File this story under “Frontiers of Science”:

A professor at Idaho State University in Pocatello has announced that his plan to use an unmanned aerial vehicle to search for Bigfoot is nearly ready for launch.

The man behind the world’s first Bigfoot drone is Jeffrey Meldrum, Ph.D., a versatile professor of both anatomy and anthropology at Idaho State—and a noted Sasquatch hunter. He is the author of “Sasquatch: Legend Meets Science.”

The professor’s airship is called “The Falcon Project,” reports Idaho Mountain Express. It is 45 feet long. It will carry a remote-control camera. The academic plans to fly it over the densely-wooded forests of “Bigfoot territory.”

Meldrum, whose curriculum vitae includes teaching stints at Northwestern University and Duke University Medical Center, has been spending the summer raising money for the project in the area.

The benefit of a drone in Bigfoot hunting would obviously be the ability to spot and observe the shifty apelike creature in its natural habitat without alarming it.

“The latter is critical for survey in areas of dense stands of forest where a sustained vertical perspective is essential for locating animals on the forest floor,” Meldrum explained in wonderfully academic fashion, according to Boise Weekly.

“These unmanned drones, I believe, are the next step in proving the nature of these creatures,” he added.

The Pacific Northwest never goes long without a Bigfoot sighting. A recent one – in May 2012 – involved some high school students from Pocatello on an erosion expedition in an area called Elk Meadows.

They say they just happened to catch a glimpse of a creature off in the woods. They just happened to have a camera. Video appears to show a swift, bipedal figure similar to famous 1967 video footage that allegedly shows a Sasquatch.

“There’s a dude watching us,” one high schooler said in the 2012 video, as the Mountain Express narrates.

“It just didn’t look human-like,” another student swore. “I don’t know what that is; it’s not a bear, it’s not a moose or anything. It was big and bulky and black. I’m not going to say yes it was a Bigfoot or no, it wasn’t, because I don’t know, and nobody knows.”