This is an easy out, a cop out in fact. All kinds of elusive, intelligent animals meet their demise accidently and intentionally at the hands of human beings. Human beings, intelligent, adapted and in tune with their natural environment met their fate at the hands of other human beings. How do you imagine such things as Indian Reservations came about. Were the Dene and the Ojibwa and the Huron less intelligent, less environmentally adapted than the monkeys some claim inhabited the same forests?I think we need to be careful when comparing different species of animals. While the Amur Tiger is a good case of an elusive animal that gets hunted on a regular basis, it's not what bigfooters say they're seeing.
A lot of Bigfooters claim to see a monkey with a sagital crest and big saggies. So what? They claim to see them in their back yards, dumpster diving, swimming at sea, but as of yet, no monkey, not a one. Anywhere. Though it's alleged to be literally everywhere in the continental U.S.Enough bigfooters claimed to have seen something of great intelligence that one could expect that the monkey would have great intelligence.
This is partly the reason why many scientists like Dr. Sykes are still open to the idea of Bigfoot even though they don't believe in it. Because as crazy as it is, there's always the possibility that's it's real somewhere even if it doesn't exist in many of the places that bigfooters claim they do.
What you need to be careful about are the assumptions you're making as to what Sykes thinks. He just might disappoint you folks more than Ketchum (DVM).