Dragons?

You know what really sucks?

Dragons.

Dragons are the main event for monster hunting professionals. They're the real deal. You don't start out with dragons, you have to build up to them. Dragons are smart, powerful, and deadly. It's hard to sneak up on them and it's even harder to kill them. Stuff just tends to bounce off their scaly hides.

Of course, slaying a dragon means you've hit the major leagues of monster killing. Over the years they've been hunted nearly to extinction, despite the immense danger involved. And when I say "nearly" I mean it's possible there are none left already. No one on the job has heard even a rumor of a dragon in over a decade. The last confirmed killing was in 1883 in Indonesia. Let's just say it went poorly because the hunter wasn't really up to the task and got "lucky."

These are excerpts from a National Geographic special recreating the lives of different dragon species.

We can't be certain they're gone because dragon metabolisms haven't been studied closely. It's believed they can live for centuries and can hibernate for decades at a time. Also, we can't be certain that some percentage of the lake monster and sea serpent sightings aren't, in fact, dragons.