Media Article # 245
Article submitted by Kyle Mizokami

Sunday, February 16, 1975

San Francisco Sunday Examiner

Special to the Examiner

ROUND MOUNTAIN--Bigfoot lives. Once again, the 17-inch long footprints of the legendary giant human-like creature have been sighted near this Shasta County community, this time near where similar footprints were photographed four years ago.

John Russak, a hunter and building contractor who photographed the giant footprints in January, 1971, reports he has found prints this week and tracked them for about a mile.

He said the tracks stretched from his home near this tiny community (population: 200), 35 miles east of Redding toward the Pit River, seven miles to the north. The footprints, measured at 17 inches from heel to toe and seven inches across the ball of the foot, were found every 28 inches, Russak said.

"It was walking on two feet, the same walk as before, but this time was moving more slowly," Russak said. In 1971, the prints were 38 inches apart, indicating a longer stride.

They included a clear impression of four toes, an arch and a heel, but not the claw marks a bear would have made, he said.

A bare human foot occasionally leaves only four toe prints in snow or mud, because weight is not placed on the little toe, he explained. The Bigfoot prints sunk four inches in a six inch snow coating, he said.

Al Berry, a free-lance writer who has just completed a book about the Bigfoot legend in the Middle High Sierra, says the tracks reported by Russak fit the description of other hunters familiar with the prints reported in the Sierra and Pacific Northwest, where Indians call the creature "Sasquatch".

"Bigfoot can move easily 15 to 20 miles per hour," he says.

Russak, a veteran hunter familiar with the mountainous Pit River country, believed more tracks in snow could be spotted from a helicopter if a search were launched within the next few days.

He says he intends to report the prints to the Bigfoot Information Center at The Dalles, Ore. and to the Bigfoot Research Center in Coleville, Wash.

He said that, prior to his latest report, Bigfoot prints had not been reported in the same location more than once. Berry contends that Bigfoot prints have indeed been sighted twice in the same locations in the sierra.

He said Russak's report is important because the dimensions of the footprints are similar to those of others reported in the Sierra and Pacific Northwest.

The latest tracks appear to fit with a pattern of recent Bigfoot "sightings" in Shasta and neighboring Tehama County.

One story had a man meeting one of the creatures face-to-face along Battle Creek near the Sacramento River in Tehama County.

Another story indicates that 17 to 18 inch long footprints were found in the Battle Creek area in Shasta County near the Tehama County line in late 1973.

Last year, a Bigfoot search expedition was organized in Washington state.

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