bruto said:
The fact that Krantz was not so gullible as to accept outrageously silly stories does not, unfortunately, guarantee that he was able to detect well implemented hoaxes. Krantz deserves some credit for trying to filter out nonsense, but being harder to fool than some may not be enough if someone is trying hard enough to fool you.
From what I've read, the main reason Krantz and others have accepted the prints is not that they believed it entirely impossible to fabricate such prints, but that they believed the likelihood of such an elaborate hoax to be less than the likelihood of a sasquatch. This remains arguable, I think, whatever you might believe with regard to the actual existence of sasquatches, especially given the presence in the area at the time of such a notorious and persistent hoaxer as Marx.
It may have been hard for an honest man like Krantz to understand the motivation for a truly elaborate and dedicated hoax, but unfortunately, there seem to be a few people who will go to incredible lengths to perpetrate fraud, even when the rewards seem trivial, and his incredulity is not enough for me at least.
He wasn't the only investigator on this. Have you bothered to read the book? It's not based on "stories". The typical hoaxer merely enlarges his own foot; Krantz was struck by adaptations for great weight in a primate inhabiting mountainous areas. He didn't think it likely that a hoaxer would have that kind of detailed knowlege. Read the book. It's interesting.
The Bossburg tracks were one of thousands of track events. There are casts nearly fifty years old. There are tracks from last spring. Isn't it a stretch of the imagination to think that hoaxers get to the high Sierras and remote mountains in B.C. to somehow lay down trackways just to fool people who don't know themselves where they are going? Do you really believe there are thousands of people running around in gorilla suits appearing to be 8' tall just to fool unwary campers and motorists? Who was doing the hoaxing before the coming of the white man?
Marx was called in after the first Bossburg tracks were found because of his known interest. He started faking films when interest was dying down in order to "kind of keep things going" (and possibly to continue to stay on the payroll). Cliff Crook has pulled similar stunts. Freeman may have done some fakery too, out of frustration, yet some of his evidence is compelling. Byrne, who exposed Marx, has been accused of being a fraud (by Green). And so it goes.
The evidence speaks for itself, and to try to throw it all out just because some over-zealous "researcher" went too far is some of that "throwing the baby out with the bathwater" Meldrum speaks of.
Some others who've taken an interest:
Dr. Bernard Heuvelmans (zoologist, France)
Dr. W. Henner Fahrenbach (research scientist, Oregon Regional Primate Center)
Dr. John Napier (primatologist, University of London)
Dr. Frank E. Poirier (paleoanthropologist/primatologist, Ohio State University)
Dr. John Bindernagel (wildlife biologist, former wildlife advisor for United Nations)
Dr. D. W. Grieve (anatomist, Royal Free Hospital School of Medicine, London)
Dr. John Bodley (anthropologist, Washington State University)
Dr. Dmitri D. Donskoy (biomechanics, Russia)
Dr. Robert Pyle (ecologist,Yale University alumnus)
Dr. J. Richard Greenwell (mammalogist, International Wildlife Museum, Tucson)
Dr. William Montagna (primatologist, Regional Primate Research Center)
Valentin B. Sapunov (biologist, Leningrad State Univeristy, Russia)
Vladimir Markotic (physical anthropologist, University of Calgary)
Jeff Glickman (computer scientist, North American Science Institute)
Dmitri Bayanov (hominologist, Darwin Museum, Russia)
Jim Hewkin (wildlife biologist, formerly with Oregon Dept. of Fish and Wildlife)
Dr. Marie-Jeanne Koffman, aka Dr. Zh. I Kofman (scientist, Russia)
Dr. R. Lynn Kirlin (professor, University of Wyoming)
Dr. William Saxe Wihr (department of anthropology, Portland Community College)
Dr. LeRoy Fish (wildlife ecologist, retired)
Krantz was not alone.
