The Teslin sasquatch and the bison hair

Teslin is a village on the Alaska Highway, about 180 kilometres east of Whitehorse. Some reports say 160. The summer of 2005 would bring its second reported creature sighting in just over a year.

In June 2004, Marion Sheldon and Gus Jules, members of the Teslin Tlingit Council, were riding an ATV out of town between 1 and 2 a.m. They passed what looked like a person standing beside the road and turned back to offer a ride. From about 20 feet away, they saw it was covered in hair. Jules, an experienced hunter, put it at about 7 feet tall but hunched over. Conservation officer Dave Bakica said: "I have no doubt they saw something, and are convinced it was not a bear or anything in the ordinary."

July 2005. About 2:30 on a Sunday morning, by the Whitehorse Star's account. Nine people in a house in Teslin saw a large, human-like figure covered in hair pass by the window. It moved upright, on two legs. One account places them at a kitchen window, watching "a large bipedal animal moving through the brush."

Chuck Chouman and Trent Smarch "heard trees snapping and creaking as the mysterious figure went by." There was no wind at the time. They put the creature at about three metres tall. It was moving fast, too fast for them to keep up with on foot.

The next morning, according to conservation officer John Klein, a print and hair were found. CBC described "a huge footprint, twice the size of a human's." A later account gives it as 43 cm long and 11.5 cm wide. Branches were broken. Smarch is credited with finding a small tuft of coarse hair in a forest where he and other locals had heard the animal.

Klein told the Whitehorse Star that about nine people had seen "a sasquatch-type figure." The hair went to the Yukon Department of Environment. Its first analysis suggested bison.

On 18 July 2005 the sample reached the University of Alberta. Wildlife geneticist Dr David Coltman took it on with Dr Corey Davis, as a favour to a colleague. The DNA was "highly degraded and of very low quality," and it took repeated attempts. The mitochondrial sequence "clearly matches reference DNA profiles from North American bison." A 100% match, with little similarity to primates or carnivores.

Coltman said the damage pointed to long exposure to moisture and sunlight, or to "the tanning process used on hides and trophy mounts." The sample "did not appear fresh." He called the episode "a wildlife CSI story." In March 2006 he told Discover: "It wasn't fun answering the phone every five minutes for a week."

The test settled the hair, but not everyone agreed it settled the sighting. Whitehorse sasquatch investigator Red Grossinger said the bison hair had nothing to do with what people saw. A witness's uncle told the Terrace Standard: "I don't think it's made up, not at all." On 29 July, CBC ran the headline "Teslinites remain faithful to idea of local bigfoot." Live Science suggested expectations had been shaped by the widely covered Manitoba riverbank video from about three months earlier.

Cryptozoologist Loren Coleman later wrote that Coltman told him privately the sample looked like bison hair "from a treated rug," and that he felt "almost certain" it was an attempt at hoaxing. The claim is second hand. Coleman raised the case again in a wider argument over Bigfoot DNA. Grossinger, for his part, says the Teslin area produces the most frequent reports. What passed that window remains an open question.