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[slow dramatic music]
- Creating the illusion of life
is no different than a magic trick.
You're creating an illusion,
but it's a different kind of illusion.
It's a static illusion.
It's not something that's moving.
It's not something that's happening.
It's something that's in front of you in tangible 3D.
- Oh, I've seen a lot of taxidermy over the years.
Not just because I'm Ken's brother,
but because I've just seen a lot.
One of the things I've noticed is that there are animals
that look stuffed and then there are animals
that still look like they're alive.
And Ken was able to make animals look
like they were still alive.
- I wrote an article
for Breakthrough Magazine some years back
and the term I coined was, Ken has magic in his hands.
[slow music]
- I don't have the art reputation as a taxidermist.
You know what, it's never been recognized
by the art crowd as being really what it is.
The people who deny that it's an art form the most
are the ones that are insulted by animals dying.
I guess a little controversy in art is good.
I'm going to the World Championships again.
I'm doing a recreation Sasquatch.
- [Woman] Oh really?
- [Ken] Yeah. - [Woman] Oh very cool.
- [Ken] Yeah, it is going to be cool. - [Woman] Very cool.
- [Ken] It's all said and done.
- [Woman] What are you using for the hide and stuff?
For the Sasquatch, bears, I guess.
- [Ken] No, not bears.
More like goats or something.
I haven't really--
- [Woman] Decided what you're, yeah...
- [Ken] Yeah, I'll see you later.
- [Woman] Talk to you later, take care.
- [Ken] Yeah.
[windshield wiper whirring]
[spooky music]
I was cursed with the fact that I discovered
that they are actually out there.
I'd rather call it a curse than a blessing, really.
Because once I know it's true, it's true.
I can't change that.
It's not like I'm going to knowand keep it a secret.
No, I'm going to telleverybody exactly what I think.
- When he's talking about Sasquatch,
you'll learn from him.
He doesn't make things up.
He doesn't do this to be entertaining.
He is totally obsessed with the subject
and he knows his stuff.
- I've moved beyond the controversy.
I am convinced and I'm going to go one step further
and build a model.
Now they have this forward lean always
this kind of a forward lean and to get it right
is not that easy.
[banjo strumming]
At the time, I was actually making claymation movies
and I got a book from the library on taxidermy
and it showed how to skin a bird.
And I didn't even think you could skin a bird.
I just found it really fascinating.
I was on a way over to my buddy's place.
We were working on one of our 3-dimensional films
and I saw an English Sparrow get hit by a car just, BOOM.
So I raced over there, picked it up.
Of course, it was dead.
And instead of going to my buddy's place,
I ran home and sat down
and step by step took this bird apart
and then step by step, put the bird back together.
And I was terribly pleased with the result,
which was really, in hindsight, quite hideous.
But there it was.
It was standing on its own two feet again.
And that's kind of how it started.
- Well, Ken was always interested in animals.
He was just a little guy walking around
with a jar full of bugs all the time.
And he had to know what made them work.
- He'd come to school and then at noon he had to run
and check a trap up in a slough close by
and he'd come back with a muskrat in his pocket.
And then, of course, the class was on. [laughing]
The teacher would have to send him outside with it.
- Yeah, I guess I was a weird kid in a lot of ways, but...
- We had to be very careful when we were kids
as to what we unwrapped in the freezer
because if it wasn't labeled,
we could be unwrappinga muskrat or a hawk or a coyote.
- My wife used to get upset.
Sometimes she'd go to get a chicken out or something
and she opened it up and it would be a hawk
or something. [laughing]
- I think I had an eagle in the freezer once
and I think she thought it was a turkey
and brought it upstairs to defrost
and it was a bloody eagle.
- He's banned from putting animals in my freezers now.
- The life of Ken Walker's wife has been interesting.
There's been a lot of challenges.
When our children were younger,he did a lot of traveling,
working in other people's shops, competitions,
and of course money is always an issue.
Yeah, he can sell a piece and make a big bundle of cash,
but that's not something that happens weekly.
Sometimes it doesn't even happen monthly.
So it's been trying,
it's been a bone of contention at times.
- Hey, what do your parents do for work?
And I say, "Oh my mom, she works in a bank,"
and then I say quietly, "My dad's a taxidermist."
They're like, "A what?
"He drives a taxi?"
"No, he doesn't drive a taxi.
"He mounts dead animals."
I pull up on Google and show them what he does.
The first thing that usually pops up is my tiger.
- This is my tiger that I won my first Best of Show with.
I gave it to my daughter, Chantelle.
It's a cat that died from epilepsy in the zoo.
I also have a snow leopard over here
that I got from the same zoo.
This one died of old age and I gave this to Patrick.
This is Patrick's snow leopard.
Each kid got a cat.
- [Colette] Happy birthday, dear Patrick.
- [Audience] Happy birthday to you.
[kids shouting]
- Daddy! - Daddy!
- If I find out someone else's dad
or parent is a taxidermist,
and we automatically become friends 'cause we understand.
As a kid waking up, going outside,
maybe we'll have dead things laying in our yard.
I'd have friends over and they'd come over
and they'd look at it and they'd be like,
"Why is there like a dead carcass in your yard."
I'll have to explain.
"Well, my dad's a taxidermist."
