Watchin' For Bigfoot -- 2010

[Bill]

Then ya need to update your browser. I wish I knew how to determine what version I am now using but that's beyond the level of my technical knowledge. It began for me tho when Microsoft automatically updated me from IE7 to IE8 so I'm betting that is what you now have if it's jumping on you.

It has stopped for me so I assume they did another auto update and that I now am using some newer version but which I haven't the foggiest idea.

I'm about to take a walkabout on my personal bigfoot research area and see what if anything I see. It rained again today so likely any tracks that were there last night were washed out. Mostly during daylight hours not much but dogs and cats come around. Were it not a felony here to deal with stray dogs and cats that problem would have ended long ago.

[Ray Ford]

Speaking of bows, which I did in a previous post, and speaking of my "personal research area," which I also did in a previous post, I have made some observations there--observations of bows.  As anyone who has participated in the discussion about Bigfoot, and the possibilities that Bigfeet might exist, knows, several people have advanced the notion that bows are the work of one of the big hairy guys or gals.  Is that so, or is it even likely--even a possibility?

Bows, to make it clear what it is that we are talking about, are trees in the woodlands that, for some reason, have bowed/bent over in such a fashion that their tops are on, or near, the ground and their trunk forms a bow shape.  My obervations have been that many such bowed-over trees die, but some do not.  Some, if in the right circumstance, continue to live and grow: the trucks of such bowed trees can attain the diameters of normal trees their age.  I've seen some bowed-over trees with 12 or 14 inch trunks.

If all bows that are found in the woods were created by Bigfeet--I suppose by manually bending them over to the ground--then there would have to be an awfully big population of Bigfeet widely distributed.  Now, I'm not saying that it isn't a POSSIBILITY that a Bigfoot, if one were around, could cause a bow by bending a tree over, but....

What, in nature, causes a bow?  In very close timber, a sapling will oftentimes grow very tall very quickly without taking the time to increase its circumference--while staying very thin.  This is a desperate ploy that many plants use to reach the life-giving sunlight where photo-synthesis can supply them with nutriants.  (I believe that people attempting to sprout sweet potatoes/yams sometimes place them in the dark to accelerate growth upward.)  When these tall and very thin trees reach a height where their tops can expand, they rapidly become top-heavy.  At a critical point of top-heaviness, the thin truck cannot support the top, and they bow.  The top goes to the ground, and the truck is permanently bent.  This can happen very quickly.  Once the tree starts to bow, it doesn't take an extended period of time to do so.  It can be tall and straight in the evening and bowed over the next morning.

Once the tall, thin tree reaches that criticasl point of top-heaviness, a myrid of things could cause it to start to bow: something as large as an ice storm, perhaps the wind, maybe even a big bird or a fat squirrel....

Incidentally, after a recent ice storm, I had two relatively thick and relatively short young oak trees growing some 18 inches apart form two perfectly parallel partial bows.  Had to be the work of a bored, or artistic, Bigfoot.  And he did it within a few feet of my gate off the black-topped county road--right in full view of anyone driving past my "personal Bigfoot research area."

(Bill, This post started jumpin' after the third paragraph--but I have about learned how to go on with my post anyhow.  Wish I was computer literate enough to know how to update my browser!)

[Bill]

Your hypothsis on bowed trees seems reasonable. I think the majority of them I have seen are in areas that have been logged. When a larger tree is felled it might catch a smaller one on the way down and bend it over. Most commonly they stay bent the rest of their lifes and as you say some live and some die. Some that live will eventually have one or more of the limbs on them turn upward and try to become the new trunk of the tree.

I've seen that here on my own personal bigfoot research area as well. I have two cedar trees that didn't exactly get bowed but rather were pushed over and yet their roots remained in the ground and the trees remained alive and now limbs on both have turned upward and are making new trunks.

When I first moved here there was such a cedar that did get bent at some time in the past and had quite a bow in it. the top eventually died just beyond the bow and a limb turned upward and became a new trunk for the tree. It was an odd looking thing for sure. I've now cleared off the area where it was so I felled the tree.

