We're talkin' Sasquatch! This week we sit down with Mike Familant, creator of the YouTube page In The Shadow Of Big Red Eye. Mike has been searching for Bigfoot for 11 years and has come across some very interesting things. Mike talks about how he first got started hunting Bigfoot, how many he thinks there are in the United States, and all of the different names for them depending on what region of the world you are in. There's even a point in the episode when we thought Bigfoot actually got Mike! Whether or not you believe in cryptids, this is a great, fun listen!
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCDlVedMt24xesCg1wTt0dOQ?
https://www.facebook.com/shadowofredeye
https://www.instagram.com/shadowofredeye
We're talkin' Sasquatch! This week we sit down with Mike Familant, creator of the YouTube page In The Shadow Of Big Red Eye. Mike has been searching for Bigfoot for 11 years and has come across some very interesting things. Mike talks about how he first got started hunting Bigfoot, how many he thinks there are in the United States, and all of the different names for them depending on what region of the world you are in. There's even a point in the episode when we thought Bigfoot actually got Mike! Whether or not you believe in cryptids, this is a great, fun listen!
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCDlVedMt24xesCg1wTt0dOQ?
https://www.facebook.com/shadowofredeye
https://www.instagram.com/shadowofredeye
Welcome back. Welcome back. Teach two dumb dudes. I'm Rob Washburn. That's Joe bento. And today we're talking about big foot tall Sasquatch Sasquatch, the seven foot tall metal man. That they're chasing in Michigan. You hear about that? The metal man in my research about this there's this call. Yeah. Oh yeah, definitely. He does. You should see the picture of him a seven foot tall metal Sasquatch lawn ornament vanishes from Michigan yard. Like this is happening in the last day or two and like the police are looking for it. And so of course, all of the headlines are Michigan state police searched for Bigfoot, honestly. Mental. Do you believe in Bigfoot?
Bento:I do not in any way, shape or form. And let me tell you, I never have. Right. And so I grew up in the eighties, nineties, you know, I'll probably tell Mike this too. You know, there wasn't cameras everywhere. It wasn't the internet. So like you see Bigfoot, you see it on the, on the tabloid at the supermarket while your mom's checking out the groceries. But yeah, I mean, if, if there was a big foot do like with all the cameras we have everywhere now, like even trail cams for hunters, everything, there's no way we wouldn't have. A clear shot of him,
Bobby:yo man. But what if he's so smart and advanced that he knows how to hide
Bento:a shit. If he was so slow in advance, he wouldn't look like an, a famous,
Bobby:the famous video that was in like what, 75 or something like that. What was it? Jerry crew, right? So Jerry crew is the guy who, you know, in 1958 he had contacted reporter Ginza. And so again, Zoely was the guy who has that famous old footage of the first, like siting of Bigfoot. And he like walks around, goes behind some trees and the guy moves the camera and like these just gone, like he's gone. I watched that shit today. And it definitely looks like something like, it's definitely something.
Bento:So do you believe. No, I don't. Okay. Thank you. Let's just say my God,
Bobby:this podcast. I know. I
Bento:want to as well, I want to believe in Nessie. Like I want to believe in that
Bobby:stuff in general. Like, I really want to talk to this guy about cryptids in general too, because I think it's just so interesting. Like triple a
Bento:is
Bobby:my favorite. Yeah. And there are just so many of those like weird things. Like I was reading an article one day about there's a bridge in Scotland and for whatever reason, like dogs commit suicide off this bridge. They think that they can jump and make it and whatever, but it's like a 30 foot drop and all these dogs die and it happens like once or twice, every couple of years or something like that.
Bento:Committing suicide because they hit their family,
Bobby:your poor dog, terrible. Honestly though, like some of this like unexplainable stuff is very interesting.
Bento:The blue, Buffalo food, not the APOE my life. What
Bobby:is this? Dinovite crap.
Bento:Yeah. So this guy today, Mike FEMLA he's a creator, I suppose, of a, the shadow of the big red eye,
Bobby:big YouTube channel.
Bento:Hey, what's up Mike? How's it going?
Bobby:Hey, how are ya?
Mike:Good, good, good. How are you guys
Bobby:doing wonderful. Awesome. Very, very glad to have beyond here. Cryptids is definitely something that we're both big fans of and, you know, so yeah, we were, we were really excited actually to to get to talk to you. So thank you so much for coming on. Yeah, no, of course. I'm excited to
Bento:just a little history. We've been doing this podcast since September and we actually kind of took a break from it and we, we had like a civil hiatal project we wanted to do. Yeah, we're both big soccer fans. So we tried the soccer podcast route. It didn't really work out too good. So you were actually our first guests back on the teacher dumb news
Mike:podcast.
Bento:Awesome. Awesome. What are you in Jersey? I am,
Bobby:yeah. Good old Jersey. It's so funny. I was watching a kids movie that day of my kid and they were like, we need to move to a horrible, horrible place, the most horrible, terrible place in the world. And they show a sign and it says welcome to New Jersey. What are you doing here? Something like that. Even the Jersey.
Mike:I'm guessing you're from New York. I hear that
Bobby:accent or know Rhode Island. Oh, the good old cramps in Italian. Unfortunately, a little
Bento:bit of Boston and a little bit of New York accent.
Bobby:Yeah. You're not the first person who will have to ask me to repeat myself.
