I will not discount the possibility that it could have been some type of firework that is designed to sound like gun fire, but in my experience the typical pack of black cat fire crackers when set off has a more random cadence, one that often has at least one or two nearly simultaneous pops. This instead had the pitch and tone of a mid caliber handgun without any pronounced rifle transonic crack, something like .380, 9mm, etc. The rate of fire was also not so consistant to be purely mechanical like an engine backfiring, instead it had the sound of somewhat rapid semi-aimed shots and as I said before this was VERY CLOSE, not some muffled sound in the distance, no so close that it sounded like someone outside my bedroom window, but perhaps dozens of feet away, close enough that stray bullets were a real concern.
As to the Deer, etc, possibilty, sure there are idiots out there that would "unload" at a deer in the middle of town (think a block or two off of downtown in a small town on a major federal highway) at 2:45 am, but again this did no have that feel, this was somewhere betwee 10-15 shots over the course of a few seconds, consistant rapid fire with no real break, it just had a panic fire feel, not a aimed fire, or even series of a few misses while shooting at a varmant, instead it was more of that shoot until your out of bullets feel...
