hunting or scouting. Every once in a while one of these threads starts and every time they are interesting. Lot of people spend lots of time in the wilds.

Full body apparition, UFO.

Baked potato, loaded.

A headstone marker at the site of the killing of two Union Pacific employees, by the notorious outlaw Big Nose George.

Coolest thing to ever happen to me while hunting. One evening I was sitting in my 14 foot tripod deer stand that was tucked into the edge of the wood line where I could overlook a 50 acre field. I felt a small bump against the stand and at the same time heard what sounded like claws "tink" against the metal. I was thinking that surely one of those big-ass fox squirrels that are always playing in the woods behind me was getting ready to climb up in the stand with me. I'm bent over looking all around the ground and don't see anything. As I raise back up and sit back in my chair I catch something out of the corner of my eye and whip my head around to see a full size frigging barred owl sitting on the rail just behind where my shoulder was. Scared the schit out of me. He looked at me for a couple of seconds and then hopped off and over to a nearby branch where he sat for a couple of minutes before leaving. I believe he was just curious about me and was checking me out. I've seen what I assume to be the same barred owl several times since when walking the woods out there, but he's not let me approach any closer than about 25 yards.

We had an illegal walk into our camp after dinner one evening a couple years ago. Saw our 45's and just sat straight down. He was in bad shape so we called the border patrol and they came in about 10 minutes and picked him up. Then a little adrenaline flowed.

Several weather balloons in the 80's

Forgot about an old moonshine still that was all hacked up

20-30 big azz pot plants

That keep you supplied for a bit?

Latitude and longitude marker on top of a big hill in Cisco Texas

Two stories your post reminded me of.
In early Muzzleloader season I was sitting in a platform tree stand, watching a couple fox squirrels hazing each other around. One finally ran up the opposite side of the tree and came zipping around to come face to face with me, about a foot away.
The look of surprise on his face was funny as hell. He never expected me to be there!
In the late muzzle loader season I was headed back to my stand a half hour or so before daylight. It was damn cold, in the teens, and I was dressed accordingly. I was walking an old township road through the woods, had a 3 or 4 foot bank on the side. I stopped to take a breather so I wouldn’t start to sweat. I stood there probably 3 minutes, in the dark I never saw the grouse on that bank. He got nervous with me standing there, and exploded off that bank past my head!
I damn near had to go back and change underwear!
I never really found anything out of the ordinary, but I have witnessed hawks and owls taking small game critters for dinner numerous times. One hawk took a rabbit while my beagle was on the track!
7mm

Twice since 2008 major tornadoes have hit parts of Alabama 60-70 miles to the SW of where I live in GA. Both times during turkey season I've found debris from those tornadoes. In 2008 I found someones W2 forms and mailed them back to him with a note telling him where I found them. I had hoped he would contact me, but he never did. After another tornado I found parts of a metal storage shed in the woods.

https://www.24hourcampfire.com/ubbthreads/ubbthreads.php/galleries/14446541#Post14446541

This is the 1st section I found. Over the years I've found 3-4 other sections of it spread over about 1 sq mile. It's hard to imagine stuff like that traveling 70 miles.

lol, i'll keep my mouth shut.

Lava

A big chunk of so. Idaho is lava flows. I've run across some interesting things out there.

There are lots of these lava bubbles but most aren't open to get inside. It was just high enough inside to stand up.





This lava rock is about 6' high. It sits on a granite ridge at least 50 miles as the pigeon flies from the nearest volcanic activity. A long time ago, a volcano must have a real upset stomach to belch this big of a blob that far.



How about this tree? It's about a foot across at the base. It must have had a rough winter at some time in it's past.

This happened 34 yrs ago, 1985. Walking back to camp in the dark carrying a flashlight of course. A buddy and I had been deer hunting all afternoon in the wildlife area known as Land Berween The Lakes (LBL). As I walked along an old logging road, the beam of my light flashed across something shining back at me. I bent over and picked up a nice, engraved silver cigarette lighter. It was partially covered with leaves, so it was pure luck that I saw it at all.

And now the rest of the story.......I walked on to our camp (about a quarter of a mile) and found that my buddy was already back and was mad as a wet hen. When I asked what was up, he said that he left his stand a little early and as soon as he hit the logging road decided to light up. He lit a cigarette and thought he dropped his lighter into his pocket, but now he couldn’t find it. What are the odds? Yep I had found his lighter that he evidently had dropped! It was a gift from his kids, so he was proud to get it back.