Bento:So yeah. Thanks for coming on. You know, we you know, we know you're, I find you online. No Bigfoot enthusiast, hunter you know, all, all things Sasquatch. So let's just start off, like, how did you get into this? How'd you get into hunting Sasquatch
Mike:full-time yeah. Well, that's a crazy story. So growing up, I was always like an inside kid, right? Video games, all that kind of good stuff. And I was living in Florida and I worked at a beach resort, which is like the best job I've ever had in my entire life. And like, like the manager would be like, I want you to lock up at sunset and go out to the beach and have drinks and socialize with the guests, I'm like, you don't have to
Bobby:tell me twice. It sounds terrible.
Mike:So anyways, I was watching, finding Bigfoot on TV and They're like go onto our website, if you want to go out on an expedition. So it piqued my interest and I was like, okay, why not? So I, I hopped online and, and I, I saw that you could buy these tickets and they had one in north Florida. So I was like, you know, called up the fiance at the time. And I was like, honey, guess what? We're going to do.
Bento:Nice romantic getaway.
Bobby:They should've put those together to go hunt for that. Who was it? The Brian laundry kid, their tickets to that. They would've sold out real quick.
Mike:Yeah, no kidding. I should mention this is back in 2011. So we're, we're talking a while now that I've been doing this, but so yeah, so we it's like two weeks before the trip. Right. And boom, we break. My life ends upside down. My goodness. And the tickets are non-refundable, you know, kick a man while he's down. Why don't
Bento:you to go? Right? He can't waste
Mike:them well. So I moved up to to Tampa and I got a job on the ambulance working for the city of Tampa on the ambulance, which is pretty cool. And I was I was saying I was working with my friend Jimmy and we worked probably a total of 12 hours and this trip was coming up. Right. It was like the next week. So he was the only partner that I've worked with so far that I've found semi relatable to in the, in the terms that he was weird. And I'm weird. So I'm like, so, so Jimmy, I got something to ask yet and you know, I'm just going to go for it. He's like, well, what's up, what's up? He's like, well, here's the thing. I got two non-refundable tickets that costs a lot of money up to north Florida to go look for big Twitch. Do you want to come? And he's like, oh, I've always wanted. Perfect. We are best
Bobby:friends the other day, those mandate questions. They're always so hard. Like they're so awkward.
Mike:Well, and then you throw, yeah. I mean, it's not even like a you know, I need a friend to go with the, you know, do a baseball game or something. I need you to come in the middle of the woods in north Florida with me to go look for creature that could kill us. No, it was October. It was beautiful. It was
Bobby:beautiful.
Mike:So anyways, we get up to our campsite and everything and there's like 60 other people there. Well like, oh man, holy shit. All right. Like I was not expecting this, but okay. Whatever. So we're going to camp away from these people because these people are absolutely insane because they're looking for. Right now we are doing the exact same. So we camped further away. And nothing happened. It was a four day, three night trip, and nothing happened at all. We had a sighting of a Florida Panther on therm, which is really cool because at the time there were like 25 of them left in the wild. We talk about, you know, finding a needle in a haystack, they're looking for an elusive animal. We, we found one. So it's pretty cool that the research techniques that we use work, you know, anything, that's what it shows. But nothing happened until the last night. And me you know, I'm up in north Jersey now and that's where I was born and raised. But living in, in the city of Tampa, I missed out on like the the night sky. I was a fan of like the stars and everything. And that night it was, they had an immediacy. So I was like, oh, and I say they had a meteor shower. Like someone, you know, exclusive is doing it. Yeah. Someone did it that night for us. There was a meteor shower. So we stayed up and, and we were watching this meteor shower and we hear a tree knock, which is something that a big foot is, is supposedly can do to communicate nobody's ever seen him do it. So we don't have.
Bobby:I heard that in one of your videos to the tree knock. And I had never heard that concept before. So like literally him knocking on the tree.
Mike:Yeah. I think actually that's what a lot of people think. I actually think it's he kind of clapped into his hands and it makes us a similar percussion sound, except it's not a knock because I don't think Bigfoot carry around a stick that doesn't make any sense. They have to use their hands for everything that they do in there to survive. Why would they mess them up by carrying around a stick? Doesn't make any sense. So anyways then we hear like a couple of minutes later, we hear the tree knock another direction. So we're like, oh, these people. You know, that put on his expedition or, you know, knock it on trees because we didn't get any ex you know, we didn't get any experiences or whatever. So this is how people keep coming back to this thing, because it's like an entertainment thing. I'm like, okay, got it. That's cool. You know, so that's like dinner and a show, right. Two shares. And then and then about 10 minutes later this size rock, maybe a little smaller than a fist. You could hear it kinda crashing coming down through the canopy of the pine trees that really like crashing through the branches rock lands about 10 feet from us. And, no me and my friend number, we can't
far
Bento:further away from them. How far away do you think you were for them?
Mike:Probably a hundred yards. Okay. So, and I think, I think that we had the activity that night, a big Bigfoot, because we were that far away from those people. I don't think if we were with hanging out with them, we would have gotten any activity. So it was kind of cool
Bobby:to check them out. Well,
Mike:no, I think it was, it was us that we were too close to his family group, but that was camping out for that amount of time in that area.
Bobby:Emily group.
