SPEAKER_00: 0:00

Four on your drive.

SPEAKER_03: 0:38

And then you hear the case. Welcome back to the Garnesty Outdoors and Podcast. I am your host, Frank Mestica.

SPEAKER_01: 0:44

You got the old squad sitting in on this one.

SPEAKER_03: 0:47

And today we have a very special, interesting podcast, something I'm really excited about. I actually met this guy at the Sussex County Farm and Horse Show. He had a booth there. And he goes by on Instagram. It's uh Shadow of Redeye. Mr. Mike is Familant. Is that it?

SPEAKER_05: 1:07

There you go.

SPEAKER_03: 1:08

Familant.

SPEAKER_05: 1:09

Familant. Familant.

SPEAKER_03: 1:11

Familant.

SPEAKER_05: 1:12

Slice it down the middle. You got it.

SPEAKER_03: 1:13

I'll take it. Hey, Mike. I appreciate you taking the time out and uh, you know, hopping on here to talk from Bigfoot with us because I'm really excited about this one.

SPEAKER_05: 1:24

Yeah, no, it's gonna be a good time. Uh we found uh we found some time in my uh ridiculously busy schedule that I can pop on, and uh I'm glad that we uh we got this opportunity.

SPEAKER_03: 1:35

Yeah, um listen, I'm I'm thrilled that you agreed to come on first of all. So but Mike, why don't you give us like a little back like a little background on yourself, how you got started? You know, floor is yours, buddy.

SPEAKER_05: 1:47

Um let's see. Uh started uh I'm a firefighter EMT by trade, used to do that back in the day. Um so uh I got into I'm a Bigfoot researcher for for those that that don't know, uh I've been doing it since 2011. What got me into it uh back in 2011, uh I was uh working at a beach resort in Sarasota, Florida, which was like the best job that I've ever had before. The boss was like, hey, if you want to go out and watch the sunset on the beach with the guests, like like do that. And I'm like, you don't gotta tell me twice, you know?

SPEAKER_04: 2:24

Yep.

SPEAKER_05: 2:25

So, anyways, uh one evening I uh I was watching, I guess I was bored and I was watching Finding Bigfoot on TV. Have you guys ever seen it?

SPEAKER_03: 2:34

Oh, I should I think I watched every episode.

SPEAKER_05: 2:37

All right, so so you're well aware. So okay, so uh for those that don't know, it's a show on Animal Planet where they go out and they they run around the woods, they look for Bigfoot and they interview witnesses. It's uh uh it's very similar to my show, except my my show's better. Uh, but anyways, they uh we'll get to that in a little bit. Anyways, at the end of the show, they were like, hey, if you guys, if you want to come out and look for Bigfoot with us, you can. All you got to do is pay this ridiculous amount of money and sign your life away, and you could go look for Bigfoot with the team. And I'm like, there's no way I am not doing this, you know. So I signed up that night and I purchased two tickets, uh, one for me, one for my fiance, whom I did not tell we were gonna go look for Bigfoot. This was gonna be our little pre-wedding, you know, surprise, my surprise type thing, you know. So, anyways, a couple of I was always uh, and this is a this is kind of an important note. Uh, I was always an indoor kid growing up. Uh, always like video games, movies, put me in front of, put me inside in front of a screen, and I am good to go. Never hiking, fishing, anything, anything like that. Nothing outdoors. So, anyways, um this was a camping trip. So I had to buy the tent and the sleeping bags and the headlamp that they require. So, about three weeks, and I'm hiding this stuff. It in we're living in a one-bedroom apartment. I'm hiding this stuff in our in our patio closet underneath like the Christmas decorations and stuff. You know, there's there's no way she is gonna find this this stuff. So, anyways, um, a couple weeks before the expedition uh comes around, and I'm greeted by her at the doorway, and she's got the face on, and I'm like, oh no, what did I do now? You know, and uh she had done something that's to this day, I have no idea why she decided to do this, but she decided to clean the apartment, and she found all of the camping stuff. So she says, Mike, what are we doing? I said, Hun, we are going to North Florida to look for Bigfoot, right? And then we broke up. So uh there was that. Uh then uh I'm I moved to Tampa uh after the breakup. Yeah. Um I got a job working on the ambulance uh for Tampa. Uh I had a uh moved up there after the breakup and I had three EMT partners. So I had picked the weirdest partner, that's how I did it, because that's the only person that I knew up there. And I said, uh, hey Jimmy, I gotta go up to North Florida to look for Bigfoot. Do you want to come with me? Because I found out these tickets are non-refundable, right? Anyways, um he said, and he's my best friend to this day.

SPEAKER_02: 5:33

He said, Oh man, I've always wanted to do that.

SPEAKER_05: 5:36

So I said, nice, you know? So we go to North Florida to Rey Estate Park. Nothing happened. We're like there with 60 other people, and I'm like, how are we gonna find Bigfoot with 60 other people here? Isn't that a little ridiculous, don't we think? Right, yeah. So um nothing happens. A little bit. It was money, you know, all about the Moolah, and I get it, you know. Um so nothing happens. Go figure, you know. Uh four nights, no, three nights, four days of hiking around Florida's wilderness and and speaking to witnesses and researchers and all that cool stuff, but nothing happens in the way of Bigfoot activity until the last night, uh, where we had we had uh we heard a tree knock. It was Jimmy and I were up, it was about two o'clock in the morning, we're watching a meteor shower, and we hear a tree knock come from one side of camp. And I immediately thought that it was a people that put on the expedition.

unknown: 6:43

Right.

SPEAKER_05: 6:43

Hoaxing us, you know, figuring that they they're you know, trying to persuade somebody to think that we're having Bigfoot activity. So I didn't think twice about it until about two minutes later, bam, a knock from the complete opposite direction. So I was like, man, these people gotta be pretty good. So so, anyways, about 15 minutes goes by, and all of a sudden you hear come crashing down through the forest, right? Plump a fist-sized rock.

SPEAKER_01: 7:14

Oh wow.

SPEAKER_05: 7:16

Right? So it was at this point in my life where I said, nope, this is how horror movies start. I am getting out of here, right? And Jimmy, uh uh Jimmy's like, well, if you want to go sleep in the car, you can sleep in the and by the time he had said that, Mike sleeping bag and boom, right to the car. So he comes up and he's like, dude, Mike, you know, Bigfoot knock on trees and they throw rocks. Like, this could be squatchy activity that we're having here. I'm like, yeah, you know, it's the whole point of the expedition is to get this activity. So I suppose you're right. So we're back out by the campfire over the course of the next 15 minutes, four more of these fifth-sized rocks come crashing down and land five to ten feet away from us, right? So my buddy comes up to me, Jimmy comes up to me, and he's like, Mike, I got an idea. I'm gonna throw a rock back at it. I say, Jimmy man, I don't think that's a good idea, brother. You know? So he takes the rock and he chucks it back in that direction. And I knew it wasn't a person because instantly after that, a 15-pound laptop-sized boulder came crashing out of the trees, landed five feet away from us.

SPEAKER_03: 8:39

Wow, no way.