We were dragging a spike elk downhill through the jack pines and were sitting taking a break. Looked beside me in the leaves and saw some cloth. Dug in the leaves and found a camo sweatshirt and a camo day pack. In the pack were several things including some .300 Savage ammo and a set of Ford truck keys. We figured it was probably at least ten years old/lost. Guy may have sat down and then forgot and walked away, then couldn't find it because they were camo. Not sure how he got home with no truck keys in the days before cell phones.

A bench mark. I've run across quite a few of those out in the desert. It's all been surveyed. Most of them are set in cement and look like this:

I like how you were nice enough to spell out what LBL is.

People out west wouldn’t do that, they think we’re suppose to know who Fred Hermit is when he gets arrested on Pissant Ant, BLM sector 16B

Exactly

I found where a tree grew around the motor of an old Harley . Entire bike was there parked behind the remains of an old corn crib tree just grew up and around motor.
Also was cutting a hollow tree and found a scythe inside it

I don’t sit down and forget anything.

I have OCD, I make sure I got all my shît before up and move.



Halfway thru that Mammoth Cave 3 hour tour, they was bleachers in there our group sat down for some guide tour happy talk

Rest of them people in that group probably thought I was some sociopath. I kept shining my flashlight under them bleachers as we mounted up, “alright people I got all my shît we can proceed, I got my wallet, I got my phone, I got my keys,I got my lighter, I’m good”

I once saw a 50's car sitting behind an even older barn. The hood was open and a 6" tree had grown up between the motor and the frame. It was at least 10' tall.

Scaling a very steep game trail toward timberline elk hunting in Wyoming when I found a heavy duty dining fork in my path. I took it.

Coolest thing: buddy and I were elk hunting during archery season in Colorado several years ago. We came over a ridge line in the trees and about 300-400 yards away there is a giant rock similar to Pride Rock in the Lion King movie that jutted out of the mountainside looking over the mountains. Looked just like Pride Rock. On the rock sunning herself was a mountain lion with 2 kittens playing on the rock. She knew we were there and watched us as we watched them with our binoculars. My buddy had just bought a new video camera with a lot of zoom to carry while hunting and film cool stuff. He of course left it at camp that day. I took a picture with my regular camera which amounted to a picture of a speck on a giant rock on a mountainside. Watching her with those kittens on that rock is one of my favorite memories.

Before my time but way back when a local guy was out in the sagebrush hunting deer. He shot a nice buck but needed both hands to drag it. He set his lever action Winchester against a sagebrush where he could find it and dragged the deer out. Yep, he couldn't find the rifle. 30 years later he was hunting in the same area and there it was, still leaning against the same sagebrush. I suspect the wood looked a bit rustic by that time.

My buddy and I were mule deer hunting an had climbed a hill to sit and glass between some boulders. Next to my foot I saw tiny flu specks when I looked closer they were beads that ants were pushing up out of a hole. We scuffed away some dry dirt and gravel and found a stone spear head. I have no idea what the beads were from but made us wonder if someone was buried under foot.

Found those at the top of a steep hill with no roads anywhere around. I guess there’s an old homestead somewhere in that area.

Not sure what the cylinders are. They were perfectly smooth like they were drilled. They’re about 36” diameter

Found an old log cabin foundation and remnants of a wood stove, old bottles, metal spikes 2 miles from the nearest road via gps on an island in Ontario. I’m guessing it was an old logging camp. I walked across a lonnngg beaver dam to get to it. Pretty cool but I can’t find the pics of it.

In Ontario, found some old car parts at the bottom of a pretty good sized hill/mountain. Amongst those parts I found 2 Ontario license plates daring back to the mid 50’s. Not sure if those were car wrecks or just a dumping spot.

A few odd things

40+ years ago I was hunting western PA and came across a abandon group of buildings that the locals later told me was a war time factory for Sylvania hid back in the boonies. They were old and creepy looking after all those years sitting empty. Tried to find them again 20 years later and could not find a trace.

30 years back my wife and I were returning from a weekend trip at my Potter county PA hunting camp, on the twisty old road from Cherry Springs heading to Galeton it was a Sunday morning as we rounded a corner and saw 3 nuns with fishing poles in their hands walking out of the fog. We pasted the field and looked back and could not find them again, later I checked and was told there are no convents nearby.

Found a few old Cemetery's in the mountains of rural PA that were way off the beaten path and run down. Looking at the head stones from 1800's it was sad of how many young children died every year in that area.

way back in i found a metal front grill from an old car. it was one that had a hole in the bottom for the crank handle. model t or something. it was way back in. i leaned it against a tree and it was still there last time i went up there about 10 years ago. the funny thing is there are no roads anywhere near it and it would be almost impossible to get a modern 4x4 back in there. no idea how it got there.

