weirdest news stories of year 2007 - bear or bigfoot?

September 16, the Allegheny National Forest, the town of Ridgway, Pennsylvania, USA; Rick Jacobs, a hunter, fastened his auto-trigger camera to a tree in the hope to capture a deer, but instead he got pictures of a mysterious hairy, walking on all fours creature that many argue is a Sasquatch.

Jacobs wasn't present when the three photos were taken, the camera was motion sensitive & equipped with an automatic trigger that was set to go off when anything large enough set off the sensor, which did two bear cubs then the strange beast. The camera had also an infrared (invisible) flash making it possible to take picture in the dark.

Photo 1 - Two Bear Cubs (click to enlarge)

The Elk County deer hunter says he doubts anyone is more skeptical about the whole situation than he: “We hung on to them for a whole week before we did anything with them,” he said of the pictures. “We couldn’t figure out what they were. I’ve been hunting for years and I’ve never seen anything like this.”

Photo 2 - The Creature (click to enlarge)

Jacobs sent the photos to the Bigfoot Research Organization, which pursues reports of the legendary two-legged creature - the Bigfoot also known as the Sasquatch - that is thought to live in parts of the U.S. and Canada. "It appears to be a primate-like animal. In my opinion, it appears to be a juvenile Sasquatch," said Paul Majeta, field researcher for the Bigfoot Research Organization.

Employees in the Pennsylvania Game Commission challenged this explanation, saying that it looked like "a bear with a severe case of mange.", They also go on to say that conservation officers routinely trap bears to be tagged that look like the creature in the photos.

Photo 3 - The Creature (click to enlarge)

If you visit the BFRO site (Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization) there's a photo of a gorilla & another of a skinny bear, plus an analysis. According to them, the photo n°3 (above) of the creature would represent (according to experts they have spoken with) a healthy primate smelling the ground & not a skinny bear smelling the ground ... the bad quality of the photos in fact make it difficult to favour one or the other theory, but it seems many of the persons who saw them & who are used to see both bears & primates think the creature can't be a bear; if it's not a bear, what it is? Most likely a class of known or maybe unknown primate ... or maybe all this story is just a good old hoax?