3. In 1811, David Thompson found some enormous prints
On January 7, 1811, the explorer David Thompson was crossing the Rockies in thick snow when he came across some extraordinarily large prints. ‘We came to the track of a large animal, which measured fourteen inches in length by eight inches in breadth by a tape line (14 x 8)… we did not attempt to follow it, we had not time for it, and the Hunters, eager as they are to follow and shoot every animal, made no attempt to follow this beast, for what could the balls of our fowling guns do against such an animal?’
Unlike customary Bigfoot prints (above), the tracks seen by Thompson had short claws on the point of each toe, which meant that he ‘held it to be the track of a large old grizzly bear; yet the shortness of the nails, the ball of the foot, and its great size was not that of a Bear, otherwise that of a very large old Bear, his claws worn away’. Though the size of the mysterious prints may have been distorted by the snow melting, and Thompson was convinced they were bear-tracks, some see this as the earliest account of Bigfoot-prints.