Campground owner and festival organizer David Shealy greeted festivalgoers from near and far at the main gate, but the Skunk Ape was a no-show at David Shealy’s Skunk Ape Festival on June 3rd, 2006.

Just in case the Georgia gentlemen and their new handler were looking for a ringing endorsement for the Georgia Gorilla, they need not look any further away than Florida.

David Shealy appears to have jumped into the Georgia quicksand, and who knows what he thinks from this media account:

Friday, April 16, 2008
Bigfoot Body A Bunch Of Monkey Business?
OCHOPEE, Fla. (Wireless Flash) — The alleged Bigfoot body recently discovered in northern Georgia may be nothing but monkey business.

David Shealy — who’s studied and tracked the Skunk Ape, Bigfoot’s smaller, stinkier cousin from the Florida Everglades, for more than 40 years — isn’t too sure the beast discovered by Bigfoot hunters in Georgia is the real thing.

In fact, he thinks there’s a bit of monkey business with the findings.

He says, “I’ve looked at the picture of what they’re claiming is Bigfoot, but I think they may have just found a big gorilla. I’ve found monkeys that escaped from places a few times and they look like that.”

However, the size and weight of the possible Sasquatch, which is said to be around seven feet and 500 pounds, leads Shealy to believe it’s actually a Skunk Ape.

He says, “We know the Skunk Ape is a real animal. Georgia also has a similar habitat and is in close proximity to Florida, so it’s very possible. We have to wait for the DNA to see.”

(I was actually happy that Wireless Flash didn’t bring up Shealy’s time in jail for pot possession. That just would have been unnecessary even though most mainstream media-types have used it to discredit Shealy in the past. Actually, Shealy’s rather obvious self-created man-in-a-suit Skunk Ape footage needs no help in undermining his own Skunk Ape “evidence.”)