Any video hoax would likely involve everyone (cameraman, etc.).

In this particular episode, what i wanted to see most was all of the other footage of those ATV guys filming themselves that day.

If they shot 2 hours of footage of jump taking, river driving, etc., and this was at the tail end, it might lend it some credibility.

If all they shot was 15 seconds of that final scene, then it leans me towards a hoax.

It’s also almost never discussed on the show how relaxed their recreations are… I saw the “bigfoot” creature seem to walk behind a log or large branch crossing the stream, whereas Bobo seemed to walk in front of it, suggesting to me the distances might have been off.

If they aren’t doing their recreations accurately, they can’t base any conclusion from them. In fact, they shouldn’t conclude anything about anything unless they can 100% document fact or fiction.

It’s all a mystery.

(Let’s just keep congratulating each other until, well, something good happens. LOL)

It’s not the most scientific approach to simply accuse everyone with whom your worldview conflicts of lying or an overactive imagination. It amounts to obstruction – indeed, denial – of science to reflexively do so with no evidence that this is the case.
Most – I mean, pretty much all – of the bigfoot reports I have read come down to one of three possibilities: Hospitalizable mental malfunction; dead flat lie; or, what the witness says they saw, which, well, is a bigfoot if the latter is the case. As you astutely point out – and it’s astute, because scoftics just don’t seem to include this in their calculations – we live by our eyes. We couldn’t function if we did not accurately perceive practically everything that crossed our paths of a day. That everyone who sees a sasquatch is malfunctioning is pretty much a farfetched notion from the start. Many of them are driving at highway speed or handling weapons when their sightings happen, and they get home OK, don’t accidentally shoot themselves and everything else they see, and can operate a computer flawlessly to send that report in.

That they’re all lying? Lots of them don’t even seem to want to admit what happened, even anonymously. I can’t fathom why anyone would want to lie by saying they saw something the societal mainstream laughs at. How is this helping them, in any way? It has to be obvious to them by now that there’s no money in anything but proof. It may be conceivable that it’s all lies. But that this is the thing you say Is It, The Explanation, and we can all go home now?

Naaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah, I’ll pass. I’m a little more curious than that. Any scientist should be.

As you also note: this sasquatch/yeti thing is jumping cultures, something that just don’t happen with ‘quaint native legends.’ Everyone is reporting something that could come right out of a guidebook, with differences in socioeconomic status, education and other cultural variables accounting for differences in description (e.g., all the ways witnesses describe the distinctive gait, or the sagittal crest, something you can recognize from all of them). If I’m a scientist – and you are right, scientists can’t ‘believe in’ nuthin’ – I am wondering what the heck is up with this, and leaving the mental door open as long as that is unresolved.

I liked one other thing you said: “I think she should keep those thoughts to herself and just say “It’s an amazing story, I wish I was there to see it.” Daniel Loxton, a significant voice in skepticism, says he can’t take sighting reports for proof, but he can’t take them for fake or mental-illness either, not without more info. He says: I wasn’t there; I can’t share the privileged viewpoint.

Right. What did she see? WE DON’T KNOW; WE WEREN’T THERE.

I can understand folks like CDC getting hot at Finding Bigfoot. This isn’t scientific method we’re seeing, by anyone on there, Ranae included.

But one can’t toss wheat with chaff. There’s a lot of evidence out there. What we need is concerted follow-up on that evidence, not road-trip cherry-picking. Or reflexive scoffing, Ranae.

It is NOT logical to dismiss anything without evidence that the dismissal is warranted.

It’s far more unlikely, logically, that a 16 year old girl will mistake a bear or person for a “bigfoot” after doing a double-take, especially after growing up around people, and probably bears.

I’ve seen a box out of the corner of my eye and thought it was my cat, but only for a split second, then the information fills in and you see what is really there, a box.

People who catch a glimpse of something moving in the forest might not see enough to know what it is, but people who see an 8′ tall furry primate staring at them, likely have enough time to identify what it is NOT, and what it likely is, even though it may challenge their previously held beliefs.

Like the ships coming over the horizon for those who though the world was flat, eventually, you cannot ignore what you are seeing.

