http://www.journaltimes.com/articles/2005/06/26/local/iq_3578775.txt

It's a fake
Journal Times Online
By Tom Barton

TREVOR - The rest of the field remains undisturbed, but at the top of a
rise about halfway into the field the wheat stalks have been bent
horizontal in an elaborate and delicate counterclockwise, swirled
pattern.
There are no signs that the grain has been stripped, there's no damage
to the stalks and there are no tracks leading to the pattern.

So what could have used such force to push the stalks over in such a
delicate and elaborate manner? Was this a man-made design? Or is this
crop circle part of some extraterrestrial activity here in Wisconsin?
These are the questions Jeff Wilson and his four-man team of
investigators drove from Ohio to answer, and which he's spent the last
10 years researching.
One in five crop circles are hoaxes, said Wilson, director of the
Independent Crop Circle Researcher's Association.

Unfortunately, he and the other ICCRA researchers just spent the last
nine hours on a hoax.
They began the day taking aerial photos and making visual observations
of the crop formation from 2,000 feet up in a small plane.
"From the air it looks pretty bad; it looked pretty rough," Wilson said.
"It showed indications of crop circles we've seen in the past which were
man-made."
While the aerial observation was doubtful, the team remained optimistic.
"But that's just an observation from 2,000 feet up. I've been in some
that looked bad, but turned out to be genuine," said Roger Sugden, ICCRA
investigator and professional aerial photographer from Fort Wayne, Ind.

There were, however, clear indications that the circle was man-made.
Instead of falling or flowing around standing objects, such as rocks,
all the stocks pointed to or lay over the objects.
"You got a serrated edge here, Roger," Wilson yelled to Sugden as he
moved on to the outside of the circle.
"As you push stuff down with a board, the wheat goes flat in one
direction, so when you try to make a turn, you end up with an edge
that's saw-toothed or serrated," Wilson said as he and Sugden continued
to walk around the circle. "But, this is all preliminary, we really
can't make a determination until we take some measurements."

The team used a gamma scout Geiger counter to measure background
radiation levels around the field and in the crop circle, as well as
electromagnetic and broadband field detectors to monitor the levels of
electromagnetic, microwave and radio emissions.
"You need to measure the energy around the field. There's energy that
takes it down. There are readings that these crop circles produce and
you need to measure that," said Dr. Chuck Leitzau, ICCRA investigator
and a teacher in the Detroit public school system.
It wouldn't take a lot of measurements, though, to tip the team off that
the crop circle was a not left by extraterrestrials.

"I found a pole hole," ICCRA investigator Delsey Knoechelman yelled from
the middle of the circle.
"They used string," she said pointing out to Wilson the measurements and
patterns used to make the formation from the pole.
Other pole holes were found and the team noticed foot-size paths of bent
wheat where they determined some persons had repositioned themselves in
order to create the almost 113-foot circle, and its 58- and 52-foot
inner circles.
While the finding was disappointing, Wilson said the investigation was
worth it.
"That's part of the chances we have to go through, We do this all of our
pockets. But if we didn't come out here and make an evaluation, how
would we know?" he said.

For Mary Sutherland, an investigator with Burlington UFO and Paranormal,
who learned of the circle earlier this week in an e-mail and called
Wilson and his team to investigate, the victory is in having busted the
hoaxsters.
"We are professionals. Our purpose is to provide the truth to the
people," she said. "I'd love to see it as a real one, but a hoax is a
hoax. We do this because there are ones out there that aren't a hoax.
This is why you have professionals come in and do this, so they don't
pull a fast one on us."

Wilson said today's investigation, and other like it will hopefully
deter future hoaxsters.
"It's a learning experience for us. This allows us to compare against
ones that aren't a hoax. It helps us educate people on what a hoax looks
like," he said. "Once we have a pattern we are able to see and measure,
perhaps the amount of hoaxing will decrease. What's the point when you
know people can tell the difference?" Skepticism aside, Wilson and
Sutherland said they believe crop circles are marks left by
extraterrestrials.

"Everyone has an opinion, but we have hard evidence to back up our
opinion," Wilson said. "Everyone else just has an opinion and there's a
difference."