-Caveat Lector- http://www.nationalpost.com/ National Post Saturday, March 3, 2001 Bigfoot, big ... well, maybe not A plaster cast of a buttock imprint left by a Sasquatch. Apparently Mark Hume National Post EDMONDS, Wash. - The place where the Sasquatch sat down, where its hairy, hominid primate buttocks left two oblong impressions in the mud is obvious enough to Richard Noll. Standing in his mother-in-law's garage, where the latest breakthrough in Bigfoot research is stored, Mr. Noll's eyes gleam as he traces the outline in a 136-kilogram plaster cast. "There's where the cheeks are," he says. "And that's a heel mark and the Achilles tendon. We figure this is where its arm rested, as it turned on its side." Mr. Noll points out the fine ridges left by matted hair in the thigh -- and then points delicately to a double print between the cheeks, where the, uh, impressions were left that show this Sasquatch was male. They are small. Judging by this cast, which is being heralded as the biggest find since 1967 when Roger Patterson and Bob Gimlin filmed what appeared to be a man in a gorilla suit, big feet do not equate to big testicles. No matter. Mr. Noll, who machine tools aircraft parts for a living, says it's the little details that make what has become known as the Skookum Cast such a remarkable piece of evidence. "I mean," he says standing back to look at it, "have you ever seen anything like that in your life?" The truth is, nobody ever has, if it indeed is what Mr. Noll says it is. But there are critics, as there always are in the Sasquatch game, who dismiss it simply as a mishmash of prints left in the mud by a much more common animal. "It's an elk!" hoots Cliff Crook, founder of Bigfoot Central, who has been tracking Sasquatches since 1956. Mr. Crook, however, who lives not far away in Bothell, Washington, has not bothered to see the cast for himself. "He's just jealous," says Mr. Noll, "because he's never found anything like this himself." Still, there would certainly be reason to believe Mr. Crook's dismissal is well grounded. There are several elk tracks embedded in the cast, for example, and no Bigfoot tracks. And then there was all the hair the research team picked up. A few strands are in a lab in Vancouver awaiting DNA analysis. Several others already tested have been identified -- as elk hair. Mr. Noll shrugs off these small inconsistencies as he paces around the Skookum Cast, explaining how the Sasquatch positioned itself in the mud, showing where its heels dug in, pointing out what appear to be dermal ridges from the skin on the feet. I am trying to bring it all into focus, but I just can't see it. Neither could the research team at first. Mr. Noll and nine others with the Bigfoot Field Reporting Organization headed out on an expedition last fall into the Gifford Pinchot National Forest, a wilderness area near Mt. St. Helens, a slumbering volcano in northern Washington State. Along with them was the film crew from a television series known as Animal X. The team went equipped with all kinds of stuff that had never been tried before in Sasquatch research, including infrared cameras, night vision goggles and ... a sexual attractant. Mr. Noll said Dr. Greg Bambenek, a psychiatrist from Minnesota and expert on animal pheromones whose nickname is Dr. Juice, had concocted a special mix for the occasion. "There is no Sasquatch pheromone," he explained. "So he mixed human and gorilla to create one. We thought we'd give it a try." The Sasquatch pheromone chips were hung in trees around the base camp, hoping to attract a roving Bigfoot. "The pheromones are for close in. They might work up to a mile," said Mr. Noll. To hold the interest of Sasquatch, the research team also set out fruit drops, small piles of oranges, apples and melons. The fruit drops were made mostly in areas where there was soft earth or mud nearby, so any approaching animal would leave tracks. A few years ago Mr. Noll and 40 researchers spent nearly a week trying to find evidence of Sasquatch in 100 square miles of rugged wilderness. They got nothing for their efforts. Not even a toe print. >From that experience, and several much longer expeditions where he spent up to three months in the bush, Mr. Noll concluded that a new approach was needed. Instead of trying to track down the fleet-footed Sasquatch, he reasoned, they'd have to bring the animals to them. So when they went to work under the shadow of the volcano they were armed with a new weapon: the call blaster. As they sat around their camp surrounded by the seemingly endless wilderness, the Sasquatch team broadcast a recording of a Sasquatch that was made last year in California. Owl and wolf researchers do the same thing to get population estimates, sending out recorded calls, then counting howls and hoots they get in reply. Mr. Noll's team took a huge sound system to reach out as far as they could across the gullies and ridges of Mt. St. Helens. "When we call blast a scream," he explained, "we pump it out at 150 watts on