Tuesday, December 28, 2010
Monday, December 20, 2010
Quinsom Investigation
We spent a lot of time searching a young second growth forest (aprox 10 to 12 years old) for any signs of Sasquatch activity . We investigated some oddly uprooted trees which we determined were uprooted due to heavy rain and snow which had recently hit this area pretty hard.
We arrived at the Quinsom river at 12:43pm , moving up the river we looked for anything out of the ordinary , after following the river for sometime we decided to head away from the river and into the forest .
We found a game trail and decided to follow it , aside from some elk scat and some old deer bones we heard and seen nothing . Moving back in the direction we had come from we noticed a large tree which had been severely chewed by a beaver and was leaning over the river, as we inspected the tree we could hear some thumping sounds over the noise of the swollen Quinsom river . After listening for some time we could not come to a final conclusion nor could we cross the river to get any closer to the sound .The thumping went on for 15-minutes starting at 2:20pm. ( A guess for the sound we heard possibly a beaver) After a little more time investigating this area we made our way back to the truck .
We decided to follow some logging roads moving deeper into a large old growth forest , we found a few extremely interesting areas which we will devote more time to in future investigations.
We then started to make our way out when we came across another side road which we decided to investigate . As we drove this road we looked for any signs of tracks as it had been raining extremely hard in the days leading up to this investigation and the roads were very muddy.About 5-minutes into this search I observed to my left about 12-feet off the road what appeared to be some big animal tracks. The following is what we observed :
Time 4:05 pm , dusk was just about to set in , Cloudy , light rain ,slight breeze and temp +4 .
Found two tracks, 1-left and 1-right . Left track was of a full print , Right track was of a half print ( top of foot and part of lower )
Measurements taken of left track : length 14.5", ball of foot 6" in width , heel of foot 4" in width .
Measurements taken of right track: length 8.5" , ball of foot 6" in width , no heel to measure due to hard packed soil (ground)
Stride measurement : Measuring toe of left track to same toe on right track was 58" .
Depth measurement : Left track 5/8" and right track 1" (measured in toe region )
The tracks were very obvious with great out lines but were to poor to cast and not a lot of toe definition was left.
Numerous pictures were taken using a tape measure for length and width comparison.
Age of track unknown due to rainy conditions but best guess was 1 to 2 days old.
The area was recently logged ( aprox 2-years old) with an old growth forest just beyond the slash approximately 300 to 400 feet away from where tracks were found .Direction of travel moving south west through slash to old growth forest and mountains beyond.
Observing the opposite side of the road adjacent to tracks we found a game trail with some scuffs on the ground leading out onto the logging road but the markings were not distinguishable . The forested section on this side of the road was a second growth forest with the trees standing about 12 feet in height.
Exact location of tracks will remain omitted from this report due to further investigation of this area.
This investigation turned up some great evidence and our efforts will be focused to this area for further research and possible evidence .
BCSO
Wednesday, December 1, 2010
Strathcona Investigation
We started by following some logging roads up the backside of Big Anderson lake , it had recently snowed in this area , the roads were mainly clear but as we started to climb in altitude we noticed more and more snow collecting on the road . We came to a hill which to me didn't look to bad but as we climbed we noticed that it was pretty much all ice, about three quarters of the way up the truck could not climb anymore and we started to slide backwards , the truck started to turn side ways as I was tapping the breaks so I decided at that point to straighten out as best I could , kept my foot off the break and crossed my fingers that we didn't slide off the bank or hit a tree . Lucky for truck and us everything worked out ,we came back down safe .( note to self : buy snow chains for truck )
We couldn't get into the Anderson lake area so we decided to check out some other areas of interest .
We ventured into a rock quarry/gravel pit , where we picked up on a fresh set of deer tracks in the snow, following them up the backside of the pit where they intersected a fairly fresh set of cougar tracks which from on top of the pit we could see that the cougar had come up from down below in the pit.We managed to track the cougars direction of travel moving from west to east into the gravel pit and up onto the top side of the pit and across a trail in to a dense patch of forest where we lost the tracks .
We then decided to move north on the trail to see if the cougar had re-emerged further down .Five hundred feet or so north of the last cougar track the trail ended at a big slash pile with a second growth heavily forested area just beyond . As we stood there scoping out the hillside we heard what sounded like very light wood knocking coming from the northeast , ( time was 2:54 pm ) it was about 30-seconds in between knocks in a series of 3-knocks , 3-knocks , 4-knocks .5-knocks and 3-knocks for a total of 5-times , we tried replying for about 15- minutes with no responses . At this point we followed the trail south back in the direction we came from , it eventually ended at another main road . We then wrapped up our search in this area after a little more investigation.
We then doubled back to the area my truck had slid down the hill .There was an area there near a creek we wanted to set up the trail cam . After setting up the cam we decided to move down the Duncan Bay Main .Darkness had just set in and we wanted to do some spot lighting . We had noticed earlier in the day that a hunter had thrown the remains of a moose on the side of the road,(note: there are no moose on Vancouver island so the hunter had brought this moose from the mainland ) as we approached this area we observed a wolf at the remains which didn't stick around for more then about 5-seconds once it noticed our head lights on it. After spot lighting for a good 45-minutes and finding a few deer , we wrapped up our investigation .
Other notes:
Temperature : -1 , cloudy , light snow at times , no wind.
Nov 28th/10 picked up trail cam , no pictures taken , camera was on , I think due to the cold and wet conditions camera's sensor was affected. Noticed 2 or 3 day old bear tracks in front of trail cam , bait set was gone .
All in all this investigation went well , Cougar tracks,bear tracks and a wolf was spotted.
Possible Sasquatch activity : faint wood knocking near rock quarry .
Hunters ( gun shots), 4x4ing and quads noticed .
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