Or are these the most extensive recordings of Sasquatch screams ever? In today’s blog, I’m taking you on an extensive journey to determine whether the sounds we’re calling “sasquatch” are those of an unknown primate – or simply misidentified coyote calls.
Christmas Eve 2009 Recordings – Pierce County, Washington
Oregon Bigfoot investigator Troy Chaffee sent me the following on 12/24/2009:
Autumn-
I have 28 minutes of audio recording I made this morning at my place.
I have been trying to send it to you but it’s getting rejected because it’s too large. When I get back home I’ll try to break it up. If I can’t, I’ll burn it to a CD. Can you send me an address to mail it to?
This recording is what I have been hearing now off and on for weeks. Only this time it was very close.
[In the Oregon Bigfoot Members Media Archives, you'll find links to the first partial recording that Troy sent me, and the complete clips of the full 28-minutes worth of recordings. Due to file sizes and bandwidth constrictions, I cannot post them here on the blog.]
After sending you the clip I packed up some gear and went for a hike. I used a compass and walked an azimuth in the direction from which the sound came. I guessed about how far I thought it was away and my route took me directly to the road behind our place. Along this road I found some footprints walking the grass line down the middle of the road. These prints were 16 inches in length and spaced 6 feet apart.
There was one print that I think was sufficient enough for a photo. The issue is my ability to make what I see stand out in a photo (really gotta work on that).
If you look at the photos when you get them you should see:
(a) general flattening of the area in the shape of a foot
(b) impressions of toes
(c) impression of a heel
(d) Leaves that were broken because of the footfall on them while there were still frost covered and brittle.
The property Troy has purchased just happens to be right down the road from where I grew up, and where my childhood encounter and all of the events in Mom’s book Valley of the Skookum took place.
There are vocalizations in these recordings that are very similar to several others here on the site. (See my members video blog comparing 12 different scream recordings from my files depicting similar vocalizations.)
The only reason I haven’t posted these before now is because I’ve been doing extensive research with the the help of several coyote vocalization experts in an attempt to address an argument that’s been brewing for some time over these types of vocalizations.
At BigfootForums. com on April 5, 2006, Ken Kristian posted the following:
Chehalis Sounds Identified
Thomas Steenburg and Gerry Matthews (GrandCherokee) were out on the Chehalis/Harrison River flats early this morning doing follow-up investigative work on possible sasquatch activity in the immediate area. At 9:30 a.m. precisely, while exploring along the edge of the bush-line on the flats, both were astounded to hear the by now familiar cries called the Chehalis Sounds emanating from a pair of coyotes.
I’m sure Thomas and Gerry will answer any questions you might have regarding what they saw and heard.
Thomas Steenburg added the following comments:
No body is more surprised but what we witnessed today than Grandcherokee and I. I have lived all my life in areas where coyote crys and other sounds were a nightly occurance and not once in all that time did I ever hear one emit a sound such as the one we heard this morning,(April 5th, 2006, 09:30 a.m.).
If I had not seen and heard it myself I don’t think I would have beleaved it. But the recording now known as the Chehalis sounds, which resulted in six weeks of back up investigation at the location has resulted in a disapointing but definite conclusion. A rare sound uttered by coyotes. It seemed the animal was was using the sound to locate a companion, probably its mate as the second animal appeared to be as large as the first. When the second animal appeared the sounds from the first animal immediately changed back to the familer yep type sound I have heard coyotes make a thousand times before. both animals ran along the edge of the flats around the trailer park and we lost sight of them as they neared the main Morris valley road about half a mile west of our position. But there is no mistaken the fact that the sounds the first coyote made were what has been recorded and reported by members of the trailer park over the last few years. sounds which are remarkably simuler to other alledged sasquatch recordings over the last 30 years, including the Puyallup screamer of 1973. The volume of the cry from this coyote was a wonder to behold, at least three times as loud as the familer yipping calls which followed. and if echoing effect along with the way sounds are louder it seems at night? It’s no wonder we all thought and I was one of the most ridgit supporters of these as possible sasquatch screams. But research is research and when results point to an answer that disapoints. we all just have to accept it, and carry on. So I am afriad that the Chehalis sounds and all the similar sounds recorded since 1973 have now an explanation which points to something other than sasquatch, and all of you out there who know me knows I would not say this if I did not believe it.