That's kind of a usual thing for me.
I don't really pay too much attention for it.
And they're like, "Ugh."
But that's just an average day for me.
- Ken has always kept an open door.
He is willing to teach anybody anything about taxidermy
if they want to learn.
- To me when somebody really looks up to you for winning
and being a good taxidermist
or even a great taxidermist in their eyes,
too many people treat that as a celebration.
And to me, it's not a celebration,
it's a responsibility.
What's the use of teaching somebody
if they can't be better than you, eventually?
- He had a young girl come up to him.
She was about 14 years old at that time,
big interest in taxidermy,
which was amazing because there were no hunters
or taxidermists in her family.
And she met Ken and thought the absolute world of him,
he was her idol.
But Amy has become like a part of the family as well.
We watched her grow up and get married
and have her own children.
[upbeat music]
- My friend George Roof said,
"I want you to meet someone really special."
And he brought me over to Ken Walker and he told me,
he's a mammal taxidermist too.
He's won Best in World in mammals
and that's what he specializes in,
which I was really interested in since I already knew
that I didn't want to do birds or fish,
I just wanted to specialize in mammals.
So Ken just kind of took me under his wing.
So, that was when our friendshipreally started really early
on in my career.
And following that, a few years later,
we were at a show and he invitedme up to Canada for a week.
And prior to this, I had never even been on a plane.
So it was a real adventure to go all the way up to Canada.
It turns out that it's the perfect business for me.
I enjoy it.
I didn't have to go to college.
I get to be a stay-at-home mom
while also doing part-time taxidermy.
So, really it was just meant to be.
- Amy has a lot of raw talent,
but I'm going to tell you straight up,
ability is nothing unless you nurture it.
In order to put the history of taxidermy into perspective,
you have to go all the way back
to when wildlife art itself was relevant.
Okay?
And that is as far back as we can go.
We're talking about 30,000 year old cave paintings
in France.
The first thing we found people holding in reverence
were animals.
Things kind of like this Irish Elk or Megaloceros.
These things have been extinct for 10,000 years
and this is a form of anatomy preserved
by somebody who's actually seen one.
Here you have your very first example of wildlife art.
- He has made animals,
taxidermied animals that don't exist.
He has made an Irish Elk that was fabulous.
Saber-toothed tigers, he's done those.
- He is one of those people who can dream something up
and actually bring it to fruition.
That's why his recreations have done so well,
like the panda that he won Best in World with.
- I think of all Ken's recreation pieces,
probably the panda is my favorite.
It's just so realistic
and you don't get to see those mounted.
- When I won World Champion with that panda,
I actually got a message
from the Smithsonian congratulating me.
And it was never lost on me.
I felt really important to be representing the Smithsonian.
The difference between conventional taxidermy
and recreation taxidermy is that you basically,
in taxidermy are creating a form to fit a hide
and in recreation taxidermy,
you're creating a hide to fit an existing form.
But you have to make the form as accurate as possible
for the recreation animal and then you have to figure out
what kind of hide will work best.
It boils down to being almost the same thing
when you look at it.
It looks like taxidermy,
it's just kind of done in reverse.
I never realized taxidermy
would lead me down this recreation road.
Although as a child I would have been delighted to know
that that's where it was gonna lead to,
because I loved the prehistoric animals
and seeing them alive again.
When I was in grade three or four or something,
I wrote a story about Big Foot.
By Kenny, Big Foot.
As I was out hunting and I came a horrible sight
of a monster animal that resembled a human.
It walked like a human and was completely covered by hair.
Its eyes were sunken deeply into its head.
The teeth in the animal were sharp
and piercing fangs 3 inches long.
His arms were to its knees and had a height
of at least 15 feet.
I had seen the Sasquatch.
Dun, dun, dun, duh!
I wanted it to be real.
And then when I got older,
I understood that since I know everything,
I don't know about those, that it can't be real.
'Cause that's how belief starts.
I would have seen it by now
or somebody else would've brought me one to skin by now.
But then when I started coming across stories
from people I knew,
and I thought, "I'm going to look into this."
[slow music]
- The Patterson Gimlin film remains profoundly important
and remains extraordinarily difficult to dismiss.
It's undergone so many examinations
by smart, well-equipped, capable, trained people.
And when that occurs, they almost always come
to the conclusion that they would not have been able
to manufacture that themselves with the existing technology.
When you see the rippling of the thigh muscles
and when you see the heft of the breasts,
one almost has to drop one's jaw and say,
"Well, golly, maybe it's the real thing."
And I still think it's probably
our single most important piece of evidence.
- I have every intention of building what you see
in the Patterson frame, a female Sasquatch.
I'm going to use this as a reference
so it will be a female.
It's what he filmed
and it's what I'm going to build.
Boy, when I get carving that styrofoam, boy, I make a mess.
- [Man] Yeah. Beads everywhere
- Oh, yeah.
Then I use, I've got the files
and the rasps and the shapers.
Excellent.
Oh yeah, I can see the arms already.
Makes great bow targets.
- Oh yeah.
- We're looking at a muscle, that comes across here.
Back of this leg is pretty, pretty much like this
and then it comes out and cuts back.
Okay, and then the front, same difference.
It will come like this.
You know I'm gonna tell you something.
