On reading yours again I thought of something else – two things actually – I should add.

With regard to “Any reasonably well-read person these says knows that all he has to bring back is a fingertip, or even less, for scientific testing” all I can say is: your definition of “reasonably well-read” might exclude the great majority of our population. I would bet you’d be surprised if you took a survey. And: have you ever wondered what’s happened to all that evidence that HAS been submitted for testing? If I had a nickel for all the stuff I’ve read was submitted, and went from there to oblivion, no reported result of any kind, shoot, I’d be able to afford the equipment to do the tests myself! OK, not, but boy it feels that way. You’re also forgetting (but you wouldn’t if you read reports) the borderline-unhinging that happens to many people’s minds when they see something like this; while the sighting is permanently branded in their brains, in detail that makes innocent misidentification a laughable proposition, the sighting itself so knocked them off balance that cameras stayed on laps or around necks, hairs got ignored, and …well, bringing something back was – by the admission of virtually all of them who failed to get anything – the last thing on their minds. I read reports, is how I know.

Plus, of course, the way I reacted when I saw tracks in Northern CA in 1986. No one will believe this; my photos will get tossed. I have it in my brain; don’t need photos, don’t need proof. Shoot. If I didn’t take a picture, who’s gonna pull out a game saw to go to work on something that looks like there might be one in your family somewhere?

Oh. The other thing I wanted to bring up. You seem to be saying that there is no way that anyone with an opportunity to bring back evidence would fail. Or at least that it would almost certainly happen, at some point. Not only has it happened – numerous times, with zero results worth reporting and many results not being recorded at all – but your saying that “there’s no way they don’t at least get a fingertip” is your personal opinion, which is no more valuable than a single sighting report.

Just sayin’. Remember: if your slant – or mine – were gospel, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. We’d be wondering whether there were several species or “just” several subspecies.

And my bet is that a prospector in Canada or Alaska – or maybe even a hunter in CA or WA – somewhere has a real interesting doorstop.

(Paranthropus boisei. It has the looks. Back on topic.)

What you said doesn’t hold up.

If you guaranteed me world control for personally detaching a sasquatch fingertip, you could have the world control, and the fingertip; I’d walk. And I bet most people are like me, or there would be no televeision show called CSI. We’d all be carving bodies up.

Why would a hunter kill a sas and bring nothing back? The story of the guy who accidentally killed one in Manitoba in 1941 holds up, to me, as well as any story I ever heard (and can’t prove). Grover Krantz got the story of a hunter in northeastern Washington who DESCRIBED THE FOOT, IN DETAIL, of the sasquatch he shot. The description – from someone who could have known nothing of what Krantz knew about locomotor adaptations – confirmed, to a T, what Krantz suspected of what the foot of such an animal would look like to perform the way it would have to perform.

Why did he bring nothing back? He’s a HUNTER, ferpetesake. All I can say is what skeptics say when they reiterate their unlikely-to-the-vanishing-point tall tale of how all those footprints and the P/G film were faked: people do the damndest things for the damndest reasons. He might have felt the way you might feel skinning out a vagrant; he couldn’t do it. I don’t know, because Krantz either didn’t ask or didn’t tell or both. (Or told, and I never saw it anywhere.) But that doesn’t make me value that story any less – or any more – than any other unsubstantiated report. I agree with you there. You can do nothing with a report, other than follow it up, if you feel it warranted, to see if there is something behind it. If that hunter’s story were the only one I would laugh; it’s the volume – told by people who had nothing to gain but a reputation as a nut – that counts here. That, and the consistency of what they are reporting, uncanny for something that is a figment of their imaginations.

Many have said that the animal looked so human it made them distinctly uncomfortable. YOU detach a fingertip from that. Many, many people don’t work that way – even hunters, when they’ve seen one, said they couldn’t shoot something like that – and I know for sure that many, many sas carcasses haven’t been found. I could easily – easily as flicking an eyelash – see a hunter, no ten, no a dozen, actually pulling the trigger, THEN being faced with the ugliness of the thing they’d done and being unable to proceed further. (The total number of murders, executions and other killings after which such revulsion happened would probably exceed the grand total of all hairy non-Homo that have ever existed.) If the animal exists that HAD to have happened; and as Sherlock said, when you’ve ruled out the hoax, I mean, the impossible, what’s left is the truth, as unlikely as it might seem.

Fame is no slam dunk. Look at Patterson, who got a movie of one! It is virtually inconceivable that P/G was faked; I consider it irrational to a distinct degree that I don’t consider that film itself proof. “If a hunter killed one he would bring back a piece” is a line I have heard before. But here’s how I have heard it: If P/G were faked 40 years ago, the faker would have – WOULD HAVE – admitted same, no less than 35 years ago, with the irresistable urge to take credit – and become rich and almost unimaginably famous – for history’s most incredible hoax making his skin crawl every minute of that time.

No, I am RIGHT.

And if I’m not – well, maybe you aren’t either.

