Interesting discoveries in the woods?

in south-east SD my brother and i were playing in a small local wood lot back in the mid 80's. we liked to play guns alot and there were plenty of downed trees to hide behind. i took cover behind one of these logs and noticed some shiny black plastic peeking out of some loose leaf litter covering it. i removed the debris and the plastic and found a cooler. opened the cooler and there were what looked to be tiny white beads that smelled like some kind of petrolium stuff.

we ran back to the house, got dad, and showed him what we found. called the police and when he arrived, he said it was something they used to make illeagle drugs. today i now realize it was used to make meth.

for a week i slept uneasy thinking that the drug makers had seen us and what happened to the stash.

--------- Eric
 
Probable the coolest thing I ever found in the woods, was with my Dad in 1972. While looking for areas where Dad could clear trees to expand one of our cattle pastures, we found these stones in a pile, with some sunk about half way down into the dirt.

Dad spent a few days digging them up and dragging them with a tractor and chains into our backyard to make a flower bed for my Mom with them.

He died in 1977, so we've moved them with Mom to each house she has lived in since, they currently sit at their 4th house! (it takes a backhoe and trailer to move them)

Over the years, we've had a few archaeologist types look at them and say they are obviously shaped by humans, they are to square to be natural, but none of them could set an age on them. A few folks have tried to buy them.

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Wow, a bit of ancient American Druidism perhaps? Very cool find. Keep these coming guys! Makes very interesting reading for my recovery.
 
More finds when we were out with the parents. They hunted grouse as we explored and waited for the Coleman stoves to be lit. One that haunts me to this day was an old homesteader house now deep in poplar. Had an attic full of 1950 maybe earlier Popular Mechanics and other pulps including science fiction. We read a few then walked away. My memory has them as being in very good condition, long since mouse nest material.:( The floor was ankle deep in them.
Found another old shed, with a tree growing out of it. Inside was an old black bed frame, with the tree in the middle. Wondered why my mom was so happy as it was loaded in the wagons. The we took the brasso polish to it. A plain and very old brass bed emerged over the next weeks. Plain but handsome.
 
i found a brand new busse laying in the woods the other day...i wish.
nothing interesting for me....?
 
TAH said:
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.
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I have spent alot of time in the Daniel Boon Forest ! If you hang around the area (cave run lake area) You will see some real weird people ! The place is also full of Pot :grumpy: You have to really watch yourself when you go in that place !
 
hiking around the Hoosier National Forest, and especially the Charles C Deam wilderness area, there are all kinds of remains of roads and building foundations and the like. A few weeks ago I found a couple of rusty pieces of a pot bellied stove a few yards apart in a creek bed. I wondered how long it had taken for it to disintegrate to that point, where the cabin that it came from had been located and what happened to whoever had been there. The real answers probably wouldn't be as interesting as some of the stories I imagined.
 
Came across this while grouse hunting last year.

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Not that big of a deal except it was way off the beating path.

One more.

Found this bad boy tucked behind a island on the Mississippi while canoing.

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I found a school bus while deer hunting in Carlos, TX one year. It was converted out to be a hunter's cabin of sorts. Had bunks in the walls, no windows on the sides, and a stove set-up in the back. It was rusted to all hell and overgrown. Found it among a bunch of other junk while I was scouting the property.
 
One, we found a large cairn of stones in a nearby woods, figured somebody had buried a pet beneath it. We let it be.

Two, in a clearing high on a local mountaintop, we found a stick wrapped with colorful ribbon and threads, probably part of somebody's spiritual journey. We looked at it and put it back.

Three, we found a small circle of rocks, been there a long time, no sign that a fire had ever been built there. Left that as is, also.
 
Bear Claw Chris Lappe said:
Over the years, we've had a few archaeologist types look at them and say they are obviously shaped by humans, they are to square to be natural, but none of them could set an age on them.
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How to make an archeeologist's heart sink: show him an interesting artifact that's been removed from it's original site.

That's sort of like finding an old slipjoint and cleaning and polishing it and replacing the scales -- and asking Bernard Levine how much more it's worth now that you've fixed it up. :D

In the case of those stones, they don't have to have been there long. Lots of people like to follow what they can of ancient customs and rituals, complete with replica artifacts.

Abandoned as yours were, i think it's a nice touch that you've brought them along each time your mother moved.
 
Stolen. Joyriders. Abandoned.

I used to go up to Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx. It's a large wooded area at the northern border of New York City. Always found stuff in the woods, never touched any of it. Cars like that were a regular feature.

It doesn't take too much of a trail to get a car through, and what grows up over the trail in a few years can make it hard to imagine it having been there.
 
I discoverd this old stone arch bridge as a kid. No roads going to it. Very few people know about it. Its in illinois.

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I found an abandoned Log cabon when I was a teen..... Empty, but old as hell. We camped in it alot as I grew older.

I also found an old Baby Overland upside down in a dried up creek. Man, it was cool. Had bullet holes in the sides, probably from target shooters, but I like to think of bankrobbers or something. It was WAAAAY off the beaten path.

Abandoned graveyards are abundant round here. Pretty spooky thing to come across.
 
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I think it was a truck :D


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We have stone walls everywhere.
All farm land at one time, seems like they farmed rocks.
 
I haven't found anything as cool as alot of you guys yet but i've got a couple small finds,

1. When I was in the National Guard in the 80's I found a Gerber Guardian laying out in the woods. No sheath so I guess it slipped out of some guys sheath.


2. There is a really big state ATV park north of where I live. It used to be an old lead mine and now they've made it into a dirtbike,jeep, ATV park. Some of the old buildings are still there and one looks sort of like a big parking garage and you can blast up and down it on your bike or quad. Not a discovery but a pretty cool old place. It's called St. Joe state park.
 
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