People who say this is somebody in a suit,
they got a heck of a leg.
It's funny because I templated a lot of animals
for the Smithsonian like this from photographs.
It's not like I'm sitting here saying,
"Whoa, I wonder if they look like this."
I know from the picturesthat that's what they look like.
'Cause I know from just my own investigations
that these silly things are out there.
And I'm really looking forward one day
to finding out how accurate this recreation was
to the real thing.
I haven't figured out an actual pose for this one,
but I mean, everybody and their dog wants to do this,
and I don't want to do this.
If I carve out the legs and the arms,
then I can set the legs up
and then we can build a torso onto it
and then attach the arms.
Hello my baby.
Hello my honey.
Hello my ragtime gal.
[laughing]
Just like the old frog, eh?
Everybody loves the Michigan Rag.
There's lots of things that people will say.
I mean, there's a lot of peoplein the taxidermy industry
think that I've lost my mind,
which is fine.
[slow music]
I got my Roy Orbison box set with me.
My Roy Orbison box set.
I've got some long screws in that, eh?
- Here, yeah.
- Oh, that's what I need to do.I need to fix that ear.
So, I gave myself a 10-year goal
to win a World Championship.
In 10 years, I'm going to win.
That was in 1999 when I first attended myself
and I won World Champion first time there.
Oh beautiful.
It's like it never had eyes until you do this.
- Ken Walker has that intangibleof natural artistic talent,
but what has made Ken so successful
is he not only has that talent,
he has a strong desire and love for nature
and he can see that with this artistic flair he has.
- [Ken] I've won quite a bit of stuff,
but I still think the day's going to come
where I got respect from the new guys,
but they'll all kick my butt real good
and I always wonder when that's going to be,
maybe this show.
All right, we need a cart.
- [Man] Okay, I'll go get it.
[upbeat music]
- [Ken] Never do a piece for a judge.
If you start letting too many outside influences,
the winning or losing aspect get in the way
of what you decide you're going to do, you lose the art.
- Lord, as we pursue our taxidermy and sculpture.
Lord, we're confronted with your creation.
Lord, we thank you for your creativity
and we praise you for the diversity that you've created.
Thank you for each person who'straveled so far to be here.
And we pray that you give everyone a safe return home.
Lord, we ask these things in Jesus name.
Amen.
- The medium small mammal category includes specimens
under 50 pounds from the size of a coyote or smaller.
The winner of the 3rd Best in World Medium Mammal
is Carolyn Brak-Dolny at Frankford, Canada
for her open mouth coyote.
[audience applauding]
- The winner of the 2nd Best in World Medium Mammal is
Ken Walker of Alberta Beach, Canada with the Wallabies.
[audience applauding]
- I got second in the world with them.
I scored really high, I almost won.
I come very close to winning and second in the world
is first on any other given day.
So I mean, I did really good.
If you get first, second or third in the world,
I mean, you've done good.
♪ Only you can make all this world seem right ♪
♪ Only you can make the darkness bright ♪
- I worked at a Boston Pizza in the city
and they were having karaoke one night
and I saw these two gentlemen and a woman walk in
and they sat at a table behind me and I said,
"Hey, can you sing?"
And he goes, "Yep."
So you want to sing a song with me? And he said, "Yep."
And so we sang all night long
until about three in the morning.
Hi, sweetheart.
♪ Your baby doesn't love you anymore ♪
♪ Golden days before the end
♪ Whisper secrets to the wind
For a long time, I wanted to go into music,
and I never liked dealing with drunk people
and I hate cigarette smoke.
So working in the bars just wasn't an option.
So it became kind of a hobby.
And for that outlet, I went to karaoke.
And then at one point, I was hired by a group called
Stars and Legends to do a Roy Orbison impersonation,
which was kind of fun.
- He's actually done a lot of performing
in the Roy Orbison impersonation realm.
He put on the sunglasses and the black suit
and do this kind of stuff,but he can hit those high notes.
- I could do a few songs pretty good
and the people clap.
But they're not really clapping for you,
they're clapping for Roy.
I guess you could say karaoke is a bit like taxidermy
in that you're recreating something.
Everybody.
♪ Oh, pretty woman!
[audience applauding]
When a Sasquatch walks,
because the shinbone is closer to the ground.
Like the knee is closer to the ground and the foot is longer,
it brings its foot up and forward like this
in order to clear the ground.
Leaning onto this leg, this arm straight down.
This one in and then a turn.
And this is the other thing I find strange.
[upbeat music]
Okay.
I think I figured out how I'm going to do this.
I think I got it figured out.
I was looking at the witness drawings
and there was one witness drawing that I liked
where the Sasquatch, when the person saw it,
they looked up and the Sasquatchhad pulled some leaves back
and was looking at the person,
so I just decided to emulate that particular pose
because it was based on an actual observation.
[upbeat music]
I know lots of very, very smart, successful people
that refuse to talk about Sasquatches
and they know all about them.
- A lot of people will see one
and then not want to talk about it
because they will figure,
well, they'll think I'm nuts or something.
- Some people are afraid of sharks.
Some people are afraid of spiders.
Upstanding normal people
are terrified of ridicule.
- The first time that I got to talk to Ken
about the Bigfoot sightings that I have personally had
was such a relief.
