How best to approach field research?

Photo by zen - Flickr.com

    The bigfoot community consists of a diverse group of people spread as far apart as the forests of the Pacific northwest, to the swamps of the southeast, to foreign shores the world over. Some are academics like Dr. Jane Goodall and Dr. Jeffrey Meldrum. Some are professionals who land television gigs like the cast of Finding Bigfoot and Monster Quest. And still, some (and by some, I mean most) are your everyday, average individuals who are fascinated by the prospect of the existence of an undiscovered great ape in North America.

    This diversity allows the bigfoot world to act as a sort of melting pot for ideas and research tactics. Every other person brings a new perspective to the table. The task the bigfooting world hopes to achieve is no mean feat. Discovering a new species is hard enough as is. Add to the mix a creature with great intelligence, natural elusiveness, and a habitat consisting of vast tracts of unexplored wilderness, and you have one extremely hard to locate animal. So, what are the best tactics to find this animal? What research methods return the best results?

    There are a ton of different strategies: call blasting, wood knocking, baiting, habituation, trail cams, gifting, the list goes on. In an attempt to keep this post at a readable length, I'll stick to a discussion of which is best, a stealthy approach, or a loud, interactive approach?

    The idea behind using a loud, interactive approach goes something like this: sasquatches, like most great apes, are curious creatures. By call blasting, wood knocking, and other attempts to communicate, we will draw them in and encourage interaction. The sasquatches will notice when humans are around, so trying to trick them with trail cams and the like is useless. (Some believe that sasquatches so excel in their natural environment that they are able to easily locate and avoid trail cams and other such photo / video traps.)

    Supporters of the stealth side of the issue argue by saying that alerting the sasquatches of our presence will only scare them away. They've shown in the past that they aren't particularly fond of human interactions. This leads to the decision that the best way to conduct research is to remain quiet and hope to capture photos, video, or audio of bigfoots being their usual squatchy selves. Proponents of the stealth side of the issue support using trail cams. (Some more recent theories involve mounting trail cams on parked cars, or around campsites. The thought here is that the sasquatches will recognize cars and campsites as man-made structures thus a trail cam mounted on one of these will, to them, seem less out of place than a camera in the middle of the forest. However, this does seem a little contradicting to the argument that a human presence scares away the creatures.)

    In the end, the choice of which method is best lies with the researcher. Many longtime field researchers have developed personal opinions of which methods work and which don't based on their personal experience. To me, this seems the best way to go. Get out in the field, test various methods, and go with your gut.

    Which methods do you feel work best? Why? Feel free to tell us about them in the comment section below.

    Thanks for reading!

    - A.Z.