Second Michigan Outing, 7-24 through 7-27-04 Options

[StacyInMI]

This past weekend, from Saturday, 7-24-04 through Tuesday, 7-27-04, some of us Michigan folks got together again for another trip up north to do some squatching. We’d have started this thread anyway, with narratives of what we did all weekend complete with pictures, just like we did last time; however, on this trip something very interesting did happen. The three of us who were there have worked together to write up this initial post so as not to omit any details or make any mistakes in the timeline of events. So here’s a summary of our weekend, with the exciting stuff occurring on the first night:

7-24-04

Nightwing, RabidMonkey, and Stacy met at 11:30 at McDonalds, with three possible campsite locations in mind. After driving around the backroads and two-tracks for a couple of hours, we decided on a location 9-10 miles southeast of town (and this is a little one-stoplight northern Michigan town), on a two-track that had no recent tire-tracks, off of a dirt road way out in the middle of the forest. It was a beautiful location, with hills rising into dense brush and then heavy forest on both sides. This was part of the reason we settled on this spot, but another big reason was that it was less than half a mile from where RabidMonkey had his possible encounter two years ago.

After setting up camp, we headed first to an area of old growth forest along the River, where we hiked in a quarter mile or so to see the large pines. Then we drove out to the swampy area (the creepy place described in the first Michigan report thread) to have a look around. The area had grown up considerably since our last trip out there, and ripe blueberries lined the sides of the footpath we took to get back into the area. In some of the muddier areas we found raccoon, porcupine, deer, and several nice, big bear prints, which we decided to return to and cast the next day. After leaving the swamp, we spent another couple of hours driving around exploring, before returning to camp at 9:30 pm. We built up a nice fire, cooked and ate dinner, and sat for awhile talking quietly.

At this point, we’ll describe the rest of the evening/early morning in a timeline. Understand that we are not claiming this as a definite sasquatch encounter, but it was odd and unnerving enough for us to want to report it in this manner.


The log was started at 1:30 AM; so all the events prior to that time are estimated, but relatively accurate. (We were noting the times of most events out loud, just didn’t start writing until 1:30.) Weather conditions were cooler than normal with cloudless skies that were semi-hazy due to ice in the upper atmosphere. Daytime temperature was mid 70’s with a low that night in the low 40’s.



11:00 – 12:45 PM : We began call blasting. We did 3 separate sessions during this time. During this time, the northern lights became very bright and noticeable and we frequently walked down to the two-track to view/photograph it. Calls were generally blasted for 30 seconds to a minute or so, and then repeated 30-45 minutes later.


4-25-05

1:00 AM: A total of 5 distant gunshots were heard from the north over the span of two minutes. They sounded miles away. The gunshots gave us the idea to try some wood knocking.

1:05 AM : RabidMonkey uses a larger piece of wood, 3-4 inches in diameter, to make two separate wood knocks on an oak tree 3-4 feet away from the fire-pit we were all sitting around. Nightwing then makes a single wood knock with a smaller piece of wood. The smaller piece makes a somewhat sharper, higher pitched but maybe slightly quieter sound.

1:06 AM: Nightwing drops the piece of wood he made his knock with and starts walking west. Stacy and RM are seated around the fire. NW gets approximately 10 paces when we all hear a very sharp, very loud wood knock that sounds like the knocks we just made. It sounded exactly like what NW had just done. It was so close and so loud that we all looked up at the tree -- Stacy and RM expecting to see NW there, NW expecting to see RM there -- but nobody had knocked. NW was still behind RM, who was still sitting down. This caused a several seconds of some confusion, as we determined that none of us had made the sound. It was just that close and loud. It was a confusing and "jumbled" couple of minutes.

1:11 AM: Nightwing walks towards his vehicle in the West to get his night vision and hears three distinct steps further west towards the tree line.

1:21 AM: We hear a soft but clear noise that can best be described as a "woo-woo" noise then seconds later a twig snap to the West.

2:03 AM: Nightwing is scanning the wood line with his night vision on the East side close to where our tents and the loud wood knocking response came from. He turns on the IR emitter on the NV and immediately a crunch noise is heard by all of us, right in that area where the IR beam would be pointing.

