Strange things found in the forest

[YanmarFever]

Strange things found in the forest

This can be a fun or scary story of anything you have come across in your woodsy travels or hunting - scouting.
Old cabins, scary strange people - animals, cougars, graves, booby traps, abandoned items, old cars, camps, mines,
strange sightings, Big Foot!
Or anything unusual that happened to your friends that they will remember forever.

 

[Terry1040]

I found a campsite, with rusty old beer cans, likely from the 1950's or so. Was kind of neat, some had partial painted labels on them. Also, find that I am not the first one here !

 

[MossRoad]

A hobo in the woods back in the 60's. My kids found a hobo in the woods at their summer camp in the 2000's.

A spring cellar with cans of milk being cooled.

Cone-top beer cans.

A pond and a dam that we didn't know was there.

Fox w/babies.

Lots of old belt driven farm equipment.

Garbage bags full of full medicine bottles and mail from a Dr's office (we called our mom on that one. she called the cops).

Metal troughs, that looked like the cement chutes on a cement truck, but 6' long with flat ends and legs... about a hundred of them. Kids in the neighborhood used them as canoes in the lake. They'd sink if you tipped them, so you'd go to the woods and drag out another one. Turned out they were discarded crematorium troughs from the cemetery dump (mom found out and called the cops and health department on that one, too).

 

[YanmarFever]

Ok... here's a few I borrowed from another site to get things going.

My story comes from a man in his 70's that needs to be shared. True story I spoke with the kids (now in thier late 40's). After returning from a long day of hunting with his son and sons friend. Dad noticed the kids had filed thier pockets with rocks. He asked why on earth would they fill their pockets with rocks while out hunting. The son and his friend told him they were filled with gold. The father of course did not believe them and looked at the rocks. Sure enough they were quartz rocks that had a gold vien in them. The kids told Dad there was rocks like this everywhere under "THE TREE". The family has been back every year for near 20 years and have yet to find this spot again.

---------------------------------------
Today went out calling just east of home and found a very nice sporterized Mauser in 25-06 on my way into a stand. High grade dual wood, checkered bolt and high end scope. With the weather wear it looks to have been dropped in the only the last few months. Asked the two neighboring property owners of the BLM land where I was calling if it was there's and they didn't recognize it. As it was found on BLM land it could be from anywhere considering how little of our area is not private land.

After I finished calling for the day I stopped by the Sheriffs office to have them run the numbers and try to locate the owner. I really do hope they find the owner of the rife as it seems they put allot of time and money into it. If they are not able to locate him/her I guess at some point they will give the rifle to me as long as she comes back clean. Will be a neat project restoring it.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Growing up in Northern Idaho in a super small town, we spent lots of time in the woods.

There is an area called West Dennis that in the 80's was still considered pretty remote. It bordered the Indian Reservation on one side and was NF and Private Logging Company land for the rest of it. We loved hunting elk and deer back there. My uncle pretty much raised me and this was his favorite spot in the world to go.

I walked one ridgeline and he and a friend walked in on a finger that branched into two ridgelines about 2 miles in. Plan was to meet back at the pickup in about 6-8 hours. I walked in about 2 miles and sat down to just listen and watch an area with my bino's for an hour or so. Well as most hunting trips turn into a big nap session for me, I decided to not change my MO and promptly fell asleep. I must have been out around 1.5 hours or so (later confirmed by the time). I woke up with every single nerve on HIGH ALERT. I sat there and calmed myself and then I noticed the smell. I can not even begin to describe it properly at this time, but it is NOT a normal smell of the woods. At this time I had killed or been part of harvesting every known animal in the Clearwater National Forest. We sustained our families on the game we harvested. I have spent countless hours in the woods both alone and in parties, by this time in my life (I was 17).

Just as I am considering WTH is up, 3 consecutive shots ring out roughly from the pickup parking area. This is our standard signal to return to the pickup as someone has something down or needs to leave (emergency, etc etc). I return with 2 consecutive shots into an old stump nearby to let everyone know where I am and that I am on my way. I am walking out and catch that smell twice more. Wind is the same as when I walked in, but I do realize swirling winds can do funny things with scents and humans have terrible sniffers. I did NOT smell it on the way in.

I get to the pickup to find a rifle trained on me, by my uncle. I am like WTH and then I notice, he is white as the background on this webboard! He taught me BRM and safety and even when I later went in the Army I have never been taught safety in a more paramount manner than my Uncle teaching me in my early days.

His buddy is in a kneeling position with his rifle to his shoulder pulling what I now realize is rear security. At the time I was like "what are these jokesters up to?" My uncle seeing it was me lowered his weapon and yelled for me to hustle. Now I am worried, here is one of the most accomplished mountian men I know freaking out. I break into a jog for the last 150 -200 yards and get to the pickup.

They barely wait for me to get there and they jump in stuffing me in the middle. Then I notice the pickup is running and they are both sitting with their side arms drawn. My uncle drives like a mad man all the way out, slamming into a stump on the way and denting the heck out of the rear quarter of his pride and joy (1985 Dodge Pickup, hey everyone has a right to dream). They don't say a word except "Anything?" "Nope."

We get back to the hardball and the finally start to relax. By the time we get to my uncles they have relaxed enough to talk. We go out into his "shop" and stoke up the fire.

My uncle and his bud recount this portion of the story as follows.

