ONTARIO BIGFOOT

Where do we begin to describe Moose Lake? How about this - It is in the middle of nowhere.There are trails leading to it but you really have to know what your doing and where you are going. Nevermind the thought that it's a simple jog off the highway. When you look at it on a map it appears to
be somewhat close to Highway 69, yet one must take either the Forest Access Road or Hwy 522 through to Lost Channel to get to the interior trail system, then it's about a 30 to 40 minute drive, depending on conditions. Trail conditions were good and you could move at a pretty high rate of speed but the problem was when there was more than one vehicle travelling with you. Dust - and lots of it, made you keep your distance.

A fascinating location and a peaceful place to be, no distractions, no hunters, no ATV's. It was very quiet. At night, there was the typical expectation of frogs and crickets to play a tune to fall asleep to.Not this time. In fact, this is not the first time we have encountered this situation within the same general area. Is it unusual? Perhaps, yet there must be a reason for it. During the day, you can hear the occasional bird, maybe the bark of a squirrel who is acting defensively. Nothing substantial. During the evening hours we expected to have a few visitors at the site. Maybe we did, for I heard a bit of scuffling around the gazebo we setup for cooking and shelter. Could not really see through the window of the truck during the one incident; the condensation from my breath on the inside of the window coupled with a moderate tint caused the flashlight beam to do nothing but reflect back at me, causing temporary blindness. I had the window of the truck cracked open a little to hear such events but in this case, it was too miniscule of a situation to warrant getting out of the warm sleeping bag just to find that it might be a coon or a fox. Forget it I said, and I went back to sleep. Possibly of interest to some is the use of Nexxtech portable motion detectors, which I picked up from The Source for a really good price - $1.96. Yes, you read that correctly - $1.96

http://www.thesource.ca/estore/product.aspx?language=en-CA&catalog=Online&category=Home+Security%2fAccessories&product=4900426

The idea was to have some form of perimeter detection available even while we were sleeping. The concept was proven over the weekend and I am glad that these were deployed. Definetely a good deal if you canstill find them. We setup these things on "chime" rather than alarm and they worked very well. During the colder evenings we found the detection range to be somewhat further than what is specified in the manual. This would obviously be because of the contrast between the warm animal / human temperatures and the cold night air. The same is true with the trail cameras, there seems to be a better sensitivity during the colder seasons.

Did we come across anything unusual? Well yes. In fact - I think this was a very successful trip, albeit too short for my liking. We managed to obtain some unique audio recordings. Using a parabolic dish, weleft a recorder going during the evening hours, pointed away from our camp towards the bush. We did not want our chit-chat to be picked up by the recorder so the parabolic was setup to point directly away from us. Tim managed to get a few good recordings, whereas my recorder shut down after about an hour or so during the first evening. I believe it was because of the cold weather that the recorder ceased to operate, either a protection circuit or the battery itself just packed it in. We found some hairballs on one of the trails which I initially mistook for scat. Closer examination showed it to be fine hair. We took a sample, and at this point we are unsure of the origin. Bobcat? Lynx? Cougar? It's the first time we have come across something like this.

The most interesting part of our trip was down in the soft riverbed where it looked like a freeway for animals. There were tracks all over the place, including a few unusual tracks which we took several
pictures and video of.

By Timothy D Ervick

The plan was that I would head in on the Thursday beforehand to scout out some trails that we had discussed earlier. Roughly 10 in all. I arrived in the area about 2 pm. Not knowing what trail to start with I picked what we had labeled as Trail 7. While driving down the trail I came across a fork in the road that couldn’t be seen on any map, so I decided to take it. After about 15 or so minutes I made it to the end of the gravel road where only an atv could continue. From leaving the main highway till my arrival it was about an hour. Checking to see if I had signal on my cell phone I was pleased to know I had a fairly decent signal although most of time heading in I had little to none. This allowed me to check my gps and relay coordinates to Jason so he would know exactly my location for his journey in. I had stopped in a fairly large clearing that loggers had made what seemed like several years ago. I was approximately 1200 feet north of Moose Lake. The clearing was surrounded by mixed bush and swampy area’s. Heading off this clearing was several old skidder trails (logging vehicle) which I thought would make perfect exploration trails and sites for my trailcams. I then started unpacking before Jason’s arrival. I immediately set up my trailcams on the skidder trails approximately 300-400 feet from the expedition basecamp. My homemade parabolic mic was placed on a tripod and initialized to record.

