Original subtitles

Previously on Expedition Bigfoot...

Mireya, you see what I'm seeing, right?

This is Squatch-made, in my opinion.

We are back here in Northern California because I believe Bigfoot

is using this area as a breeding ground.

It would lead me to believe that you have a male

with multiple females in a group.

Look at this.

Check this out.

That's a really big-looking footprint.

Yeah.

Right there.

What the hell is that?

It's just like a blur of fur.

Did that look like something walking down the hill?

Like two feet walking.

That's just crazy.

Look at that.

Look at that.

You're seeing that, right?

Deep in the remote back country

of Northern California,

survivalist Russell Acord

has detected a heat signature on his thermal camera

moving along a nearby ridge, that appears to be a bipedal creature.

Did it go over the hill?

What'd that look like to you? That looked like something walking down the hill.

Like two feet walking.

This thing on two legs

bipedal, moving fast,

ran over the ledge, out of sight.

We got to go. Let's pack it up.

Let's go.

All this does is confirm

that we are on the right track.

- Let's go. - All right.

You good?

My adrenaline's pumping and I'm going to chase this thing down.

Watch your step there.

You okay?

This is treacherous. Be careful.

Holy crap.

These overturned trees,

a lot of this stuff is rolled over from the wind

and all the successive rain.

I don't like the sounds of that.

I don't know what that was, but that was close.

Dude, that was thunder,

or was a landslide.

That sound sounded like, something like earth moving.

I didn't like the sound of that at all.

I mean, we're seeing the trees that have fallen down.

That concerns me a lot

because, on this hillside, well, shoot,

one of those things starts falling and we're in the path,

we've got no way to get out of the way quick enough.

This, like, thicket, drops down.

Holy crap.

Watch out.

Can you see that?

That drops straight down.

Holy crap.

Be careful.

See what that is?

That's all fresh. That's a landslide.

That tree came out... Look at this.

Right there. That basin.

Holy crap.

It's not time to be taking unnecessary risks or chances.

- Are you ready? - Yeah.

Okay. Watch your step.

When you're trying to study wild animals

in their natural habitat,

you basically have little control,

over things that can get in the way

of an expedition,

like the weather.

Back at base camp,

far to the southwest of Russell's position,

Dr. Mireya Mayor and Tobe Johnson

have been pounded by relentless rain

totaling eight inches over the last several days.

It's frustrating because I've been on so many expeditions

where the rain has just about, made it impossible

for us to achieve what we were out there to do,

and with Tobe here there's this

amazing opportunity, to record audio and then have that analyzed,

you know, picking up on things that we may otherwise have missed.

And due to the amount of rain tonight,

we're just gonna have to call it.

There's no way for us to continue and try to record it.

It just isn't worth it.

I mean, it's... it's a drain on you physically.

It's a drain on you psychologically.

It's just the luck of the draw.

You can't always win it with Mother Nature.

However, evidence we found, especially the track,

especially the sound of... a Canadian goose

that did not match a Canadian goose at all on sonogram.

You can see here, it's a totally different signature.

Is there any explanation for why it would sound like something

but not match visually?

Well, mimicking.

Strange.

I look forward to going back

and being able to review this

audio that I've captured out here.

Hey, Mireya.

Hey, Tobe.

As the storm continues to hinder

the audio surveillance investigation,

Tobe's limited time with the expedition must come to an end.

Did you have a chance to listen to some of the audio?

I did, I did.

I'm anxious to get back and look at it.

That's great. I'm excited to hear that you feel confident

that we have audio that you can go and, and analyze.

Well, given the type of evidence that we've got

in proximity to trying to record stuff,

I think we might have something.

Let's keep our fingers crossed.

Sounds great. Thanks.

- Thanks, Tobe. - Yeah. I'll be back.

Six miles away from Mireya's position,

Russell pursues the bipedal creature

he observed on his thermal camera last night.

There's a little opening.

This rain isn't quitting, But when there's adverse weather,

deer, elk, bear, any creature that I've ever encountered,

they'll settle in and get a comfortable spot and they'll stay still.

See how it's dry underneath it here?