SPEAKER_05: 8:40

Yeah, that was it. That was our nothing else happened that night. The next morning, we asked our camp neighbors, hey, did anybody here see anything? And nobody did. Uh, they were all asleep by that point. And uh, you know, we wanted to be all scientific because this was a research expedition, right? So we're like, okay, let's see what's the closest that this thing could have been to us, right? So we did some measurements, and the closest this object or whatever could have been throwing these rocks at us were 75 yards away. So yeah, I mean that that's outside of human range. Boom, no question about it.

SPEAKER_03: 9:17

Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_05: 9:18

So that was my first experience, and that was 2011, and I've been looking for a bigfoot ever since.

SPEAKER_01: 9:24

That's cool.

SPEAKER_03: 9:25

That that's really cool. So, what actually like drew you to Sussex County? I know like I talked to you a little bit at the fair, and you were kind of telling me like where like some like where most of the sightings were and all that, and that like really intrigued me because like I would have never thought Sussex County, to be honest with you.

SPEAKER_05: 9:44

Oh, yeah, yeah, big time. Uh, I am born and raised in Sparta, so that's the uh that is uh you know, homegrown garden state, born and raised, uh, which is pretty cool. Um, I toured the country eight months out of the year, uh, and it just so happens that the first week in August every year, I'm back in my home county of Sussex, and I'm at the New Jersey Farm North show, Sussex County Farm North show where we met. So uh you caught me on a good week.

SPEAKER_03: 10:15

That that was perfect. Told you as soon as I saw your tent, I was like, I have to go in there. I'm pretty sure I remember telling you um about like how my son has an uncle squatch and he calls him squatch, and we were talking all that because he was interested. We walked right in there and he was like, Is that squatch? I was like, No, it's not squatch.

SPEAKER_05: 10:40

That was a fun week, man. I met um not only I love the people like the kids that come running up and were like, I saw you from the top of the Ferris wheel.

SPEAKER_02: 10:50

And I'm like, nice, that money is well worth it.

SPEAKER_05: 10:54

Um but no, actually, what was cool about the fair, not only did I was I like one of the head presenters there, which is really cool, and hint hint we may be doing it again in next year, which would be really awesome. Um I got it. So Sussex County, New Jersey is as I think where I was telling you at the fair, has like a lot of sightings. We have 71 current sightings of Bigfoot in Sussex County, New Jersey, um, which is awesome. That's the highest number east of the Mississippi, which would kind of make sense because we also have the highest density of black bear population east of the Mississippi. So that goes hand in hand where you have bit black bear sightings, you have a good habitat for possible Bigfoot habit or Bigfoot habitat, right? So, anyways, they go hand in hand. So um at the fair, we just about almost doubled the number of sightings that people have never told anybody, just from Sussex County, New Jersey, of people coming up and saying, Hey, I've never told anybody this before, but on uh, you know, Deckertown Turnpike in the 70s, I saw a Bigfoot, and this is a story. And uh I think it, I think the total number was 48 people came up to us uh and shared their their encounters.

SPEAKER_03: 12:11

Wow, it must have been amazing just to hear their stories because like a lot of people I know, like even from watching the show, like a lot of people are scared to come forward, they like you know they don't want to be known for that, so they usually just keep that to themselves.

SPEAKER_05: 12:56

And it's because and I and that's and I I joke about the money that I spent on the tent because I spent a lot of money on that thing, but with with that comes those that ability to to gather and gain these kind of people that have never shared their experiences before, and if it wasn't for the tent, they would have never come over and saw what I was doing, you know. That begs you to ask the question: how many people have seen a big foot but never have shared their experience, never told anybody? No, no, we don't have that's a we don't have a number for that. Is it one in ten? Is it one in a hundred? Is it a it we don't we just we'd have no idea?

SPEAKER_03: 13:41

Yeah, no, you're right. It's crazy to think about.

SPEAKER_01: 13:46

If I can if I could cut in for a second with with that, it's funny how how you say that with uh people who don't say much about anything, and being on two different podcasts with with this one and uh another one I'm on, um we've had guests come on and they see my name and they're like, Yo, do you do you believe? And I'm like, Yeah, well, obviously, I'm like, Yeah. And it's like, and they're like, Well, I saw I saw one. That's why, and you know, and I'm like, really? And there was one guy, he was an actual professional hunter. He was in West Virginia doing a turkey hunt. He went in with uh another guy, and they heard screams and yells from the the the squatch in there, and uh he looked at his buddy and he goes, Is that what I think it is? And he goes, Yep. And he goes, Do we need to go? He's like, right now. And they turned around and they they beat feet back to their truck and got back to their camp where they were. But uh total never met the guy before, didn't didn't have any. I mean, he was it was like it was so funny, and you know, not trying to toot my own horn or anything, but he was waiting to talk to me at the end of the show, and he's like, Yo, how'd you get that name? You know, and I I went, I went, I just went through the you know the whole thing, but yeah, um my uh my you know I don't want to take up Frank's show and stuff, but I'll tell you my father in the in the 70s was chased by one and almost killed by one.

unknown: 15:13

Wow.