Bento:I know you were saying day before in reference to
Mike:multiples. Well, how do we have, we have to have a breeding population. So because yeah, I think there's more than one big foot in the United States or in the world. If that was what the misinterpretation was, but yeah, there has to be a varying population. I think there's like 2000 of them in the United States,
Bento:2000. And what do you think they are?
Mike:I think they're like
Bento:an ancient human. Okay.
Mike:Never evolved. Yeah, exactly. It's actually, instead of a Neanderthal, you could put it, then this has been, which is they is the missing human link. We have, if we have a little fragment of a pinky bone and from that weekend, determine that they lived alongside the Andrews thoughts and in modern humans. And have that have gone extinct very recently, which is interesting because they may not have gone extinct. They may have gone into hiding, which I think is kind of what happened. And now they saw how we evolved and they're like, holy crap. You know what? I don't want nothing to do with these crazy.
Bobby:You think it's like a full level of consciousness like that or animalistic
Mike:instincts? Yeah. I think you're, you gotta a mix of two. I think you have a very high level of intelligence for an animal, but you also have human traits that are along with it. I don't think they can make fire, but I think they can communicate if that makes sense.
Bobby:Yeah. And I mean, communication, you know, w w I assume, you know, is going to be established very, very quickly and, you know, any species in general, but the idea that if they could achieve enough, I guess reproduction is still biological, but if they could think clearly enough to hide, right. Couldn't they. I just, I think that like, where, like they couldn't create fire, like they're, they've no doubt seen fire been around fire. And
Mike:now the question, the question is, do they not create fire because they don't want to be seen and found they did not create fire because they don't know how to.
Bobby:That is another
Bento:question. So what's fascinating to me about the whole thing and cause I, you know, I've always understood this as it's just one, right? So even if there was just one, my, you know, my lot, the logical side of our brain always says, you know, like I grew up, I don't know how old you are. I'm 41. So I grew up in the eighties and nineties, you know, no cell phones, no cameras, you know, you go to the supermarket with your mom and you see the tablet. They're like Bigfoot and Hillary, Hillary Clinton had an alien baby. You know what I'm saying? But like with technology now, I mean, cameras, satellites like trail cams. Like if there's approximately 2000 of these, why haven't we seen like concrete, something on video that shows like this, this creature exists or have women. And I just
Mike:don't know. Yeah. We ha we have we've found well, in the terms of, of video, if you look at the Patterson Gimlin film, which is the kind of famous one. Hmm filmed in Northern California in 1972. It's one of the female, big foot kind of turning and looking back the famous, I don't know. That's one of the best films that we have in terms of a real piece of evidence. We also have footprints that have been castrated and studied and have been determined that they, they come from an animal, but it's not an own species. Same with vocalizations. I've recorded vocalizations up in my neck of the woods, up in Northwest Jersey where it's a vocalization along sustained how that I've sent off to an army linguist. She was also in a big footing. So if you know, he knows his stuff and he came back and said, this is outside of human range and it's no, no names. Hmm. So that's pretty cool in itself. And we also have physical schools know I have I don't have it downstairs. It's my, a piece of hair that it came back, unknown primate. So when you say yeah, for Michigan,
Bobby:oh, a piece of hair and you was sent for analysis, who did the analysis?
Mike:This is a place in California. I didn't, I send it off. I got the
Bobby:copies. Yeah. Unknown primate in Michigan. I feel like that's not exactly a climate and somebody would have a pet Orangutang either.
Mike:Yeah, yeah, no, I mean, you know, and
Bobby:then you credible. And so how many, how many searches have you done? Like over the years like this
Mike:hundreds? I
Bobby:couldn't count them.
Bento:You also, do you also do tours where you have people come with you to do them? Like kind of like how you got started?
Mike:Yeah. I used to comes back as it's little, too much of a liability for me to take it on the somebody gets her. It's not, you know, I don't, I'm not a company, so it's, it's not, I don't think it would be beneficial to me if God forbid somebody gets hurt and sues me. Yeah.
Bobby:Whatever I do.
Mike:I do have a group of about 30 people that I'd say half of them are kind of active that do come out with me and investigate. We, we normally go on one expedition a month. You have anywhere from three to six people. Usually sometimes I go so low. I just planned to big for the trip coming up that I'm gonna be down there. So which school?
Bento:So you go all over the United States.
Mike:Yeah. Mostly stick to the east coast, just because of gas. You know If something I would love to get out to the, to the west coast. It's just, you know, the drive is killer
Bobby:that's serving. And so, and so throughout all of these you know, I saw on your YouTube channel too, that, you know, running across things. Oh, it was the big red, what the called
Mike:the big red, big red eye. Yup. And that's Northwest New Jersey.
Bobby:Okay. Okay. And so explain that to me a little bit. Like, are there different kinds of big foot Sasquatches, whatever, like,
Bento:I think they'd be big feet, right?
Mike:The debate continues. You don't know
Bobby:that's why a murderer. Well, like that.
Mike:Yeah. So like I said, we were what was the question?
Bobby:I'm sorry. I was asking like, you know, so, so, you know, with the, the red eye, like, is it building either there's a separate species or
Mike:types or whatever. Yeah. So, so just like we have different like kind of parts of the country, we have southerners and, you know, Northeastern dinners and stuff. I think big foot are kind of the same thing. I think they're kind of in the United States anyway, I think we're their brothers, if you will, or you know, and the same species, like a north American black bear, you have like a smaller black bear.
