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I agree 100% that eye-witness experience is very, very relevant.  The only other evidence I see approaching eye-witness testimony, so far, are footprints (very prevalent), vocalizations and convincing images (scarce).   To your other points:  1.)  Some in academia are negligent, most are not, in my experience.  That is unless negligent implies that more of them should be out searching for Bigfoot.  2.)  I don't give the entirety of Governments enough credit to cover-up anything.  Many of our elected officials (whose salaries, benefits and often misused power we pay for) obfuscate a lot but, as Abraham Lincoln once said: "you cannot fool all of the people all of the time."  3.) Delusion implies a false perception of reality.  I am convinced that whatever Bigfoot witnesses are seeing, it is very real.  So, I think the options you omitted include:  A. (as MIB suggested) - Humans are too inept to find them.  And, B. (as I have suggested and which actually falls in line with ineptitude - they are beyond our current Scientific paradigms.  That is: we do not have methods in place to even understand what they are which, significantly hampers our ability to find and classify them.  That is humiliating in some ways, but since the paranormal is ultimately subject to some sort of explanation; I think it's good that we are not closing our minds to the discovery process. 

I agree that Bigfoot is the hide and seek champion. And I agree that if it was a normal animal it would have been found long ago. But I also don't rule out the possibility that it WAS found a long time ago.🤷🏻‍♂️ Because it is so much like us that may be the problem with the powers that be.   Yah so many parallels to ufology. Ufos were swamp gas and the witnesses were drunk rednecks. And anyone that defended any of it immediately thrown into that lot.   But knowing the capabilities of the military and alphabet agencies, and watching leaked Ufo footage? What else do they have pertaining to our field as well? They don't just watch the sky. The also watch our shorelines and borders too.   Yah. I think the mass delusion hypothesis right now is dying in a loud grotesque way in ufology. I think it will with us as well in the future.

Well, yes, but I also have "but but but" perspectives on these .. as you'd expect.   I remember something Thom Powell wrote .. he said thing guerilla, not gorilla.   I talked to him about that at the Richland conference more than a decade ago.   His notion is there's a difference between a merely shy animal and something that goes to great, planned, deliberate ends to avoid us.    That lemur is an animal, not a kind of person.    In that context, comparing the two situations is not really apples to apples.      Regarding coverup .. again, I haven't seen any signs of it despite a lot of interaction with both government officials and working in academia myself.   So far as academic suicide, 'tis true the faculty at Idaho State tried to take Meldrum's tenur .. that's basically attempting to take away his retirement as well as his professional standing, so it is a real thing, but it is academia itself, not government, and it isn't being done under threat, it is done because his peers perceived his actions as making them look foolish by association with him.      Mass delusion ... is a thing I've considered.   The question is .. as I frame it .. is it possible there is something genetically broken in every human that causes us to have the same hallucination?   It has to be something every single one of us has, genetically, not just an occasional twitch, because it manifests essentially identically in every person that has it happen.    It crosses cultures, it crosses centuries, it crosses oceans .. yet the symptoms, the "hallucination" itself, remains essentially fixed.   This can only be genetic wiring if it is mass hallucination.    That also doesn't account for tracks, for audio recordings, etc.   Plaster does not hallucinate.   Audio equipment does not hallucinate.   So .. possible but not very probable.  

Thanks for the reply Norse and I agree with the biopsy dart gun usage. The forest service and blm biologist should incorporate biopsy dart guns as part of the tools for the hundreds of biologists and field workers that they employ. Do they really want to discover bigfoot? why or why not?   It sounds like DNA from hair is inadequate when it comes to identifying bigfoot as a new species.  Do Hair Follicles Have DNA? Yes — hair follicles contain living cells with intact nuclei, making them a rich source of nuclear DNA, the unique genetic material that can identify an Where the DNA Is Found A hair has two main parts: Root (hair follicle): The living portion embedded in the skin. This contains nucleated cells with nuclear DNA (nDNA), which is unique to each person and inherited from both parents  Shaft: The visible, keratinized part of the hair. It is made of dead cells and generally lacks viable nuclear DNA, but it does contain mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), which is inherited almost exclusively from the mother       

I think the most politically correct, and most expedient way forward currently is….   Biopsy darts.   If everyone in research had a biopsy dart gun? At some point? Someone is gonna connect.   And then we shall see if its “allowed” to be discovered.