'Real Bigfoot Hunter' Tom Biscardi launches $3m start-up to find Sasquatch

A man who dubs himself the Real Bigfoot Hunter has launched a $3m (£2m) fundraising effort to finally find the legendary beast Sasquatch.

Carmine 'Tom' Biscardi is well-known for his interest in finding Bigfoot. He has been involved in a number of hoaxes claiming to have found the creature that have gained global media attention.

Most recently, he appeared on the BBC programme Shooting Bigfoot: America's Monster Hunters.

Now, he is looking to raise funds through an initial public offering to "capture the creature known as Bigfoot".

According to the Wall Street Journal, Biscardi and his partners plan to raise the $3m by selling stock in Bigfoot Project Investments – they will spend the money raised making films and selling DVDs, while budgeting $113,805 a year for expeditions.

Biscardi started the IPO in 2012 and he filed the company in February last year.

However, not everyone is pleased with Biscardi's plans – other Bigfoot hunters have said the entrepreneur's actions give them a bad name.

Kathy Strain, a Bigfoot enthusiast and US Forest Service worker, wants to bring scientific methods into the search for Bigfoot. "It just makes it a big joke," she said of Biscardi's activities.

William Barnes, who claims to have seen Bigfoot 17 years ago in Nevada County, California, is also looking to fund a project to find Sasquatch. Working with Idaho State University and Professor Jeffrey Meldrum, he is looking to raise $400,000 to buy a drone to scour hotspots in hope of capturing Bigfoot on film.

Meldrum, who has spent much of his career trying to make the study of Bigfoot a credible scientific pursuit, said he is convinced of its existence: "My conviction stands firmly upon evidence that I have examined. It's not a question of whether I believe Bigfoot exists or not."

Belief in the existence of Bigfoot appears to be becoming increasingly acceptable.

Over the last few, renowned broadcaster and naturalist David Attenborough has spoken how he would like to find the Abominable Snowman: "It is not impossible that it might exist. If you have walked the Himalayas there are these immense forests that go on for hundreds of square miles which could hold the Yeti.

"There is still a mystery about the Abominable Snowman, there are teeth that were found back in the 1920s, huge molar teeth about six times the size of ours, immense things, they were found in a Chinese druggist's store and undoubtedly are the teeth of a giant ape that must have lived relatively recently itself and that could have been the Abominable Snowman."