There's something's been bedding in here.

So the rain helps us more than hurts us because of what I'm looking for,

that bipedal thing that I saw walk over the ridge line,

is gonna stay still, we can catch up to this thing.

It looks like... like a

like a feeding ground area here.

I mean, there's nothing left but the bare bones.

It's spread all over this whole area.

A lot of times, animals will feed on an animal

and most of the carcass is there.

But some of these large bones covered a pretty big area of ground.

You know, 20, 30 feet away from the original main part of the body.

What that tells me is that something big pulled this thing apart.

The thing is what I'm looking for right now

is any, like, bite marks

where something would have chewed on the bone itself.

There's not, like, bite marks.

Like, a bear would chew on it and gnaw on it.

Looking at these bones,

there was no bite marks on this thing.

They were clean.

Seeing that these things weren't chewed on,

it would be like you and I would eat food

where we pull the flesh from the bones and consume it.

And to me, that was interesting.

Sure reminds me of Washington.

We call it the Kill Zone.

There's old bones and then there's fairly fresh bones.

Something's bringing its kills to this space here

to feed on it and eat it.

I want to treat this like a crime scene.

Some of the tendons and the flesh on it

were still together.

I thought it was older than that.

And the bones, they were white from the sun

but there was still flesh on them,

so they hadn't been there that long.

This stuff is fresh.

So the old nest sites are here.

Back at base camp, six miles away from Russell's position,

Mireya has decided to map out the evidence that the team has collected

in order to see if any patterns emerge.

The first piece of evidence that Bryce and I came across

is a print that we found here.

We also heard a sound in this section right here.

Tobe thought that he heard a sound here.

Tobe also heard what sounded like branch break

and movement in this zone.

Which is really interesting because if you look at it on a map,

you can see that all of the evidence

is actually traveling in this direction.

Based on all of the evidence the team has collected so far,

it appears that one or more creatures may be headed

to an area northeast of base camp.

So that is where I want to go.

At his command center just outside of the target zone,

Bryce Johnson has received the 3D scan of the possible Bigfoot print

that Mireya and Tobe discovered last night.

Holy crap!

Look at this thing.

Did you find something?

Check this out.

That's a really big looking footprint.

To me, it looks like a foot.

Let me just get a different angle on this here.

Wow.

I can see the toe here,

and I can see sort of the mid-foot here,

a definite heel impression.

Look how those toes just really clawed into that earth.

Looking at the location of where they found this print,

it's only a quarter mile away from where I originally found mine.

Tell me what you think of this.

Check that out.

I feel like I see a big toe, a little toe.

That's interesting.

You know, what I would love to do is I would love to compare this

to that footprint that I found.

If I pull up a side by side...

Here we go.

So this is the track that I came across on that first day.

What immediately catches my attention

is just these are very similar in size and shape.

I mean, these are footprints.

You know, there's no mistaking it.

Wow. I wonder how big this thing is.

All right? So I'm just gonna measure this here,

from toe to heel.

Which measures at about 17 inches.

Coming in width-wise, we've got about 6.5.

This thing is huge.

Mine was about 23 inches,

and approximately nine to ten inches across.

Based on the size differences of these,

there is no doubt in my mind

we have at least two Bigfoot moving through this area.

And with these different sizes,

to me, this could be a male and its son,

a female and daughter, male-female.

I'm starting to wonder

if this could perhaps be a male and a female counterpart

moving along this route, which, if that's the case,

if this is a male and a female, then that means family.

We still don't know for sure how these creatures pair up,

whether in traditional groupings or not.

But this physical evidence, it bolsters our theory

that families of Bigfoot are moving through our target zone.

And that makes me think that locals in this area

might be able to corroborate that idea even further.

So my next move is to find someone who had an encounter

with a family of these creatures.

This is the find we've been looking for

because now that we've plotted where these two footprints were found,

we could potentially plot where these things are headed.

And hopefully have our team be there, ready to intercept.

Outside of the target zone,

Bryce contacts former CIA agent Ben Smith

to find out if any eyewitnesses could corroborate his theory

that a family of Bigfoot are moving through the area.

