Ask anyone who's spent real time in the deep woods at night and they'll tell you: you hear Bigfoot long before you'd ever see one. If the creature is out there, sound may be the best evidence we'll get. Whoops roll across ridgelines, a single wood knock cracks out of a dark hollow, and a long moaning howl makes the dogs go quiet.
But the forest is loud at night, and plenty of ordinary animals sound downright unearthly. If we want our sound reports taken seriously, we have to be the hardest graders of our own recordings. That isn't doubting the Sasquatch. It's respecting it.
This guide walks through the sounds people most often attribute to Bigfoot, the famous recordings behind each one, and the everyday animals you need to rule out first. You can listen to the recordings themselves (as links to the owners' official uploads) on our Bigfoot sounds page.
Why sound matters to believers
Sightings last seconds. Sounds can be recorded, timed, looped, filtered and compared on a spectrogram. A spectrogram is a picture of a sound, with pitch on one axis and time on the other. Serious groups like the BFRO and the North American Wood Ape Conservancy (NAWAC) run autonomous recorders for hours on end, and NAWAC's public catalog of recorded audio from its Ouachita Mountain study area in Oklahoma is one of the most detailed collections anywhere.
That's the upside. The downside, as skeptics like Brian Dunning of Skeptoid point out, is that the clearer a recording gets, the easier it usually is to match to a known animal. So start with the animal before you get to the ape.
The "big five" Bigfoot sound types
1. Wood knocks
What people report: A sharp, hollow crack, like a baseball bat on a tree trunk, often heard as a single knock or a set of two or three. Researchers commonly report knocks that seem to answer their own.
The famous examples: NAWAC has published several knocks, including a loud "power knock" logged by an autonomous recorder at 3:47 a.m. on June 14, 2019, and a July 2022 knock that answered one of its own team's knocks. In Ohio County, Kentucky, investigators from Kentucky Bigfoot report that faint single knocks answered their tree knocks on a 16-degree night in December 2013.
Rule out first:
- Woodpeckers. Their drumming is fast and rhythmic and almost always happens in daylight. A single knock after midnight isn't a woodpecker.
- Falling limbs and cracking trees. Cold snaps, wind and snow load make wood pop and snap.
- People. Hunters, campers and other researchers knock too. If you're in a popular "squatchy" spot, assume other knockers are out there.
- Echoes. In a tight valley your own knock can come back to you a beat later.
Believer's test: A knock that answers yours from a different direction, at a distance no echo could explain, in a place with no other people, is worth logging. Write down the time to the second.
2. Whoops
What people report: Loud, repeated, rising whoop calls that carry for long distances, sometimes in answer to human whoops.
The famous examples: NAWAC's "Hooch bang and whoop" from June 19, 2018 is a standout. A rock slammed the metal roof of a storage shed and a loud, gibbon-like whoop followed seconds later, picked up by a recorder about 250 meters away. Kentucky Bigfoot recorded three reply whoops in Trimble County in December 2017.
Rule out first:
- Barred owls. The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service describes the classic "Who cooks for you? Who cooks for you-all?" call, plus "weird howls, yelps and raucous squalls," and notes some people say they sound like monkeys. Pairs duet most in late winter courtship but call year-round.
- Common loons. The FWS lists four loon calls: the wail, the tremolo, the yodel and the hoot. Skeptoid plays a famous alleged Bigfoot whoop right next to a loon, and the match is uncomfortably close. If you're near a northern lake, think loon first.
- People whooping back at you.
3. Howls and moans
What people report: Long, low, mournful howls that rise and fall, often in sets of two or three.
The famous examples: The Ohio Howl, recorded by BFRO founder Matt Moneymaker in late autumn 1994 in Columbiana County, Ohio, near the Ohio River. BFRO describes three long, moaning howls from a distant, unidentified animal, with a neighbor's dog barking in the foreground. It became the yardstick for the "moan howl" family, along with the Mississippi Howl (John Callender, 2004) and the Florida Howl (Dan McGee on a January 2006 BFRO expedition in Lake County). See our Ohio sightings guide for more on that region.
Rule out first:
- Coyotes. The NPS Sound Gallery has a good reference recording. Coyote choruses are yippy and fast, but a lone coyote can hold a long, wavering note. BFRO's own media list says the 1973 Puyallup and 1978 Snohomish recordings, long famous as Bigfoot screams, are coyotes. When a pro-Bigfoot organization says that, listen.
- Wolves. In wolf country, a single long howl is likely a wolf. Skeptoid compares the Ohio Howl to a pair of timber wolves.
- Dogs. Hounds and loose farm dogs howl at sirens and at each other.
- Great horned owls at a distance can turn into a low, moaning hoot.
Believer's test: Pitch matters. A huge animal with a long vocal tract should produce a low fundamental frequency. A howl that sits up high is more likely a canine.
4. Screams
What people report: A blood-curdling scream, "like a woman being attacked," or a bell-like repeated cry. Alicia Bateman's vocalization paper on the BFRO site sorts screams into types such as the "Long Call," the "Flat Shriek" and the "Roaring Scream." Even Bateman warns that foxes, porcupines, deer, cougars and owls can produce similar calls.
