WHITERIVER -It did not take long after the snow began melting for
Bigfoot to make his/her emergence from the hills surrounding
Whiteriver.
A.K. Riley, former lawman in the community and renowned Bigfoot
investigator, found a cache of new prints in the hills surrounding
the area, saying he discovered them about middle of last week.
Riley gave The Independent exclusive access to the prints,
which came out of the dense, brush-covered hills overlooking
Whiteriver onto an extremely rough dirt trail/road, leaving around
20 feet of them before crossing over to the other side and
continuing for about another 30 feet or so and then disappearing
into the woods.
Riley said he was in the area performing his normal searches
for signs of Bigfoot when he came upon the fresh prints, indicating
the creature may be on the move again with the snow melting and it
being easier to move about in the rough terrain.
Pointing down at the prints, Riley showed where curiosity
seekers had already found and destroyed some by leaving their own
prints either alongside Bigfoot's or inside to show the difference
in size. He said it is natural for people to be curious and he often
finds the same conditions when he comes across Bigfoot prints, but
the problem is that after people leave their own shoe-clad
impressions in or beside Bigfoot's and walk all over the area, it
compromises the scientific integrity of the prints, often rendering
them useless as evidence.
"You can see where they have put their feet beside them to show
how much bigger they are, but it messes up the prints and makes them
hard to see sometimes," Riley said while pointing down at the
tell-tale impressions.
Before reaching the location of the newest Bigfoot tracks,
Riley took The Independent to a riverbank of the White River running
through the region and produced an earlier, almost washed-away print
which clearly showed a deep impression where a heel would have come
down on the ground while walking, as well as the faded impression of
toes digging into the soil as whatever it was that left the print
continued walking. The print was about 13 inches long and about four
of five inches wide and had obviously been there for at least a few
days while the fresh prints higher up on the hill were nearly
pristine and flat.
"These have been here for some time," said Riley pointing at
the faded earlier print by the river bank. "And you can see some
others in the area as well, but they are faint and hard to see, but
they were left here by Bigfoot too, probably a few days ago, but
with the snow and melting you can not see them very well now."
Riley said the creature might have been looking for food or
simply going from point A to point B while using the river as a
guide, but whatever it was doing it left the telltale tracks behind.
He said he did not get any new photos of Bigfoot, but he for one has
no doubts in its existence.
A woman who lives in Whiteriver and passes on information to
and from Riley in his research said she too believes in the
existence of the creature. She said on at least two occasions she
has seen evidence and heard noises compelling her to believe
something is out there.
The woman asked to remain anonymous but said she and her
daughter were out in their truck one evening and saw "something"
cross the road in front of them that was "big and hairy" with about
a three- to four-foot stride, which was able to cross the
double-lane road in no more than three steps. She said on another
occasion a friend of hers witnessed what she believed was Bigfoot in
an abandoned trailer. The woman apparently heard some noise in a
single-wide trailer and when she went in to investigate saw what she
thinks was Bigfoot hunched over on a corner of the trailer trying to
hide.
Riley said that type of behavior is not uncharacteristic for
the creature and that it prefers to keep out of sight. Others in
Whiteriver were not so sure of Riley's discovery of new Bigfoot
prints saying no scat (feces) or any kind of carcass has ever been
produced which could be proven to be Bigfoot or some other unknown
creature which could explain the Bigfoot legend. One said until some
kind of definitive, scientific evidence could be produced, which
would provide undeniable evidence of the existence of Bigfoot, she
would not be a believer.
For many years, sightings of Bigfoot have been reported on the
Fort Apache Reservation, mostly by loggers and people who work in
the woods. White Mountain Apache Police and game rangers with the
Wildlife and Outdoor Recreation Division have collected evidence of
these sightings over a long period of time. The hair samples that
have been sent to the DPS lab for testing have come back "non-human
animal origin," leaving a lot of room for speculation.
Bigfoot believers say the persistence of reported sightings of
Bigfoot-type creatures in North America and elsewhere has convinced
leading researchers on primates, including Jane Goodall, made famous
by her studies of chimpanzees in Tanzania, to call for something
never seriously considered before: a legitimate scientific study to
determine whether the greatest apes that ever lived persist in the
world's moist mountainous regions.
Critics suggest people mistake bear prints for those of Bigfoot
since the forests where sightings most often occur are inhabited by
bears. Standing on their hind legs, bears roughly match the
description of Bigfoot, but advocates counter that witnesses include
experienced hunters and outdoorsmen, who claim to be familiar with
bears, and insist that the creatures they have seen were entirely
different.