Killing a Bigfoot is explicitly a crime in exactly one place in the United States: Skamania County, Washington, where a county ordinance carries up to a year in jail and a $1,000 fine. Everywhere else, there is no Bigfoot-specific statute, but a stack of ordinary wildlife, firearm, and federal land laws would make the act illegal anyway. So the honest answer to where it is illegal to kill Bigfoot is: one county by name, and most of the country by default.
Skamania County, Washington
Skamania County passed Ordinance No. 1969-01 on April 1, 1969, making the “premeditated, wilful and wanton slaying” of Sasquatch a felony punishable by up to five years in prison and a $10,000 fine.1Washington Bigfoot. Bigfoot Ordinance 69-01 The April Fool’s Day timing was deliberate, but the ordinance itself is real and enforceable within the county.
A 1984 amendment softened the penalties and expanded the scope. A killing with malice aforethought became a gross misdemeanor carrying up to one year in county jail and a $1,000 fine. A killing without malice was capped at six months and $500. The amendment also designated the county a “Sasquatch Refuge” and extended coverage to other names for the creature, including Bigfoot, Yeti, and Giant Hairy Ape.2Library of Congress Blogs. Laws Involving Animals – Real and Mythical
This is the only place in the country where a prosecutor could charge someone under a statute that names the creature.
Other Washington Counties That Declare Protection
Two other Washington counties have adopted protection measures, but neither creates a crime. Whatcom County’s council unanimously approved Resolution No. 92-043 in 1991, declaring the county’s 2,503 square miles a “Sasquatch protection and refuge area.” The preamble states that “if such a creature exists, it is inadequately protected and in danger of death or injury,” and asks citizens to “recognize said status.”3Washington Bigfoot. Resolution Declaring Whatcom County a Sasquatch Protection and Refuge Area No penalties attach.
Grays Harbor County passed a similar resolution in 2022. It also relies on voluntary compliance.
If you are looking for a jurisdiction where killing Bigfoot is a named crime, Skamania is still the only one.
Why It Is Illegal in Every State by Default
Most people assume anything not specifically protected is fair game. State wildlife law works the opposite way. You can legally kill a wild animal only if the state has designated it a game species, set a season, and issued you a tag or license. An animal that doesn’t appear on any game list isn’t unregulated. It is unauthorized, because no agency has sanctioned the take.
No state lists Sasquatch, Bigfoot, or any unclassified large primate as a game species. There is no season. No tags are issued. That means a kill would violate the state’s general prohibition on taking non-game wildlife, regardless of whether the creature is mythical, undiscovered, or anything else. The legal problem isn’t that Bigfoot is protected. The legal problem is that nothing authorizes you to shoot it.
Federal Land Rules
Much of the terrain associated with Bigfoot sightings is federal, and federal rules apply on top of state law.
National Parks
Inside national parks, federal regulations prohibit “the taking of wildlife” except where hunting has been specifically authorized by federal statute and the park superintendent.4eCFR. 36 CFR 2.2 – Wildlife Protection The rule covers all wildlife, classified or not. A shot fired at anything in Olympic or Mount Rainier would violate federal law before the carcass was even identified.
National Forests
National forests allow hunting more broadly, but firearm discharge is still restricted. You cannot fire within 150 yards of a residence, building, campsite, or developed recreation site, or across a National Forest road or adjacent body of water.5eCFR. 36 CFR 261.10 – Prohibitions And any legal hunt still has to comply with state game laws, which brings you back to the no-season, no-tag problem.
Federal Statutes That Could Add Charges
The PACT Act
The Preventing Animal Cruelty and Torture Act makes it a federal crime to purposely crush, burn, drown, suffocate, impale, or otherwise inflict serious bodily injury on any “living non-human mammal,” when the conduct occurs in or affects interstate commerce or takes place on federal land. Penalties reach seven years.6GovInfo. 18 USC 48 – Animal Crushing The statute covers any non-human mammal, whether or not the species has been scientifically classified. It targets prolonged suffering rather than a clean kill, so a single rifle shot is outside its reach, but trapping, wounding, or drawn-out harm on federal land is not.
The Lacey Act
The Lacey Act makes it illegal to transport, sell, or acquire in interstate or foreign commerce any wildlife “taken, possessed, transported, or sold in violation of any law or regulation of any State.”7Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 16 USC 3372 – Prohibited Acts Because the underlying kill would violate state game law in any state, moving the remains across a state line to sell, display, or hand off would stack a federal offense on top of the state one.
Self-Defense
If a large unidentified primate charged you, self-defense is the strongest legal ground available. Even the Endangered Species Act, one of the strictest wildlife statutes on the books, recognizes a defense for someone acting on “a good faith belief that he was acting to protect himself or herself, a member of his or her family, or any other individual, from bodily harm” from a listed species.8Congress.gov. Killing Endangered Species – Whats Reasonable Self-Defense State self-defense doctrines generally parallel this. What matters is whether the threat was genuine and immediate, not whether the attacker has been scientifically catalogued.
The defense does not help someone who went into the woods armed and intending to kill a Bigfoot, then claimed the creature attacked first. Courts weigh the whole picture, and setting out to hunt something cuts against the claim that an encounter was unexpected.
Could It Be Charged as Homicide?
Federal homicide law defines murder as “the unlawful killing of a human being with malice aforethought,” without defining “human being.”9Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 USC 1111 – Murder State murder statutes use similar language. Courts have never had to draw a line between human and non-human hominids, because no case has required it.
Existing precedent cuts against treating any animal as a legal person. In 2022, the New York Court of Appeals held in Nonhuman Rights Project v. Breheny that nonhuman animals are not legal “persons” entitled to habeas corpus, even when they display complex cognition. The court defined personhood as requiring “the capacity, not just to benefit from the provision of legal rights, but also to assume legal duties and social responsibilities,” and said any expansion should come from the legislature.
A creature that turned out to be a member of the genus Homo would push harder against that line than any animal in current litigation. If Bigfoot were shown to be a close relative of humans, the argument that it qualifies as a “human being” under homicide statutes would carry real weight. No court has decided the question.
The Short Version
Skamania County is the only jurisdiction where killing Bigfoot is a crime by name. Everywhere else in the United States, the same act would still be illegal, usually under several laws at once: state game regulations that authorize no take, federal rules on parks and firearm discharge, and potentially the PACT Act or Lacey Act depending on what happened after the shot. Self-defense remains available for a genuine attack. Homicide law is an open question that would turn on what the creature actually is.