If people are able to shoot a picture of bigfoot, dont you think they could also shoot a gun? mmhmmmm

People are more likely to be carrying a camera on a family outing than a high calibre rifle which is what you would need to take down an animal of that size.

Some of the old 60s and 70s books on bigfoot were the best, because they not only recounted sightings in a clear manner as the reports were given, without speculation, but also because they posed questions like this...
"if someone shot a bigfoot and it was an endangered species, then the shooter would have some serious fines and even jail time levied against him, and worse, what if bigfoot was more human than many people suppose? That could well end in murder charges."
Something to think about.

Was there a point to this thread besides showing you have no proof of anything whatsoever?

I was just thinking the exact same thing RD.....

Not to try and sound hostile, but this is a rather pointless and not well-thought out arguement



But in answer to your question, here is a reply that is well thought and researched.

Photographs

Top 10 Reasons Why There Isn't More Footage

1) Very few people in rural areas keep a camera handy at all times.

2) Witnesses consistently describe initial confusion and fear during their sighting.

3) Sightings typically last only a few seconds. A camcorders' auto-focus, by itself, takes a few seconds to adjust.

4) Very few people go out looking for these animals for the purpose of photographing them. Most bigfoot researchers are "arm chair" researchers.

5) Sightings in a given area are usually rare. Sasquatches may be on the move most of the time.

6) The only practical opportunities for footage or photos with everyday cameras are situations where a sasquatch is observed out in the open, in the day time, from a distance, for several minutes. Those situations are rarely described.

7) The typical habitats are dense, brushy, quiet forests, where human intruders can be heard well before they get within visual range. In those environments a person can be completely invisible to someone standing less than 10 feet away.

8) Sasquatches are likely nocturnal. Hunters and fisherman almost never hunt after dark without a flashlight or lamp.

9) Sasquatches are likely intelligent. Just as their bodies are much larger than humans', so, apparently, are their heads, and presumably their brain cavities as well. They don't live like humans, but they are certainly more complex than other ape species.

10) They may be the most elusive land mammal species of all, yet they receive the least amount of effort or attention from the government.

Many critics of the sasquatch phenomenon point to the scarcity of photographic or video evidence as a reason to doubt the existence of the species. Although no one has ever debunked the best footage that is available, skeptics continue to question why sasquatch images are so rare. Quick logic suggests there should be miles of footage if the animals really do live in our forests, especially considering how much footage there is of other large North American mammals. Although a handful of short blurry or inconclusive film clips *may* depict real sasquatches, neither the Patterson/Gimlin footage nor any of the lesser clips possess the quality that viewers have come to expect from commercial wildlife footage.

Commencing with the fifteen-minute telecast “The Nature of Things” (1948-1954), natural history documentaries significantly impacted common perceptions regarding wildlife photography. Popular programs such as “Marty Stouffer’s Wild America” and, in more recent years, “The Crocodile Hunter” contributed to the belief that any terrestrial (land) animal can be located, followed, and filmed in the wild by naturalists and professional cameramen without too much difficulty. With that in mind, it is hard for the general public to accept the premise that any large species can consistently elude determined film makers. While these conclusions may appear to be logical enough, most people are simply uninformed about the elements involved.

In addition to the failure of professional wildlife cinematographers to film a sasquatch, critics also emphasize the fact that millions of people live near or visit purported sasquatch habitat. Many of these people are armed with cameras. It stands to reason, according to the argument of skeptics, that sheer chance alone dictates that someone should see and photograph a sasquatch. As with the odds of a random hunter killing a sasquatch, there are many unique and unusual factors to consider when evaluating a random photographer’s odds for success.

The term "random photographer" is used to describe someone toting a camera who is not specifically looking for a sasquatch but who may find himself or herself in a position to photograph or videotape one. A random photographer's odds must be analyzed differently than the odds of someone who is specifically looking for a sasquatch. The vast majority of people who have cameras or camcorders with them in forests are tourists and vacationers, not professional wildlife photographers. Tourists and vacationers are usually found in places where there are lots of other tourists and vacationers. This class of photographer rarely gets far away from crowds and is typically found along well kept trails and roads in popular destinations such as Yosemite, Yellowstone, and Grand Canyon National Park.