Knowing that I would not be ridiculed and looked upon
as being kind of a crazy person or anything.
I know bears, I grew up with bears.
We used to chase little two year olds in the neighborhood.
Standing bears, they drop their forearms
and they have this huge long neck.
They're more slender, they're more tubular.
They have no shoulders, but with a Bigfoot sighting,
they'll have the head, the crown of the head.
They have almost no neck
and they have broad shoulders and long arms.
There is a huge difference between a standing bear
and a Sasquatch.
So I told him my stories.
The first one was in Jasper and it was in November
and it was during a winter storm.
The second one was actually here in Hinton
and it was down at the Ruby Falls.
[quad bike revving]
He was from about the waist up
and he was walking from the left to the right
and he was a silverish color and
with the sun behind us, it was really shiny.
- Yeah.
So many people see them and don't talk about it.
- Yeah, I haven't really told anybody
until I told you about it.
- Yeah, I'm glad you did because I needed that account
to add to the other ones in this area
to prove they winter here.
My whole thing was that if Sasquatches are out there,
then hunters are seeing them.
The hunters aren't seeing them, they're not out there.
Plain and simple.
It turns out that, by God,
the hunters are seeing them, not maybe.
They're seeing them often.
Probably talked to more people who've seen a Sasquatch
than have seen a wolverine.
You can usually tell by the type of person
and the vast majority of hunters I talk to,
no reason in the world to lie about that.
As a matter of fact,
they've got everything to lose
by saying those kind of stories.
When you go out camping,
you wish there was no such thing as a Sasquatch.
Do you know what I'm saying?
You can see where people are going to have to reach
to accept these forest people.
That's not to say we're not ready.
I think we are.
I think we're ready.
- Every language in the world has a word
for Sasquatch or Yeti.
Every civilization has reports of seeing
this ape-like creature there.
- I'm sure they exist.
There's enough evidence now to know that they exist.
They don't want to be found.
They're trying to stay away from us
and I don't blame them because people have a tendency
to kill things that they're afraid of or don't understand.
- There's a lot of sightings, a lot of sightings.
With that many sightings, you'd have to think that
something's got to be out there.
- I believe in Sasquatch.
He's out there.
- I would probably have to see more proof for myself.
I'm not sure how I feel about it,
but I love hearing him talk about it.
- I don't see it.
I don't see it.
I need proof.
I need more proof than him bringing home a little baggie
of dung from the bush [laughing]
- Of course, the one thing that I am looking for
is evidence of Sasquatches.
And I know it's out there.
Well, I have it.
Obviously, I have been looking for it so I have evidence.
It's DNA evidence.
It's basically...
scat.
This is where I keep it, right here.
There it is, there it is.
Sasquatch scat sample.
People say, "What do you got in your freezer?"
I got everything, even Sasquatch scat.
This is the hand print there from a Sasquatch.
So, basically I'm going off of that.
Yes, yes, yes.
Hand-wringing, yes, yes.
Yes, yes.
According to the measurements we have here,
from the peak of the head
to the bottom of the chin is 15 inches.
So we're looking at this for a distance there.
So 7.5 should take me right to the brow ridge.
There we go.
That's what we want to do.
7.5.
So the brow ridge actually starts here.
The length of the head is the length of the foot
on these guys and it goes five times
into the height of the body.
Creepy.
[upbeat music]
She's not gonna win Miss British Columbia,
but for this model to be successful in my eyes
is for somebody who has seen a Sasquatch,
especially somebody who's had a good sighting.
For somebody to be able to come over and say,
"That is what I saw, that is it."
What's going to be really weird is like,
I'm making the Patterson creature, right?
I've got to put boobs on it.
And contrary to what people might think about me,
I'm not looking forward to it.
I don't think I can put any nipples on her.
I will, after I get it home, I'm not for the World Show.
I want it to really look good
and I mean I've got some hurdles like what kind of hair
and how I'm going to apply it and things like that.
I've got some major hurdles to overcome,
but I'm thinking about it all the time.
I've been thinking about it for years.
So now all of this is culminating.
The word stuff came from the fact
that they used to sew the animal skin up,
and fill it with straw, sawdust and whatnot,
and then push it back into shape.
And I mean, the results were, for the most part,
less than desirable.
And then the guys like Carl Akeley came along
and realized that you could do an anatomical sculpture
by cleaning the bones, setting the skeleton up,
using plasters and things like that to rough it in
and then making production molds from that.
They would make a mold in pieces
that was easy to come apart.
Build up laminated paper.
That was the beginning.
Of course, foam didn't come along until like the '70s,
but you get the idea, it's a skin stretched over,
an anatomically correct mannequin.
Of course, putting all that care and attention
and love into the anatomy resulted in the same care
and attention going intorepresenting the proper behavior
and lifestyle of these animals.
To take it even further,
they would plop these animals into habitats
that were like their natural environment,
whether it was Alaska,
whether it was lions in the Savannah in Africa.
It was such an amazing thing for back then
that these people who created these things
like Carl Akeley and Hornaday and Robert Rockwell,
they were considered heroes at the time.
It was without a doubt the golden age of taxidermy.
In the 20th century, whereas people used to go to museums
to connect with nature,
suddenly the shift moved towards nature photography
and documentaries on film
that were shown in theaters and on television.
