6+ miles from the trailhead, I found a bag containing a couple mountain house meals hanging in a tree. I was low on food and stretching out my hunt another day, this was a good find. It had been there awhile, but was sealed and tasted great!
Son shot a buck the next afternoon.
Like most everyone else here....arrow heads (also found a nice spear point on top of a 11,000' mt in the Sierras), left a custom knife hanging on a nail on our meatpole tree & came back a year later...there it was. Was dove hunting in Californias' Imperial Valley and found a Browning O/U shotgun laying in the road, unfortunately someone had ran over it. It was totaled. Gave it to a friend who was gunsmith for parts.
A person that was missing for a month (dead) Found him while cutting across the ice of a frozen swamp as his hand was the only thing sticking out of the ice.
Found a few patches of Mary Jane, a couple of meth labs and on the local military base I have found some smoke grenades, still taped to trees and some dummy claymore mines. I have lost far more than I have found.
On my first elk hunt, one of my dad's friends and I got badly turned around on a mountain. We ended up taking the LONG way out... We stumbled on an area about 100 yards long by 30 yards wide full of petrified wood. Some very cool pieces- whole stumps, branches, sticks etc. I tried to go back several times but could never find it again. I was 14 at the time. Thanks to google earth, I am pretty confident I know where it is now and have plans for a summer hike. Hopefully will post pictures when I make it back. There are still no roads at all in the area so I'm hoping it is all still there.
It isn't easy being a deer in our woods. Wasn't a shock to find a body out at that hunting lease. It's a pretty rough area. Explains the meth stuff. There used to be shoot-outs between hunting camps and sometimes LEO when the folks would hole up on the islands formed by the river. Columbia came apart right over our area, hear the boom and look up to see all kinds of stuff scattering from it. That was a sad deal knowing what you were watching.
Arrowheads are fairly common where I hunt now since the close towns are named after Indian Chiefs that inhabited the area. The place has a big ridge on it just out of flood plain for the river that the cows like to get behind anytime a cold front blows through..I'm thinking the natives did the same thing since I'll find an arrowhead on the backside of that ridge by accident just about every year. 4 in a pile one day.
Wow Hilltop, would love to see those pictures. Make sure you turn the location settings off on your phone if you use it to take the pictures or it may imprint the GPS coordinates into the image. Very few really nice petrified wood sites left. I have read stories of areas that had standing forests years ago. That would have been cool to see.
Lots of cool finds here. I have found much of the same stuff; binoculars, knives stuck in trees, dog leash's, arrowheads and a really nice hammerhead, glove and hats, always the left hand one. I always seem to lose the right.
One interesting thing was walking through a trip wire some mental giant had set up in a narrow draw that led to his pot patch. It was attached to some sort of pyrotechnic that was weathered enough to not go bang. Pot was all cut down and hauled out, but they left the booby trap. I left a note.
I have found petrified wood while elk hut with my brother in north eastern Arizona. There is actually quite a bit of it. I found these remains of an old truck mles from any road in Nevada. I've always wondered who drove it there and whether he died there too. I found the bottom part of a shovel and the soles of a pair of boots.
Found a jump rope about 3 miles from any roads at 6 ,500 ft elevation, found an American Flag driven into a tree which was cool it had to have been there for 15 years or more....Tree grew around the flag pole/stick. Also found a dictionary in the backwoods which was unusual.
Out deer hunting, pulled up to an old gated off logging road, one set of human tracks in the snow going in and coming out from the previous day. About a half mile down the road with thick brush on both sides the track going in it started to take longer steps, now running, what's up with this I thought? Cleared that heavy brush and 5 feet off the trail the snow is all tramped down. In the snow is a pair of blue and white checker boxer shorts, kind of stained! I don't wear boxers so I didn't pick them!
What's the ethical thing to do about tree stands? We found two that don't look like they're getting used. Was thinking if they're there this spring/summer we might "move" them.
What's the ethical thing to do about tree stands? We found two that don't look like they're getting used. Was thinking if they're there this spring/summer we might "move" them.
Check the state regs. I know a lot of states have time limits that the tree stands or blinds can be left up. At a certain point it is considered littering or destruction of the environment so my thoughts are that if someone wants it, they will get it within a month after season. If they are still there I'd say they are fair game, but that's just me. I know I pull my stands down right after season unless they are on private and I'm not worried about them going anywhere.
im not sure on the rules, ive never taken any down but ive been tempted when ive found them snow shoeing during winter. find several that are all rusted out and old
I found a Scentlok jacket a couple years ago---fit me perfect!!! More than made up for all the sets of homemade shooting sticks I've left out in the mountains over the years.
I don't know about the "ethical" part of it, but the stands I find usually have tree spikes, rope, and miscellaneous items in the area. Here they are required to be marked with name and phone number and pulled by a certain date. They seem like trash to me, and not cool. People should pick up after themselves.
Not joking about filling my truck. We find piles of them in the spring while shed hunting. Never any rusty ones so I suppose SDGFP goes out and collects them.
I'm not sure of rules/law. I think filling up the pickup and making a trash run if found on National Forest ground after season seems appropriate. I spend more time picking up garbage flyfishing then actually fishing in some spots. People never seem to amaze me in their laziness and lack of respect for all the land we share.
One year my father found a 300 Weatherby rifle leaned up against a tree over near White Sulpher Springs. A female hunter had gone to the bathroom and had completely forgot about her rifle as she wandered off after finishing her business. Once she realized she had left it, she was not able to locate her tree! There were not a lot of camps near where my dad and his friends were camped and he just felt it probably belonged to someone in that camp. My dad said that when he walked into their camp with a spare 300 Weatherby, he has never seen another person so appreciative and thankful in their lives as she was.
I was with my grandfather hunting a couple different times over near Roy Montana in the Missouri Breaks and we found a couple dinosaur bones and an arrowhead. I was helping him one summer move some cattle back in the breaks on horseback when we came upon a complete skeleton of a really nice 5 point mule deer buck hanging up in a tree. It had been there for years and the bones were all white and bleached and there was not a single spot of flesh or anything on the bones. No animals had been able to reach the buck as it was hung up really high into the tree. It was hanging by it's back legs and the tip of the nose was down. The end of the nose had to be 7 feet up off the ground to give you an idea. The hunter (s) didn't want a bear, lion, or coyotes getting to it I would assume. The breaks country is pretty rough stuff and it's easy to get turned around. All we could figure was they just never were able to find the tree they hung him in again. I so wish I would have had a camera. I was just about 12 years old when that happened.
My buddy Jeff lost a brand new $700.00 GPS over near P-burg where we hunt. We spent the better part of one day looking for it. It was the very first day he used the darn thing!
I was hunting in the same general area one day archery hunting for elk with another friend. After hunting hard all day and taking one more walk up a likely looking ridge from the truck and not seeing anything or hearing any elk, we went back and decided to call it a day. At the truck we took our packs off and set our bows down and got a snack and water. Threw everything in the truck and drove home which was about 70 miles away. Got to my friends place and his bow was not in the truck. Realized he had left it sitting up against the right front tire on the pickup. In a panic he jumped into his pickup and hauled ass back over there certain that his bow had been driven over by me as we pulled out onto the Forest Service road and/or someone had driven by and snagged it.
He got back over there and somehow I did not manage to run over his $800.00 compound bow and it was still sitting on the edge of the Forest Service road. I KNOW that several folks had to drive past this bow sitting by the road. Only thing I can figure why it was still there is that when people drove past, they had to figure the guy/gal was just up the hill going to the bathroom or something. Luck was on his side that day!