found things in strange places????????

[Dick in Seattle]

I was camped in a meadow in a National Forest in Oregon back about 1968 or 69.   There was a deep, broad, overgrown depression running across it.  I was walking along the depression when I saw a rounded metal shape in the prairie grass.  It looked like an iron kettle.  At first I though it was whole, but a little brushing and digging showed it to be a broken section, maybe 1/3 of an arc of a cast iron kettle maybe 10" or so across.   Other folks in the camping group informed me that the "rut" was actually part of the old Oregon Trail, heading down to the Columbia River at about where Hood River now is.  Over the years I've thought many times about that piece of kettle... someone breaking what had to be an important piece of equipment at almost the end of the long trip out from Missouri.

[David Schroeder]

I was in the woods,stood by a aspen tree,only to find a carved name in the bark,,I knew a person by that name! Funny thing,I saw that person a week later,& asked him if he carved his name in a aspen tree in the location I was in. & he just couldnt believe it.He was 8 years old.w/ his dad deer hunting back in the late 60`s.Now his 47

[Jim Jackson]

I was working for the forest service in the Quachita's in Arkansas right out of college.  We took a lunch break at a scenic overlook deep in the forest one day. Beautiful location overlooking the rugged terrain.  We were on this huge rock outcropping, and I noticed something shiny down in a large crack.  The other two guys in the crew lowered me down by the legs, and I brought up an old six pack of pabst.  Pull tabs and all.  It took us a couple weeks to work up the courage to see if it was still good.  Turns out it was...!

[scrub-buster]

We found an old metal tractor seat way out in the woods while tracking a deer.  We also found the metal ring from the outside of a wagon wheel.  You could see where it was forged together.  It had a huge vine growing inside of it that I had to cut to get it out.  

While helping my uncle look for a deer he shot at with a shotgun, I found his bullet.  It was laying on a leaf in a trail about 50 yards from where the deer was when he missed it.  It was a Brenneke slug.  When I found it, I asked him if he was shooting Brenneke's.  He said "yes", then I handed him the slug.  He couldn't believe it.  It had a dent in one side where it glanced off of a tree

[Looper]

Back in the late 1980s, I found an old leveraction rifle grown into the fork of a tree.  It must have been there for 30 years.  I bet it's still there.

In 1995, I found a camoflage rifle case complete with a Weatherby rifle and a Swarovski scope floating in the channel near the Point Retreat lighthouse near Juneau, AK.  I found the owner later that winter. He was up from Oregon and lost the rifle about a week earlier and 10 miles or so from where I found it.  It bounced out of his son's skiff in some rough seas and they couldn't see it in the water.

[boznarras]

A buddy and I were walking along the shore by the ocean to get back to our boat, and came upon a row of wooden plugs in the ground, level with the surface. We had not seen them earlier as it was higher tide when we arrived. We followed the row of plugs and came to a defined bend in their layout. Finally got up on a tall rock and saw we had found one of two rows that converged into a vee or funnel. The whole arrangement covered 75 yards by 150 yards, next to a creek. Pulled up one plug and looked, it was sharpened like a stake on the bottom. (I put the plug back.)
Later went to an archaeology lecture put on by the Forest Service, and recognized we had found remains of a Tlingit indian fish trap. Originally these poles were high walls thatched with brush. The salmon got in at high tide and were trapped when the tide went out.
I told the archaeologist about our find, and marked it on a map. Later got a report. They radiocarbon dated it, several hundred years old, and the cuts on the poles were made with a stone axe. They said you can tell the tool was stone because the cuts are wavy, not straight.Apparently the salt water pickles the buried wood, and packed in the mud with no air, it does not decay.

[centaur]

Hunting elk near Dubois, Wyoming some years ago I was in some black timber on an elk trail when I came across the remains of a cabin. This was about 5 miles into the wilderness area. Still had an old bedframe, and glass that probably was from the 1920s. This was before GPS; I have been in that area several times since, and could never find the cabin in the maze of black timber. Another time in the same general area, I came across a lodgepole 'funnel' high on a mountain. The Sheepeater Indians used funnels to kill game, and I think that is what this was, but again, I could never find it. Too bad I didn't have GPS at the time; sure would like to go back and do some more looking around in those spots.
And then there's this....
 
