Why Finding Bigfoot is So Important
(The Animal and The Show)
If you’ve suddenly found yourself interested in the wonderfully weird topic of Bigfoot and are feeling overwhelmed about where to start, look no further than a television show that first aired just over ten years ago. The topic of Bigfoot, Sasquatch, The Wild Man, Skookum, or whatever you want to call him, is a massive one. He may be elusive, but he has certainly managed to enter himself into the zeitgeist on a global scale.
Once you start to get invested in the giant hairy creature you will notice him everywhere. He is on restaurant menus, billboards, trinkets at the bookstore, name dropped in songs and movies… the list goes on and on. Bigfoot is EVERYWHERE. Many people who becomes invested, become hooked for life. There’s just something about Bigfoot that captures the imagination, generates curiosity, and stirs up nostalgia.
Because of the plethora of Bigfoot content on television, documentaries, movies, books, and podcasts, it can be hard to figure out how to enter into the space in order to find your place within the community. Every level of interest should be welcome, from experts going out and investigating to casual fans who will order an item off of a menu just because it was named after Sasquatch.
This article isn’t about the differences that exist within members of the Bigfoot community. It’s not about the history of Bigfoot or the reasons why you should or shouldn’t believe Sasquatches are real. I wanted to write about why the search is so important to people and how a television show changed the landscape for those who believe.
So, what is this Finding Bigfoot show?
According to Animal Planet’s website, the show Finding Bigfoot is pitched to us as the following:
“From small towns in the South to remote areas of the Pacific Northwest, four eccentric but passionate investigators embark on one single-minded mission to find the elusive creature known as Bigfoot.”
This pretty much sums up the show perfectly. The two greatest strengths of this show are its singular mission and cast of characters. That killer combo created a certified phenomenon.
Finding Bigfoot is an Animal Planet television series that ran from 2011 until 2018. The show followed four hosts, (all credited as ‘self’), as they journeyed to different areas of North America. (Occasionally, however, they would travel abroad and search for Bigfoot-type creatures found in those native lands. Those episodes include “Australian Yowie,” Indonesia’s Little Bigfoot,” “Vietnam: The Heart of Squatchness,” “Kung-Fu Bigfoot,” “Abominable Snowman,” and “Amazon Squatchin’.”)
Their objective, as the name of the show would suggest, was to find a Bigfoot, and all four team members frame themselves as authentic investigators dedicated to finding the creature. The team leader is Matt Moneymaker. Matt is the founder of the Bigfoot Field Research Organization (BFRO). One of the leading research organizations in the world. Another member of the team is James “Bobo” Fay. Bobo, as everyone calls him, is a Bigfoot researcher and expert caller (a person who specializes in recreating accurate Bigfoot calls and forms of communication) from Northern California. Cliff Barekman, the analysis expert, had been investigating Sasquatch for over twenty years before the start of the show. Cliff has one of the largest collections of footprint casts in the world. (More on his collection later, when we visit his museum). The last member of the team is the resident skeptic, Ranae Holland. A field biologist by trade, Ranae provides the sole skeptic perspective on the team.
Matt, Bobo, and Cliff have all claimed to have witnessed a Bigfoot in person and are one-hundred percent believers. Ranae is a skeptic who wants to believe but needs to see it to believe it. And in all eight years of the show, she never actually did.
The show is not officially scripted as there is no one credited for script-writer on any of the episodes. However, a director does guide the team members by reminding them of how certain situations are going to be shot and key topics to keep in mind. Each episode tends to have a theme, and so the topics of conversation between the cast members typically fall into those set themes. The show features reenactments of witness encounters.
In these scenes, a CGI Bigfoot is added in later to help the audience visualize where the Bigfoot might have been from the perspective of the witness. There seems to be something very genuine about how the show is made. Of course, the editing process allows for moments to be more dramatic, but there are no staged sightings, planted witnesses, or fabricated evidence. Post-production only adds a CGI creature so the audiences at home can get a picture of what the witness described. It presents itself as a show whose sole motive is to find Bigfoot.
But how does the Finding Bigfoot team view Bigfoot? They look at the monster as a flesh and blood animal. (Though they probably don’t like the term ‘monster’ in association with the large creature) The team considers them peaceful animals who are just trying to live and stay away from human disturbances. Throughout the course of the show the team is very clear that they are looking for an animal, not any sort of spirit or paranormal being.
None of them have backgrounds in paranormal investigation, ufology, or the supernatural. Ranae is a field biologist, so her focus is always on the facts that surround the possibility of the existence of these creatures. Matt, Cliff, and Bobo look at the creature from a purely empirical standpoint as well. They have all had personal and empirical encounters with the creature and those experiences inform how they look at them.