I have a maple that has two trunks growing from a common base. Back quite a few years ago I had the larger trees in that area taken out and one fell across only one of the two trunks of this particular maple. It fell over making a near perfect bow and remained that way until I tied a rope to it and pulled it back vertical and tied it off over a winter. It is now again an upright tree.

BTW while I was typing that last paragraph mine started the jumping so perhaps there is an update for the forum softward that stopped the problem at GBO. I'll ask Matt to update the software here as well. Maybe it will then stop jumping here.

[Ray Ford]

Your hypothsis on bowed trees seems reasonable.

Actually, Bill, my "hypothsis" is more than that: it is a conclusion based on considerable emperical observation and some knowledge of plant growth dynamics and of engineering.  But that isn't important.  And you are right that there are a lot of things in nature that can bend a tree over: wind, ice, another tree falling on it....  Shucks, I suppose even a Bigfoot, if there are such critters around, could bend one over. 

I have seen several strange tree configurations--including the kind of bowed-over trees that you described where the bowed tree sent one or more branches upward to eventually form one or more new trucks.  I know where there is a tree--its on a creek inside Tulsa--which is really two trees of different sorts.  The tree that is rooted into the ground developed a hollow and another tree of a different sort seeded into the hollow.  The last time that I saw it/them, both trees were substantial, and not very different, in size.  It is/was east of Memorial between 51st  and 61st on a creek.  It has been several years since I worked an inmate crew there cleaning out the creek, so I don't know if it is still standing.

In that series that I wrote under "Works of Fiction" about the little part-Cherokee boy and the old man with scarred fingers, I describe a Sycamore, or Sycamores, that the old man told me about.  There was a large burned out bole some six feet in diameter with a number of new Sycamore trees growing out of the bole.  As you may recall, it had an opening in one side and formed a natural shelter in which the boy took refuge.  Only the old man and the boy actually know if that sycamore actually existed--existed back in the 1950's.  Been intending to do a "walk about" in Blue Gar bottom and see if I could find anything like the old man described.

Well, better quit.  My post is jumping.

[Bill]

I've seen the same situation Ray but never where either tree had any real size to them. When I moved here I had a cedar that I assume was bent over when this land was cut for timber at some prior date. Lots of rotted out stumps and stump holes up back. I don't recall the type tree and at that time it was really more of a bush than tree size but it was growing from that cedar as you mention. It's long since gone tho.

The old home place I was raised in had what is likely the largest sycamore I've ever personally seen. When I was a boy I'd guess it at easily 60"+ for the first 6' or so of the trunk and well over 100' tall. It had a limb growing out at perhaps 8'-10' that was as large as an average tree. I build a tree house on that limb and played in it for many years as a boy.

That huge old sycamore split into two trunks at no more than the end of that 6' height and in that crotch formed by them a privet hedge grew. I dunno if from birds dropping seeds or us using the seeds in our bb guns to make war on each other. It was rather large the last time I saw it. I've not been back out there since about '82 when dad sold the place. I dunno if that old tree is still alive or not.

[Ray Ford]

Speaking of markers, which no one has in this thread....

I have posted about tracks.
I have posted about bows.
And markers are a third thing that some people find as evidence of the presence of Bigfoot.

Now, I'm not sure that I've ever seen a Bigfoot marker, nor am I sure that I really know what one would look like if I did.  My understanding, derived this from other people's comments and pictures, is that they are unusual and/or un-natural arrangements of limbs and other forest items made by a Bigfoot as a means of marking his territory--or whatever Bigfeet mark.  The problem is that, at least here in Oklahoma, the wind and ice storms produce some unusual, and sometimes un-natural appearing, arrangements of limbs and such.  Those circular winds that roam across the state from time to time are particularly bad about doing that.

This brings me back to bows and tracks--and to a question that I've meant to ask someone:  How do Bigfeet make bows and markers without leaving any tracks around?  Funny, isn't it?

I appreciate Bill's remarks about gun ranges.  Just the other, four of us were shooting trap, and, as sure as shootin', I heard an old Tom Turkey laughing over in the brush.

[Ray Ford]

It has been awhile since I have posted on this thread and even longer since I started it.  Lots of water has flowed under the old bridge since....