For the first time on expedition I brought my young dog “Dallas” along. He couldn’t of been a better alert system for us. He doesn’t bark much and usually only huffs when he hears something in the woods. Most of the time we would see him perk his ears up and stare into the bush allowing us to look where he was alerting to. He gave Jason and I a great sense of ease knowing he was that alert and a tune to what was happening in the woods that we never would of heard or even noticed. I believe the only time he actually barked was when Jason pulled into the clearing the next day having been delayed by a critical issue at work.

The first night in the bush by myself was uneventful and very cold. Okay I have to admit having the dog was a very big bonus for keeping warm. I didn’t bring any heater thinking it would be unnecessary. I had brought firewood for starting a fire but wanted to save it for when Jason and I both could enjoy the fire. Plus I was a little tired so I laid back in the back of my explorer and watched the movie “Priest” on the Ipod. I guess I should have picked a better movie like “Predators” or “Jurassic Park” or “The Legend of Boggy Creek” to get into the right frame of mind for the rest of the weekend. After watching the movie I also knew how to kill any would-be vampires that might approach my camp late at night. LOL I knew my parabolic mic and the dog would pick up on any activity outside the truck if anything happened while viewing. Being in nowhere by yourself at night, in the dark does seem to test your resolve and nerves a bit. I’ve always been a little to extremely apprehensive while alone in the bush at night. I’m still working on that but the dog probably helped. After many expeditions I am slowly getting more comfortable alone in the bush at night. I awoke to my surprise at about 11 am. Not having an alarm with me allowed me to sleep in and get some much needed rest. Plus I would need it for the late night observations that always take place on these expeditions.

At this moment I wished I had brought my stove along to be able to make a morning cup of coffee. Jason was bringing later. I did start to think back to an episode of Survivorman when he boiled water in a water bottle over a fire. lol The rest of the day was spent setting up, organizing equipment, videotaping and photographing and exploring the area but I never went to far from basecamp. I never once heard any human activity such as atvr’s or gunshots from hunters. Even though it is small game season in that area. I found plenty of signs of wildlife in the area like tracks,scat, game trails etc. I will say if I wanted to hunt Moose this would be the place to go having found huge tracks plenty of times while exploring.

Jason arrived about 4 pm after a 9 hour drive and we immediately started setting up the shelter we would cook under or hide from any rain that might take place during the weekend. We did manage to enjoy sunny days and and 3 quarter moon star lit nights while on this expedition which is a change from the norm. Jason and I discussed the plan for the weekend and started to do some exploring and set some of his trailcams up further down the trails. We then headed back to basecamp so I could make that coffee I had been dying for since the morning. After supper we collected firewood which was abundant due to the previous logging activities.The rest of the evening was spent by a large warm fire discussing what we hoped to accomplish during the weekend, setting up more audio recorders, motion sensors that would cover the perimeter of the baescamp and pre-recording an episode of Simply Sasquatch Radio. Nothing unusual or out of the ordinary took place during the evening or early morning hours.

Saturday morning we awoke to what I could only describe as “Apocalypse Now part 3” having been rudely awoken by a very low flying helicopter doing what could only be described as aerial acrobatics. Spraying the bush around our campsite. He finally left after about an hour. We were happy no wind of any nature was present. When I first woke up hearing the helicopter I first thought it was the Ministry of Natural Resources and we had camped on the MNR’s landing site or pad.

Then I thought that some would think it’s one of those famous black helicopters surrounding the Bigfoot mystery trying to chase us off. lol

After that excitement we had some breakfast and started preparing and setting up for a live broadcast of “Simply Sasquatch Radio” Live from the field. Click pick to listen.

Another reason we needed decent signal for the cell phones and laptop. Something I found out on this trip is not all usb cables are alike. Some you can charge your cell phone hooked into a usb- 12 volt adapter and some do nothing even though they are the same cord. I didn’t think to bring my 120/AC adaptor even knowing I was bringing a 12V 300 watt inverter. Experiment before you leave and test. We then headed off to do more extensive exploring of the area heading in the direction of Moose Lake which was south of basecamp. After about an hour of bushwhacking we arrived at the edge of Moose Lake to find the eastern part of the lake was lower than usual and was not much more than a small stream in a valley with lush green grass surrounding the snake like stream.