I hate to seem dogmatic, but none of those reasons hold up. Any reasonably well-read person these says knows that all he has to bring back is a fingertip, or even less, for scientific testing. (Now I would definitely go for something more demonstrative: a head, or, if that was too hard to detach or too heavy to pack out, then a hand or both hands… I would be paranoid and bring back two pieces, one of which would never leave my sight). The person who establishes the animal will become rich and famous. Stories of “proof events” without evidence are no more valuable than any other sighting story: indeed, they may be less compelling, since in some scenarios the witness SHOULD have some evidence to back it up and does not. (If you had an encounter and did NOT bring back a piece of the animal you shot, ran over, or whatever, why then would you ever tell the story at all?)
Yes, the idiots from Georgia have messed up the whole business: it will be harder than it was before to get a lab and a sponsor to ensure the evidence is looked at properly. But “shoot and shovel?” Not when you could bring reputable people like Loren or Jeff Meldrum or John Bindernagel a sasquatch hand and let them take it from there. Even if you did not know who these people were, a minute on Google would tell you “there are reputable people I could bring this to.”

Sometimes it’s more fun to get off track. I mean, I think Matt said this: we need to find the extant animal. Fossil speculation will get us no closer to proof than another plaster cast.

Have to agree with Matt. (I think, but wait here.)

I can see a scientist not reporting a sighting. (And I am all but certain that many are remaining mum. But in fact some have filed reports, most of them, yes, anonymously.) I’m not sure what one would do with a video after what happened to Patterson. But if you are getting one of these critters to visit you regularly, I simply have trouble with the assertion that you can’t photograph it. Habituated animals say cheese. And if my experience made me reasonably certain that science would pick up on my evidence, I think I’d present it, and it would seem odd not to – even if, and I think this is the case with me, I wouldn’t report a personal sighting (except maybe anonymously to a website).

Now. As I have said earlier that I believe that a number what skeptics might consider “proof” situations – e.g., killing one or finding a carcass – have certainly occurred if the animals are real, I have to posit a caveat here. I believe it is quite likely that someone killing one, or finding a carcass, might simply leave it and keep the discovery personal for fear of any one of a number of things: the messy business of getting that evidence out of the woods; the even trickier business of enlisting a partner and having to share – or even risk losing – the discovery; the possibility of being charged with a crime; I could go on here. “Proof in hand” and a carcass way in the backcountry are NOT the same thing. Find a carcass way out there if you doubt me. lol

I have also said here that many – including scientists – don’t seem to think this such a big deal. I could see many a scientist saying: why rock the boat? I have my proof. Getting discovery credit is NOT a slam dunk; and some people may NOT WANT THE ATTENTION. Knowing may be enough for them. Oh yes, I could definitely, easily, see a lifelong professional biologist being totally satisfied with knowing, and not wanting to run the Patterson gantlet.

But again, however one slices this, anecdotes aren’t proof. Regardless how real they are to the person experiencing them, society can’t make the move from an individual’s experience to societal acceptance without proof.

Point one: Pardon me, but the comparison to Goodall is inaccurate. No one has done what Goodall did – find the species and stay out there until the species accepted her presence, then provide voluminous documentation, including photos/film and the accounts of other researchers, including students and photojournalists, who stayed with her. (Granted, this requires some source of support.) I don’t reject anyone’s personal account without reason, but it is only that – one personal account, which zoology is not going to accept, even in the aggregate, as proof of ANY species without better supporting evidence.

Point Two: As to the claim made above about extant but unavailable supporting physical evidence (bodies or parts thereof) that’s been deliberately suppressed, this is an extraordinary claim of its own, which requires proof. The idea that any scientist who had in hand physical proof of a spectacular species would reject the idea of becoming famous as its discoverer because other scientists would shun him is absurd. They’d be breaking down his door if he had an actual type specimen. Professional disapproval may explain the reluctance of some zoologists to consider the subject without hard evidence: it does not explain the alleged action of any scientist to hide or destroy physical evidence which would put him or her in the pantheon of heroes with Goodall, Darwin, Simpson, et. al.

Unfortunately the ‘something doesn’t feel right’ statement leaves so many possibilities for the readers to contemplate. I have a good handle on forum discussions and innuendoes don’t come across very positively.

But so you can understand that I don’t see a bigfoot behind every bush. Here is a paper I wrote this Summer that discounts one of the most-often claimed signs of sasquatch there is by many field researchers. Well at least in regions where there can be heavy snow loads anyhow. I’m speaking of tree breaks of course.

My first encounter with a Sasquatch was 32 years ago in the Sierras of California where I almost ran into him one night on a mountain road. Had my roommate along who was nodded off but got to see him as he bent over to lower himself off the road and down the mountain. Got within 25 feet from him then after braking and looked right into his eyes when he looked into mine. I’ve never wanted to pursue the subject until 3 Summers ago due to the stigma attached, but realized I must occasionally encounter them for a reason. So I finally got over the initial fear to pursue the subject at the encouragement of a few well known researchers. Yeah, there is a hell of a lot more to my encounters that you don’t know, but that will just have to be the way it is in a public forum.

“That’s what separates ‘field’ work from the internet.”

You wrote: “Somehow I was able to get him to keep coming back during many of my visits”.

But not one photo? Not EVEN a blobsquatch? I simply don’t believe the encounters happened. (And yes, I have never done ‘real work’ in the field.)

I do not know you personally. You have an obvious love for the field, but something doesn’t seem right.

If you had just one chance encounter, awesome. I believe you did. But several different encounters, with no evidence (other than audio), makes me wonder if something to your story has been left out.

As for other encounters, its not like they stand out in the open allowing a photo op. Ever seen a blobsquatch? So no, no effort to take a pic of a possible outline through brush. Again, the idea was to try and build trust. Again, maybe hard for some people to understand this who have never been in the situation themselves. That’s what separates real work from the internet.