Off the subject of bigfoot sorry, but heres the online book
I saw a cougar back in 78 when I was canoeing the mullica at age 14.where did you see yours at?
Jeff I'm assuming that your are refering to the patterson-gimlin film. With a little research you will find that any REAL scientific or forensic analysis of the film essentially concludes that the creature in the film is in fact real. If you look up the NASI report(which is only one of several legitimate forensic analysis of the film) you will find some interesting things there. Also, several of hollywoods top makeup/ape suit designers have been consulted for analysis of the film....every single one agrees that there is no way that can be a man in a suit(based on things like body dimensions i.e. the proportions of the arms and legs to the body and all of the muscle contraction/relaxation that can be seen as the creature walks) And when you consider that that film was made in 1967 by a guy who was by no means rich....the idea of man in a suit becomes more of a stretch. However, to play devils advocate, roger patterson was out to find a bigfoot as he heard that there had been sighting in the area....so it does seem rather convienent that he ran into one that day. But then again, some people play the lottery and win don't they? I attached the link to the remastered version of the film. The more you watch it.....the more you start to think to yourself that you might actually be looking a real sasquatch....or that it was the greatest friggin monkey suit ever created in the history of mankind lol.
I've done a lot of night hiking in the barrens myself and the only thing I've actually seen out there to fear are young doped up drunks driving around and acting insane. I have shook up a few people at night myself playing on jersey devil fear back when i was young and could actually out run people in the woods.Too old and fat to run now so i don't pick on people so much anymore
) About 10pm two carloads of people come barreling in and I spend the next few hours being entertained with drunken yells, screams, laughs, a radio and car horns. But the real fun started when two people broke out some hardware and started shooting wildly all over the campsite. I jumped out of my sleeping bag and tent as fast as I could and slid on my belly in the ice to take cover behind tree. I stayed behind the tree, shivering and wet for about 45 minutes until the two carloads of people abrupty took off. When I got back into my tent, my clothes were completely soaked through, the inside of my tent got wet when I abruptly exited it and left the door open, and I spent one miserable miserable, cold, wet night out there. Those folks who decided to pop off a couple boxes of ammo in the campsite are fortunate that I don't carry illegally, otherwise they would have driven their cars out of there on the rims. 
Jeff i agree with you 100% but i figured I would give you my schpeel anyway lol. I enjoy the debate with people like you who are staunch skeptics....I post on some bigfoot forums and it gets old after awhile because people on there are quick to accept every snap,crackle, and pop in the woods as bigfoot related. But Jeff I can only hope that one day you're walking through the pines and a bigfoot decides to greet you...I hope i'm the first person you tell lol.
To play devils advocate you would expect animals to act a certain way because animals don't have critical thinking skills and at on instincts and reflexes. I you pretend that bigfoot is a real animal they have to be fairly intelligent...more so than any of the other great apes...to what extent though is anybodies guess. I'm sure you have seen on TV people who walk right up to a pack of gorillas or chimps and sit there interacting...apes have the ability to think to some degree so I don't think it always comes down to a fight or flight response with intelligent animals. Maybe Patterson's bigfoot didn't see them as a major threat and decided to just keep an eye on them as it walked away. I think that if you consider a BF to be more so of a man than just a monkey that walks on 2 feet it's easier to expect more "human-like" behavior from them, in which case you wouldn't expect them to always just run or attack at the sight of an intruder. This is just my thought on the matter.
You make good points. In my mind the pines are definitely not an area that would hold a isolated population of bigfoots...like you said it really is just too small. Instead my "theory" is that it is a place that they might move in and out of during certain times of year...probably fall/winter mostly. So the pines don't necessarily have to support such a large animal long-term. I know that large animals move out of higher elevation during the winter and fall seasons. I think that the appalachians could be a higher elevation corrodor that allows them to move north/south along the eastern US. The pines in NJ are kind of an off shoot of the appalachian wilderness if you think about it. Why couldn't small numbers of these animals be moving through the pines seasonally out of NY and north eastern PA down thru north western NJ or from the southern boarder of NJ via Delaware/maryland(there are lots of reports from DE,MD,NY,NJ). There are plenty of deer and smaller animals in the pines which you would expect such an animal to eat. I don't think its really a stretch to say that small numbers of BF could keep themselves feed as they pass through.
