The debate about whether or not a Bigfoot creature should be shot to help scientists better protect the species is not a new one. The record of sightings of giant hairy man-beasts in North America goes back nearly 200 years and in that time there have been many attempts to shoot one. As many of these sightings were made by seasoned hunters, it is somewhat surprising that no one has yet produced a dead one ­ assuming that the creature now called Bigfoot or Sasquatch really does exist. Why not?

First, it seems that many hunters have fired at Bigfoot but it is often too quick for them and they have been unable to hit it. Sometimes, when the hunter's bullets find their mark, the creature has seemed unworried by their impact, even when fired at point-blank range.

In 1924, five men prospecting in Washington's Cascade mountains claimed to have been attacked by several Bigfoot creatures in a canyon. One of the men said that he fired three shots into one creature's head and two more into its body but it kept running. Gary Joanis was another hunter who fired at a Bigfoot, this one having just stolen the deer he had shot! Joanis and a colleague were hunting at Wanoga Butte in Oregon, in 1957, when the 9ft (2.75m) Bigfoot suddenly appeared, picked up the dead deer and carried it off under its arm. Annoyed, Joanis fired his .306 rifle repeatedly at the beast's back as it departed but it gave no sign that it had been injured ... unless its strange whistling scream was a cry of pain. It kept on walking and Joanis had no choice but to let it go.

Fourteen-year-old James Lynn Crabtree was equally powerless when he tried to stop a Bigfoot. Out squirrel hunting near his home in Fouke, Arkansas, in 1965, he encountered an 8ft (2.4m) creature which turned to face him and then walk towards him. The boy shot it in the face three times with his shotgun but it showed no sign of hesitating, so he fled.

Two years later, a group of teenagers armed with heavy-calibre weapons hunted several Bigfoot which had been seen around The Dalles in Oregon. One of the hunters saw a 7ft (2.1m) creature in a crouching position and blasted it in the chest with his 12-guage shotgun. This knocked the creature down and it rolled over twice before it stood up and smashed its way through a fence, snapping off the fence-posts. The hunters returned the next day to follow the tracks and collect the carcass but after 100 yards (90m) they lost the tracks as there were no bloodstains to follow. In 1974, a police patrolman fired two rounds from his revolver at a 7ft (2.1m)-tall hairy creature as it walked down the road towards him near Fort Lauderdale in Florida. The creature screamed, jumped 20ft (6m) off the road and ran away at about 20 miles an hour (30km/h).