Camp Bullis Military Training Area, back in the years when I was employed by a Contractor monitoring bird populations.

Used to find all sorts of stuff left out there, from all different eras, mostly ammo related, like rusty bits of machine gun ammo still in links, inscriptions from the 1930's inside concrete blockhouses, ponchos, a 0.50 cal machine gun bullet in the dirt, pointed away from the range two miles in back. A friend tripped a whiz-bang practice claymore left armed.

Coolest thing though was behind the range fans, an area I was able to get into only once a season. On an open hillside a sunken grave-sized rectangle of collected rocks likely from the old days when that area was open prairie. I always wondered who had been buried there and when. Maybe Indians or outlaws got him and their friends buried him there.

I would like to see those lava bubbles. Next time I'm over that way. I will look for something like those things.

Birdy,

While I was doing contract OPFOR at Bullis I came home with a bunch of them heavy azz 1930’s era tent stakes that were used to set up the WWI era GP medium tent. They work real good with my big square awning set up. They had been driven in the ground and left there when the tent was taken down.

While coyote calling, I walked through a pasture in west central Ks. It was very near where I was born and raised. At one time several hundred people moved to this location and established a small town in the late 1800s, in anticipation of the RR passing through this town. The RR did not pass through the town and it collapsed.
Lots of foundations, rusty nails and bits of metal are all that remain. All I found of interest was a mule shoe, that was very rusty.

Got aggravated one day at some belligerent weenies in the north end of the A Shau Valley. They were playing games in the elephant grass, hide and plink stuff. On a whim I had the gunner chuck a couple of WP grenades about 30 yards up wind from them. The fire started and a few minutes later we flew thru a huge fireball that bloomed in our face. That was the craziest thing. Coolest was the next day, same place, no pun intended. The entire north half of the valley was ash. Burned up a few big trucks they had hidden in revetments, and I lost track of the number of 12.7mm AA gun pits we had exposed. Footprints is the ash going every which way and me laffin' like crazy.

The south end of the valley got torched that day and it pretty much shut them down for several months in the valley floor.

Now you know why I like fire.

Arthur Brown

Petrified wood in the artic circle couple hundred miles from a tree.
Crashed Super cub
Two crashed WWII bombers
Petroglyphs, one was of a 6 fingered hand?
Spear points
Headstone at an abandoned homestead in the desert with two names said were shot in 1878.
Mountain lion, bears, deer, fox burned to death in Forest fires.
.50 BMG casings
Japanese glass fishing floats on Alaska beaches
Foothold traps
Lost Christmas tree hunters near death.

Been hunting Slumlord’s back yard I see. Next time take a pic of the Curtis Mathis Teevee collection.

I found a corn pile behind the truck so I think I may have stumbled across Slum’s property line. Don’t tell him.

While rebuilding a fence corner, I found an old Zippo, engraved EJM - brought it home, and showed my office manager. Turned out it had been her brother's, seems he had worked for my father-in-law (sporadically) years ago.

Maybe it’s just part of my growing up, I don’t consider old abandoned cars or outbuildings or old foundations grown over with brush and trees as anything out of the ordinary. Heck, western PA’s woods has hundreds of old abandoned farms and such that I never gave it much thought.
I guess maybe that’s why I’m sort of a fatalist about stuff like legacies and things like that.
I constantly reminded that at one time, someone did all they could to carve a home and maybe a farm outta the woods, only to end up long gone and trees growing up through the old foundation, and woods retaking what had been a productive field.
A couple of decades is all it takes. People’s priorities tend to change.
Someday I’ll be one of those guys in the pictures that grandad has that nobody recognizes!
7mm

Had a Great Horned Owl that was going to land on my head one time. I saw something move out of the corner of my eye and turned my nhead and he was coming in for a landing, the big boy did a hellofa job putting on the air brakes and slipping into reverse! he landed about 25-30 feet away and we watched each other for 1/2 hour or so.

I came across a weather balloon that failed to deploy its package of 50 radiosondes. I contacted NOAA and they asked me to gather everything up and take it to the local NWS office in Valley, NE. When I first saw it, I thought that it was a parachute.

