Screaming or howling in Tuolumne County, California

Okay, I just spent about ten or fifteen minutes listening to the various sounds and recordings that you have to try to help me identify what we heard. I cannot say that any of the recordings sounded just like what we heard, however it sounded similar to many of them. My family (husband and two kids) went up to Big Prather Meadows, straight up from Dorrington, California. My husband's grandpa has a small cabin in the meadow, and we go there when we can, generally in the summer. I made the mistake of reading a bunch of your stuff prior to the trip, and I admit that I was on "high alert" that first night. However, around 2:30 or so in the morning of Friday, July 25th, 2008 (just three days ago), I heard some kind of vocalization that was not familiar to me. I was not happy to hear this, honestly. I suppose I ought to be since I have held an avid interest in this subject for years, but there is a whacking big difference between sitting safely in your home reading about this stuff on the net, and listening to something make funky noises in the dark woods of a forest. As my best friend said, "I used to really like the cabin..." I got out of the tent to wake up my husband, who was sleeping on the ground by the unused fire pit. We both sat and listened to the sounds for about an hour and a half, or so. To the best of my ability, this is what we heard: Loud, clear, not-shrill sounding (to me, the Puyallup calls sound somewhat metallic and shrill), medium-range, and smooth sounds. They began lower in pitch and would rise smoothly to end at a higher pitch, but not like the whoops that you have recorded. These didn't have that "lilt" at the end. It was just a smooth ascent from low range up to a higher range. There was another call that sounded like what a contraction looks like. (Forgive me, I'm not sure how to describe it but it made me think of what my contractions looked like on paper when birthing my kids), beginning low, smoothly rising up to a higher level, and then smoothly descending down again. There was also a kind of a hiccup sort of sound that would directly follow some of the calls, but I was literally shaking and too freaked out about it to really pay attention to what kind of call it followed: the upswing, or the contraction call. Anyhow, as I said, this went on for over an hour with the two of us listening. Sometimes it would sound like it was moving near to us. Other times it sounded further away. I am not sure if there were two animals, thus accounting for the near/far sounds, or one. If it was two animals, they sounded identical to me. After this happened, we both tried to explain how big/far the sounds were to us. We both agree that it sounded somewhat distant, but find it hard to tell since sound might carry really well in a dead-silent forest. We agree that it sounded to be between a half a mile and a mile away. We also agree that it was a large sound. Whatever made it sounded effortless on its part, but was a very large sound. We believe that it is a sound of "size" similar to, say a very loud moo of a cow across a field. I'm digging here because I've never had any experience like it so I don't have much I can truly compare it to. I grew up in Washington State, west side. I'm a Biology minor with a Life Science teaching credential, so I am familiar, at least, with what wildlife looks like and sounds like in videos, if not in person. But most of my personal encounters with wildlife have been animals of the smaller variety: coyote yips and howls things like that. I've only heard larger animals on wildlife programs and I am holding out the hope that one of your specialists will call me back and explain that what we heard was just a "such and such" and often is confused with a Big Foot call. I'd be able to enjoy the cabin a lot more if you could do so. But, I know you won't, because this was a very strange sound, and even my mathematician-husband, who is grounded in science and wasn't afraid like I was, stated that it sure was loud, and that it wasn't like anything he'd ever heard before. It sounded like an animal, but it also sounded enough like a person to think it could have been a joke, but not exactly. I do not think I could replicate the sound.