Strangest thing you have found in the woods/wilderness/desert etc.

[weasel]

last post reminds me of another incident, a friend was looking for elk antlers, he found a cooked horn outfitters pack with clothes, compass, matches, etc, the mice had chewed it up. He also found a wallet with an elk tag 2 yrs old and a odd glass "bowl". He was showing his son, who said it was a crack pipe. Kind of a shame, once in a lifetime tag, the guy gets bombed and screwed it all up. One more elk for the rest of us

[kyelkhunter3006]

That's such a waste.............jeez.   

[NONYA]

ill bet that stuff was stolen by the crackhead and he dumped all the non pawnable items there,who wouldnt go back for thier wallet and elk tag?

[weasel]

I dunno, always wanted to go find the wallet just to hear from the owner what his story was. This elk tag is like hitting the lottery, once in a lifetime, I think the biggest bull that I know of from this area grossed 438". With an archery tag you should at least see something in the 350-380 class. I had a muzzleloader tag there last year, saw lots of bulls, the best maybe 360".

[NONYA]

crackheads dont hunt,if they ever did they pawned or traded all thier gear for dope long ago.

[mardrobe]

While Archery hunting in Idaho, my son and I walked up on a couple in a car parked in the middle of a back road.  We didn't realize what was going on until we were next to it.  We ignored them and continued walking in to the area.  Later when we were working our way back down a fence line in the trees they opened fire on us.  I'm not sure they were trying to hit us but hearing the bullets go through the leaves above our heads was one of the scariest experiences I have had in the woods.  We were only armed with bows so we could only yell to get their attention.

[the rifleman]

I came across a plane crash, while deer hunting many years ago. The plane hitting the ground opened up quite a clearing in the woods, which I could see throught the trees. Thinking it might be a good spot to find a deer I snuck up to the clearing, and had quite a shock when I saw what there. The debris field was about 3-400 yards long, and about 40 yards wide. Wheels, tires, mangled alluminum, wires, cables, insualation, cloths all over. I worked my way over to the front part of the fuselage, which was upside down, fearing I would find the worst. The seats were torn out, and lying askew in the cockpit, but no skeltons thankfully! I still felt pretty odd looking over the spot, where somebody most likely died.

I went back to camp and told my buddy about it who asked if there was any engine at the crash site. I could not recall seeing one. He figured that the FAA had already been there and probably choppered out the engine to check it out for faults, along with any remains.

Years later I found out that it was a small private commercial freight flight, that had been flying in fog. It had hit the highest point of the Gulf island I was hunting on. 100 foot more altitude, and he would have cleared it. Two died. Rotten luck...

[azshooter]

This was not really in the wilderness but when I was a kid I went fishing on the Colorado river at Lees Ferry.  Below the Dam holding back Lake Powell there are tunnels that go from the canyon back to an underground access road that goes to the base of the dam.  Most tunnels are up way high where there is no chance of reaching them but one tunnel looked like it had had a recent rock slide and you could reach it by climbing up from the river side.  I climbed up the rock slide and went in the tunnel and it was full of civil defense supplies from what must have been the 50's or 60's.

[kyelkhunter3006]

That's kind of cool, really.

[Inrut24/7]

A trench dug on top of the mountain that had been recently cleaned out and hunted from. I later found out it was from a vietnam vet who who dug it some 30 + years ago and still hunts from it to this day.

[rockbilly]

As a kid I was out squirrel hunting and happened across a skull.  At first I thought it was a green rock, kinda round, but after a closer look,  it was a skull.  I put it in my game bag and carried it home, while I  cleaning the squirrells, I left the skull on the back poarch.   It was near dark, my Mother came out and turned the light on, she saw the skull and went into a fit.  We lived back in the country, didn't have a telephone, and it quite a long ways to the next house, but she insisted I walk up there and have someone call the Sheriff.  He took the skull,  and  said he would be back the next day for me to take him to the place I found it.

We went back the next day, and couldn't find any other bones.  The skull was examined by someone and determined to be well over a hundred years old.  Likely either native American, or Civil War remains.  I didn't see anything wrong wwith bringing it home, after all every kid needs his very own skull, but my Mother sure didn't see it that way.  I was lucky I didn't get my pants dusted.