SPEAKER_01: 15:14

And uh I always thought it was a bullshit story when I was a kid, so I didn't cut up and run off because we had a lot of land up here where we live. I'm up in uh Ulster County in New York, nice, and um it was very rural back then, and it's still pretty rural now, but it was uh uh there was a villa, there was a lot of villas in the areas where people would come up from the city and and spend time and then head back home, you know, for for the weekend. And uh my dad had a gig where he he's he was a drummer. I'm a drummer also, and uh him and my uncle, my uncle play guitar. They had a job at this local villa right down the road from their house. And uh my dad worked there working in the kitchen doing dishes and stuff, and he said to the old guy that owned the place, he says, Hey, you know, maybe we can make a couple bucks. Let me and my brother play up on the you know for for a couple songs and stuff, and uh throw us a couple bucks. So the guy said, Yeah, so as you can imagine, it's later at night when you get a show going and stuff like that, and they would play their gig. And my dad saved up enough money to buy this really nice Ross 10 speed that he wanted. So he got that. Now he didn't have to walk back and forth to the house, and we're talking about a mile and a half from where the villa was to their house, and um, there was no houses except for one in between that villa and their house. Well, it was a full moon night. Of course, it has to be a full moon night, but it's a God's honest truth. And there's a dip in the road where the road comes down into a bottom, and there's a swamp that's right in the middle of that. And my dad heard some rustling around in the the uh the woods, and he was like, Oh, maybe it's that buck, you know, all the deer is probably that big stag we've been seeing. I'm gonna stop right here and I'll get a good glimpse at him. So all of a sudden the deer started crossing the road, one after the other. The big ten-point came out, ran down, and went down through the woods. He's like, Man, I knew it. I knew I was gonna see him. And all of a sudden, he said he heard the most blood curdling woman scream down to this guttural lion roar. The hair stood up on his freaking neck and he started pedaling that bike like he never pedaled before. So he's going down this in the roads were dirt back then, they didn't have paved roads up here. So, you know, a tenspe, he's got little skinny tires on and he's pedaling his ass off. He said he can hear trees snapping, and this thing is just coming. And he said he could actually hear the feet, you know, like through the woods. He could hear the brush and everything snapping. Well, he has to make a right-hand turn onto his road. At the corner of that two pieces of property, it's stone walls. Well, this thing came out and swung at him and tripped over the rock wall at the same time. And my dad had looked, my dad had shoulder length there because he was in a band and stuff, and it actually hit his hair. It almost hit him in the head. And he said, when that hand went past his head, he said it was the most stinkiest, horrible smell, like something died, went right past him. And he heard it hit the ground. You know, it tripped, it fell. He's saying, Oh my god, I'm gonna die. I'm gonna die. The devil's after me. I don't know what the hell this is, it's gonna kill me. So he's pedaling like a son of a gun again. Now it's on the road, and he hears pop, pop, pop, pop, pump. He can hear the feet hitting on the road. He comes down the hill, they were building the house, and they had a mobile home trailer that they lived in and had a little front porch. He's pulling and pulling on the door, and my grandfather had chained the door and he's beating on the door. Pop, pop, let me in, let me in. So my grandfather wakes up. He's all pissed off. What the frig is the matter with you? You're gonna wake the whole family up, buddy. What the hell's going on? My father can't even breathe. He says, Lock the door, lock the door, something's gonna kill me. He says, What the hell are you on? Drugs or something? What's wrong with you? He says, Dad, I'm telling you, something's out there is trying to kill me. And it went that into that deep roar. And he went, Oh my god. They got the gun cabinet open, they loaded all the lever action guns, shotguns, everything they had. My grandmother got up. My uh uncle was already had had been home, and my aunt was just a little girl back then. So everybody got a gun, and this thing was making circles around the trailer. And every time it went around the trailer, it got a little further and a little further and a little further away. And at one point, it was actually came back and it was shoving its shoulder into the side of the trailer, and the trailer was you know rocking and doing this stuff, so it quieted down after a little while. My grandmother had called the police, so local town police came up, spotlight on, looking all around, told them be careful, something's out there. They said, Look, we're gonna drive all around trying to see what the hell happened here, whatever. My dad's like shaking. He's he can he's beside himself, he didn't know what the hell it was. So my grandmother, my my I'm Native American on my grandmother's side. My grandmother had an inclination of what she knew, what she thought it was. And my father's she told my father, listen to me, go take a shower, calm down. Here's a little bit of rum, and they gave him some rum to drink, something that just cool as jets. He got in a shower and he cooled off. She said, Look, go to bed. Nothing's out there, we haven't heard anything for a while. Just go to bed. So he goes in the bedroom, he lays down, and um he says, I just had this weird feeling. And I said, Yeah, and he goes, like something was watching me. And he goes, I looked up and now the trailer sat high. The trailer was over six feet because they put it up on like a foundation to keep it off the ground and keep insulation underneath the trailer to keep it warm and all that stuff. He said through the moonlight in the window, that thing's shadow was cast onto the bed, and he could see. My dad's an artist, so he can draw really good. He made he drew that whole outline and it said he said it had like almost like pointed ears, and his head came to like a almost like a coconut, like a point on the top, and it was looking in the window. He slithered out of the bed, got down on the floor, and just laid there and he didn't move. And he said, Finally, it disappeared. And that was the last that they ever heard of it being around them that they actually heard. But like two weeks later, there's a lake down the road. And I actually hunt behind the lake, I call it Squatch Lake. And um there was a little kid and his father and the guy sitting there drinking beer back in the day. You know, they didn't care, they drank and drive or whatever. They didn't give a crap. So this guy's drinking beer, little kids fishing in the pond. He's daddy, daddy, there's a bear. Now, up here there was no bears, only in the Adirondacks you had bears. We didn't have bears here. So the little kid, Daddy, there's a big bear coming this way. Shut up and fish. He says, Keep keeping just you want to fish, just shut up. I'm trying to read the paper. So about two seconds later, Daddy, that big bear is getting closer. Guy goes, Would you shut the hell up? Stop lying. There's no bears around here. So he's just in the car sitting there. He said, Daddy, that bear is really getting close. He says, That's it. Let's golly crap. And he looked around the lake and it was coming around the lake, right to where they were parked out in front of the spillway. So the guy took got the kid, he sped off and got the hell out of there, and he went to the town police and he told them. So there's actually two records in history in the town of Platakill up here, uh, that that Bigfoot was seen. What happened with my my dad and my family, and it was documented on what had happened with that guy and that little kid. Later on, if you probably you probably know this, uh, Mike, that uh there was an apple jam. It was owned by the limbos up here. That's where the Bigfoot baby was seen swinging. That's only about maybe five, six miles uh west of my house from here. And uh I can honestly tell you, all the years that I've lived here and I've hunted in the woods, and that's where I got the name the squatch because I'm hairy and I'm the wild, I'm the squatch means wild man of the woods, and that's that's me. I'm the wild man of the woods. I've I've never seen one. Uh I did have an encounter one night when we were all camping uh in the town of a soapus. Something big wandered into the camp. I still to this day don't know what it was. Me and my buddies heard it. I I don't know if it was a bear or if it was a squatch, but I was damn scared sitting there in that tent with a knife. That's all I had was a knife. And uh I woke up the next morning and I didn't say nothing. And my buddies like, uh, were you guys up like later? And I was like, Well, I was trying to go to sleep. Well, I heard something, and I'm like, You heard that too. And he's like, Yeah, why didn't you say something? I'm like, because I didn't want to be an idiot, you know. I was like, I don't know.

SPEAKER_03: 24:26

You don't want to be the first one.

SPEAKER_01: 24:27

I was like, you know, and it's like, you know, you're coming forth about saying something like, you know, how many people hide it and stuff. I didn't want to say nothing. I didn't know what it was, but that's the only thing, and I didn't see it with my own eyes. I just heard something outside the tent, and uh that's the closest I've been. I've been in the woods ever since. I've I heard something one time when I was coyote hunting, calling coyotes that didn't sound like a coyote. I kind of like revisited it. I I got the hell out of there. I was like, I don't want to find out what the hell's here. I know that scared the crap out of me, and I wasn't sure if it was a bobcat maybe in breeding season, growling like that or something, but I just got in the truck and I was like, Yeah, I'm going home. And you know, but no, I honestly I've never I've never had really anything like where I visually seen something. Yeah, but through the years, all around here, there's been reports. We've got a lot of swamps and bogs and stuff, and you know, it's mountains and and stuff. So you know, one spot up the road, there's uh they call it Huckleberry Turnpike, but it's it's the cranberry bog up there, and they called that guy the bog monster. And um all around the same time period in those 70s, early 80s stuff. I mean, there was reports of stuff, and uh it's it's funny because when I started the hunting channel, I started my uh Instagram page with everything. I'm like, what the hell am I gonna call myself? And I I got thinking about it, and I'm like, I had long I had long hair too, so with the beard and the long hair, I really was a squatchy looking kind of guy. And I was like, screw it, I'll call it outdoors or more with the squatch, you know, and it fit, and yeah, from here on out, that's where we got it. And you know, I got shirts and hats and the whole nine yards, but it's really interesting, and and people ask me why, why? Well, I mean, I got a family history with it, you know. I mean, yeah, you know, for one, you know, Sasquatch is an Indian name. I'm I'm Native American, so you know, it's something to connect back to my heritage. I am the wild man of the woods, I do all a bunch of crazy shit, and uh you know, I'm in the woods just as much as they are, is like what I like to say. And it's cool to have, you know, we're off the the hunting topic, but we're also on the research topic of the Bigfoot and the squatches. It's really, really cool to have you on. And uh, I just wanted to share that. I don't mean to take up so much of the show, but no, no, man. I mean it's one of those stories that needed to be heard, you know. And and Mike, if if you want sometime, if you're doing something, uh my father, I had told him that I was gonna be on with you. He said he would tell a story to you or you know, okay, a group of people. Because he really tells, you know, I tell it like it's like he was he's he's the one that got it, you know.

