Bigfoot Skookum Cast — Research Team Finds Body Impression in Washington Mud

In September 2000, a team from the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization (BFRO) set up a bait station in the Skookum Meadow area of the Gifford Pinchot National Forest in Washington State. The following morning they discovered a large impression in the soft mud around the bait that appeared to have been made by a large bipedal creature resting on its side. The impression was carefully excavated and preserved in a plaster cast measuring approximately 3.5 by 5 feet. Anatomists and wildlife biologists who examined the cast identified features consistent with a large, unclassified primate: heel impressions, forearm impressions with hair follicle patterns, and what appeared to be a buttock impression. Dr. Jeffery Meldrum of Idaho State University and Dr. John Bindernagel, a wildlife biologist, both concluded the impression was genuine and inconsistent with any known North American animal. The cast was exhibited at scientific conferences and generated significant academic interest. The Skookum Cast remains one of the most physically compelling pieces of evidence for a large unidentified primate in the Pacific Northwest. Elk were proposed as the source, but investigators demonstrated that an elk reclining in the same position would produce a fundamentally different impression pattern.