$1 Million Reward Retracted

This may come as bad news to some of you out there; It appears that the $1 million dollar bounty, that Loren Coleman announced at the Texas BF Conference last weekend, has been retracted. A Hasbro owned company, The Wizards Of The Coast, was the one who was going to sponsor the bounty. The Wizards of The Coast is mostly known for it's Magic The Gathering games. The bounty was withdrawn due to safety concerns for the people involved and the creatures that may be harmed in the process. The company is sponsoring another photo contest, however the prizes for that are much less than the $1 million originally planned. Here is a quote from the article: Instead, Duel Masters is sponsoring a photo contest that provides a guaranteed first prize of $5,000 for the photo that best perpetuates the mystique surrounding the hunt for the legendary creatures Bigfoot, Loch Ness Monster and/or Yeti. A second place prize winner will receive $2,500, and three third place winners will receive $500. More details about the new photo contest will be revealed in a few days on their site. Overall, I still like idea of a photo contest that gets people out there looking. Maybe the $1 million was too much and that is why they decided to pull it. Money can make people do crazy things. When I heard about the reward last week, I was also concerned about the number of inevitable hoaxes that could be passed off as real pictures of Nessie or Bigfoot. Amazing things can be done by digital manipulation these days. All of these hoaxes may have hurt the real search for these creatures in the long run.