On July 2--that was a week ago today--I drove out to western Oklahoma to our place in Alfalfa County.
I spent the next day, Saturday, working on a garage that I've been rebuilding for a year or so.  (I don't, these days, get things done too quickly.  Come to think of it, I never did.)  But my son came out to the place, and we took a break from working to go check a new corn feeder that he had placed down by the creek--Eagle Chief Creek.  The critters had not been frequenting it too much, and there was lots of corn scattered around on the ground.  Over to one side, there had been a turkey kill by something--probably a bobcat.  A few big feathers remained.  The presence of a bobcat might explain why the other critters were leaving corn on the ground.

We walked around a little and then drove around the section.  Our place is the SE Quarter and the NW Quarter of that section.  They set corner to corner.  Eagle Chief comes into the section on the NW Quarter and curves down to the SW Quearter before leaving our land.  The SW Quarter in the section north of us usually hosts a large flock of turkeys.  We've counted over 150 at a time.  This day, however, there were only 8 to 12 visible on the wheat stubble.  Makes me wonder if whatever killed that one next to our corn feeder is not cleaning out the population up and down the creek.

That is probably, as I said above, a bobcat, but I guess that it could be a bigfoot.  But we didn't see any tracks or find any hair or scat.  My son is not too enthusiastic about looking for bigfoot sign: he doesn't believe in them.

We came back to the eastern side of Oklahoma on Saturday evening.

[Ray Ford]

That last post was in March.
It is now into August--and it is hot!

Last Friday, we drove down to the Cowpokes Cafe--I stop there sometimes--at the junction of I40 and old 75 and picked up our two "grandkids."  I put that in quotation marks because they aren't really biological grandchildren.  I had an adopted son.  When he died, he had a little boy.  The boy's mother subsequently had another boy and a girl.  My wife and I knew the problems that attending to one child in a blended family cause, so we always treated all three alike:  Christmas presents, birthday gifts, etc.  The two younger children started calling us "grandma" and "grandpa" like the older boy did--and started coming to visit.  Ergo, we have two, even three, grandchildren.

From the junction on I40, we drove to I35 at Oklahoma City, up to 412, and on to our farm in Alfalfa County, Oklahoma.  

We took the kids to Salt Plains outside of Cherokee, the only place in the country where you can dig for crystals and keep what you find.

We took them to Alva, and my son, who works for Northwestern Oklahoma State University there, gave us a private tour of that school's natural history museum.  They have mammoth tusks and bones that the University of Oklahoma in Norman would love to have.  They have a significant bird display.  Frankly, I didn't realise how large bald and golden eagles are until I saw that display.  (Bald eagles can not now, I understand, be taken for display.  The ones on display there predate the restriction.)  They have lots of other stuff.  My zooloogist friend friend was curator for many years.

We took them to the only extant sod house in Oklahoma.  It was built by a family that "made the run" into the Cherokee Strip.  It survived 60 years until the Oklahoma Historical Society took it over and built a protective building over it--at which time it started to disintegrate.  They figured out that it could not be allowed to dry out.  They had to keep it wet.

We spent a couple of days on the farm, but couldn't get out into the hunting areas very much.  It had rained 7 or 8 inches in ten days there, and the "squiters" were working alive.  We did make some recon drives and saw a few turkeys and a deer or two--not as many as usual.  And we took the boy down in the pasture to practice his shooting.  He is right-handed and right-footed but left eye dominant.  And he can't close one eye at a time.  But he has already killed a big buck.  His dad took him to a good hunting spot out in western Oklahoma.

Didn't see any bigfeet or tracks of same.
Didn't hear any vocalizations.
Killed a bunch of awfully big mosquitos--which doesn't really count.  

[Ray Ford]

Made a trip out to our place in Alfalfa County, Oklahoma, this weekend.  I didn't do much: just loafed around--which is frequently the best thing to do at a place in the country.

I did go down into the woods with my son.  He wanted to set up a deer stand from which he could use his newly-acquired compound bow.  Got that done and returned to the house.  Later I did just a little work on the garage away from the house.  At one of those places, the woods down by the creek or the tall grass beside the garage, I collected several chiggers.  And found one tick crawling up toward a good spot to latch on.

