We were at a canyon bottom and had a long uphill hike to get out, 500 foot climb on a forest service road. We were goofing around and WVFooter immitated a Bobo howl , I grabbed two rocks and made some clacks.
We started our hike and a few minutes later heard some brush rustling. We just ignored it thinking it was a deer or something, kept hiking and then we started to hear heavy footfalls. We stopped and it stopped. We continued and it resumed. Stopped again and it stopped, we repeated that 4 or 5 times. It had rained so we could hear the splash when the foot hit the ground. I couldn't reproduce the loudness with my boots. That's when I started getting apprehensive. Kept hiking and it continued to follow us. We couldn't see the damn thing, it stayed behind the brush the whole time.
Finally WVFooter pulled out his .22 revolver , screamed in the general direction and fired two shots into a tree. It didn't like that and started crashing loudly through the brush away from us.
The last 100 yards we broke the world record running to the truck.
We came back a couple of weeks later well armed to retrieve the sound recorders and trail cameras, they were gone and have never been back.