Searching For Bigfoot: Deer River Minnesota Bob Olsen Bigfoot Prints

Deer River Minnesota Bob Olsen Bigfoot Prints

June 2006

Deer River, Minnesota

On June 10th of 2006, the Searching for Bigfoot team, lead by Tom Biscardi, headed off on our third cross country expedition of the year. We began our trip, heading for Deer River, Minnesota. We went to meet with Bob Olsen and his family. Mr. Olsen had sent us a note telling us about a row of giant foot prints he was told about on a dirt road that was being cut into a remote resort area. He went out to the area to see for himself and verified the existence of the tracks. Not knowing exactly what to do, he made plaster casts of some of the tracks and held them for us.

We arrived the following morning in Deer River and met Bob Olsen and his beautiful wife Nancy at Bob’s business, Olsen Auto Body Repair. Bob is a tall articulate man who enjoys investigating the mysteries that life presents all of us. After a short time of introductions and simple social chatter, Bob stepped back into his shop and came back to his office displaying a group of casted foot prints. He took several with plaster of paris and a couple more with materials used in his body shop. It seems he had run out of plaster while in the area, but was so amazed, he was not willing to stop making casts.

Here are a few of Bob Olsen’s prints. Note the blue colored casts at the end. The blue casts are made from automobile body putty!

Tom and the team examined the prints carefully. We found them to posses all of the attributes of real casts and none of the obvious traits of fakes. We will do additional research on the casts themselves and on some of the materials we were able to remove from the casts before we can make a definite finding on the authenticity of the casts themselves. We were hoping to find more material stuck to the casts, but Mr. Olsen had blown off much of the debris with an air hose prior to our arrival. He was unaware of the importance of keeping as much material with the casts as possible. Often, we are able to find pieces of skin or hair on the bottom of the prints that can help validate them. As luck would have it, we did find hair on the outside edges of the prints that were cast with the body putty. The hair was stuck to the putty and as long as it was not contaminated by the chemicals in the putty we may be able to coax a DNA reading from them.

Tom decided to pack up the rig and head out the site where the casts were taken. We climbed into the truck and followed Bob out of town. We drove about thirty miles down the main two lane road before coming to a turn off into the woods. We turned onto this newly graded one lane dirt road and drove another 3 or 4 miles into the woods. Soon, we began seeing small marker flags that Bob had left near his finds. We pulled the rig over and stepped outside. As soon as we did, we were welcomed by huge swarms of mosquitoes and other hungry flying residents! It was hot and muggy and not a place I would choose to spend a day just walking about. Walking carefully down the road, we searched for signs of foot prints. It wasn’t long before we began finding them. We did not see any fresh prints, but we saw several prints that, although not fresh, were still discernable. We were able to follow these tracks until they turned into the deep woods bordering both sides of the road.

These pictures show the dense woods on either side of the road and one of the older prints still recognizable alongside of the road.

The tracks seemed to follow well worn game trails through the thickets and towards some swampy areas that sat behind the thickets. We found deep impressions in the softer earth on those trails. Although we could not make out clear prints due to the heavy leaf litter on the ground, we could feel the heel and arch as we ran our hands lightly over the impressions. On the sides of the trails, we found saplings from three and up to five inches in diameter snapped over along the trail. Something we all recognized as a common thing done by this creature to mark trails and territory. Our excitement grew because we began to realize that we were on the trail of something very large that left footprints unlike any other animal!

We met back at the rig and began planning our next step. We know that the animal is nocturnal, so we would need to come back to this spot after dark. Not an action we were thrilled about. Although we were excited about the creature, there were other animals in this area we did not want to come into contact with. We had met them here in the afternoon and knew they would be out in full force by evening. Mosquitoes… Mosquitoes by the millions… But, we know our jobs and knew what we had to do. We checked for the best places to set up our trip cameras and headed back to town to get prepared.

