Midwest Bigfoot Sightings Returned After Conservation Restored Forests and Deer

Posted Monday, August 10, 2026

By Squatchable.com staff

So there's this fascinating video making the rounds from the Southeast Bigfoot Research Organization, and honestly, it's one of those pieces of research that really makes you sit back and think about the bigger picture. The channel's founder, Jer, breaks down what he's calling the "Midwest Bigfoot Migration Event," and the findings are pretty compelling. Here's the gist: two researchers, working completely independently of each other, ended up arriving at the exact same conclusion about Bigfoot populations in the Midwest. One is John Hickinbottom, a park naturalist at Salt Fork State Park in Ohio, and the other is the guy behind Eric's Quests, who runs the Indiana Bigfoot mapping project. Neither of these guys knew what the other was working on, yet their data told the same story. What story is that? Well, both Ohio and Indiana show a massive gap in Bigfoot sightings during the late 1800s and early 1900s. And it lines up perfectly with what happened to the land during that time. Before European contact, about 95% of Ohio was old-growth hardwood forest. By the turn of the 20th century, that number had plummeted to as low as 8%. The same kind of agricultural development was happening across Indiana and large parts of Illinois too. When you wipe out the forests, you wipe out the food. Deer, bison, elk, all the major calorie sources that sustain large predators just vanished. And Bigfoot vanished right along with them. Makes sense, right? If you're a large omnivore that needs serious calories to survive, you're not sticking around when your food supply gets demolished. But here's where it gets really interesting. In the 1930s and 1940s, the government stepped in with conservation efforts. They replanted trees, established wildlife sanctuaries, and reintroduced deer populations. And within just a few years of the deer coming back, Bigfoot sightings started creeping back into these states too. Now, compare that to other large predators. Wolves, cougars, and black bears took decades to recover, and some of them still aren't fully established in these areas. But Bigfoot? They came back within years. That's a pattern that really stands out. The Monroe State Forest in Indiana is apparently one of the areas where sightings really started popping up again, and it's becoming one of the strongest pieces of evidence for this whole hypothesis. Unlike grainy videos that can be debated, this is data-driven research from two biologists who essentially peer-reviewed each other's work without even knowing it. Jer mentioned they've reached out to John Hickinbottom to start sharing information officially, so there's likely more updates coming down the pipeline. The whole thing paints a picture of Bigfoot as an intelligent, adaptable being that follows food sources just like any other large predator would. Whitetail deer populations are massive across the Midwest now, so if Bigfoot is following that food chain, it makes total sense why they'd be thriving in these areas. Definitely worth checking out the full video for all the details. The way these independent researchers ended up at the same conclusion is the kind of thing that really adds credibility to the field.