SPEAKER_03: 27:17

He's really into it, you know, like oh yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 27:20

Yeah, yeah, we'll chat after after this and uh we'll get I'll get your information. Absolutely, Mike. Sounds great. Cool.

SPEAKER_03: 27:27

That's such a cool story. Because I I remember seeing um I think it was finding Bigfoot when they when they did an episode up here, Mike. I don't know if you remember. Oh yeah. Um I think they were up by like Mountain Creek where that was. Yeah, Hamburg Mountain. And like High Point, I think, too, or something. Because I heard a lot of people see stuff at High Point.

SPEAKER_05: 27:50

High Point's great. That's where uh I've gotten two pieces of my best evidence. We're up in High Point. I've I've gotten uh a footprint find in the snow that was like 15 and a half inches long. Um and we got uh uh howls recorded three distinct big. I mean, I'm I'm I'm gonna call them Bigfoot howls because they could be nothing else. And I say that because I sent the howls off. We re-recorded them, they're on my YouTube channel if anybody wants to check them out. Um, we sent them away to a linguist in the military who just happens to do Bigfoot research on the side, so he's like perfectly you know apt to analyze my audio. And he came back with this report that says because of X, Y, and Z, this is outside of human vocal range, and it's no known animal from Northwest New Jersey.

SPEAKER_03: 28:40

That's that's so awesome. See, I'm I'm like fascinated with this stuff. So was that the um the footprints that you had in your tent?

SPEAKER_05: 28:48

Uh that was it's the one uh on the back. I don't know if I showed it to you on my phone. It's the one uh uh in the snow that we had, but the uh the other ones that I the footprint cast that I had on my table, uh we had one uh if we're gonna keep it on New Jersey, we had one from Sparta Mountain Wildlife Management Area, which is uh my backyard basically is where I'm from.

SPEAKER_04: 29:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05: 29:08

And then one uh small juvenile one we found down in the pine barrens down in South Jersey.

SPEAKER_03: 29:13

Oh wow. That's that's so awesome. Like I'm I'm just so intrigued by it.

SPEAKER_01: 29:20

I I I got it just a quick question for Mike. Before you went, when you were you were telling us before about the the Bigfoot making the uh getting the tickets to go down on the trip. Were you a believer before that, or was just something you were just interested in?

SPEAKER_05: 29:33

This was going to be a weekend of people watching and camping with a bunch of crazy people.

SPEAKER_04: 29:40

Okay.

SPEAKER_05: 29:40

That's that was that was the MO of the weekend. It was not that we were had any obviously since the show was on in the background, I had to had be interested a little bit by by some means. Um uh and then to purchase tickets, I had to be like, oh man, it's gotta be a little bit cool. But uh, I was never uh you know, never uh into the whole Bigfoot phenomenon before this. This we went into this not thinking Bigfoot was real. We left this expedition knowing that there's something capable of throwing uh inhumane sized rocks, unhumane, I don't know, big sized rocks at us that uh a human couldn't do. So uh I don't know, it was cool. I should be on paper. Sitting on a street corner in the city of Tampa working on an ambulance right now. But because of because I experienced these 15 minutes of these rocks thrown at me, it changed the course of my life forever. How cool is that? All because of Bigfoot.

SPEAKER_03: 30:44

Yeah. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. That's freaking awesome. No, have you ever so like since you got into like the whole Bigfoot and thing, have you ever got anything that was like negative? Like people are like all like bullshit, you know, like approach you and be like, no, no, like you didn't see one. Like he's not real. Have you ever seen anything like that? Or everybody's more most pretty much like accepting about it?

SPEAKER_05: 31:08

No, there are about two people a day, uh, just at the state fair that came up and be like, they were either uh said Bigfoot's not real and because of this X, Y, and Z, which is fine. I don't have a problem with that. But then uh there's also some people that were absolutely disgusted because I made this my life and my journey, which I find very phenomenally funny because that just means you're Uber jealous.

SPEAKER_03: 31:31

Yeah, yeah. You wish you can you can be out there doing it.

SPEAKER_05: 31:35

Yeah, I I get that, I get that too, but you know, that's gotta that's it's gotta be a rough life you lead, whoever you are, you know.

SPEAKER_03: 31:42

Yep. So you must get a lot of requests of people who like, I want to go out with you, or you don't really see that too much. Oh I would definitely do it.

SPEAKER_05: 31:54

Yeah, uh well, uh yeah, um it's like uh how would I the best describe it, uh like one of the the most luxurious uh like senior living uh places in the country, right? And everybody wants to to live there when they they they live out the rest of the last of their years, right? Uh and the wait list is like so long. I will put you on that wait list, my friend. However, there's no guarantees that that's ever gonna happen. Because there is, I mean, there's there's quite a few people. And here's here's the here's the thing of it, and the the realistic part about it is I used to take a lot of people out on public expeditions, and I I have since stopped doing that. Um mostly, and the sad part, and the I even hate to even to say that I have to say this, is the liability aspect of it. No one gets hurt under my care. I'm not uh, you know, I I I can I can save you, but that's about the extent of it. You know what I mean? I'm not insured, like I don't insured to take people, I'm not a guide, I'm not a certified guide by any means in any state. So it's I I'm legally not allowed to take these people out and guide them through the woods. Um now, with that being said, there are occasions that I will take people out. Uh, for example, uh at Bigfoot festivals. Fun fact, there are Bigfoot conferences and festivals around the country. Um there's one coming up uh in this weekend in Pennsylvania, which we're doing night hikes on, which I'm one of the leaders of the night hikes. So if you happen to find a local festival that's close by that they're doing night hikes on, you could certainly get out and do it that way.

SPEAKER_03: 33:48

That's cool. No, that that's really cool. I'd I'd probably definitely know it in a heartbeat.

SPEAKER_05: 33:53

Yeah, it's fun, it's like camping on steroids, is like I like to tell people.

SPEAKER_04: 33:58

Yep.

SPEAKER_05: 33:59

You know, it's um, you know, it's just it's and especially, you know, no most nine nine out of ten times nothing happens, but it's that one time that you have that like, hey, was that a tree knock? You know, like that kind of ambiguous type thing is what makes the whole thing worthwhile, really.

SPEAKER_03: 34:17

Yeah, yeah. I think I would be one of those people that'd be like, Yep, I heard it. Like every little noise that is, yep, that's one.

SPEAKER_05: 34:25

Yeah, I'd be probably so amped. There's a lot of people that I that I I know that are like that, and um I'm actually kind of the opposite. Uh I I'm uh I'm one of the ones of let's rule every possible thing out first, and then we could even remotely maybe even think that it could be something unknown.