Hey, Bryce. How you doing?

I've been good. Hey, listen.

I... I managed to go ahead and take a look

at those two prints that we collected,

and it would appear

that they came from different creatures.

The sizes are distinctly different on these tracks,

which leads me to believe

that there are more than one moving through this area,

possibly a group, maybe even a family pod.

So this is where you could help.

Have you heard or talked to anybody who's had an encounter

with more than one of these creatures?

Yeah, actually, I'm in contact with a guy named Inker.

Really interesting guy, claims to have had a run-in with a family of Bigfoot.

I had a meeting all set up.

But you know what? Why don't you take this one?

Yeah, that would be incredible. A family of Bigfoot.

That sounds like exactly what I'm looking for.

Yeah, send me his information and I'll reach out as soon as I can.

Yeah, no sweat. I'll send it to you right after this.

Sounds good, Ben. Thanks.

Yep. Take care.

While Bryce chases down another lead,

back in the target zone,

Mireya has made her way northeast of base camp.

Based on mapping out the various pieces of evidence,

including audio data and the locations of possible Bigfoot prints,

she predicts the unidentified creature

might be moving through this area.

I mean, already you can see,

from this higher elevation,

that the terrain is different, right?

The vegetation looks different.

And even the air feels colder.

When I was looking at this evidence,

I noticed that something

was clearly traveling in this direction.

And we've been working in an area that was

very dense, but it was flat.

But in an environment like this, it's a lot steeper.

I have to be careful of slipping, sliding in our footing.

As I'm starting to work through here,

this reminds me of when I first set off to Madagascar

to study one of the most critically endangered primates

in the entire world.

During an expedition in 2000,

Dr. Mireya Mayor and a team of researchers

were the first to successfully photograph

and catalog the elusive Silky Sifaka,

a primate found only in the dense, mist-covered cloud forests of Madagascar.

By utilizing the incredibly tall trees,

the Silky Sifaka is able to remain undetected

while spying on the forest floor over 100 feet below.

As I'm looking around, I'm wondering if our best chances of seeing anything

and maybe even tracking down what was moving in this direction

might be to use the same strategy as the Silky Sifaka,

and use elevation to my advantage

and put ourselves up high.

I have this vantage point where I can look at a much wider distance.

Now, after what Ben told me over the phone,

I've arranged to meet with a man named Inker.

He's a prominent member of the Hoopa tribe.

I believe he may have had a first-hand encounter

with a family of Bigfoot.

- Well, Inker, I really appreciate you... - -Yeah.

Taking the time to speak with me.

I want to welcome you to our beautiful valley.

Welcome to... Valley.

Thank you, Inker. I feel honored to be here.

What was your first experience with,

these creatures we call Bigfoot?

So the first experience I had was, I was seven years old.

We used to live at the very end of our road.

At the time, I looked up and I seen this big arm reaching in the window.

But it was all hairy and, and gray.

And the hands were probably like

twice the size of mine, but all black.

It wasn't like a gorilla hand.

It was like, like a man's hand.

But twice as big.

I mean, it scared me so bad.

I couldn't scream. I couldn't holler.

I couldn't do nothing because I was, like, in shock.

It paralyzed me.

And so it reached in, and it tried to touch me.

And I fell back on the wall.

And then I finally let out a holler.

"Dad, Dad!" I hollered.

And he come running in there.

And he actually says, "What's going on, son?"

I said, "It tried to grab me, Daddy, it tried to touch me."

He goes, "What?" I said, "In the window."

Anyway, my father grabbed his gun and flashlight.

He ran out the back door and...

So he was seeing it, too?

He's seen it, too, yeah.

But he knew what it was.

And so I can remember him coming back in the house, he said,

"It was that Bigfoot."

Back in the target zone,

Russell has been tracking

what he believes could be a Bigfoot

after spotting a bipedal creature

on his thermal camera the night before.

Seeing that deer laying right here,

it's good to know that

there's plenty of food source up here.

I've been tracking this bipedal creature for a while now,

and I know there's so much ground I've got to cover.

But I think if we keep pressing,

we're gonna get what we're after.

Looks like an old homestead out here.

