Things you have found in the woods!

[slowzuki]

I have read about people finding chainsaws etc.  Let's keep to to man-made objects:

Myself, only old farm equipment in the middle of the woods and things like hats.

What have you found? Lets hear some interesting ones!

[Ron Wenrich]

Old cans & bottles from old dumps, camping equipment stashed under rocks (never figured out why), condom machine, porno mags (not the same place  :D), abandoned cars, cannon balls, and WWII airplane.  I had a partner that found a body.

Then there are the typical dump-alongside-the-road items.  Refrigerators (found one of those in a creek), sofas, chairs, stoves, beer cans and anything too big for the dump.

There's probably others, but those are the better ones.

[Gus]

Did a cut on private property once where there was an old logging camp back in the white pine hay-days of Northern Minnesota. Found the dug well and a chain grown into the crotch of an old red oak. The chain was hand forged. I'm sure it is still there, was imbedded deep.
Another time I found what looked to be a hand-made knife with bone handle stuck into a tree about 5' off the ground. I spotted it off the skidder. It took along time to dig it out but I still have it somewhere.
Gus

[Bro. Noble]

About 30 years ago I was quail hunting with a friend.  We were walking along an old fence and he remarked that the old woven wire fence looked like the ones that were woven on the site.  I had never heard of such a thing.  He proceded to describe how the wire was woven and the machine that did the weaving.  About that time we came across an old rusty fence weaving machine and the fence stopped

[Viking]

ive found mostly all farm still, the stuff that horses would pull tillers and the stuff that puts the cut hay into a line, fdunno what they are called haha , a few older trucks "here on my property, they are from the 50's there was some logging on my property back them, ummm alot of pop bottles and cans, an old husky chain saw, couldnt tell what kinda it was it has grass and everything growing throguh it haha, i just tossed it out. i think, thats about it.

[slowzuki]

I forgot a really interesting one, it was a very old piece of machinery, turned out to be a bottling unit for a Coca-Cola outlet that was there before WWII.  The building was long gone but a neighbour has some of the crates that were used to carry the bottles.

[Scott]

 I have a small collection of stove doors and legs from old logging camp dumps. I haven't found much in the way of farm equipment or anything very good. i found an old coleman stove, an ice fishing pole, 2 rowboats, an old bread truck that was made in england and one time i found an old caulked boot. I've stumbled across a few drug growing sites as well. I found an old 30's car with a straight 8 in it too.

[Kirk_Allen]

While stationed in MS during my first hitch in the Air Force I was deer hunting in an old forest area north of Biloxi.  I was on an old logging road and tripped and fell on my face.  I thought I tripped on a root but when I kicked it, after getting up of course, it didnt budge.  After some curious digging, it turned out to be the top to a complete hyraulic jack.  A really big One!  8) 8)

I still have it today and although I dont know the capacity, I have used it to lift our farmers combine to change a tire.  

Most recently, while recovering cherry logs from a local area, I found an old pick/axe.  The type you see an old gold mine using.  How did I find it :  You guessed it.  I tripped over the handle.  At first I thought it was just another branch in the pile.  I guess when they pushed all the trees into the piles this thing got uncovered in the process.  

Although the head has some rust its still quite usable.  

[Tom]

I have found lots of "dump" type stuff but a beer can was the most amazing.
We had been riding motorcycles in the woods NW of Athens Georgia.  We were in an area where the last human had to have been visiting a neighboring Neanderthal or Cro-magnon.

I ran out of gas.

We didn't have anything to transfer gasoline in and had picked up one of the bikes and were trying to turn it upside down over my bike when someone hollered, "Here's a beer can".  It was too.  It was bright and shiny and just been dropped.  We couldn't figure it out and I haven't to this day.

[Don P]

Fire extinguisher,farm junk, still foundations, 6" tip to a saber in sheath (I buried it back on the old homesite we were planting), an old A model with a 12" tree growing where the engine was supposed to be.
And a bunch of funny rocks ???

