Missing 411: Hunters by David Paulides

Missing 411: Hunters Reviews

• 
  Katherine Addison

  [library]
  
  This is a collection of missing persons cases, this time of hunters, almost exclusively male and almost exclusively white--and I don't know whether this is because white men are the predominant hunters in America, whether they're the hunters most likely to go missing, or whether it's unconscious selection bias on Pauldies' part, either in choosing to focus on hunters or in choosing the hunters he focuses on. But anyway. Paulides is getting worse at hiding his Bigfoot theory behind his claims of objectivity. He wants it to be Bigfoot or at least some sort of other cryptid (or maybe aliens. Aliens might be okay). He says in his discussion of the disappearance of Larry Wycoff (116-119):
  
  "I am one of the most open people you will ever meet when it comes to understanding missing persons cases. I have seen too many instances where someone called a psychic, remote viewer, and so forth steps into a case and assists in finding the person. I would never push assistance away from someone who is a proven success in finding people" (118)
  
  Problem #1: "too many instances": none cited
  
  Problem #2: "assists in finding": not the same as "finds"
  
  Problem #3: (more specific to the Wycoff disappearance) "I would never push assistance away" (emphasis added): but the deputy in this case "got five psychics to help him" (118). OR "gave interviews saying he wasn't really involved in Larry's case but was ordered by supervisors to meet with the psychics who had volunteered and keep them out of the hair of the investigators on the case" (119). Paulides is all more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger about the closed-mindedness of the brass but doesn't notice he's contradicting himself.
  
  Problem #4 (Wycoff): 1 psychic drew a sketch (not reproduced): "the picture appears as though you're looking down on a body and high grass, near a beaver pond and creek" (119), a description which is markedly generic for the area of the disappearance, Michigan's UP. The deputy goes and shows the drawing to the locals, and a retired carpenter says he recognizes it, knows right where it is. They search there once, find nothing. Search there a second time, find the body. Deputy says the sketch looks just like the location. There are so many dubious leaps of logic and/or faith in this story that it's impossible to believe any of it wholly.
  
  Paulides' desire to believe in the occult (like Mulder's I WANT TO BELIEVE poster, as amended by the kid in "Jose Chung's 'From Outer Space'" to read I BELIEVE) colors his narrative of disappearance in several ways.
  
  The worst is probably that he goes straight for the occult answer. (I'm using "occult" as a catchall for aliens, cryptids, Lemurians, ghosts, and whatever other agent you can think of, including Men In Black.) He almost never addresses the possibility of foul play (except in one case where it looks to me like the parents killed their child and beat the polygraph, but Paulides insists because they beat the polygraph their child must have been abducted by an unseen and unknown monster). He never addresses the notorious and thoroughly proven unreliability of eyewitness testimony, nor the possibility that witnesses might be lying (either because they are actually murderers, because they were doing something illegal, for personal reasons of their own, etc.). He harps endlessly on rivers and ponds and swamps, but he never says whether someone could fall into a river and be swept downstream out of the search area, or whether there's quicksand. He never discusses the possibility of sinkholes or old mineshafts. (One missing persons case I am haunted by, Jesse Capen, who disappeared in the Superstition Mountains searching for a lost gold mine, was made infinitely harder for SAR efforts because the abandoned mineshafts are everywhere and completely uncharted. (Jesse was found in 2012, three years after he disappeared. He fell down a cliff and his body was wedged in a crevasse; he was found basically by accident.) And Arizona is not the only state in the Union with this problem.)
  
  And this problem creates another problem, which is that the points where his research might actually uncover something interesting and valuable get ignored. One is the frequency with which he quotes Koester's Lost Person Behavior only to triumphantly note that this MP bucks the trend like a bucking thing--and yet he never asks whether there's something, other than Bigfoot, that might explain why Koester is wrong. Similarly, could there be a reason other than Bigfoot, that people with training, experience, and "common sense" seem frequently to be the ones who vanish? My husband suggested the parallel with the fire-fighting disasters chronicled by Norman MacLean (Young Men & Fire) and John N. MacLean (Fire on the Mountain, The Thirtymile Fire, The Esperanza Fire), where men and women with extensive training and experience still get disastrously caught out by the unexpected behavior of a terrible fire. "Wilderness" is a volatile and freighted concept in American culture, but at the core, it's still a place where the indifferent power of the natural world can crush you or eat you . . . or make you disappear.
  