Built in the early 1900s, that's for sure.

It still looks fairly intact.

The roof line still looks good.

So it's not all caved in.

Need to be careful coming into a spot like this.

Coming through this... this countryside,

it doesn't surprise you to come across

either an old homestead, an old building, an old shack.

I wanted to see if there was anything

that would show animals had been in and out of it.

Because the doors were open,

it's protection from the elements.

So anything could get in there.

So if something wanted to seek shelter from

just the major elements,

this would work.

It could keep you dry.

Let's see what the other side of it looks like.

Holy.

Look at this.

That's blood.

That is blood.

Holy.

That is blood.

I mean, when blood first hits the ground,

it's going to be that bright red.

As it dries, it starts to get darker and darker.

And you can see it wasn't black.

It hadn't decayed.

This couldn't have been that long ago.

Look, see these nails?

If you look directly above my head,

all these nails that come through the ceiling...

See these?

And I had to keep my head down from hitting these.

It would just take a simple misstep

to cut yourself on that

and start leaving a trail.

I'm thinking whatever it was,

hit these nails

and he started bleeding.

And he made his way to the exit.

Right away, I knew that something got hurt.

The idea wasn't to stay there and take care of itself.

The idea was to flee that building.

So if you follow the trail to see if there's anything else,

there's a couple of spots right there.

This is covered up with a lot of dirt, but there you are.

More spots, right there, there and there.

And now it's just a matter of finding out

what that blood came from.

Another spot here, here,

inside and around.

I know that from the thermal heat trace,

to the bones, to the blood I just found in this building.

It's very important to get whatever kind of evidence I can.

So I've got a pretty good blood sample right here.

I'm gonna take this sample.

That's perfect.

We're gonna grab two DNA samples out of this.

It could have been a person.

It could have been an animal.

But if there's more to this

than a human or a known animal species,

then we've got a great starting point.

We actually have DNA in a blood sample.

All right, let's go.

Something that we are going to have to pay close attention to

is how the weather goes today.

Four miles away from Russell's position,

north of base camp,

surrounded by towering redwoods,

Mireya will employ a new strategy that capitalizes

on the unique terrain of the region.

Because of the challenging terrain,

there are channels that animals are being forced to move through,

and so the idea for me is to

go up high and have a vantage point.

The advantage of being that high up in the trees is that

at that height, animals that are moving through here

aren't really gonna notice me.

You know, generally on these expeditions,

we are always walking by foot,

trying to stay quiet and unseen.

But the truth is that

because animals have such an acute sense of vision and smell,

animals can smell and see you, and so,

by going up a 100 feet above the ground,

not only am I eliminating my visual presence,

but they're also not going to be able to detect me by scent.

I'm gonna be using a portal edge,

which is literally a portable ledge.

It's a mountaineering tool.

And because I'm gonna be up this tree

a 100 feet above ground, for hours,

I want a platform that I can actually work off of.

These trees are so tall and the branches are so high up,

that I'm actually gonna have to use a specialty tool

where I'm actually gonna sling the rope

up over those branches.

And from there, I can actually ascend and build the portal edge.

So now I need to climb the rope line

to get up to the portal edge.

The way these ascenders work is, that they actually

grip onto the rope line so that I can't fall down.

But I'm able to steadily move up the tree

so that I can get up to that portal edge.

Outside of the target zone,

Bryce continues to speak with Inker,

a witness who had multiple encounters with Bigfoot

over the course of his life.

Have you seen one or encountered one

since you had your experience

- when you were younger? - Yes.

There's a place above my house.

A place where my mom told me not to go.

There's caverns back there, she said,

"I don't want you to go back there."

So there's areas that... basically told not to go

because these creatures inhabit that area.

Yeah. As I get older,

curiosity always kills the cat, right?

Yeah.

So one day I put on my camouflage clothes

and I hiked up this ridge

to where my mother said not to go.

And I hit this trail.

I got this...

Have you ever been in a place

where your hair raised in the back of your neck?

Yes.

I had this feeling like kind of like something that...

- Danger is present. - Yeah.

I looked across the canyon,

and seeing a mother and a baby.