We headed back to our Motel, The White Oak Lodge, in Deer River and unpacked our mosquito netting and bug repellents. We grabbed a quick bite to eat and headed back out to the site of the prints. Once there, we set out our cameras and baited the area with sardines (a bait that omits a strong odor and is known to have been effective in the past) and light sticks (a bait that attracts the creature with a visual lure, playing on the creature’s curiosity, also known to be effective in the past). We set up our distress calls (bait that has worked in the past, simulating the sounds of game animals in distress and attracting the creature audibly). We had covered three senses for the creature, however, we were not through yet. We also set up our recording equipment to play out the recorded sounds of a creature we have on file. This has been effective for us on several occasions and hopefully will work this night as well. Next, we set up our bionic listening device, capable of hearing a whisper at 300 yards! We prepared our hand held heat seeking devices and passed them out. We checked the batteries in our thermal imager, capable of seeing anything that gives off heat at up to 300 yards away, our night vision scopes, and our infrared cameras. We were ready, or at least, we though we were prepared for anything. We soon found that we were not. Within ten minutes of setting up the mosquitoes began to swarm. They were so thick that they soon broke through our best defenses. They were inside of our netting, they were inside of our truck, even inside of our equipment…. They were literally eating us alive! But, we had a job to do and set about doing it. We set up the trip cameras and set out the baits. We began our calls and listened intently with our bionic ear, waiting for the return calls or any sounds of animals moving in the woods around us. We sat as quietly as possible and were not even able to swat the masses of insects away as they enjoyed their meals.

We stayed for several more hours, but with no success. If there was a creature in this area, it had moved on. We did not hear or see anything in these woods all night. We decided to call it a night and packed up. We would be back in the morning to collect our trip cameras and see if we might have captured anything on film. We headed back to the motel so we could shower up and begin treating our bites. Between us, we counted more than a hundred bites… We could only imagine what would have happened to us without the netting and special gear that we wore!

We headed back the following morning and collected our cameras. We had not captured anything unusual on film. If there was a creature in this area, and we believe that to be highly probable, we did not find any more evidence of it this time. However, there was enough evidence remaining in the area that we made the decision to stay a little longer and meet and talk to other locals who claimed to have found prints or had sightings in the general area.

It didn’t take us long to find that prints like these had been found, independently, by several other local people. One of the people who saw and cast prints from this area was a Mr. Dave Smith. Mr. Smith is a retired Minnesota Game Warden, who patrolled this area as part of his territory for many years.

The Searching for Bigfoot team found Mr. Smith and interviewed him. Dave told us that he had been and outdoorsman for many years, retired as a Game Warden, and still spent his off times in the woods. He told us about when he first saw these tracks. He was surprised to say the least. He had spent years in the woods but had never seen anything like them before. He had heard stories about similar finds in the area for years, but never saw them himself, until now.

Tom Biscardi with Linda and David and Linda Smith and Tom with two local hunters, Tim and Nick, who shared their experiences and photos with our team.

Dave told us of some of the stories he had heard from local hunters over the years and agreed to introduce us to a few of the better hunters in the area. We listened intently to the local people who knew the area best. Once they began to understand that are serious about finding the creature known as Bigfoot, they began to open up to us… Shortly, they brought out pictures they had taken in the same woods that the casts Bob Olsen had made came from! Although taken several seasons prior to the casts Bob had, they were similar in size and shape.

Their pictures were of prints made in muddy earth and not in the sand like Bob Olsen’s, but they could be seen very clearly. There are no casts made of these prints, but they did have the presence of mind to put a tape measure up next to the prints prior to taking the snap shots.

The Searching for Bigfoot Team did not solve this mystery on this trip, but we made many friends and found a lot of people who will help us keep on looking. Some of these people were uncomfortable sharing their stories because they thought they would be ridiculed. Once they met our team and realized how seriously we took this subject, they felt comfortable sharing what they had seen and experienced. We developed friendships that will last for lifetimes. The Searching for Bigfoot team has expanded and we know that this will bring us even closer to our goal. Our goal of proving to the world that there is a large unknown primate, walking on two legs, and living just outside the areas we call home. Until we do, we will continue Searching for Bigfoot!

Written and posted by JavaBob

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