The lack of evidence isn’t necessarily as condemning as one might think. Anthropology and archeology often have surprisingly little evidence to back their claims as the data is extremely difficult to collect (especially in the U.S.) I was surprised to learn that we can fit all the hominin remains we have ever found into the bed of a pickup truck, everything we initially learned about the Denisovans came from a single finger bone, and we just discovered a new great ape species in the last couple of years. I’m not saying Bigfoot exists but I’m also not willing to join the afootist, or rather, anti-footists camp and claim they don’t exist. A yet undiscovered micro population of hominin or great ape species seems within the realm of plausibility, possibility even probability if you look at historical data. Also note that all hominin discoveries (including the
recently discovered homo Florensis that lived as recently as 15,000 BC) have been discovered outside the U.S. It seems likely that hominins existed at some point in the U.S. even though we lack any evidence for such a claim. My personal beef (which I don’t hear Bigfootists making) lies with the laws in the U.S. prohibiting the gathering of evidence that could prove its existence. If I were going to look for Bigfoot I’m ideal circumstances, I would look for bones rather than a living specimen, but by law those bones have to be turned over to the local Native American tribe to be re buried before they can even be tested to see if they are actually homo Saipan. Good luck getting any real anthropological work done in the U.S.
Also, animal planet doesn’t want to find Bigfoot because then they’d be out of a show.