I don’t “believe” in bigfoots, personally, because to believe something you don’t know is like brainwashing, the mind isn’t free to discern the mystery or the truth with a belief in the way, but logically… when you have hundreds of people over hundreds of years seeing these things all over the world, in various cultures, that never talked to each other (realistically) prior to the 20th century, then we have only a couple likely scenarios:

Their eyes play tricks on them – unlikely since people generally don’t hallucinate and can negotiate life while identifying things properly.

They are all liars – really, they are ALL liars?

They are seeing exactly what they think they are seeing – “bigfoot”, some as yet unidentified primate that is very rare and very stealthy, when it wants to be.

I’ll tell you, I’ve rarely seen animal bones in the forest, though I’ve seen dead animals, and I’ve never seen human bones lying around anywhere. Is that proof none of us exist?

Burying the dead might be a human/bigfoot custom. Or maybe they eat their dead? Who knows? Absence of a body of an elusive species with human-level intellect (perhaps) isn’t proof of non-existence.

If 15 people come forward to the police and independently say they saw someone jump from a cliff, but they can’t find the body, does that mean they are all lying, all having fantasies, or did someone move the body?

As a skeptic, I doubt that all these witnesses are liars. I challenge the show to start respectfully doing lie-detector tests on all these witnesses so that Ranae, and the public, can at least have some inkling as to whether they are truth-tellers or liars.

Ranae is another scoffer unacquainted with the evidence. The naive think the issue is: why is nobody seeing this animal? Obviously because it’s so sneeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeky that NO ONE EVER DOES.

Then where are we getting all this evidence?

Obviously, from people seeing them.

Here’s the problem the naive seem unable to get their arms around: no one believes anyone who says they saw one. I could have a bigfoot at my house every night to borrow a cup of sugar. If no one whom I tell believes me; if everyone seeing that animal walking the streets to my door thinks: I’m crazy, and there’s no way anyone’s ever gonna find that out; if they talk and no one believes them…OK, where are we?

To accuse people with no evidence of same of overactive imaginations is, well, stupid. If no one follows up evidence….um, exactly how do they expect to get any proof?

There’s being so open-minded your brains fall out.

Then there’s being so close-minded you’re squeezing ‘em out your ears.

A true skeptic might make the show less of a waste of time. Shame.

Well, think about what you said for a sec.

If an 8 foot tall, 500 pound, hairy creature, has lived throughout the wooded areas of the North America, for 1000′s of years, and not one body, bone, or hide, has ever been found, what type of behavior do you think it would demonstrate?

If you don’t want to use logic, then what’s the point?

If a unknown Bigfoot type creature ran around scaring little girls all the time, I promise you they wouldn’t be unknown for long.

Truth is, it is MORE likely that it was a bear, hobo, or prankster, and the girl let her imagination run wild, than an 8 foot tall hairy monster said boo.

Ranae, in my opinion, is not hard enough on these witnesses. The Video? She knew it was a hoax yet she didn’t say anything to the witness. On an ATV 20 feet away from a Bigfoot? Please.

You call it “limited thinking”, I call it “REALITY”.

I hope Matt, Tom, BoBo, Cliff, and others prove me wrong…but I don’t think they can.

It’s OK for Ranae to have doubts, that’s normal, but to potentially create insecurities in OTHER people because she has her own doubts about Bigfoot isn’t fair.

I think she should keep those thoughts to herself and just say “It’s an amazing story, I wish I was there to see it.”

“Well, there’s not a lot of tree cover here, I don’t think Bigfoot would walk out into the open”… or “I don’t think a bigfoot would just walk out if they heard an ATV”…

(not exact quotes). It seems she always has a tendency to project what SHE WOULD DO if SHE WERE AN ELUSIVE BIGFOOT and then use her own thinking to dismiss any evidence they come across… videos, eyewitness accounts, etc..

This is often one of the main self-defeating behaviors of those prone to “scientific minds”. They limit themselves by their own “logic” that they project onto any given situation and can’t see beyond it.

A human being sees an 8′ creature standing in the open (unless the girl was lying) and Ranae thinks it’s an overactive imagination because it doesn’t fit her preconceived notions of how a bigfoot would behave.

She almost always has an excuse based on her limited thinking, and I wish there was some way for her to get perspective and see that just as the rest of the cast thinks “there’s definitely squatches here” every time they see some woods, she is equally as non-logical and non-scientific in her approach.