SPEAKER_04: 34:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05: 34:48

But until we can rule everything out, that's why like in the woods, like you know, people people get excited when they hear, you know, something and we get it on on camera, and you know, and everybody's like, oh, that was a squash. It's like, nah, let's just, you know, let's get it analyzed, let's do it the correct way, you know, that kind of stuff. So um, and another thing is like tree breaks, you know, a lot of people attribute tree breaks to be Bigfoot activity, yet nobody's ever seen a Bigfoot break a tree or build a structure. So we can't, I mean, maybe 70, 60 percent chances that they are Bigfoot are doing these type of structures and tree breaks and tree manipulations, but nobody's ever seen one do them. So why are we putting so much weight on these are all Bigfoot related?

SPEAKER_03: 35:33

Yeah. Well, that's that's a very good point. Like, have you ever actually had anybody come up to you with like a video or whatever and been like, hey, like, can you look at this? Like, I'm pretty sure I saw one.

SPEAKER_05: 35:47

You want to see my inbox? It's I mean, yeah, it's it's the uh daily. I get I get people uh sending me footprints and and um uh videos and requests to to come out with me and all that good stuff. Um, and it's all funny games. I try to get back to everybody that I can, but like I said at the beginning of the program, I tour full time. So if I do have cell phone service, I'm trying to get booked at libraries rather than answer you know everybody's emails. Not it, no offense, but you get it, right?

SPEAKER_03: 36:22

Of course. I I remember when I when uh actually it was right before I left the tent, you said, here, look let me sign a picture for you. It might be worth something someday.

SPEAKER_05: 36:35

I don't see it on your wall anywhere, sir. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 36:41

But I was like, yeah, man, that that's that's awesome. So when the so my next question would to you would be I know like most people go and at like night when they do like expeditions, right? Is there like a certain have well, I guess like your research, does it is there like a specific time that's like the most like squatchiest or not?

SPEAKER_05: 37:11

Like uh, you know, everybody has their own uh quote unquote witching hour that they like to do their activities. Um I seem to get a lot of activity when it comes to uh being uh just after the sunset. So it doesn't have to be too late uh when you when you get Bigfoot activity. Here's the thing though. Uh let's take uh let's take numbers and play a numbers game for a little bit, all right? So 70% of Bigfoot sightings happen during the day, which would lead me to believe and roll with me on this roller coaster. I know we're we might be, you know, might be going a little crazy, but would lead me to believe that that would mean if 70% Bigfoot seen during the day, that Bigfoot is a nocturnal creature because that number is not like 98% seen during the day. Yeah right. So the fact that 30 Bigfoot seen 30% at night when people are historically not in the woods leads me to believe that Bigfoot is most almost certainly a nocturnal creature. So that's why most of our research is done at night. Not to say they're not diurnal when they could be up all the time and roaming around kind of like deer and bear and other animals are, but I think they do most of their their activities at night.

SPEAKER_03: 38:34

Yeah. Huh. No, that's interesting. Now, have you have you ever had um like any bit of evidence that you you weren't sure what it was? Like you couldn't like you couldn't rule it out one way or another.

SPEAKER_05: 38:48

Um yeah, I mean there's there's a couple different things. Uh I wish I could show you, show you guys that print that um that I got in High Point, because that's a really good uh a good example of one that I'm not a hundred percent sure about. I'm like 98% that's a big foot, but some people say that it could be a black bear double step because it was we discussed there's a lot of black bear up there. Uh the problem with that is it was an 11-inch uh diameter. That's that's that's a big black bear. I mean, that's a big size for diameter of a black bear's paw print. So, and the way it was, some people say, you know, the back paw of or the front paw of a bear print could step in the back paw and make it look very human-like. This thing didn't have any claws on it either. So kind of rules out a black bear to me. But um, yeah, that's that's one of the ones that uh the haters a lot of times they'll come up and be like, oh, that's just a black bear double step. And I say, okay, you know, teach their own. I never say it is or isn't because I like to leave everybody's mind open. I don't like to close anybody's mind. Um but uh yeah, yeah, definitely. And I've gotten some pictures of like people's tracks that are so run down and ambiguous, it's like, man, you can't, you know, it's just watch out at this point, you know. It's and it's a lot of people come up to me with the paridolia, which is the the, you know, when you see a cloud, uh face in the cloud, yeah, that's that's paradolia. It's that's when you see something that's not actually there. Uh you see see things, and it's like um another example, uh, like if like if for if for Bigfoot wise, when you see see a footprint and it's just simply a rock that was displaced or something like that. Um happens all the time. Uh tree damage or snow load for tree breaks or tree bettings. Uh a lot of people think they're they're Bigfoot related, but we can easily rule them out because of snow load in certain areas of the country, obviously. Um, but that's a that's a lot of things. And another thing we're struggling to as Bigfoot researchers nowadays is AI. Uh when the AI technology comes out, we we don't know what's real and what's fake. I've basically, I know I know I said I get so many emails about looking at stuff. I basically have stopped stopped looking at anybody's stuff because I don't know what's real and what's not real anymore. You know, unless it's something really good or something that's making the rounds that other people have looked at and debunked and that have time to really sit down and debunk or look at. I don't have time to sit down and and really like investigate these clips or these these pieces of evidence people send me. I wish I did, but I the fact is I don't. So that's that's one of the other reasons it's very difficult as a researcher to be able to tell what's real and what's not real nowadays.

SPEAKER_03: 41:38

Yeah, no, that's a good point. I didn't even think about that, especially with like all the AI stuff, like how easy it is to like you know, tweak something like that. Yeah, yeah, it's a shame.

SPEAKER_01: 41:51

Yeah, you're probably gonna get a lot more, a lot more of it now with AI really becoming popular. I mean, yeah, I screw I screw around with it with us, like you know, on our stuff, and it you know, actually, this this whole shirt I made up just with AI. I just pulled it what I was looking for, and then I just I saved it and I sent it out to the t-shirt place, and I was like, Oh, that's pretty cool, you know. So I come out with that. But the the other one, like Frank's got on, that was Adobe Free stuff. That was the Adobe Free stuff. I had found that, and then I bought the license for that. I use that, that's my opening for all my videos and stuff, and I put like a spooky theme music on it, and whatever. What I what I wanted is a quick story, Frankie. Sorry, to sorry.

SPEAKER_03: 42:39

No, no, go for it.

SPEAKER_01: 42:40

Um, I predator hunt at night, so I'm out in all hours of the night in the winter time, and it's it's spooky, man, especially when you're calling coyotes, you're calling stuff that's hunting you. And I'm sitting up here in the orchards one night because I got all apple orchards and stuff around me. And uh I in the in my my uh night vision scope that I have on my rifle, it also records. So all I have to do is hit a button and it starts recording, and then I make the videos, my predator hunting videos, right off of that that scope. So one night I'm out here in the back, it's cold, miserable out, and I'm asking myself, you know, you really gotta be bored and nuts to be out here in the middle of the night. It's like two in the morning, and you're out here calling Yodis, and you know, it's just wicked out. And all of a sudden, in my night vision, and I pan and in the tops of the tree of the apple tree. Now they're only about eight, nine feet tall, some of them, because they're still new. There's eyes and they're big and they're glowing. And I'm like, oh my god, I go, it's fine. I finally seen one. And he's standing, he's standing behind the tree, like looking like this. You know, he's like, I go, oh crap. So I'm hitting record, I'm like, oh my god. And I'm like, and then it goes like that. It was an owl, it was an owl. Because when I panned the first time, there was nothing there, and then he turned and he was looking in my the the uh the IR. This is I got one actually sitting right here. This is an IR illuminator that mounts on top of your infrared scope. When you turn this on, that illuminates anything that reflects back, also, and it catches like when you're when you're coyote hunting, you'll see their eyes first coming down through the woods. Yeah, so I saw those big eyes, and I'm like, Oh, I said, Let's finally see one. He's up there and he's looking over the tree at me, and I'm like, what the hell am I gonna do? And I'm like, I'm I'm now I'm zooming in and I'm going, and then it went, you know, like owls do. And I went, Oh, it's a freaking barred owl up in the tree. My heart, my heart was going, yeah. I'm like, I'm like, don't do that to me. I'm fat and overweight, you're gonna get a heart attack out here.

