Hearing a Blank Gunshot to Repel a Gang of Japanese Monkeys

When I started trekking in the mountain forest, I heard a few rounds of blank gunshots echoing from below at irregular intervals. (I could manage to look back and record only a single shot in this footage.) It sounded like somebody was firing blanks at Japanese monkeys (aka snow monkey; Macaca fuscata fuscata, family Cercopithecidae) to repel them from their crop fields or apple orchard at the foot of a mountain. There has been an endless conflict between wildlife animals and local farmers over the yummy and valuable crops. Captured in the cloudy late-morning (around 10:50 AM) of mid-July 2024 in Japan. For a full story (text in Japanese); https://sigma-nature-vlog.blogspot.com/2026/01/blog-post_19.html