BIGFOOT HUNTER IN CALGARY HAILS NEW RESEARCH SUPPORTING YETI
Many Alberta sightings of legendary creature
A Calgary man on an unwavering quest to uncover the existence of an elusive, legendary creature has endured “heaps of mockery” and dug into his own pockets to pay for his pursuit.
But Tyler Huggins remains on the hunt for Bigfoot, parsing through potential evidence after encountering what he believes was the ape-like beast, widely believed to be something out of mythology.
Theories about these mysterious, walking primates were thrust back into the public spotlight this week after Oxford University researcher Bryan Sykes released research findings that suggest the yeti — an ape-like creature of the Himalayas — could be a polar bear hybrid still roaming mountain terrain.
“I’m floored that we’re finally getting someone with credentials to properly investigate these claims,” said Huggins, who had spoken with Sykes about tissue and hair samples that could be linked to Bigfoot, which the Calgarian collected.
The yeti or abominable snowman is one of a number of legendary ape-like beasts — along with Sasquatch and Bigfoot — reputed to live in heavily forested or snowy mountains. Scientists are skeptical, but decades of eyewitness reports, blurry photos and stories have kept the legend alive.
“I’ve had heaps of mockery from friends; it takes time away from other important aspects of my life,” said Huggins, who spent his own cash helping someone in California investigate suspected tissue samples that turned out to come from a bear. “But you see something first hand, at least I feel compelled to get to the bottom of it and tell people what I know.”
The Bigfoot Field Research- ers Organization reports sightings and directs expeditions to suspected stomping grounds of the beast. The most recent expedition in Alberta, a four-day trek in August to Nordegg west of Red Deer, was sold out. According to the research organization, there have been Sasquatch sightings and encounters in the area over the past few decades.
An Alberta Sasquatch online message board features all sorts of wild and mysterious accounts of Bigfoot, including a long list of reports of sightings, footprints and vocal sounds, documented during the winter months alone. Nordegg, Lake Louise and Bragg Creek are among the many sites of reported observations.
But these types of reports do not appease the skeptics.
“There is no evidence, true evidence that such a creature exists,” said Mark Boyce, a biological sciences professor at the University of Alberta, who hadn’t reviewed the Oxford University research. “Until we have one in hand or a piece of documented evidence, I just dismiss those kinds of reports.”
But Jeffrey Meldrum, an anatomy and anthropology professor at Idaho State University, said he’s convinced that Bigfoot roams the earth, based on the “totality of evidence” he has seen. In his lab, he keeps more than 200 casts of footprints he said were left by the beast.
There is no evidence, true evidence, that such a creature exists
MARK BOYCE, PROFESSOR, UNIVERSITY OF ALBERTA
But Meldrum said the Oxford University research does nothing to verify or discount theories about the yeti or Bigfoot.
He said reports indicate the two creatures are distinct species, the yeti being of smaller size and having a big toe that looks like a thumb, the Sasquatch appearing much larger with a big toe like that of humans.
And he notes the Oxford researcher compared two hair samples from Himalayan animals — identified by local people as Yetis — to an ancient polar bear jawbone found in the Norwegian Arctic that is at least 40,000 years old. Sykes concluded the tests showed the creatures were not related to modern Himalayan bears but were direct descendants of the prehistoric animal.
Meldrum, however, said questions about the yeti cannot be answered with two hair samples and a single gene.
“If people take these results from Dr. Sykes’ study and think the yeti mystery is solved — it’s just a bunch of bears — that is too simplistic an explanation,” he said.
Sykes’ Oxford University team had collected organic remains believed to be linked to the Yeti and other undocumented species, such as Bigfoot, to analyze them using genetics technology, with plans to have the findings peer reviewed.
Huggins said he was travelling with five friends and family members near Lake Louise in May or June of 1991 when they came across a strange figure. He was too far away to see it clearly, but his brother reported that “some kid” had leaped across the path, but later recounted he didn’t see any clothes, only long, blondish hair.
After peppering his brother with questions and mulling over the encounter, Huggins deduced that it could not have been human because the leap would have been difficult for a man and because the landing area was treacherous, among other reasons. And, he reasoned, it couldn’t have been another known mammal because it walked on two legs.
Since then, while walking through the foothills west of Calgary, he has come across what he suspects could be a Sasquatch bedding area, a patch of grass pressed down apparently by a large animal. He discovered a reddish hair sample there and nearby tracks made by an animal with a long stride, 52 inches between each step.
Never afraid to embrace his inner skeptic, Huggins said the hair could have come from a fox and had nothing to do with the bedding area, but a taxidermist friend said the strand was finer than what you’d find on a fox.
“I think that people are a little bit in general conceited thinking that we know everything that’s out there,” Huggins said. “If you play a game of hide and seek with people in the forest, they can be within 20 yards of you and you can’t find them. So I think it would be very easy for an animal that is intelligent, that has a soft sole-foot, that has a lot of mobility, to be that elusive.”
I think that people are a little bit in general conceited thinking that we know everything that’s out there
TYLER HUGGINS