Found?

[bigozzie]

wish I had seen this thread 30 years ago, i would have put more importance on the buffalo skull I found.
Hunting on some BLM land I was climbing a steep creek bank and stepped on an odd looking bone sticking out of the silty soil.
Told my dad about it and we went back and dug around, pulling out a buffalo skull, packed it to the top of the bank and left it lay there.

hmmm
young and dumb I guess.
oz

 

[406LIFE]

I've had a few interesting finds:
1. In TN while out squirrel hunting I found an abandoned cemetery near an old homestead sight. I could make out some of the wooden boards for names and years. most seemed to be children. The gravesites were very much sunken in and overgrown. I could never find any info out on the homesite.

2. I was in nowhere, MT and came up on the is old fort façade looking fence and there was a sign on the front that said no law enforcement, fbi, cia, etc and listed like 20 agencies were allowed to "trespass". Only the fire department was allowed with written permission. This was when I was a kid and it spooked my dad who I've never seen scared of anything.

 

[SixPoint]

Strangest find to date for me would be an old .22 pistol I stumbled into while looking for sheds a few years back. It was loaded and quite rusty. I left it on the mountain thinking it might be bad mojo if it was involved in a crime etc.

 

[Jim/Wa]

Found a 58 cal minie ball (circa 1860's) embedded in some exposed dirt on Potts Mtn in SW VA while turkey hunting some years back. I've always wondered if it was related to this: http://ourvalley.org/gen-hunters-occupation-of-new-castle-county-feels-wars-harshness/

I also found part of an old pot-bellied stove wrapped around a tree near Tionesta, PA about a mile from where a series of tornadoes annihilated a large valley including dozens of cabins in 1985. The stove was wedged into a fork in the trunk about 12' off the ground.

 

[2ski]

Strangest find to date for me would be an old .22 pistol I stumbled into while looking for sheds a few years back. It was loaded and quite rusty. I left it on the mountain thinking it might be bad mojo if it was involved in a crime etc.

My dad lost a .22 revolver around Martinsdale MT while we were antelope hunting. His holster was a little too lose and we assumed he lost it jumping to cross a creek. We went back and looked. Never found it. So somewhere on a ranch on north of the highway is a .22 that was just lost.

 

[bowhuntmontana]

About 15 years ago I was way back in the Beartooth Absaroka Wilderness. We were several miles off any trail, above treeline, and making our way to some remote lakes. While crossing a boulder field next to a lake, we look down and there is a purple stuffed teddy bear. It was sun bleached on the one side. One of the group strapped it onto his pack and it became the camp mascot for the rest of the trip. I swear, that thing had to have fallen out of the sky.

 

[MJE2083]

While archery hunting in PA some years back I found a suitable tree for my climber and climbed up about 15 feet. After some time I looked above me and about 4 feet above my head screwed into the tree was an old ez hanger bow hanger. While it was certainly no ancient artifact, I couldn't help but chuckle to myself that I was not the first person to climb and hunt from this very tree.

 

[fishing4sanity]

Lots of interesting things have been found and seen by you guys, cool thread to read through. I grew up near Adrian, Oregon and while quail hunting a wild blackberry thicket I found an old metal Pepsi 6-pack carrier. I thought it was a pretty good find so I've hung onto it all these years. If I remember correctly a couple of these bottles were from the same area, the others are some I found hunting and fishing along the Owyhee River and old farmsteads in that area. I always pick up garbage while I'm out fishing/hunting. When I pick up old cans that have the pull-tab tops right along main trails and popular fishing holes, it makes me wonder how many people have just walked by and left it over the decades?

 

[commandoNate]

My dad once found a pair of Swaro 10x42's on an elk hunt. We were camped in a place that had obviously been camped in before but he was out gathering firewood when he found them. My hunting buddy's response was 'why don't you go back over there and look around some more, there might be a winchester in there too!' We all got a good laugh outta that one.

 

[idnative1948]

Lots of interesting things have been found and seen by you guys, cool thread to read through. I grew up near Adrian, Oregon and while quail hunting a wild blackberry thicket I found an old metal Pepsi 6-pack carrier. I thought it was a pretty good find so I've hung onto it all these years. If I remember correctly a couple of these bottles were from the same area, the others are some I found hunting and fishing along the Owyhee River and old farmsteads in that area. I always pick up garbage while I'm out fishing/hunting. When I pick up old cans that have the pull-tab tops right along main trails and popular fishing holes, it makes me wonder how many people have just walked by and left it over the decades?
View attachment 65772

F4S- Could I send this pic to my sis who works at what used to be Nagel Beverage, but is now Pepsico?

 

[fishing4sanity]

F4S- Could I send this pic to my sis who works at what used to be Nagel Beverage, but is now Pepsico?

Sorry I didn't see your question any sooner, but yes, you can send her the pic.

 

[Northwoods Labs]

Very interesting topic with lots of great stories. I guess the only really cool thing I found was in northeastern Wisconsin when we were scouting around trying to find a brook trout stream. We found an old foundation with a tall stone chimney. We found out later the spot is supposed to be haunted. A family lived there and had a bed and breakfast and were going to start a cranberry farm on the stream long ago. One day they just disappeared. Supposedly folks say they hear children laughing down by the stream. When I was there I didn't notice anything.