Every March we have "coyote weekend" at our camp. (We've never even seen a coyote that weekend, let alone killed one). The weather was cold as hell and we decided to go for an ATV ride. About a mile from camp we found an emaciated retriever mix puppy who was full of porcupine quills. We scooped her up and pulled out a bunch of quills with a Leatherman and took her back to camp. We pulled some more quills and gave her some food & water which she wolfed down even though she was exhausted and weak. I took her to my house and my wife and sons pulled more quills out of her. We figured 50 or 60 by the time we were done. I went to the vet's office and talked to a couple of the guys from the local radio station to see if anyone reported a missing dog. Nobody had so I asked one of the radio guys to make an announcement Monday morning. When I got to work Monday morning one of my sons called & said a guy called and said the pup was his and he would pick her up after work. When he got to my house I told him that she had been through a lot and my wife had already made an appointment at the vet's office and he ought to keep it. He informed me that he could doctor her up himself. He said she had been missing for about 2 weeks. Then he went on to tell me that his neighbors didn't think he knew what he was doing and they were all the time calling animal control on him. Great. He took her home and I told my wife if I ever see that dog running loose there won't be anymore phone calls. About 2 months later one of my friends called me & said he thought that dog was back up to camp. He said it was in the ATV shed. I went up there and went out back and whistled. She came running out of that shed and right up to me wagging her tail. I opened the back door of my truck and she jumped in & I said let's go home. That was 12 years ago and she still doesn't leave my side when I'm home. Best dog I've ever had. I think that was a pretty good find.

I was elk hunting and was in a really remote area and i was walking at the base of a cliff and there was a cow elk and a coyote skeleton laying beside one another in perfect condition. I figure what happened was the coyote must of been chasing the elk and they both fell off the cliff and died beside each other....it was about a 40ft fall. I showed my son the skeletons....it was weird.

A steam donkey with a blown boiler.

One of my dads friends was archery hunting in PENN back in the 70s and came upon a parked car on an old logging road. Walked up to it and discovered some poor soul had committed suicide in the front seat.
Ran as fast as he could to a house and asked the owner to call the police. Shook him up pretty bad.

A miner's pick that a schoolmarm tree (double trunk) had completely grown around. Just a bit of one point coming out of one side, couldn't see the other side it was entombed in wood. It was suspended about the height that someone had leaned it there, handle on the ground pick between the Y of a small tree back when and forgot it I guess. The handle was long gone just the iron remained. The area was mined before the big strike in Barkerville was discovered in 1861. I"m not sure if it'd been there that long but it well could have been the tree was huge. It was about 50 feet from a very rugged steep creek. This was in about 1980.. wonder if its still there.

We were way out of town by the Nevada/idaho border shooting rabbits one night. We shut the truck off on a hill and we were talking when us in the back saw a dark shadow about 10 feet tall coming towards us really fast in the dark. We turned in the spotlight just in time to see it was a cowboy with his pistol drawn and Hammer back as he rode up and yelled shut off the light before I shoot. He thought we were environmentalists shooting the cows and told us later he already had the canyon picked out where he was going to bury our bodies. I told him I was good friends with his boss Bud B. and he let us live.

Pretty scary seeing it come at you in the dark. My first thought was there really is a Bigfoot as i loaded a mag in the 10/22 i wished I had a bigger gun. Pissed off cowboy didn't occur to any of us til the light came on. We all later admitted to first thought bigfoot.

Bb

A tree frog. Squished flat, smack in the middle of a moose track. ("Jump, Kermit, JUMP!")

Yep, you found an Indian grave. Leave that chit there, bad juju to take it.

We did leave it there. Funny I hunted that area for 20+ years after that often climbing up to that rock pile to glass and often thought this is where I would like to be buried myself.

I was archery hunting sitting in a climbing stand next to an Apple tree in Pa. watching the edge of a field must have been 500 yrs long when a big turkey cobbler appeared into the extreme opposite end of the field. He took off an flew straight towards me as he got closer he zeroed in on the tree I was sitting in. Before I knew it he was back flapping his wings to land on the branch right next to my arm. When he landed he sat there 10" from my hand for a minute or so. I slowly reached up and grabbed his leg. ...took my about 1second to let go as he beat me near to death with his wings. That was CRAZY!

Don't ever grab hold of a healthy Canada goose like that. Besides the wings, they have a pile driving beak that can really do a number on you.

Found a body on my property way back in October 1991 while scouting for deer. Smelled it a long time before I found it. Black girl from Indiana, murdered and dumped there. Case has never been solved, although I could name 3 people, and bet the family farm that one, if not all, were responsible.

