I had never given tree knocks a second thought...I had always just figured, "hell...it's just woodpeckers, or some guy working on a tree stand"..
That is..untill one July evening a couple of years ago.
There were 3 of us camping, in an area that's had several reported sightings(including an incident with one of the people who was there that evening).
It was about 1 am, on a cool(upper 30's), even for Michigan(in july), night. We had done several call blasting sessions, using a mix of known primate locator calls, and the "tahoe scream"(yeah, I've got a copy
).
At just a couple of minutes before 1 am, we decided to try a tree knock, to see if we could get any replie. DP(not going to use his name), did a single knock on an oak adjacent to the fire. About a minute later, I did the same..we were using a 3ft ax handle for the "knocker" and it made a satisfiying crack.
Literaly seconds later(perhaps 5 seconds), we got a return knock that was so very close, we all jumped, and looked at the very tree we had just knocked on. It was THAT loud, THAT close. The best way to describe the sound was as has been noted, like a louisville slugger hitting a tree at full swing. It was literaly like a gun going off. The t hing that got to us was the proximity of it. This was NOT some vague sound off in the distance..this was virtualy IN our camp. It was dead silent,..I mean absolutely no wind, not even any insects(I think it was the cold...they were quite all night). After a brief moment of confusion/recovery(essentialy...what the HELL was that!), we flashed our lights in the direction of the knock, but to no avail..the wood edge is solid, and we didnt see anything.
The following day, we tried to the best of our ability, to duplicate the incident. What we came up with(and even this was not as intense), was that in order to duplicate the volume and sound, we had to have somene hit a tree with a dry, hardwood log of 3-4 inches in diamter, as absolutely hard as they possibly could, at a distance of no more then 10 feet!!
Only that would dubplicate the sound.
We searched the edge of the woods where the sound had to have come from, and about 10 feet from my tent(which is always set up there), we found a tree which had taken an impact of some kind. About 7 feet up from the ground was an impact point where wood was driven INTO the bark of the tree. Something wooden had hit the tree so hard that agian, splinters were driven into the bark. On the ground underneath, was a shattered stick that roughly equaled the size/type that we had found was needed to make the sound. This was perhaps 15 yards from our fire pit...
Due to the heavy grass cover, no defined tracks could be found. There were lots of impressions, but they could have been from anything, at any time(lots of bear in that area).
So...do I know what did this? Nope..but I cam confident that whatever did it, had to be able to manipulate a stick, and thus, have hands. There are really only two possibilities...man..and something like man.
Due to the isolated nature of the area, and the fact that untill late that afternoon, even we did not know exactly where we were going to camp..I don't th ink anyone was in there messing with us. Even if a person had somehow stumbled onto our camp, way in the forest..they would have to figure out what we were up to, and know just how to "reply" to us to make the hoax work..
Then they would have to get out without making a sound, through heavy brush, it total darkness....
Again..NO one knew where we were...we had picked the location due to it's proximity to a couple of unpublished sightings..but only in a general sense...no one other then ourselves knew within a few dozzens of miles, were we were.