Bobby:As you mentioned earlier, the is exactly the environmental adaptations.
Mike:Exactly. And then you have couples which are in different continents, the Yeti you have the year-end the the gigantic or the at different, the Yaqui is in Australia. Then the United States, there's different, just different names. Like you would have different names of different groups of people. So in Ohio, it's the grass man in Florida. It's the skunky and, and Northwest Jersey. It's big red eye. There are I forget what, what they call them in south America, but they have another big foot type creature down there on a Mala in Mexico. But yeah, I think definitely one of the really cool things I think do exist as the style of the scene, which is in New Zealand, that the Tasmania Tasmania, the Tasmanian tiger thought to have gone extinct in the 1950s was the last known one to be alive. So technically considered they're extinct, but people still seem to this day, I would love the opportunity to go over there and research that that would be so
Bento:cool. Do you, do you research anything else besides the Bigfoot?
Mike:I exclusively do big foot right now. Yeah. It's, it's the thing that got me into it and kinda My mission or my, my, the reason why I keep doing this is because I want to know what threw rocks at me so we can, we can get into a whole lot of other things. A lot of people ask me about UFO's and some people think that big foot and UFO's are connected. Some people think that big foot or interdimensional, and I think it's cool. If you have your own opinion, it's
Bobby:not like that.
Mike:That's that's they, they go into a different dimension. Yeah.
Bento:I mean, there
Bobby:was that there was that video and you had mentioned one from the seventies, but it was the one from the fifties with the fellows riding the horse by the Creek.
Mike:And then that's the one I mentioned, I think it was the 1960 something. Patterson Gimlin film. They call it the guy that shot it was Roger Patterson.
Bobby:Oh, okay. And so, yeah. And so like in that one, like he walks behind the trees or whatever it is, like walks behind the trees and then. As he moves the camera. Like he doesn't come in division again at all anywhere. Yeah. And so that's like the interdimensional thing. That's, that's a funny way to look at it.
Mike:It's a lot of people, people will fight it tooth and nail who believe in that and, you know, good for them. I say, I say, listen, I'm open to anything. It's just, I haven't mind the evidence that I have captured and that I've gotten, leads me to believe that they're a physical, physical creature that doesn't have any cool abilities nor is in cahoots with any aliens or
Bento:UFOs. So what is your take on, on them as far as like, where do they live in? How are they so good at staying hidden
Mike:all the time? Yeah. Well, If you look at the forests and in pretty much every state, every state has a siting of a big foot except to Y which has got a pool. If you look at the sighting reports oh Ohio is a huge state with members Washington, Oregon states that don't have a lot of sightings are like Montana and Alaska, which I think is crazy. But it
Bento:makes sense because that is not as dense. Right. So
Mike:it's need to have it need to have two things for a sighting. You need to have a person, but many people you're not going to have a
Bobby:sighting. Yeah, I guess that makes sense.
Mike:So I do in New Jersey. I do a lot of of my research here. And I could tell you in New Jersey, there's two family groups and there's a total of nine individuals in the state. And I can get into more details about how they, their, their nomadic movements around the state every three years, if you would like me
Bobby:to based on, based on the sighting reports. Absolutely. So get into that a little bit, cause I'm, I'm interested in that. So you analyze reports and put together that they travel in a specific pattern.
Mike:It's it's a nomadic pattern. They follow the food. Yeah. So, and that would make sense. What food are they eating? I think they eat the same thing that bears do because going back to where are the big foot location? Generally speaking, they're in the same exact areas that bear are. So I think that would lead me to believe that they would eat the same kind of foods that bears do. So we're going with like 70 to 80% berries and grasses and shrubs and stuff like that, the rest garbage. So and that would make sense because so the sightings in New Jersey take where I am in north Jersey. Every third year, sightings increased by 80%. You take it a year and a half from now. Let's say that they're up here and go down in the pine barons and the south Jersey, the sidings will increase by 80% in a year and a half from now.
Bento:Oh, well, what constitutes deciding? So if I'm on the woods and I, think I see this creature, what would I do to, to kind of be counted as exciting as far as your data is concerned? Well,
Mike:see my, if you think you see something and you report it, then that's exciting to me because I can't tell you what you saw and what you didn't see. So anybody that says they saw a big foot, so a big foot, in my opinion. So that's going to be added to the database and if they're lying or if they're hoaxing or doing whatever that, that is going to be easily weeded out, because it's not going to fit in with the, with the data
Bento:that, yeah, that's where I was going with that. I was curious about people that just kind of want to screw up.
Bobby:How many things are you looking at in a given year? Let's say,
Mike:And giving year, probably anywhere from 15 to 30, we'll say a New Jersey,
Bobby:New Jersey. Wow. That's not a terribly large data set then.
Mike:Well, I think there's only nine of them. So I think that's why, you know, there's, there's not a whole new, Jersey's most densely populated state, but again, you need two things to have a sighting.
Bobby:Right. Right. And if they're staying exclusively in those kind of hard to reach areas. Yeah. There's
Mike:a, there's a Greenway around the state and you know, like I said, they go counter-clockwise around the state every third year and you could fall, you could fall. I can tell you where they're at right now. And we could go tonight and have a really cool big foot and counter, if you want it to let's do it.