Otherwise, I've seen or found the typical stuff.........an old still, a bunch of arrowheads, and old house places.

glad I didn't find it, but a woman was found on our hunting property that had been missing for about 9 months, a short distance from her home which borders our property. When she initially went missing, local authorities, etc combed the area pretty good for about a week. I had been all over it too that turkey season after she went missing. For some crazy reason, the body turned up about 9 months later, weird that it was never found in the beginning that close to her house.

A wallet with $1,771, had been lost for 3 weeks. The owner gave me $300!

I was bowhunting deer at the bottom of the ridge and settled into some small scrubby hardwoods outside of a nasty thicket. After the typical time period where things start to move again I noticed squirrels started getting active. There were so many going at one time I dubbed it the squirrel ghetto. Anyway, it stopped. Became so quiet I could hear my pulse through my ears. Then all hell broke loose with all of these squirrels barking in the treetops going crazy and I thought, how the hell did they bust me? I never moved an inch. Then out of nowhere, I hear this woosh woosh sound like a helicopter starting up! And I felt a what I would describe as a "wind pulse" as this monster hawk flew right by my face up in that tree. It was awesome! He/she was turning its wings and vectoring through that thicket to pick off one of the squirrels. This place was so claustrophobic I couldn't believe how fast that bird moved through the tree limbs and never hit a single one!

I've seen and found a chit'ton of stuff, 100 year old, thousand year old, older. Most common is indian ruins, pottery shards, pictographs sometimes. Here's a few...







Spanish symbol for gold and a cross...




Across the creek some Hohokam lizards and other symbols...



While I was searching the Hohokam area I had a visitor...

Trust me that these two videos are worth the approximately 2 or 3 min each.... S L O W motion...



and



I'll give you your money back if you are not satisfied with these videos!

John

Pretty cool...

jpb,

That first video shot of the Goshawk flying through the woods was very similar to what I was hunting. I was about 10 feet high.

Thanks for the video, they offer a great perspective for what lacks in my narrative! The raptors are incredible!

Another thing, the squirrel racket was intense, like they had a radar group scanning for a bombing run!

Son and I discovered an old gold mine hidden deep in a canyon on his property. After long discussions of mine safety we promptly threw all that out the window, put on waders and went inside. Hard rock gold mine with cart tracks visible under water. At a partial cave in we found an abandoned ore cart.

Was sitting on a rock by a trout stream way back in the mountains and well off any established trail. It was eating my lunch and happened to look down on the ground by my foot. There was a perfect little tomato plant with one tiny red tomato on it. Someone else had apparently had their lunch in the same place a year or two before and dropped a tomato seed I guess.

Four monkeys drunk on fermented marula fruit playing with a human skull.

Came across two of those markers while chasing bucks in the Adirondacks.

On the hawks: Cookie feeds the local birds and we have Goshawks, Sharp Shins, and Cooper's working the feeders. All seem capable of navigating stands of shrubbery with little to no loss in velocity. A solid wall, like the side our house or the pickup does seem to hinder them a bit.

Better than 30 years ago control shooting in the west on a rugged part of a ranch I found a human skull with a very neat hole in the forehead. Very old. I brought the Sheriff next day and he took one look at it, kicked dirt down off the bank on it, and said "I didn't see that" Good enough by me. I've found neat dinosaur bones, indian artifacts etc.
I think the neatest thing I've found in the west were some of the old ranchers years ago. interesting tough old boys for sure. One had an old 7th cavalry bugle he'd found.
In northern MN I've found the remains of three different very old logging camps. I'll look on them one day with a metal detector but other than tools don't expect to find much, i think most loggers in those camps were paid with company script and not coin.

osky

Friend of mine was in his stand one afternoon when we had a lease near Zapata. A '63 Chevy pulled up about 30 yards from his stand and a couple proceeded to give him a pretty good show, in the car, on the hood and on the trunk. Said the girl wasn't much to look at, but she sure was enthusiastic. There were a lot of people poaching that lease as the oil truck drivers would give out the gate lock combinations to all their buddies to hunt during the week while there was no one there. That was our last year there.

Mule Deer hunting in the Eastern Sierra Nevada once, came to a strange metal box in some dense timber. Maybe 2 feet square and 6 feet tall. Seemed to be either stainless or aluminum, I forget. Puzzled, I banged on it, shook it, then walked around to the other side and found a sign that said "Earthquake Sensor, property of University of Nevada Las Vegas". I probably gave a grad student in Las Vegas a heart attack, when I was shaking his box

Was exploring a friends new property when I found a T-6 that had crashed into some heavy woods. My buddy did some research and the plane had crashed about 40 years prior killing the pilot. Apparently what was left of him had been picked out and the wreckage was left due to the dense woods. It appeared to have come down in a flat spin by the looks of the plane.

