Happy Bigfooty Christmas (or whatever you call it, my preference being closer to Satan Claws) (fwd)

[Noelle <http://dummy.us.eu.org/noelleg>]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Sat, 24 Dec 2011 17:06:53 -0800
From: "Steven Streufert, Bigfoot Books" <http://www.gmail.com/~bigfootbooks>
To: undisclosed-recipients:  ;
Subject: Happy Bigfooty Christmas (or whatever you call it,
     my preference being closer to Satan Claws)

Hello all,

Here's a little "Christmas Card" from me. Of course, it is related to Bigfoot. 
It is a PDF file.

All my wishes for an Interesting New Year for all of you!

Steve

************************************
Steven Streufert, Bookseller
Bigfoot Books
box 1167
40600 Highway 299
Willow Creek, CA 95573 USA
(530) 629-3076
http://bigfootbooks.webs.com
************************************

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December 2011

Bigfooters Of The Year
For those who have followed my documentation and writing on the P-G filmsite, 
you
may recall the Bigfoot Times from October
2001, in which I described the â??big tree,â??
with a picture of the base of the tree on the
second page. It had the look and feel of the
big tree but it seemed a bit high off the existing sandbar, but I reasoned that 

over that
time span - almost thirty-four years - that
much of that forest floor must have been
washed away. Also, it was logical in my
mind that over the ensuing decades many of
the trees seen in the famous Patterson-Gimlin
film were either felled by loggers or toppled
by the elements, and the late Rene´ Dahinden
had already noted tree falls in the 1970s.
That â??big tree,â?? (shown below) clearly seen
in frame #352 of the P-G film that I located
in 2001 turned out to be an imposter; too far
to the west to be the real deal. I was just
plain wrong in that early analysis.
In September 2003 a distinguished field of
Bigfooters, John Green, Dr. Jeff Meldrum,
Chris Murphy, myself and others descended
upon the P-G filmsite, yet no one could
clearly tell with certainty the exact whereabouts of the filmsite with
physical reference points
to seal the deal. John
Green was not as studied
as the late Dahinden on
the filmsite, but Rene´
was no longer available to
question. At the time I
was only able to show the
crowds the street but not
an exact address, such as
10926 Milano Avenue.
Then and later it was my
thinking that much of the
original P-G filmsite was
washed away by the
heavy storms this region
experiences and that looking for it would be an
exercise in futility.
Yet on that sunny September 14th in 2003 in
Bluff Creek the P-G film

Above: bookstore owner Steven M.
Streufert at the base of the real â??big
tree,â?? and Ca State Park Ranger
Robert Leiterman, right, near the filmsite. Below: the â??big tree,â?? (a 
Douglas
fir) as it looks today, and as it looked in
a black and white photo snapped by
Peter Byrne in 1972. Photographs courtesy and copyright of Steven Streufert,
Rowdy Kelley and Peter Byrne.

1

site stood silent in all her glory and the
scholars at hand could not separate the trees
from the forest, so to speak.
Unlike another famous site like Dealey
Plaza, the P-G filmsite changed its physical
appearance to the point of
being almost unrecognizable. Yet it was still there,
grown up with new
growth filling in the clearings where a silent movie
star, Patty, walked away
from Roger Pattersonâ??s
Kodak K-100 movie camera in October 1967.
As the years went on the
filmsite was photo documented by the likes of
Rene´ Dahinden; George
Haas; John Green and
Peter Byrne but in recent
years new forest growth
camouflaged the existing
site to the point of being
unrecognizable.
As that happened the
Bigfoot community had
a field day, conjuring up

^Lother sites, claiming only they knew where
the real P-G filmsite was, but it proved to
be just poorly informed sources trying for
their fifteen minutes of fame.
Then a small group of dedicated Bigfooters tried to locate the one and only P-G
filmsite and the team consisted of Steven
Streufert, Ian C. and later Robert Leiterman and Rowdy Kelley joined in. I wasnâ

??t
sure what they were doing and frankly I
wasnâ??t paying much attention.
On November 19th Steven M. Streufert
sent an e-mail with a link to his
www.bigfootbooksblog with a note,
â??Check it. You can download the maps in
fairly high resolution, too.â?? So I clicked on
the link and started browsing, not reading.
With the massive amounts of postal and email people send along, I only have 
time to
browse. But as I was browsing it was their
map and corresponding artifacts that
proved to be of tremendous interest. I
asked if he could send along some higher
resolution photos and Steven did that immediately. It was then it occurred to 
me
they nailed it, this ragtag collection of Bigfooters had truly rediscovered the 