Bobby:I would love that. Actually. I'm not gonna lie. But yeah. So in terms of these, you know, places where they're living you've been to these places. I mean, how hard is it? Like you said, you need two things for sighting hard is to get to these kinds of places. Like are, I mean, we're not following the trail markers, I'm assuming. Yeah. It
Mike:depends on how into it you want to get, I mean, could have. The siting in your backyard, if you live in a rural place or you could go extremely deep in the woods and hope to have a siting there too. But
Bobby:according to your, according to your data though, I mean like how, how far off the grid are these creatures staying?
Mike:50% are road crossing sightings.
Bobby:Yeah. That's pretty crazy. Yeah. Like just flashes in the head beans or during
Mike:the day, during the night, whatever, whatever it may be, that, just that really quick. Boom, one second. And it's gone. And
Bento:were you able to file a police reports at all? Do people report maybe seeing a person that you are, or
Mike:I can, I don't have access to, to any police reports or anything. It would be cool if I did, but yeah, no. I do have some contexts that are in. The state police and the park police system that if there is kind of a thing off the record, they'll come and tell me, and then I'll, I'll go check it out. But I'm not going to get into that too much.
Bobby:That's so cool. And so, like, I gotta be honest with you, like, you know, coming into this, like, I'm a big fan of cryptids, but that's because I like stories not necessarily because I believe any of it. Right. But,
Mike:I can see your, your mind is starting.
Bobby:My wheels are turning my turn. I'm not gonna lie. I'm pretty easily convinced. Oh my God.
Bento:I was just gonna say that. And I was like, I don't really want to be mean to him and say it
Bobby:on the podcast so easily convinced. But I just, I don't know for me, I love just hearing these kinds of different stories because I want to, I want to believe that they're true. Like, I think the idea of big foot is kind of cool. But I, I just have to go back to like benzos point about like the technology. If there were real like undeniable evidence, wouldn't this be everywhere? Like, so blown up, like, is it like, I just, it's hard to, you know, if we have sightings and, and audio and all this kind of stuff, like wouldn't be people looking for these things all over the place. I mean, I feel like it would be a much bigger sensation
Mike:than it is. I, I hate to compare to the two, but it's the same as aliens. We accept the aliens. The government has gone on record as, as investigated and people aren't going crazy, baby, baby.
Bento:The only community is probably a little bigger than the big full community, but yeah, that's, that's a, that's an app comparison for sure. Yeah,
Bobby:definitely. But, but you know, it brings me to the next point, like, is this something that we should be concerned about? Like, does it matter that these creatures are potentially out there? I mean,
Bento:If they are, they seem to want to hide a lot. So I know no concern. Right.
Mike:And, and here's, here's the thing if they are out there. And I say, if, because yeah, I don't, I'm not a hundred percent, I've never seen one. So I'm not a hundred percent that they're out there or not. But if they are out there, then we obviously can live alongside of them. No problem. And we have been for a long time. Cause even if you go back to like every native American tribe in the north America and north America has the big foot like story like creature. Yeah. So if anybody were to know about who lives in the woods, I think it'd be the native American for sure. Sure.
Bobby:And from what we know about native Americans, they kept pretty good records about things.
Mike:Right. And the thing with them is like they had a lot of out there stories like the God of rain. And stuff like that, but big foot was just like, you know, it was like, Hey, there's a squirrel, there's a chipmunk Eagle Bigfoot, you know, there's a, you know,
Bobby:whatever onto the next thing.
Mike:Yeah. So with that being said, I think right there that would support should be enough for anybody to lend credence to that. Oh man, there might just be something out.
Bobby:For sure. I mean, it's one of those kind of like plausible deniability things, right? You can't, you can't, you can't say yes, but you can't say no, either
Mike:as much as you want to maybe say no, it's like, man, there might be something you can't prove something doesn't exist.
Bobby:So it's impossible. Yeah.
Bento:But you can though, you know what I mean? That's so that's the argument. I always, I always go back and forth with, cause I'm an atheist and with the people of religion and they use that, they use that all times. Like you can't prove that something that doesn't exist, but scientifically if you are coming with the claim, you have to ride the proof. Like the burden of proof is on you. If you make the claim. So if you're saying there's a big foot out there, that's cool. But you know, you need to provide the proof and that. Yeah. I can't just say, oh, you can't prove it doesn't exist because in that case, I mean, anything could technically exist. You know what I
Mike:mean? Right, but how, how, how do you know that big foot doesn't? How can science prove that big foot doesn't exist?
Bento:Well, it can, but like I said, that's, that's the app, right? Like it's the burden of proof is on the person making the claim. So the claim is big foot exists. You know what I mean? Like if I look at my water bottle, I know my water ball is this. Cause I can see it and I, I can touch it. You can't do that with Bigfoot. So that that's just a comparison there. Yeah. I
Mike:mean, I, I have a footprint downstairs that I I've cast, so you can kind of hold it just as a, as a counterargument.
Bobby:What do you say? What do you say about like the the Jerry crew people, you know, in California whose family came out and said that he was like casting footprints and claiming them to be big.
Mike:Oh, you mean making
Bobby:them and stuff? Yeah. That he, he was making like a large footprints carved out of wood and then was like spoofing on his coworkers.