Rule out first:
- Red foxes. The Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation says that during breeding season (December to April, peaking in January and February) red foxes produce a high-pitched scream "described as sounding like a woman screaming."
- Gray foxes. They bark and yap, and the Missouri Department of Conservation has a gray fox bark on its field guide page worth memorizing.
- Bobcats. Indiana DNR notes bobcat vocalizations are rarely heard, but the yowls and screams they do make in breeding season are startling.
- Mountain lions. The Missouri Department of Conservation says mountain lions "rarely make any noises," but the "caterwaul" heard in winter breeding season sounds like loud screaming. It adds that more often than not, a scream in the woods is a bobcat or fox.
- Elk. A bull elk's bugle is a rising, whistling squeal that ends in grunts. NPS Yellowstone says the rut runs from early September to mid-October. A September "scream" in elk country should be checked against the NPS elk bugle recording first.
The model case: In January 2013, screams recorded near Umatilla, Oregon made national news. A professional biologist writing on Cliff Barackman's site ran them through bioacoustic software and found a fundamental frequency near 1 kHz. That matched foxes and was far too high for wolves, coyotes or a giant primate. The conclusion was that it was very likely foxes. That's what responsible Bigfoot research looks like.
5. Chatter, mimicry and "faux speech"
What people report: Fast, syllable-like jabbering, or sounds that seem to imitate human speech or other animals.
The famous examples: The Sierra Sounds, roughly 90 minutes of audio recorded in the 1970s by Alan Berry and Ron Morehead at a remote camp in California's High Sierra. They include the famous "samurai chatter." Former Navy cryptologic linguist R. Scott Nelson has studied the tapes since 2008 and argues they contain language-like units, which he transcribes in his own "Sasquatch Phonetic Alphabet." NAWAC has also published a 2011 clip of growls ending in what it calls "faux speech."
The other side: Linguist Karen Stollznow, writing in Scientific American in 2013, argued that translation work doesn't qualify someone to describe an undocumented language and judged a hoax likely. Skeptoid notes the chatter sounds nothing like other alleged Bigfoot audio and that it has been imitated by people. Believers should weigh both. The provenance of the Sierra tapes rests on two men's account of a secret location.
Rule out first: Distant human voices, radios, and auditory pareidolia, which is the brain's habit of hearing words in noise. Mockingbirds, jays and ravens are also gifted mimics.
Other sounds that fool people
- Tree breaks and limb snaps. Elk, moose, bears and deer crashing through brush; beavers felling trees; deadfall in wind.
- Huffs and grunts. NAWAC describes exertion huffs before rocks hit its cabin. Remember that the Minnesota DNR says black bears huff, snort and jaw-pop when they're nervous, and the NPS bear sounds page has a recording of a nervous grizzly you can compare.
- Deer snorts. A startled whitetail's "blow" is loud enough to make you jump.
- Rock clacks. NAWAC reports clack-for-clack exchanges with something unseen. Hooves on stone and settling rock can click too.
- Whistles. NAWAC's August 2017 camp whistles "vaguely resemble" an eastern screech owl, the group says, though birding software and ornithologists didn't flag them as one. Always check the small owls.
- Escaped or captive exotics. In Florida's Green Swamp, a recording posted as a skunk ape drew a comment from someone who works with primates saying it sounded like a howler monkey. Commenters also pointed to exotic-animal facilities in the area. See our skunk ape guide for more on Florida.
A quick ID checklist for your next night out
- Record, don't just remember. Any phone voice memo beats memory. Better: a handheld recorder with a windscreen. Our gear checklist has budget picks.
- Stay still and quiet. Kentucky investigators admit they talked over a promising howl in 2013. Freeze, let the recorder run and say nothing.
- Log the context. Date, exact time, temperature, wind, moon, and your best estimate of direction and distance. Note the season, because fox, bobcat and lion breeding runs in winter and the elk rut in fall.
- Compare against known calls. Use the NPS Sound Gallery, your state wildlife agency's field guide and a bird ID app before you decide.
- Look at the spectrogram. A free audio editor can show you pitch. Very low, powerful vocalizations are the interesting ones.
- Never over-filter. Heavy noise reduction and amplification can invent "features." Keep the raw file and share it alongside any cleaned version.
- Report it properly. Our guide on how to report a Bigfoot sighting covers which research organizations take audio reports.
So does Bigfoot make sounds we can prove?
Not yet, honestly. No recording has been confirmed by independent scientists as an unknown primate, and even the BFRO has reclassified two of its most famous "screams" as coyotes. Critics such as paleontologist Darren Naish, quoted on Skeptoid, argue that alleged Bigfoot sounds are far too varied to come from one species.
Believers have an answer too. A large, intelligent, social animal could have a wide repertoire, and some recordings, like NAWAC's roars and rock-strike whoops and the classic Ohio Howl, still have no agreed explanation. NAWAC reports that when it played its 2017 "X-Roar" for a mountain lion biologist at UCLA, the biologist said it didn't sound like a mountain lion to him.
That's the space where real research happens: honest about the owls, the foxes and the elk, and still listening. For the bigger picture, read Is Bigfoot Real? What Science Says. Then head to our Bigfoot sounds library, put on headphones and decide for yourself. If you're ever in southeast Oklahoma on a quiet night, keep the recorder running.
