Knocking in Flathead County, Montana

I am not sure that I had sighting. The reason I am writing this is because I listened to the "Whoops and Knocks" recording from CA, and it reminded me of what I heard while I was hunting on Tuesday afternoon. I was hunting with friends in the Swan Valley of MT. I do not know the exact location, because we were in the backwoods, and traveling on back roads off of Highway 83. We were on the east side of the highway north of Condon and I beleive south of town Swan. My Partner and I split up (our other partner was in his truck up the road). He was to my left 150 yards and in front of me by 200 yards. I saw something brown in the corner of my eye pass behind a tree to my right, hoping it was a deer or elk, I started to head in that direction. My partner contined heading toward and through a ravine. I would walk, and then stop for about 10-20 seconds looking around. I kept hearing a knocking sound. I thought it was a very close woodpecker, but could never see one.Plus it was really loud. After I decided that I must of lost the deer or elk, I decided to head down into the ravine my friend has been went through about 5-10 minute before me. The knocking sound became loud and I was sure that it just was very loud wood pecker, or deer ruttings(The rut is not for a couple of more weeks). The sound always came from the right of me. After hearing knocks on the recording in the Seirra Mountains, I am about 98% sure that is what I heard. Wood or something hitting wood, which also explains the volume and pacing of the knocking. I walked down into a ravine and it got a littel louder. Then all of sudden the knocking just stopped. I decided to go find my partner and walked out the ravine to the other side. I could not find him, so I went back through the ravine, and heard more knocking.I walked back somwhere between 1/2 to mile to our drop off point on the road (I came out about 100 ft to right of the spot), and thought I heard and elk call (which none of my partners heard) but sounds very much like the whoop call after the 1/2 point of the recording. The two men I was hunting with are expereinced hunters and in the woods. It was my second time hunting. I told them about what I thought was the elk call, and neither of them heard it. When I heard it I was probably atleast 1/2 mile from them. I did not mention the knocking, because I though it was bird, and no big deal. I have hiked/backpacked in Tenn,CT,NC,AZ, The Cascades in WA, Grand Coulee Dam Area of WA, and enjoy being in the woods. This is my first time that anything like this has happened. I will leave the verdict up to you, You are the experts not me. If this was a sighting then great I am glad that I could help. If not then that is fine too