Mike:Yeah. Well that, I think that happens actually and gets, I don't think it gets reported that much because it's obviously, I think people that do that kind of thing are just like trying to be funny and, and mess with somebody like a friend or something like that. They don't, they're actually doing it in a malicious manner. No.
Bobby:Yeah, no, no, no, no. Yeah. I don't think it's malicious either, but I mean, I like to hear your opinion of incidents like that. Like how often do you think a sighting is actually reported, but really it's just like a spoof, like somebody messing with people.
Mike:I don't think that happens too often. I'd say less than 5% of the time. I think a majority. When it comes to reports and sightings, and majority of them are miss identification of like per se say bears a lot of the time bear, footprints look like they have a double step pattern. So their back Paul actually looked like a human
Bobby:footprint on top of each other.
Mike:Yup. Fox sound absolutely crazy. I don't know if you've ever heard a Fox at night screaming, but people report that as big foot screens all the time. And again, in Blackberry, they just look like big foot,
Bobby:unfortunately, when they get on their hind legs.
Mike:Sure, sure. So I think that that has a, probably 95% of the sightings that come into me and then.
Bento:Yeah, it sounded like a bookcase, a bookshelf dropped or something.
Bobby:I thought a car trash. And then I was like, oh my God, what's been following you.
Mike:I was like, oh man, something cool. Finally happened to me. It's going to go viral.
Bobby:He's like that fat guy doesn't believe me. I'll show
Bento:him.
Bobby:Oh my God. Good. Well that thunderstorms coming our way next. I'm sure. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. That's terrific. Terrific. So let's talk about other cryptids right? Because I am, I am interested to hear your, your favorites. What are some of the favorite folklore cryptids that you've heard of big food or not? Kind of throughout your explore exploration of this. Well,
Mike:I mean one of my favorites is and I always go investigating for it. What will I know when I'm up in the area is champ, which is the lake Champlain monster.
Bento:I don't think I've heard
Mike:of that one. Yeah. So it's, it's just like the Lochness monster, except a little bit smaller and lake Champaign and then in New York and Vermont. So every time I go up to white hall which is a huge big foot area, I always hop over the border into Vermont and go up a little bit and take a look for, for a champ while I'm out there.
Bobby:I have totally been swimming there before, right inside. Right. South hero. It's on the border of New York and south Vermont,
Mike:south bay,
Bobby:maybe. Is it, is it it's the border between Vermont and New York? Yup. Yup. Yup. Yeah, there's a little island there. A south hero Northeast. Okay. And you it's like a land bridge from like Burlington. And so I've stayed right out there and you can go swimming out there and stuff. Yeah, man. Good thing. We didn't get eaten a
Mike:lot of sightings in Burlington too. Is
Bobby:there what a beautiful area that is? I'll go. I'll go looking for champ. Anytime. It's an excuse to go up there. Oh my God. That's
Bento:good. I'll tie a bunch of steak to you and then I'll
Bobby:drag, you know, you
Bento:go in, I'll stay. Then I really went in and just
Bobby:be a foot. I'll be, I'll be live, beat the champ. That'd be so cool. So again, so like describing this guy though, he's like, he's like, like dinosaur S just like Locklin, SES imagined.
Mike:Yeah. Yeah. Just like everything that you've heard about Nessie or, or there's one in Canada, Ogopogo that lake Ogopogo monster, same kind of deal. But yeah, there, you know, like 50 to 60 feet long looked like it just I forget what the column, some agent or dinosaur, and they said they, they might've lived lived on kind of like Bigfoot through the ice age and everything and has survived since
Bobby:that's absolutely insane. I think that, I like, like I just said, like, I just want to believe so bad. I wish that. I dunno. I just have such a hard time with it without like seeing it for myself. Like I'd have to come with you and, and see it for myself. Really, really good. Thank you. I do appreciate that. I, for sure. Then the next time you go to Vermont, I might join you. I think though that
Mike:I'll be out there for the white hall, big foot conference and that's going to be, let's see this September and the September. So you're more than welcome. I'll get in touch with you if you want to
Bobby:up after the show. I do Vermont Lisa timber. I do absolutely. Absolutely. We, we go up there all the time. So
Mike:we're actually staying at this there's the Vermont the Vermont trail camera footage, which is a big foot grabbing or gathering apples from a tree. And we're actually staying on that guys. So it's really neat. I stayed there last year on the same, like it's like 10 years later to the day that that photo is tooken taken back there again, the same exact time of year. And do some, do another round of squatting up there for sure.
Bobby:That's awesome. And so when you go on these trips, like, what does it entail? Like I use setting up, you know, I watched a little bit of each channel, like I said. And so you guys are setting up cameras around you, campsite. And how else are you exploring those areas?
Mike:Yeah. So it it's, it's a pretty intense expedition when you think about it, because there's a lot of filming involved. So everything we do gets filmed, which is tough.
Especially
Bobby:when I'm saying, yeah, I saw you juggling the thing too.