Did they notice you?

Yes, they noticed me.

- Really? - Yeah.

The baby was actually shivering...

Like

like... like it was scared.

Did they perceive you as a threat, do you think?

I don't know.

The mother stepped out

and she had to be like 7-foot something.

She looked at me like that and turned back away from me.

And then they actually started to communicate with

with the child,

like, almost speaking to it some way.

Did it sound like a language, or was it more guttural?

No, it sounded like a language.

- Really? - Yes.

Like a language I never heard before.

Kind of like, it did have

- a little grunt to it... - Yeah.

But it had

like

I could talk to it.

That's incredible. These creatures were using intelligent communication.

- Yes. - That, to me, says,

- extreme intelligence. - Yes.

I actually said, you know,

I'm not here to harm you.

And then I went on my way.

Do you think that this valley that we're in

holds a special place for Bigfoot?

I... I truly believe so.

It comes here for a reason,

cause they used to dance with us,

our people a long time ago,

cause all the tribes that you will talk to,

will tell you about...

They-they would speak their language

to all these different tribes,

because we all have interrelationships with Bigfoot.

That's incredible.

We used to intermingle

with Tin Tai.

Tin Tai.

Is actually how we say Bigfoot.

The old man of the forest.

As I get older,

I always make sure that I take care of myself when I'm in the mountains,

because there's actually people that go missing here,

men and women, that we have never found,

that are tribal members

that went into the mountains

and their trucks were there, but they've never found them.

They're leading you to some place off.

They don't want you there.

After following a trail of evidence,

Mireya is searching for a creature

she believed could be moving through this area.

I'm about a 100 feet above the forest grounds,

I'm still under the canopy.

Day is just now turning into night.

So it's that perfect time where you're getting

actually two different kinds of animals,

the diurnal animals that move around during the day

who are just now getting in those last final moves

before they settle in for the night

or the nocturnal animals which are just getting going.

So this isn't a huge amount of area,

but it's just enough that I can work.

I can have my backpack, pull out my equipment

and basically spend the next few hours

trying to observe anything that moves through this forest.

Mireya has brought two pieces of equipment with her

in order to see in the dark.

Her standard thermal camera,

as well as a pair of night vision binoculars

capable of viewing over 600 meters away.

Anything that moves through here,

I'll be able to see from up here.

While Mireya begins to observe the forest floor,

at the command center outside of the target zone,

Bryce reviews the mountain of evidence

the team has collected.

You know, initially, we came here

because we captured something amazing

on our surveillance camera footage.

But it seems like every day, we're getting new evidence

inside of our target zone,

which just tells me

we are in the right place at the right time.

So right now, Mireya is just north of base camp

because all the evidence is telling us

that one or more of these creatures

is moving in a north-eastern direction.

But I really wanted to plot some of the evidence

that Russell has come across,

because, you know, I've been out in the field,

and I really haven't had time to assess some of these findings.

So Russell really has been working out of this northeastern quadrant.

We sent Russell around to this area

because on Pete's LIDAR,

we thought we found a cluster of nests right over here.

Now, unfortunately, we didn't find any nests,

but Russell was able

to capture an audio recording right here

where he thinks it might have been two Bigfoot

communicating with one another.

Holy.

It sounded like a couple of grunts.

Like a...

That's weird.

From there, he tracked something through a cave system

where he got something on thermal,

something upright on thermal, right here.

That thing is bipedal. What did that look like to you?

That looked like something walking down the hill.

Like two feet walking.

That's just crazy.

And it wasn't long after that

that he found a kill site right about here.

This thing was literally torn apart.

It looks like... Like the feeding ground area here.

And some blood spatter, not too far from the kill site.

Right about here.

Look at this.

That is blood.

You know, that's pretty interesting

if you start to plot

and just connect these dots

where Russell found that thing

out of the cave, saw the thermal,

and then here's that kill site with the blood spatter.

All this activity, he's discovering

is moving from the northeast to the southwest.

You know, looking at all this evidence

that Mireya has been discovering,

it moves from the southwest to the northeast.

It seems to me like all this action

is converging into one place at the center of our hot zone.

