SASQUATCH by Don Hunter with Rene Dahinden

Author Don Hunter presents the story of one of the Grand Old Men of Bigfooting, Rene Dahinden (1930-2001), and his quest to expose the SASQUATCH! Dahinden grew up a foster child, was re-adopted by his birth mother and abandoned yet again, and eventually settled in Canada from his native born Switzerland whereupon the quest for Sasquatch would consume him, to the point of ending his marriage. To finance his work he scraped by collecting and reselling spent lead shot from the Vancouver Gun Club. He became involved in millionaire Tom Slick's Bigfoot expedition, which is described herein with mixed feelings from Dahinden and some truly bizarre details ... 

What the hell, Bob?

An anecdote which is fortunately absent from the modern Bigfoot canon has expedition member Bob Titmus stealing used sanitary pads from women's rest rooms and nailing them to trees around camp in an attempt to attract horny Bigfoots. This is, admittedly, in keeping with classic stories of Bigfoot kidnapping forest brides and the modern, sleazy underbelly of the Bigfoot genre:

From the Men's Adventure Library's excellent Cryptozoology anthology

Amidst this sleaze, Dahinden struggles to make scientists and the public appreciate the serious nature of witness sightings. The death of Slick in a 1962 plane crash robs the field of a major donor, and at times money is tight for Dahinden and he has to suspend field work. Always though he continues collecting reports, and the fact that people are seeing something out there - something that leaves enormous footprints - keeps him going. Some sheriffs and policemen have sightings, along with mineral prospectors and various First Nations individuals, and these witnesses are treated as especially reliable and important by Dahinden.

Co-author Don Hunter

Not so reliable is fellow Bigfoot hunter and confirmed hoaxer Ivan Marx, who leads his comrades on a merry chase around Bossburg, WA, with the infamous "Cripplefoot" tracks of 1969, alongside a grift from one Joe Metlow, a local prospector who claimed at first to have an entire Sasquatch captured in a mine, and then later only a foot in a freezer. 

Here is where extreme fractures appear in the Bigfoot community, as Roger Patterson, John Green, and Dahinden and their cliques all find themselves at odds over the Bossburg mystery. Dahinden is offended by the moneymaking attitudes of both Patterson and Green, with Patterson acting a carnival barker and Green throwing money at Metlow's bogus captured Bigfoot.

Eventually Peter Byrne discovers he's been swindled by Marx when he checks some supposed film of the crippled Bigfoot taken by Marx and finds it blank. Other accounts have said it was snippets of Mickey Mouse cartoons but in either case it was a bust, and Dahinden is left with a bad taste in his mouth.

Co-author Rene Dahinden and his quarry

Dahinden again, in the field

Despite his friction with Patterson, Dahinden is bullish on the Patterson-Gimlin Film. Expertise from Grover Krantz and "the Russians" Dmitri Bayanov and Igor Bourtsev is brought to bear in support of its authenticity.

It's interesting 50 years on that despite Dahinden's approval of it the film is only one small part of the book - nowadays it's one of the few pieces of Bigfoot evidence left for us to pick over, and instead of blurry reprints of still frames in black white we can watch a "hi-def" (give or take) stabilized version on youtube. But Dahinden was after the real thing, the genuine article of a live Bigfoot. 

Sketches from the Bords' Bigfoot Casebook Updated

One especially evocative sighting doesn't quite get the full treatment from Hunter and Dahinden: two prospector brothers who sighted a gigantic, auburn haired creature near Pitt Lake, BC in 1965. The creature was "only a city block away" from them but on the other side of a steep gorge, and had immense hands, "like canoe paddles" and yellow in color. The brothers also found huge footprints before and after their sighting.

Hunter and Dahinden leave out the mysterious parallel grooves found beside the tracks, as well as the brothers' description of a pink tint within the tracks. Janet and Colin Bord's Bigfoot Casebook Updated (2004) includes these as well as sketches made by the brothers. Perhaps Hunter and Dahinden thought the additional details too outré, a common tension in Bigfooting that sees "scientific" perspectives of relict hominoids set against cases that include UFO, ESP, and high strangeness.

The Bords' casebook also includes three other reports of captured Bigfoots beside the famous Jacko case, with two from 1800s newspaper accounts and one from 1940 in Alaska. Hunter and Dahinden do not mention these, as they term Jacko the only captured Bigfoot. Maybe they thought the other cases too flimsy or weren't aware of them, but the point of this nitpicking is to illustrate the varied perspectives within the Bigfoot field.

Above, the original 1973 hardcover edition from McClelland and Stewart Limited. One gets a melancholy feeling reading Dahinden's quest, and he himself admits it may be a fool's errand, but that he can never give it up. Despite his searching, he never had a sighting of his own.

We'll leave Dahinden with the last word here, as recollected by fellow Bigfooter Christopher Murphy: "You know, I've spent over 40 years - and I didn't find it. I guess that's got to say something."

Sasquatch is available to read and download at archive dot org.

Signet Books, 1975 (original pub. 1973)