Mike:Yeah. But and that's cool though, because I, I, I kinda don't mind doing that because that's the way that I want to show film, like an amateur point of view. Like I could have like all these expensive high-tech equipment, but I don't want to do, because it takes away from the show. I want, I just want to get people outside. That's my goal of the
Bobby:show. And it sounds like, it sounds like you accomplished that for yourself as well. Yeah. A hundred trips a year. My God talk about being active
Mike:and if it wasn't, if it wasn't for. Then I, who knows, you know what I mean? Like, it's the coolest, it's the coolest thing people's like, oh, you're crazy for thinking, you know, that big foot is real or whatever. I'm like, well, you don't know what
Bobby:it's done for me has been so good for your life, right? Yeah. A hundred percent.
Bento:Why not? How many cameras are usually setting up when you go
Mike:out? And these I have three trail cameras and I positioned them kind of around camp in a strategic way because some people say that big foot can see the infrared that the trail cameras admit. So I kinda, if they can, that's cool. Cause I'll put them around camp and make a kind of, cause I think they're inquisitive. I think they're very they're they're they want to see what's going on, especially if you're camping and doing something a little crazy
Bobby:close to them.
Mike:Yeah. Yeah. And I, and I think they want to keep an eye on you to make sure that they're not, you're not going to get too close to their family group. Cause what happened to me in Florida And, and what happened to us is that they intimidated us. But I think that big foot, a lot of times it doesn't have to intimidate. You better just keep an eye on you. So if they could see the trail cameras, I'll be sitting in an area where there's not a trail camera with thermal imaging camera, which we used to investigate. We also put out three voice recorders and we triangulate them. So if we do have a vocalization, we could tell how far away it was. And from what direction th there's a lot of sites. We, we
Bobby:once you get a vocalization like that, do you start heading out in that direction?
Mike:Oh, if it's live. Absolutely. We're, we're booking at that direction. If, unfortunately, a lot of times vocalizations happen after we go to bed. So, you know, that's yeah. Well,
Bobby:what is it called? Hotbed it right out beds.
Mike:Yeah. Well, well with the going back to how that shows him. So we, we, we go and we do an expedition as we go do scouting every day. During the day we get up you know, whenever we wake up probably around 10, a breakfast to go scouting to where we're going to be that night just to make sure that there's no obstacles, nobody's going to break an ankle and look for any thing we're going to miss at night footprints tree breaks which is another thing big foot are said to do any hair. And we also have our voice recorders and everything going because 70% of sightings happened during the. So we're going to be ready just in case. And then at night we go in and it's balls out. It's we, we go and we try to get a vocalization back and we try to, we try to get a big foot, follow us back to camp. That's the whole goal investigation.
Bobby:Yeah. Okay. So you're trying to learn one closer to the cameras. Absolutely. Yeah. Wow. Okay. And then, so have you, have you ever found any success in getting someone to follow you back onto a camera?
Mike:No. I mean, if, if that was, if that was the case, then I think it'd be, it'd be all over the news. You know, I have gotten very peculiar pictures. I, I think I might've took a picture of a big foot in the pine Barrens in New Jersey, but I don't know what it is. And it's a blurry something and nobody's ever going to see the legacy of it because it's, you know, I'll get made fun of for showing that I'm not like a lot of people in that circle that like circle around big foot things for any amount of time, but you'll see people that circle there's 50 big foot in this picture and they're all red circles wrap. What are you guys smoke in the seats? Right. Give me some of that. Like, that's my, that's what I'm saying.
Bento:And how long are you usually staying out on these trips?
Mike:Usually it's a long weekend, Thursday through Sunday. This Florida trip I have coming up, I just scheduled is about two weeks, which is going to be cool. And that's, it's a solo trip, which is going to be even even better. I did that not too long ago. We just filmed in me. We, we got back. I actually went to the back to the place where I had my first encounter, which is awesome. It's the first time I was back there, which was extremely eerie.
Bobby:Right. I bet. Were you by yourself for that one?
Bento:Oh, no. I think we up
Mike:on us,
Bento:big foot cut his internet connect. Oh, no,
Bobby:Mike, the big foot guy that was too funny when the light went off. This is so funny.
Bento:Oh, I just got a message on Facebook from him, I think. Yeah. Oh no, it was power went out.
Bobby:That's a bummer.
Bento:All right. Mike's yeah,
Bobby:wow. Yeah.
Mike:I was a senior. I was talking for a second. I was like, hold on, wait a second. I'm like, wait the computer still go and put the Internet's not going. Correct.
Bento:But big foot broken and smashed your head with a rock or
Bobby:something. Yeah, we were afraid to cut your power.
Mike:Yeah, no, no, no kidding. Anyways.
Bobby:Sorry about that. No, no, no, no worries at all. That's that's the beauty
Bento:of editing, you know, it's like, it never happened.
Bobby:Exactly. So that's awesome. And so you, so you've been doing your show for a while and like you said, you got a bunch more trips planned coming up in the future. How are you going to involve these kinds of expeditions? Like, is there a kind of next step into things you can try to get a sighting or, or, you know what I mean? Like, like bento is, I know Ben was making a joke about hanging meat out there, but you know what I mean, putting, putting a bushel apple somewhere or something like that.
Mike:Yeah. You gotta be careful about beating because it's illegal in some states. So
Bobby:you check to see where what is it illegal to be Bigfoot? I don't think that's a lot.
Mike:Yeah. I don't know. That might be the grit that that's something you're going to get to have to go to court over. And I'm, I'm not,
Bobby:not worth the battle in the end, so.
