At what point does it become (to footers) completely ridiculous, the idea of a 400-1200 lb 7-10 foot tall undiscovered bipedal ape roaming North American forests? It is 2013, and humans are widely dispersed across this land. These reports, are all mistaken identity, fabrications, or hoaxes.
THAT is what the "evidence leads to". It leads to story tellers, pranks, gold digging hoaxers, and more classic circus side show acts. It leads to everything except for a real animal. At what point can you reasonably believe it is still there? (Although, most folks know it's crap due to critical thinking skills, and simple logic after investigating the phenomenon.)
At some point (footers) must jump through an amazing number of hoops to come to a conclusion that there is something real out there. (of course, after you take out the liars, cons, and deluded - which may be a large portion of the long lasting proponents) Seems like most folks with an interest in the subject figure out pretty quickly that it's a joke, a prank etc.
The story tellers, and "habituation" claims are the funniest. How many are seriously deluded? I would guess a very small amount. Most of them seem to be attention seekers, or imagining that every twig snap and animal call "might be bigfoot" due to over active imaginations, or just plain old making up lies to tell good camp fire scary stories. My gosh, people would never do such a thing!
I saw a post earlier today when I browsed through the BFF saying other phenomenon nothing compares to bigfoot as far as claims/witnesses etc. WRONG! Try ghosts, UFOs, Aliens, and a number of other ones that have even more reports than bigfoot.
Guess what? Their reported range is alarmingly similar to bigfoot reports, and *gasp* even more similar to the human populations reported range. 2+2=1 if you're a bigfooter. If you're not, you may notice that every single kind of reported evidence has been explained and the source comes back to man, either hoaxing/fabricating or misidentifying other existing fauna sign. Bigfooters do not see this as proof of source. They only want to see bigfoot proven to be the source. So badly, they will lie, contort and squeeze every cherry picked conclusion to support their fantasy.
It is not different than other social constructs. But will folks like mulder or dwa, or a number of other hard core proponents open their eyes to reality? No, because it's fun to play the game. Deep inside they probably know it's not real. It may tend to be more about winning and losing, and the human spirit of competition. It might be more about pride, and the lols for some. The simple truth is: there is nothing to it. I've lost hope that "educating" footers to the truth is the answer. I think that being crass, and maybe lol'ing at the stupidity might be more effective in "eye opening" than simply telling people the truth, or trying to show people that its just a fantasy. It's become apparent to me after years of interest in the subject that its not about a beast. It's about people, and how gullible they are, and how many good liars there are out there.
Not the PC answer? Cool, but its the truth. (as I see it)
Where does that leave folks like Meldrum? (deluded, fabricator/liar, uneducated on the phenomenon?) I see him as a fraud, a snake oil salesman.