One Thing Bothers Me About Bigfoot Tree Knocks

[MIB]

Yeah, I'm not aware of turkeys knocking.   The ones around our yard don't.  

 

I'm fortunate enough to know / have known some of the past generation researchers.    They heard knocks, some of them even had an idea bigfoot was involved, but the dots weren't connected.   The same is true of habituation.  People really only knew about the things they'd personally experienced and noticed.    It wasn't 'til the internet when people started sharing less formally, just yammering on about one thing or another, that those little seemingly irrelevant details worked into the conversation and someone noticed the pattern.   

 

You doubt?  If you can, go dig into old family correspondence and compare that to the email correspondence of today.   Those old hand written letters were thought out.   Only the glaringly important things got mentioned.   The day to day trivial details, which are so much of today's communication, were omitted.    I know this to be true ... a 2nd cuz found a letter in her grandma's stuff that my mom had written back in the early '60s.   It was dry, read like a newspaper article.  Not one "wasted" letter.  

 

It's the same thing here.    It's the easy, informal communication that caused these previously "unimportant" details to rise to the level of notice.

 

MIB

[JDL]

Incorrigible1 said:

 

"I saw Dr. Bryan Sykes on Nat Geo channel, yesterday. Bigfoot: The New Evidence. In it, he made an aside comment to Mark Evans, wondering if sometimes bigfoot enthusiasts don't hear other enthusiasts responding to tree knocks."

 

So now I picture Abbot and Costello in:  "The Knock Knock Joke"

[VAfooter]

Just wondering, has anybody ever recorded a compilation of "tree knocks" using different media (i.e. good wood, bad wood, rocks, large bones, baseball bat, metal pipe, etc.) to compare how they sound?

[gigantor]

^^^ good idea. A standardized measure of distance should also be stablished IMO.

 

[Guest Cryptic Megafauna]

Just a note,

I've heard knocks when in the woods.

Not sure what it was, certain it was not Bigfoot.

 

So a knock does not a Bigfoot imply.

Does not imply it is not a Bigfoot either.

 

A knock is a knock absent other confirmation.

That would be the logical approach.

 

Or you can do belief oriented results, if so, I believe I will abstain.

Edited January 10, 2017 by Cryptic Megafauna

[hiflier]

2 hours ago, MIB said:

Yeah, I'm not aware of turkeys knocking.   The ones around our yard don't.  

 

 

This is a hunting Forum and post #25, the important one, was written in 2009: http://forum.gon.com/showthread.php?t=391964 I never knew turkeys knocked until I read this.

[VAfooter]

52 minutes ago, gigantor said:

A standardized measure of distance should also be stablished IMO.

 

 

Sound loudness would depend on both distance and force applied. Not sure how you quantify the latter, but a good thought regarding distance.

 

Also, a "catalog" of different target trees would be interesting to hear as well. What difference in sound, if any, does hitting an oak tree differ from hitting an elm/poplar/aspen/maple/etc. using the same instrument and force?

 

 

[gigantor]

I figure we should be able to easily collect something like:

 

 

We setup a good sound recorder at a known distance, known temp and record each strike...

 

The only thing we need is a machine to consistently swing the striker (bat) with the same force every time. I'm reading the following to learn more:

 

http://www.acs.psu.edu/drussell/bats.html

 

Below is an idea college students used for a project to measure the performance of baseball bats

 

.

 

 

 

[Trogluddite]

Several good ideas in this thread; hopefully some are followed up and documented, which is critical to provide some repeatable/testable information.

 

Just some random thoughts.  As noted above, hearing a wood knock (something that is unequivocally wood on wood) does not necessarily equate to hearing a bigfoot hitting wood on wood.  Anecdotally, encounters in which the bigfoot is seen drumming on a tree are rare.  

 

That being said, the grand sum total of time in which humans observe bigfoot behavior is somewhere on the far side of inconsequential.  A great many encounters simply involve someone observing a bigfoot "in transit."  We don't know where they came from, what they were doing, where they are going, or what they plan on doing when they get there.  So the fact that bigfoot are not often observed with a handy club may just be a function of they are not observed in a situation where they need a handy club to communicate.

 

Last, a bigfoot may have a far better intuitive grasp of what it needs in terms of a club and a tree to hit than humans, who don't communicate by simple signals any more.

