MONSTERQUEST: Monster Close Encounters

History Channel - Original Air Date: 3/25/09

Yes, it's another MQ bigfoot show, and yes, we've got Loren Coleman as an on-camera expert again.  There are plenty of eyewitness stories, including one of a car that hit a bigfoot and two people who then shot at it.  The MQ team investigates the damaged car and looks for the wounded creature, though a local naturalist says a bear is the only possible suspect.  They find some broken branches, and a bullet in the tree -- hoping that it may have passed through the creature before being lodged in the wood. Another man claims to have nearly hit a bigfoot on a busy highway -- a sighting confirmed by other witnesses.  Another attack on a car is blamed on The Lizard Man, though Coleman believes it may have been a moss or algae-covered bigfoot.  They take samples there, too, and decide to recreate the jaws that left the bite marks on the car.  Another man claims to have nearly shot a bigfoot while hunting, while a younger man claims to have been grabbed through the window of a truck while out spotlighting deer.  Both these people are polygraphed.  The hunter passes the test; the grabbed man does not.  Bite tests suggest that it woudl have taken 350 pounds of force to bite through a car fender this way -- a strength and attac mode suggestive of a dog.  A primate, one expert says, would have pounded the car, not bitten -- and that's what hapened in the other case.  The hair sample (claimed from the bumper) of that car yields nothing; neither does the bullet dug from the tree.  Coleman claims that such encounters are becoming more frequent, and predicts that within 25 years, someone will be killed in such an incident.  While the stories here are interesting, more than the usual MQ bigfoot show, they -- once again -- present no actual proof.