And whereas taxidermists
were once considered givers of life,
they became takers of life, or equated as such.
Basically, the perception went
from being a hero like James Audubon who was a taxidermist
to Norman Bates from "Psycho,"
who was also portrayed as a taxidermist.
And to this very day, taxidermists struggle
in a lot of ways with that stereotype.
[guitar strumming]
I have to cast the ears.
So I'm kind of thinking of going with gorilla ears.
From the Smithsonian,
that's the one we mounted, the female gorilla.
My plan is to cast this ear,
then to sculpt a reciprocal of this.
Like most of the witnesses say,
they don't see much ear
and cold weather animals tend to have smaller ears
than warm weather animals.
It didn't take long after winning awards
and things like that that the situation of being a judge
was brought forward.
Sooner or later they're going to ask you.
[upbeat music]
Okay, now, this score sheet
is basically, it's into four parts.
A composition, which is basically standing back
and looking at the artistic merit of the piece
and then we have the anatomical accuracy.
So, they want to know whether the nose, the lips, the eyes,
the musculature, etc., etc. is accurate.
And then of course the painting,which means the finishing,
putting the colors back into it.
That's the last.
- We're going to sort out this other stuff here real quick.
We got a half hour.
- Maybe we get the list, we can pick it. - I got it right here.
- Oh you do. - Oh you got the list?
- I got the list. - Let's do it then.
- [Ken] We've got couple of the spots we're getting finished.
- [Man] Nostril work is pretty good, too.
- What's your best piece, Ken?
- My best piece? - Yeah.
- My high scoring piece is the squirrel.
- Okay.
- [Ken] My highest scoring large mammal
is obviously the cougar.
- [Man] You like it better than the squirrel?
- Which one do you think is the best? - Yes.
- It's up to you.
- Well, listen, I ran a score sheet over either one of them.
- Not the biggest, the best.
- The one, it's,
I don't know, the squirrel.
The squirrel is the better piece of taxidermy.
- Okay.
[upbeat music]
- And then your eyes area little on the small side too.
It's really hard to do.
- So, you mean open them up?
- You need a bigger glass eye.
This is what we call negative space
when everything's empty here.
I'd like to see that framed with even a little bush
that kind of broke the outline of the coyote
The critiques are very important,
that people come and they hear what you have to say.
And I always tell people,
you might not get it for another two months.
It might sink in a while later,
but it's very rewarding to critique people's work
and help them aspire to be better.
[audience applauding]
- Taxidermy is the most difficult art form
that man has ever devised.
- Even though it was like the original.
- Right. - Yeah.
- You have to be a sculptor, a painter, an impressionist,
all wrapped in one.
- But you know...
- And it's the only art form that has the perfect thing
to compare it to.
- That's right, but you know what the funniest part is?
This is where everybody's thrown for a loop.
Okay?
It's all done by right-wingers
who don't even believe in art
and don't even know they're artists.
Most of the people who've seen Sasquatch have said
that they tend to have hair over fur.
So, other than a whole bunch
of little goat hides or something,
I didn't really know what to use.
And then I got the idea to go
and check out some highland steers.
I took one look at them and I knew
that not only would the hair be right,
but they would also be big enough.
Obviously, the color is off until I color it.
But that's one of the otherthings that has to be done here.
This isn't an easy thing to do because,
what's it gonna look like when it's done?
Is it going to look like Snuffleupagus?
This is one piece.
Once I get this piece trimmed and on,
and then I can move on to the question of the eyes.
[upbeat music]
- Glass eyes in the taxidermy industry,
that's the central part of any mount.
Where do you look for the expression?
You look into the eyes.
That's what tells you that that is a living piece of art
as opposed to a still, stationary,
lifeless collection of parts.
If the eyes are a high quality and if they're set properly,
that's what brings the expression out.
- I want to get that edgy look that,
there's a difference between a dog and a wolf.
A dog is hah, hah, hah.
A wolf is like, just don't move too quick.
They got that.
That's what I have to do.
I have to get the difference between a dog and a wolf.
The difference between a person and a Sasquatch.
It's going to be somewhat similar.
- Today, we're going to be painting
some eyes for Ken Walker
for his Sasquatch project.
A Sasquatch apparently is more of a primate, like we are.
So we're going to want to select an eye
that is appropriate for that.
All of your primates and most binocular species,
even the big cats will have this more bulbous shape
and also round pupils.
The other thing that we have to consider
is glass clarity and quality.
Bigfoot is supposed to have excellent vision
and so he's going to have a fairly well-developed eye.
- All right now.
So I've got three pairs of the big ones,
two pairs of the mediums and two pairs of the small ones.
[slow music]
I've talked to people who've looked at Sasquatches.
One of the most common threads
is that they look very intelligent.
So I imagine like people,
they are very expressive depending upon their moods.
[slow music]
The sightings in this area go over a lot of years.
There's quite a few accounts
that are on the different forums
like Western Canadian Bigfoot forum,
Alberta Bigfoot forum of sightings,
mostly along the Forestry TrunkRoad, which is just up here.
This place here is a little tucked away spot
in Western Alberta in the foothills
and this area has had a historyof sightings of Sasquatches.
I've been coming out here and putting up cameras
and just basically, just kind of hanging about
and seeing if I can find something.
