Up-dated 2011 edition includes
section on sarcoptic mange in foxes and treatment plus a list of
wildlife sanctuaries and rescue centres in the UK.
By the 1700s the British fox was on the verge of extinction and about to
follow the bear and wolf into history having been hunted for sport for centuries.
The first solely wildlife book by the noted naturalist.
The answer was to import thousands of foxes per year for sport. But
foxes kept dying out so jackals were tried. Some were caught, some
escaped.
Even wolves and coyote were released for hunting.
The summation of over 30 years research -all backed up with full
references including from books and papers by famous British "fox
hunters" and manuals and game keeper guides to keeping foxes for
hunting- reveals the damnable lie of
"pest control" hunting but also reveals the cruelty the animals were
subject to and how private menageries as well as travelling shows helped
provide the British and Irish countryside with some incredible events.
The legendary Girt Dog of Ennerdale, a favourite of cryptozoologists and mystery writers, is also dealt with in detail.
Arctic foxes, coyotes in Essex and many more near forgotten mysteries of
wild nature in the UK and supported by illustrations and photographs
once thought to have been lost many years ago. Trawling newspaper
archives does pay off.
The terror and mystery created by “Jack The Ripper” has been the
subject of countless books, magazine articles as well as movies and TV
documentaries. Ask anyone if they have ever heard of Jack The Ripper
and it is doubtful anyone would respond with a “no idea.”
By that same token, ask people who “Spring-heeled Jack” was and you
would be lucky to find anyone who had ever heard of him.
Spring-heeled
Jack was the subject (loosely) of a film The Curse of the Wraydons
(1946) and Dominic Keating also appeared as Spring Heeled Jack in the
2010 film Sherlock Holmes by The Asylum film company. The character has
also featured in both American and British comic books and a number of
books, for both children and adults.
But the fact that the Springald held the country –not just London– in a
grip of terror much longer that the Ripper did is all but forgotten
except for some half-truths and fanciful theories.
Now be prepared to read the full story of Spring Heeled Jack
I do wonder whether it is just the constant arguing, name-calling and "little wars" going on between researchers and groups that has resulted in a near famine of new books on cryptozoology -I'll call it that since it covers sea and lake creatures, hominids and so on?
There are any number of "A-Z of Cryptozoology", "Dictionary of Cryptozoology" as well as "Monsters of Cryptozoology" -all basically presenting the same rather boring, old information. Where are all the original books on first hand original investigations?
Bigfoot/Sasquatch seems to consist, in books as on You Tube or TV documentaries, of works on why Roger Patterson faked his "Patty" footage -which I believe (having looked at the evidence) he did not. Or the same old Bigfoot cases re-hashed. Conspiracies involving the US government and "cryptids" and what I can only call total and utter crap.
It's quite easy to publish a dozen-or-so books of your work if you are just re-hashing or copying. Or trying to turn true accounts and 'investigations' into action novels!
Where are all the researchers looking at sea creatures ("sea monsters") or "Lake monsters" and their books? Have these creatures finally become extinct and therefore no more books are needed?
And since when did book sources/sellers list fiction amongst the non-fiction books? "That sounds interesting", I thought, before finding out the book was just a typical Syfy channel style plot book. Weird creature encounters....actually a bunch of fantasy cryptozoological sex books.
All listed, mixed-up in amongst the Sasquatch and other cryptozoological books!
PLEASE if you want original research/investigation check my books out -bulky, well illustrated and fully referenced!
I thought I'd try to get copies of old books that were lost or "purloined" over the years. Bernard Heuvelman books are priced at £150-400 ($3-800 US)? WHAT??!
How on earth do we expect new, well educated researchers and investigators to enter the field if they need to spend so much on a book? It really is unbelievable.
That book at the top of the post? It can cost you between $80-176 (US). Ridiculous. I have a pdf of this and it is just NOT worth anywhere near that.
And there seem to be no "Names" amongst the authors. By "Names" I mean writers you know are truthful and have put in the work and you know you can trust. Ivan T. Sanderson, Heuvelman John Green, Grover Krantz -you saw their names on articles or books and you knew what you were going to get and that the work would count for something.
