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Wow. The condescension is staggering. Is there any hope that the rest of us of the great unwashed could someday join the vaunted ranks of your good-old boys Bigfoot Experts Club? A tutorial or checklist of some sort, perhaps?

You miss it completely RockApe...it is a position of humility that proposes that I don't know everything that goes on in this world, quite the opposite view of many here who claim to have all the answers. And let me beat you to that punch…DWA is not saying he has all the answers either. He isn’t and trust me on that one. There is a fundamental misappreciation of what truly forms the true basis of knowledge in this world, and it begins with the thought, "Crap, I probably am not as smart as I think I am..." Go there. I am there. You resist the messenger to the point you have a knee-jerk to the message. The message won't change, because it never does...curiosity and exploration trump smug certainty about how things “are†any day. "We don't know, but I want to worry the question like a dog with a bone." Say it, and I promise you it won't sting but a little. Obtuseness merely shuts down dialogue. You've got people on this board with hundreds, maybe thousands of hours of field research time and wildlife observation ...knowledge they could bring, but why bother? They are on the side of answering the outstanding issue we all care about, but what profit they by coming here and talking about it with the likes of some? The supreme irony is this attitude stifles the very conversation ALL of us could learn from. As I’ve said many times, it squanders a valuable resource for the sake of position statements. A simple shame, is all.

Hello Bonehead74, Stemming that tide is a full time job. It's not like a certain one of these folks start their own threads or anything. Heaven forbid but instead use everyone else's threads as a staging ground for promoting a consistent diatribe couched in biased, blind suppositions. Furthering objective critique of the evidence isn't part of the equation and my hat is off to the members of this fine Forum for not indescrimately getting on that bandwagon. Books are written from a biased approach. Conferences are launched from the same perspective. Evidence, if at all not hoaxed, is viewed and disseminated with a slanted mindset. There's little if any objectivity involved behind the dialogue which is meant to gather thinking into a narrow focus involving a one-sided element- that being total conviction of the general public in the unquestionable existence of a large predator in the forest. The task of keeping thought and dialogue in the realm of logical discernment of the available information without leaping into the preconceived mentality drummed up by assumption and speculation regarding the data is daunting at times. What's worse is the dead response to anyone addressing the attempted misguidance of objective thought into one that keeps the blinders on. I suspect it's done to promote discussion and as a flame to ignite member antipathy which is pretty sad to think of as a motive. The incessant nature of a dialogue that ignores all attempts to soften the one-sided steamroller is a good indication of an agenda not favorable to open mature thinking. Is that sad or what. I get tired of the childish rhetoric.

Of course, for your calculations to mean anything, one must presuppose that bigfoot exist. If bigfoot do not exist, then it makes no sense to calculate the chances of a reported sighting not being a mis-id or hoax. The probability would be zero. In other words, the existence of bigfoot does not (and can not) depend on any sort of statistical analysis of any number of anecdotal sighting reports. Instead, the ability to determine the potential validity of said reports using your (or similar) calculations is wholly contingent upon the actual existence of at least one bigfoot creature. The assumption, a priori, that bigfoot exist, is required for any such theorizing to have merit.

Hello Incorigible1, Yes indeedy there is! It's called "hiflier".