PERRYSVILLE — A large conference room packed with Bigfoot enthusiasts sits silent, their eyes locked on a screen at the front of the room.
Matt Moneymaker, star of Animal Planet’s Finding Bigfoot, stands in front of the room, issuing commands into his phone. He’s giving instructions to a drone pilot who is flying his aircraft nearby, in the hopes of catching Bigfoot on a thermal camera.
The live video feed from the drone is what the audience is transfixed on, scanning the landscape for possible sasquatches.
“There was something to the right,” an audience member calls out.
Moneymaker tells the drone pilot to turn to the right. The drone slowly turns, revealing a white hot heat signature in a field of gray. The camera zooms in. The heat signature remains still for a moment.
Suddenly, the signature erupts into motion. Its form becomes clear: it’s a rabbit darting across the field.
The audience erupts into laughter.
This was a scene from Bigfoot Basecamp’s VIP reception. It’s part of the Sept. 9-11 Bigfoot Basecamp Weekend at Pleasant Hill Lake Park in Perrysville.
In this instance, Moneymaker was showing off a new technique for finding Bigfoot, one that combines drone footage, cell phone GPS, and expensive search and rescue software.
“We might get a Bigfoot here, we might not. But we know whether or not this is useful and we learn a lot about how to make it better and what the glitches are,” he said.
Across the lake from Moneymaker, campers were on the ground, searching for Bigfoot in Pleasant Hill Lake Park.
I tagged along on a hike through an area where Bigfoot was spotted in 2020. We traipsed through the woods for half an hour, our eyes and ears primed for any sign of the big guy.
Sadly, he never showed himself. All we could hear were the sounds of insects and music blaring from a distant campsite.
When we returned from our hike, we were greeted by Lori Wade, a Bigfoot Research Organization (BFRO) investigator and volunteer for the weekend.
Wade, who lives in Chattanooga, Tennessee, joined BFRO around 2015, and since then she’s experienced two Bigfoot sightings.
The first occurred on an expedition with fellow BFRO members. After hours of walking through the woods, she and her colleagues decided to take a break.
They sat back-to-back, all facing a different direction to ensure that nothing snuck by them. Shortly after setting up, Wade saw a large, hairy figure approaching her on the trail.
“It stopped and then it turned just like that, and it ran down the ravine. Well when it ran down the ravine, all of these little saplings and stuff, all the trees were shaking, acorns were falling everywhere, and the coyotes in the ravine started just going off. You could see the tree movement,” she said.
When her team inspected the area later, they could see trampled leaves where she saw what she believes was Bigfoot run into the ravine.
Since her sighting, there have been four other sightings within 100 yards of where she saw the creature, she said.
Wade has always been a believer in Bigfoot, and decided to join the organization after she saw Moneymaker’s show Finding Bigfoot.
Now she travels all across the country attending Bigfoot events, and even leads Bigfoot expeditions of her own where she serves home cooking for all of her hikers.
“I mean, I love it. And I love the camaraderie, I love being around people that don’t think you’re crazy,” she said.
While Wade may be a true Bigfoot believer, her husband is not.
“My husband thinks I’m absolutely a lunatic. He says we’re part of a cult, I’m like ‘We’re not in a cult!’ But I love it. If you like hiking, if you like camping, what’s not to love about kind of throwing in there a little Bigfoot hunting?” she said.
Near the end of my conversation with Wade, she paused to greet a group of hikers who were returning from a Bigfoot hike.
“Any Bigfoots?” she asked.
“One picked me up and threw me over his shoulder,” a teenage boy in the crowd jokingly replied.
“One slammed me against a tree,” a younger boy trailing behind him added.
The rest of the hikers passed and she turned back to me, her voice full of contentment.
“What’s not fun about that? What’s not fun about just getting people outdoors, doing something? I mean we can’t prove there’s not one, right?” she said.
