Q: . What is the greatest single piece of evidence that inspires you more than anything to keep on going in your research?

A: Well, it's not a valid question since nothing of the sort is necessary. It's been interesting and I get a lot of satisfaction out of it so I'm just going to keep on doing it. It's been frustrating, but overall, I'm not in need of inspiration. The solidest evidence is another question. I think you've got to put the film at the top of the list. But then there's the Skookum cast which is very powerful.

Q: At one time you said if the Skookum cast was investigated by reputable scientists who came to the conclusion that it was authentic, you might be persuaded that a body might not be necessary to prove that the creature exists.

A: I'm now in the same position with regard to the film. The proof is there in the film. The problem is getting enough scientists to pay attention. The beautiful thing about the film is that it fits perfectly with the scientific method. Replicating the basis for the claim that it is genuine requires only a very little bit of effort once a person is provided a sufficient number frames from the film with which to make their own measurements. Say, "Here you have the dozen best frames from the movie from which to make a comparative estimate of the arms and the legs.

Q: There was some very good work done by a few members of the Bigfoot Forums who did a lot of comparisons, frame by frame -

A: But they don't have all the frames. Rick Noll and I are working on this right now - use a copy of the film and go through and pick out the frames in which you are best able to make this particular estimate. It won't include the most familiar stretch of the film because the feet are hidden. We don't know at this point whether we're going to find anything that's really good. You have to have, in the same frame, at least a half of the arm and a half of the leg square to the camera. There may not be such a frame. You can certainly have one or the other, but if they're not in the same frame, that adds complications. Fortunately, Patterson's film was taken not from a standing height. He's much closer to being in the mid-point of the creature's height so there's certainly no significant distortion because the arm was taken dead-on and the leg was at an angle. We have to pick out which frames from which you can best make an estimate. They have to be frames that are not digitized. They need to be straight enlargements from the movie so nobody can argue they've been fiddled with in a computer. And, if you're going to get them to - I hope - dozens of people, then you're going to have to have a lot of them. So you're starting to run up a significant cost. There's a lot of money and effort involved in getting people to look at them.

I wanted the Skookum cast to be taken around the continent. We had several good starting points of someone who said yes, they'd like to look at it. The first question was could we get everyone to look at it where it is, but that's very expensive.

Q: So Rick Noll is the present caretaker of the cast?

A: Yeah, but Rick is concerned that it could be destroyed on the highway.

Q: Which is valid.

A: I would take the chance, but I'm not him and it's not my cast. At one time it looked as if LeRoy Fish and I would take it around. But he died. So the next thing was to find out if we could make a copy of it. The expertise to do that was to come from Grover Krantz. And he died. It's very difficult to copy because there's all sorts of interlocking elements in it. Traditionally, you just paint many coats of latex and back it with gauze and so on, then peel it off and then you can make another cast with that. But this one would have to be done in many pieces, I expect. Again, I'm no expert. Bob Titmus could have done it. He used to say he could make a plaster cast of an elephant if you were prepared to pay for it. [Laughs] I have found a couple of people who say they can do it, but it's getting pretty obvious that Rick is just scared to have it done.

The biggest problem with seeing the cast for what it is is that it's inversed. That works OK with a footprint cast because you immediately react to it as the bottom of a foot. But this thing is just a bunch of unidentifiable little slopes and valleys with hair imprinted on them. We've learned from experience that it takes a person quite a long time to really get the hang of it. I mean, they had enough trouble when they saw it as an imprint making out what it was. Took them a while to figure it out - they had already stepped on it, fortunately not in a critical place - before they realized what they were dealing with. It would work better, I think, if it was displayed on a wall. When you're looking down at it, your brain can't get away from thinking it's looking at the ground. And you're not. You're looking at the opposite of what you normally see on the ground. So that again makes it impractical to bring a lot of people to look at it. Most of them would take a quick look and go home. But if they've said they would examine it and you've taken it to their lab, it'd be a much cheaper way to do it and a much higher percentage would feel obligated to really examine it, and the main thing, each of them that really took an interest in it would be able to suggest to you other people you should take it to. We don't know who these people are and this way we could have been finding out as we went along. Running up an impressive total and eventually finding 3 or 4 with real clout who could do a paper on it and get it in a prestigious publication. That's a really big problem that all for us face. You can get things published by outfits that are into this sort of thing to start with, but you can't break through with one's that would carry the impact.

So those two things are those which I would say, if I reinterpreted your question, are the solidest evidence. The other one that needs to be mentioned is Glen Thomas' observation of the thing digging a hole in the rocks..