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If a "researcher" fails to carry a simple dslr camera into the woods, that tells you they're not truly a "researcher."

I don't give a rats ass about your English lecture. But you could definitely brush up on your reading comprehension. I'm not going to debate what happened 250 years ago. What is done is done. All that matters is what is happening now..... Over one million humans live just in western Washington, if I was Bigfoot I would want recognition and protection for myself and my habitat that is left.

If that's true we can certainly stop worrying about the PGF being real. That one didn't evade detection at all or even seem to recognize the camera or guns or understand their purpose. Of course, to be fair, we should probably consider all possible options. Maybe Patty is real but somehow mentally challenged? Another option might be that it wouldn't need to move fast if it was a hoax as the person would be in on it but how likely is that really? Who's ever heard of a bigfoot hoax or people lying to make money? Or, maybe, just maybe, it was genetically engineered by aliens and traveled light years to come here and raise our consciousness 50 years ago before disappearing, forgoing stealth just that one time, never to be clearly photographed again...mind blown! All I can say is that probably our only chance of ever capturing one of these uber beasts probably rests with Putin darting an Almasty the next time he's out darting (rare & elusive but obviously not impossible to find, dart & study) siberian tigers, that cat can shoot! And as ex-KGB chief he's pretty crafty himself. http://www.reuters.com/article/us-putin-tiger-idUSLV19939720080902 Or maybe the guys from Mountain Monsters will come through, they're like the A-Team of bigfoot hunters with all the welding and plans. Maybe one day we will all love it when a plan comes together!

If you're going to attempt characterize what I said, at least get it right. Take any example of a species that is on the brink of extinction. The population decline was directly due to human intervention either through hunting, sport, or fear. Had humans not intervened from the beginning there never would have been a problem. That applies to bison, wolves, brown bear, alligators and many mor, particularly the mountain gorilla. Right now, the sasquatch population is free from human intervention yet for some reason, that defies rational explanation, you think humans can begin the process of intervention and get it right. Look what happened to mountain gorillas since they were discovered in 1902. There are now less than 1,000 mountain gorillas on earth. How has human intervention worked out for mountain gorillas? And the same fate will befall sasquatches. Mass extermination for sport or for profit. Their fate will be more like mountain gorillas where guards with automatic weapons protect every gorilla. That's the fate we want for sasquatches? Do we want their numbers dwindle to a handful off them and then herd them to a "park or reserve" where they can be protected from total extinction. Not me. Humans screw up nature. Sasquatches are one species where man has not impacted their lives. And I will repeat.....it is best to leave them alone from the get go.

Ok....I'm done. The paranormal section is that way vvvvvvvv!

But that's not how the sightings read and you know it. Show me the report from Chicagoland or anywhere in Illinois that comes across as ridiculous, specify how it's spurious outside of the fact that you don't like its location. You have way too much faith in your estimates, there's tons of room for error. How do you know it's valid to take great ape data and scale it up linearly? Do we know for sure it's a linear relationship? Do we have mountains of data on bigfoot metabolism? Do we have reason to think it should be identical to known species?

Here is my camera......say cheese.

This is just slightly conspiracy-theory for me, but a part of me thinks the "BF reservations" were established by the government a long time ago in the form of the federal and state parks. There's a lot of protected land for them to use. Even if we're looking at the harder-to-swallow suburban bigfoot, the forest preserves of Chicago are not going anywhere. There's a balance to be struck with the timber industry, but it doesn't seem like they're just running amok bulldozing forests at an alarming rate.

Cotter- sorry my spell checker renamed you as "coffee" in my previous post!

