Survivorman Les Stroud on Bigfoot

Les Stroud is a Canadian survival expert, filmmaker and musician best known as the creator, writer, producer, director, cameraman and host of the television series Survivorman. He has also done shows on Bigfoot and believes them to be real.

Survivorman Les Stroud 
The World's Premier Survival Expert

What's going to lead to the next exciting step in the search for Sasquatch?

I think it's a two-pronged approach to a big breakthrough. We're already in a situation where we not only have easy access to cameras but really high-quality cameras. What you can do with an iPhone these days is pretty intense. Everyone from hunters and people going fishing to adventure sports nuts are all out there with a decent camera and the ability to use it. So if there is something out there, then the odds are getting better that we'll capture more than a blurry photo. Another factor that could lead to a breakthrough is how the research techniques today are much, much stronger. Real scientists are getting involved in the research, and not just local people who are interested. If you look at the work of people such as Jeff Meldrum or the work of the Olympic Project, they're using 3-D and heat-sourcing technology so that if there was something very elusive—but very real—the ability to detect it gets better everyday. It's mind blowing. 

What have been your own encounters with Bigfoot?

While shooting Survivorman Bigfoot, some of he things that happen just seem to betray any sort of normal or natural wildlife explanation that I could come up with. When I was much younger and in the middle of northern Ontario, I had something very heavy and two-footed walk up to my tent. I've been on a lake before and heard the screams that people talk about...it just sounds like women being tortured in a Satanic ritual or something. When I hear something like that in the middle of a forest, I think "OK, that's not cougars fighting or porcupines mating...that's something else.

Why do you think Bigfoot has remained hidden from the wider world for so long?

If you collect all of the data of the anecdotal evidence, and you add things up, you start to see a pattern emerge. It seems very much like extreme savants. What if this was a human species with incredible savant abilities? There's a boy they found whose savant ability is to remain hidden. He could be in the living room with you and you couldn't find him. What if the whole species had a litany of savant abilities that enabled them to be stealthy in the bush? Does that make them aliens? No. Does that make them apes? No. We don't know what it makes them. 

Are you hoping to be the one to bring in Bigfoot?

I don't want to be the one to discover it. My life would be over! I would never be able to sleep again because everyone would be at my door. 

From Newsweek's Special Edition Magazine - "BIGFOOT: The Science, Sightings, and Search for America's Elusive Legend" - Purchase here!