P-G
filmsite, something that got lost over time.
Keep in mind the site is a living area and
constantly in seasonal change; small trees
become big, others rot away and so the site
will always be like a chameleon, always
changing her stripes.
But enough trees stayed the course from
1967 to 2011, some forty-four years, to
give the researchers a positive identification of the filmsite. Some of the 
trees even
got their own names, such as the â??big
tree,â?? the â??leaning treeâ?? and the â??ladder
tree.â??
Within days of going from browsing to
reading Steven Streufertâ??s excellent blog,
I phoned him in Willow Creek, Ca
for a follow up. Who discovered the â??big
tree,â?? I wondered.
â??It was me,â?? Steven told me. â??But I'm not
going around claiming credit. It was group
research. I found my way to that tree this
summer, and gave it a serious new look. I
had to change my whole image of the film
site around to realize it was the correct
tree.â??
The P-G filmsite is a deception of sorts. It
looks for all the world there is not enough
real estate to get all the film Roger Patterson recorded on his movie camera. 
But it is
there, hiding in plain site, with all the open
spots filled in with new growth. Although
trees appear directly behind the subject in
the film, the camera is capturing those images in a diagonal fashion, something 

that

Robert Leitermanâ??s site survey map of the P-G filmsite, with enough 
corresponding
trees and stumps to seal the deal as the real filming site. An arrow points to 
the â??big
tree.â?? Though this map may look crude in illustration, a massive amount of 
man
hours went into the making of it. Map courtesy of Robert Leiterman.
gets lost when three dimensional reality is
translated to a flat surface such as film.
I also phoned the ranger, Robert Leiterman,
and he told me he â??couldnâ??t buy into the idea
the whole [P-G filmsite] world has changed.â??
â??Something has got to fit,â?? he insisted. As
the team scoured the area in question, Robert
said in excitement, â??wow, look at the size of
these trees!â?? They knew they were on to
something.
To be on the safe side, I jingled Rowdy
Kelley as well. He had worked on the Finding Bigfoot television series.

BIGFOOTER OF THE YEAR

1998: Don Keating, Ohio.
1999: Loren Coleman, Maine.
2000: Rene´ Dahinden, Canada.
2001: no one selected.
2002: no one selected.
2003: Chris Murphy, Canada.
2004: Chris Murphy, Canada.
2005: Matt Crowley, Washington.
2006. Dr. Jeff Meldrum, Idaho.
2007. M.K. Davis, Mississippi.
2008. Matt Moneymaker, Ca.
2009. Bill Munns, Ca.
2010. Bob Gimlin, Washington.
2011. Robert Leiterman & Steven
Streufert, Ca.
2

â??I manned the compass and read the tape
measure,â?? Rowdy told me, but added he was
â??very new to it all.â?? After finding the potential site they were â??pretty 
enthusiasticâ?? because â??from a film perspective, it lines up. I
began to see the shot.â?? He told me that Robert Leiterman, a late addition to 
the group,
proved to be the â??leader.â??
>From Rowdy Kelleyâ??s comment about
Robert Leiterman as the â??leaderâ?? and the
initiative of Steven M. Streufert to start the
project, it became clear the two had broken
new ground, just the sort of thing that would
lift their stock, jointly, as the Bigfooters of
the year. It would be hard to separate the two.
It is the first time that two people would be
named to the top spot, our Bigfooter of the
Year now Bigfooters of the Year for 2011.
Said Steven Streufert, â??Robert [Leiterman]
gets loads of credit for managing the site
survey. It was Robert who was most fixated
on the stumps, which are other lasting features that will help prove this 
location with
finality.â??
Although Rowdy Kelley and Ian C. were
part of the team, their role was more supporting cast and I am told Ian still 
has doubts
about the location. He needs more facts, I am
told. They rounded out the team and their
part is noted, but the real focus is on the key
players, Robert and Steven.

^LOn such a historic rediscovery, I thought it
wise to get some further insight into the matter by asking questions, something 

I am told
I am very good at. The questions were
fielded by Steven Streufert and a few for
Robert Leiterman via e-mail.

nearby in Redding, Ca. Iâ??d known
Leiterman for a while, and when he heard
about our research his own curiosity to find
the site was ignited. He became a driving
force to get us to apply our research on-site,
rather than just hike around and theorize.

Daniel Perez: Who made the decision to
create The Bluff Creek Film Site Project?

P: Who was part of the project?