Adventurous nature tourists may occasionally don backpacks and join smaller groups headed to less crowded locations, but those trips still take place along marked trails or down rivers that endure relatively heavy and consistent human traffic. Safety concerns keep most backpackers close to marked and maintained trails. More experienced backpackers may venture into wilder mountainous or densely forested areas, but even here they generally stick to some kind of established path.

Elusive woodland or wilderness animals such as predators, on the other hand, do not search out maintained trails. Such creatures know the routes used by animals and (especially) humans. If a bear or mountain lion were to travel along a trail frequented by people, it would normally use the trail at night, a time when it is less likely to have a surprise encounter with a human. In those rare instances when an unanticipated encounter occurs along a road or a maintained trail, animals like cougars, wolves and bears usually slip back into the woods within a few seconds, before a backpacker can get a camera ready to shoot a single frame.

Most nature tourists, even backpackers, carry cameras for the purpose of photographing themselves, fellow travelers, and landscapes. Cameras are brought to preserve vacation memories, not to photograph quick moving animals. Tourists do not usually hold cameras in their hands until they reach a place where they know they are going to take a photograph, and many people keep cameras safely secured inside backpacks. Many seconds may elapse before the average tourist is able to remove a backpack, fish a camera out of the bag, deal with the lens cap, try to focus the camera, find the subject in the view finder, and take the shot.

The desire or ability to photograph a large dangerous looking wild animal always depends on the comfort level of the tourist. Photographing a group of large hungry polar bears poses no threat when the tourist is seated safely inside a large heated bus designed specifically for the purpose of thwarting large hungry polar bears. Similarly, photographing "park bears" eating from a garbage dump in Yellowstone is not an uncomfortable situation because lots of other people are also standing around taking pictures.

The situation is totally different when a backpacker observes a large dangerous looking animal while hiking through a forest. Encountering a bear or mountain lion in a remote area can be a very frightening experience, even if the animal turns and runs away. When a surprise confrontation occurs, the observer is usually very concerned about his or her safety. The observer does not think about taking pictures at that moment, even if he or she has a camera in hand. This physiologically derived response can be likened to the "Drive-by Shooting Effect."

Drive-by shootings were a nightly occurrence in Los Angeles during the 1980s and early 1990s. Dozens of people were killed each year. There were, collectively, hundreds of witnesses to these incidents.

There is only one piece of video footage documenting an actual drive-by shooting. This astounding fact appears to defy superficial logic, considering that Los Angeles is one of the media capitals of the world. Many Angelenos own cameras and try to make a buck with them.

The one piece of footage was obtained by a free-lance TV crew. The crew was taking a break between stories and testing its gear in a dark downtown neighborhood when the incident quickly unfolded in front of them. The crew dove for the floor of the van while the camera continued rolling.

They got the footage, but it happened unintentionally. The camera happened to be sitting on a tripod, with tape rolling, and pointed in the direction of the gas station where the shooting happened.

If the crew had somehow gotten advance warning that a shooting was going to occur, the camera would not have been sitting on a tripod outside the vehicle. It would have been on a camerman's shoulder. He would have likely taken cover when the shooting started, and he would have missed getting footage of the shooting.

Unexpected sense of extreme danger will interfere with any mission or desire to take pictures or shoot video.

For a sasquatch to be an easy target for casual photographers, it would have to wander repeatedly into the open, in daylight, and in predictable places frequented by humans. However, sighting patterns indicate that sasquatches prefer to remain in thick forests, venturing out only after nightfall. In addition, reported behaviors seem to indicate that sasquatches feel very vulnerable when observed by humans, a common mammalian response. Because viewing opportunities are exceedingly rare to begin with, especially in daylight, the odds of a random person photographing a sasquatch are negligible.

On the other hand, the odds of a "sasquatch photographer" have to be analyzed differently. A person specifically dedicated to the goal of photographing a sasquatch is likely to be more mentally prepared to handle the surprise of an encounter and has undoubtedly played out possible scenarios many times over. The photographer knows the sasquatch may dash off quickly; a camera, featuring an appropriate lens, fast film, and possibly equipped with a night-vision attachment, is kept handy. Even with these advantages, however, the would-be sasquatch photographer must still overcome daunting difficulties.