Can you spot Bigfoot? I'm Joking! I should say Blobsquatch.

A wildlife paradise with a multitude of animal tracks and wildlife. Heading west the stream empties into the lake. At this point we stood atop the edge of a 60-70 foot cliff that both Jason and I thought would make a perfect spot to have a blind for hidden observation of any wildlife that might visit the valley. A future thought. We headed West along the cliff edge until it slowly started to drop to lake level where we found several interesting large footprints in the mud along with small game and Moose tracks covering the entire muddy area.

At this point as we watched the dog run in the mud we realized a hunter could mistake Dallas for a coyote and get shot so we kept Dallas closer for the rest of the hike and eventually put a blaze orange marker on him. Hey better safe than sorry is the motto.lol Jason’s Blaze orange toque wasn’t hurting although the fashion police would have shot him on site. We then headed back to camp to set up the IR night vision camera’s and relocate my parabolic mic further away from the camp as not to get our conversations and noise on the recording. Nothing like 7 hours of someone's snoring caught on tape.lol The evening was uneventful although after review we did get some interesting audio recordings during the night. (stones hitting stone, possible wood knocks, mumbling, and what can only be described as Feline purring??)

Click to Listen

Large Feline possibly Cougar

Possible wood knock

Possible stone and wood knocks

Jason and I agree that working on and improving our ability and equipment to capture good audio field recordings is a high priority for future expeditions. Many animals can be heard but not seen at night.

Location 45° 51.732'N 80° 26.162'W

Hi folk's been a little busy lately and haven't found the time to post anything. Well Jason, Peter and I went into Still river for the weekend on Oct 23 2009. It was a little on the crappy weather side but we made the best of the time in the woods. Several minutes after I arrived I proceeded to bury my van up to the axles in mud. Thinking the other guy's had gotten there first I was following tire tracks, that in the end wasn't them. So I walked out to the main dirt road the trail I was on connected to and waited for the boys. After several hours Peter came to my rescue.

After setting up the carport and enclosed it in with a ton of tarps we went to go get my van further up the trail. We had decided to camp where it was less muddy. With several heaters and some tweaking we managed to bring the heat up enough to take the edge off of the cold outside. During the weekend we set up several trail cams (4) and did lot's exploring of the area with the help of Peter's Mule.

We managed some call blasting ( for those that don't know what call blasting is, it's when you play a series of loud vocals of monkeys and gorillas and what we think may be actual vocalizations from the big guy. We also had a audio recorder going so after the 30 second clip, we would be able to record anything in between the 30 sec clips. Which we feel may have produced an interesting result. During Saturday nights recording we had left to check out a trail further up the road and while we were gone we left the recorder to record the call blasting. We were gone for about 66 minutes.(time on recorder) Roughly 43 minutes into the recording you can hear what appears to be breathing and walking. Now let me tell you, we were alone up there. I truly mean alone. Plus if it was someone coming in a vehicle you would of heard it on the recorder. OK maybe it was a hunter or MNR (Ministry Of Natural Resources)? No way! Any hunter,or MNR coming into that situation in the middle of the night would have announced himself. Remember this is hunting season. No one just sneaks up on campers with a well lit campsite, with all this noise coming from it. A very good way to get shot I would say. Not that we had any weapons to speak of. It wouldn't of been a bear because our coolers and food were about 10ft away from the recorder and we would have came back to a hell of a mess.All other animals would have steered clear because of the noise and light. You can hear the wind, the call blasting and the tarp moving around because of the wind, but you can hear what sounds like breathing and something walking. We only discovered this later in the week when Jason Goldring was reviewing the recording. Needless to say we aren't saying it's the big guy but all we can say is "Very,very interesting".

Jason and I are heading back in on Nov 27 for the weekend and hope to get more breathing.lol We are ready for whatever happens. You can find the "Breather" at the very end of the Still river trailer. Which is a project we are still working on. I hope the rest of the video will be as interesting as the trailer.lol Isn't that always the case?

I would call the "Breather" deepthroat but that's what I call the voice on my GPS. Oh well just another female telling me where to go.lol

Click to listen

Location 45° 51.728'N 80° 25.342'W