They go out of their way, not to leave any trace.
It's almost like their entire existence
is based on being stealthy and not being discovered.
This particular place right here
is where I was first told to come here
and look for forensic evidence of a Sasquatch
because one had built a big bed here, also called a nest.
And this was all, I mean it was a big mat of grass
that was pulled and carried and all kinds of stuff.
And it lived under this tree.
And so I came in this, well, in March,
there was still like a lot of snow
and we took snow shovels and dug it up
and filled up five bags of frozen scat,
put it in a cooler in bags,collected it with our gloves on.
And then I sent it into the Fish and Wildlife
and they actually tested it.
And it came back inconclusive in that they,
and I thought that they didn't find DNA and the guy said,
"No, we just don't know what it is."
And he said, it's kind of the result that you want
and told me that if there's, to put some away
and if there's ever anything to compare it to,
to bring it back out again.
I have two bags of it left and you can still see the snow
that I collected with it,
but there it is: actual, real Sasquatch poop.
It was frozen right away.
And when I collected it, it was frozen
and it has not been thawed.
There it is.
And there's two bags of itand it's the real deal because,
I collected it myself.
I saw the bed, I saw the nest that the Sasquatch built.
It was very cool.
And all the hunters that come through my shop,
I ask them all to keep their eyes open.
If you find anything,bring it to me, bring it to me,
don't bring it to anybody else, bring it to me.
So there's an army of people out there looking,
and sooner or later somebody's going to bring me something.
I've already had people call me back say,
"Man, I thought you were crazy,
"but you wouldn't believe what I saw.
"You won't believe what I found."
So it's working.
And sooner or later somebody's going to come
and they're gonna bring me what I'm looking for.
One day somebody might just drive up with a dead one.
Who knows?
But in the meantime, I have Sasquatch scat in my freezer.
There you have it, proof,
for all the good it does me.
One of the recurring themes of people with habituations,
people in areas of activity
is they kept showing these tree structures.
People in Florida find them, people in Colorado,
people in California, Washington,
all the way up into Canada, Ontario,
they find these tree structuresand I found the same thing
that those people say they're finding.
Obviously, they have meaning, but they look random.
But once your eyes are trained to see them, you'll see them.
They stand out.
You see, they weave.
They weave these together.
I know how old some of this country is.
It was only recently opened
and a lot of these structures were made
before the country was even accessible.
A lot of the Sasquatch habitat is being clear cut
and being moved into by industry.
- Everything is under pressure.
Native cutthroat trout are on the verge of extirpation.
Rocky Mountain goats,Woodland Caribou, Grizzly bears,
wolves, all of those things are tenuous at the very best.
Those are species that needbig spaces to live and survive.
- If we were to protect big tracts of land
that are imputed to have Bigfoot living on them
and along with Bigfoot,
all of the animals and plants that come under its umbrella.
And if Bigfoot doesn'tactually exist, does it matter?
Well, in a way, no,
because we will have protected one of the grandest treasures
the earth has ever had.
On the other hand, if we were to so tame the land
that we can no longer even imagine the possibility
of wild apes out there,
then we will have lost something deep,
something profound and something irretrievable.
- People don't know how to react
to the natural environment anymore.
They've been provided with so much technology.
The natural environment feels foreign to them
and they're not to blame.
It's just the way things have evolved.
But it's tragic for the wilderness because it means
that if you don't understand it and have compassion for it,
you don't care if somebody ruins it.
And that's what we've beenseeing here big time in Alberta
for decades now.
Big business, big oil gets everything it wants.
You can say whatever you want about it
and why it shouldn't happen,
why it's important to wildlife
and those things compared to the billions of dollars
of revenue that come from wells like this
don't mean anything to our government.
It doesn't matter that future generations
will not know or have the most wonderful things
we have on earth.
- A lot of environmentalists are urban,
a lot of hunters are rural.
There's a huge urban/rural divide.
But it does seem sad to me and unnecessary
that there should be this big schism between hunters
and other conservationists that
puts people at loggerheads who are natural colleagues,
natural comrades for the greater good.
- Hunters fear losing their opportunity
to do hunting in the way they're doing it.
They fear that, which is, that's reasonable.
But what they don't see is that
how much of the conservation community
is trying to preserve thevery thing that they love and...
why they'd been at odds so much and so often
is really beyond me.
- We've come to a place in our world right now
where we are so confrontationalabout ourselves versus them
that we've even lost track of what we're even fighting for.
Is it bad, bad, bad vibe out there now.
And I really think that people need to step back,
take a deep breath and learn how to get along
and realize that we do really share all this stuff.
[fast strumming guitar music]
And the thing is,
they're there in the fossil record, too,
which is pretty important to think about.
That something that, maybe not is the same species
but approached to be that size.
There is a 10-foot tall hominid
and they found teeth and they found a jaw bone
and that's it.
So finding fossils of Gigantopithecus
is an amazing scientific accomplishment,
which is actually quite a feat considering
they've never found a fossil of a chimpanzee or a gorilla
in history.
Never.
Even though I'm not convinced that Sasquatch
is Gigantopithecus.
Gigantopithecus is extremely relevant
because it shows that there is the evolutionary trait
for a primate to attain that size.
