Author and naturalist Jim McMullen holds a plaster cast of what he claims
is a footprint of a bigfoot that he took while in the Florida Everglades. Lisa Krantz/Staff
A Golden Gate man who has spent almost 23 years tracking the Florida panther is stepping forward with claims of a bigfoot in the Everglades and a book in the works on the hairy beast. James McMullen, 55, is a naturalist and the author of a book on the Florida panther. He said that, in his years of tracking the big cat, he’s had “unexplained encounters with physical evidence and unaccountable strange sightings of an unknown creature known as ‘bigfoot.'”
McMullen, who issued a news release on “the skunk ape phenomena” this week, joins Ochopee resident David Shealy, who has also publicly made similar claims of a bigfoot-like creature that roams the Everglades. Shealy’s stories of the foul-smelling beast, which he calls a skunk ape, has attracted local skeptics and mostly tongue-in-cheek attention ranging from the Weekly World News to Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show.” For McMullen, he said his only bigfoot encounter occurred in the daylight sometime in August 1997, when he came across a nearly 7-foot, 500-pound hairy creature while tracking the panther in the Everglades. McMullen said he’s seen numerous evidence of the bigfoot.
He declined to reveal the exact location of the sighting, but the 30-second encounter took place in a remote area located south of Lake Okeechobee and north of the Ten Thousand Islands. McMullen said the sighting was located miles from Shealy’s skunk ape sightings at Trail Lakes campground on U.S. 41 East in Ochopee. McMullen said that although he was unable to photograph the bigfoot, he began a research project to track the beast for more evidence, including collecting seven plaster casts of the hairy creature’s tracks. McMullen said he decided to go public with his story after finding the best bigfoot track last month. He made a plaster cast of the five-toed, 14-inch footprint. “In essence, I have now gone public with my bigfoot project to help save him from extinction mostly because of overdevelopment and destruction of habitats that exist in critical areas of Florida,” McMullen said. For several years, McMullen worked for the Big Cypress Nature Center and The Conservancy of Southwest Florida as a naturalist. McMullen’s book, “Cry of the Panther: Quest of a Species,” was a New York Times bestseller in the mid-1980s.
“In my opinion, we have an unknown species that needs to be defined,” said McMullen, who says he is not working for any special-interest group concerning Everglades restoration. McMullen noted that his current research involves trying to collect DNA evidence of the bigfoot, which he hopes will prove its existence. “It seems like people should know about this and how it relates to the environment,” he said.
Source: bigfootencounters.com