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SPEAKER 1: Now, I haven't seen the show Finding Bigfoot or Mountain Monsters, and I don't know what happened to the $10 million Bigfoot bounty on Spike TV. But clearly these reality TV shows have encouraged a new generation of Bigfoot enthusiasts and they're undeterred by the lack of scientific proof of the existence of the legendary part-human creature. But our John Enger met a dedicated man who's tracking Bigfoot in the Northwoods of Minnesota. And John joined him on a recent hunt and he has this report.

[CAR ENGINE HUMS]

JOHN ENGER: 20 miles north of Nashwauk, Mike Hexum turns his truck down a narrow, washed-out, old logging trail. The air hums with mosquitoes. It's not an inviting part of Northern Minnesota, but that's where you have to go, Hexum says, if you want to see a Bigfoot.

MICHAEL HEXUM: I mean, what a paradise for Bigfoot? There is no human traffic in here. You got food. You got shelter. It's like a grocery store and nobody's there.

JOHN ENGER: 4 miles in, Hexum stops the truck in a small clearing. He brought some camp chairs and fellow enthusiast Abe Del Rio from Saint Paul. Del Rio brought the bug spray and a special short baseball bat he swings into a white pine.

[LOUD THUNKS]

Hexum believes roaming Bigfoots communicate over long distances with ape-like calls or by hitting trees with fallen limbs. Imitating those sounds, he says, can sometimes get a reply.

[ULULATES, GROWLS]

MICHAEL HEXUM: Now, again, we just wait and see if anything happens.

JOHN ENGER: The Bigfoot legend has its roots in stories of wild men and Yeti told by the native tribes of Asia and the Pacific Northwest. For a long time, these stories and the occasional shaky video clip didn't get much traction in the mainstream culture. But now--

BOB BARHITE: People don't feel embarrassed about reporting things. They don't feel crazy anymore. They feel accepted.

JOHN ENGER: That's Bob Barhite. He investigates sightings for the Bigfoot Field Research Organization, a national group dedicated to proving the existence of Bigfoot. He says twice as many Minnesotans have reported seeing Bigfoot in the last 10 years as in the previous 20. And he says there's one good reason for the increase-- television.

BOB BARHITE: That was the turning point.

JOHN ENGER: In 2007, an episode of the paranormal reality TV series MonsterQuest focused on the Bigfoot legend and sightings have been on the rise ever since. It's a TV show bringing Hexum to the forest today. Animal Planet's Finding Bigfoot will film an episode in Minnesota later this summer. Hexum is scouting locations and he's back in the first spot he saw Bigfoot from a homemade deer stand in 1975. He was 14 years old then, old enough for his father to send him alone into the woods with a sandwich and a rifle.

MICHAEL HEXUM: And he walks out in the shooting lane in plain daylight in front of me, 30 feet away, and I'm going what the heck? I thought it was a guy. Big, dark guy with-- look like a prehistoric face on it. Of course, I freaked out. I couldn't get out of the woods fast enough.

JOHN ENGER: He told his father what he saw and his father told him to keep it to himself.

MICHAEL HEXUM: Yeah, he told me not to say anything. He would be embarrassed.

JOHN ENGER: So Hexum grew up. He moved away and got married. He had kids and he forgot about Bigfoot.

But five years ago, he got laid off and moved back to a cabin in the woods near his childhood home. And he started to remember. A half hour passes in silence and the two researchers give up on their waiting for Bigfoot strategy, setting off instead through the dense woods towards a tamarack swamp.

MICHAEL HEXUM: Through years of thinking about it, I've determined that I could bet my year's pay on it that they primarily live in that swamp.

JOHN ENGER: When the ground turns squishy and wet underfoot.

[LOUD THUNKS]

Del Rio makes a few more tree knocks with his baseball bat and waits in silence for a reply.

MICHAEL HEXUM: It's really, really quiet here.

JOHN ENGER: As the sun sinks beyond the trees, they head back to camp. On the way, Del Rio spots something.

ABE DEL RIO: Mike, Mike, Mike, Mike.

MICHAEL HEXUM: Huh?

ABE DEL RIO: I think we got something here, man. I think we got a metatarsal break.

JOHN ENGER: He drops to one knee over what looks like a footprint and pulls out a camcorder and a tape measure.

ABE DEL RIO: 13 and 1/2 inches long. I'm not seeing any tread, which would indicate there would be a shoe or a boot.

JOHN ENGER: It's dark by the time they reach the clearing so Del Rio starts a fire. They tell Bigfoot stories by its flickering light.

[PHONE RINGS]

Eventually--

ABE DEL RIO: Hey, you.

JOHN ENGER: Del Rio gets a phone call from his girlfriend.

ABE DEL RIO: I'm having a bonfire out in the woods. What are you doing?

JOHN ENGER: She reminds him he has to work in the morning installing air conditioning units back in Saint Paul. Hexum has to work too. He's a welder in the mines. So the night winds down with little more than a possible foot impression, but no one seems too concerned.

MICHAEL HEXUM: It's not a wasted night. The whole day I'm thinking, god, will we hear something, will we hear something? You get all excited and you got something to look forward to. And if we could just get a real loud knock about 20 yards that way, we'd probably all be running that way. But you know what, we'd be happy.

JOHN ENGER: John Enger, Minnesota Public Radio News in Nashwauk.