I'm positive the proof already exists.
I know there's somebody out there that has something.
I know for a fact, and I'mjust waiting till I can get it.
There might be somebody one day
that walks up and sees that model
and decides to give me what's in his freezer.
That is my ultimate goal.
As much as I don't like to share personal details
of a relationship like the one we have,
the fact has to be addressed
that we ended up living separatelives in the same house.
I couldn't seemto make her happy at times
and that's always weighed heavily on me.
I feel like I failed in that respect
and she had to be lonely and I know I was lonely.
It's a very difficult thing to be lonely in your own home.
It looks all right.
It seems to look all right, eh?
[slow music]
[dramatic strings music, the theme from "Psycho"]
You know what?
Now I like it.
Well, I can't see it when it's the wrong color.
I can see the expression.
It seems to be thinking.
I still need to put it in front of a witness though.
[shaver buzzing]
[slow music]
Amy's up here in Canada now,
and I had actually planned this trip
for her a long time ago.
In my wildest dreams,
I couldn't have foreseen what would happen.
- I knew that at some pointI wanted to tell Ken how I felt
and I had some feelings for him
that were more than just friends
and I didn't know how he'd react to that.
And I basically end up one nightprofessing all these things
to him and...
it turns out that he felt the same way.
It's pretty down there.
- It is pretty.
I have lots of times I've seen bears.
Like they come just over the top and they'll be
right at the very bottom.
Now, just take your time, take your time.
Now, you pick your spot.
- Okay. - Oh, just wait.
- Tell me when.
Oh, crap
- No, you can't.
- I know.
I had to be the first one to put it out there.
Otherwise, I think just out of respect,
he would have held it in.
- I would have never done or said anything to Amy
to ruin the friendship that we have
because that's what I have with her.
Nuts, nuts, nuts, nuts. - Damn, I'm tired.
Okay.
I didn't have a chance.
- We're keeping this a secret.
We're basically trying tofigure out what to do about it.
I know we want to be together.
- [Amy] I love you, buddy.
- [Ken] Hmm? - [Amy] I love you.
- [Ken] I love you too, babe.
- [Amy] There's a dead mouse.
- [Ken] Oh.
- [Amy] Or something. - [Ken] That's a shrew.
- [Amy] Oh yeah?
- [Ken] Yeah, tiny little shrew.
[slow music]
- [Ken] Hey, Daniel!
- [Daniel] How are you doing?
- [Ken] Good, hey, can you grab the door there? Grab a foot or something.
Where is it?
Where are we setting it up?
Are we setting it up right here?
- I got a call from the New York Times.
The first thing they asked was,
have you seen the Sasquatch yet
and could we interview Ken Walker?
I got a call from the Springfield Enterprise
and two days later the headline was,
Sasquatch is Coming to Springfield.
[upbeat music]
- I mean, sure, it's getting some laughs,
and there's a lot of people that don't believe in it.
So you have that part of it.
- [Ken] She was standingup there getting a sun tan.
When you think of a Sasquatch,
you think of something moving in the shadows,
which is exactly what they are.
I think that the effect would have been tenfold
if they would've put it somewhere in a corner
where it was dark.
- Amy and I, we came down here together
and we snuck in here last night 'cause I couldn't wait.
I couldn't wait to see it.
Seeing it for the first time
and seeing it kind of in the shadows
'cause it was kind of dark in here and everything.
It was like, yeah, it's pretty much exactly what I saw.
- Where did you see the Sasquatch at?
- The one that I saw? - Yeah.
- It was in Alberta, Canada.
- Okay. - Yeah.
It was in Western Alberta in a place called Swan Hills.
- Were you a believer before then or?
- When I saw it, I wasn't a believer.
And even after I saw it, I wasn't a believer.
I wasn't a believer until I started talking to people
that I knew weren't lying to me
and went out and looked for myself
and investigated a lot of stuff
and basically found out where they were.
Found reports, found the tree structures they make,
had them follow me.
And basically network with dozens of people
who have seen them.
When respected people in the industry walked up to it
and said, "I saw one of those, and that's what I saw,"
that made all the difference in the world to me.
There were a number of people that stood
in front of that model and says,
"Yeah, I've seen one of those."
I didn't do it any different
than I would any other recreation.
Except for a set of skeletal remains, of course,
I used photographs from the Patterson footage.
I didn't embellish it in any way.
I basically tried to get as close
to what was in that film as possible.
There were a few things like the hair length,
but it actually was done the same way
I would have done my Panda or Megaloceros
or any of the other projects.
- He was hoping possibly he could enter it
into recreation division, but we got together the committee
that handles questions and concerns
about entry into the show and it was decided
that the Sasquatch would not be eligible
for the recreation,
simply because it has not been scientifically named
and classified.
So that left the option of him entering
our new Interpretive Division.
It's a new division that we started at the last World Show
and I love it.
It has taken off some very creative pieces in it.
- [Ken] It has to go in with all the art stuff.
So how's it going to do against art?
It will be there for people to look at.
And that's kind of how it's going to be.
It's not there to win anything, that's for sure.
- I wasn't expecting it to look so realistic in the eyes.
It really has a lot ofhuman-like emotion in its face.
So I think I did expect it
to be a little bit more scary looking,
but she really looks tender and kind.