My son rode back home with us: he needed to drive a car back to the farm.  But while he was here, we treked out to the gun range, sighted in a couple of rifles, and shot a little bit of trap.  He had a Steven's double 16 gauge.  I took my NEF single 12 gauge.  I'm going to get good with that $100 gun if it kills me.

Didn't see any bigfeet either at the farm or at the range.  Do bigfeet get chiggers?

[Ray Ford]

It was back in September that I last posted.  Haven't been out much--not since catching that bad case of chiggers that I mentioned in my last post.  During our primitive firearms deer season, I went out to our place in Alfalfa County, Oklahoma.  I arrived sometime after noon on Monday, October 25, and was in the blind by 5 p.m.  My son showed up at 6, and we watched six does, one buck, and 14 turkeys harvest new wheat off the north field on the home place--the southeast quarter of our section.  None of the deer were ones that we wanted to shoot.

On Tuesday morning, I watched seven does and 14 turkeys.  A smallish coyote trotted past my blind without, apparently, noticing my presence.  He was not more than 15 or 20 feet from me.  (My blind is constructed of aged privacy fence pickets and has been in place a while.  It is approximately 4 by 8 with a walk-through opening in the back.  Serves the purpose vary well.)  That evening, I saw five does, one buck, and 14 turkeys.

On Wednesday, I went to the blind about noon and saw those 14 turkeys--again.  That evening, I saw three does, two bucks, the 14 turkeys, and one very large striped skunk.  The two bucks, one a spike and the other a 4-point, treated me to my first buck fight--if you could call it that.  They engaged for some 20 minutes before deciding that they would reather eat the tender wheat shoots.  I characterized the fight as being somewhat like an adolescent shoving match.

Not having seen a bigfoot, and not having seen any bucks worth shooting, and not wanting to shoot any of the does, I came home to Broken Arrow.  Probably couldn't have killed a bigfoot with that black powder gun anyway.

[Ray Ford]

On Monday, November 8, I drove back out to our place in Alfalfa County, Oklahoma.  Muzzleloader season was come and gone without me scoring on a deer--but turkey season was open.  I took my turkey and varmint gun, a Ruger .22-250, and hoped for the best.

Our home place, a quarter section, has north wheat ground and south wheat ground separated by pasture and timber.  The south wheat ground is divided by a seepy, wooded ridge into an upper (east) and a lower (west) fields.  I have built ground blinds on both the north and the lower south fields.  I used posts, 2x4's, and pickets salvaged from old privacy fences.  The one on the lower south field is right against the pasture fence facing west onto the center of that wheat ground.  The one on the north field is backed up against tember facing north onto the center of that wheat ground.  They stand right out, but they've been there long enough that the deer and other criters don't pay any attention to them--and they are weathered gray.  Both hold two hunters easily: they are approximately 4 by 8 feet.  (At the northeast corner of the lower south field, there is a large hackberry tree with a steel tree seat up some 15 or 20 feet on a limb.  It was put there by my deceased son, and is now grown into the tree.  We've never taken it down.  He killed a few deer from that seat.  He had no trouble getting to it: he was small and as agile as a squirrel.)

Monday afternoon, I saw turkeys on the south field and some does on the north field.   Tuesday afternoon, I again saw turkeys on the south field and a doe and two bucks on the north field.  On Wednesday, I saw two does on the north field but no turkeys until I drove around the section.  A flock of some 15 or 16 was on the wheat field on our other quarter section--on the wheat there.  None of the turkeys that I saw was a tom fit to shoot.  After I returned to Broken Arrow, I had a conversation with  a retired biologist who told me that, this time of year, the turkey's would separate into three groupings.  You will see, he said,  flocks of hens, flocks of toms, and flocks of jakes.  At my place, I had the hens.

I did take one shot at a cripled bird that might have been a large jake.  I actually took two shots, and, at over 200 yards, I missed both times.  He cripled off into the timber along the creek.  Maybe a bigfoot harvested him--or the two cyotes we spotted on the place.