[gypsyman]

Did a gun show in Quincy,Ill. many years ago. One of the security guards was a local police officer, also a diver for the area's rescue team.He related this story. He was on a recovery mission for a couple of people that had drowned in the Mississippi. In that stretch there are locks and dams. He said that sometimes a body will get caught at the base of a dam, because of the back flow of the water coming from above. He was feeling his way around, as the water was pretty muddy. He felt something bump him in the back, figuring that it might be the body floating around. When he turned around, he grabbed out, and pulled it closer, as the water was so murky, he realized it was a catfish, according to him, with a head bigger than his own. He claimed to have been the second person in the world to have walked on water, and he did it with swim fins on! Almost became catfish p**  gypsyman

[Captain Emo]

I once found a dog license from 1965 while fishing the Little Juniata.  It is a brass tag that goes on the collar. 

Another time I was canoeing with a few friends.  We sent around a bend in the river and saw something odd on a gravel bar that went out into the river.  It kinda looked like a dead body, kind of twisted up.  As we drew closer, it moved, and we became aware of what it was . . two young women having "relations"  out on that sunny gravel bar.  All we could do was watch them get dressed and offer them a beer. 

Another time while fly fishing, I found a turtle with no front legs.  Both were gone. Old injury, scarred over.  I wondered what bit that tough little guys legs off.   

[.308 Win.]

  A few years back while hunting in Shelby County, Kentucky, I came up on a compound bow, quiver and arrows hanging in a tree.  The landowners said they didn't know who it belonged to so I gave it to my cousin.  Come to find out, the man who owns the next farm over liked to shoot at legitimate hunters in their treestands while bowhunting.  It happened to the same cousin I'd given the bow to and another friend of mine as well, on the same day. We called the state police but they said they couldn't do anything about it unless they saw it first hand.  They wouldn't even go and talk to the man.  I figure he shot at whoever owned this bow and the bowhunter freaked out and ran out of the woods leaving his bow hanging in the tree.  Now, here's the kicker: A year later when I was gun hunting in the same area, I was approached by the game warden.  After he checked all my tags, licenses, etc., I asked him that if I decided to bowhunt this area again and I brought my pistol, would that be legal for me to do given the circumstances. The regulations state that no firearm is to be carried while bowhunting but the thought that I'd need to be able to protect myself was looming large.   He said "No."  He went on to say I'd need to find another place to bowhunt.  What kind of sh*t is THAT?  They wouldn't go after the neighboring farmer but said they'd try to take my pistol.  I just laughed and told him he wouldn't be getting my pistol without a fight.  Didn't matter, though.  The man who owned the farm I hunted on died and his kids wouldn't allow any hunting anymore because of the potential for trouble.  The bow I found was a Bear and it had one of those overdraws that were so popular back then.     

[jamesrus]

My dad found an old double barrel muzzleloading shotgun grown into a tree when he was a teenager, hes 67 now.  The gun was in surprisingly good shape. It still hangs over his fireplace today. There were no makers marks or anything on it. It appears to be around a 12 guage.

Jamesrus

[grumpyErik]

My fishing buddy and I are always finding the dead or at least parts of them. Once while fishing the VFW post pond we found a homeless guy who had apparently gotten drunk and drown, he was caught under the dock. We often seine for bait doing this we have found old guns (probably murder weapons), human remains and other strange things. Its odd, we have found so much stuff seining that the police really get tired of us bringing them stuff we have found.

[Brock Samson]

In 1993, after surviving a summer that included the murder of my police partner, a tough divorce (aren't they all?), and about 3 other serious "life events",  I was beginning to think I could be happy again, with the nice little home I bought on the Tippecanoe River.  I'd met a lovely lady, and one sunny weekend, I had her and her young sons over to go inner-tubing on the river.  We dropped in at the dam, about a mile upriver, and had a nice float down to my house.  This was the first time I'd done this, and it was quite wonderful.  As we're paddling up to my little beach, I saw something snagged on my pier, just below the water, that turned my stomach over.  I told Viv to take the boys away from the pier for a moment, where they couldn't see.  I waded back in, and pulled at what looked like a T-shirt.  Sure enough, it was, and there was a spinal column still in it.  I forget how I kept the kids away, but I kept them distracted until I got another officer out there.  One of my county deputy buddies (a scuba diver, used to body recoveries) was the first to arrive, and took a look.