[etat]

I like the rocks.  Great find.  Do you know  anything about the folks that might have dropped them?  I've never actually found any indian artifacts, but have found quite a few chunks of limestone with cool fossel shapes in them.  They come out of a creek I used to play in.  Lost em sometimes in moving over the years.  There's a LOT of shells in limestone around here but the bunch that come out of the creek had some really cool lookin shapes embeded in the limestone, some of em was in color.

[pasbuild]

A buddy of mine picked up 35 acres next to his place an old still came with it. There is an inland lake up my way that has no road to it, very thick brush, when we get there we find two old car hoods welded together to make a boat.
  There is a lot of float copper also

[Kirk_Allen]

I didnt give it any thought until Don posted the arrow head pics.

My dad has two shoe boxes full of arrow heads he found on his farm as a kid.  

You have to be careful with exposing some of those finds though.  There are some native orginazations that will try to lay claim to not only the artifacts but the land they were found on.  We recently had such a situaiton in our eara that only made the lawyers money.

[Tom]

I found an axe that belonged to Abraham Lincoln.  It was stuck in the side of a cherry tree.  The handle was rotten so I replaced it.  The head broke when I put the new handle on so I replaced it.  Now it looks real good and bright and shiny leaning up in the corner of the barn. ;D

[Buzz-sawyer]

A little bit of everything ...old homesteads,arrowheads from long gone hunters,well pumps,bones once a jaw bone eerily human!
plow,albino racoons 3 with normal colored mom.
hunters I saw who didnt see me...a beaver dam shaped like a heart...much much more.....
Don

[Ed_K]

Two summers ago, I was helping a forester mark a cordwood lot. We found an old TD 18 dozer, had a 12 dbh blackbirch growing between the radiator and blade. while later we found an old radio flyier (little red wagon).
 I was talking to the forester this last summer, he mentioned the land owner got the dozer running.
 Yrs ago, I was doing a land leveling job in Quana Tx. We found an old model A junk yard, there was no roads near it.
 One thing you don't do is run a skidder over an old dump,
 DanG near lost it when an old buried car collapsed  .

[burlman]

how about an arc welder. yes brand new still in its plastic wrapper. I was driving along a soft back road one spring, I gues someone in a car perhaps got themselves severly stuck and needed a jack or something they took the welder out set it on the side of the hill, I guess they were alittle tired when they finally got out, that they took off and forgot the welder. I first suspected it was stolen. It had a serial no. so I informed the police, and put an ad in the local paper. the police said if I had no response witin 2 weeks it was mine. I'm not much at welding so I sold it. I also found an ice auger while deer hunting one fall. It was in apiece from a trout lake, I suspect some poachers were  trying to get a little snack mid winter, perhaps thet heard the helicopter or snowmobile, suspecting it was the wardens they pitched the auger back in the bush, and didn't go back for it.

[Paul_H]

That's how I got my parents a Christmas tree one year.
I was still living at home,and drove my Dad's truck up in the bush to check his machines.The truck was a 1975 GMC pickup that was a similar green to the Forest service trucks.

My freind Guy and I drove up around a corner and saw a group of people dive in the bush.We drove up honking the horn and stopped by the trees left alongside the road.We could hear twigs snapping as they ran away.

We loaded up the trees and left.They had very good taste in trees.

Ron W,
could you tell us more about the WWII plane?

[Gus]

This thread was a good idea.
Bro. Noble, that woven wire machine is by far the most interesting to me. I had no idea someone made a machine that tied the wire as you went down the fence row. 8)
Gus

[L. Wakefield]

   I just recently dug up what I believe is a stone hand tool for skinning. It's too lightweight to be a hand-axe (I think) and is not likely to be a tomahawk head, but there are finger notches that fit the hand exactly for a tool just about shaped right for skinning.  We had a great time passing it from one person to another to see what their hands did with it and what it said to them. It almost looks like a Flintstone era windshield scraper..I may try it out when it's time to skin the deer Mike got on Saturday just about last light. Got it in under the wire and won't be going muzzle-loading after all.. lw

[Bro. Noble]

Gus,

It is an interesting thread 8)

I don't remember much about the fence machine,  but have recognized  the woven in place fences a time  or two since then.  Rather than rectangular spaces between the wires,  they are triangles.

