Foraging for morel mushrooms has become a part of Illinois
culture, but one intrepid mushroom
hunter says he got way more than the fun
fungus he was looking for.
May 2015.
A local horticulturalist is recording himself
during a routine mushroom hunt in the woods
of northern Illinois.
HORTICULTURALIST: These look pretty big.
HOST: The footage, shot from his perspective,
shows him calmly narrating as he walks through the forest,
pointing his camera at various mushrooms scattered on trees
and logs.
HORTICULTURALIST: And this one looks
like it has a bite out of it.
[laughs]
HOST: After pointing out what looks
like a half-eaten mushroom, the man
is startled by a strange and scary sound
seemingly coming from nearby.
[alleged bigfoot roaring]
HORTICULTURALIST: What?
[alleged bigfoot roaring]
HOST: It's a long, drawn-out howl
that lasts about nine seconds and certainly sounds
like an animal of some kind.
The mushroom hunter pans his camera
back and forth to see if he can spot anything,
but sees nothing.
HOST: Field researcher Ken Gerhard
believes Bigfoot is a real primate,
and like other primates, capable of producing a huge array
of vocalizations and noises.
KEN GERHARD: So this, I would characterize
as a yell or a scream, which does fit into the paradigm
of the Bigfoot world.
HOST: Gerhard claims Sasquatches are social animals
and may vocalize if there's another one nearby.
Most animals vocalize for a couple primary reasons.
One is for mating.
HOST: But Gerhard believes this actually isn't a mating call.
It's a war cry.
[alleged bigfoot roaring]
KEN GERHARD: This particular vocalization
has a definitive sound of aggressiveness.
I would say whatever is making this sound is trying to scare
this person out of its area.
HOST: One theory is that this particular alleged Sasquatch
is just defending its feeding grounds.
Bigfoot is what we call an opportunistic omnivore,
which basically means it eats anything.
And it would make perfect sense that as an omnivore,
Bigfoot would find an abundant and plentiful food
source in this mushroom patch.
Most Bigfoot sightings in Illinois occur in the south,
in places like Shawnee National Forest.
But this encounter allegedly took place in the north.
There is a theory that Bigfoot is a transient species,
and one of the reasons they're so hard to find
is that they're always on the move.
So if they exist, it's plausible they could be in the area.
But let's turn it over to our experts.
[music playing]
Anthropologist Kathy Strain wonders if we
could be hearing a black bear.
Now there haven't been native populations of those bears
in the state for a century.
But it's believed that stragglers
from neighboring Missouri and Wisconsin
can travel to the state, so how about it?
Bears do regularly growl.
However, they don't tend to scream or yell
for long periods of time.
Their growls are very concentrated.
[bear growling]
But this was very loud and very extended.
[alleged bigfoot roaring]
HOST: Biologist Dr. Floyd Hayes examines
the other possibilities.
FLOYD HAYES: The coyote or wolf can have a long howl,
but it sounds quite different than that.
It sounds more like a dog howl.
[wolf howling]
[alleged bigfoot roaring]
And I don't think there are any smaller
animals, like a fox, that would make a call that loud.
So the only possibilities, in my mind, would be either a human--
Woohoo!
FLOYD HAYES: --or this mythical Bigfoot creature.
HOST: So we turn the video over to our expert sound ecologist,
Dr. Ben Gottesman.
BEN GOTTESMAN: We see that the sound
lasts for about 10 seconds.
At the beginning, it's a very throaty, broadband scream.
But then it ends in this long, drawn out, tonal wail.
[alleged bigfoot roaring]
HOST: Under further examination, Gottesman says something
rings hollow about this sound.
This is an open forest, and yet, there's
a certain muffled quality to the sound.
So I went digging, and I found the following sound effect
from a show about dinosaurs.
[dinosaur roaring]
Sound familiar?
It's a match.
Listen again.
[dinosaur roaring]
[alleged bigfoot roaring]
[both roaring]
This recording is a hoax.
So our verdict?
This is a hoax.
These aren't real Bigfoot vocalizations.
They're just sound effects cleverly
edited into a video in order to create an internet sensation.
Still, that doesn't discount the idea that Sasquatch
could be a mushroom lover.
Just make sure to avoid the poison ones, big guy.