It is relatively easy to speculate where the fours hosts fall on what I call the Cryptid Belief Spectrum, a scale that measures the level of belief one has in the existence of a particular cryptid. Matt, Bobo, and Cliff are all vocal complete believers. Ranae, based on her appearance and behavior on the show, is an open skeptic. She does not believe in the creatures yet, but wants to be proved wrong. Otherwise, she would not spend so much time looking for them. These respective Gazes produce the lens by which they look for Bigfoots and informs their monster- hunting performance on the show. (This refers to how they look at, search for, and live with all things Sasquatch.)
They take it seriously, they use technological equipment and center their efforts on finding an elusive hominoid type animal that people have seen all over the world. Matt, Bobo, and Cliff would say that they know beyond a shadow of a doubt that these creatures are real. They have said so multiple times throughout the show and in various interviews. In the opening credits of Finding Bigfoot, Cliff’s title credit blurb says, “These animals in fact are real.” Bobo’s title credit shows him remarking, “I've seen them. They’re real.” They are confident in their belief.
There are over one hundred episodes of Finding Bigfoot, and each episode offers a chance for someone to watch and engage with the material. Each individual will watch an episode differently. For some people, seeing the number of witness reports is enough to convince them that Bigfoot is a creature worth believing in. Others will not believe until the creature is caught on camera by the team. Finding Bigfoot was a massive ratings hit for the network. The first season garnered an average of 1.1 million viewers per episode.
The second season jumped to an average of 1.6 million an episode. And each person has their own individual experience with the content and perspective the show broadcasts. Viewers can be from all places on the Cryptid Belief Spectrum. Complete believers can watch in hopes that the team will finally prove Sasquatch exists. They may also want to see and hear people who have their same experiences. They may not have ever told anyone about their encounter, but they get comfort from watching other people share similar experiences.
Each episode is structured almost the same, save from the occasional special episode. And of course, as the seasons continued, the producers changed things up here and there. But for the most part, they followed the same pattern for every episode. The team traveled to a location after receiving a lead about a Bigfoot sighting or piece of evidence. This lead would be either a video recording, audio clip, or specific witness report.
They then would meet with the witness and try to recreate the encounter. If there was a video, the team physically recreated the footage and compared it directly to the original evidence. They would test for size, scale, speed, proportion, distance, environment, and more. Afterward, they would discuss the legitimacy of the evidence. Next, they went on a night expedition in that same area in hopes of seeing something that could be a Sasquatch.
Typically, one team member camped in the area for a few days on a solo mission while the others met with witnesses in the area. They held town hall meetings where several witnesses gathered and told their personal encounters with Bigfoots. This meeting literally created a hub that would attract believers, witnesses, and enthusiasts all to one place in order to engage in a dialogue. These meetings would sometimes gather one hundred or more people.
The team members listened to witness stories before mapping out where the sightings occurred. The team then chooses a few leads to pursue. They visited those exact locations where the sightings occurred and re-create the event to gauge the proper size, shape, and movements of the potential creature. Then they embarked on their final night investigation.
During their investigations, the team members used various techniques and tried new things in order to attract the creatures in different ways. But they always used vocalizations and wood knocks. Both of these practices are known to garner responses from Sasquatches according to Bigfoot research. Vocalizations refer to different howls the team members yell out; the point of a howl is to get a response from the creature. A wood knock is simply knocking a piece of wood against a tree.
The researchers sometimes just used sticks from the wild, but in the later season, they had special small bats to knock trees. According to Bigfoot researchers, Bigfoots respond to wood knocks by doing their own knocks as a sign of communication. And so, the researchers listened for those responses. The investigative team also used a thermal imagers and night vision cameras in the dead of night. They also used techniques such as various noise producers from drums to whale noises.
In Season Seven, while on expedition in eastern Ohio, the team visited the place where Matt Moneymaker had his first full encounter with a Bigfoot. Matt, a Southern California kid, went to law school in Ohio after hearing about all of the Bigfoot reports coming from that area. After his own visual encounter, Matt Moneymaker devoted his life to looking for Bigfoot, and this led to him creating the BFRO. “I had waited years to have that kind of an encounter,” said Matt, “and I just had and I was just like I don’t care what any other doubters say after this, they don’t know.” In that same episode, Bobo says:
“I remember when I had my first sighting, I didn’t sleep hardly for three days. I was so jazzed …. Being here with Matt totally reminded me of my first visual encounter where you knew without a shadow of a doubt that they were real and it never mattered again for the rest of your life what anyone thought of you or said, joked, whatever. You know they’re real. You know you’re right and it just can obsess you, make you consumed with filming them, proving they’re real, showing the world.”