No more.
If anyone out there can recommend good, well researched books then please leave a comment -it's appreciated!
A few weeks back I posted that I was unsubscribing from the Bigfoot Evidence channel.
Why? I was fed up with the constant obvious fake videos and images being posted. Yesterday I realised I had gotten it all wrong. Egg on my face because I never checked things out properly. Normally I do.
Bigfoot Evidence is used to show photographs and videos -as well as other Sasquatch evidence- as a central focus. "What's new?" You ask. "I'll check Bigfoot Evidence and see!"
Then some ass (me) comes along and fails to realise what's going on. It is, in fact, a great channel. I was watching it from 2330-0045 hrs yesterday/today. Some nice illustration demonstrations -"Bigfoot Illustrated" by Dredd Funn and I do mean excellent artwork.
At the moment I'm doing research for the next book.
Rather than a book on the paranormal as planned -I did post a while back stating I was going to look more deeply at ghostly phenomena but the total lack of response made me change my plans!
I'll be dipping back
into my naturalist roots to look at some odd stuff but that's just me.
Although, with my last book, Pursuing The Strange And Weird: A Naturalist's Viewpoint (up-dated 2013), I thought I had covered "sea monsters", Sasquatch and other such things for one final time I had reckoned without that invisible hand that tugs me toward anything unusual and, sadly, once I'm drawn in then I have to pursue the subject until I can close the file.
Recently, a number of things have been drawing me back onto the subject of mystery hominids -Sasquatch, Yeti, Almasty et al. There have been documentaries on the subject and some have seemingly deliberately skirted over facts in favour of twisting the truth or, at best, not telling the whole story.
The Bigfoot Files on the UKs Channel 4 was one such series and the behind-the-scenes controversy exploded and then fizzled away.
Melba Ketchum and the Sasquatch DNA is another matter. When I wrote Pursuing I was assured by (now red-faced) academics that the evidence was solid. The whole matter needs to be looked into again since this matter also seems to have fizzled out but is there threatening to ignite again.
The mockery of Almasti researchers has also been something that I have found annoying. I first corresponded with Dmitri Bayanov in the 1970s/1980s. He has always been a sincere and competent investigator. The story of Zana may not have involved Almasty -DNA work by Professor Bryan Sykes, Professor of Human Genetics at the University of Oxford research, revealed that Zana’s ancestry
was 100% Sub-Saharan African and that she was most probably a slave taken to the region by the then ruling Ottomans. But that does not throw out all the other work carried out over the decades.
And Todd Standing and his Bigfoot footage....
This subject alone deserves a book of its own but I shall try to be concise!
The subject of unidentified sea creatures is something else I feel a need to look at. I thought I had covered the subject at sufficient length in Pursuing but my thoughts on the subject evolve and I really want to look at the ecology involved as it could very well explain the decreasing number of reports.
Ecology could also explain the old "tall tales" of mega fauna. Looking at Africa in the 1600s and descriptions of wildlife from contemporary accounts and looking at the fauna there in the 21st century shows just why the mega fauna may well have existed but now become extinct.
Having said that I did note in Some More Things Strange & Sinister how Swiss photographer and anti-bushmeat campaigner Karl Ammann, in 1996, found a crested skull in the Democratic Republic of Congo. This was the first small step to discovering the man-sized chimpanzees known as Bili ape or Bondo mystery ape.
Africa may still hold surprises.
And there are a few surprise subjects I am looking into and the results may be as startling as finds published in The Red Paper: Canids.
In fact, all of my books have featured "lost" or "no longer existing" images and photographs. Each one has also corrected some very -very- dubious 'facts' pushed by Cryptozoologists and their ilk. I'm not against serious investigators calling themselves "Cryptozoologists" but there are a lot of sensationalists out there and the truth isn't that important.
Okay, these people do not read my books but they have certainly, uh, "borrowed" from them.
But this book is going to be, I hope, finished by next Summer. Title? Still not sure but when I know you'll know!
Oh, and, no, I'm not out to make friends just put forward the truth and facts -all fully referenced as in all my books.