  I think this question--of why people with training and experience go missing--is one that should be considered much more carefully. Partly, it's that they go missing because they're out there, in the wilderness alone, like
  Randy Morgenson (who fits many of Paulides' criteria & may actually be in Paulides' 1st book, which the library hasn't given me yet), but why doesn't their experience/training cancel out that vulnerability? What's going wrong?
  
  There's also a certain degree to which you have to expect that the same conditions (person alone, bad weather, etc.) will produce the same results, which Paulides does not account for. He leaves his cases absolutely contextless, except for his "cluster" theory.
  
  Pauides also, as I've mentioned in other reviews, completely fails to establish a control group of disappearances that aren't occult. So at the root of the whole enterprise is a fatally flawed methodology. As he himself says with unintentional truth, " "After reading my books, you will quickly find that logic doesn't come into play in these stories" (155).
  
  Paulides chooses his cases based on a set of criteria which he calls "profile points":
  
  1. "Canines cannot find a scent": he harps on the failure of bloodhounds to find his missing persons. I need to find out more about what one actually can and cannot expect a scent hound to be able to do, but I'm also concerned by the fact that I can't tell whether Paulides understands that SAR dogs & cadaver dogs are two separate categories; any given dog may be able to do both, or may only be able to do one. And Paulides' claimed experience with tracking dogs keeps shifting. In this book, it's "extensive" (103). So I am mistrustful.
  
  2. Bad weather: Paulides' missing persons almost always go missing right around the time a monumental blizzard or pounding rain or some other dramatic weather event occurs. I think, as I've said before, that he's indulging in post hoc ergo propter hoc. Because the weather comes after the disappearance, he claims the disappearance somehow causes the weather. (? Or something? It's not actually clear to me what Pauldies thinks is going on; I can only tell he thinks there's something.) But I would say that the catastrophic weather goes a long way toward explaining why the person was not found. Again, there's no control group set up of other people who went missing in the same area without bad weather, and whether they were found or not found.
  
  3. Geographical clustering: Paulides claims there are "clusters" of missing people who meet his critera (and, hey, one of those criteria is that the person be in a "cluster": self-selecting & self-fulfilling condition). He further claims that because they're separated widely in time, no one has noticed this alarming rash of missing persons.
  
  (For a reality check,
  750,000 MP cases are reported per year, on average. Paulides is well past his original four hundred eleven, but his MP (drawn from at least a hundred years of MP cases) are maybe just barely 1/1,000th of the missing persons cases reported in America every year.)
  
  His "clusters" of course generally map onto national parks and other wilderness areas, where you would actually logically expect people to go missing because they're deliberately isolating themselves in a dangerous location.
  
  4. Victims found somewhere previously searched: he's big on this one, and insists it happens over and over again. I don't know enough about SAR to tell whether he's genuinely found something weird or not, but I know just how much eyewitness testimony cannot be relied on, and that's a factor he never addresses.
  
  5. Clothing or shoes removed: He goes right up to the edge of explicitly denying
  paradoxical undressing and harps endlessly on clothing found neatly folded or hung in a tree. I agree that some of his cases are weird as all fuck, like the man whose clothes were found neatly folded in a spot that was under six feet of snow when he disappeared. But again, without a control group, I can't judge how weird this actually is.
  
  6. Missing often found near water: I don't even know what he thinks is so important about this.
  
  7. Time of disappearance: he says his people mostly disappear in the late afternoon. (Which is what one would expect, really; if you go missing just as night is falling, you aren't as likely to be found.) He doesn't say whether this is common for the wider Venn diagram of MP or not.
  
  8. Disability or illness: People with disabilities (ranging in Paulides' terminology from diabetes to severe musculoskeletal damage from car accidents to developmental disabilities) and people who aren't feeling well--he says--are part of his Missing 411 categorization. Again, I can think of reasons that someone not feeling well or someone with a disability might be more likely to go missing, reasons that have no occult tinge at all.
  
