Much ado about a Big Hairy guy

So you've probably heard of the run in that a former president of the United States who "spoke softly but carried a big stick" in the Oregon woods on an outing with his friends. Don't get me wrong, but often when guys go out hunting there is usually a lot of drinking, story one-upping and if in Oregon beware of the mushrooms. That said, there are even older stories from the indigenous peoples of North America that speak to tall hairy creatures that walked upright like a man. They had to say that because even they knew that people would speculate it was just a bear walking on it's hind legs and the native Americans were like, 'yeah we can tell the difference between a bear and what is obviously not a bear.'

We at the society often postulate to the foundations of a tale as we set out to find it's truth, but countless members have come back baffled, confused, confounded... It's not that they didn't find their quarry, it's that they couldn't clearly explain what they found in any way that made sense. All the stories start off like this:

"We set out into the wilderness in the early dawn and followed a river toward its source. It wasn't long before we noticed tracks of small game, larger animals and what was surprising was a college of large and deep human looking footprints along the sand and silt shore. We tracked the prints into the deepest darkest areas of the wood until we came to a clearing and...." That's where the stories all change. From unbelievable to the purely fantastical.

Every adventurer should have the freedom to find the truth for themselves until that truth has become common knowledge. In this case, the truth is waiting still for it's finder, just don't expect to come back from the woods knowing how to explain what you may (or may not) have seen. I myself have an old photograph I took myself near the middle of the last century, and while a bit underdeveloped, it is clear that what is showing in the foreground is not a bear on its hind legs (I know what a bear is) and not a man. What I do know is that all these years later I'd like to know what it is I saw.