A B-24 or B-25 wing mounted aerial smoke generator in the middle of the White River National Wildlife Refuge. Must have been dropped in the woods (it was dented) or river and floated there in a flood. That was before cell phones but it looked like this:

Lessee:

I found and aerosonde by my treestand once. It had been stuck up in a tree until it rotted out. It had a return address on it, but I didn't send it back, because it was too far gone.

Twice, I've seen owls snatch squirrels off the ground. The last one was this past December. The owl seemed to be flying right at me from about 100 yards out-- swerved at the last second and snatched a squirrel off the ground. By the time it lit on a branch, the squirrel was dead.

I used to have a mated pair of Bald Eagles search me out whenever I went bowhunting and they'd either circle me in the stand or alight on a branch nearby and watch me. Those are big-azzed birds!

I once fell asleep in the woods and had the biggest Great Horned Owl alight on a limb right above me. When I awoke, we both had a huge surprise. Darn thing looked 3 feet tall and 50 lbs.

The absolute neatest thing I ever witnessed was the Gobblers down on Pity Creek getting all cranked up and sending waves of gobbles all up and down the holler. You could actually hear the waves cross each other. It went on for half and hour. It still happens, but it takes just the right conditions. Some years it only happens one day a year-- last year it didn't happen at all.

Always enjoy reading these. Keep em' coming.

Out in the Kenai NWR while moose prospecting I came on this big glacier dropped boulder about 30 feet in diameter and 20 feet tall. Split down the middle with a walk thru passage. Pics did not do it justice

My dad grew up in Miller, South Dakota. Every summer, a band of Indians would camp out on the edge of town. This would have been, 1934 or so.
The Indians had covered wagons and horses, but the wheels of the wagons were regular car wheels. There were about a hundred of them.
First day of the camp out, they went into town and got all the scraps they could from the butcher. Any kind of fat or skin scraps.
Plus bought about 5 pounds of meat. Then the squaws would dig up roots, and they had a big cast iron stew pot they put on a camp fire and they kept going for the entire time. They would stay there for about 4 weeks. They would always try to kill a jack rabbit or whatever they could, to add to the stew pot.

Dad said, it was illegal for Indians to buy alcohol, the Indians would give him five bucks and he would go into town and buy booze for them.
Also, dad said the chiefs would rent out their wives, or daughters, for a dollar. Whities could pay a buck and go into the teepee and have at it.

A guy I knew in the USARMY told me was hunting deer in Maine and was standing under a tree hoping for a buck to come by. It was a cold but calm day and the woods were pretty quiet. Just by chance he turned his head and maybe 20 feet away from him a large bull moose was standing there just staring at him. It took off like a rocket as soon as he moved. He told me it was amazing how an animal that large walked up to him in the fall leaves and never made a sound until it took off running.

4 piglets (wild/feral hogs) on state game lands in SE Pennsylvania in spring/early summer of around 1989. It was about 3/4 mile from tge nearest road and at leat 1 1/2 mile from any other building. I don’t think there were supposed to be feral hogs or wild boar in PA at all in those days. There are still none in this part of the state a very few in PA at all.

A Colt Cobra 38 Special,still in the holsters, with 6 rnds of hollowpoints in it . Sitting On a pine stump in an area I was hunting.

Good story, Thx

Saw a real nice looking young woman in a bar in Grand Junction drink a beer while she was standing on her head.

I posted this in the deer hunting forum last month. Had a crazy camel adventure on a deer hunt this season in Kansas...yes, a wayward camel! I think I lost my 5-star deer guide rating with our daughter when that happened, but I'm blaming it on trying to hunt on Friday the 13th. When the camel decided to hang around we unloaded rifles as we didn't want to shoot and spook it and were able to get in touch with the owners (nearby exotic animal farm) to help them get it back in and fix the fence where it got out of the pasture beside where we were hunting. Didn't put any meat in the freezer that night, but it was definitely a memorable hunt!

If that was near Manhattan I know where they got loose from

I wonder what camel taste like. 😀

Found the skull of one of the Green River Killer's victims.

Funny looking white rock, kicked it and it rolled over showing teeth.

They identified her with dental records. I still remember her name, 20 plus years later.

Wow. That's heavy.

What was her first name?

Patricia.

R.I.P.

