SilentGiant wrote:
...Dave54: I don't believe that the Patterson/Gimlin film has ever been debunked. Many have tried including the author Greg Long and a man named Bob Hieronimous. Although Patterson had a few holes in his story and was a bit rough around the edges, he passed away a while ago, going to his grave insisting on the authenticity of the footage. For the past 50 years, Bob Gimlin (the man who accompanied Patterson during those searches) has withstood public scrutiny and ridicule while making nothing in terms of any kind of profit. To this day he will freely talk to anyone that wants to about the film and he has proven to be a man of high integrity by many who have met and known him. I am somewhat on the fence but I tend to believe that the film is authentic. There's a pretty thorough breakdown here if you're interested:
http://www.bfro.net/news/korff_scam.asp" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; Yes, it's from a pro bigfoot organization but not many others have invested the time into researching and putting it together in one place....
I have read and researched all the debunking attempts I could find. There are much better attempts than the one you posted. All failed. There will always be 'true believers' no matter what evidence is presented, and I will not get sucked into a discussion here. You have the right to believe anything you want, whether Jimmy Hoffa is really living in his UFO base in the Bermuda Triangle, the P-G film, or the world is secretly controlled by the Trilateral Commission.
i completely dismiss the line of argument that it's all unexplored. As pointed out earlier, many, if not most, here hike off trail extensively. We see bear and deer carcasses frequently, scat, tracks, and all other forms of animal sign. Yet no one has seen a bigfoot. In my many years in the Forest Service I pored over thousands of high resolution aerial photos. I have seen bear, deer, and elk on the photos, and twice an unclothed couple in amorous embrace (they just thought they had privacy). No bigfoot. I have seen many fleeting glimpses of large animals I could not identify -- none of those rise to the level of proof of bigfoot.
There are new species discovered in our back yards all the time. The new species of butterfly discovered in Lassen Volcanic NP, a new species of orchid in Shasta NF, and the new species of fungus that actually was a new genus -- all within the past few years. All of these are small, no new large species. The odds of a viable population of hominids living in an area as developed and explored and visited as the Sierra Nevada are astronomically remote.
So why do people keep claiming to see them? Many reasons. As you pointed out a sizable number are outright fabrications, a well concocted story that never really happened, submitted for the author's personal reasons. Some are third party hoaxes, like the teenagers in a modified gorilla costume in Plumas County a few years back (mid 1980's?). They generated a lot of 'sightings' before a local reporter tracked them down. Some are misidentification of bear, elk, or deer or other animals. And some are psychological creations, seen in the mind but not by the eyes. An analogy can be made to the sightings of leprechauns in Ireland to this day by credible educated and successful people that pass polygraph tests with their tales. Or elves and trolls in mainland Europe, Britain's faeries, or Jinn in the middle east -- same phenomenom. Some researchers put Christianity's angels and flying saucers/aliens in the same category.
So we fall back to the argument of absence of proof is not proof of absence. Although we cannot absolutely dismiss the existence, there also is no reliable evidence. As of now bigfoot is nothing more than folklore and amusing campfire stories.