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If I'd known I was going to be called "uneducated" on a subject/ area filled with mostly self proclaimed experts because i used "him" in a paragraph typed on my phone I would not have bothered to share an honest opinion in good faith.

Only self proclaimed experts on this forum are a few resident skeptics that "know" what they cannot know. I openly proclaim that I know less over time in that what I thought was simple subject at first. Compounding this is trying to determine behavior of probably the most elusive land creature on the planet.

Yes people have lives. And when the best find of a lifetime presented itself I will say they stepped up. This is about the handling of the e-DNA samples. It has been my bone of contention all along. That's where what I thought was an incredible opportunity for discovery got irretrievably ruined. Look, even it wasn't Sasquatches that built the nests, scientifically it was still undocumented behavior by......ANYTHING- including bears AND/OR Humans. That's probably the biggest point to make here out of the whole thing. SOMETHING constructed those nests. If I was a zoologist of any standing in whatever department at whatever university I would be all over this discovery. Simply on the basis of it being an incredibly unusual find. Never mind that the whole thing landed in the laps of Squatchers. And even if it DID initially land in the laps of the Squatchers it seemed they knew enough not to screw up the opportunity. And I don't think they did screw it up. They seemed to have done all the right things by bringing in experts to see the nests. It wasn't until the e-DNA samples got taken that things went south. THAT'S what doesn't sit well, especially since the excuse for the failure of the entire discovery of who or what the nest builders were rested on getting only $5,000 together for testing.

My apologies. You struck a cord and memories of very uneducated people asking, "do you believe HE is real?!?". If it was a singular he or she...it's magic or a demon, or not real.

Only because with all of the promises made in the beginning of the discovery about being careful to not repeat mistakes made in past opportunities, i.e., contamination and other mistakes. Yet there were those that criticized the lack of sterile technique seen in that photo of the piece of a nest being searched by that group of people. In other words it looked like there was going to be no chance of NOT contaminating the evidence. And at the nesting site itself we saw photos of people lying in the nests (Cliff Barackman, Shane Corson, Derekl Randles' daughter etc.) and again thought about contamination. I gave the Olympic Project the benefit of the doubt though because of their assurances in podcasts that things were being conducted properly. And I think they ultimately did things right. It still went off the rails for what I consider frivolous reasons however. Namely claiming to have ended up with degraded samples. We all here on this Forum have discussed over the past recent years the ramifications should proof of this creature ever come to light. It has now been nearly 4 1/2 years since the nests were first found. The samples are useless and the evidence at the nesting site was reported (a year and a half ago) to be overgrowing and disappearing back into nature. The evidence will be gone soon and may have been the best chance we've ever had for a highly precise scientific chance at discovery. It was held up for a year and a half because of $5000. The samples degraded resulting the whole e-DNA opportunity being lost. Again I gave the opportunity the benefit of the doubt by saying that maybe there were good samples taken that were tested and that the results are just waiting to go through the proper scientific peer review process before being made public. Believe it or not I'm sill holding out hope for that. But if that isn't the case then a ridiculously small amount of money held back and ruined any chances anyone may have had for discovery of anything by having fresh samples to work with. It seemed so outlandish to me that I became suspicious of the methodology that ended up in such senseless failure when the PhD's should KNOW from their training and education what would happen to the DNA samples under such circumstances. They would know that the samples were degrading and yet there seemed to be no urgency beyond waiting for the right amount of money? That's why I keep saying something about this picture is way wrong and makes no scientific sense whatsoever. Are we just being jerked around because people think we're stupid or something? I'll wrap up my arguments, which I think have been sound and logical. With on more point. When the nests were first found there was still greenery on the twigs as mentioned before. It was also thought that the nests had been constructed only a few months prior to being discovered. There was also hair samples taken from those nests. A LOT of hair samples. You know what that means? It means that whatever constructed those nests from all of the broken huckleberry bushes had laid in them and laid in them more than once! How long would it take DNA to find its way into the soil under those nests in those few months and, after doing so, how long would it take that DNA to degrade before the nests were discovered and e-DNA samples taken? I've thought often about that. And I think that the short timespan between the nests being used and being discovered wouldn't be enough time for DNA to degrade hardly at all. Think about that and then think about what we have been told about the poor condition of the DNA in the samples. It just doesn't add up.

I enjoyed your post and thought it was a good descriptor of the beast.... whatever it is. 😊