Dave: How did you first get interested in bigfoot?

Jon: I heard about Sir Edmund Hillery and Tensing Norgays sighting of tracks on Mt. Everest and saw the pictures. I thought that chasing Yeti’s would be about the neatest way anyone could spend their life…learning about and trying to catch up to a Yeti. I was 7 years old at the time.

Dave: I notice you are one of the very early members of Bigfoot Forums. How did you hear about this forum and how has online bigfooting influenced the search for the ‘big guy’?

Jon: I do have one of the earliest numbers - 37. I didn’t really hear about Bigfoot Forums from anyone. I just did a computer search using “bigfoot”. Eventually, I ran across the Bigfoot Forums and checked out the site.

As far the net goes…it goes a long way. As far as I’m concerned…it’s both magic and a mess. It brings together some of the most intelligent and creative people you could ever hope to meet who come up with great ideas…solutions to problems, novel ways to do research, equipment, etc. It also brings information to the “newbies” to help them get started with good basics. It’s a good way to get assistance when a sighting or series of related sightings occurs. The hoaxers are the messy part. They waste our time. They spread misinformation. They waste resources that serious researchers could be using. They add to the public’s view of us as crazy, irrational fools when we are lumped in with the hoaxers. Add in supermarket tabloids and their brand of bigfoot “news” and we can see what a real mess it can be. I must say that the Moderators on the BFF’s do an admirable job of controlling the hoaxers and crazies there.

Dave: You mentioned earlier you have had your own sightings. I would be interested to hear about them and whether they were also in the desert.

Jon: That could be a long answer. It’s easy to forget that I’ve been searching for sasquatches for a large part of my adult life. I started hunting for them in Idaho in 1971. I went 17 years before I saw the first one, but have seen quite a few since then. You can see that I’ve been doing this for 36 years. I’ve had sightings in Idaho, Montana and Arizona. You recently read about my last sighting. I’ll tell you about the first.

In the Spring of 1988 I was a doctoral candidate in Educational Administration at the University of Idaho at Moscow. It was March 2 and I was returning from one of my night classes when the dream of a lifetime came true. I had said many times that if I ever saw a sasquatch, my life would be complete. I was wrong.

It had been raining every day for about a month and this day was no different. Coming back from Moscow on Hwy 95 I encountered light rain, heavy rain, patches where it was foggy and some sections where it was clear with excellent visibility. North of Potlatch I’d caught up with an Excell (wood) chip truck, which I’d seen ahead of me for a while. The truck was going about as fast as I wanted to go, but I’d crept up on it, so I went ahead and passed it at Moctileme Creek where a long straight stretch goes north. At about 600 yards from the Minneloosa Valley Road, I could see a slim, whitish-gray, man-shaped being standing just north of the intersection on the east side of the highway. As I got closer I could see that it was standing beside a highway reflector post that came just above its knees. My impression was that it was about 10 feet tall. Its dirty, white hair was soaking wet and gave me the impression that it was miserable standing there wet. I couldn’t really see a mouth and nose as its hair hung down over its face. I had the impression of two dark eyes. The body hair appeared to be about 6 inches long. The hair on its head was possibly longer. The head seemed to sit on its shoulders like it had no neck…like a football player with shoulder pads. It was standing upright with its body facing the highway. His head was turned as if watching my approach in my 1986 Nissan 4x4 pickup. When I drove up beside it, the sasquatch had bent over with its hands on its knees and was looking at me in the pickup. I could just see over the top of its head as I drove past. Then I watched it in the rearview mirrors. When I got to the top of the hill, I asked myself “What in the h—- are you doing?” I turned the truck around, met the chip truck and drove back, but the sasquatch was gone.

I returned to the site a day or two later, used two pieces of lath which I’d taped together and a pair of vise-grips to hold the lath to the reflector post, adjusted the height of the combination until I could just see the top of the lath as I drove by in my pickup. This lath and post combination was 9 feet 6 inches high. I also measured the reflector post…42 inches. I took a picture of a professional basketball player…Magic Johnson, and being extremely conservative, used a point about a third of the way from the center of his knee to his crotch, adjusted until I had 7 equal segments from that point to the floor. I then paced from the floor to the top of his head and had 19 segments or 9 feet 6 inches. It was clear to me that what I had seen had been at least 9 feet 6 inches tall and was more likely in excess of 11 feet tall when standing erect.