Interesting discoveries in the woods?

TAH

TAH

Joined
Jul 3, 2001
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With the recent story of hikers discovering Steve Fossett's plane wreckage in the California wilderness, what is the most interesting thing that you have come across in the woods?

Mine would probably be an abandoned backcountry campsite with all kinds of stuff that had been obviously laying around for a long time. Some of the items we found were sleeping bags, clothing, an axe, unused cartridges, and even canned food. It appeared that for some reason, somebody left in a real hurry.

We discovered it while backpacking in Red River Gorge (Daniel Boone National Forest, Kentucky) in the 90s. We reported it to forest rangers after our trip.
 
When I was about 12 or 13 years old, my best friend and I were bumming around in the woods across from my house. It was a Sunday afternoon and all was well, saw some of the local wildlife etc. Then we saw a car parked in a big clump of trees. We went back and told my dad, who in turn, called the Sheriff's Office. Turns out the car had been stolen and abandoned there. Aside from some old rusty cans, buckets, old beer bottles, porno mags,and remains of campsites...that's about as interesting as I've come across so far. -Matt-
 
Was hiking in a very remote part of western massachusetts and found a jackers camp. It was stocked kind of the same way as you described, I mean they had everything in this camp. It was on an island in the middle of a swamp. We found it during the winter out on the ice.
Come to find out they ended up getting caught and confessed to illegally harvesting tons of deer, if I remember correctly they all went to jail.

Here is a kind of funny one..a few buds and I were fishing a reservior and one of my buds who is cheaper than dirt yells to us that he just found a dollar bill. We yell back, nice find, take it and hurry up. We then get a reply back "oh no", get over here and see this"
We run over to see what the heck he is yelling about.
Someone had taken a HUGE crap and placed a dollar bill into it. When my bud reached and grabbed the dollar he also got a handful of the jokers crap.
We laughed so friggin hard over this one.

Have a good un'
 
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Found a pot plantation once. Left in a hurry. Visitors not welcomed.

Found an abandoned gold mine - buildings, boxes of stock certificates (those the rodents hadn't claimed for nests), and all. I still have 5000 shares of Big Gigantic Gold Mine Inc. (or whatever it's called). Shoulda' taken some of those old bottles, but they were heavy and the paper was light.

Found the six beer bottles from the guy who took two shots at us in deer season one year - and two empty 30.06 rounds. It's true that you hear the ziipp just before the bang.

Found a guy who had wandered off and died of a heart attack. Didn't look very nice to three an eight-year-olds --- or anyone else I suppose. Had his red bandanna in one hand as if wipping his brow.

Found an old rimfire black powder shell made into a plumbbob. Wonder what he was building?

Found a dog, but he left us after two weeks. (Face it, he found us.)
 
GREAT POST.


1st one-
Dead guy.

I found a hike that jumped off of the top of a mountain, close to charlotte. Had to call the rangers in, wait an hour, then about 90 people came up, plain clothes detectives, people with dogs, all sorts of crazy things. The guy had folded all his clothes before he left home, a tell tale sign of suicide.

2- an old well

Straight out of the ring. An old well in the middle of the forest. Actually, it turned out to be an old old old home stead, you can see foundation rocks everywhere

3-abandoned whisky still. Its NC, Nuff said.


4-
A walker coon hound while backpacking, he was so excited to see everyone that he peed all over us. We packed his little behind out and found the owner. She was overjoyed.

5- an old abandoned campsite in the middle of no where. Some crazy woods squatter I'm sure.

6- Bear bag aftermath, while bushwhacking.

I'll be posting pics of this up later on, but it was with howitz 2 weekends ago. Really neat
 
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Found a nose assembly for one or the twin engined trainers used here on the prairies for the Commonwealth air Trainer program. Forget the model of aircraft at the moment. Not that odd a find as a lot of these trainers were sold off to farmers as scrap I was told. They used the wiring, wheels, generator, motors etc. around the farm. Came across a couple of the yellow planes in various stripped stages i farmyards when I was a kid in the early sixties.
Once almost lost my shins to a post hole auger that used an aircraft starter motor for the drive.:grumpy:
 
i found a cessna 150....when i was 18 and in Civil Air Patrol...it had crashed and i found it with an ELT locater.

at 15 my friends and I found an old house compete with windmill, well, and outhouse and barn. it was a 10 bunk longhouse made out of brick and was older that god...had not been used in years...everything was covered in inches of dust and dirt.

very cool though was the newspaper on the floor was dated like 1915-16 or some where close to that, and the cabinets on the wall still had stuff in them...some clearish liquid that more than likely been jarred food...but i wasnt going to look in it....razor blades an strop broken mugs...all sorts of stuff...ranch hand type stuff.

my friends and I went back there many many time while growing up...we always found something new...the old machetes and double bit axes were awesome...just to bad i didnt understand how cool all that was going to be.

it has been 13 years since i was there last...wonder whats going on with it now....

might just have to go back...and see.
 