Mike:But yeah, we've, we've used apples before I try to get, depending on the area that we go to, I try to get organic stuff that's grown locally. So like, if I go out to the Midwest, I'll get like in like Ohio, like, I'll get some corn. If I go down south, they'll get like a peaches or, or oranges and stuff. You know
Bobby:anywhere you'd have to get, you have to get something that grows on the ground because like, you know, you go apple picking. You're not supposed to pick up the ones in the ground. Right. You only supposed to pick off the tree. And I wonder if big foot knows that. Hmm.
Bento:I don't know, get big foot in the American diet and hang up like hotdogs and hamburgers. Yeah. Put some McDonald's up there.
Mike:I've used bagels before. Oh yeah. Yeah. I've I've used fireworks and stuff. Like I said, I think they're very inquisitive animals. So I think that the kind of crazier stuff that you do. Like I've, I've climbed fire towers and add done vocalizations that you could hear for miles. And I got responses from that. Absolutely. You have to go and try different things because if you don't, you're not going to get any, anything cool to happen and you know, why, why do this kind of stuff if you're not having fun. Yeah. Right.
Bobby:That's what I literally, I was just saying about the, I was like, got about coming up with you in September. Like it would just be so fun to just go try something.
Mike:Yeah, absolutely. And, and that's what I, I like try to tell everybody and that's with the, the whole point of the show really is try and get out there and try something outside, you
Bobby:know? Yeah.
Bento:Yeah. It's a good message. And it's so cool that you've able to make a living for yourself doing this, like very few people in this world, get to do what they truly enjoy for a living. So it's, it's so cool.
Bobby:They get to do this full time
Mike:right
Bobby:now. Yeah. Wow. Good for you. That's awesome. Yeah, I've never
Mike:in my life.
Bobby:Would I waited? I imagined just stick it to the man, buddy.
Mike:I don't know how long I could stick it to them, but we're
Bobby:doing it. We're here to help as much as we can.
Bento:That's awesome. Awesome. Yeah. So on that note you know, speaking of what you got going on, you know, let us let us know you know, where people can find if they can contact you, you know, I'll I'll anything you have going
on
Mike:right now. Yeah. Yeah. We'll we're. We do, all of our episodes are out on our YouTube channel, which is Sussex county, big foot. Or you could just find the show in the shadow of big grid. I and search that. We're on Instagram shadow, red eye, and we're on Facebook, also shadow of red eye, facebook.com/shadow of red eye. Those are our social stuff. We got a lot of stuff, a lot of appearances coming up. In Pennsylvania coming up, we got a big foot day at Patsy Hamlin park coming up on May 7th. We've got pine Bush UFO presentation in pine Bush, New York. And then the UFO festival coming up. I'll be there as well. So definitely those are coming up in just the next couple months and forest county, Bigfoot festival, West Virginia Bigfoot festival. Kecksburg UFO festival,
Bobby:Washington. I like these festivals turns like big drinking parties or people dead serious now
Mike:everybody's serious, but it's just, it's a, it's really cool because you have like the crazy people which are about the real crazies. There's only about 10%, but it's cool because they blend in very well with everybody else. So you actually get to talk to them. Yeah, but no, it's, it's a pretty serious thing. People are really people come to these things because they've seen a big foot that's, that's important for them. They there's a lot of people that are horrified thinking about telling their story about this, because they don't want to get ridiculed. They don't want to, you know, whatever
Bobby:come to these things. I mean, I might, I might not believe, or maybe I do, or maybe I don't. Like it's a story. I mean, people are telling them a hobby. Yeah. Right.
Mike:Yeah. I mean, I don't know if you think about it, if you're like a big up high up lawyer or doctor which people evolve, you know, if all classes have had sightings there, there may be, especially in a small town that you live in and you know, where a lot of these sightings happen. You don't want to be the, you know, outcasted the town. I don't know. It's just some places that I've experienced, but I have my old car like decked out and like, it's a big foot mobile command center. And I got, I have people come up to me that have said, Hey, I've never said, said, you know, I've never shared my story with anybody, but, and it's so cool because I've gotten so many experiences in that way. Yeah. That's why I did it. It's the whole reason why, why I acted out like that is to have those kind of people to have an outlet to come up. And I will tell you, I can't tell you. Parking lot conversations I've had at seven 11 it's, six o'clock in the morning, try and leave for an expedition, nonetheless, where people have said, Hey, you know I want to tell you about the siding that it's cool. It's an, it's an amazing tomato. It been an amazing ride for sure.
Bobby:That's awesome. That's awesome. Well, thanks so much, Mike, for coming on and sharing your story with us. We were, we were really excited to have you on and again, thanks for teaching us about Bigfoot and Sasquatch. It's definitely something that we didn't know too much about. So I'm excited and I'm going to look for.
Mike:Okay. All right. Well, we'll keep in touch for sure. I'm sorry about this. Or about the whole light thing.
Bobby:Oh man. Shit happens. Trust me. Yeah. Yeah. And best of luck to you, Mike, man. Thanks. Thanks. We really appreciate your time.
Mike:Oh, it's been a blast. I had a really great
Bobby:time. Thank you guys. All right. Take
Mike:care.
Bento:Yo, do you think that there are Southern Bigfoot that are also Trump supporters on a faint Wednesday night? You can hear them chanting at school, Brandon.
Bobby:Oh my God.