For me the Sasquatch has almost always felt as wrong as it’s possible to be, the Yeti, Yeren etc on the other hand I was always convinced of until recently. I wasn’t happy letting go of them either.
That's the bone of contention though - why is there no chance of such an animal being there?
Because there’s no way they could ever have reached Australia let alone New Zealand. There are terrestrial placentals in Australia not introduced by humans but none are bigger than a rat. It was possible for them to reach there because they are small enough to raft across on vegetation, and numerous enough in their original territory for this to lead to them having a chance to establish themselves in Australia by this method. Australia has never been connected to mainland Asia if it had been there would be far more evidence of interchange than that. There is evidence of more interchange further North West around the Wallace line, but in mainland Australia and New Guinea the fauna is distinct.
Not even rats reached New Zealand though before the Maori introduced them.
It’s been said that the Yowie could be a marsupial the thing is though the descriptions are the same as everywhere else. Even if there was a marsupial to fit the bill, there’s another problem, that’s the coincidence that two animals isolated for so long have evolved not only to be physically identical but share the same uncanny ability to be huge, be reported around human settlements, maintain adequate numbers to be both viable and be widespread enough to generate sightings in all parts of Australia, including Tasmania, except for the Capitol Territory and still never be either, shot, captured or photographed.
Even if you get over that, you’ve still got to account for New Zealand, where the only known indigenous terrestrial mammal lived sixteen million years ago, and is too isolated to be reached by any other land animal than humans.
Of course I’m not saying that there’s nothing there to investigate just that at least for me the abundant evidence of the ecology south east of the Lydekker line is strong enough to make the current paradigm so sound that it’s best to look for the answers outside of the physical. I’ve got my own opinion of what’s going on but that’s just me.
I know this thread is about India but for me the Yowie etc has a direct bearing on it, because as you say;
the sheer volume of reports, often as not by people who know what they're looking at, surely indicate that there is something there?
When you know it can’t be what they’re reporting in one instance, then I think that by extension you have to question the reports even from areas where it is feasible they could exist, especially because of the huge amount of negative evidence. After all what’s being proposed is that what would be
the world’s most widely distributed large mammal ever, and one which is still alive across every continent today, despite the huge impact we've had, has never been captured ever. How could that be?
Incidentally I'm not kidding myself that I know for sure, outside of Australia, just that it's something that really needs to be taken into account.