I decided by using all three lists I would concentrate on the states showing up most frequently to evaluate details. The first was Washington, and then the eight states that tied for appearing on two of the three lists. These were Oregon, California, Ohio, Colorado, New York, Pennsylvania, Florida and West Virginia. The final list in the search for finding enough similarities to transfer to the other 41 states in the country was comprised of these states. Hawaii with no reports submitted was the only state not considered. When looking at the reports, I concentrated primarily on those counties within each state with the most activity and narrowed it down to only Class A reports with an actual sighting. For some states, like West Virginia, I had to weed through every county to get enough reports to use in comparison. In those states, I found there are many reports that are simply vocalizations heard or footprints found.

The first thing I had to determine was how close to the approximate sighting location should a structure be to be considered significant. If a sasquatch can, as some have reported, travel upwards of 30 to 40 miles per hour would one mile be considered too far? I don’t think so since we are talking about a section of ground that can be covered in less than a couple of minutes. According to the results I obtained from “The Paper Chase,”¹ trees, in one form or another, were reported in 67% of the reports by either the eyewitness or the report investigator. After collecting the reports I was going to concentrate on, I found that just over 50% of the sightings had any mention of trees, even though some of these sightings took place in areas I personally know are quite wooded. I decided to go beyond just the reports and map out where the sightings took place, as best I could, based on the information in the reports, and compare that to topographical maps of the area. I found that it’s not just over 50% where trees appear in the sighting area, but actually 96% of the sighting locations! So initially if we simply concentrate on wooded areas we are improving our chance at success by not wasting our time in locations that suggest only a 4% success rate. In some areas of the country this may not make a difference, but in other areas where trees are limited it could make a tremendous difference in how much land you have to cover.

Again, in “The Paper Chase” another significant type of structure that came up was water. I found that 47% of the sightings listed water of some sort, either by the eyewitness or by the report investigator. I started to wonder if water might have been left out of some of the reports, as trees had been, so I again turned to the topographical maps. The first report I looked at, to determine if this may be a possibility, was BFRO Report #3441, Oregon, Clackamas County, November 29, 2001. In this report neither the witness nor the investigator mentions anything about water, other than the ground was wet and the road muddy. Based on the location given in this report, I was able to pull up a USGS Topo Map from http://terraserver-usa.com and here’s the map I found.