Before addressing some of these major hindrances, it is important to note that very few experienced photographers intent on documenting a sasquatch actually get into the field on a regular basis. Although many skeptics assume there must be hundreds, or at least dozens, of these individuals, in reality, photographers consistently trying to track sasquatches probably number fewer than five. At best, only a few dozen investigators get into the field on a monthly basis. Because nearly everyone on the sasquatch field research scene today has a day job, researchers are rarely able to remain in the field for more than a few days at a time. The number of people employed full time to get sasquatch footage is zero (0); in fact, there are no paid positions in any aspect of sasquatch field research.

As surprising as it may sound, no television wildlife production company or wildlife magazine has ever put a professional wildlife photographer in the field for more than a few days in an attempt to obtain photographs, film, or video footage. Production companies that do produce programs dealing with sasquatches typically focus their attention on sasquatch researchers and theorists rather than trying to get original footage.

Part of the problem is that production companies do not have the luxury of planning for long-term projects with ambiguous odds of success. It is much easier and more financially feasible to spend a few days or weeks tagging along with folks who call themselves sasquatch researchers, interviewing them, asking cliche questions, and showing stock footage. By necessity, TV producers are not long term project managers. The expenses involved in television production necessitate strenuous deadlines and reliable project completion criteria. Sasquatches, for better or worse, do not lend themselves to short term media planning.

One practical long term plan for a sasquatch photographer would be to follow up on recent reports and pinpoint promising areas to patrol on horseback at least a few times a year for several days at a time. Sasquatch photographers almost never have the time or resources to conduct these kinds of repeated, extended, horse packing trips. In fact, the last people who actually did this over the course of a few years were Roger Patterson and Bob Gimlin. They were able to approach the photography challenge from this angle because their jobs were seasonal, they were experienced backwoods hunters, and they had ready access to horses. Patterson and Gimlin also had a decent communications network that enabled them to stay abreast of the most recent sightings and track finds in the Pacific Northwest. In 1967 sasquatch tracks started turning up as logging roads were bulldozed in remote mountainous reaches of northern California. Footprints were found in the new roads and nearby areas, including the bed of Bluff Creek. Patterson and Gimlin got wind of the track finds and soon set out on horseback, searching for days along the creek. On horseback they could travel long distances and easily patrol areas each day that were rarely seen by humans.

By a fortuitous twist of fate, the bottom land adjacent to Bluff Creek was quite open in late 1967. A major storm had caused massive flooding earlier in the year and, as a result, little more than sand bars, mud flats, and flood debris characterized the creek in many places. For months after the floods, animals had to venture out into the open, crossing extensive mud and sand bars, to get to water, a fact that may have played a role in the discovery of tracks during that period of time by sasquatch researchers such as John Green and Al Hodgson. It was obviously a crucial factor allowing Roger Patterson to film a sasquatch as it retreated from the water's edge back to the tree line. The location now looks very different. Riparian vegetation has grown back with a vengeance. Today Patterson and Gimlin would not be able to see the figure from where they first spotted it, nor would they have an unobstructed view of it as it walked back into the dense coniferous forest. It is evident that a host of unique circumstances and the right combination of people, place, plan, preparedness and perseverance enabled the documentation of the sasquatch in 1967. The fact that no one has matched Patterson and Gimlin’s feat in the ensuing decades serves as testimony to the magnitude of their achievement and the monumental difficulty of the task.

Hindrances faced by contemporary photographers stem mainly from the elusive habits of sasquatches. Almost any other type of terrestrial animal is easier to locate and photograph, not only because there are more of them, but also because they live in more predictable locations. Sasquatches may be nomadic, that is, it appears that their food requirements and social structure may force movements from place to place on a frequent basis and in unpredictable patterns within a large home range. It is evident that they are nocturnal to a considerable degree and extremely wary of humans.

Elusive predators such as wolves, cougars and bears have more predictable territories and behaviors, enabling them to be trapped. Captive animals can be relocated to settings designed with the needs of the wildlife image market in mind. As a prominent wildlife photographer related, "An animal such as a cougar is virtually never photographed in the wild unless it is hounded by dogs first. All of the images on calendars, in magazines and books are taken in captivity - even if they don't look like it. There is a whole industry around the photography of difficult predators. Photo tours to game farms such as the Triple D in Montana are big business and they are also a source for film makers - even documentary film makers." These facilities, offering expansive naturalistic settings, make it easy for cinematographers to locate their subject for filming, creating the impression that a wild animal has been skillfully approached and followed consistently through unrestricted habitat as it hunts, feeds and reproduces. Much of wildlife videography is "staged" in this way.