These researchers devoted their lives to the hunt for Bigfoot. From the research I have done surrounding this show (and other paranormal monster-hunting shows), I have gathered that Finding Bigfoot is about as legitimate as it comes when it comes to monster-hunting reality shows. The hosts were genuinely looking for Bigfoot during every episode and were using legitimate techniques they learned from their extensive experiences outside the show. There were no fabrications or hoaxes involved.
That’s why people trust them. They aren’t trying to play tricks on the audience nor or they trying to make anyone look foolish. The motivation is always planted in genuine curiosity and openness.
The average viewer who loved Harry and the Hendersons growing up may think about the topic of Bigfoot as a fun childhood fantasy. The witness who had a terrifying experience in the woods might have another experience with the material altogether. An anthropologist, a folklorist, and a zoologist may approach the subject in vastly different ways. This seems obvious. The topic of Bigfoot is a ubiquitous one.
The skeptics who write books disproving their existence are insistent that time and resources are wasted looking for this fantasy. They are adamant about the lack of evidence and do not support continuous research efforts on the topic. Those who do believe, or are at least are curious on the matter, would state that all knowledge and research is worth pursuing. That is what science is; the pursuit of the unknown and the quest for answers.
Finding Bigfoot, referring to the discovery of a body or the uncovering of indisputable evidence of the existence of a large hairy hominoid, is not about being proved RIGHT. It is not about gaining incredible recognition or fame. It isn’t even about marking your name in the history books.
Sure, a scientific discovery like this would be ground shaking and earth-shattering. I mean, can you imagine a world where Sasquatches are studied in science classes and spoken about as if they were any other engendered species in the world? It would be exciting, and to be honest a little scary.
It would be scary for both humans and Bigfoots. Because people are reckless and self-centered, the worry of their discovery stems from an unpredictable (yet oh so predictable) human reaction. What if people start putting bounties on them? What if people start hunting clubs? What if people continue to annihilate their native habitat? There are a lot of sad things that can come out of Bigfoots being real animals living among us in the corners of the wilderness. But I think the good that could come from it has a strong chance of outweighing all the bad.
There are organizations devoted to protecting Bigfoots. They will continue to do so when the world catches up to what they’ve believed all along. If a life-altering proof of discovery is uncovered, it’s not like Bigfoots are going to all of a sudden be coming out of the woodwork. They would still be up to their old tricks like evading human contact at all costs. So, the search would still be difficult, which means they would continue to have protection from the harms of man. Therefore, I can’t be worried too much about the Sasquatches. After all, they can probably take care of themselves.
I believe the most important aspect of finding Bigfoot will be the effect it has on those who believed and those who have had encounters with these creatures.
So many people are afraid to come forward with their experiences due to a fear of being ridiculed. They worry about losing their jobs, tarnishing their reputation, or even losing friends. These experiences changed their lives. It terrified them or it set them on a new life path. Some became obsessed with proving their truth, others have lived as though it is a shameful secret.
It can be easy for people on the outside to view those who believe that Bigfoots are real as naïve. We live in a society that likes to mock others in order to make ourselves feel better. Call a person crazy and it somehow means we are less so. Claim a person is stupid in an attempt to make yourself feel smarter than you actually are. It’s ingrained in us for some reason. Belittling someone is just too easy to do.
That’s why shows like Finding Bigfoot matter so much. On the surface, it is easy to dismiss the show as silly. It takes guts to go on television and boldly proclaim you’ve had a Bigfoot encounter. The fact that people who have had experiences with Sasquatch can see other people share similar experiences is important. It doesn’t matter if skeptics laugh at you for taking this stuff seriously. In its own weird way, it is an example of why representation matters. Seeing believers and experiencers take the subject seriously allows those sitting at home watching to put that same level of seriousness onto the subject. It also allows people who have had encounters to have more courage to speak up and share what they saw and what they experienced.
If a Bigfoot body is discovered and definitive proof comes to light, the first people I’m going to be thinking about are all of those who can now breathe a sigh of relief. I’ll be thinking about all the people that can sleep better at night now. Those who can have conversations about their experiences and not feel embarrassed, ridiculed, or crazy about expressing what they saw or heard.
BLOG NOTES
-“Finding Bigfoot Shows Ratings Increase After Season 2 Premiere,” Cinema Blend, January 4th, 2012. https://www.cinemablend.com/television/Finding-Bigfoot-Shows-Ratings-Increase-Season-2-Premiere-38319.html.
-Finding Bigfoot, season 7, episode 6, “Matt Goes Home.” produced by Brad Kuhlman, featuring Matt Moneymaker, James Fay, Ranae Holland, Cliff Barackman. Aired January 11, 2015. Animal Planet.
- Finding Bigfoot, season 7, episode 6, “Matt Goes Home.”
