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<Unfortunately, that is how it goes with anything strange that happens> Agreed Pistola. I was hunting once and thought something was throwing rocks at me, small pebbles actually. That was close to 40 years ago but I still remember it because it was so odd. I chalked it up to birds dropping them from the trees above me. So while I'm a skeptic on BF that's probably why I don't write it off as "can't possibly exist". Like a lot of others here, we're just looking for explanations to strange things we've witnessed.

Not a coverup. Just avoiding headaches. Peer pressure to "not talk" about it. Not unlike one's experience with skeptics on this forum. The experience I had at Fort Lewis in 1983 was like this. I knew what it was, but all it did was scare a couple of REMF privates. Was I going to report it up the chain? No way. In my experience, if you bring it up people will rib you when you're in a group, but confide in you one on one. Usually, the last thing you want to do is take a firm stand on it when interacting with the group as a whole.

While I have not been to Bhutan (though I would love to go), I have been to Nepal. I spent two or three weeks in the country, and most of it was in the Himalayas at a small village called Pangom in the Arun Valley. I knew the area was remote, but there's nothing like being there to really drive that home. There were no roads whatsoever. We had to be helicoptered in to the site and picked up at the end of our stay. Our gear was transported by these strange yak/cow hybrids escorted by Sherpas who walked for days to get anywhere. When tensions with a neighboring village arose and police were needed (Bobo was accused of angering the gods and causing a torrential downpour and the resulting landslides), they had to walk from a nearby village downslope and it took them over 12 hours to arrive. Not only is this area huge, but the terrain is extremely rugged. The mountain slopes are ridiculously steep and covered with leech-ridden semi-tropical vines with pokey thorns and worse. The people who live there mostly lack electricity. They live a subsistence living by catering to tourists "trekking" through the mountains and by growing potatoes, cabbage, and other crops. Most of the folks who helped us were illiterate. Ranae spent a week before filming in Bhutan and she reported that the situation there was more or less the same in economics and geography. I feel that my assumptions about Nepal would largely be accurate to describe Bhutan as well. To me, it's a wonder we hear of ANY yeti sightings. The people of the Himalayas are far more preoccupied with surviving than reporting sightings to outsiders of animals they know live there. Most of the mountain folk know people don't think yetis are real, so why should they care what scientists think unless they can make a living guiding for them, or being porters? They go to bed at dark and wake up at sunrise. They aren't out in the woods at night. They are wonderfully simple, happy, and compassionate people living a small life in a huge mountain range. Who would they report a sighting of a perfectly normal animal to, anyway? Even better, HOW would they report it (it's a two-week walk to Kathmandu)? I imagine such an action seems like quite the hassle to a Sherpa trying to put food on his family's table. Just because Westerners don't hear about yeti sightings much doesn't mean they don't happen. I have to question whether or not yeti sightings are in fact in decline, or have remained more or less quietly steady over the years. Just because a news article says so, it doesn't make it true. Just my two cents from having actually been to the region. If you're interested in reading my field notes from Nepal, they are posted on my website here: http://cliffbarackman.com/finding-bigfoot/finding-bigfoot-episode-guide/finding-bigfoot-season-four/finding-bigfoot-season-four-abominable-snowman/ Cliff

You may have missed my point...not too compelling in an "only an isolated incident" sense of looking at it only. From the perspective of a collective body of evidence? Oh yeah, at least to me. And the recognition of the significance to Pistola needs to be acknowledged too. This man kept this piece of wood for years, and went out of his way to complicate his life by telling the story to us and others. It pays to wonder why he would do that. Lasting knowledge and insight only comes from connecting lots of dots. One dot can't be connected. I'm looking for other dots here.

I'm not on board with the tree limb twisting burglar either, but if I had to place it somewhere on the plausibility scale, it would rank well above bigfoot.

The eye photos were weird, but I still believe him. I'm into audio/speakers and the voices sound authentic to me.

Bigfoot runs into this neighborhood full of houses and people breaks and branch and then runs away. This makes a lot if sense and is completely believable.

Great! Now where do I go to ensure a confrontation in my lifetime, which is growing shorter by the minute?! :-) Even allowing f/a 4-to-1 ratio of unreported to reported encounters, the # of encounters/square miles/time = a very small number. So, some of us have to deal in "belief" or, if that word is anathema to some, with weighing the evidence and determining if probable cause exists to believe that Bigfoot exists. For me, it's not "convinced based on a website discussion" so much as its my belief/probable cause meter is moved this way or that by consistencies between and within individual reports, information gained that allows me to assign a greater/lesser amount of weight to types of evidence, and in many cases, individuals who have graciously provide additional information in response to pointed questions (almost always by PM) about their claimed encounter. An imperfect solution, yes, but until you shoot one or I run over one, the only one we have. That matches my experience almost to a T. Did not even think about Bigfoot until stumbling across a Legend Meets Science re-run and the publicity about the DNA review that was going to settle the issue f/all time. And like Terry, directly above, I am cautiously and optimistically coming down on the "exists" time, but if anything, the amount of at times outrageous claims and stories that populated this forum really put a heavy weight on the negative side of the scales. EDITED TO ADD: Not sure why the quoted posters aren't showing up, but the appear when I use the editor. Sorry. From the top its JDL, 1980squatch, norse, and dmaker. Edited Anew: Freakin' computers....