Just thought of another find.  An older neighbor was showing us where there had been an old sawmill on his place in the late 1800's.  Said the engine blew up and scattered metal and operator all over.  On the way back to his house my son found a piece of grate from the firebox of a steam engine.

[isawlogs]

  Found an old splitting axe , chainsaw chain stuck in a branch... ( my dad later told me who put it there... him in the 50's...) a few horse shoes.
   While I was hunting a few years ago I found an old boat on the bank of the river a mile or so down from my hunting camp.It was near a logging camp, that was in use a long time before I was born. I told my dad of it and he than told me it was the same type they used when they did the river drive . He then told me about the logging camp and who had worked there. He had worked a few miles from there, back then it could of been 100. Found an old lamp in the ruble and it's in my camp now.

[woodmills1]

On my own property I found 2 old cellar holes along with a doodle bug, which I think is a model A turned into a tractor, along with lotsa bottles and junk.

[Frank_Pender]

One of the things I have found on this Tree Farm took almost 3 years to identify what it was and how it operated.   Since I married this place (already in my wifes hands)  I felt somewhat like an interloper, much of the time.  

Anyway, after digging this critter out of 25 year old natural Fir reprod I set it up in all kinds of positons to determine what it was.  On one end was a cam that was the hardest thing to dcide the what for issue.  

One summer a friend had loaned me his John Deere 450 for building a pond and we had to do some welding.   He came out to help and brought a friend.   I showed the friend the contraption I had been looking at for thre years.  He immediately said, "I know what that is!   I have one just like it."

I said, "Ya, right" and laughed.  He procededto set it in working positon and explained its workings.   I turned out to be a military well driving rig that was designed to be parachuted froma ricraft in Europe to establish fresh water supplies for the troops.   They had been designed to operate off the pto of a duce and a half.

[Stephen_Wiley]

Tom

I think that axe belong to George Washington before Abe got it !
 :D :D :D 8)

[Stephen_Wiley]

Just a little off topic.........but hopefully you guys will bear with me, as this thread reminded me of this:

Don, a former good friend (he died 1999 at 83yrs.) who spent his entire life in the coastal woods here in Oregon as a faller / bucker and forester; once relayed this story about a coworker.

Seems the fellow did not have much patience with saws and their maintenance. He also did not have much control over his tongue.

Due to his physical stature, which was above average in size and build, no one had the desire to try and 'calm' him in his fits of rage.

On more than one occasion his saw would stop and fail to start. This was followed by loud cussing and very explicit descriptions to which he labled the saw, ending with the saw being flung over the canyon and down the canyon bouncing off of stumps and rocks. :

Eventually, he or a coworker would make the effort to retrieve the saw.......usually having to replace the bar or sometimes only be able to salvage parts. Due to the steepness of the coastal hills the saw could easily be thrown, bounced and end up several hundred yards away. For those of you who have never left the flat lands of the midwest, hiking down or up one of these canyons is a work out to say the least.

My friend (Don) who was then the "Bull buck" of the crew arrived to work early one morning to find this fellow had bought a new falling saw. But it was'nt very long before Don heard this fellow near the back of the crummy cuss up a storm and throwing things.

Don walked to the back of the crummy where this fellow and his new saw were.  Don grabbed his new saw and flung it over the canyon.

This fellow immediately was speechless........finnaly he asked Don ' why'  he did that.  Don responded that since it had occurred so many times before.....that he wanted the pleasure and experience of knowing the feeling of flinging a saw down the canyon. :D :D

Seems this fellow never threw a saw after that. In fact Don said he seemed to grow up a bit after that day.

Well  if any of you are ever hunting or scouting the Oregon Coast range. There are falling saws to be found yet. As he did not retrieve all that were thrown.   8)    

[Stephen_Wiley]

Back to topic,

While working in Eastern Oregon, I and a few friends came across an area where pioneers had to reduce their wagon loads in order to continue their journey. Due to the steep grade of the Blue Mountains.

