banging sound at night
Posted: August 23rd, 2017, 2:28 pm
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?
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?