No, I'm not. And, by the way, the word is "you're", a contraction for "you are". Illiteracy does not help make your case. Note, that is "your", possessive. Note the difference. Learn from it. Do you honestly think those tribes would rather be where they are, on reservations, rights or not, rather than living free ... or dying free ... as they did 250 years ago before we rounded up their ancestors, shot them, poisoned them, deliberately gave them diseases to eradicate them? What do you think the members of tribes that no longer exist would think ... that they're better off dead from the benefits of our tender care for their well being? Or alive even if struggling ... struggling, as we see it, because they're not tied down with our vices? MIB

Wait, you want a dashcam video? That exists, from a police vehicle no less. Ohhh you wanted a clear dashcam video, well now we're adding a lot more variables into the equation again! I'd put a pretty huge majority of published reports as likely genuine (>95%), and even with that factor about as high as possible, the odds of any given sighting leading to a clear photo or video are still going to be vanishingly small. What would your estimates, confidence intervals, evidence, and reasoning for the following parameters be: 1) Proportion of sightings where sasquatch is unaware of human presence at first sight 2) Average length of time for sasquatch to become aware of human presence 3) Average length of time for sasquatch to flee into cover 4) Factor by which (3) is reduced if human reaches into pockets or for some device 5) Factor by which (3) is reduced if human makes any movement 6) Proportion of sightings within 20-30 feet (any further and we're no longer talking convincing photos, or at least diminishing returns - substitute this for some kind of distance:quality scaling factor if you can figure out how to make that make sense) 7) Proportion of sightings by humans that actually have some type of camera accessible 8) Average length of time for human to be aimed and ready to shoot with thumb on the button (phones in pockets will increase this dramatically) 9) Proportion of people who actually remember they have some type of camera accessible (careful overestimating this one) 10) Proportion of people who remember, and actually still care about taking that photo plus anything a professional photographer would consider, the particular technical specs of the camera, type and time to focus, resolution, lighting, you name it. So that's me taking a stab at the "Drake equation" approach suggested by ohiobill, but it's an especially apt approach because Drake clearly didn't mean to gain any actual statistical insight into the question; rather, it was meant as a thought exercise for scientists. Overuse and misapplication of statistics and modeling is a plague of scientific reasoning right now, and that's the take home message of both these thought exercises for me.

No, not at all. It's just .. history. Among my interests are the history of westward migration, westward expansion. Manifest Destiny, the growth of the United States. We accomplished some great things and we did some very shameful things along the way. We can't change the past. We can learn from it but only if we acknowledge the bad and the good. I'd like to think that some of the people who did the bad did so not understanding the consequences of their actions. I'd like to think that we can learn from their mistakes and do better. It's very obvious as a student of history and of human nature that we're not there yet. MIB

Well, MIB, that's just a right nasty little post you've got going for yourself. Yeesh.

Wildlife examples are not relevant to bigfoot. What is relevant is what fate has befallen every kind of primitive culture that has been "found" by western "civilization." We sell them religion, we take their land and shove them on reservations, we give them smallpox. 90%+ mortality rates. Look what our missionaries do to indigenous people in the tropics. Look what us enlightened Americans did to our own indigenous people. Same for Australia. We ram religion down their throats, we shove them on reservations, destroy their cultures, and we give them nice presents like smallpox with a 90%+ mortality rate. What the heck is wrong with you? Can't learn from past genocide, you have to find another primitive people and wipe them out, too? Really? MIB

How has it worked out here in North America for wolves and grizzly? Free to roam until humans came around, then slaughtered to near extinction. They are now confined to a handful of "designated areas". You call that progress and I call that humans mismanaging nature,

Your experience is a really good argument for not doing bigfoot field work at night as a large portion of field researchers think is essential due to the Finding Bigfoot television show. You could nearly step on a BF foot in the dark and never know. How in the world could you expect to see or photograph one at night? And of course you are likely to completely miss finding footprints unless you are running around with flashlights.

I once thought I saw a black bear from about 100 yards in broad daylight... it turned out to be a black bear.

Sadly any sort of show about Sasquatch, or anything in a field like cryptozoology, the paranormal or UFO's, is going to be fraught with drama and have a over exaggerated hype element to it. It is just the nature of what people want to see these days. Very few people want to learn anything about the technical or educational elements of what it takes to actually do thorough and objective research into a field. They care little about the steak, all they want is the sizzle.

If bigfoot is a real animal, then there is no reason at all that it should not be possible to acquire proof.