- I'm happy with the eyes and that was the main thing.
In the words of a witness I spoke to,
he said it looked intelligent and the eyes looked soft.
Those are his direct wordsand that is what I wanted to do.
Not scary,
intelligent and soft.
- What's the first thing you think of
when somebody says Bigfoot?
Oh, big. Scary.
Put the fear of God into you.
Monster.
And I think the more that Ken worked on it,
the more he just grew to love it.
So, it's not a monster anymore to him.
It's a friend.
[slow music]
- Now, I will explain the Best in the World Awards.
Winning a Best in World title
is the crowning achievement for success in our industry.
The new world champions that are crowned tonight
will accomplish something they can truly be proud of,
not only today, but years from now.
- The winner of Interpretive Division 2015,
Best of Division,
Don Frank, Smithville, Missouri, Redfish.
[audience applauding]
- You want to play something?
- I could try.
- Yeah, there you go.
- Thanks for playing.
I played with you a littlebit the other night.- [Man] Yeah, that was fun, too.
- [Ken] If we were up to our own devices
and we could do whatever we wanted, it would be easy.
It would be so simple.
But it's not that simple.
It's not just us.
- [Amy] My kids are the ones that I'm mainly worried about,
but I don't agree with marriages staying together
just so you can get thekids grown and then split.
You've wasted a lot of years of your life
that way living unhappily.
It's gonna to be hard to see my husband hurt like that.
I mean, I don't hate him.
Obviously, I care about him.
How can you not care about somebody you've been
with that long?
It's gonna hurt, but
I must make a choice, and I,
boy, have I gone over it a million times.
And I'm going with what's in my heart.
He is my best friend, always has been
and I've always had to be careful not
to call him my best friend because
somebody you're not married to isn't really supposed
to be your best friend.
Are they?
Just hurts to think this time tomorrow I'll
have just stepped off that plane.
- It's gonna be hard to see you get on that plane, but you'll be okay.
You'll be fine.
You'll be fine, it'll be good.
[somber music]
So I took Amy to the airport early this morning
to go back to North Carolina.
Yeah, it was really difficult to see her go.
It's just really, really hard.
We'll see what happens.
But as long as, just as long as she's safe and happy,
that's all I can wish for.
If I really care about her, if I really, really care,
like I say I do, then...
whether it benefits me or not,
I want the best for her.
And that's how it has to be.
Otherwise, people aren't possessions.
If you really love them,
you want them to be happy one way or the other.
[somber music]
When Amy got home, she was terrified.
She was so afraid and she was very tired.
And then I got a phone call.
And the phone call basically said, "I've changed my mind."
It didn't even sound like her. It sounded weird.
She just sounded weird.
And she says, "Well, I'm going to go back and
"be with my family."
And then she basically said,
"Oh, we might see each other at shows,"
but it's not the cause of the end of my marriage.
It was the catalyst.
When Colette got back from her vacation,
I told her what had happened.
She's actually engaged to be married again.
I'm happy for her and she seems to be happy
and that's all I could hope for.
I'm back into my music.
I'm looking at doing displays of art, museum jobs.
I'm just traveling.
I'm looking at doing different things, branching out,
and just not being the guy that,
"Look at my latest deer head, look at my latest coyote."
No, no, no.
The strangest thing about the whole experience
was that I don't think anybody else could have got
through to me.
And to be honest, Amy saved me.
She saved my life, literally.
♪ A candy-colored clown they call the sandman ♪
♪ Tiptoes to my room every night ♪
♪ Just to sprinkle stardust and to whisper ♪
♪ Go to sleep, everything is all right ♪
♪ I close my eyes, then I drift away ♪
♪ Into the magic night, I softly say ♪
♪ A silent prayer like dreamers do ♪
♪ Then I fall asleep to dream, my dreams of you ♪
♪ In dreams, I walk with you
♪ In dreams, I talk to you
♪ In dreams, you're mine all of the time ♪
♪ We're together in dreams, in dreams ♪
Discovery.
There's been a development
and I'm being very guardedly optimistic
as of like right now.
There's something that I've been working with
for a number of years
and it has to do with final proof.
And whether it comes out in the wash
that I had anything to do with it or not, I don't know.
But there is a very, very good possibility
that conclusive proof will be brought forward... soon.
[upbeat music]
♪ There's a lot of frighteningfolks who don't know who I am ♪
♪ Some call me Satan others just the Bogeyman ♪
♪ Well the time has come to step away from the shadows ♪
♪ I plan to lead if you want you can follow ♪
♪ I'm making a stand
♪ I'm gonna show the world who I am ♪
♪ This blue world is turning a bit more brown each day ♪
♪ We screw things up, we don't seem to know another way ♪
♪ So let's make some noise, a primal scream in the night ♪
♪ We're doing things wrong, so lets do things right ♪
♪ The time has come to show the world who I am ♪
♪ Big plans big dream big moves and we know why ♪
♪ I'm telling you now big fur she's gonna fly ♪
♪ Hold on to the task that we have at hand ♪
♪ Only together can we see this good land ♪
♪ Fight the good fight, together we all have to try ♪
♪ 'Cause I'm telling you now big fur she's gonna fly ♪
♪ I'm telling you now big fur she's gonna fly ♪