The nocturnal habits of sasquatches also create huge challenges for photographers. Light problems also make the effort much more costly as a result of expensive night vision and/or infrared illumination equipment requirements. Illuminating a sasquatch with a bright light apparently doesn't have the mesmerizing effect it has with deer. The few sasquatch researchers who claim to have briefly spotlighted a sasquatch say it only lasted a few seconds, and they weren't given a second opportunity. Sasquatches apparently do not like having lights shined in their eyes. They won't attack people who illuminate them, but they will retreat quickly into the brush and leave the immediate vicinity.

For many years a major hindrance for sasquatch photographers was finding out where sasquatches have been sighted. Sasquatch photographers are still quite dependent on the most recent leads from witnesses because last year's information may not be relevant unless it helps to establish a solid pattern. For the last twenty years the main problem in gathering data from witnesses was that most witnesses were afraid to make reports, or didn't know where to make reports. Outlandish supermarket tabloids with bogus sasquatch tales had a tremendous silencing effect on most witnesses. These tabloids hijacked the term "Bigfoot" and turned it into cartoon monster figure, rather than a common name for a whole group of animals. These ubiquitous publications made witnesses vulnerable to ridicule and teasing, and their observations were placed on a level with "Elvis sightings." Dispatchers for law enforcement and park rangers typically did not record these kinds of reports and often insulted witnesses who called. Sasquatch researchers wanted these reports but witnesses usually didn't know who the researchers were or how to reach them.

Sasquatch researchers had their best success locating witnesses in parts of the Pacific Northwest where people traditionally spoke rather openly about sasquatch sightings. In the northwest, in general, people are more open to the idea of sasquatches, so many heard about sightings or track finds by other local residents, especially those living in smaller communities. Those reports eventually reached those who wanted to document them.

Starting in the late 1990s, the Internet has greatly facilitated communications between witnesses and those seriously interested in witness reports. Greater numbers of recent reports are making their way to researchers and investigators, and locations can be more easily plotted. This new communication channel has surprised many veteran researchers because of the quantity and quality of reports from forested regions that were not formerly thought of as "bigfoot country." Many of the eastern states, the Great Lakes region and the Appalachians apparently have as many credible recent eyewitnesses as the Pacific Northwest.

The Internet isn't the only technology that will facilitate future sasquatch research. Compact video systems are becoming more affordable each year. Some of these systems allow for unmanned video surveillance of a target area. Unmanned systems may prove to be key devices for obtaining a good quantity of close range daylight footage.

In summary, several explanations serve to answer questions regarding the paucity of sasquatch photographic documentation. A short list could include:

a) few people in the field are trying to photograph them,
no professional wildlife production company is willing to commit to a systematic and long term effort the way Patterson and Gimlin did, and
c) crucial technology has not been affordable or available until very recently.

With more reports becoming available to the public in a timely manner via the Internet, and unmanned camera systems becoming more affordable, new people will undoubtedly attempt new photographic techniques in new areas. This could soon lead to unprecedented images that may have an enormous impact on sasquatch research, natural history, and science in general.


http://www.bfro.net/gdb/show_FAQ.asp?id=412

How come a hunter hasn't shot one?
The short answer: Because hunters don't hunt for these animals.

Hunter Behavior

The counter to the short answer is often:

"The woods are full of hunters who'll shoot at anything. If something like a bigfoot were really out there, a hunter would have definitely shot one by now."

That line is intended to conclude the discussion, and usually does so in most urban conversations. The argument usually goes unrebutted, because most urban folks aren't very familiar with hunting patterns in North America. If you were to go out and examine: a) how hunters hunt, B) where hunters hunt, c) what laws they have to observe, d) the actual statistics on poaching, and e) all the factors making it unlikely that a hunter will ever see a bigfoot, you'd discover the basic erroneousness of that argument.