Some people here need to READ. Comments from two months ago show total
ignorance of any facts and I am speaking as a naturalist and former
skeptic. You need to get a copy of Sasquatch: Legend Meets Science by
Jeff Meldrum -it's a few years old now so no excuse not to read it
unless you do not want facts. There is also the Monsterquest special
with the same title.
Also, every hoax claim has fallen flat. Look at
the enhanced clips of the footage including ruptured leg muscle when it
moves. THAT was impossible to fake in 1967 and why would a hoaxer add a
touch that no one at the time would ever see and which he probably never
knew would be seen.
I go by evidence and I speak from the evidence -of
people who are scientifically recognised experts in their fields
-anthropology, biology -people who have studied primates and
particularly great apes who find so much consistency in evidence and
most of it unknown to the general public. I used to mock the subject
for years until I took a look at the evidence. If it is the mere fact
that these creatures exist that scares you then do not watch items about
them or books.
This is an interesting documentary but obviously tailored so that those who do not want to believe in an American Great Ape do not have to. But it also plays into the hands of those who do believe.
When you have two experts who have worked in the field and studied primates -and Great Apes in particular- K. Anna I. Nekaris or Ian Redmond who command the greatest respect- and they see all the correlations between those and Sasquatch you need to pay attention.
I will not be too rude about the man from the University of Manchester, Dr Bill Sellers, when he says nothing about the Patterson film says anything other than "man in a costume". Firstly, we have to remember that one curator of Natural History Museum, London, was "asked to leave" when he discussed the Loch Ness Monster. And British Universities are mainly about PR and bringing in the cash these days -we no longer have Natural History departments because they do not bring funding to universities. So, there is that. It might also be that Dr Sellers is afraid of professional embarassment.
You see, from 1977-2005 I was an exotic fauna consultant for UK police forces from the Scottish Highlands to the Isele of Wight and I used to be called upon if there were sightings of large cats -and I mean pumas or lynx and even panthers (black leopards)- and live stock kills. I dealt with university DNA departments as well as other professional experts.
I once spoke to a very senior naturalist who, under very good viewing conditions saw a puma move across a road and momentarily stop by a barrier (so the height could be gauged) before continuing on. The naturalist who had worked with police as an "expert witness" and had studied wildlife in Canada and particularly puma. He told me by phone and in writing that "from tip of ears, facial markings and all the other diagnostic features there can be absolutely no doubt that it was a puma. A black puma."
Now, having read and checked the credentials of this man and his work I knew that no one could really challenge him. But they did. A man far less qualified who had never studied puma in Canada and did not have an international reputation responded: "No. He's mistaken. It was NOT a black puma. There are no black pumas." In fact, there is no reason why it could not be a melanistic puma -they were supposedly common around Los Angeles in the 18th century and were reported in South America. But the "it cannot be black" is the get-out excuse -if it was black then perhaps it was not as big as claimed? A domestic cat?
So, what did my expert (remember: "X= The Unknown and "spurt" is a drip under pressure") have to counter this senior naturalist's contention that he had seen a melanistic puma?
A black leopard.
To say that the senior naturalist was livid is an understatement. "I would NEVER have gotten out of the car and gone to take meaurements of the area and barrier had it been a leopard!" He re-iterated that he KNEW the difference between a puma and a leopard and that if someone claimed they could be mistaken by him...well, he remained angry but polite.
So, I got back to my "expert" and offered him the telephone number to contact and discuss the matter with the witness -he very -very- adamantly refused to do so! So a very low ranking professional called into question a very senior professionals abilities. The senior naturalist refused any further discussion. His report is on record.
Then there was a Canadian naturalist who had been to Vancouver Island and other areas of Scotland to carry out field studies of puma. He "might" have heard a call once and found a partial track but had not seen one "in the flesh" yet he knew the area he and his colleagues were working in had large populations. So, he's in the Scottish Highlands on a warm, sunny, clear day. Driving to meet colleagues. As he drove along he looked into a field and some 50 feet away stood a puma. He thought a female puma. He continued driving and thinking that the cat would show itself now and then....he braked!
