Update on the bigfoot hunt

Hundreds hunt for Bigfoot

Sunday, February 13, 2011

By David Freeze
For the Salisbury Post
Michael Greene of Salisbury has attracted a lot of attention in his hunt for Bigfoot.More than 300 people joined Greene and about 10 staff members of the Animal Planet cable-TV channel at the Eldorado Outpost on N.C. 109 near Troy and began a search for signs of the mysterious, perhaps mythical, creature on Saturday.Green was glad to see the crowd.
“Five years ago, I joined the Bigfoot Field Research Organization (BFRO). I was just tired of doing this myself, a little discouraged, and had no one to talk to and share my hobby,” Greene said.
Greene’s interest in Bigfoot began when was working toward a master’s in behavioral psychology. He wrote a thesis on group hysteria, and one of the subjects he studied was Bigfoot.He came to believe that Bigfoot was possibly a real entity, so the reading and investigation began.Greene, now 69 and retired, moved with his wife to Salisbury two years ago. They wanted to be near family and to investigate Bigfoot sightings in the area. North Carolina is a hotbed for sightings, according to BFRO investigators who attended Saturday.
John Pate, Tommy Poland and Olaf Seamen all told of the excitement of the hunt. Seamen drove six hours to join the search in the Uwharries, and he usually spends 10 weekends a year on the hunt.“The more you look at something, the more the book opens up,” Pate said.David Pardue says he has pictures of his own sighting of a family of four Bigfoots. He claims to also possess evidence of territory marking by the creature. Pardue says that Bigfoot often twists a small tree, first one way and then another, laying it down to signify its territory. He says that Bigfoot can change his eyes to red, and makes an audible sound known to the investigators.Since Bigfoot, aka Sasquatch, is nocturnal, most of the serious hunting is done at night.
On Saturday, Bigfoot enthusiasts began to arrive about midday. Most came by car or truck, but there were horses and four-wheelers, too. Even a helicopter, arranged by the Animal Planet crew, flew over the activities.Matt Moneymaker, head of the BFRO, organized a grid search that started in a large hay field and moved into the woods. Television cameras and microphones surrounded the searchers as they looked for elusive clues.Moneymaker instructed searchers to spread out and stay at arm’s length from each other as they formed a long line headed into the woods. He used a bullhorn to instruct everyone to look for hair on trees or barbed wire, nests of stick structures, trails cleared of twigs and limbs, and “tall boy trails.” Tall boy trails have been cleared of tree limbs and branches up to 8 feet high.Hair samples were found, and the Animal Planet crew saved them for analysis.

Read rest and see pics here :http://www.salisburypost.com/News/021311-david-freeze-column-sasquatch-w-pics-qcd