 

As I said, wholly random, and by no means intended to be conclusory, thoughts.    

[MIB]

1 hour ago, VAfooter said:

Sound loudness would depend on both distance and force applied. Not sure how you quantify the latter, but a good thought regarding distance.

 

Also, a "catalog" of different target trees would be interesting to hear as well. What difference in sound, if any, does hitting an oak tree differ from hitting an elm/poplar/aspen/maple/etc. using the same instrument and force?

 

How far the sound carries can depend on background noise like rushing water or wind in tree leaves.   It can be affected by how heavy the tree cover is since tree cover absorbs / mutes sound.

 

Regarding trees, it would be useful to know whether or not the "knock blow" hits on bark, damp wood, or hard, sun-dried wood.    Even the thickness of the two pieces hitting together can affect the pitch.   You could do gigantor's "experiment" with a 1" piece of pine on each kind of wood, then a 2" piece of pine and get different results, then a 3" piece of pine (still theoretically easily within a bigfoot's ability to grasp), get different sounds, then change the length of each piece from 1 to 2 to 3 to 6 feet and get different results yet.   The point is, wood on wood is very dynamic and has many many many factors, for instance, humidity.

 

In the end it may be like music, all may hear and enjoy it but it takes another musician to TRULY understand the nuances.

 

MIB

 

Edited January 10, 2017 by MIB

[FarArcher]

1 hour ago, Trogluddite said:

Several good ideas in this thread; hopefully some are followed up and documented, which is critical to provide some repeatable/testable information.

 

Just some random thoughts.  As noted above, hearing a wood knock (something that is unequivocally wood on wood) does not necessarily equate to hearing a bigfoot hitting wood on wood.  Anecdotally, encounters in which the bigfoot is seen drumming on a tree are rare.  

 

That being said, the grand sum total of time in which humans observe bigfoot behavior is somewhere on the far side of inconsequential.  A great many encounters simply involve someone observing a bigfoot "in transit."  We don't know where they came from, what they were doing, where they are going, or what they plan on doing when they get there.  So the fact that bigfoot are not often observed with a handy club may just be a function of they are not observed in a situation where they need a handy club to communicate.

 

Last, a bigfoot may have a far better intuitive grasp of what it needs in terms of a club and a tree to hit than humans, who don't communicate by simple signals any more.

 

As I said, wholly random, and by no means intended to be conclusory, thoughts.    

 

Those are some really good observations and thoughts.

 

I've never heard a knock - but I've spent enough time in the woodlands etc., to know that "proper" wood isn't readily available on a forest floor.

 

Someone did a test - and video'd the test to determine how far knocks could be heard - both when the sound would have to travel between trees and brush - and then they tested it on a quiet country road without any obstructions whatsoever.

 

I've looked, but can't find it.  Seems like straight line, no obstructions, the sound could only be detected some 200 yards away.  Which was surprising to me.

[TritonTr196]

FA, that was the mabrc. It's hard to qoute or link on this tablet, but go to page 5 of this section and scroll down to the "Silent Hills" thread, and that is the one you're looking for.

[BobbyO]

I'll just give you some "knock" numbers from the SSR's 252 knock reports Continent wide.

 

65% in hours of darkness.

56% of those reports in hours of darkness come on times of the night when the moon is visible.

October is the most common month for a knock report, with a report in October being 32% more likely than any other month.

 

The numbers differ of course when narrowed down though by geographical area though and WA State where i look at a lot.

 

The Southern WA Cascades for example and its 31 reports.

76% in hours of darkness, a 17% increase on Continent wide reports.

36% of those reports in hours of darkness come on times of the night when the moon is visible, a 36% decrease on Continent wide reports.

June is the most common month for a knock report, with a report in June being 100% more likely than any other month.

 

Different strokes for different folks.

 

If anyone wants any State specific info on knocks, just shout and i'll add to the thread..

 

[VAfooter]

Also the diameter of the tree being hit probably makes a difference as well.

 

A thought last night after I went to bed. What if the "knocks" are made by a slap or fist, instead of wood or some other material? I suspect that BF could make a pretty loud sound just by hitting a tree with his hand.

[spacemonkeymafia]

I was hiking in to retrieve a game cam one day and I hear what sounded like a car door slamming on the ridge above me. I know there was no road up there. Very strange and I still don't know what it was.