The Skookum Cast is a supposed body casting of a Bigfoot made near Mount Adams in the southern part of Washington state in the year 2000. An Australian television program for Animal Planet called “Animal X” had come to the United States to film a Bigfoot special.
The cast was taken on September 22, 2000, during a Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization (BFRO) expedition to the Skookum Meadows area of the Gifford Pinchot National Forest in Washington state, during the filming of the Animal X[1] television show.
The expedition included Matt Moneymaker, Thom Powell, Rick Noll, Dr. Leroy Fish, the film crew from Animal X, and several other BFRO members. For six days the team had been blasting recordings of alleged Bigfoot vocalizations, experimenting with pheromone lures, and using thermal cameras.
In many ways, they were doing the same kinds of activities that would become the basis for the television show “Finding Bigfoot”. On the evening of the expedition’s sixth day, the team placed fruit bait near a muddy patch by the road in the hope that it might lure a Bigfoot and provide some good physical evidence. On the seventh day, September 22, the team discovered the large animal impression that would become known as the Skookum Cast.
The Skookum Cast (above) may look like a shoddy bit of cement work at first glance, but it allegedly shows where Bigfoot had a lie-down in the mud of a wallow pit. Bigfoot researchers believe that the cast bears the impression of an arm, hip, thigh, Achilles Tendon, and ankle of a hominid.
Not everyone is so convinced as some believe there is evidence that it was an Elk. The expedition members used over 200 pounds of casting material and some tent poles to make a record of the large impression. During the television episode, the consensus of the experts seemed to be that the cast represents one of the best pieces of physical evidence for the existence of Bigfoot.
While not definitively proving the existence of a species of North American ape, the cast constitutes significant and compelling new evidence that will hopefully stimulate further serious research and investigation into the presence of these primates in the Northwest mountains and elsewhere… .
Dr. Jeff Meldrum, a professor of anatomy and anthropology at Idaho State University
Their examination of the cast demonstrated anatomical features that Meldrum believed represented an 8 to 9-foot tall humanoid creature. Details of the cast showed evidence of dermatoglyphs — what is commonly called fingerprints — which only primates are known to have.
In my opinion, the Skookum body cast is that of an upright descendant of Gigantopithecus.
Dr. Esteban Sarmiento – Primatologist and Bigfoot researcher
What was missing was Bigfoot footprints in the mud. The investigating team, including [Dr.] Meldrum; Dr. Grover Krantz, a retired physical anthropologist from Washington State University; Dr. John Bindernagel, Canadian wildlife biologist; John Green, a retired Canadian journalist, and author;
and Dr. Ron Brown, exotic animal handler and health care administrator, all examined the cast and agreed that it cannot be attributed to any commonly known Northwest animal and may represent an unknown primate. Hair samples from the area did prove to be Elk.
Footnotes
- Animal X is an American documentary television series that aired in more than 120 countries. It began in 1997 with its first series of 13 half-hour episodes. In 2002, Discovery Channel in the U.S. co-produced the second series of 13 half-hour episodes with the creators of the series, Australia’s Storyteller Productions, for Animal Planet. At this point, Animal X episodes generally had 3 stories, with one exception: “The Skookum Cast”. This was a joint expedition between Animal X and the BFRO which discovered the Skookum Cast, said to be an imprint of the body of a bigfoot.=
Sources
History Collection
Skeptoid
Wikipedia
Cryptomundo
