Oregon Hikers

The night before the eclipse we were camped off of a forest service road in Mt. Hood National Forest south of Rhododendron Meadow, about 8 miles N of Breitenbush, as the crow flies. During the night we had lots of deer tramping through our campsite and on three different occasions we heard a sound I'd never heard before. It came from far away, not in the campsite where the deer were, and sounded like something between someone running a stick over a washboard and banging a stick on a metal gate. It was very short duration -maybe 1/4 of a second. Each occasion was separated by about five or ten minutes and each occasion we heard the sound from three to maybe ten times, with two to ten seconds separating each sound.

I would have assumed it was human caused except each occasion it came form a different direction, and was far enough away that someone couldn't have traveled on foot between locations in that amount of time. There are no roads between the locations and we bushwacked all over that area the previous day and saw no one.
I've searched online for all kinds of possible sounds and can't find anything close. It was not any owl sound that I've ever heard. There were nighthawks around, but it was not any of the sounds they make. I thought maybe a deer or elk snorting or sneezing, but couldn't find anything on the web that sounded remotely like it.

I'm clueless. Any ideas? Did anyone else hear this?

The only sensible conclusion is... Bigfoot.

Aimless wrote:The only sensible conclusion is... Bigfoot.

Scary to think they like to hit things with sticks.

Are you aware of the sound that a nighthawk makes when diving?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0aHlV7syK1Q

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7kJXiFPnlIE

aiwetir wrote:Are you aware of the sound that a nighthawk makes when diving?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0aHlV7syK1Q

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7kJXiFPnlIE

Yes. This was not that. It really sounded like someone striking one of those cheap metal farm gates with a stick, only about twice as long in duration. Also this was in the middle of the night. When I hear nighthawks tweeting and diving, it always seems to be at dusk.

Sorry about that. I didn't know anyone was close enough to hear. We cooked some chili for dinner and didn't eat much of it, forgot to clean it right away, and well, it got stuck to the bottom of the pan. Tried to scrape it out, but that only got us so far, so I got more violent with it and banged the pot against a rock. I was kinda dark, so i don't know exactly how many thrusts it took to dislodge the gunk, but eventually it came out.

...having not heard the sound first-hand, that's the only plausible explanation i have for the sound you described.

Not really a metal sound but Mountain Quail makes an odd one. If sound did not move, then migrating birds wold not be an option, if sound was moving, it could have been a migrating flock of birds, can't think of one that makes a flight call like that. Most birds have some type of flight call they use while in migration at night. Foxes can do odd barks as well.

It moved around during the night, or maybe there was more than one source. Also, it didn't sound like it was coming from above, or that the sound was moving across the sky. I'm toying with the idea of going back to the same place to see if I can hear it again and track it down, or at least record the sound.

I tried to go back and Hwy 46 was closed. Yet another fire!