on the cover / By Ryan “Capt. Buhne” Hurley

BIGFOOT TRAPPED BY NORCAL FANATIC!

Bigfoot Is Real

To clarify: When we Sasquatchers say that “Bigfoot is real” we’re not talking about a single beast, but rather a breeding population of several thousand individual members of an unrecognized species of primate that — but for its uncatalogued status — is a flesh-and-blood mammal in all other respects. While mainstream scientists have for the most part avoided the mystery of Bigfoot like a leper colony, the loose consensus among those academics who have ventured into the study of hairy, man-like monsters posit that Bigfoot is most likely Gigantopithecus blacki , an Ice Age holdover that crossed the Berring Strait from Asia 12,000-or-so years ago.

A monstrous primate, several of the fossilized bones of G. blacki have modernly been recovered from the Vietnamese countryside. Though the accumulated fossil record is large enough only to fill a few shoeboxes, judging by the size of its massive jaw bone, scientists have concluded that the average G. blacki specimen stood around 10 ft. tall and weighed 1,200 pounds.

So, Bigfoot was real — at least in the distant past.

Forced eastward in a search for food and temperate climes, the leading Bigfoot explanation goes, G. blacki. — like their Homo sapiens sapiens brethren — ventured over the Alaskan glaciers and Canadian tundra into what is now the mountainous Pacific Northwest region of the United States. The reclusive apes, Bigfoot lore holds, have called our forests home ever since.

Having trouble wrapping your mind around the notion that the Pacific Northwest — our extended backyard — is inhabited by thousands of Chewbaccas? I once did too.

But consider this: Since World War II, more than a hundred small aircraft have crashed in the greater Pacific Northwest. Of those, several dozen aircraft, along with their passengers and luggage, have completely disappeared, despite the best search and rescue technology available on earth. (Old guard Bigfoot hunter Peter Byrne places the number of still-missing aircraft in the Northwest at 73.) They’re gone — gobbled up by the torrential rains, thick duff, omnivorous forest critters and highly acidic soil of our Northwestern outback.

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