I once found a safe out in the middle or Arches National Park. Yes, a safe. It was old, real old and may be referred to as a strong box. I had hiked about four hours from the road and came across it under a big overhang where it was preserved dry for who knows how long with it's door and lock broken open. My guess it that it weighed 200lbs and was a real chore to get it to where I found it. Images of cowboys and bad guys out in the wild west fill my head to this day.
j
 
Except for an old trash site in my fathers woods (his propery and the surrounding properties had once been part of a large, working farm), it's been the breathtaking sites if you hike far enough into state and federal parks. Lots of people on the trails, but I have found some really nice spots literally off the beaten path.
 
As a kid in israel i found some hand grenades.... Another time i found a few machine gun belts loaded with 308. Those ones we didnt report but took them home to use the gun powder... We also found a Bunker that was used to hide weapons... Here in the LA area i came across people have sex and once across some realy hot looking girl all naked skiny dipping in a lake... That was the best find yet..

sasha
 
My daughter and I went for a "hike" through the neighboring woods one day and found two abandoned railroad passenger cars on what had been a siding a long time ago. The nearby rail line was long discontinued. The cars looked like something out of the old west.

By the greatest coincidence, as we came out of the woods by the next town, we saw a train coming towards us! It turned out to be an excursion train, the first on that line in years, celebrating the line's reopening. As Walter Cronkite would have said, "and we were there!" :D
 
I've found my share of crazy looking plants / fungus while exploring, but most those pictures are on another computer.

Me and my friends did come across this the other week. It was gone when we left.

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I have found alot of machetes, flashlights, axes, knives, cups, even backpacks when I've been on some of the more traveled paths.
Don't know if they just frogot them or didn't want to carry them back.

Found a ontario machete on my dads lot when I was 8, he cleaned it up for me and I played with that thing alot growning up.

Found an old horse carraige when I live in wisconsin, had trunks of old junk in it.

Found a abandoned squaters camp on the property where I hunt.

Found some pot plants in my local woods.
 
langston302 said:
i found a cessna 150....when i was 18 and in Civil Air Patrol...it had crashed and i found it with an ELT locater.

at 15 my friends and I found an old house compete with windmill, well, and outhouse and barn. it was a 10 bunk longhouse made out of brick and was older that god...had not been used in years...everything was covered in inches of dust and dirt.

very cool though was the newspaper on the floor was dated like 1915-16 or some where close to that, and the cabinets on the wall still had stuff in them...some clearish liquid that more than likely been jarred food...but i wasnt going to look in it....razor blades an strop broken mugs...all sorts of stuff...ranch hand type stuff.

my friends and I went back there many many time while growing up...we always found something new...the old machetes and double bit axes were awesome...just to bad i didnt understand how cool all that was going to be.

it has been 13 years since i was there last...wonder whats going on with it now....

might just have to go back...and see.
Click to expand...



Make sure you bring a camera, I'd love to see the windmill.
 
When surveying in the Black Hills in the 70's we would find old mining camps with shacks full of old bottles, picks, shovels and cans. There was always old mining machinery around usually hooked up to an old automobile on blocks that ran a small crusher or some other sort mine equipment.

Found a two man Eureka Timberline tent laying in the weeds off trail. Complete and in good shape. I still have it.

In the far corner of the woods behind our house there was a very large animal bone pile. It was where the early farmers carried their dead animals to dispose of them. The kids called it "Haunted Woods".
 
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Found an abandoned log cabin down in a steep sided hollow once while four wheeling with my ex a few years ago. Found two abandoned cemetery's on the ridge above our house.

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It's an old one for sure, seems like most of the buried died around the same time period, close to the Spanish Flu pandemic? Quite a few of the graves belong to infants who only lived a few days.
 
I ahve one of those by my plantation in south carolina. Amazing to read the stuff on the stones, isn't it!

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and my old jeep next to it. RIP jeep :(

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Cool thread!:thumbup:

1. In northern New Hampshire a ways behind my grandfather's house when I was a kid, I found a cool little cave and outside of it was an old fire pit with a couple of cheap cooking pots.

2. in the Finger Lakes region of western NY I found a small, abandoned graveyard from the mid-1800's.
 
A buddy and hiked up out of some creek bottoms to the top of a gorgeous clear grassy plateau in Hoosier Nat'l Forrest. We took a break to have lunch since the area was so quiet and the grass so thick and green.

As I was prepping some grub I noticed that there seemed to be sunken oval indentations in the ground all around us that varied in size from just a 2 feet in length to about 5 1/2 feet. I brushed some of the grass to the size by the indentation that was nearest to me and found a small flat stone with a weather inscription. We were right in the middle of a cemetery that was as old as Indiana itself. Not far from this spot there are some remains of early settler's cabins. The cabins are on every map you'll find of Hoosier but this particular cemetery is not.

The hard life those early Hoosiers led was pretty evident in those small hand carved field stones. The shorter holes were heartbreaking when you realize that they were children's graves and that they greatly outnumbered the adult graves.
 
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