It's not something you look forward to eating a second time.

Cool story.

Wow! May she RIP

BTDT.

Also once spotted a bedded, brown hairy butt sticking out from behind a tree 20 yards ahead, while I was slip-hunting thru cover. Not knowing whether it was moose or bear i I stepped back against a bush to break my outline and waited. Several minutes later a cow moose rose to her feet - she had heard or sensed something probably, and picked her way out of there without a sound. She had her nose inches from the ground, watching where she stepped.

Ran into a crazy camel like this while at a bachelor party weekend near Lake Corpus Christi. He lived on a ranch where we were fishing several bass ponds. I was petting him through a fence and he seemed really intrigued by the smell of my Bud Light Lime (I’m classy like that). I figured what the heck and poured some in his mouth - he really seemed to enjoy it so we gave him a couple more. Not long after that an ostrich strolled up. It didn’t partake in any Bud Light Lime but she went nuts over my chili cheese Fritos. She was so into the Fritos that she literally ran behind the truck as we drove back to the camp. I was fresh out of Fritos so she gave up on me and wandered away from where the guys were gathered up enjoying some cocktails. A few minutes later there was a hell of a commotion over where the trucks were parked. We ran over to see what was going on and Lucy the Ostrich had a big double leaf bass spinner hooked in the side of her face. She was pulling drag like crazy from the rod that was sticking out the back of my buddies truck. Apparently the lure was dangling over the side of the truck and she pecked at it & got hooked. The ranch owner managed to get her corralled and got the hook out so all ended well. We found one of her eggs the next morning and had scrambled ostrich eggs with breakfast.

Despite their bad reputation, the one camel I've met was one of the most gentle large animals I've ever seen. She would slowly and gently lay her head on your shoulder and loved having her face gently stroked.

Lol

Back in the late 90’s, While walking out of a 1000 acre hunting lease, in the dark, I almost stepped in an abandoned well or cistern. All I know is my dimly lit flashlight revealed an old hole about 20 feet deep and 2 1/2-3 feet in diameter. Hunting by myself way back in the property. Still gives me chills thinking I could have stepped right into it. The week before I was hunting the same area and forgot my flashlight and was literally “feeling” my way out of the woods, in the dark, with the faint light of an old flip phone.

This one was very gentle, too, and definitely enjoyed the attention from Grace.

Ran into a crazy camel like this while at a bachelor party weekend near Lake Corpus Christi. He lived on a ranch where we were fishing several bass ponds. I was petting him through a fence and he seemed really intrigued by the smell of my Bud Light Lime (I’m classy like that). I figured what the heck and poured some in his mouth - he really seemed to enjoy it so we gave him a couple more. Not long after that an ostrich strolled up. It didn’t partake in any Bud Light Lime but she went nuts over my chili cheese Fritos. She was so into the Fritos that she literally ran behind the truck as we drove back to the camp. I was fresh out of Fritos so she gave up on me and wandered away from where the guys were gathered up enjoying some cocktails. A few minutes later there was a hell of a commotion over where the trucks were parked. We ran over to see what was going on and Lucy the Ostrich had a big double leaf bass spinner hooked in the side of her face. She was pulling drag like crazy from the rod that was sticking out the back of my buddies truck. Apparently the lure was dangling over the side of the truck and she pecked at it & got hooked. The ranch owner managed to get her corralled and got the hook out so all ended well. We found one of her eggs the next morning and had scrambled ostrich eggs with breakfast.
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Hooking an ostrich? I can only imagine the commotion that created! That had to have been quite a rodeo!

If they taste anything like their smaller cousins, the llamas, they should be pretty good.

Pig hunting in South TX.

I was the last one back to camp on an elk hunt. Found an empty liquor bottle. I was annoyed that they didn’t save me any.

LOL! One of them appeared on old rancher buds ranch where we’ve been know to kig a pig or two. He told us that if anyone saw it and didn’t shoot at it, we weren’t welcome back! We all got a chuckle out of it. We had an emu that hung around tbe neighborhood here many years ago.

A B&C beaver dead as a hammer, only point of interest is it was so fing huge and concealed enough thought it was a bear cub at first. Must have been magic as I hardly recall cycling the action on my bolt rifle I just knew in a split second a sow would be coming. Fortunately for me bear sows aren't nearly as protective over dead beavers as they are over their cubs.

That quick shot of adrenaline always leaves a metallic taste in my mouth.

Some well hidden cool old cabins, always love exploring them.

Couple idiots shooting right over us.


