The net's been buzzing this week after a hunter based out of Texas (a weird enough state already) announced he'd accomplished the seemingly impossible task of killing a Sasquatch. Unlike others who've claimed the same, this guy says he has a body! But there's something the media isn't telling you about the kill...
Rick Dyer calls himself a professional Bigfoot hunter, and it's true that in the last few years he's made a career out of searching for the legendary beast. But while the "professionals" from Finding Bigfoot can't seem to track down the hairy dude over four seasons with hundreds of leads and thousands of dollars in equipment, Dyer claims he's managed to kill one with some pork and a gun.
Images of Dyer's kill began circling the internet this week, and it wasn't long before mainstream outlets like TIME magazine were giving valuable press to the "man who shot Sasquatch", running stories about how Dyer baited the beast with Wal-Mart ribs nailed to a tree outside San Antonio. He claims that after the big guy was studied (we're never told by whom), his body was stuffed and preserved. Now Dyer is touring the country with the dead body in the back of his trailer, charging curious onlookers a few bucks a pop for a peek behind the curtain.
If this all sounds a little, well, fake.. that's because it is. What the media isn't mentioning is that this isn't the first time that Rick Dyer has "killed Bigfoot".
Back in 2008, mainstream news outlets like CNN went crazy after two hunters held a press conference to announce that they had shot and killed Sasquatch in Georgia, providing photos of the creature with its guts hanging out, the body frozen safely in an icebox. But when the beast was sold for some $50,000, the ice was thawed only to reveal a rubber suit with some cow parts tossed in. One of the hoaxers, a police officer, lost his job over the matter. The other was Rick Dyer.
Of course, Dyer claims that the Men in Black stole the real body.
The fun doesn't stop there, because just last year Dyer was part of a British documentary on the elusive beast, Shooting Bigfoot, a film that caused quite a bit of controversy thanks to its final moments.. If you plan on seeing the film, and can't parse out the ending from the title, consider this your SPOILER ALERT.
During the climax of Shooting Bigfoot, Dyer and filmmaker Matthew Morgan are camped out in a "research area" that Dyer has a gut feeling about. The "skeptical documentarian", of course, doesn't exactly believe him but goes along with it. Stop me if you've heard this one before.
Sure enough, like most of these cliches tend to shake out, something attacks the camp that night and we're left with a lot of shaky, inconclusive footage a la Blair Witch Project. There's a scuffle, a clip of a tense Dyer clutching his gun, some argumentative yelling, and a shot is fired. Finally, we're given a glimpse of a big hairy face that bears a striking resemblance to a rubber mask.
We're led to believe that Rick downed a Bigfoot in those final moments, but Morgan doesn't quite have the gumption to end his film conclusively and has refused to really elaborate on what happened.
Morgan remaining mum on the subject is probably a good thing, since one of the people involved in the film came out and said the entire final sequence was written and rehearsed several times. So much for categorizing the film as a documentary.
Add these events to Dyer's complete distain for serious researchers, his past run-ins with the law, and his constant failure to actually provide any actual data to real scientists, and it's a wonder that any mainstream news outlets are even bothering to pay any attention to the latest hoax.. especially without mentioning all of Dyer's past transgressions.
Turns out good reporting is harder to track down than Bigfoot.
If you're serious about tackling your own hunt for the elusive Sasquatch (or starting your own traveling sideshow attraction), these are much better places to bag a Bigfoot than the supposedly "wooded area" where Dyer shot his. Good luck!
[Huge thanks to Brett McGinnis for tracking down a photo of the "Bigfoot"]
onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com Uncovering the Dirty Secrets Behind the Latest Dead Bigfoot Story