Steven Streufert: It was Ian and I who
started this research project by obsessing
over small details in the history of Bluff
Creek. There were a lot of unanswered questions, and many outright 
contradictions. This
included five main opinions as to the location
of the P-G filmsite, and many more minor
locations proposed or hinted at by others. As
explained below, the official â??Projectâ?? was
started in 2010, when Robert joined us and
started filming our research and investigations, and releasing the results on 
the BFRO
YouTube page. Iâ??ve been blogging about it,
too, on Bigfootâ??s blog. It has been a long
personal process for each of us, but our collective work took the last two 
summer-fall
seasons, with preliminary stuff between Ian
and I before that in 2009.
P: When did this project start?
S: Ian and I were separately heading up to
Bluff Creek in the early to mid 2000s, and
began working together on this history after
meeting at the Yakima Bigfoot Round-Up in
2009. In 2010 we began working with Robert, who wanted to document the process.
Three summer-fall seasons, then, went into
this Project. I first looked for the film site,
using John Greenâ??s sketch from his 1968
book in 2001. Greenâ??s map was rather vague
and imprecise. Questions lingered until I was
back up there in [October] 2007 with Cliff
Barackman, James â??Boboâ?? Fay and others.
>From their opinions, guided in part by what
Gimlin had said in 2003, and the marked
maps found in Bigfoot At Bluff Creek, we
tried to find the filmsite. It was a strange
place, at once familiar, and yet very alien. No
clear indications were found anywhere of the
scenery familiar in brief glimpses in the P-G
film itself. The following years were a slow
and sometimes agonizing process of trying to
pull the real information from the word-ofmouth and presumptuous statements 
made
by various researchers. Ian was there in
2006, where he met Daniel Perez and Richard Henry. His outdoors and 
navigational
experience gave rise to a parallel interest in
discovering the site. Ian and I met in Yakima,
Washington, but were able to conveniently
meet and head to Bluff Creek as he lived

S: Ian C., [a member of the Bigfoot Times,
who does not wish to have his last name
used] Steven Streufert, Robert Leiterman,
with part-time participation of Rip Lytle, and
then Rowdy Kelley toward the end of it. We
were aided immensely, of course, by the remaining older locals from the general 

Willow
Creek area, like Al Hodgson and Jay Rowland, as well as many of the old-time 
Bigfoot
researchers like John Green, Jim McClarin,
Bob Gimlinâ?¦ and yourself, among many
others.

be accurate. We found, in trying to investigate this stuff, that there were 
many such
snippets, and none of them could prove anything. What we saw was an oral 
history disintegrating into legend. We sought to correct
that, and it truly was not easy to do. We
sought to establish truth and reality, a real
history, which are rare things in the field of
Bigfooting, Iâ??m sorry to say.
I have to say that the biggest enemy in this
endeavor has been the presupposition of unfounded claims made by some 
researchers
who never bothered with proof and documentation. Just saying something is so is
never enough. As in the case of M.K. Davis,
one false conception can lead to a thousand

P: Other parties claimed to know where the
filmsite was but nothing bore fruit. Do you
think they were doing it to attract attention to
themselves rather than the subject?
S: Before what I like to call the â??Great Confusion of 2003" (when many major 
researchers along with Bob Gimlin himself tried to
find the site and could not), I think many just
assumed that the site was â??known.â?? We
found, living here and having the time to try
to find the spot, that it was NOT known. As
it turned out, the spot found in Bigfoot At
Bluff Creek was correct, but the trackway
course was not found, nor the big trees, nor
frankly any of the things actually seen in the
film. The last positive I.D. of these features
that weâ??ve been able to determine was made
in 1983, by Thomas Steenburg, who had help
from Dahinden. After this it really seems to
have become overgrown and lost to time,
with John Green and Bob Titmus not being
able to find it.
The many researchers who have made the
varied claims of â??their ownâ?? filmsite location
seem to have suffered either the confusion of
faded memories, or else a certain arrogance
that their own â??informationâ?? and â??knowl-

â??...we tried to find the filmsite. It
was a strange place, at once familiar, and yet very alien.â??
--Steven Streufert, 2011.
edgeâ?? were sufficient, despite a nearly total
lack of verification and validation. Those like
M.K. Davis simply made up their own location, with no substantiation whatsoever 

save
that the spot â??feltâ?? right to them, and they
heard some snippet or rumor they felt must
3

The â??ladder tree,â?? named for its limbs
which look like ladder rungs, in 1972
and how it looks today, viewed looking
toward the sky. Photos courtesy Steven
Streufert and Peter Byrne.
others following. Attention-getting? Yes. It
seems to be what drives Bigfooting the most,
as we generally canâ??t seem to produce very
good evidence of the phenomenon to give
more weight to individual declarations, egotism, and imaginary and 
unsubstantiated
claims to truth without real evidence. Everyone in this likes to call 
themselves â??researchers,â?? but it is stunning how few of them
bother to document and really study anything.