  Hand in hand with his magnetic yearning for the occult goes his blind spots. Paulides is completely unwilling to admit that lost people behave irrationally. He keeps saying things like, "But X would never do Y! It defies common sense!" But instead of drawing the conclusion that maybe common sense was not in operation, he insists that because common-sensically X would not do Y, X did not do Y, Bigfoot did.
  
  The arguments from physical impossibility are at least less unconvincing.
  
  I've also started catching him in sweeping statements contradicted by statements from actual experts:
  
  1. Paulides claims the FBI have a "very large group in their profiling unit" (182) which is exactly the opposite of what an FBI profiler tells Zeman and Mills in
  The Killing Season 1.1 (Zeman's the guy who did both Cropsey and Killer Legends (also with Mills). I'm not very far into The Killing Season, but it is thus far excellent.)
  
  2. Paulides says, "SAR teams know that missing people rarely go higher in elevation when they are missing or when weather is turning sour" (Paulides 193). But in "
  How 1,600 People Went Missing from Our Public Lands Without a Trace," Jon Billman quotes Robert Koester (the Lost Person Behavior guy) as saying, "Heading for higher ground is a known strategy for a lost person."
  
  I think it's interesting--and probably telling--that while Koester talks about lost people, Paulides only talks about missing people. Word choice matters.
  
  What I find most frustrating is the valuable data swamped by the flawed exposition. Every once in a while, he inadvertently says something true or useful: "I am telling you these two specific stories to bring it into your head that it doesn't matter how experienced, smart, and educated you are: this can happen to anyone" (89). This is a great sentence & an important sentence, until you get to the point where you try to define "this." I would define it as "getting lost & dying in the wilderness." Paulides would define it as "Bigfoot or other occult occurrence." He looks so right, but he's still so wrong.
  
  And he's so unaware of what he's doing. He outright says: "It's very odd that when you start to profile the cases, picking specific cases that match what you are looking for, that the similarities start to show themselves" (242). This is textbook observer bias, recorded by the observer without any apparent awareness of what his observation means.
  
  What I want most, really, is for Paulides to stop pretending he isn't biased. That's all.
• 
  K.W. Bernard

  I bought this book and OFF THE GRID after watching the Missing 411 documentary and listening to radio programs like Coast to Coast AM with Mr. Paulides as the guest. Both got me interested in his work. This is the 6th (of 7) book in the series. I haven't read the others. I started with this one because I know a lot of hunters and there are cases from my state in it, and, like many folks in this book, I do things that make no sense.
  
  MISSING 411 HUNTERS is a compilation of stories about the disappearances of people on hunting excursions that fit certain 'profile points'. These include: the failure of dogs to track the victim, a coinciding weather event, proximity to other missing person cases, proximity to a waterbody, the victim being separated from their clothing, the disappearance occurring late in the day, the presence of a disability, and the reappearance of the victim in an area thoroughly searched. For most cases, the author first describes the area the hunter went missing in, tells us a little about the hunter and their family, or both. Then gives a fairly objective account of events leading up to the disappearance and the subsequent search effort. Last, some kind of summary/conclusion/driving home the weirdness of the incident is given. The cases are organized by countries, states, and provinces.
  
  This book is clear, compelling, informative, and extensively researched. It kept me reading, left me wanting to read more from the author, and creeped me out a little bit.
  
  I'm not sure what more Paulides's rabid critics want. He doesn't claim to be a scientist. No one thinks these books are peer-reviewed journal articles. Paulides has distilled newspaper articles, police/park reports, and sometimes witness or expert statements into easy-to-read stories of disappearances, not conducted a study for his dissertation at a major university. I just don't understand mocking the experimental design of a non-experiment, but maybe I'm not a troll.
  
  Some claim Paulides implicates Bigfoot in the disappearances. He doesn't. Not in this book. And in his talks and radio appearances, he's completely unwilling to say what he thinks is responsible (although, it's clear he believes someone(s) or something(s) is, and not that these people are just getting lost or having accidents).
  