We found china, pewter pots, silverware, knives made with buckhorns, shells with date stamp in the 1800s, glass bottles with glass tops and asundry of other items some dated back to the 1600's.

In addition, arrowheads and native american artifacts, old logging tackle and blocks, wreckage of a airplane,  numerous old tools.

[Ron Wenrich]

The WWII aircraft was from the local Army base.  They were out flying and had engine problems.  The pilots parachuted out, and the plane became part of the mountain.

Staples found part of the space shuttle when it blew up.

[OneWithWood]

In addition to a wide assortment of old bottles, lead-acid battery cases, beer cans, ceramic crocks horseshoes and such I have a horse drawn two-bottom plow, a horse drawn hayrake and a horse drawn corn planter rusting away in the woods.  The implements are all sitting together where at one time the edge of a field was.  Also found a milk can sitting on the top of the ridge all by itself.

[johncinquo]

Some people just north of us own a farm and have horses now.  Long before they bought it it was a hog farm, probably back in the 50s.  The train would bring the waste food from Chicago all the way up into west MI.  They would just dump train car loads  of this stuff out and let the hogs have at it.  Over the years they have found coutless amounts of stuff including silverware, glasses both drinking and eyewear, plates, little eye washing cups, and all sorts of weird stuff that made it into the food trash. New stuff gets worked to the surface all the time with the horses walking around.  You can walk out there and find something every day.
I was cleaning up an old dump site just north of my woods and found a nifty looking jar under everything else.  I gave it to my friend who is a total old jar and bottle nut, he sold it for $3300!  He gave me an old rowboat to make up for it.  He showed me how to go "treasure hunting" in rural areas.  I'll tell you the secret if you want to give it a try.  Find out where the outhouse was.  Yeah sounds gross, but any human waste is long gone.  People would drop or throw stuff in there and eventually it would get filled up and they would just cover it over.   We would get a general idea of where ot was, the probe the ground with a long metal rod.  When you feel some clinking and are sure you have the spot, just start digging, very carefully.  I have been out with him and found jars, bottle old teeth, and all kinds of strange stuff.  Not my cup of tea to collect, but fun to go hunting.  he sells and collect the stuff.  Hey finding the right old canning jar can bring over $40,000.  
My great grand father had a farm in Ohio and would find arrow heads every year.  About 10 years after he died we still had alll of them in boxes under the bed.  My mom finally put them all into 7 shadow boxes and arranged each box to have a good variety of them.  Gave one to each of the kids and grand kids so we all got a piece of our history.  Sure beats stuffing stuff under the bed!

[Weekend_Sawyer]

his is a good thread.

I was hunting in our woods in West Virginia in the 70's and came across a length of narrow guage train rail. No one beleived me and I have never been able to find it again. I am always finding sea shell fossils along this one ridge near the top of a mountain.
WS

[Ron Wenrich]

Narrow guage rail was the method of logging back after the Civil War.  There were sawmills in the east that would put many large west coast mills to shame.  I know of one that was rated at 230 MMbf.  Their edgings were bundled for kindling to NY.  That was equivalent to 30 Mbf per day.

I've come across several of those beds, but never any rail.  There is one place that has an old trolley turnaround.  Seems that there was an amusement park at the one end of town.  It is now a woodlot.  I had to read about that one in the history  books.  Lots of old amusement parks around, you just have to find them.  Good treasure spots.

Another thing we have are charcoal flats.  These are areas that were cleared and charcoal was made on the spot for iron production.  We have one area named after the guy who did all the charcoaling - Governor Dick.  He clearcut about 1,000 acres by hand - twice.  Burnt into charcoal and hauled to the local ore mine by mule.  And we think we work hard.  

[Don P]

I mentioned Tweetsie on another thread. It's an amusement park outside of Blowing Rock, NC. It is the last of the old narrow guage ET&WNC (East TN&WesternNC...or eat taters and wear no clothes). The lines also tied into the logging lines around Grandfather Mt and the valley below. I was camping around the area and was walking the old railbed, they were abandoned after a flood in the 40's. Found bent rail around a huge tree in the floodplane and what looked like evidence of a wreck, part of a boiler and some wheels on bent axles. There was coal scattered along the railbed.