Here's the weird thing; it was a pig's spine, inside a t-shirt!  We speculated that somebody had poached a hog, then wrapped the remains and dumped them off the bridge.  Either that, or someone with a twisted sense of humor!  It sure worked on me! 

Always was a little tough to relax on the water after that inaugural float! 

[Brock Samson]

Oh yeah, one more.  Regarding catfish and dead bodies. 

I'm a scuba diver, but never went for police scuba work, because I prefer my water clear and blue.  Grabbing a wet decomposing corpse in cold, dark, opaque water is not my idea of fun.  I convinced a buddy to do it, however, telling him he'd get great training.  He got the training, and a whole lot more.

A couple years ago, they drained Lake Shafer, up north of where I live, so that folks could repair piers, etc.  When they did so, they discovered a car that'd gone off the road MANY years ago.  This was the missing car that contained two college boys who'd been missing.  Speculation had always been a murder, or kidnap/murder, because the last place they'd been seen was as strip club in a rough part of a neighboring town. 

Anyway, the lake goes down, they see the top of this car, and call the State Police dive team to come help get it out, and process it as a crime scene.  My buddy goes up there, helps rig the tow lines to yank the car, and they drag it up to dry land.  It's full of water, of course, so they open the doors to pour out the water, and along with the water comes this GIGANTIC catfish!  All the windows were rolled up to just a crack, so we reasoned that a tiny catfish had swam in through the vents, started eating the boys (oh, yeah, both boys were there; turns out they'd just missed a turn and driven into the lake, not been murdered), and grown too big to swim out!  So for God only knows how long, this gigantic, corpse-engorged catfish had been lurking there in this submerged car, too big to escape!  They kept the catfish for several hours in the bottom of one of the dive boats, but nobody wanted to keep a fish that'd eaten the boys, so they eventually released it, after taking dozens of pictures.  I was amazed that something that big could live on the oxygen in the water that ran through the vents, but then, catfish are tough.  I can't imagine how big the fish must have been before it started atrophying from lack of food. 

So you could say there's actually a "man-eating" catfish in Lake Shafer. 

[mikedb]

found some abandoned graves from the 1830s on state land while deer hunting maybe 12 years ago.   They are on a high spot surrounded by marsh.  Around the high ground surrounding the graves are many 50- 60 ft pines.  They appear like they were planted to hide the grave markers.  When I set up to hunt their before I saw the graves I had a real sense of peace.  It was like I was in a cathedral.  I then saw the markers laying down in the grass.   I did some research and traced them back to a settler from NY state that moved to Michigan.  His wife was burried there with two children that I assume died with her in childbirth.  The other grave was an older sybling.  Tough time the 1830s.  BTW the local historical society is aware of the graves and asked I not show anyone the location to minimize the chance of vandalism.

[Ray Ford]

There is lots of evidence, much found in old cemeteries, that setting the west was hard. 

Just over a half of a mile north of our place in Alfalfa County, Oklahoma, there is a reasonably well-maintained but small cemetery.  It sets in the northwest corner of a northwest quarter of a section.  It has a story.  That quarter section (160 acres) was claimed by a family who made the Oklahoma Land Run into the Cherokee Strip.  (That run was one of the times that the United States government went back on their promise that Indian Territory would belong to the Indians as long as the sun shined, the waters flowed, and the grass grew--or something like that.  I don't remember the exact words of the treaty.) The family, after staking their claim, dug and built a dugout to live in the first winter.  They hoped to build better the next summer.  Summer never came for them.  A deep snow caused the roof of their temporary shelter to cave in, and the entire family was killed.  Neighbors dug them graves in the corner of the quarter section and buried them.  That started the cemetery, and others joined them there.

