Regional Research and Field Investigation Teams

Editor’s Note: This is a guest post by Tom Fonner. He has been exploring the backcountry of Arizona for over 30 years. He enjoys the solitude and peace of the outdoors with a passion for wildlife, nature, and landscape photography, tracking, hiking, camping, and fishing. You can visit his blog at swbri.blogspot.com.

The Bigfoot community is a very fractured and diverse group of individuals that would benefit from regionally structured, dedicated, and reliable response teams. There are many investigative groups and individuals throughout the country that work independently in their search for Bigfoot. They often investigate with a sense of guarded secrecy to their locations, protective over the evidence they find, and untrusting in nature to others. The reasons range from the drive for personal gain, to prevent interference from hoaxers, and even the desire to protect Bigfoot. Regardless of reasons or motives, many of these groups or individuals would benefit from the expertise and assistance from a highly selected group of trusted people whose primary goal is to evaluate and follow up on evidence that has merit and may lead to the verification of Bigfoot.

There are benefits to this idea even if not at first apparent. Over time the attention given to hoaxers and those seeking personal gain would diminish. The focus would shift and those not willing to present their evidence to these special regional teams would eventually be ignored by the majority interested in the verification of Bigfoot. A mind set would grow on the belief that only evidence shared for evaluation would be valid and acceptable. The Bigfoot community would eventually understand that personal recognition would not be lost and the gain would outweigh the desire to withhold evidence for that reason. This would result in a centralized and trusted network of experts that everyone could rely on, and critical evidence would not gather dust over months without the appropriate attention. This leads to the benefit of a more rapid response with follow up investigations that could uncover additional evidence that would normally be lost over time. Footprints, scat, and hair degrade and are lost as time passes. These things if found in abundance, or over a wide area, would allow experts to track and map the location and movement of Bigfoot. Evidence would possibly emerge showing either a migratory pattern or an established home range leading to the chance for additional sightings and observations.

The larger and more established investigative groups would not be overshadowed by this process but reinforced with independent and highly skilled teams that would assist in verification. This will build on the investigative group's legitimacy and even help expand the efforts and chances of finding and observing Bigfoot. There will be established groups that will still oppose the use of special regional teams, but as time passes these teams will establish their credibility and importance of purpose. Most groups will eventually recognize that the regional teams will improve their credibility resulting in the desire to promote the teams assistance for their own benefit.

There are many groups and individuals like Team Tazer Bigfoot, Dr. Meldrum, and others that have established their own credibility and have respect in the Bigfoot community. The responsibility of the selection of regional teams would be appropriately determined, and agreed on, by groups and individuals like these and others. It will be critical to select individuals from recognized and established field investigative groups to gain the approval of the Bigfoot community. Those chosen would be recognized as experts and have established their own credibility in their given region of operation.

This idea is much to broad to be established quickly and haphazardly, and it obviously hints at a national organization of Bigfoot researchers. This would be a process that would need years to develop and to be accepted by most. Appropriately this process could begin on a trial bases at a smaller regional level. Success and acceptance regionally by experts that have already established credibility in the Bigfoot community would allow for the gradual development of regional teams in other areas. Until the individual and independent nature of the Bigfoot community can be improved with a centralized consortium of experts then the elusiveness of Bigfoot may still be a obstacle that will be difficult to overcome.