Most Notorious – A Legend or Just Elusive? Sasquatch keeps the world guessing.

He's as elusive as the mist on a mountain lake, his hair as thick as the tangled underbrush of the deep woods. Most likely, if he's ever seen (again?), he'll be shot. And that may be the only way to conclusively prove he exists.

For decades, Sasquatch --- also known as Bigfoot --- has defied scientific proof but has left tantalizing hints to lead many to believe in his existence.

A notorious creature of impressive stature, he's also brought notoriety to those who studied him and claim to have spotted him.

The late Grover Krantz, who was an associate professor of anthropology at Washington State University, once estimated there are about 2,000 Sasquatches living in the Pacific Northwest.

In his 1993 book, "Big Footprints: A Scientific Inquiry into the Reality of Sasquatch," he describes the beast as nocturnal, most likely omnivores with an adult male standing 7 feet, 8 inches and weighing about 800 pounds.

So how come hikers, loggers or hunters don't encounter them more often?

Sasquatches are "probably the most intelligent animal in North America outside of man," Krantz wrote. He said the only practical way to prove Sasquatch's existence is to shoot one. Krantz said the most tangible evidence of Sasquatch is footprints, which may be preserved in photographs or plaster casts.

Most Notorious Series

This is the 15th story in a weekly series about the area's most notorious citizens of the past and present. By notorious, we mean people who are widely and often unfavorably known. Our subjects don't have to be lawbreakers, but they must raise eyebrows. They can be cantankerous and irascible, famous for one deed or a body of work.

Such was the case in 1998 for Randy Trusty and David Hart, both of Longview.

While hunting in the woods above Little Cape Horn in Wahkiakum County, they discovered footprints unlike any they'd ever seen before. They made plaster casts of the prints and gathered a lock of extra-coarse brown hair

"I've spent countless hours in the woods," Trusty said in a Daily News article in 1998. "To look down on the trail and see something that clear on the ground chills you to the bone. ... This evidence is enough for me that this creature exists."

But for every small shred of proof, there are 100 hoaxes.

The best known local Bigfoot trickster was the late Ray Wallace, a Toledo man whose family said helped create the Bigfoot legend.

In 1958, Wallace made giant footprints at a work site in Humboldt County, Calif., that were reported by a local newspaper the next day. Wallace continued Bigfoot pranks when he returned to Washington, even having his wife dress up as one of the half-human wilderness creatures, relatives said.

But Ray Crowe of the International Bigfoot Society in Hillsboro, Ore., said Wallace was a true believer and pulled some of the pranks to throw critics off the track.

Krantz admitted most sightings and footprints are hoaxes. "It has also been said that, in a sense, Sasquatches often come out of whisky bottles."

Of the 75 accounts of Sasquatch sightings Krantz had heard about, he was convinced seven were authentic and another 33 probable. Krantz' extensive knowledge of primate foot structure helped him spot fakes, and the number of reported footprints sightings are far too high to be made by hoaxers, he said.

Robert Michael Pyle, a prize-winning nature writer who lives in Grays River, spent several years researching the myths and facts that swirl around the hairy giants for his 1995 book "Where Bigfoot Walks: Crossing the Dark Divide."

Most of his research time was spent in the Dark Divide, a land of rugged ridges and forested valleys between Mount St. Helens and Mount Adams in the Gifford Pinchot National Forest. It's an area of numerous Bigfoot sightings. He saw large footprints and heard strange animal calls on at least three occasions during his research.

Pyle said in 1998 that he's skeptical but open to the possible existence of a flesh-and-blood Sasquatch. He disagrees with Krantz' assertion that killing one is necessary to prove its existence.

A grainy 16-millimeter film shot by Roger Patterson in Northern California in 1967 of a large, lumbering hairy beast offers the best photographic evidence of Bigfoot, though naysayers argue that the subject is a big guy in a gorilla suit.

Kranz argued that no man of the subject's size could take steps as long while bending his knees, as the film shows, and the shoulder proportions are impossible for a human. Pyle, though, called it "difficult to dismiss."

And the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization, founded in 1995, further debunks the hoax theory on its Web site (www.bfro.net). It claims: "Large amounts of money have been spent trying to make a matching costume. Hollywood costume design talents have been brought to the task, but have not succeeded."

Further, it says, "No scientists or qualified experts have ever debunked the Patterson footage. It has never been shown to be fake. On the contrary, every scientist who has seen the footage either says it shows a real, unclassified species, or that a conclusion cannot be made."

So why have traces of remains never been found?

"No serious work has ever been done to look for remains of surviving wood apes where they are rumored to reside," the BFRO Web site says. "No one should expect remains of such an elusive species to be found, collected and identified without some effort."

Krantz said it isn't surprising that no Sasquatch bones have been found --- the bones of wild carnivores seldom are. Though there are 200,000 bears in the Northwest, he said their skeletons are "almost never found."

But myth or fact --- Sasquatch or Bigfoot --- has been around for a long time and in many places.

"I think of Bigfoot as an emblem of the Pacific Northwest, standing for the residents' earnest and whimsical frontier curiosity, for their eagerness to grasp the essence of the land and its life," Pyle wrote. "It reflects our fascination with the bizarre, the monstrous, and the mysterious --- the more like us, the better ..."

[From the Daily News Online]

WCSRO, 2006.