Wildlife Biologist Alton Higgins

Like many people involved with this field of research, my interest in the sasquatch dates from childhood. I read everything I could find by Ivan T. Sanderson and was captivated by “The Legend of Boggy Creek” movie. My school chums and I even used to plan expeditions to the Pacific Northwest to trap a bigfoot.

Growing up hunting and fishing, I enjoyed the outdoors and decided to pursue a career involving the study of animals. I enrolled at Arizona State University and earned an undergraduate degree in wildlife biology and a graduate degree in zoology. I was employed through the university and served in different capacities, including working as a field researcher in a variety of locales and ecosystems, ranging from the mixed coniferous forest in eastern Arizona to the riparian systems of the mountains and deserts of central Arizona to the marshes and woodlands of the lower Colorado River valley along the Arizona/California border. Much of this work entailed doing hundreds of wildlife censuses, particularly for birds.

As much as I enjoyed biological fieldwork, I was gone too much to make
a new wife real happy, so I eventually decided to go into education.
After additional schooling and four years teaching junior high math and
science, I moved to Oklahoma in 1989, where I currently reside. I teach in the General Education Department at Mid-America Christian University, an accredited four-year institution. My responsibilities there have varied, but
mostly I’ve taught earth science, biology, and ecology, along with
lower level math courses. I must confess that I gave very little
thought to unknown primates for most of my adult life, although I
remained interested in the occasional sasquatch television documentary.

My perspective changed in 1998.

Southeast of Mt. St. Helens, while on an outing with some cousins, we found, quite by accident, what appeared to be compelling sasquatch evidence. I couldn’t stop thinking about it after I returned home. That experience prompted my first search of the Internet for bigfoot information and my first contact with the BFRO. Shortly thereafter I signed up as a volunteer (as you could do at that time). Soon Matt Moneymaker started sending me a few submissions from Oklahoma to check out, and my involvement with the organization just sort of evolved.

As I studied tracks and other forms of evidence with my own eyes, and
as I met and spoke with eyewitnesses who gave every indication of being
completely sane and honest, I grew increasingly fascinated and
increasingly convinced of the legitimacy of this domain of research. By
sheer luck, I found myself living in a state that produced some unique
and exciting opportunities for evidence collection and evaluation.

That served to initiate a collaboration with BFRO Curator Dr. LeRoy
Fish, with whom it was my pleasure to share ideas and information for
about a year and a half or so. For me and others, he both instructed
and inspired. Following Dr. Fish’s untimely death, Matt M. asked me to
help coordinate the disposition of submitted physical evidence. My
primary areas of interest included overseeing research outings and
related activities in the Oklahoma area, collecting and assessing
physical evidence, and helping advance the knowledge and expertise of the investigators.

Probably the highlight of my years with the BFRO was the September 2003
International Bigfoot Symposium, sponsored by the Willow Creek/China Flat Museum. It seemed like every living sasquatch researcher of note was there. All the scheduled speakers invited by the museum steering committee, with the exception of Dmitri Bayanov, were BFRO curators, so the symposium presented a once in a lifetime opportunity to talk to some outstanding researchers, most of whom I had communicated with for years but never met.

One of the people I ran into at Willow Creek was Craig Woolheater, director of the Texas Bigfoot Research Center. Dr. John Bindernagel, who had spoken at the TBRC’s annual conference the previous year, encouraged me to present my paper at the upcoming conference in Jefferson, Texas. In spite of the late date, Craig was kind enough to work me into the program. Subsequent to that introduction to the TBRC, I started assisting the group with some of their fieldwork.

After my departure from the BFRO in early September 2005, I was able to devote more time toward helping the TBRC in their efforts to validate the existence of the sasquatch.



*I would personally like to thank Professor Alton Higgins for providing me with the article you have just read above.*