They were walking in and just as they got to the branch in the finger they smell something, thinking it might be an elk they hunker down in a makeshift hide and wait. My uncles buddy was the first to see it, movement about 75 yards out and FAST movement. They think it is an elk moving downwind. My uncle decides to just chirp a cow call to see if it will stop. Not only does it stop, it stands up. It then starts screaming in what they describe as a distressed woman wailing. Now we have run dogs on bears and cougars so neither of these guys in unfamiliar with the sounds either of those animals makes. They are pretty freaked out they say, it just feels weird. The animal moves off into the woods and they decide it is best to just leave the area. As soon as they stand up to leave 50 yards on the OTHER side of them the brush explodes with sticks being smashed into trees, the wailing sounds from 2 seperate voices/animals. They say F that and start booking it out. As they round a corner on the skid road about 20 yards on the uphill side two very large rocks (they say neither of them could have picked up the rocks) get rolled forcefully onto the trail behind them. Then the wailing starts again 2 voices one on the uphill side one on the downhill side. Either the animals are matching their movement or there are a lot more of them than the original 2, because the brush is pretty thick in this area and it would be hard to match a guys pace on a skid trail while walking off trail in the woods.

They break into a pretty healthy jog, now. They get to the pickup clearing and immediately smell that smell again. My uncle decides to send off the 3 rounds in hopes of calling me back and hopefully to scare off whatever it is that is harassing them. He hears my two return shots and is happy to hear that I am only a couple miles away. They hunker down behind the doors of the pickup, scared to death. They smell the smell one more time and it is right before they spot me walking down my own skid trail to the pickup.

To this day neither my uncle nor his best friend will go back to West Dennis. I don't either by shear respect and awe for this story. These guys would not tell anyone else the story for fear of being called crazy, stupid, naive or worse liars. But I would put my reputation on my uncle without hesitation. Why would he willingly stop hunting his favorite spot that is full of game and beauty?

I never really could place that smell until I was in St. Louis with my two boys. We walked into the large primate exhibit they have and BOOM there it was. I am saying that I am so sure the smell I smelled was primate. Specifically it smelled like the Gorillas the most.

I don't know what any of that means, but it scared the crap out of 2 grown men and by defacto one teenager.

 

[MossRoad]

My best friend and I once found two older kids planting pot in clearings in the woods. They threatened us with a knife. That was a fun day.

 

[Leejohn]

I found today another part and was able to wall down the trail of tears for about a half a mile. I have talked to and got to know the land owners, Hoping I might be able to walk from todays find to the River. It's about 5 or 6 miles of the trail that you just can't go to see or walk on and it's almost all woods. Today it made me think I was walking with them and how sad it must of been.

 

[stuckmotor]

Nearly 30 years ago our elderly neighbor wandered off. Search parties checked all the likely places for days. Finally someone checked a place with no road or path and found his body near our property line.
There were the remains of what l'm told were a couple of raided stills on the farm. One is gone now, the remains of the other are still recognizable.

 

[Gunny]

Years ago I was walking through the woods on our farm and found a Remington 870 minus the barrel, leaning against a tree. It hadn't been there long at all since the metal showed no signs of rust, but nobody in the family knew of anyone that had been hunting the place that year. The two neighbors didn't know anything about it.

I hung onto it for two or three years, just in case somebody came asking about it, but that never happened, so I bought a new barrel for it and used it in my next gun trade.

 

[tcartwri]

Have found my fair share of poached animals. One a black bear with only it's gallbladder removed.. Or that's what I assumed they cut out.

 

[Jstpssng]

I've found many old camps throughout the years, so far nothing except old bottles and trash. Someday I'll go back and dig a few of them. A friend once found an nice old, single shot .22 in a camp, which he cleaned up and- after testing it by tying a string to the trigger- carried in the woods while working.
I came across anice old stone foundation a couple years ago that could have been interesting, I was gokng to visit the local historical society to find out more about it but my employer sold the land before I could get back to it.

While deer hunting this fall I came across the remains of a Honda Recon which was stolen in 2001. The serial #'s were gone but I know who owned it, we knew who stole it, (I caught them trying to steal mine the same night) and it was 1000 feet in back of the used ATV place we knew that it went to. (He stole things in Maine, took the parts off and brought them to PA to sell, then came back with stolen items from PA to sell up here.)

About 40 miles from here - also on my employer's land- a hunter came across a cache of Revolutionary war vintage rifles. He brought one out, but was never to find his way back. More recently in the same area, one of our timber harvesting equipment operators told of coming across the foundations of an old encampment. I've been in looking once with no success, but haven't given up hope.

Laying out a harvest block one day I picked up a big piece of coal about the size of a half gallon jug. It was in a strange place for a piece of coal, but my GPS showed an old road there which has long since returned to woods, and I suspect that the coal was for an old steam powered Lombard log hauler.

I was cruising timber, working my way up a steep mountainside in New Hampshire when I came across an old flume which was used to slide logs down the hill years ago. The wooden frame was gone of course, but it looked like a long concrete mixer chute running down the hill.
On the back side of a lake someplace in upstate New York
I came across an old horse hovel which was still in good shape and had a pair of log scoots inside.

I have never been to see this, Old locomotives sit abandoned in the middle of Maine ? Outdoors ? Bangor Daily News ? BDN Maine
but someday it will be a snowsled destination.