Calif. Del Norte County Jed Smith Park witnessed in Del Norte County, California

Open Map

I am the Manager of the Visitor Center at Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park. During the winter of 2001-2002, my family and I were the camp hosts at the park, and lived in the park full time. One evening in mid-December 2001, I and my two children, ages 11 and 10, were in our travel trailer reading when we heard the a sound that made us cower. It was something between a human "cat-call" and a cow mooing, a kind of "Ah-oooo" that just echoed through the woods. I have served as a docent naturalist for the California State Park System. I have hiked the woods of California all of my life and I have never heard anything like this before. I have heard bear, mountain lion and elk, and this was nothing like those. What impressed us most was how loud it was. We have heard groups of humans in the campground hooping and hollaring and their noise level was not even close to this. We were inside of a travel trailer that had the windows closed up and the noise was clear and strong. We estimated tha...