  In fact, arguing against the possibility the hunters were attacked by wild animals, or humans, pretty much excludes a novel hominin too, doesn't it? Unless you're one of those interdimensional Bigfoot folk. (Or maybe Bigfoots are space-faring now, with tractor beams, what do I know?)
  
  I suppose that by attempting to rule out all mundane causes for these disappearances, as well as foul play and animal attacks, Paulides does imply a supernatural/paranormal explanation. So if you have no interest in these things, and can't cope with the fact that some people do, this book is probably not for you.
  
  Now that I've criticized the critics, I'll hypocritically criticize the book.
  
  While intriguing, it failed to convince me that many of these disappearances defy all rational explanation (and I think it was trying to). The author makes good arguments, but there just isn't enough information with some of these stories to totally rule out medical events or foul play from a hunting companion or human predator (especially with the younger victims). It's possible I'm missing something, since I haven't read the earlier books, but I don't see how some of the 'profile points' are significant. Bad weather is obviously going to make it harder to find someone. People hunt near water, and it's logical to seek it out when lost. That said, some of the cases are weird AF, and I'll entertain the notion that the freakin' Predator is to blame. (The author included an account from a supposedly reputable bow hunter near the end of the book who described a visual disturbance in the trees similar the cloaked alien in the movie Predator.)
  
  I do think there might be other ways to organize the cases in this book that could prove more illuminating to the reader or at least better make the argument that something truly bizarre is happening to these people. Like, maybe have the cases where people are found dead 20mi from their boots, or whatever, in one section, then discuss the phenomenon.
  
  There were a few places where I found the writing sort of jarring. While much of each account read like I imagine a police report would, some were peppered with hyperbolic statements and speculation.
  
  I laughed at the phrase 'snow blizzard'.
  
  Still, I really enjoyed this book, and whether or not one buys into the inexplicable nature of the cases highlighted, I believe the book/Paulides's research has the following value:
  
  It's a reminder that the woods can claim anyone. No matter your education, training, experience, fitness, toughness, or preparedness, you can die out there. Lifelong outdoorsmen, wildlife experts, game wardens, and people with military training have all gone missing.
  
  It uncovered a lack of accountability/documentation by our government for people who go missing on public lands.
  
  It compiles unresolved missing persons cases which authorities/SAR could potentially learn from, for atypical disappearances.
  
  It's gotten people who were legally declared dead or just plain forgotten by authorities into missing persons databases. Now if their remains are ever found, they can at least be matched to a name on a list, hopefully providing some closure for the family/community.
  
  It's a reminder to watch young children every minute they're outdoors. Even if you think they're in a safe area.
  
  This particular book gives good safety advice for hunters at the end, including a list of gear and precautions to take before going out.
  
  Regarding one case of a missing 2yo, "The distance to search involving an event such as this shouldn't be dictated by how far the child could walk; it should be dictated by how far an abductor could carry the victim." I think this statement could save lives, if taken seriously.
  
  I also gained some practical knowledge from this book, such as: 3 gunshots mean someone's lost or in trouble. And, poke a bear in the eye with a rifle to make sure it's good and dead before you fuck with it.
  
  In short, this was a great book, even if it doesn't prove there's something sinister harvesting hunters while their buddies' backs are turned.
• 
  Richard Dominguez

  An interesting collection of stories involving the strange disappearances of hunters.
  While the book offers no real solutions to what might have happened, it does very well at presenting the facts that create an aura of mystery around each disappearance.
  The book also presents cases in which the missing bodies were found, but the finding of them presented a bigger mystery than the actual disappearances.
  If I could this would be a very interesting series of books to look into, as the information is presented clearly and vividly. While you may be confused about what may have happened to these missing hunters, the information offered in the book is not confusing at all.
  This is a good addition to readers with an appetite for the paranormal or real life mysteries.
• 
  Vanessa *the Pixie Princess*

  These books are always facinating but this one could have used a better editor.
• 
  Jordan Tyler Quinn Farkas

  I have been following David since 2012 and have been fully convinced by his work that something is absolutely going on in the shadows of America.
  
  Where are all of these people vanishing?
  
  One of the things I love about the author is that he writes as fluently as he speaks and he never tries to sell anything. He simply passes along the best information available... as a reasonable investigator should.
  