Thomas Steenburg
Now, unfortunately, no one present was able to record a visual of the coyote making the cries, or even the audio of the cries themselves. Last summer at our Beachfoot gathering, I teased Tom about this. “So in other words, we simply have your word that these were the ’same’ vocalizations?”
While the teasing was good-natured, the question was serious. And Tom admitted that without “proof” (there’s that word again) of what he saw and heard, it’s simply more anecdotal evidence, albeit from an experienced and level-headed witness.
It stuck in my mind. Here, we’ve been listening to these sounds for years and thinking they may be Sasquatch calls. Were we wrong all along?
I decided to try to get to the bottom of it.
I contacted a “coyote vocalization expert. Brian R. Mitchell is an Adjunct Assistant Professor at University of Vermont, Rubenstein School of Environment & Natural Resources. Mitchell’s Ph.D. research focused on coyote vocal communication. He found that “coyote barks and howls are individually distinctive, and that coyote howls convey information for distances of at least one kilometer. I also studied the responses of coyotes to audio playbacks.”
I figured Brian was the perfect guy to ask. The following is my email exchange with Brian in 2007:
Dear Mr. Mitchell,
Greetings from Oregon! This might be the strangest email you receive today. Or, perhaps, all year. *grin*
Your name came up while I was doing a search regarding coyote communications. I attempted to download your dissertation from your website in order to, hopefully, find the information that I was looking for but the link took me to an error page on the UVM website.
I have several recordings of “wildlife” that are in question and am trying to identify the sounds in the recordings. I know that there are coyote sounds within them, but the recordings were obtained by field researchers studying an even more elusive creature… dare I say it? Sasquatch.
These researchers are attempting to record vocalizations of these creatures and are playing purported “scream” recordings of such. The vocalizations they are getting in return INCLUDE coyotes, but we’re trying to determine whether the sounds recorded are strictly coyotes or contain something unknown as well.
I’m curious whether you’d have the time in your busy schedule to listen to some of these recordings and offer the benefit of your extensive knowledge on coyote vocalizations in order to help define which of these sounds are attributable to them, for future reference.
Of particular interest is a moaning howl that begins a series of coyote calls. These calls are followed by a single scream that sounds similar to a woman screaming. Is it common for coyote packs to begin with just a single voice, before all the others join in?
In addition, I have several recordings that are purported Sasquatch vocalizations, recorded over a twenty-plus year period in different locations that are all very similar. There are certain researchers who are convinced that these vocalizations represent a specific type of coyote call. Because our research is rife with audio recordings of this type of call, we’d really like to know whether we’re recording coyotes, or something else. *grin*
If you have the time, I’d love to send you some of these sound files and get your take on them. Of course, you might feel that Sasquatch research is a total waste of time… some people do. I, unfortunately, do not have that luxury (*grin*)… having had a sighting as a child, I’ve spent the last 17 years researching this phenomenon and trying to figure out exactly what it was I saw.
Thank you for your time!
Best,
Autumn Williams
Oregonbigfoot.com
****
Hello Autumn,
How could I resist the chance to hear a sasquatch? If the sound files are large, you can send them to me through UVM’s large file transfer site. It is indeed very common for a single coyote to start off a group howl… but I’ll give your recordings a listen and let you know what I think.
Brian
****
Hi Brian,
Thanks for your response and I’m sorry for the delay in replying. I’ve got an 8 month old and very little time to work, plus we just got hit with another family health crisis. When it rains, it pours, I guess.
The sound files are uploaded to the link you sent. On the first one, the original sound file I was sent, there is a call in the beginning prior to the coyotes calling, and then a “womanlike scream” at the end of the file.
The second file – Neches smoothed – was sent to me with the following description:
“I’ve attached another recording that you might be interested in as I think it may be a similar creature. This recording does have some mild editing to remove some frequencies and clip out extraneous handling noises but the vocals are true to the master recording.”
In the future, if files this size will be accommodated in your email box, please let me know, since it would be easier to send them that way. Otherwise, I’ll continue to use the upload link. (Time’s a VERY limited commodity right now due to the screaming meemie who’s cutting four teeth at once. LOL)
These are two particular recordings from a LA researcher that I was asked to look into – and I suspect they’re probably coyote – but I have other recordings that I’d like you to give a listen to that I suspect may be something else entirely. But let’s just stick with these first, so we don’t get the files confused.
Thanks again, so much for your time!
