Odd finds while in the field

Found a base plate for a land surveying tool that had a date of 1822 stamped in it on the Louisiana/Mississippi border. Found an coors beer can with a crow feather stuck in it at about 10,000’ in the eagles nest wilderness area in Colorado, looked like it had been there for years. Found some sort of shrine or something deep in the wilderness in Colorado once, had bits of paper and a few trinkets inside of it, and a 12” mill bastard file with the tang stuck into a pine tree. It was pretty rusted and looked like it had been there a really long time. The tree had grown around it and kinky about 8” of the file was sticking out.
 
Still have the base plate, but the file is the only thing I have a pic of
 

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The weirdest thing I’ve ever seen was people wearing masks in the middle of the Pasayten Wilderness.
Yup, hiking out of Ptarmigan Peak Wilderness we had hikers coming up who glared at us with their masks on, they passed us about ten feet off the trail, downwind.
 
Not too weird in comparison to others but did find an Indian allotment stake while near the North Dakota South Dakota border working on the corps of engineers ground on end Missouri River. Pretty cool and showed the students that I was teaching that fall and it helped provide true history to text. Another more creepy thing was a punching bag in a random canyon on the pine ridge Reservation in a canyon miles from any road. Did not check that one out too close.
 
I was hunting Mt. quail in the Piute Mts a few years bace and came upon a 12 ft. wooden boat. 7200' and Where I had walked into was accessible by foot only. It did not look like it had been there for a real long time. I figured it was someones idea of a joke.
 
I found an elk antler in Brainerd MN at the new way side rest area that we were doing the landscaping on. It was in a area that they had stripped off over a foot of top soil and was still half buried.
Another time my wife and I were up grouse hunting the edge of a clear cut around Ely MN and found an antique hand cross cut saw about 4 feet long.
Ryan
 
Desert hunt 30 years ago WAY out in SW NM (5 miles from the AZ border). Had to watch out for the mine shafts (just open holes in the ground- straight down 60-80 ft) in that country. Walking along one day I kept finding these super old rusted chains... some still tied around 3-4 lb. rocks- just laying everywhere. There was also rusted tin roof metal on short post- like 3 ft tall nearby- mostly fallen down on the ground. It was mostly rusted through (and this was old nickle plated steel-- so VERY old!).

I was working for the BLM at the time and asked my Range Conservationist about it the following week after the hunt. He explained that some (very lonely) guys became "goat herders" in the 1920s (right after WWI) and that the chains (tied around rocks) were tied to nanny goats' legs because (as I knew) nanny's are pitiful mothers and will drop a kid and walk off leaving it to die. The heavy rocks kept them from leaving the newly born kids!

BUT... What freaked me out, is that MY great grand-dad WAS one of those goat herders!!! As a kid (in the 70s) I always heard of the stories about how he and Babe Wardlow (originally from South Texas) had a goat "operation" in the 20s and shipped goats on trains from "Arizona" to Junction TX (starting the goat market in TX which set prices world wide until the 70s-- and *my family ran close to 12,000 Angora goats when we sold it all off in the late 80s). I remembered my dad was raised in Del Rio, TX BUT born in Duncan AZ... about 30 miles from this spot... that I was obliviously hunting back in 1987.

Kinda cool to make accidental connections like that one!
 
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The weirdest thing I’ve ever seen was people wearing masks in the middle of the Pasayten Wilderness.
Definitely saw a lot of that in the Mt. Baker Wilderness. They would get about 20 feet off of the trail and wait until you were long gone to remove their mask. :LOL:
 
Fossilized Coral found at 6k feet above sea level in NW Wyoming.
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Sent from my Pixel 3 using Tapatalk
 
And that rack has been on your wall ever since ;) (haha, just kidding!)

-bad timing for that elk... "if a tree falls in the woods, do you hear it... after it hits your scull?"
 
Bad day for him for sure he laid there for days digging deep holes till he diEd of dehydration was sad to see….the only dead head I did not chop antlers off separately.….about puked trying to remove came back with a chainsaw….

ps I have plenty for the wall🥰🤙
 
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