A couple of miles south of this cemetery is the last extant sod house in Oklahoma.  The people who staked their claim for the quarter section where it is located built it and lived in it for a while before building a wooden house.  The abandoned sod house set there for decades--out lasting two wooden houses and now sharing the land with a third. It was turned over to the Oklahoma State Historical Society by the land owners.  The Society built a steel building over it to preserve it--and it promptly started falling apart.  Seems a sod house will last forever out in the weather where the sod in the walls can have its moisture content replenished with each rain and snow.  In a protecting building, the walls dry out and start to crumble.  The structure is now regularly wet down and is in good repair.  If you, or your children, have only read about the sod houses of the early setters on the prairies, you might want to visit this last one.  Go west on HW 412 out of Enid to where HW 8 heads off north toward Cherokee.  Go through Cleo Springs and watch on the left/east.  If you see the little cemetery, you missed it.

On another note of possible interest, settlers in dugouts and sod houses liked to share their abodes with two critters: Bull Snakes and Dirt Daubers.  Bull Snakes took care of rats and mice--and other snakes.  Dirt Daubers took care of spiders.

If you go to www.gbofreeforums.info/Raysplace, you can read about some strange graves that I found back east of Roff, Oklahoma.

[Ray Ford]

Here's the weird thing; it was a pig's spine, inside a t-shirt!  We speculated that somebody had poached a hog, then wrapped the remains and dumped them off the bridge.  Either that, or someone with a twisted sense of humor!  It sure worked on me! 

Always was a little tough to relax on the water after that inaugural float!

Many years ago, when I was a young reporter for the Okmulgee (Oklahoma) Times, we received a call about the discovery of the remains of a woman's hand.  An old mansion dating to the oil boom of the early 1900's was being razed.  Over a wall and behind a ceiling joist in the detached garage was what appeared to be the bones of a woman's hand.  It caused a stir, and the police and news people were contacted.  But on examination by medical people, the woman's hand turned out to be a pig's foot.  Possibly it had been discarded and a rat or a cat had carried it into the garage.  Fortunately, it was NOT enclosed in a glove--though that would have been an interesting story for my paper.

In the house of poorer folks, no pig's foot would have been discarded: they were boiled/pickled and eaten.  To discard a pig's foot would have been a waste of good food.

 

[Oldtimer]

A friend owns a farm in the bend of a river and the only access is across another farmer's property, so few people hunt there.  The river has cut a high bluff, at the top of which is an old house, long abandoned.  I am told by a woman who grew up on the farm that the house has a hand dug well that is nearly 100 feet deep.  The well is not marked, so it is risky to go around the house.  If you fell in, it is doubtful that you would ever be found.  Next to the house is an area of about half an acre and every hardwood on it has multiple witch's brooms.  For those of you who don't know what a witch's broom is, it is when all the twigs on a branch grow at the same rate.  Trees put out an enzyme that inhibits lateral bud development,but allows the terminal bud to continue growing.  When I was working, I had a territory about the size of the state of Connecticut  and I only knew of one other tree in that whole area outside this half-acre that had a witch's broom.  Now the presence of the witch's brooms is one thing, but I have always had the sensation of being watched when I was in the area of the house, and especially in the half-acre with the witch's brooms.

[jamesrus]

Hey guys i have a place on the hunting club i hunt on that i can find petrified sharks teeth, petrified whale bones, petrified wood, and arrowheads and spearheads dating from neolithic times. I have a small collection of all of them. The best find i ever made was a 3 inch diameter whale vertebra. When i picked it up it was hiding the point of a 4 inch long 2 inch wide spear point.  The sharks teeth range from 1/4 inch long to 4 inches.  All of these items can be found in the sandy bottom of a creek bed that cuts across this hunting club and descends over 100 feet in roughly a mile. There are also oyster shells and tube worm fossils in the creek. This area is in the north central part of Louisiana right on the edge of the mississippi river valley. Im planning on going looking for more this spring when it warms up enough to be in the creek up to my knees for a few hours.