Most non-hunters believe that hunters will shoot any animal they come across while hunting. This is one of the more glaring misperceptions about rural behavior. In reality most hunters focus their efforts and carry the proper equipment for only one type of animal on a given day. A hunter's choice of game animals is always restricted by law to particular animals at particular times of year. Thus the season usually determines the type of animal a hunter can fire upon. Between the equipment limitations and legal restrictions, a hunter is limited to only a handful of choices most of the year, and only a few more at other times of the year.

Most non-hunters also have a very skewed perception regarding the degree of saturation of hunters in rural areas. A majority of Americans who own guns do not hunt at all. Another way to look at that equation is to say a minority of gun owners ever hunt. Of that minority describing themselves as hunters, the majority of those men hunt no more than two weekends per year. Hunters, who hunt often and year round, are hard to find these days. Unless you head out into public hunting areas in October or November you'll probably never come across a hunter. If you stay away from maintained trails in national and state parks you probably won't see anybody at all. In almost every state and province from coast to coast there are thousands and thousands of acres of forest, some more remote than others, that never see any human traffic at any time of year. To say "the woods are full of hunters" is to confess one's inexperience with North American forests.

Poaching is hunting in disregard of hunting laws. Poaching is more common in some states than in others, but it's always the exception rather than the rule. Most poaching incidents are roadside occurrences involving opportunistic motorists who'll shoot deer from vehicles at night. Even poachers are selective about what they shoot. Arrests of professional poachers tend to make headlines whenever they happen. This has the effect of magnifying its perceived frequency compared to lawful hunting. The vast majority of people who hunt do so for relaxation and recreation. They obey state hunting laws and observe local hunting regulations.

In most states a hunter can be arrested and prosecuted for poaching merely for being equipped to hunt animals not specifically permitted in that season. They can't always carry the largest caliber rifles with them. A hunter will pass on shooting a large dangerous looking animal if the hunter feels inadequately armed. Those few who hunt bear or mountain lion want to feel safe themselves, and adequately armed when shooting an animal that could turn and attack. In most circumstances the only time a hunter will be carrying a very large caliber rifle will be in deer-gun or elk-gun season. Deer-gun season lasts only a few weeks in fall, and elk-gun season lasts only a few weeks in winter. In most areas high caliber rifles are restricted to shooting ranges at all other times of year. In states like Ohio hunting with high caliber rifles is completely forbidden. Hunters may only use short range firearms such as shotguns to hunt deer.

There are a few factors actually making it less likely for a deer/elk hunter, as opposed to a hiker or a camper, to see or encounter a bigfoot. A sighting or encounter is more likely to happen when the person sees a bigfoot before the bigfoot sees the person. A bigfoot is more likely to see the person first when the person is wearing a bright fluorescent orange ("hunter orange") hat and jacket. These extremely conspicuous garments are worn by deer/elk hunters to make them more visible to other hunters. They are invisible to deer because of the eyesight physiology of deer. One could assume that the eyesight physiology of a bigfoot would be closer to primates than deer, so bigfoots would probably see hunter orange as distinctly as humans can. Also, for safety reasons deer/elk hunters cannot legally hunt deer at night (except by special permission for crop damage control purposes, and then only in open fields). Coon hunters can hunt in forests at night (when bigfoots are believed to be most active) but they are required to carry lit lamps with them, for the same reason deer/elk hunters must wear hunter orange -- to prevent hunting accidents. With or without lit lamps, coon hunters are even more noticeable than deer/elk hunters because of the loud hounds they employ to sniff out coons. Even in the thickest forests coon hunters and their dogs can be heard, literally, a mile away. This gives bigfoots plenty of warning to leave the area before a confrontation can occur.

Another widespread presumption is that coon dogs and bloodhounds can be used to hunt anything and everything. The fact is, hunting dogs have to be rigorously trained to follow a particular scent and ignore all others. The typical training involves exposing them to body parts of the particular game species from the time they're puppies. It would be difficult to train a pack of dogs to all consistently follow the scent of a bigfoot if the dogs have never smelled a bigfoot before. Bloodhounds can follow the scent of a human that they've never smelled before, but it's always the same species they're after -- humans. ***