^LP: Are you confident that after 40+ years
you have located the exact spot?
S: Yes. Indeed. Well, we still have to prove it
absolutely to the world. Proof, in a scientific
and surveying or optical/photographic sense,
is a whole other order of business. The history is ambiguous and contradictory, 

too. I
am satisfied, though, that this is the site, and I
see absolutely no evidence for any other location we have investigated. All of 
the evidence and history, such as it is, points to this
one single sandbar on the long course of the
creek. There is no doubt in my mind, as I
walk on the very course of the trackway on
that site. It is big enough, with all the landmarks and proportions in order. 
Once understood, the site becomes clearly visible (conceivable, at least, 
though one cannot really
see in the way Pattersonâ??s camera did back
then), despite these 44 years passed and new
forest growth since the filming event.
P: Of the team, who had that Eureka moment of pinpointing the â??big tree?â??
S: The â??Eurekaâ?? moment was really a gradual process realized as a group 
over a few
years. It was I, Steve, who began insisting on
that particular big tree and area, and seeing
the sandbar and the angle of view in the film
toward the â??rightâ?? side of the sandbar. But
I'm not claiming credit for it personally. It
was group research, and no one of us alone
could have brought this project to fruition.
That is why we go by â??Bluff Creek Film Site
Project.â??
Weâ??d looked in that area before, but always
felt that the trees were just way off too far
toward the end of the film. We had decided
that we would focus on that spot and do a
site survey last year, but we ran out of time
with the seasons and weather changing. Robert and I were even more convinced 
when we
heard that it was Bob Gimlin who had identified the spot of the first sighting. 

Ian remained skeptical, thinking the site and big
trees were not big enough, and so forth.
I found my way to that tree again this midsummer (during a time when we were 
unable
to get the group together up there), and gave
it a serious new look. I had to change my
whole mental image of the film site around
to realize it was the correct tree in the right
spot. In many ways the image in the film is
an optical illusion of perspective, with a
moving subject and camera position. We had
to think around â??squareâ?? models such as seen
in Chris Murphyâ??s diorama of the site. I began pointing out that tree to the 
others, the
biggest one down there in that general spot.
Robert Leiterman agreed, but reserved

judgement until we could do the site survey
grid. Robert was very determined to get to
that level of documentation before concluding anything. Ian wasnâ??t able to 
spend much
time at the spot with us at the one time we
were all together there this summer. He still
has reservations, but I think weâ??re making a
little headway convincing him.
When we did our survey with Rowdy we
saw things in greater depth and focus, and
the landmarks began to emerge from the
â??jungle.â?? We saw the trees from the forest.
So many had assumed the area was just not
big enough, but when we measured it - the
known film distances fit in there perfectly,
with all the right pieces of the puzzle. Next to
that big tree there were others in what appeared to be exactly the correct 
locations.
When we were there as a group surveying
without Ian I showed that big tree to the guys
again. Rowdy then insightfully spotted the
maple next to the big tree, with a slightly
bent trunk. I then identified the spiky snag,
which I'd never thought before could still be
standing. The â??ladder treeâ?? and middle tree
were obvious, once the big tree was found.
The other background big tree clusters are
notably similar, but we have yet to fully
study and measure all of them. Measuring
anything on that hillside is very difficult.
Rowdy helped out in huge ways at that
point, in organizing and conducting the site
measurements. Rowdy, who has a degree and
works in film, has already contributed many
new views and analysis that hadnâ??t occurred
to us before he got involved.
Ianâ??s skepticism and rationalism have been
constant guards against false assumption.
The process: The arrow in the Daniel
Perezâ??s booklet identifies the end point of the
film, pointing specifically to the upper sandbar zone. Gimlin identified the 
crook in the
creek downstream as the first sighting spot in
2003, and more decidedly this summer on
site. In 2010 Perez, upon being asked to pinpoint Rene´ Dahindenâ??s exact 
mark on the
map, marked this very spot. We had already
ruled out all locations downstream, and focused on the upper sandbar when 
Gimlin
arrived here. We had to try to conceive of
that sandbar without the new tree growth,
trying to see again what Dahinden saw in his
â??aerialâ?? shot from the hillside. We realized
the big trees had to be farther toward the end
of the sandbar, and that the film was shot
diagonally [emphasis added by the editor]
across the apparent north orientation of the
sandbar.
Bill Munns put out an animation recreating
the motion of camera man and subject within
the setting, and this was instrumental in our
re-visualizing the site. We drew a magnetic
4

north axis on site and found it oriented perfectly with the biggest tree there, 

one weâ??d
previously thought was way too far to the
â??rightâ?? to be the big tree. Upon close inspection, all the other main trees 

were found, and
in our site survey the old stumps and debris
piles were amazingly still there.
P: In your Bigfootâ??s blog site, it is stated,
â??Though the proof is not officially final...â??
Who makes it official?
S: â??Proofâ?? cannot be had by mere photography, as the site is a totally 
overgrown jungle
now. Each detail needs to be analyzed by
itself, and put into location on our site grid
map in order to be seen and understood in
context. This was the real, full â??Eurekaâ??
moment, when Robert finished his map.
There was so much more corresponding artifacts than weâ??d never imagined weâ??
d find.
(Editor: to be continued in the Bigfoot
Times, January 2012).

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^L