Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire What is things have you discovered while hunting?

Found a place that was an old homestead. Not much there, but being the desert, what was there was still preserved.

Some Indian painted pottery, a few .41 rimfire Derringer rounds. Unfired.





Wish the Derringer was around too... But alas, not to be.

A 67 corvette a couple miles out in the woods.

That's my thinking. So. Idaho is highly volcanic but most of them were lava flows, not the explosive kind. There have been some boomers, though. I don't know what it weighs but if that's what it is, I sure wouldn't have wanted to be around when it blew. Geologists figure that the hot spot under Yellowstone used to be under so. Idaho. It stayed in place as the north American plate moved west. Stick around long enough and it should eventually be under So. Dakota or Nebraska.

Shooting prairie dogs in South Dakota one year, came across a piece of plywood laying out in the middle of a nowhere dog town.

Flipped it over, and it was the city limit sign, Valentine, Nebraska, population 2830.

In the Piedra Primitive area of the San Juans I found the rusted remains of an entire box spring mattress. I know the area hasn't been closed to vehicles all that long, but I couldn't see how a vehicle could have gotten to that spot, or even close. Found some pottery shards and arrowheads over the years as well.

A friend of my fathers used to elk hunt in Arizona. They had horses and found an area they liked mostly for the ambiance because there were lots of indian ruins and interesting things to see nearby. This place they went (he never told me where) was pretty far back on horseback and though they never got a lot of elk, they never saw anyone else hunting there and they enjoyed the solitude of it. One year on their way in, they rounded a corner in the trail and met two other guys on horseback who were leading a third horse with a body bag tied across the saddle. After an uncomfortable few moments of stunned silence, the guys with the body bag told them to turn around and go back where they came from and never come back and never talk about what they saw there. That was their last trip.

Good thread, btw.

The local Mennonites do that here. I found out one was setting them out and turned him in the game warden. They watched him for months, but couldn't get any dirt on him. Turns out he was checking it at night. Not an ethical way, but I guess if you are like the Mennonites are, then the laws don't apply.

I have made a rather remarkable geological discovery on the land that I hunt. Over the years, the valleys that I must climb out of have gotten steeper and steeper.

reading this thread makes me want to pick the most remote trails I can find and go hike them

One thing you realize when you’re out and about in the woods, is that rural areas used to have a lot more people on them than they do now. There is hardly an acre in my part of the world that wasn’t planted in cotton and corn at some point. On one of our places within about 80 acres, there are five old wells from house places that were there in the past. Though they probably all disappeared sometime between 1890 and 1930.

In the middle of the bush in Zimbabwe, whilst hunting with John Sharp. He tracked down the descendants in England. Fascinating

arrow head, weather balloon, a good Mitchell 300 spinning reel that I used for years and of course bear [bleep]
Young Bill

"reading this thread makes me want to pick the most remote trails I can find and go hike them:

If you limit your search to trails, don't hold your breath until you find something. Other path walkers have been there before you.

Bill Quimby

Many of the modern trail runners and bikers never see what's there. Their noses are glued to the trails.

It sure seems like when you are in the middle of nowhere and thinking to yourself that you may be the first man to walk this area your bubble gets burst when you find something that was left behind by someone and it's less than 125 years old.

I get a kick out of people that go into the BWCA thinking they are in pristine untouched area.

Some years ago, while hunting on Elk Mountain in Wyoming, I came across a grave marker of two people who had been ambushed and murdered by the notorious train robber and his gang, Big Nose George. His real name was George Parrott.

In 1878, Parrott and his gang murdered two law enforcement officers — Wyoming deputy sheriff Robert Widdowfield and Union Pacific detective Tip Vincent — after a bungled train robbery.[4] Widdowfield and Vincent were ordered to track down Parrott's gang on August 19, 1878, following the attempted robbery on an isolated stretch of track near the Medicine Bow River.[2] The officers traced the outlaws to a camp at Rattlesnake Canyon, near Elk Mountain, where they were spotted by a gang lookout. The robbers stamped out the campfire and hid in a bush. When Widdowfield arrived at the scene, he realized the ashes of the fire were still hot. The gang ambushed the two lawmen, shooting Widdowfield in the face. Vincent tried to escape, but was shot before he made it out of the canyon. The gang took each mans' weapons and one of their horses before covering up the bodies and fleeing the area.

Cool stories and pics folks, thanks

A few of mine:

AZ, Coues deer hunt, above the Rim, South of Flag:



Turn it over look what's underneath:



Odds are likely it was used for fuel/lubricants for some machinery. Friend I had owned a backhoe operation in the 70's, we used a number of old milk cans for that. Relatively leak proof in the back of the p/u on the way to the jobsite. I've seen a few others around, many (most?) without lids.

Not really "found" as I'm sure others know where it is (I've looked up the data from it)



Geno

I hafta wonder what caused this 20- 30 ft up a tree?



close up:



Geno

That is a female.

Perhaps my most special "find", because of the way it occurred.

While doing my "business" after dinner on a grouse hunt in the mountains in northern WA, I dug my cat hole, squatted, and some paracord hanging down from a branch on the tree next to me. Upon finishing up I looked at the string only to find it attached to a good size rock on one end and picking it up found it ran up to the branch where a buckle had been tied to reduce friction and then too a light wire noose. Realizing we were near a military survival school across the road from our camp a bit, I took it as possibly being some soldier/airman or such had somehow managed to leave the boundary (or perhaps the training area had been reduced in size over the years?) and was trying to catch a mouse/squirrel for his dinner. I wondered how long it had been there before I just happened to fertilize that particular tree?



Geno

She's likely a busy one as all I can see around her are plenty of males!

Geno