Media Article # 294
Article submitted by Ron Schaffner

Sunday, April 13, 1980

Big Footprints Are Called Hoax

By Celia Laska
News Sun (Paris, Texas)

Members of the Bigfoot Research Society said Friday that the Powderly Bigfoot has wooden feet.

Members of the society, who said they have researched reports of Bigfoot sightings around the continent were in Powderly Friday to see whether the four-toed tracks found around a pond in Powderly were a hoax. Bob Throneberry, an anthropologist and head of the society, said that the tracks were made by a wooden foot shaped with a bandsaw.

"Most of the Bigfoot-type footprints that we see in Texas are hoaxes, but we want to check every report just to make sure," Throneberry said.

"Whenever a report like this comes out, amateur Bigfoot hunters come out and disturb the people living there. We think its our duty to call a hoax when we see it. Those of us who do serious work on Bigfoot get a bad name from thinks like that."

"We were skeptical when we heard about it," he said. "There's no such thing as a four-toed one." Bigfoot, if he exists is probably a primate, Throneberry said.

Throneberry said that the wooden forms were probably pounded into the ground to make the tracks appear as though they were made by a heavy animal.

Game Warden Bill Milling said that he is somewhat relieved that the society considers the tracks a hoax.

"I wasn't concerned about the calls I was getting. I was concerned about people coming out her to hunt Bigfoot," he said. Milling said Throneberry brought casts of other Bigfoot prints that had been made in California and the Ozarks in Arkansas.

"They had five toes and looked more like a human foot except that they were much longer," he said. "They had a little more detail to them."

However, Milling would not say whether he believed that Bigfoot exists.

"I really don't know much about all this," he said, "but I do wonder."

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