$10,000 Fine for Killing Bigfoot

[WildaBeast]

I was having lunch with some colleagues yesterday, and one of them mentioned this "fact" I'd never heard before. He said in the state of Washington there is a law on the books that imposes a $10,000 fine for killing Bigfoot. He says the law was enacted during the Teddy Roosevelt administration, when the Pacific Northwest was still considered the frontier, I guess. He said at that time people had heard stories about Bigfoot from the natives, and were unsure as to whether such a creature existed, and decided to create a law to protect it just in case it did.

Has anyone else ever heard this story?

[Eddylizard]

Was there much of a drive for animal protection laws in general at the time?

[jimmy101_again]

Teddy R. was very big on conservation and he championed a fair number of animal conservation and protection laws.

[Chloe]

Though it rarely stopped him from shooting animals, I note.

[geminilee]

Originally Posted by Chloe

Though it rarely stopped him from shooting animals, I note.

I know you are going to find this quite shocking, but a whole lot of hunters are conservationists. In fact, it may be safe to say that the only ones who are not are not very forward thinking; if you do not conserve animals today, there will not be enough to hunt tomorrow.

[Chloe]

Originally Posted by geminilee

I know you are going to find this quite shocking, but a whole lot of hunters are conservationists. In fact, it may be safe to say that the only ones who are not are not very forward thinking; if you do not conserve animals today, there will not be enough to hunt tomorrow.

Be ready to be shocked in return; I am well aware that hunters are often conservationists! Eleventy!

Reasons for being conservationists are manifold; among them, "I'm afraid there won't be anything left for me to kill" does not rank very highly on my ethical scale.

[RivkahChaya]

There could be a law that makes it illegal to shoot rare animals, and in its definition of rare animals, includes some language along the lines of "newly discovered native species, whose population is undetermined." That would include a lot of things, from a North American wild boar, to a small rodent that gets into grain stores, and farmers would be anxious to eradicate, to an eight-foot-tall, bipedal hominid.

$10,000 is pretty steep for the time, though; I mean, why impose a fine that there was no hope of collecting in full, or that might be so high as to be ruled unconstitutional?

Also, Washington was admitted as a state in the 1880s, and Roosevelt became president in 1901, when McKinley was assassinated, so Washington was a fully fledged state, not "frontier."

Anyone who is from Washington willing to check the books and get back to us?

[WildaBeast]

Originally Posted by Eddylizard

Was there much of a drive for animal protection laws in general at the time?

I don't know about animal protection laws specifically, but I do think the mention of Teddy Roosevelt is key to this myth, being a conservationist as jimmy says.