Of all the legends I've opened my mind to over the years, Mr. Foot has been relegated to the "Cool Story, Bro" shelf along with the Loch Ness Monster, and Area 51. This is due to the same basic reasons already listed in this thread by others:
1. Commercial development of regions where Mr. Foot is supposed to roam. Logging/mining roads, and their respective operations. Expansion of vacation homes branching out from multiple small towns.
2. Cell phone cameras.
3. Trail cameras and other hunting technologies like tree-stands, stands, and hides becoming lighter, and thus easier to take deeper into the wild. Hunters are smart, and let's face it, Bigfoot in 4K is worth big money. That video hasn't happened.
4. Science getting more toys to remotely observe and record critters in the wild going about their business.
5. DNA sampling from water sources, and other places have turned up nothing.
6. Cheap-but-quality security cameras have become commonplace both for homes, and property surveillance.
7. Research into many of the classic Bigfoot legends yielded many facts left out of the pop-culture versions told on the internet today.
I grew up in Monterey County. I was an avid hiker. Big Sur, Little Sur, Garapata, The Pinnacles, Fort Ord, the Carmel Valley, Point Lobos, and locations in the Santa Cruz mountains hold many fantastic memories for me. I never saw anything on a hike that I'd call paranormal, and I've seen many wonderful, and amazing sights. Monterey County does not have a Bigfoot legend. We have tales of lost treasure, secret Native American gold-mines (even though our Native Americans ran around naked, built simple grass/stick structures, and had zero metallurgy skills), ghosts, and for a while in the 1930s we had a sea monster.
While I can't speak for Bigfoot, I can attest to how easy it is to vanish, and or remain unseen while in the woods. At least for a while. But while I've never seen a bear in the wild I have seen tracks. I've never seen a Mountain Lion, but I've followed their tracks, and their scat. Never seen a wild pig, but have passed through areas where they have rutted. I can also testify that your eyes can and will play tricks on you in the woods. Trees, branches, brush, deadfall, and grasses all conspire to give your peripheral vision a sideshow.
Bottom Line: If you don't believe in Bigfoot, you won't see one.
