By John Green
There has always been speculation that Sasquatches might migrate with the seasons, so it might be possible to establish that they would be passing certain points at certain times of the year. I have looked for evidence of this in my computer entries in three different ways:
Relationship of altitude to the time of the year.
Relationship of direction of travel to the time of year.
Relationship of location to the time of year.
None of these has shown any consistent pattern that would indicate migration. Average altitude of incidents is highest in the summer, which is probably normal for most animals, but it is lowest not in the winter but in the spring, and the difference is less than 400 feet. Since human observers also would tend to be at higher altitudes in warmer weather there is probably no significance in these figures. Direction of travel could be expected to be the most promising indicator, since a migratory pattern would surely be south prior to winter weather, and north when winter is over. Alternatively, near the coast, there could be a movement west in the fall and east in the spring. Unfortunately I have only 126 track reports and 82 sighting reports in which direction of travel is indicated. Even making some of these do double duty (counting "northwest", for instance, as both north and west) the numbers are small. There are 14 northbound reports in spring compared to 9 southbound, which looks a bit promising, but in fall there are 27 northbound and only 20 southbound. In fact 54% of the directions noted were northbound, and if that were statisticially valid all Sasquatches would eventually end up in the Arctic Ocean. The only season when a majority headed south was summer, 25 southbound, 19 northbound. East-west results were similar, with 54% headed west, and the greatest imbalance, 21 west to 13 east, coming in the spring when migration theory would have suggested travel in the opposite direction. Looking at location, there is a complete jumble, with the distances involved probably too small to mean anything even if they were consistent. Perhaps the results could be summed up by noting that if the average latitude and longitude is worked out for reports in each of the four seasons, the locations for all four come within a circle just 30 miles in diameter, which, incidentally, is in Oregon just southeast of Portland. For altitude and direction of travel the study used all the reports containing the relevant information, but for location only reports from British Columbia, Washington, Oregon and the northern half of California were used. Methods used were amateur in the extreme, since I have only rudimentary abilities both statistical analysis and use of the computer, but I am confident that they would have been adequate to show evidence of migratory behavior if there were any.