Knocking in Stevens County, Washington

My husband and I live in the back woods of Clayton, Washington. We were driving around our property which is the side of a large heavily wooded hill/mountain. We were trying to find a place to build our cabin. We drove to the top stopping about halfway to look over the edge of what we call the pixie stix. A bunch of trees that had been fallen by previous owners stacked on the side of the hill like pixie stix. We noticed something had been moving logs and stumps around. Probably a bear though we saw one stump out of place for a bear. It had been pulled straight up out of the ground tap root and all still intact. No sign of the rocking motion that a bear does to remove roots. No claw marks. So we looked around for bear tracks and really didn't find much. We went back to the truck and continued to the top of the hill removing trees and branches with the chainsaw to get through. When we got there we removed some more branches and scoped the area for our cabin all the while there was something staying just out of visual contact but walking around behind us on the neighbor lot. We left when we were done. We went back down the hill and started up another road that my husband had built with our dozer a few months earlier, as we started up the road which is not that long, I was startled when I was looking at a tree that I didn't remember was there and it turned and quickly moved out of sight to the left. I yelled at my husband asking him what that was? he said "what?" I asked him if he saw it, he said no. The branch about 8-9 ft above the ground was still moving rapidly from where the head, I assume it was the head, hit it (I saw that happen). He stopped next to where it was and we could not see anything. We continued up farther on the road and got out and I was talking to him and he said to hush. He had heard something about a minute or two later just as he literally started to say "ok I heard a "woop" just once. Again he was talking so I did not hear it. He wasn't believing that I saw something. So we looked around this area for another possible cabin site. After about 20 - 25 minutes we went back down to the bottom of the hill (home). That night we started hearing things. This time hubby heard it too. Later that evening when we went to bed and lights were out there was banging on the side of our cabin and then a short time later things were hitting our cabin. Not rocks really don't have any around so it had to be sticks. My husband is a believer now. He was scared. I'm nervous to go outside when I'm here by myself. The next day I did go out and look for footprints around our cabin and found a huge print behind our cabin but it was an older print. It looked like a huge flat footed huge toed person. I showed my husband and he started looking in the area and found another it looked about the same age. So my husband has been leaving food out for it but we don't know what is taking the food. We think maybe due to the fires here in Washington they are on the move but we also have been hearing strange howl/growl sounds that are very loud for months. Our cat would always be in the same area as the sounds as if it was talking to our cat. Yesterday something went after my chickens and so there was a lot of commotion and then I kept hearing branches breaking and woop woop sounds. What do we do?