And you are a Scoffer.

> Occam's razor would likely find that the existence of a never discovered large ape species on a continent with no record of supporting any ape species at all is pretty dubious.

Again, in relative terms, it's a far more likely explanation than positing the existence of a nearly century-old coast-to-coast footprint hoaxing conspiracy, armed with technology that could recreate the fine details of dermal ridges, when such a feat is still considered cutting-edge by modern law enforcement standards. After all, at least there's a real-world precedent for the undiscovered and/or presumed-to-be-extinct species, with the Coelacanth ...

> Add the fact that the sightings and evidence come from all over the country (these pictures are from Pennsylvania... not far from where I lived. Heavy hunting territory, and a lot of people tromping through those woods which are bordered on all sides by roads and civilization) and now you need a huge breeding population to account for them all.

I'm honestly not sure whether the Pennsylvania Bigfoot is real, as there have obviously been any number of false reports of Sasquatch over the years. However, what Krantz postulated was that Sasquatch is probably near extinction, even in areas with more available wilderness, due to precisely the sort of encroachment that you're talking about.

> Large mammal species are not easy to overlook. Every large mammal species that has been "discovered" in the last century was one that was simply a new classification of an unremarkable species for the territory... many of them commonly known (and even domesticated) by the people living in the area, but simply not yet identified in scientific circles.

Here's where I show my regional bias; while I'll freely concede that it's less likely in the eastern United States, I don't think you people quite grasp just how big the outdoors are here in the West. In Washington state alone, the remaining untouched and federally protected wildlands are equal to an area roughly the same size as the entire state of Massachusetts. And Washington is practically metropolitan when compared to Idaho and Montana (although it's probably no more urbanized than Oregon).

> To coexist in the same territory with man and yet never have left conclusive proof of their existence is more than just improbable.

I suppose it depends upon how much intelligence we ascribe to them, but that's a whole 'nother can of worms ...