this great, big battleship horn, and we wait for a response. Then the next day we look in those areas for tracks where we hear Sasquatch screaming back." And they did hear them answering. "It sounded sort of like a high- pitch scream by a woman, trailing off to a gurgle," he said. Five days into the expedition Mr. Noll, LeRoy Fish, a zoologist, and Derek Randles, a landscape architect, went out to check the fruit drops. At two sites the fruit had vanished, but no tracks were left. Then they came to what was known as the mud site, in Skookum Meadows. The expedition diary recounts what happened next: "Mud site has fruit missing, three out of six apples gone. Melons pecked by birds, probably ravens. Old tracks in mud include elk, deer, bear, coyote ... Noll notices an unusual impression in the transition mud at the edge of the wallow and suddenly figures out what caused it. Fish and Randles note the shock of Noll's face and come over to have another look at what he's examining. The three observe and note the various parts of the impression, and the chunks of chewed apple core nearby. "The base camp is alerted. Everyone comes to see the impression. All conclude the animal was lying on its side at the edge of the mud, reaching out over the soft mud to grab the fruit. The group discusses the possible reasons why the animal might have done this, instead of just walking into the wet mud to grab the fruit, as the other animals did ... One possible explanation is immediately apparent -- the animal did not want to leave tracks." If that was the Sasquatch's intent, it has been outsmarted. While most of the team couldn't make out what the print was at first, Mr. Noll soon won them over, repeatedly lying down in the mud to mimic what happened. Finally, they got it. While the Animal X crew records the moment, the Bigfoot researchers make an enormous cast, freezing it all in a plaster substance known as Hydrocal B-11: impressions of the buttocks, the ankles, the testicles, the thigh, the arm and the imprint of hair. Mr. Noll gets down on the garage floor to show how the Sasquatch was lying, lounging on its side and reaching out with one long, hairy arm to pluck an apple or two from the fruit drop. Little bits of chewed apple have been collected and are at a lab awaiting analysis. Perhaps tests will find proof of Sasquatch saliva. Having heard this incredible story, having heard how Mr. Noll has spent most of his adult life searching for proof of Sasquatch, until now without success, of how he has dedicated himself to finding hard evidence, I am struck by how bizarre the moment is. In the cast are the clear hoof tracks of an elk. There are imprints left that would match perfectly with an elk's legs. The hair collected in the mud has been matched to an elk. It would seem that Mr. Noll has, if anything, a cast of the impression left by the hindquarters of an elk. But Mr. Noll and his entire research team see only one thing -- undeniable scientific proof of a Sasquatch. "One day I hope this will be in a museum," he says. "Where everybody can see it. It's like something out of an archaeological dig." Earlier, visiting other Sasquatch researchers, I had been shown casts of footprints. Almost all of them looked like Fred Flintstone had left them. One researcher showed me a cast with dermal ridges and realistic toe prints. "I made that myself," he said. "Just to see if it could be done. Slid my foot back and forth and side to side. Just kept making the print longer and wider, then I worked on the toe prints. "It was easy," he said, asking that I not use his name. "I would guess that more than 90% of the footprint casts are hoaxes." The man, who believes proof of Sasquatch may one day be found, said he's backing away from the Bigfoot research field, because "there's too many crazies, too many wild people." Mr. Noll knows he's facing a lot of skeptics with his Sasquatch butt print. But he's convinced it's genuine and believes that sometime in the next few months "very serious" funding will be secured to finance a major Sasquatch research expedition in the Pacific Northwest. Then he digs through his country and western CDs and comes up with a recording of a Sasquatch scream. "Just listen to this," he says, popping it into the CD player in his 4X4 truck. He cranks up the volume -- and my hair stands on end. The high-pitched scream that warbles out of the speakers in his truck doors sounds not like an animal, but like a musical synthesizer. The note holds for a long time, then trails off into a gurgle. You expect a New Age symphony to start up, but the sound just comes again, and again. "Have you ever heard anything like that?" asks Mr. Noll, who's got kind of a far away look in his eyes. You can tell he's thinking of being in the woods again, late at night, with sex pheromones hung in the trees around his camp, listening to a Sasquatch screaming at him from the dark forest. <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! 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