Best,
Autumn
***
Hello Autumn,
I took a quick listen to the files you sent, and my initial impression is that they both reflect what I would expect coyotes to sound like given the types of recording equipment that were probably used(inexpensive microphones can alter and distort vocalizations). Lone vocals before and after coyote “group yip-howls” are very common, and may or may not come from the group doing the group howl.
I’ll take a more careful listen in the next couple of days, and also try to dig up one or two coyote recordings so that you can hear something similar that is known to be coyotes.
I never know how big sound files will be when people say they want to send them… but your files were small enough to handle by e-mail. Files greater than 5 megs should go through the file transfer site.
More later… for now I’m going to have to take advantage of a beautiful late summer day, and hop on my bike…
Best of luck with the teething youngster,
Brian
****
Hello Autumn,
I listened to these recordings again, and I think that they are entirely consistent with coyote vocalizations. I’ve attached an example group yip-howl that sounds similar… and it is very common for one coyote to precede or continue howling after the group.
Best,
Brian
****
[The recording Brian sent me is available in the media archives.] Coyote group yip-howl
Back on the Bigfoot Forums, John Frietas (a welfare fraud investigator by trade and a researcher I’ve known for many years), originally investigated the Klamath scream, and had some comments of his own:
If by chance you’re referring to the Klamath scream, it was investigated by me. I personally sent the recording to Texas A&M and Cornell University for evaluation where both came to the same conclusion: “unknown animal”. The witness, shortly after the recording was made sent it to Stanford, where the conclusion was: “unknown animal, but similar to an orangutan”.
The witness at the time was a fishing guide who now works as a correctional officer at Pelican Bay State Prison. He was as creditable as they come, and has been in the woods most of his life working as a fishing guide for a good portion of it.
The unfortunate part of this issue is two-fold:
1: No one saw what was making the Klamath scream
2: A recording wasn’t made of the coyotes heard making a similar sound to see how they compare to the Klamath scream.
At this point I know these facts:
“The Klamath scream was recorded by several people; including a newspaper reporter that shared his recordings with the police and sheriffs department at the time it was recorded.
This vocalization happened where a sighting had occurred just a week prior.
And over a hundred people heard this vocalization from the small community of Hunters Creek. Nobody thought it was a coyote.
Around the same time, Scott Herriott video taped an animal in this area that is thought to be a possible sasquatch. [Editor's note: I wouldn't call Herriott's video conclusive in any way, simply because I'm unable to see anything that definitively looks to me like "sasquatch" in it, but I suppose that's neither here nor there...]
This would not be the first time someone has made the claim that the Klamath scream is a coyote, however, it has been evaluated by three top universities that have come to similar conclusions, none of which are coyote.
John Freitas
Back to Brian Mitchell. Our correspondence continued. He sent me a more detailed analysis of the sounds, and I had some comments and questions regarding his analysis. [Note: Again, in the Members Media Archives, the sound files are linked so you can follow along and listen to the recordings we're discussing...]
Brian: Stevens – Are wolves a possibility where this recording was made?
Autumn: I’m not sure. The area in question is at Stevens Pass in Washington. Part of the Cascades. Those don’t sound like wolf howls to me, though.
Brian: The long howls “low moans” may be wolves, and probably are not coyotes (coyotes almost always intersperse howls with barks, and coyote howls are normally shorter).
Autumn: That’s good to know for sure. I kind of thought that was the case!
Brian: It sounds like the [Steven's] more “whoop”-like calls were a playback produced by the recorders?
Autumn: No, the whoops were a naturally occurring sound. I know the guys who recorded this stuff. I really froze when I heard these, because they were IDENTICAL to whoops I heard within yards of me in Northern Cal several years ago. The volume was so loud that it was like someone holding a bullhorn up to your head at full volume and yelling through it. They made my ears buzz!
Brian: Colton – This is a very poor recording, with a LOT of reverberation (echoing of sound waves off of environmental structure, like trees), and potentially frequency bias from the microphone.
Autumn: Aren’t they all? LOL
Brian: While the sounds are strange, even for a coyote, I would not rule coyote out on the basis of this recording.
Autumn: Do you have ANY recordings that sound even remotely similar to these? The Colton one IS very strange. There is the siren-like call, then the “barks”, followed by another siren that really starts out low and gathers umph. *grin*
Brian: Klamath, Snohomish – These are also low quality recordings, with lots of reverberation and wind that can do strange things to vocalizations. Also, because of attenuation of high frequencies with distance, a distant vocalization will actually have lower frequencies than a close sound… so the lower frequency of the snohomish recording may simply reflect greater distance.