SPEAKER_03: 44:56

So you're lucky I wasn't with you.

SPEAKER_01: 44:58

Oh, dude, you'd you would have been like, holy cow, but it was so funny. And then one just one little quick thing extra, too. I am friends with uh Flavors of the Forest, they are Bigfoot Breath Garlic Company. Uh, they're out of Oregon. Guy's name is Nelson. Uh his his wife Laura and uh Matt, they're they're three three people that made this corporation of freeze-dried garlic, and they call it Bigfoot's breath. And they have all different spicy, they have uh lion's mane. Anyway, I hooked up with these guys, they love me. I love to cook. I I cook all the time, and I'm always promoing their stuff and being omnisquatch, you know. I always, you know, send them a little shout-out with everything, and he's so cool, he just sends me the stuff. I don't I don't pay anything. Um he's hoping he gets successful enough to give me a full Oregon experience out there to go out, hunt, fish, just as a thank you for being a good friend. And he's he's friends of our other show, and uh he has sent me uh pictures of squatch tracks in Oregon right in the sand. And I mean these these are legit. The bent over trees that are weaved together where they they nest, they call it a nest. And he's been fishing on the river by his house, boulders over the top of them, down into the water, and that's somebody that lives out there, and you know something that's pretty legit. So to have that same sequence of stuff go on across the country, it's to me, it's not an accident. I've had people explain it to me. Maybe he's a third-dimensional animal that appears and can disappear. Um, even at my local gun club, you know, and I always introduce myself. I'm the squatch. Really? You were out here walking over the ridge the other night when we were out here hanging out, and I'm like, You heard something, and then I and then we get into the story of what happened with my father, and but I mean it's just people out of the blue. It's it's I think too, with the way times are and things are changing, and you know, all the talk about aliens and UFOs and blah blah blah. I I think people are starting to you know crack the shell, they're starting to come out of their hiding and actually just say, you know, I actually saw this kind of stuff. So but Frankie, what else you got, brother? I know you got some good questions.

SPEAKER_03: 47:21

Yeah, yeah. No, I mean, I love your stories, by the way. So I was gonna I was gonna ask you, Mike, what do you do? Like, with all your years of experience, that he'll actually like one day we'll actually discover Bigfoot in our lifetime, or you think it's just gonna like go on for years and years and years from now?

SPEAKER_05: 47:47

Well, um, what's your definition of discovering?

SPEAKER_03: 47:51

Like somebody actually like seeing him, but getting like there's no like there's basically like, yep, 100% like this is him, like we found him, like he's real.

SPEAKER_05: 48:09

So that that's gonna that's gonna depend on the person that actually has that experience. Um it's gonna it's gonna take it's gonna take the the the witness to be able to have that knowledge base that Bigfoot actually does exist or doesn't exist. Uh and that's gonna change a lot of a lot of people's minds and open a lot of people's minds. Um if you're asking the question, do we think that Bigfoot's ever gonna be acknowledged by today's mainstream science? Um no, I don't think so unless there's a little little star above that, um we get uh uh unrefutable proof that there's a body, right? Unless somebody hits someone with a with a bigfoot with a car and or a hunter is out there and decides that he's gonna be the guy or she's gonna be the woman that takes the shot. Um and it's so publicly acknowledged that something has happened that the government cannot uh uh cover it up, then uh then we might have a government acknowledgement of uh of Bigfoot. But until then, uh no, I don't think so. Uh it's gonna take like a lot, like I said, a lot. Um I think that if a because of a couple different reasons. One, um, let's look at where Bigfoot is mostly seen. Where's the hot spot of Bigfoot in the United States?

SPEAKER_01: 49:42

Uh West.

SPEAKER_05: 49:43

Pacific Northwest, Oregon, California, Washington State. Um, if Bigfoot is a biological animal, which I think it is, I think it's here on this planet like we are, um, then uh it's going to be an endangered species, right? We can just agree with that because there's inherently not a lot of them out there, if there are out there at all. Uh so they're gonna need protection and land management, and what is the leading economic development and uh source of income in the Pacific Northwest?

SPEAKER_01: 50:18

Wood logging, logging, exactly.

SPEAKER_05: 50:21

They're gonna shut down logging, and that is never gonna happen.

SPEAKER_01: 50:26

Yep, yeah. Yeah, it makes a lot of sense because they they stop stuff up here for like the rattlesnake nesting and all that stuff.

SPEAKER_05: 50:34

Oh, yeah, for salamanders, yep. They'll they'll still I mean they will shut down housing projects.

SPEAKER_01: 50:40

Turtles, blanding turtles where I used to work. The blanding turtle was an endangered turtle, and they you had to be real careful about what you did around the grounds and stuff.

SPEAKER_03: 50:47

Yeah, the same thing happened on our farm upstate. My my dad um he had actually had uh solar panels put in, but one side of the farm they deemed it wetland because it was tons of turtles and certain kind of frogs in there, and they're like, Nope, like we can do it up to this point, and that's it.

SPEAKER_01: 51:07

Yeah. Yeah. You know, that to bring up an interesting fact, in the Bible, there was Nephilim, there was giants, and Goliath was a giant. So to you know, as far back as the Bible, there was giants, there was things that were big. Uh, in in I heard I don't know how much truth there is to it, but as you know, Adolf Hitler was like a mastermind of trying to create something to devastate World War II, and they actually were extracting from what I understood and trying to build a supreme soldier that was like a Nephilim, like a like a Goliath that would fight our soldiers and kill them through DNA researching stuff. And then we're talking way back, World War II era, but they had the scientists that were figuring that out, and supposedly there was uh reports that they actually saw you know bigger, bigger creatures. So you know, like with the UFO theory, I have seen UFOs. I have seen that right hand of God, I've seen them clear as day. I mean, my father and I seen them. Uh when they were growing up up here, they they they had them also. And I'm a firm believer in it. I mean, you can't tell me what I what I saw wasn't because it it changed shapes and stuff right in front of us. And um to say maybe it's alien-like or it's prehistoric, you know, from like I said, because it was in the biblical times. To to rule out and say, no, it's just fake, it's not there. I mean, there's stuff in our own ocean we haven't discovered yet, and it's here on earth. So I mean, you know, but but the collab the collaborations of stories, stuff that goes on, and people may have seen the same thing within an hour of each other, and uh the the certainties of the story uh are amazing, you know, in contrast and detail of how they explain it, and these people are total strangers, they don't even know what the hell's going on. So, you know, uh to me uh on a believer scale, like you know, one to ten, I'm like a like at least an eight and a half, maybe a nine. You know, yeah. I I mean at any moment, you know, when I'm out in the woods, I expect it, you know. I expect it, and it's like yeah, it's like you know, um what and I say to myself, what are you gonna do? You know, and it's like I don't know what I'm gonna do. I'm I may freeze, I'm probably gonna freeze and panic and and like you know, hug the tree so you don't see me or something, yeah. Or like point to my shirt.