If you were to try to put some faces on the term "bigfoot hunters" you'd steadily discover that there aren't many people who regularly, or even occasionally hunt for bigfoots with the intent to kill one. I've asked around for many years now trying to find people who actually hunt for bigfoots. I've met several people who have large enough rifles to do the job, and who are not philosophically opposed to it, but they meet only the most basic requirements. I have yet to meet anyone who consistently pursues sighting reports in order to hunt and kill a bigfoot. There were situations in the 70's where car loads of rural hunters would patrol a vicinity following a flap of sightings, but those were always localized situations and they never lasted more than a week or two. The occasional solo commando bigfoot hunter usually doesn't get very far on his own. Those who are lured by the fantasy of slaying the great monster for the sake of science ... tend to get frustrated after a while and throw in the towel. The few weekend profiteers who stick with it eventually switch from rifles to camcorders. There are a few reasons for this eventual change of equipment and goals.

Anyone who actually carries a high caliber rifle while looking for a bigfoot gradually realizes how unlawful it is to merely carry a rifle in most forests during most seasons of the year. Even patrolling backcountry roads with a rifle in a vehicle can lead to some stiff fines and/or jail time. The fantasies of an aspiring bigfoot assassin will eventually mature from visions of scientific glory to visions of big money. Once that transition is made the fantasizer gradually comes to realize that a quantity of stunning, clear, close-range video footage could be worth as much, if not more, than a carcass. After all, unlike video footage, the body of bigfoot does not have an established market value. It might actually be worth less than nothing if confiscated by the government as part of a criminal investigation. A body would certainly be much more difficult to transport, store and preserve than a videotape. And no government authority would ever challenge someone's right to sell the footage or collect continuing royalties from it. A videotape would not be worth as much to science, but a body may, in the end, only advance the careers of the scientists who study it, and not bring anything to the hunter other than some dubious notoriety. The hunter's notoriety might only generate a relatively paltry amount of cash from interviews immediately after the incident, but intriguing video footage would bring notoriety as well as commercial licensing fees and royalties for use of the footage. These are the realities that help diehard bigfoot field researchers to favor cameras over guns.

The diehards are probably correct in assuming that the hearts and minds of the general public can be won over with compelling video footage. When that happens one can expect that the scientific community will not at first admit any embarrassment, but will probably be more inclined to investigate recent eyewitness reports for themselves. Some will probably obtain the funding and support to conduct systematic searches of remote North American caves to look specifically for giganto bones. Most caves and deep overhangs in Canada and the United States are not marked on any maps. There may be thousands of "undiscovered" caves and deep overhangs in our remote forests and mountain ranges. These mini-frontiers could be suddenly appreciated as fertile ground for biological and archeological exploration. At the moment, the idea of searching for "bigfoot bones" is still politically risky in academic institutions. But an earthshaking videotape could change that quickly. A clear close range video with good audio would capture the public's imagination in an unprecedented way. Sudden popular interest and political pressure would inevitably "enlighten" institutional attitudes. The media and legal community will begin to ask more pertinent questions and demand better answers from the scientific community and the government. Unlike the U.F.O. phenomenon, the "bigfoot phenomena" will be seen as something native, and within our reach, and therefore more practical to study.

Some suggest that the credibility of any video footage would be questionable because of the capabilities of high-tech Hollywood special effects. This is a rather naive argument because even the best computerized special effects, when used to create living creatures, can be immediately distinguished from reality by the trained eye, and by the untrained eye in most cases. Real footage of real animals has qualities that still cannot be duplicated by computers. Real footage of a bigfoot up close in daylight would be extraordinarily powerful and captivating to most people, and therein lies its power and commercial value. The owner of the footage does not have to convince every last stubborn skeptic before he can market his tape for public consumption or create media interest. A good tape would create a lot of public interest, even if it did not provide immediate "scientific proof."

Let's examine hunting laws in the United States. Most states have hunting laws beginning with blanket prohibitions against killing any member of a few classes of animals, including any "fur bearing animal." Then the hunting laws go on to spell out the exceptions to the blanket rule. These exceptions form the bulk of a state's hunting laws. They specify which type of animals can be considered "game" animals at specific times of year (e.g. deer in deer season, squirrels in squirrel season, etc.). It is important to understand that general hunting laws do not specify which animals cannot be hunted. They specify which animals can be hunted.

