7 Fun Facts From That Time I Met Bigfoot

This is my "I kind of hate myself, but had
 to see" look. Strangely enough, it's a little
blurry, like most Bigfoot photos.

Tuesday evening I went to the Alamo Drafthouse for the tour stop of Bigfoot hunter Rick Dyer's alleged Bigfoot corpse. Dyer is not well-liked, to put it nicely, by most of the Bigfoot community, but since I have a middle grade novel manuscript about a girl with cryptozoologist parents, I pretty much had to go. You know, research. And one of the characters in the book, Jethro Muggins, wants to hunt down and kill the Lake Champlain monster, so attending a presentation by someone who claims to have killed Bigfoot (with no regrets) seemed especially appropriate.

(So, I was there as a curious writer; I'm not a bigfooter or any kind of expert on cryptids, and there are plenty of people who are knowledgeable about the field who've written about Rick Dyer and his antics, and those are easy to find through an online search if you want to learn more).

The Q&A session was quite entertaining, lively, and unintentionally funny. Here are just a few of my favorite moments from the night:

1. I knew we were in for a good night when an announcement on the screen advised us that the presentation was "...strickly for educational purpose's." [sic that to infinity]

2. The manager told us before the show that few members of Dyer's Team Tracker weren't able to attend this leg of the tour, since they're in Dallas protecting a woman's house from a Bigfoot attack. This is probably the greatest thing I've ever heard.

3. Dyer says he was wearing only boxer shorts when he shot the Bigfoot, which was running away from him after taking the rack of ribs that he'd bought as bait from Wal-Mart.

4. Dyer's new Porche and his $100,000 RV are proof that his Bigfoot is real, because why would people pay him to see something fake? I don't see how any of us can find anything wrong with that logic.

5. When asked how he moved the 800-pound corpse after killing it, he says that he carried it to a rented freezer truck with the help of "several homeless people." Since he'd claimed an investor paid him $9 million for the body, the interviewer said that maybe it would've been nice to have used a little of that money to buy a house for those homeless people. Dyer thought that was pretty funny. On another note, those are the most ripped homeless people ever.

From there the corpse was hauled to a university for DNA testing. No word on what university or when he'll reveal the results of that DNA evidence.

6. An audience member asked Dyer why anyone should believe his claims, since he's been involved in hoaxes before, like this one in 2008 in which the Bigfoot he'd captured turned out to be a costume. He said that he really did have a Bigfoot body back then, but "the government" confiscated it. Then he got caught up in the hoax-y part, purchasing a Bigfoot suit so he'd have something to show people who'd been waiting to see the body.

Oh, and if you're wondering what branch of government shows up to take your Bigfoot corpse? "They arrived in black helicopters, and they wore black suits. So, The Men In Black."

Wait, does this mean Bigfoot is an alien? I'm confused.

7. After the presentation we got to view the body in its glass case. A man in front of me asked why the
fingers of the hands seemed fused together, and the Team Tracker attendant said that it's because of the resin used in taxidermy. "You know, like when you get a deer stuffed." I admit I'm no taxidermist, and I'm no hunter, but, um, what?

I heard later that Dyer tells a different story about the unifinger: Bigfoot uses friction to start fire with his hands, and his hands are scarred from catching fire. I imagine that incident going something like this:



So there you have it, just a few of the evening's highlights. Here's a parting shot from the big guy himself:

Darn you, honey BBQ sauce