When it comes to why nobody did much, you have to remember that we have the benefit of hindsight.
WE know that there were a pile of sightings (or at least claimed sightings) in a few years. WE also know that soon after, the sightings dropped off and became rare. WE know that this sparked a huge mystery that would go unanswered for decades.
THEY didn't know that was going to happen. From their perspective, something new had just been discovered and was suddenly seemingly everywhere. You could find tracks at will. Everybody around had either seen one, or at least the tracks. Shoot, some guy riding horses even got pictures of one on his movie camera while riding around. Seems like only a matter of time and somebody will have captured one or figured out what is going on. Doesn't seem like there is any big hurry. Whatever they are, the dumb things seem to be everywhere. If nobody has caught one by next summer, maybe we'll go look around. Who knows? Maybe we'll get lucky. After all, how hard can it be to find one of those whatever-they-are's?
Hindsight gives us a very different perspective.
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