This old tractor is in a nice little meadow in the Bighorns, leftover from logging operations many years ago I'm guessing.

[misfire]

Several years ago while gun hunting I entered the woods on an old dirt track following it about 1/4 mile in. When it got light enough I cut into the woods and could smell something burned or burning. After about 50 yds I came upon the remains of a car that had been torched. I wrote down the VIN because there were no plates. Followed it's tracks back to the dirt road. I was amazed that they got the vehicle in that far. Anyways after hunting I went to the local PD and gave them the VIN. It turns out the vehicle had just been reported stolen by the next town over.

[Bill Carlsen]

I imagine this has happened to many of you, but I often find golf balls in places that Tiger Woods couldn't put them on his best driving day. Just last week a friend of mine was hunting up near the White Mountains and found an old abandoned apple orchard full of deer and bear sign. In one pile of bear scat he found a golf ball. Who could have guessed?

[Mo. Huntin]

Man this is neat anybody got anymore?

[Bonebuster]

I found a fanny pack on the last day of firearms season here in Michigan.

It had been there over a week I guessed. I contained a frozen and broken open Coke, rope, pruning shears, a Buck Pathfinder knife, some .35 Remington ammo, a pipe, and a bag of pot.

Still have the knife, the shears, and the fanny pack. I dumped the pot out.

[joevan125]

Walking through a pine thicket and noticed a big black case half buried. My first thought was i it might be a case full of money, drugs or a body. Turned out to be a old drum set in great shape.

[frankwright]

Hunting in Georgia I have come across countless numbers of moonshine stills. Some were tiny little operations and others had a truckload of fifty gallon drums and broken crock jugs.

An old friend of mine told me when he was a little kid hunting around Treat mtn in Georgia with his dad they came up on a big working still. Worried that eyes may be on them, his dad picked up a hanging tin cup and filled it with the drippings and drank it, hung up the cup and turned and went back the way they came. No sense in being mistaken for Government men!

[Apex Predator]

I found a perfectly good grunt call last year.  I picked it up and tried to blow it.  A big old spider climbed out just as I got it to my lips!  I don't like spiders!  My buddy thought it was funny!

[Dave Bulla]

Not me personally, but my cousins own a sawmill in PA and they once were cutting some old mature timber and found a blunderbuss musket with the flared muzzle completely grown inside a tree.  I think it was a crotch piece.  They figured the gun was leaned there and then for some reason abandoned.  Brings to mind thoughts of pilgrims, pioneers and injuns.

[boznarras]

Another find.
While in Dawson, Y.T., I was camping across the Yukon from town, and went for a walk along the river, heading north/downstream. Walked about 1/4 mile from camp and found a side slough of the river where they scuttled sternwheel river boats. Boats were floated in and left to fall apart, some places they were resting on the remains of earlier boats left there. Some had the tall pilothouses still up, reminded me of Planet of the Apes. I poked around amidst boilers, bottles & hanging shreds of asbestos. Later in town found old photos (1890's)of some of these same boats during the Klondike gold rush, recognized the names on them. The lady at the visitor center said they did not advertise these being there due to hazards, but I thought it was really interesting.

[Ybuck]

A baseball glove(the old individual finger type)on very remote timber in Southern Iowa.
I'm guessing it was from the 1950's or 60's.

[Brently]

Out hunting around here and found a mdl T or what was left of it, no motor or wheels.  Any way I was telling my dad about it and he said that they always heard that there was a mdl T out in the woods around there but they had never seen it.  Any way he had heard about it when he was a kid back in the early 1930s. I took my daughter to see it and to get a few pictures of it to show my dad since he isn't able to get around very good anymore.

[sendero25]

I saw a deer once.

[ethan]

When I was a kid my Dad and I were walking out of the woods and saw what looked like a piece of metal sticking out of the ground.  Dad dug it out and it was obvious part of something at one time.  Turned out to be the base plate for a surveying tool used in the mid 1800's.  
Me and a good buddy were recently elk hunting in Colorado and about 4 miles into the trail at around 11,500' we found a saddle just laying there a couple feet off the trail.  It was above timberline and obviously had beent there for a while.
This is a cool thread, like to read more.

Ethan