3:04 AM : In the SW direction, all of us hear a fainter wood knock like noise. Nightwing hears it as a single noise while Stacy and RabidMonkey hear it as double tap noise almost overlapping itself.

During the time between the first occurrence (the loud, close knock) and the time we went to bed, there were several more little sounds here and there which could easily be attributed to other things, small animals, etc., that normally one wouldn't pay much mind too. There were though, several low, soft "whoop" sounds heard by Nightwing and RabidMonkey to the north of camp, however they were in the same direction and about the same distance as we'd heard owl vocalizations earlier.

4:00am: Bed. Nothing further noted, although NIghtwing did report hearing some rustling in the brush outside camp to the east, up on the hill behind the tents. Again, this could easily have been about anything. Deer, bear, and assorted small animals were in great abundance in the area.


7-25-04continued....

Spent several hours in the morning exploring the area looking for tracks and/or other possible sign, and also trying to recreate the sound we heard, trying to come up with any possible explanation for it. Extensive testing of all manner of possible explanations for the sound eventually brought us to the conclusion that only a 2-3 in. diameter stick of fairly hard wood, about 3 feet long, hit as hard as possible at 20 yards or less against a decent sized tree, would come close to duplicating the sound we heard. Rocks thrown at trees could not do it, nor could breaking branches of any size, nor falling branches(we tried all the above).

For the rest of this day we drove back out to the swamp and casted 3 bear tracks, and did more driving and exploring in the area. Arrived back in camp at 9:30pm again, when OpenRange (Bruce) surprised us by calling to say that he and his wife Sue were about 45 minutes away... they’d decided at the last minute to come up for the night. So they joined us around the campfire for a couple of hours before leaving for their cabin several miles south of town. We did several sets of call blasts, as well as some tree knocks this evening, with no concurrent response. Shortly before retiring at around 3:00am, a clear and sharp crack of wood on wood, or large branch breaking, was heard from the hillside to the West-Southwest of our location. This sound appeared to be moderately close to camp, perhaps 100-200 yards or so..very much estimated distance of course. It had the "sound" of significant weight or force, but again this really could have been anything (bear are quite common in the area). Nothing else of significance happened this evening.


7-26-04: Met Bruce and Sue for breakfast and headed back out to the swamp with them to pick up the bear track casts, only two of which turned out. One of them had both the front and back paw in it. Spent a couple of hours out there and drove back into camp to leave the casts safely behind. We then decided to take a drive along the two tracks and forest roads to the south of our area, and check out an extensive burned forest fire location. We then continued exploring the area by jeep, looking at a small stream and a power line location, and decided to return later to those areas for call blasting. After this, we returned to camp for a couple of hours untill dusk. At Dusk, we left camp again, to do an hour or so of "shining", primarily in the area south of camp and in the burned over area. We saw nothing of interest other than a handfull of deer.

After 11:00pm (legal end of shining here), we went back to the stream location to call blast. Nothing answered of interest, although we got a pack of dogs going bonkers! Another call blast session was done at the powerlines (again, no response), and a last one (from the car), done on a two track a bit closer to camp. That call elicited a coyote response, and an owl, but nothing else. We returned to camp about 1:00 am (roughly), and call blasted, and again had an owl respond but nothing more. The remainder of the evening was uneventful, and we retired at around 2:30am.


7-27
We spent the morning breaking camp, and around noon or so, we each headed home. Other than the giant wolf spiders, nothing significant visited us this morning!




So that’s it...This is a run down of the basics, PLEASE ask anything and we will try to answer as well as we can. Again, we are NOT claiming unequivocally that this was a sasquatch encounter, as we did not see what hit the tree.....but we all agree that we cannot come up with any reasonable natural or other explanation for the event, and the lead up with call blasts and our own wood knocks immediately before the event, is at minimum very interesting. The entire evening continues to leave us stunned in some ways.
We might also add that this even occurred less than a half mile from another possible event two years ago, as well as less then 5 miles from a sighting by listed on the BFRO.

So please... question and comment freely, all we can do is answer and explain to the best of our ability and we are completely willing and anxious to do so!

Nightwing, RabidMonkey, and Stacy



typos once again....

This post has been edited by StacyInMI: Jul 29 2004, 03:11 PM