  That said, I have the utmost respect for David, his group of colleagues, and all of the work they continue to tackle.
  
  Keep up the good work guys!
  
  If you haven't read this book, do yourself a favor and get ahold of a copy. You'll thank yourself later.
• 
  Bookfan53

  I have been following Mr Paulides' work for a good few years. The reason I wanted to read the Hunters book is because I have had family members who hunt, and have done since they were young. I wanted to find out a little more as to why Hunters were disappearing. Hunters know where they are going, what they are doing and are very knowledgable about the outdoors in general. They are also armed and prepared for any emergency.Hunters in my family hunted to put food on the table, they were not 'trophy hunters'.
  
  In some of his previous books that I have read, it has struck me that perhaps some people disappear due to misadventure etc. One thing also is there were a number of serial killers who used national parks, Israel Keyes was one and he travelled all over USA, Canada from approximately 1997 - till his capture in 2012. I'm not saying all disappearances are due to serial killers, but, it may be a factor in some.
  
  The one thing that does disturb me (and the main reason that I had to dip in and out of this book) is the thought of the family and friends of the disappeared. It is an awful thing to say cheerio to a family member and then never see them again. It must be terrible, the not knowing.
  
  To my mind, Mr Paulides works hard at his research, he reads, he goes to newspaper archives and some cases he has actually visited the places where people have gone missing. He obviously cares about missing people, their family and friends.
  
  One case in the book that is downright strange is Aaron Hedges. He was not that far from help and I just cannot understand why he ended up sadly deceased. Mr Hedges seemed to be a very experienced hunter and outdoorsman.
  
  The other thing that puzzles me is the boots. I live in a very cold climate during winter,I can assure you the last thing you would do is take off your boots in the middle of winter for any reason. Why are there so many instances of missing boots, shoes etc. In the wilderness this makes no sense at all.
  
  My own opinion, I think something is going on but I don't believe it is down to any one thing. Some of these cases are so strange and don't seem to have a rational explanation. Another of these cases, (but it does not feature in the Hunters book) is the strange disappearance of a young girl called Stacey Arras. Mr Paulides has a film on Youtube about Stacey that I would recommend you watch. Sadly, this young girl was never found. What a heartbreak for her family and friends.
• 
  Vanessa Waltman

  As a person who loves the wilderness and has hunters in their family I found this book very interesting. I put off reading for a few months but I couldn’t get it out of my head. After reading I will say that I am far more aware of the links between missing people, especially in the forest areas. I have insisted that my loved ones heed some of the warnings and advice this book provides. And above all else, I learned from this book. It’s very enlightening and a rather quick and easy read. I do recommend anyone who is hunting or plans to hunt read this book at some point in your life. My only issue with it was that the editing could have been better. There were some grammatical errors and the profile points weren’t always accurate/complete.
  But all around a good book.
• 
  Candy

  This book makes you think twice about hiking or hunting in the woods alone. There are so many disappearances and so many unanswered questions, and a great degree of odd details that make you wonder what on earth happened to all of these people. I have 2 if the authors other books but this particular one was hard to find and I got it at the library. The conclusions at the end have left me shocked, especially since one of the events happened close to where I live.These books need to be read to influence those who go out alone in remote areas to hike or hunt.
• 
  Keith

  An amazing series of books. This is not just missing person cases-there are criteria that make these events stick out from others.
  After reading multiple books in the series with cases all around the world it’s hard not to believe there is something occurring that doesn’t fit more prosaic explanations.
• 
  CherD

  I have followed Mr. Paulides work for several years, first hearing him on Coast to Coast. I also follow his YouTube Channel. I am fascinated by his research, and find him quite a devoted and knowledgeable researcher. Enjoyed this book, as much as one can learning of hunters who have not ever been found and those who are found deceased even after several years.
• 
  Shelly

  This is another intriguing book in the Missing: 411 series. I'm sure some of these people had some sort of unexpected medical event and succumbed withough being found, but some of these cases do make you wonder...
• 
  Julie Jones

  I put it as read on accident! I really want to read it but can’t figure out how to get it back?