Autumn: Interesting!
Brian: Chehalis -Same as above, plus it sounds like someone really cranked up the gain post-recording to make the vocalizations louder, which may have introduced additional distortion. Given the amount of reverberation, wind, and distortion in the Klamath, Snohomish, and Chehalis recordings, I would have to say that they could all possibly be coyote howls. I am not saying that the recordings (or what the people making the recordings heard) really sound like coyotes (they don’t). I’m saying that environmental conditions and recording equipment can distort vocalizations between the sender and the receiver, and that coyote vocalizations could be transformed enough in poor environmental and recording conditions to sound like what was recorded.
“I am not saying that the recordings (or what the people making the recordings heard) really sound like coyotes (they don’t). “
Huh. So where did that leave us? These could be coyotes, but they “don’t sound like coyotes”, but they could be coyotes. *grin*
Autumn: If these were coyote howls, what would the coyotes be “saying”? I guess what I’m asking is, are you familiar with any KNOWN coyote calls that sound like this? Keeping in mind that a couple of researchers are claiming that these are examples of that rare “locator” call (the one I sent you)?
Brian: Regarding the Colton recording, no, I do not have any recordings that sound much like this one… but I think the vocalizations are within the realm of what could be expected of a coyote (especially when you consider that some of the odder aspects of the recording, like the echoing and distortion at the start of the second howl, is environmental- or equipment-related).
You asked about what the coyotes might be “saying”, and this is not an easy question. In general, coyote vocalizations (like those of many animals) are good at conveying emotional meaning, and do not correspond to words as we know them. When you hear a coyote vocalizing, you can be pretty sure it is a territorial coyote (transients almost never vocalize… they’d rather keep a low profile). Single coyote vocalizations (bouts of barking and howling) are often a sign of annoyance (e.g., the coyote has detected an intruder, and is alerting the intruder that he/she has been spotted (while simultaneously alerting any nearby pack-mates). Coyotes will occasionally approach people and bark and howl, and I think in these cases the coyote is treating the person as an intruder. I suspect (but can not prove) that the fewer barks in a howling bout, the more annoyed the coyote is. The other common vocalization people hear is group yip-howling, which usually has one or more coyotes howling in a warbling sort of way, with another one or more coyotes producing high-pitched yips. When I observed coyotes in Utah, the females always produced the yips, and the males always howled. Due to something called the “beau geste effect”, there are almost always many fewer coyotes vocalizing than you think; usually two coyotes can sound like four or more. These group-yip howls are multi-purpose; they serve as an advertisement that the territory is occupied, and they facilitate bonding within a pack / family group.
Within a group, there is more that coyotes may be “saying”; in the sense that coyote vocalizations are individual enough that pack members probably recognize each other based on the vocalizations. In addition, if individual coyotes howl in a certain way under certain circumstances (e.g., when it finds a fresh carcass), then it is possible that pack members might learn to associate certain characteristics of an individual’s vocalizations with the circumstances (e.g., pack members may recognize that the alpha male howls in a certain way when he finds food, and in a different way when he’s about to chase members of a neighboring pack).
As for a specific type of call that is a “locator” call, I don’t know.
I have a lot of respect for the trappers and others who spend a lot of time listening to and observing coyotes, but the science has not caught up with their ideas of different types of vocalizations for different situations. Howls, because they are harmonic vocalizations that are frequency modulated, are well suited for listeners to localize on the source… but any howl will do! Barks, on the other hand, are noisy, short vocalizations, and are not well suited for localization.
So that’s that.
What THAT is, exactly, I don’t know. *grin* Here we have a coyote expert (remowned, I might add, since all the wildlife biologists across the country whom I contacted sent me back to Brian), saying that they could be coyote, even though they don’t really sound like coyote. But I didn’t have a coyote recording in hand and really SOUNDED like anything in those recordings, echo or no. Despite all of my work on this, I didn’t feel like I had gotten much farther than where I was when I started.
So I decided to wait, sit on the information, and see what else developed.
Then, last December, Troy sent me his recordings. Despite the fact that they were relatively distant, they were clear and there was 28-minutes’ worth. FINALLY. Something else I could throw at the experts and see what response I could get!
I contacted Brian again, sending him the partial clip:
Hi Brian,
It Autumn, the bigfoot gal again. :)
I don’t know if you remember, but one of my researcher friends claims to have witnessed a coyote making a vocalization similar to the recordings that I have acquired over the years that are purported bigfoot screams.
