→ Type of Encounter:
Rock Clacking or Wood Knocking
→ Reported by:
Confidential
→ Location of Encounter:
McLean Creek, AB
→ Date & Time of Encounter:
2017-07-29 @ 8:00 PM
→ Details of the Event:
It was July 29, 2017. I know this from the pictures I took of that days quading trip. Me and 3 friends took the weekend to scout for moose for the upcoming hunting season. The last night had us camping 3/4 of the way up a cut line just down from McLean Hill. We had just parked our quads, and finished setting up our sleeping areas. Mine was a hammock with my sleeping bag in it and a mosquito net overtop. The other two had goretex bivy bags and slept on the ground. Being our last night we wanted to have a good meal. It had been hours since we heard our last ATV so we decided to have a small fire to cook up some deer sausage. We found some dead wood lying around and smashed it on a tree to break it into pieces. Bang! Bang! Bang! That’s when it got weird. About 5 seconds later there was loud bang, bang, bang, coming from the bottom of the hill. This wasn’t an echo as the sounds were separated by a time of silence. We all looked at each other and smirked that someone at the bottom of the hill was also having a fire and was letting us know they were there. We all new it was wrong as there was a fire ban in place that weekend. We knew that being so far away from the main road and having a small cooking fire that there was less chance of anyone seeing or smelling the fire. Things went quiet from there, sun went down so we all went to bed. It was about 2:30 in the morning when I was woken up and when it happened again. Bang! Bang! Bang! This time it came from the top of McLean Hill. I sat there with eyes wide open listening. 5-10 seconds had passed then, bang, bang, bang, from the bottom of the hill. A short time after that came more bangs from the top of the hill. Then it stopped. The night was dead quiet, no atvs, no partying kids, no human voices at all. I didn’t smell anything funky, or hear any weird animal sounds. I remember that it was a clear night. At first we thought it was other people chopping wood, it was very loud. Then I thought maybe a moose banging it’s antlers, but the responses matched the first set of bangs. I’ve hunted and quadded that area for the past 20yrs, and have never experienced anything like that before.