I know that people occasionally strap on wooden feet to hoax bigfoot tracks, but had never seen any until I found this pair at the flea market. They measure 19 inches, and are roughly carved from a knotty wood (I assume pine, but someone else may know better), and are untreated. They show some cracking and water damage.
The previous owner put picture wire on the backs, so they could be displayed. But you can see, on the toes and heels, holes showing they were once screwed onto something else, presumably so they could be worn. I suspect that they were not just a woodworking project, but were used. The man who sold them to me said he bought them at an estate sale in upstate NY, where they had indeed hung on the wall, but had no further information.
(Posted by Doug Skinner. Thanks to Mark Pilkington for the photos, which, by the way, you can click to enlarge.)
5 responses so far ↓
1 Loren Coleman // Nov 26, 2012 at 1:34 pm
They certainly appear to be a folk art project versus a Sasquatch hoaxing tool. But you are right, they could be a little bit of both.
A 19 inch set of tracks in the Bigfoot literature would jump out at any researcher, and I don’t recall anything looking like this. But I’ll look a bit deeper now.
One thing is certainly demonstrated, once again, by these: Humans do a remarkably bad job at carving in wood hominoid toes. Most wooden carved feet give themselves away as hoaxes by the carver getting lazy and leaving carving tool marks, as well as square edges, here and there. These are great examples showing those errors.
Thank you for saving these from a flea market. A significant find. Good for you.
2 Doug // Nov 26, 2012 at 1:54 pm
My guess is that they were indeed used to make tracks, but more as a prank than a hoax: something to amuse the kids, or to play a joke on a neighbor — a simple act of ostension, probably after some tale-telling, or some local sightings. A serious hoaxer would put more effort into the carving.
3 Win // Nov 26, 2012 at 8:49 pm
I have often wondered why so few commentators on the putative evidence for the passing of Big Foot have not mentioned the obvious analogy with Gautama Buddha.
After he achieved Nirvana, Buddha was said to have left an impression of his footprints wherever he trod, and there are over 3,000 carvings of his feet in rock and stone all over Asia. Many of these carvings are as stylized or rudimentary as any of the artifacts associated with the Yeti who supposedly inhabited the same mountain ranges across which Buddha’s teachings traveled.
In the Buddhist cosmology, his footprints represent both his presence – he was here, on this earth, and left his mark – and his absence – he achieved Nirvana and is no longer bound to this earth. As a symbol of the ultimate nature of human transience, they are one of the most simplest yet profound that I have encountered.
So…I’m sure these wooden feet were used in the spirit Doug suggests, for fun, and yet they subconsciously partake of a tremendously plangent human urge to probe the nature of the universe in which we exist, but apparently also do not exist.
4 Mamie // Nov 26, 2012 at 11:28 pm
Are those wires for hanging the feet or for sticking your own feet into when you want to make the prints?
5 Doug // Nov 27, 2012 at 12:07 am
For hanging on the wall, I think. The rig to wear them seems to have been removed.