There is some confusion still as to whether these calls are “coyote locator calls”, as he claims, or something entirely different. This is an important distinction for those of us in the research field, since these vocalizations are being “billed” as bigfoot screams, and we don’t want to be mistaking something more common for that.
Recently, one of my investigators was able to record 28 minutes of these calls. If you have the time, I would love your take on these. Now that I have such a complete and illustrative recording, I’d like to try to put this to rest once and for all. The investigator’s name is Troy Chaffee… incidentally, he’s a police officer and lives on the same road that I lived on where all of my family and neighbor’s bigfoot encounters took place.
(Troy, I’m cc’ing you on this. Brian is the coyote expert I mentioned in our phone conversation the other day.)
I’m attaching a short clip for you to listen to, but would really like to send you the complete series of calls. There are vocalizations in there that have me scratching my head, and you’re the best person I know who might be able to shed some light. The complete series is six recordings, about 11 MB each.
If you have an idea of what TYPE of coyote communication call these might be, and could attach a sound file to your reply of that type of call as you did before, that would be most helpful.
I hope your holidays were wonderful and I look forward to hearing from you.
Best,
Autumn Williams
Oregonbigfoot.com
Brian replied:
Hi Autumn,
If you want to send the full clip to me, you can use the UVM file transfer site…
The recording you sent me does sound like canid vocalizations (I wouldn’t necessarily rule out domestic / feral dog at this point). I’ve definitely seen coyotes make this sort of vocalization for upwards of 30 minutes. As for why coyotes would do this, I can only speculate. I suspect this type of vocalization is mildly aggressive and territorial; the coyote has identified a potential threat, and is letting the interloper (human or canid) know that he/she is being watched, and is expected to leave.
It will probably take me a few weeks to get to the full recording, but I will listen to it, and see if I can dig up something similar from my library.
The holidays were good… nice and quiet, for once, since my wife and I stayed in town. I hope all’s well with you!
Brian
I knew Brian was busy and it would take a while to hear back from him, so – in the meantime – I decided to contact another person, in Troy’s area, who might have some input.
I called Michelle Tirhi at the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife District Biologist, Pierce and Thurston County. After a brief conversation (she was intrigued), I sent her the partial clip. I also sent her a copy of the Klamath scream, because – despite the background noise – the amplification was such that it was easy to hear.
She replied:
I listened to both recordings and they sound very much like coyote, especially the first. The second is hampered by echo. A good comparison is found here: 
(listen to call #3). Coyote will often sound a screaming cry, especially if stressed. Regardless, I will pass these around and see what other in the agency think (I’ll not key them into coyote but let them guess)….get back to you when I hear more…
I went and listened to the recording. To me, it didn’t sound ANYTHING like the others.
Now Troy was in this with me and we were getting more and more frustrated. It isn’t that we didn’t respect the expertise of those who had studied coyotes. It’s that we can’t seem to get our hands on a sound file that is undeniably REPRESENTATIVE of these purported coyote calls in order to hear the similarities for ourselves. Every recording we were sent just didn’t sound like a good candidate.
One biologist I talked to said it sounded like a “pissed” coyote. I asked him if he could point me to any recordings of a “pissed” coyote. He said I should Google it. *grin* I emailed Troy, who has driven himself insane listening to every available coyote recording on the net (as I have) trying to come up with an EXAMPLE of these sounds from a KNOWN coyote.
Troy emailed me and said, “Aaaagggghhhh!!! More conflicting opinions. Stressed coyote? I googled “pissed off coyote”. Now I have to google ’stressed coyote’….it’ll return something about a strip bar in Las Vegas…lol “
“No,” I replied. “That’s ‘ugly coyote’.”
*grin*
So where do we stand with this?
Well, the experts all say the sounds COULD be those of a coyote (despite the fact that, as Brian said, “it doesn’t SOUND like a coyote”…). But no one can offer up a single KNOWN coyote recording that provides an obvious EXAMPLE of the sounds that have been recorded.
And then we have to consider that Sasquatch has reportedly been sighted in several of these locations during the same time when the sounds were occurring – conversely, no one in any of these cases, that I am aware of, actually saw a Sasquatch making these sounds.
The definitive conclusion? There isn’t one, as far as I’m concerned. I’m still waiting to hear back from Brian. And Troy has promised to run outside, with a camera, in his skivvies if necessary and track that sucker down if it starts hollering again so we can get to the bottom of this once and for all. :)