SPEAKER_03: 53:49

I mean point to my shirt when you're like, hey, I'm I'm your buddy. Especially when you get like that eerie feeling and it's like super quiet.

SPEAKER_01: 53:58

You know, I do there's there's a a parcel of woods where I grew up that I get that, you know. And I Frankie will tell you, you know, when I'm hunting, I'm I'm very I'm a I'm a very spiritual person. I give the deer the last rights that the Indians do. And um I have that sixth sense about something when I'm in the woods, and there's one piece of woods I go into, man, and every time it's a long log road that goes back in there, it's a carriage road. And I know history from that area, and it and I'm telling you, there's just nights I come out of there, and it's like something, huh? I just go, stop, you know, I'm I'm I'm of the I'm of this place, and I'm like, just chill, I'm all right, you know, I'm not nothing here to bother you, and then it kind of goes away. But you know, I mean, I right hand of God, I mean my hair standing up on my arms right there because I'm telling you about it. Yep. You know, just for that, just for that reason. There's there's a lot that's in this world that can't be explained. You know, I'm lucky, I I've seen some of the stuff that's unexplainable, but it's to rule it out. I don't know how people rule it out. Just go, nah, it's fake, it's all bull crap. You know, I don't buy that. I don't buy it.

SPEAKER_03: 55:12

No, I don't buy it either, especially with like how many you gotta think of how many hundreds of thousands of acres are out there that like we still haven't even touched, you know. Like, I just I don't I don't see how people could say no he doesn't, you know, because every time I'm telling you, every time I watch those shows, I'm like, I literally get goosebumps and I'm like attached to the TV, you know, and especially like when they find like um like Bigfoot hair or whatever, then they're like they bring it to the to the lab for testing, and then it comes back inconclusive. I was like, see, I told you. Oh I literally looked at my wife, I was like, I told you like I just I just I'm so fascinated by that stuff, and I've you know, I just like I love just seeing like the evidence, I love watching like like seeing people's videos on TV, and just like and I was like, Yeah, of course that's one. Like, how could they say it's not one?

SPEAKER_05: 56:14

You know, yeah, it's interesting because uh you brought up like uh you know 80 to 100 80 to 90 percent that you think Bigfoot's out there, and I I agree I agree. Uh I agree with that number because I you know it's funny because people people will come up to me and be like, you know, do you you've you've obviously you think Bigfoot's real. And I think I I've never seen a Bigfoot. Right. So I can't say that Bigfoot without a doubt is real because I've never seen one. So that's where I'm sitting at that 80%, and people come up and they're like, You you've devoted your life, you don't even think this is like a a real like 100% thing, and I'm like, Yeah, you know, I think that's an important point because the people that that are a hundred percent Bigfoot and have never seen them, it's like, well, how do you know? Yep, you know, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 57:00

No, you're right. Now, how do you feel about like them being linked to maybe like the dog man or um um like like like uh Mothra and those other different you know, I mean I I kind of like my my personal feeling is that that's a little more sci-fi-ish, but you know, the actual squatch, the bigfoot, the you know, is he an ape? Is he part whatever silverback gorilla and he mixed breed with some, you know, that side of it I can see, you know, scientifically, I can see it. The other stuff, okay. Now you're starting to get in like werewolves and Dracula, and yeah, I don't know. I don't know if I buy all that. I'd be like a maybe like a four on a four, you know. I'd be like, come on, you know, really. But yeah, it's not it's not to say, you know, it's not to say I I don't want to begrudge anybody if that's what you like and you're into and you're you know you're fouling and it's your life dream, go for it, man. I hope you do find the thing, you know.

SPEAKER_05: 58:02

Well, and here's here's here's the thing. Uh you can't say that something doesn't exist is is the and the the very very end and root of it. But um uh what I can say is I spend a significant amount of time in the woods. Last year alone, I spent 139 nights tent camping just looking for Bigfoot.

SPEAKER_04: 58:23

Oh crap.

SPEAKER_05: 58:24

So um this year in 2025, I'm working on 150. Good for you. So um again, another reason why you got me on a good night is because I have shelter. Um so the um I have never in my years of experiencing the woods have come across anything I can relate to anything other than Bigfoot. Again, I'm not saying that there's they're not out there because I don't know. But like, for example, the Jersey Devil. Yeah, great story, yeah, incredible story. I love it. The 13th child, the mother leads, killing the going up through the chimney. Very cool. Uh if that happened, we would, I mean, stop the presses, you know, that's a that's a thing. Yeah, uh, but I don't think it actually happened. That's folklore, right? The thing is, all folklore stems from reality and truth somewhere.

SPEAKER_04: 59:25

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_05: 59:26

So uh what did that come from? Is it true that there was a big six-foot-tall winged cryptid, you know, flying through the side skies of the pine barrens? Maybe. Or was it more likely back in the 1920s and the early the late 1800s when this was happening? Uh, we didn't have phones or the internet, it was all word of mouth, right? So we do have a resident population of sand till cranes living in southern New Jersey. It's not huge, not a lot of people see them, but they're there. And I think back in the early before anybody knew what a sandhill crane was in New Jersey, they see them flying over. Have you ever anybody heard them?

SPEAKER_01: 1:00:09

I mean, they sound crazy. Yeah, they make a wacky sound, man.

SPEAKER_05: 1:00:12

I mean, yeah, you know, you see them flying over, they you know, see red kind of eyes. I mean, that you never seen a bird that big before. Okay, hey, word of mouth, Jersey Devil is born. I can totally see that.

SPEAKER_01: 1:00:25

I give you that. Yep.

SPEAKER_05: 1:00:27

But then you have the thousands. Of thousands of credible eyewitness sightings of Bigfoot.

SPEAKER_01: 1:00:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05: 1:00:34

That is a horse of a different color to me.

SPEAKER_01: 1:00:39

Yeah. It's crazy. It's really crazy when you when you sit there and you think any amount of accounts of stories that are so similar that you know, and then like people will just sit there and know I mean think about back even into like the the ancient people who did drawings on rocks and stuff. And there's these cryptids, there's these big cryptids, and they're like, Well, yeah, that's what we saw. And it's like, okay, so it's document. I mean, they didn't sit around on the internet and they didn't have AI, and they weren't like dreaming crap up like that. These people really saw stuff like that, and it's like they wouldn't draw it if it wasn't there. So it just amazes me that I mean the biggest argument when we sit down, we talk with people, like you know, just friends and stuff, people be like, Well, how come we haven't found any of their dead bodies? And how come we haven't listened let me tell you something? I'm an avid deer hunter. I go out in the springtime and I look for antler sheds that these bucks shed off in fall. How many of them do I ever really find? A few. Yeah, a few. So if it's hard for me to find something like that, what do you think? I mean, if if if they're intelligent, which they obviously obviously are, yeah, sure.