Jamesrus

[rex6666]

I was working as a dispatcher for a large trucking co. in OK. the co was at the edge of town
i got off work at 7am i had taken to going home through the country, might see a coyote
or something. One mourning i was about 2 miles from home when i saw something in the
ditch ahead then it disappeard, when i got closer i stopped my pickup and got out and looked up and down the ditch i was about to leave i heard a voice that said pease help me.
I looked closer and there was a young girl, i was 34 at the time. she was completely naked
and scared to death. lucily i had a old camo top behind the seat of my truck and through it to her see put it on and came out i put her in the truck she was very scared at first. She
told me she was 16 and 2 boys she knew had taken her clothes and put her out, be cause she refused to have sex with them. Then is when i started getting scared, ske didn't want to call the police, i didn't know what to do, thought it might be a trick. I took her home with me cause i knew my wife didn't leave until 8:30. My wife was a little sceptical to say the least
we finally made her understand we had to call the police our her parents, she finally let my wife call her parents, that had been uot since 1am looking for her. the paarents came and got her, they ask me lots of questions and were finally satified they did not want to call the police either. I promised my self for years next time i would mind my own bus.

[kyelkhunter3006]

I can understand that, now-a-days it seems that it doesn't take much to be turned from the rescuer to the bad guy.  I would have been petrified.....

[Ray Ford]

Let me make a couple of observations:

First, girls and women have been used as bait--as decoys to lure someone into a robbery or an assault.  I doubt that this was the case: if she had been a decoy, she would probably have not hidden.

Second, the proliferation of cell phones has solved some problems in some situations.  In a situation like this, as someone with a background in law enforcement, private security, and the ministry, I would recommend that you call 911 IMMEDIATELY.  Do not attempt to transport a person in a situation like this yourself--and by yourself.  I say this, but, in an emergency situation, I would probably take the risk IF IT WAS CALLED FOR!  As you described this situation, I see no real emergency: she was not physically injured.  The skepticism of your wife, and the questions of her parents, should let you know into what kind of situation you were putting yourself

BTW, I have, in recent years, lost my willingness to stop and help a woman in trouble on the road.  I think that such women are already anxiety-ridden, and, if a guy that looks like me stops, they might shoot first and....  With the concealed carry laws, many such women have guns.  Unless stopping is really called for, I assume they have a cell phone and can get help.

BTW again, thanks for helping the girl out.  If she were my daughter, I would be grateful--but probably ask you a lot of questions.

 

[rex6666]

I  fogot to say this was in 1976 -77 no cel phones and where she was their wouldn't have been 2-3 cars a day. I would do it again if i thought it was on the up and up,
depends on where, their are some really strange folks out and about now days

[halfbreed]

"Last Sept. we were packing out after a goat hunt on a popular trail, I found a wallet with $2,371 on cash, credit dards, title to a horse trailer, pilots' license, etc. The owner had lost it 7 weeks prior, had been up looking for it 3 times. Nice guy, gave me $300! Why would anybody carry that kinda stuff on the mountain?"

because at home I can get anything fixed and wait till payday to pay for it. But on the road, nope, cash is about it.

[sunshinegirl]

I found a fire extinguisher went up on a mountain top. Wonder how it got up there, and that evening my brother told me he found a old 4 seater plane wreck. I located the site of shredded aluminum, what was left of the fuselage and a bronze place with the names of 3 women & one man who died in the crash. We found out the plane had left a local airport with these people, and ran square into the mountain in foggy conditions. The word was they had won big at a local race track, and money was strewn every where. There is also the engine section of a jet trainer that crashed in the 50's, and on an adjacent hill, there is a twin engine plane that did a fog landing, but the hill side was so steep that the wings sheared off breaking forward speed, so the pilot survived.
 I did find a Sony digital camera, tried to locate the owner, but never found the person, if that counts.

[Specklebelly]

I didn't experience this but saw it on the news.

Most people around here don't know this but Oklahoma City owns a wildlife refuge by one of the water supply lakes.  It is a neat place to run the dogs but also has had a history of bodies being dumped there.

A year or so ago some slime ball murdered his pregnant girlfriend, presumably to get out of child support payments.  The cops were tipped that the body was buried in the refuge so they sent out search parties.

They found the poor woman's body and get this, they also found another one they were not searching for.   

Not a big story but a little too creapy for me.