He had only flown in from Canada the day before but suddenly realised he was in Scotland and there are no pumas in Scotland!Yet he had just seen one clear as day. So he told his colleagues who after jokes about Scottish whisky and so on told him they did not doubt him but there were "no pumas in Scotland". He told me a few days later after getting my number from the police and we talked a good while on the subject.
So, he was a known expert on puma but he was not taken seriously by people he had known "for decades". But I can top even this account. This witness was a professor from an American university and police checked on him for me and told me that he had worked with US Fish & Game and taken part in various puma trapping and tagging study projects. In short he KNEW what a puma looked like. He was in Scotland taking advantage of salmon fishing and had caught "a beauty" of a size he could boast about but had seen bigger close-by so waited it out to try to catch bigger.
As he sat, watching the river he heard a slight noise break the silence and his first thought was that a rabbit or fox had broken cover not realising he was there. He wasn't bothered but his catch was on a ground sheet some 10 feet from him and he thought a fox might try to grab it. So he turned "there was a full-sized male puma, greyish in colour looking at me." To say he was shocked would be another understatement so he got ready to stand and "make a lot of noise" to scare it off but then thought it probably wanted his fish "I just weren't dumb enough to want to fight for it!" And the puma moved in, took the fish and was off.
Expert breathed a sigh of relief. Not only did he have a tall tale about a big catch that "got away" but he had a funny cat story to tell, too! Then he told me he almost fell back down onto the fishing stool he had been on. In fact he sat there "a good half hour" after realising that he was in Scotland and not California. What did he get for mentioning this to his peers? Jokes.
So, Dr Sellers may well have been happy to take the TV pay-cheque and maintain "the equilibrium" though in experience Redmond and Nakaris totally outranked him. But here is my point, and I have been very long winded about this I know, but why were the gathered experts not shown all the enhanced Patterson footage or given the technical data pulled together by Meldrum, Krantz and others? This documentary was made a long time after the Monster Quest episode - Sasquatch: Legend Meets Science (also the title of the book by Dr Meldrum based on all that gathered data) so no excuse.
And before you think "Why didn't Meldrum point this out and insist on using some of this evidence?" It needs to be pointed out TV just does not work like that. One TV company makes a Sasquatch documentary that seems pro-existence another cannot really call the experts involved liars so it just makes an "on-the-fence" counter documentary where those who just "do not want to believe" can go with the expert "weighted" in their favour.
There are agendas behind most documentaries and they are either entertainment, trying to prove a point or mocking. Bigfoot the Definitive Guide was obviously entertainment (through re-enactments) but also trying to prove a point but if it was to prove non-existence then it failed. Redmond, Nakaris and Meldrum won things over because all Sellers had to really say was "it's a man in a suit" and "no evidence" which works if you are dumb. And as for evidence Meldrum has -specifically the collection of footcasts which include dermal ridging and so forth- well, he is a "consultant" and does not outrank the producer or director....nor the "cutting room floor"!
I've done TV work and radio work and hours of talking, evidence pointing can be cut to "not real evidence" from my mouth when in fact what I said was: "To those who have never investigated or looked into the spoor, casts and live stock kills and just depend on the odd news funny item we are dealing with not-too-bright observers and that is not real evidence." In 2000, following yet another such broadcast on BBC radio I sent a letter of complaint and pointed out that from that point on the BBC were on a "black list" when it came to future dealings.
BBC TV had been similarly black listed by me after another "silly cat story" where observers were openly mocked by the reporter and studio presenters -one of whom told me later, while trying to convince me to appear in another "mystery cat" item, "well, we're sorry about that but that was down to the editor of the programme. A lie since the reporter mocking the witnesses and studio reaction were all live and not pre-arranged items.
The latest "real life" celebrity has more pull on TV news reports than an expert of forty years on a subject. "What do you think of this Bigfoot report, Kim?" "Well, John, he wasn't as big as my butt!" Cue laughter. But I would have loved to have seen Sellers review all the data and the Patterson movie enhancements and respond with "It's a man in a suit" because, as Bill Munn pointed out, you cannot fit a man into such a suit especially at a time when the techniques to build such a costume did not exist.