SPEAKER_05: 1:02:01

Uh hunters will come up to me all the time and say, I've been hunting for 40 years, where where and I've where the bigfoot bones. And I say, Well, if if you've been hunting for 40 years, you've obviously come across a bear skeleton.

SPEAKER_04: 1:02:17

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, nope.

SPEAKER_05: 1:02:22

Nobody does, and if you have, you're very lucky, yeah. Right, yeah, it's extremely rare to come across to bear skeleton in the wild. Like your point to the the deer sheds, you think that in every hike we would be tripping over the number of deer bones that should be out there. You you think so, right?

SPEAKER_03: 1:02:40

Yeah, yeah, you're absolutely yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 1:02:43

So why that's a good point, and then it's like people are like, Oh, well, you know, you go in the woods all the time, you would see them. Let me tell you something, okay? If I'm sitting in the woods and you walk into a parcel of land and I don't move, you're not gonna know I'm there. Oh, yeah. What the hell do you think they're doing when you walk in the woods and you're oh well, I wonder if they're just standing there, they don't even have to move, they can lay down. You would walk right by them, you wouldn't know freaking what happened. They get up and go the opposite way. So, yeah, I mean, you know, like they say, he's the world-class hide and seek champion, man. I mean, you know, yeah, he's he's all over.

SPEAKER_05: 1:03:20

I I love the argument that people come up and they're just like, Well, I've never seen one, so they don't exist. Yeah, that's the stupidest thing I've ever heard.

SPEAKER_03: 1:03:32

Exactly. At least that that would be my response to it.

SPEAKER_05: 1:03:36

Yeah, like narrow that one down, check that one off the box. All right, doesn't exist, got it.

SPEAKER_01: 1:03:41

And I'd like to see their reaction when they actually did see one. And yeah, what what would they actually think? You know, like what what okay? So, what's your excuse now?

SPEAKER_05: 1:03:50

You know, yeah. They're not gonna come up and apologize to me. No, 100%.

SPEAKER_04: 1:04:02

Not at all.

SPEAKER_03: 1:04:04

So, like I was gonna ask you, um, I meant to ask you before. So, what made you actually name like your YouTube channel and everything, Shadow of the Red Eye?

SPEAKER_05: 1:04:14

Yeah, that's a that's great, it's a great question. Uh, it's so in 1972, uh, we were just talking about High Point. Uh, there was a park ranger up in High Point, and uh he went on record uh during his patrol, he was on patrol at night, I guess walking down a path or driving down a path or something. He saw uh two pairs of reflecting red eyes in the forest. And they were like seven and a half foot tall, he reported, and he wrote it down, I guess, in his shift report. And somehow a day later, that shift report got leaked somehow. I guess one of the I don't know how, but it the newspaper got a hold of it, and the Star Ledger uh printed front page of their newspaper, uh uh Big Red Eye, Sussex County's Bigfoot. So that's our little claim to fame for Bigfoot here in northwestern New Jersey.

SPEAKER_03: 1:05:05

Nice. That's cool. See, I grew up here and I never knew that. See, you learn something every day. So my next question to you, Mike, would would be um so like going forward, like for the future, do you have any big like expeditions or any projects or anything that you're like working on? That's like doesn't have to be top secret, but like anything that you got coming up that you're looking forward to?

SPEAKER_05: 1:05:34

Yeah, well, we just uh so so like I said, tour the country. I do a library tour. Uh we're finishing up this year's tour um with dates in or locations. I'll be in Pennsylvania this weekend, followed by the UREs in North Carolina next weekend, then uh Maine the following weekend, then Virginia to finish up the year, which will be fun. Uh, we did just announce this is the the the do you believe tour. Uh we did just announce next year for 2026 the Mike Family Live Beyond the Footprints tour, where we already have bookings in Florida. We're gonna be there in January. I can't wait for that. Escape the cold and the snow from up here and go down to change it in for some beaches, babes, and you know, Bigfoot. And yeah, I'm excited for that. Uh and we're we're just uh we're really working on booking our programs for next year. Um, we do have the potential, and this is is kind of a little top secret-y thing, uh, of going out to the Pacific Northwest up to Oregon to do a little uh do a little uh they having an expo out there that they want me to speak at. Um so that's a potential. The uh it's logistically very difficult because I would have to drive, and that's a long drive for me from nature.

SPEAKER_04: 1:07:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05: 1:07:01

So um, and I mean there's ways around it, but we can figure it out. But uh that may be something. Keep your eyes out. Shadowofredeye.com has all my upcoming appearances on it, so you can check out where I'm gonna be and find me. And if you want to come harass me after the show, as long as it's after the show and not during it, I don't mind.

SPEAKER_03: 1:07:21

Perfect. But all right, we're we're reaching that that time squat. You got any other questions?

SPEAKER_01: 1:07:27

Um yeah, I think I think I hit on everything that I wanted to get out, but just wanted to say it's uh been a pleasure, really interesting stuff that you bring to the table. And and being uh I grew up my whole childhood with it, and having an old man that would tell the story and scared of bejesus out of all my friends. It's it's nice there's other believers out there that think the same way.

SPEAKER_05: 1:07:50

Yes, sir. Well, it was very nice to meet you. I appreciate you being here and and uh chatting with me. That was uh and thank you for sharing your your experiences. That was that's that's super cool and very awesome.

SPEAKER_03: 1:08:00

Thank you. Yeah, I I appreciate you coming on again. Like I said, as soon as I saw your tent, I knew I was gonna ask you. I knew I had to get you on because I was a big buff with this. So this I was looking forward to this podcast like since we started talking. So Mike, I appreciate you coming on. Is there anything that you want to say?

SPEAKER_05: 1:08:19

Yeah, no, two things. One, I'll send you the invoice, and two, uh, I like to keep everything. No, I'm just kidding. Uh everything, uh, your your eyes just got like I was thinking, I was like, let me text Mike and tell him to do. No, I like to leave every all the presentations I like to leave uh, you know, with with trying to leave everybody's mind open and stuff like that. And the way I do that is uh is by a quote, and I like quotes. And uh the quote is life with the possibility of Bigfoot or the Loch Ness monster is far superior to one without. Thank you guys for having me on the show tonight. I really appreciate it.

SPEAKER_03: 1:09:03

I appreciate you coming on, man.

SPEAKER_05: 1:09:05

Nice to have you. Absolutely. Anytime.

SPEAKER_03: 1:09:08

So we'll we'll have to get you on again at some point, you know, after all the chaos and after all your expeditions. We'll I'll so we'll keep in touch that way. I can try to follow up with you and see how you're making out, Mike. I appreciate it again.

SPEAKER_05: 1:09:22

Yeah, and we'll have to get you out in the woods squatching with us too.

SPEAKER_03: 1:09:26

Let's let's do it, man. You just say the word I'm there.

SPEAKER_05: 1:09:30

All right, sounds good, my friend.

SPEAKER_03: 1:09:31

All right, all right. But hope everybody enjoyed this episode, and we'll see you all next time.