My soul

Back when the bottom fell out of the emu market and everyone wanted rid of them my cousins picked up as many as they could and would turn them out in their dads pasture to mess with him. After the first couple days uncle starred shooting them but couldn’t figure out why there were more every day. I don’t know if they ever told him they were the ones doing it

Jmp300wms: I have found a LOT of items while Hunting. Including knives, bullets, binoculars, Indian arrowheads, Indian thumb scrapers, game calls of all kinds, foam seats for keeping warm, gloves (at least 40 or 50 of these over the last 60+ years of Hunting), fossils galore, agates and LOTS of petrified wood which I drug home over the decades and made a "petrified wood garden" out of.
Found a pair of expensive Zeiss binoculars once in a set of saddle bags and through some detective work (via Zeiss of America) I had the Zeiss people contact the warranty owner who called me and I got the Zeiss binoculars back to him.
I truly have only lost maybe 10 items over the 60+ years I have been Hunting from Alaska to Texas - and I feel grateful for that.
Skinning and boning out game in the dark almost always "creates" lost gear for my partners and I.
Two of my Hunting partners (I was not with them at the moment) were skinning an Elk up in the Missouri Breaks country in a wind storm and when my partner took out his wallet and went to retrieve his game tag, a one hundred dollar bill got sucked out and away it went with not one but two humans in hot pursuit - they never did catch up to/find it!
Hold into the wind
VarmintGuy

Varmint.......Sounds like you have found your share. I lost a GPS once on a turkey hunt. That is probably the most expensive item I have lost. After 40 years I guess I have been lucky.

Abandoned ICBM complex in the southern Idaho desert. Teenage years, about 1974. Back then it wasn't fenced off; we walked through a maze of tunnels (some dead ended into the side of a deep missile silo, looking down into the abyss was a little spooky), threw rocks down into open silos, explored the domed underground control room, and had a grand time.

The owner of the company I worked for years ago had a ranch in the TX Hill Country. It was used for entertaining clients and had all kinds of exotics on it as well as some nice whitetails. At some point some Rheas (like an ostrich but 1/2 as big) had been turned loose on the place and they must’ve multiplied like rabbits because there were a bunch of them. We had a client out one weekend who was a jerk but was responsible for some hefty profits. There was one particularly large buck that had been seen in the headlights in a thick part of the property. He was far too smart to come out to a feeder during daylight hours but I’d seen some big deer tracks on the brushy end of one of the ponds near some thick bedding cover and figured it may be him. Once our client heard about the big 5x6 whitetail he turned his nose up at the giant blackbuck antelope, axis deer and fallow deer we put him on. On the last evening sit of the hunt it was really warm and the wind was right so I set the client up in a clump of cedars across the pond and about 200 yards away from where I hoped the buck may come in for a drink. According to the hunter there was a full on parade of game that came to the pond that night and he passed them all up waiting for the big fella to show. Right near sunset he spotted movement in the thick brush that ran down into the pond. His binos confirmed it to be our mature 160 class buck. He was reaching for his gun and shooting sticks when he caught movement coming from just to the side of the cedar he was scrunched back into. Just then Mr. rhea strutted up and apparently thought WTF is in this bush. He proceeded to get all kinds of aggressive spreading his wings, scratching the ground like a pissed off bull, emitting some freaky noises and making charges at old Dale who was trying not to wet himself in his hidey hole. He ended up having to stand up yelling and swinging his shooting sticks at this pissed off rhea to make him go away without getting pecked or stomped. Needless to say by the time he proved his point Mr. mossy horn across the pond had vamoosed! I’ve never seen somebody so pissed off as that client. He ranted and raved all night. In an act of solidarity my boss swore we would get revenge on the rhea and all of his kin. Since the client had the only rifle in camp that weekend and had only brought about 5 rounds with him for his 6.5-06 I was elected to make the 30 mile trek to the nearest Walmart to buy all of the buckshot they had. Dale didn’t even try a morning sit for the whitetail, he and the boss man went out in the UTV and exacted revenge on the rhea population while I cooked breakfast. It sounded like a small war going on and when they came back they were out of ammo & they declared the rhea situation rectified. I felt bad for the dumb critters as they were just shot and left for the coyotes which seemed like a vast overreaction to appease a customer who was an Ahole to begin with. As we were driving out of the ranch what may have been the lone survivor ran across the road in front of us, stopped and raised his wings like he was giving us the finger and I just knew it was the one who had accosted old Dale. He was beyond pissed they’d missed one but I was quietly rooting for the rhea!

TFF