Town of Merton - Is Bigfoot stalking Lake Country?

Kristi Haunfelder, Staff Writer - November 16, 2006

The 8-foot-tall, fur-covered, manlike creature who became famous in the late 1950s with blurry films and huge footprints - 2 feet long - left in the dirt, has been sighted in the Town of Merton.

Two young Merton residents might have seen a large creature near their home near Highway VV a week ago. Was it Bigfoot, Sasquatch or a yeti?

A family did not return a phone call for comment, but according to a story on Today's TMJ4, David Radeztsky and a friend were outside jumping on a trampoline and saw a hairy monster on the corner of the woods.

Last week, Steven Krueger of Menasha, a contractor removing a dead deer from the highway near Holy Hill, reported seeing a large creature resembling a bear with pointy ears pull a freshly loaded carcass from the back of his pickup truck as the startled man drove away. That story was in the West Bend Daily News.

"It's kind of fun to think (Bigfoot) might exist, but in science we don't jump to conclusions until there's evidence," said Marlin Johnson, a semiretired associate professor of biology from the University of Wisconsin-Waukesha.

"I think people are just having fun with the whole thing," Johnson said.

"The only big foot around here is mine," quipped Hartland Police Chief Robert Rosch. He said his foot measures about 15 inches. "But I haven't been stomping around in Merton or Holy Hill lately."

Over the years, Bigfoot has been reported around the world and gained newspaper attention as early as 1920. It often was reported to have been seen in remote forested areas of the United States and Canada, specifically the Pacific Northwest, but also the Rocky Mountains, the northeast United States, southern states and the Great Lakes region.

"The evidence is very anecdotal," Johnson said. "As a scientist, I have to be skeptical. It doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

"There have been supposed sightings of mountain lions in the Hartland vicinity, but there's a difference; it's a known animal," Johnson said. Bigfoot is not known to science.

Tom Isaac, a wildlife biologist at Pike Lake, said the only large mammals that have been in the area are large dogs, dog-wolf breeds that have gotten away from their owners, wolves occasionally passing through, and once, a few years ago, a bear. The bear had made its way from Northern Wisconsin and was captured in Milwaukee.

"I don't want to offend anyone out there who thinks they saw something, but, to my knowledge, Bigfoot just doesn't exist. It's one of those myths people keep propagating," Isaac said.

"In 17 years, we've never gotten a Bigfoot report," Isaac said.

"We got dozens and dozens of these reports about bears, and one of them was true," Isaac said. "The rest were black Labs."

Isaac said that after one report of a sighting of a bear or a wolf gets out, "people get it into their heads," and sometimes the mind plays tricks, resulting in mistaken reports.

"It could be a big setup, but that's probably not what happened," Isaac said. Someone probably saw something.

The Waukesha County Sher­iff's Department can't make the same claim, according to Detective Steve Pedersen, the Sheriff's Department's public infor­mation officer.

Pedersen said occasionally sightings of Bigfoot are reported to the department on New Year's Eve or when there's a big Packers Super Bowl party.

"Most of the time, it's someone who has been partaking of a party festivity a little too much," Pedersen said.

With the recent attention, radio and other media have been discussing Bigfoot, Pedersen said.

"Someone on the radio was saying it could be a bear-wolf," Pedersen said. On the same principle as a jackalope, a bear-wolf has the body of a bear and the head of a wolf.

Pedersen said that in his 22 years in law enforcement, this is the first sighting of Bigfoot in Waukesha County that he's heard of. "I'm not doubting what they say or their perception, but this is the first sighting we've had in our area," he said.

And, as long as Bigfoot behaves, apparently it can stay. "It's not a law enforcement issue," Pedersen said.

If the Hartland police ever got a call of a Bigfoot sighting, "I guess we would have to investigate to determine the threat of it," Rosch said. "If there was a threat, someone would have to neutralize it."

If nothing else, an investigation could discover "something left behind to support the sighting of something unusual," such as a footprint, Rosch said. "We could make a casting to document it."