Sadly, not a lot happens on the cutting edge of cryptid research as far as the Loch Ness Monster is concerned. You may read what is called research as people offer new explanations on how a famous case was actually a hoax or some known animal will be brought in as a new suspect for what was actually seen by witnesses. Useful in terms of cleaning up at the edges, but it does not get us further in identifying what actually lurks beneath the waves of Loch Ness.
That this should not surprise us is evident for most researchers I will bet do not believe anything monster like exists there today. It is all misidentification and lies. I have addressed this overblown theory before and will continue to highlight its deficiencies. But that does not mean debate should be stifled on either side as some kind of sense is made of the raw data.
In that light, I go back to Dale Drinnon who has replied to my earlier posts on elks at Loch Ness (see link). Elks follow on in the line of deer, otters and homo hoaxus as possible explanations for lumbering nessies.
My latest reply is this:
I think you are making the data fit the theory. Firstly, there are no elk in Scotland. I asked you for specifics on where and when but you did not choose to reply. Unlike the more exotic interpretations of Nessie, surely an Elk carcass or live animal would have been found or caught around Loch Ness a long time ago. They can't hide under 700 foot of peaty water after all. Or the idea that an elk turned up in 1933 and died a few years later is just too convenient. There are too many improbables that have to come together for the elk theory:
1. One or two turned up when they are not indigenous to Scotland.
2. Witnesses exaggerated their statements through misperception, lying and partial amnesia.
3. No one stayed around long enough to see one submerge and if they did it was probably drowning.
4. Why no such sightings along the other Great Glen lochs?
If you say that the stories become more plesiosaur like with the telling then you have to go the whole hog. Fordyce would have added flippers and made his animal less hairy to keep up with the plesiosaurs! And to be frank, an elk head is HUGE, it is a bit of a push to have us believe it was not noticeable to witnesses.
Some of the accounts may have elk like features such as hooves which need some explaining on my part. But others don't and that invalidates the elk theory - it has to explain everything.
So please do not go down the "rest are hoaxes" approach to shoehorn in partial theories! I know it bolsters your case but try and make your elk theory stand on its own four feet.
As some kind of advance publicity, I will be talking on land sightings of Nessie in January 2012 at the Edinburgh Fortean Society. I will be taking the stance that the thirty land sightings do in fact describe an unknown or unidentified large creature. That does not mean I gullibly swallow all accounts but neither should the extreme of rejecting the lot be countenanced either!