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Recover the dozer not the man. I was there and helped were I could.Kawi

I stumbled on to an old well shaft on Corps of Engineer lands while hunting one time, nearly fell in it. I found an old pop can and placed it near the edge of the hole hoping it would direct someones vision down there to see the hole. When I got back to the truck the game warden checked my license (and was quite a jerk about it). I told him about the well shaft and he didn't seem to care one about it at all and didn't want to know where it was at. The next day I phoned the conservation agent in the adjoining county to tell him about the well and the poor treatment I had gotten from the agent. He was very appreciative to get the info about the dangerous well shaft and appologized for the rudeness of the other agent. Aparently that was a common complaint. He had spoken to the other agent the evening before and he had made no mention of the well. Jerk.

I and my family stumbled upon a hole up on a limestone ridge. This hole was just about ten feet off to the side of the natural trail and the ground was mossy right up to the edge of the 2 1/2 foot diameter hole. My son dropped a rock down and it took a LONG (seemed long. It was probably a couple of seconds)time before it hit the first time and it hit 3 or four more before it quit. It occurred to us that the ground we were standing on could very well be undercut and we backed away nervously. I told my son, if I ever had to get rid of a body, I knew where I would take it. If a man fell into a hole like that, he should pray that the fall kills him. GD

We have a fairly large lake here that drains through a natural sinkhole about every 10 years or so it seems. It will drain the lake almost completly dry. The last time this happened I thought I'd take a ride over and check it out just like all the other rubberneckers. Well when I got out there to it people where all standing around it ooooing and awwwing and throwing anything and everything in it. All the while water is still draining into this thing. Maybe 20 feet across at the most. When I did finally get close to it I knew right away I would not be as close as the other numbnuts around it! No way to see the bottom and god only knows how deep. If one fell into that no way in heck would you be found let alone recovered.

I am clearing for more pasture on a piece of the ranch that was logged of old growth redwood back in the hand logging days.

Yesterday I drove the D-6 into holes three times, Once I drove off a log that was over 5 feet high, the next was a log that just turned to rot and dust under the weight of the CAT as I was going down hill, and the last was just a cat sized depression on the hill side.

I took a break from working it today to regain my nerve.

Once I went waist deep into an old gray water tank that had been abandoned, and we lost a calf a few years ago when it went into another one.

A high school buddy and his son were lost here when they drove into a mines vertical ventilation shaft.

There are lots of hazards in the world that is for certain.

While hunting in the Tennessee mountains, I ran across some sort of deep hole/cave-in that caught me off guard. It had been raining for days and I'd gotten used to the sod giving way under my feet when walking up the ridges. The footing looked okay, but in many places it was mush and mud under the top layers which were loose. One narrow finger ridge I crossed had what looked like a clump of sod and rocks which had slid and given way to a depression. From the side at the same elevation it didn't look too bad, so I made an attempt to cross over the ridge above this depression to reach a draw on the other side. I crossed over about ten yards or so above when the ground gave way and I slid with the mud and sod the entire ten yards until I caught myself right at the edge of the depression below. Well it wasn't a depression, it was a good size cave-in that was easily ten to fifteen feet deep with fast moving water at the bottom which washed underground. Not sure how deep the water was, but it looked like it would have taken me with it underground. Even if it didn't, not sure how I would have gotten out.

After that, I've been far more cautious in Tennessee.

Best

Beaver holes on the edges of swamps in Washington will about snap your leg right off.

Have encountered lots of deep 6-8 inch holes around Central PA. From what I have been told they were test holes for natural gas wells. Not big enough to fall in, but big enough to drop something valuable in.

I've absolutely found some very deep dangerous ones.
It only took one that was 8" deep to cost me thousands in knee surgery.

Forgot about those. Seen a guy break his leg on a way to a salmon spot near Lake Ontario in New York state.

some of those beaver holes can really cost a guy. best proceed with protection. lol

Wife and I were walking the kids in the mountains one day. We hear a scream from our youngest, turn around and she is gone. We found her at the bottom of a 3-foot deep hole so surrounded and covered by the tall grass we were walking through that none of us had seen it. Never did figure out exactly what caused it but thank God it wasn't deeper.

I once fell through a hole in the ice that appeared out of nowwhere when I was walking on it, no idea how deep the hole was. Just glad I caught the rim with my shotgun ;-) before going all the way under..

California's Mojave Desert and Death Valley desert are full of old, long abandoned vertical mining shafts and holes. Although people are warned to be watchful and careful, every year, a person or two is killed by falling in one.

L.W.

There was an old well/cistern out in the timber/hog lot on Dad's place. I ran all over that area playing when I was a kid, but I knew about it and stayed away from it.
We never lost any hogs in it, and they eventually wore the area around it down and it filled-in. I CAN remember the old cover that was over it, but it was wood and rotted away quite a while before that.

Missouri has a LOT of old home sites that are potential hazards for old wells, etc. Most are now long gone, but the potential for problems is still there.

There was a deer camp close to my dads house that had an
old well behind it and had a large piece of sheet metal
over it. He showed it to me when I was a kid and told me
to always be careful when I was in that area. The camp
was sold and the first thing the new owner did was have it
filled in.

We fall into muskrat borrows alot, duck hunting on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. Walking on solid ground one minute, balls deep the next. No warning they just let go. Sink holes show up in Central Pa from time to time from old mine shafts. Dangerous stuff

I stepped in a "stump hole" (where the root has rotted and left a hole usually covered by leaves, etc.) many years ago walking out of the woods, with a flashlight by the way, and almost knocked a tooth out when the knee of the leg that didn't go down the hole hit me in the chin. Saw stars***** but didn't break anything.

Run into a few here in S.O. as well.

Desolation unit in eastern Oregon is rife with old mining shafts and some of them are scarey deep!

I hunted an area in the Yucatan where the asteroid that supposedly killed the dinosaurs hit. Limestone and little top soil remaining after the asteroid. Where the jungle had been cleared, the country looked as flat as could be, but wasn't. 4-10 feet deep holes/caves all over and covered by brush. One guy on the trip fell in and broke his arm, which is not the best thing to do in Mexico.