No state provides an exception for an "undiscovered" fur bearing animal. Therefore a successful bigfoot hunter would be, by definition, a poacher. A bigfoot poacher and his transferees would face several legal and societal risks: Confiscation and prosecution by the government, and villainization by the public and the media, regardless of the "discovery" factor.

Among the factors making a discovery by a hunter unlikely, the importance of a more common obstacle shouldn't be underestimated. That obstacle is the average hunter's basic decency and civility toward other humans, and things that might appear to be humans when viewed from a distance. The few casual hunters who've reported random encounters with bigfoots typically claim they didn't know what the things were at first and they didn't want to shoot them because they seemed so humanlike. A good example is a 1970 incident involving three hunters in Routt County, Colorado. A more recent report from Pike County, Kentucky demonstrates the natural shock and uncertainty following a sighting by a truck-load of rural hunters. An article in "Alabama Fish and Game Magazine" documents how well-armed rural hunters will abandon a sighting area, and be disinclined from even discussing their encounters, rather pursue these animals. A third report from Jefferson County, Washington, shows a hunter's reaction of surprise and wonder when observing a bigfoot -- a reaction that supplants any thoughts of shooting or pursuing the specimen. You'd have to picture these situations and appreciate that a bigfoot / sasquatch looks a lot like a primitive man. Without even considering the influence of hunter safety courses (which everyone must take before getting a hunting license), it is simply not realistic to expect that a hunter's natural reaction will be to shoot a primitive manlike figure in the back as it runs away.

The understandably 'human' reactions of surprised hunters, and the other above mentioned factors, tend to decrease the likelihood that a hunter will kill a bigfoot, yet these factors do not even touch upon the geographic and legal restrictions related to where hunters can go hunting. The geographic restrictions alone reduce the odds substantially.

Other odds-reducing factors are related to bigfoot behavior: Nomadism, nocturnal feeding, nocturnal migration, intelligent strategic behavior (see the article "Deer Kills and Bigfoots"), dense forest habitats, a tendency to avoid areas where humans are afoot, the absence of predatory behavior toward humans in all cases, the lack of aggressive or territorial behavior toward humans in almost all confrontation cases, and the apparent habit of at least temporarily abandoning a habitation area when there is some degree of human intrusion.

The rarity of these animals combined with their own elusive habits make the odds of a random sighting drastically lower than the odds of sighting any other type of large mammal with a comparable geographic range. On top of the poor odds of a sighting there is a whole series of events that would have to precede a "discovery" by a hunter. Each one of these events has its own debatable odds, which have to be compounded mathematically in a string to evaluate the overall odds of a discovery by a random hunter. The odds are not very good to start with that a hunter will ever see a bigfoot, especially in daylight hours. If the opportunity arises a surprised hunter must then 1) overcome his immediate shock, fear and awe in order to have the presence of mind to quickly deliberate and assure himself with absolute certainty that this hairy manlike figure is not a man in a costume, 2) be absolutely certain that his unprecedented decision to kill this non-human, seemingly intelligent, powerfully built whatever-it-is will have no negative legal, moral, or supernatural consequences for him and his family either now or in the future, 3) have enough time to get a clear shot before the figure dashes back into the treeline, and 4) hit the figure in a vital organ so it falls down quickly. If these events fall into place then the location of the kill will have to be close enough to a road or vehicle to make retrieval of the body feasible and inconspicuous. The body will then have to remain with, or end up in the hands of, an individual or institution willing to display the body to the public and the media. The individual or institution must then manage to hang on to it so it can be examined and reexamined to the satisfaction of the scientific community.

The bottom line is that there are plenty of unique and unusual factors to consider when evaluating the likelihood of a bigfoot "discovery" by a hunter.

http://www.bfro.net/gdb/show_FAQ.asp?id=411

Oh my god.
You provide proof, in the form of a question.
A question in itself is demanding an answer.
And answer needs proof to correspond with the question.

That's like saying "I have proof that cereal isn't healthy!"
"Can you guys tell me how much sugar is in weetbix? LOLOLOLOLOL!"

Holy cow, Talon, I'm glad I'm not debating against you!! =o
Everything Talon said is correct and to the point. I'm amazed. And my eyes hurt from reading so much. =|

*cough* He copied that off webpages *cough*

Yeah, he even included the web addresses down the bottom lol