Right here.

Right here into the center of our target zone.

So that is either a pretty big coincidence

or there is something right here.

We just need to find out what that is.

I say we kind of go in this general area,

have a look around, see what we can find.

Ten miles away from Bryce

and four miles away from where he spotted

the bipedal creature he believes could be Bigfoot,

Russell continues to follow a trail of evidence.

What the hell is that?

Listen.

Is your mic picking that up?

That sounds like something walking through water.

I want to get closer.

I think we gotta go stealth.

I want to be able to move quietly

and keep that element of surprise.

So I'm gonna ditch the big backpack

and break out the night vision goggles.

If there's anything out here,

at least it's not gonna see me coming.

All right, let's get into this.

Be careful.

Look how steep this stuff is.

We're definitely near the stream.

I know something came through here.

But it's gone.

Now we've got a long night ahead of us,

so I've decided I'm going to go back

and continue the same direction I've been tracking.

See this? That's been smashed down.

Something's been right through here.

Look at that. Look at that.

Holy crap! Look at this.

Look how big that thing is.

Look at the size of that thing.

I'm looking.

Watch where you step.

Holy. Dude.

Tell me what you think that looks like.

One, two, three.

That looks like toes.

That looks like toes, man.

Something that most people don't realize

is really a crucial part of an expedition,

especially when you're trying to look for

a rare and an elusive animal

are the local stories.

I cannot tell you how many times I have walked,

sometimes ten hours a day for months on end,

and not seen or found the animal that I'm looking for.

And then I walk into a village

and I talk to the village elder

and the locals

who then share their eyewitness reports

and lead me to the very place where I then find

and able to document that animal.

And we're super grateful to people who

basically have more to lose than to gain

by sharing their stories and their insights with us.

Because it really helps further along

our investigations.

My God.

No.

A bear would have a distinctive pad,

and in front of that,

the claws would have laid down and pushed into the soil.

There's nothing.

I'm shaken.

I'm blown... I'm just blown away.

I've been tracking this bipedal creature for a while now,

and it seems like the evidence I'm getting

keeps getting stronger and stronger.

I told you all day there was something trying to keep out of our way.

You know, I might lose some ground on this,

but I've never seen a print this good.

From the point of the toe,

that's almost 16 inches.

I can't believe how big that thing is.

I got to pour a cast on this.

This could actually prove that what I saw in the thermal

is a Bigfoot.

I have to cast this print.

Let's go get that other pack.

You ready?

- Watch where you step. This way. - Okay.

Everything is about gathering that evidence while it's still intact.

This is like, timing is everything.

I'm gonna go find my backpack...

Back down there.

Get my casting materials,

mix it up, let's get this thing poured.

No way.

I don't have casting material.

What a rookie mistake.

The weather changes so fast around here,

it's been raining on and off all day long.

I'm terrified I'm gonna lose detail out of this thing.

The longer I wait to get this thing poured,

I'm losing evidence.

I got to cover that track and protect it.

The best I can do right now,

is cover it,

protect it,

and hope that nothing touches it

and get back to the truck.

That should be good.

Okay.

I bet it's going to take us ten-twelve hours, maybe?

Let's get as far as we can tonight.

High above the forest floor,

Mireya silently peers through the darkness,

searching for any signs of activity below her.

It's so dark, that I can't even see my legs

right in front of me.

It's incredible.

The clarity on this is really remarkable.

I brought night vision binoculars and a thermal camera,

which should allow me to see anything that moves through the area.

This light is so bright, that I can see all the way down to the forest floor.

But because what it gives off is infrared light,

nothing below should be able to detect any light source up here.

We've got some

some deer, so already

we know we're at an active site.

For the last several hours,

I've been using the night vision binoculars

and scanning this entire area,

but it's very rainy and it's going to be getting

more and more difficult to use them

under the poor visibility conditions that we're in.

I'm scanning.

Wait, wait, wait, wait.

I'm getting something on the thermal.

Okay. Something...

Something is definitely giving off a heat signature.

What is that?

My... look at this.

Look, look, look, look.

It looks upright.

Holy. What is that?