not have any more luck finding signs of the creatures, and soon turned our attention to other things….but this would change in the fall of 1974.

I don’t have any reference to know what exact day the following event happened as I did with the first time I found Sasquatch footprints (when we got to John’s home, American Bandstand was on their television, and Johnny Nash was singing his hit “I can see clearly now”, I was able to find what day that particular show aired, it was Saturday, December 16^th 1972). This event occurred in the fall of 1974. One evening in October I believe, just before dark my collie began barking furiously toward the nearest stand of trees to our house.

We kept him tethered to his dog house at night because my parents didn’t want him “visiting” neighboring farms and getting himself into trouble, he was in the habit of herding the neighbor’s farm animals to our farm! My dad had told me that if I saw any raccoon’s or skunks to shoot them as they may have distemper and may infect the dog or my sister’s cats. So I thought that was what he was barking at, they came into our yard often going after the cat’s food. I got one of my .22 rifles and a couple of bullets and let my dog go from his tether.

He ran immediately toward the tree line, when he got to it he came to an abrupt halt. He stood there rigidly for a moment very quietly; suddenly he turned and ran back past me as fast as he could to our house! I was astonished, all the time we had him he never ran from anything! In fact he did things that were dangerous for a dog like chasing coyotes. This time however, he ran to the back porch of our house and sat on the top step shivering. I thought it very odd behavior for him. I continued to the tree line where he had stopped. When I got to the spot where he had stopped, I could hear something moving in the maple leaves on the ground just inside the trees. I walked in after chambering one of the bullets I had brought. When I entered the trees, I came face to face with something much larger than any raccoon! It was between 7 and 8 feet tall, built like a man but covered with dark brown hair that was between 4 and 6 inches long. The hair was matted and had leaf debris and twigs in parts of it. The creature was moving the leaves around with its right foot, and when it saw me stopped and just stood there about 15 feet in front of me. It looked as though it weighed around 700 or 800 pounds, growing up on a farm I could judge weights pretty good. I thought what in the world is this? I hunted bear and deer and elk with my dad and uncle and knew most animals pretty well, but this? Then I thought, “Oh this must be what made those footprints we found in the snow!”

I then wondered what to do next? Of course all this thinking happened in moments, I decided to shoot in the air and see what happened, and my rifle was way too small to do anything to something so large. I shot and then a second creature like the first came out from behind some brush on my right and stood by the first creature, this one was a little shorter than the first. Then fear set in and I took off running as fast as I could toward the house hoping the creatures weren’t following me!

I called John Adams and a couple other friends telling them what had happened, we agreed to track the creatures at first light the next morning. We all met at my house just before first light the nest morning rifles in hand. It had frosted heavily that night and tracking was easy. We followed the footprints in the frost a long distance only losing the trail when the sun came out and melted the frost.

We didn’t talk openly about these events, everyone except John’s father made fun of us. While on the school bus one day the following spring, another of our friends overheard John and me quietly talking about what we had seen. He asked me if he could “interview me”, he was a nice guy and quiet and shy so I thought it couldn’t do any harm as I didn’t think it would come to anything.

My friend Jim who interviewed me gave me three books written by John Green, I had no idea books were written about what we had seen and totally absorbed what was written in them. One day during the summer of 1975, one of my sisters came to my room and told me that “two men were there to see me”, now I wondered what two men were there to see me, I didn’t know any “men” outside family and my parents friends.

I slipped on my boots and went out to the back porch, and there came walking up was Rene’ Dahinden! I immediately recognized him from his picture in Green’s book. He introduced himself and the man with him as Dennis Gates. He said they were there to talk to me about the things I had seen. He said John Green had received a letter from my friend about the things I saw and experienced. So we talked about the tracks and sighting for a while, then they said they had to get back to Puyallup, they were there with John Green investigating sightings and other related events in that area, and asked me if I was interested in coming to their camp? I said I was, and they left. I went later that day to their camp; there I met John Green and Washington State Patrol Trooper Mark Pittenger, and some locals who had recorded Sasquatch screams.

I stayed close to Dahinden, we took the night shifts and walked the roads at night looking and listening. It was very exciting, and that was the beginning of a 25 year friendship with Rene’ Dahinden, he said I was pretty good in the bush as he put it! 39 years later, I continue to search for proof that the Sasquatch exists.

William Jevning