[Ray Ford]

On Wednesday, November 17, I drove back out to Alfalfa County.  Wednesday was cold and rainy, so, old and wimpy as I am, I stayed in the house.  On Thursday, I drove up to Alva--my son lives there--and went to the Moreland rifle range and to a gun shop in Woodward with him.  We sighted in a couple of rifles at the range, and I purchased a Marlin .22 bolt action with cylinder magazine at the gun shop.  We returned to Alva, and I drove back down to the farm.  I saw a small antlerless deer not far from the highway about a half mile before I got to our place.  On Friday morning I saw one buck on the north field.  And, while driving around the section, I spotted a flock of turkey hens on a field in the section north of us.  Turkey season had come and gone without me scoring a turkey--but deer rifle season opened Saturday.

My son showed up at the farm before daylight on Saturday morning, and we treked down to the blind on the north field.  "Treked" may not be the right word to use: We drove around on the county road to the well road, down the well road across the wheat and into the pasture, parked in the pasture near the blind, clambered over the fence and walked through a line of timber along a drainage way to the back of the blind.  

In just a few minutes, a decent buck emerged from that line of timber not 75 feet west of the blind.  Before I could get positioned to shoot, he melted back into the trees.  Shortly thereafter, we went back to the house.  That afternoon, we returned to the blind, settled in, and started glassing the wheat field in front of us.  A short time thereafter, a doe emerged from the timber along the west end of the field.  We could see a decent buck standing just inside the timber.  In a minute, he stepped onto the wheat and stopped--posed for a broadside shot.  I held my Ruger .25-06 just behind his shoulder about the middle of his body and fired.  He and the doe disappeared into the timber.

We walked the 205 or so yards to the timber.  I went north and my son went south.  In just about a minute, my son hollared, "Here he is."  He was stone-cold death.  My shot hit him some 5 or 6 inches down and left from my point of aim and ripped his lungs and heart.

He was a small deer with a large eight-point rack.  At the widest point of the inside curve of the main beams, he was almost 16 inches.  Both brow tines were broken.  That could have been from a fight with another buck--or maybe a bigfoot grabbed them.

[Ray Ford]

On Wednesday, November 24, we--my wife and I--loaded up and headed west to the farm in Alfalfa County, Oklahoma.  We arrived sometime after dark--which didn't leave much opportunity to look for game animals.  My son came out the next morning, took a position in the ground blind on the north wheat field, and shot, with his Ruger I 7 mm magnum, a nine-point buck just after daylight.  He made a neck shot, and the buck dropped.  He returned to the house and rousted me out of bed to help him retrieve it from a draw in the wheat 200+ yards from the stand.

We spent the rest of the morning checking it in and taking it to Cherokee to be processed.  Then, we ate the turkey and ham dinner that my wife had thrown together.  (Whatever else that you can say about my wife, she is one of the best cooks around.)

That evening, I went down to the blind and watched for whatever.  A buck emerged from the timber along Eagle Chief Creek.  He was over 300 yards from me--and I had already shot my rifle buck.  I watched him stand on his hind legs and eat Chinaberries from the trees.  (There are a lot of those Chinaberrys along the creek.)  He moved out onto the wheat and worked his way north around the edge of the field.  Then, two does came onto the wheat from the southwest corner of the field.  They, too, worked their way toward the north edge of the field.  

I was watching the three animals when I heard something walking behind the blind.  I turned around, but I could see nothing.  In a few minutes, the tiniest eight-point buck that I've seen emerged from the timber just east of the blind.  He walked  past the blind some 25 yards from it headed west.  He did not, apparently, notice me being there.  He grazed north toward the other three deer.  In a little while, the does and the big buck went into the timber directly across the field from the blind--onto the neighbors.  I could have dropped one of the does.  I was carrying my Browning .270 A-bolt equiped with a Nikon scope, but, if I had, I would have had to dress it.  And our theory is that, the more does you have on your place, the more bucks that you will have.

That little buck was a sure nuff eight-point: he had tines about an inch long off the main beam.  He might have weighed 70 pounds entire.  Tiny!  The big buck was an oddity: he only had one antler.  The other had popped off his head like a shed.  If both sides had been there, he would have been a nice eight.  We decided that he would live until next year--and maybe be a good eight or ten.  We've observed several oddities in the racks this year.

You don't reckon that a bigfoot jerked that left antler off, do you?

We came back east on Saturday.