Until we have a specimen or other generally acceptable evidence — and the recent reports from east Texas give some reason to believe that might not be long — all we can do, really, is argue over the merits of sightings and other secondhand evidence. But it’s definitely worthwhile for sas proponents to continue to stress that serious misconceptions in the relevant areas of knowledge constitute the great bulk of the “con” side’s case.

Are there stupid people who wouldn’t be deterred by that idea? Sure. But there are people who bungee jump from 25 foot ridges with 30 foot of cord too.

I just meant it for any evidence left behind.

Right.

Unless you simply have blinkers on that blind you to the very idea that anything like this can exist. Which is the problem with most scientists. Science’s biggest strength is also its biggest weakness: it’s so careful (good) that it’s so conservative and so slow to change (bad) that — well, in this case, the public will probably be the force that finally pushes the scientific mainstream to consider the simple possibility that there’s an ape here and somebody might want to find it.

And, if you were really going to go all that trouble, you’d have a blobsquatch photograph to show.

I do know, that none of my encounters were with a guy in a gorilla suit. He would be dead. No man, in a costume, miles from the nearest road, would be able to be as elusive as these animals are. I do not believe for a moment that that is physically possible.

The lady probably saw something. Just as many of us have. The question is “What did she see?”. “What have any of us seen?”. We call it Booger, Bigfoot, Sasquatch, Monster, or any other of dozens of names, yet none of us really know what it is. Just that we have seen it, heard it, and/or smelled it.

I’d say she probably saw one of these animals. After all, there are plenty to go around, and in that area, there many reported encounters.

Probably. That’s the best we can do, for the moment, without calling the poor frightened woman a liar.

Keep in mind that nearly no one keeps a camera handy and already on in their moving vehicles. These roadside occurences are mostly fleeting. In this case, she said she only saw the creature for a few seconds. That is barely long enough for any human to even register what they are seeing, let alone slow down, reach to a camera, turn it on, focus and take a picture of (at that point) a likely quickly moving target.

And as to the hoax idea, I have to say two things. One, I believe that an extremely high percentage of people who would wish to pull off such a stunt are doing so to fool friends or someone else they know. People just aren’t willing to waste their time hoping someone sees them. I should know, as I know a few people over time (myself when I was younger) who have done such a thing. And, looking back it was an extremely foolish thing to do. I did that near an urban area in Iowa, not Texas, but there are plenty of people with guns anywhere you go, and fear makes people dangerous and unpredictable.

Two, I agree wholeheartedly with the contingent of commenters who discussed the difficulty of looking natural, not to mention “graceful” in a costume of any kind. Please note with humor how “Boston” Rob fairly recently took a tumble as he was attempting his own downhill hoax on TV!

If a sighting occurs deep inside woods or dense forests, it is unlikely a hoaxer would go so far wearing a suit just to hoax one person. Besides, so deep inside woods, who knows when somebody with a camcorder might come along.

Those sightings are the most relevant ones to me, because it would seem likely that such ans elusive species would remain hidden is dense forests for most of the time. If it showed itself too often near human settlements, it wouldn’t be long until evidence was found or conclusive footage was taken.