My grandpa once found a message in an old time bottle in a river near his hunting cabin. He has it set out on a cabinet as a decoration. He hasn't attempted to open the bottle and read the message and doesn't plan to

 

[grandejuan]

Was deer hunting along the musselshell several years ago and came upon a "soddy". It had a fallen down wood front and mostly missing door. There was a lot of broken blue on white China plates etc., old cups and saucers. I felt like I was violating someone's home. Kind of weird!!! GJ

 

[bigozzie]

somebody's bear bait

 

[tim629]

while bear hunting in PA during high school I found some old rail road spikes at the base of a tree, still have them marked on my GPS been on the mountain a dozen times since but never ventured back to grab one, was a long time since there would have been rails going up that mountain for what I would assume was iron ore

here in NY while horseback riding there is one trail that goes right beside an area that a microburst pretty much leveled, a bowl of trees that were all blown over with everything else around looking completely normal

 

[Coyote44]

Someone mentioned another forum that had this same kind of list, and I've seen it too. It's on
www.2coolfishing.com
At least one of them is, it's about 70 pages last time I checked. There are some really cool finds on there, just thought I would give you guys a heads up. It's in the hunting section in the sticky.
Op, if I'm not allowed to post this link, please remove. Sorry for my ignorance, this is obviously my first post! One last thing, it's a website based out of southeast Texas, so most of the stories are from around that area.

 

[Hannibal]

Nothing found but how about "dancing antelope"? A number of years ago I was hunting antelope in Idaho Unit 50 along Antelope Cr. road with a friend from Pocatello, Idaho. We spotted a small herd on a hillside. We climbed the hillside and got close enough for a shot at several bucks. When we fired , almost certainly in unison, one buck stood up on his hind legs and began "walking around" as he shook his head from side to side. He dropped to the ground and a few seconds later repeated his actions several times before running off. Several minutes later I was able to take another shot this time succeeding in putting him down with my .300 Weatherby after "missing" with my initial shot minutes earlier. My hunting partner and I both were stunned by seeing him walk upright while he shook his head never having seen anything like it before or since for that matter. After field dressing and dragging the buck to my Ford Bronco we arrived back in Pocatello where we ran into Leslie Mitchell of Mitchell Construction Company who was impressed with my buck and offered to have the head mounted if I would allow him to display it in the lobby of his company headquarters in Pocatello. I agreed to Mr Mitchell's offer and it was then that we discovered the antelope buck had apparently been shot by me or my hunting partner in one of his antlers. The bullet did not penetrate the antler but made a deep indentation. Though I still can't explain why my buck decided to walk upright it was rather obvious why he shook his head in the manner in which he did. Mr. Mitchell unfortunately passed away a number of years ago and as far as I know my buck is still on display at the company headquarters or a family member is in possession of it.

 

[Coop]

Bored at work and stumbled upon this thread...some pretty interesting finds! I haven't found anything too special other than a memorial in the breaks several miles from any roads or anything. My dad has some pretty interesting stories from hunting around MT for 30+ years. Several buffalo skulls and spearheads, and a perfectly spherical rock on top of the Gravellies...always thought that was kinda cool. I think my favorite story of his though, was from a September bow hunt in the Gravellies. Him and his buddy were quite a ways from anywhere when they came across a herd of domestic sheep that were scattered every which way. They kept walking and found one of those Peruvian sheep herders that spends summers up there, and he wouldn't leave his wagon. He didn't know hardly any English, but he just kept saying "Big Kitty, Big Kitty." I always got a kick out of that story.

 

[RobG]

I came across this on opening day. From now on I think I will write cryptic messages on all the dead sh!t I find.

 

[archer wapiti]

A few years ago I was way spring bear hunting back in the Skyland Rd. country up by Marias Pass. I had put a stalk on a bear way up high in a slide almost to the peak. Of course when I got up there the bear was gone. It was really steep, so I worked my way over onto a little finger ridge with some stunted trees so I had something to grab ahold of. As I was crawling over a log I looked down at the ground under the log and noticed something that looked like a curved, rusted piece of metal. I reached down and pulled on it and it was a good sized bear trap that was buried in the dirt under the log! It was sprung and had a little hair stuck in the jaws. It was pretty damned heavy, but I packed it down anyway. Way down lower but close to the spot is an Outfitter's camp that has been there for a long time. I could only guess that maybe a long time ago somebody was having bear troubles and set that trap, but didn't have it chained down good, and the bear took off with the trap and lost it up on top of that mountain. I don't know but it's cool.

I found an S. Newhouse No. 6 trap in the Pecos Wilderness a few years back. Just lucked into it several hundred yards off trail, in the depression formed by the root ball of a well-decayed Douglas-fir blowdown. I'm not sure if the tree grew up over it and then fell and exposed it, or if the trap was put there just after the tree fell. It was well-rusted, covered in dirt and moss. The last grizzly was killed in the Pecos in the early -mid 1920's. Of course it could have been used for black bears or lions later, but I suppose it had to have been from about that era.
It prompted some research on the Google and I learned the connection with the Oneida community, Victor traps, and Oneida Silverware. http://www.trapperpredatorcaller.co...-commune-to-biggest-trap-company-in-the-world
Never know what you'll find out there.