When I was a kid, I soooo wanted Bigfoot to be real. I remember the grainy film of him walking through the woods that is still being analyzed to this day.

**** it. I don't care. Bigfoot is real dammit!!

As I've said before, despite some compelling eye witness testimony from seemingly sincere and serious people, I just find it difficult to believe that nobody has ever bagged one of these things if they're real. All these encounters you hear about going back for decades, hell, centuries, and never once do they involve a hunter with a rifle that could bring down a grizzly who doesn't take the shot?

With all the trail camera's in the woods, how is there not a perfect picture of one?

There are certainly many undiscovered species out there right now. But a 8 foot bipedal primate is not one of them. It's just not possible. For one, primates have only flourished in jungle environments with lots of rain. They are for the most part herbivores. It's been that way for millions of years, supported by fossil evidence. Meanwhile there is zero evidence of a stinky 8 foot hermit beast living in North America. It cannot provide a primate herbivore diet. No primate fossils have ever been found in North America. No hair or DNA evidence of any kind. Are we to believe that these beasts live solitary lives, yet never accidentally die leaving remains? There are thousands of men and women that spend their entire careers out in the wilderness, as well as cameras recording the areas of supposed Sasquatch territory. Millions of game hunters out there, many using trailcams. Some idiots make a full time career out of Bigfoot hunting. Yet nothing but stories.

It's just not possible for a primate to escape discovery unless we're talking about extreme environmental isolation. Which excludes North America.

The Native Americans believed Bigfoot was a magical being..

You could only see one if it wanted you to.

Kind of like Jesus, or angels?

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Z7NSQczf_w...igfoot-med.jpg

Sex Panther

This. WHile I acknowledge the pacific NW would provide optimal conditions for such a creature to exist, the fact that no hunters or remains have been found despite large groups consistently searching for it make me beyond skeptical.

I'm probably 90% against existence, but withhold 10% chance. Again, I am not a badass outdoorsman-'Great White Hunter'-type dude. But I have spent a considerable amount of time sleeping on the ground, and have never once come across a bear carcass for instance. Unless an animal was killed by predation- I haven't ever found it's remains and that includes mountain lion, wolves, bear, coyotes, or even a fox.

There are several photos of what appears to be a large predatory cat in the UK for instance, yet no remains have been found. Hell, people in Kansas say they've seen mountain lion/large cats and I remember as a kid down in Arkansas folks saying the same thing. Yes, those animals are known to exist and it isn't beyond imagination that a few might be roaming outside their range. But every now and then you read about the discovery of large animals/fish in the ocean that were thought to be extinct for 2 million years...recently a certain whale if I am not mistaken. All this is the open-minded ten percent side of me.

The overwhelming majority agrees that somehow, somewhere a person would have killed one and either cut a piece off, or gotten a very good up close photo.

Interesting if nothing else.

Just out of curiosity, do any of you think it's possible that givin the thousands of square miles of forest in the US that there are indeed places in there that no man has ever stepped in? Seems pretty impossible to me, but thousands of square miles IS alot. I don't know how far in your average hunter goes, but I'd bet there is still a great deal of forest area that has been largely untouched by humans. Maybe that's where they are...heh.

I hunt here in Nebraska, and it's not even a particularly remote area. I've seen one deer carcass in 12 years. Nature seems to pick up after itself pretty well.

No doubt there are a few remote spots that man hasnt been to- there were places in Washington (state) that we said 'hell no' about trying to move into or through; just too thick/steep or isolated. I'll say the same for some places in northern New Mexico. That's only my limited experience.

I will admit I'm kinda fascinated by things like this too.

I caught one once, but he wasn't regulation size so I had to throw him back into the woods.

Even better than Bigfoot is the Skunk Ape. The guy who runs the Skunk Ape Research Headquarters is a total nut job.

We tried to buy souvenirs from him and he kept just giving them to us for free all while bitching about how is what so financially hard to continue research.

I do believe there's a squatch in these posts.

There's a big difference. Your wilderness experience aside, there have been countless carcasses of all the animals you listed found in the wild. And there's clearly fossil records of these animals in the North American ground. Enough so that we can see how the animal has changed over the past million years or so. Each of those animals has been clearly photographed thousands upon thousands of times. We have instances of each of those animals in captivity all across the world. You can go to Google right now, and find more results than you can click in a day of these animals appearing clearly on trail cams and all sorts of other pictures.

Just this last year, a mountain lion was photographed in Kansas, and it's clear as day. And the mountain lion is actually a really good example of a solitary predator being unable to escape discovery. Mountain lions are incredibly solitary and independent animals, not to mention being nocturnal. They don't live in packs, and they have a territorial range larger than any other animal in the Western hemisphere. So there's very very few of them, they cover a huge range of territory, they're very elusive and rarely out in daylight. But look at the evidence we have for their existence.

http://img12.imageshack.us/img12/7991/15741624bg1.jpg

Yet we still have zero evidence of a large unknown North American primate. Zero. Nothing. Nada.