The arrowheads were from my tree planting days mostly the Carolinas and VA. We would also find pottery shards, often imprinted with corncob patterns. A friend found what we thought was an axe but an archaeologist showed where it had a little soil polish, it was a hoe. Oh, and bits of clay tavern pipes.
 We happened upon a dig in Nebraska that was a buffalo jump. It was near a spot where there were several springs in an all to dry landscape and had artifacts from many generations. They were at the level of a jumble of what must have been thousands of bones. There were a number of spearpoints they had found. These were used to finish off injured animals that didn't die in the fall.

I did find the outhouse pit here, unfortunately with the bushog. They had filled it with rocks...its now full of gravel :D.

[craigc90]

  Besides the usual. I have 2 handug wells and an old railroad tunnell from the 1840's the tracks are long gone but it is as good as the day it was built. a 1/4 mile long hand dug mill race for an old waterpowered mill and 2 cement dams built by the CCC in the 30's or 40's. When we started clearing to build our house I was finding pieces of an old tv antenna nearest house is 800 feet at the bottom of the hollow.I have 800 feet of old antenna wire that I have cleaned up out of the woods in the scap pile out back. The people who used to live there couln't get any TV stations and ran a wire and carried this big aluminum antenna to the top of the ridge and used it for years. My neighbor had an old waterpowered mill on his property and there was a hand built dam and they tunneled a water tunnel straight thru a hogback ridge where the creek makes a big turn when they wanted to grind corn they diverted the water straigt thru the hillside and out thru the mill. The dam is gone and so is the mill but you can still see thru the tunnel.I am going to cut this short now because I am getting longwinded but I also have found dozens of old blue glass railroad insulators and bottles.

[dail_h]

   When I worked in the woods around here,used to find lots of tram rail,ocasionaly a set of wheels. Once south of the Albermarle Sound,we found an old steam skidder still rigged to a tree. Oh yeah a number of unregestered chemical operatoins,looked lpke some sorta distillery ;D ;D

[Mark M]

My daughter was picking blueberries once and found a $50 bill. 8)

[woodmills1]

Found three hand dug wells laid up with stone, 10-15 feet deep.  One is under the newest addition of the house.  At the old house there used to be horses, found at least 50 horseshoes and all of the pry bars that I currently use.

[Buzz-sawyer]

Hey woodmills have you seen the movie the RING? It had a well under a house as well ...with sumptin in it
Don

[Jeff]

Tammy and I and Jeremy were out "Two Trackin" in the eastern U.P. a couple years ago. We had gottn off the trail on to what seemed like an old growed over skid road. It had trees growing in it. Several times we had to get out and scout our path. Anyway, 3 hours into our off-road adventure we came upon an old school but sitting in the woods. It  had been painted sorta like the old partridge family bus. It was covered in moss and and it was obvious that no one had been around it in decades. On the side of it was painted

MAJIK SKOOLBUS  We figured it was an old Hippy home or something at one time as the paint job was very 60s. We have tried to find it again but never have.

[Jeff]

Jeremy just informed me  he was little and it was 10 years ago. :-/ DanG i'm old. Some day somebody will find me in da woods.

[Keltic]

I found a friend of mine one evening. He was sitting on the ground with his thigh bone sticking out through his jeans. He was happy to be found, less so after we hauled him out with a tractor and pulp trailer. Ouch!

[karl]

'Bout all I found in the woods was my way home-
Know a guy that found a big ole cannon barrel- 5' or more long- had a carriage built for it and mounted on his lawn. Figgered some of them Brits forgot where they parked it when they wus defending "the King's pine trees".

[sawman]

  Back in the late 70's or so we were out doing tsi and came upon a tree that had a piece of tin through it,seemingly out in the middle of nowhere.  Dad said it was an  old homplace and many years ago a tornado had came thru and the piece of tin was from the roof of the house, and the tornado drove the tin through the tree.
 I'll try to find my way back to it and get a picture. It was still there about 10 years or so ago.

[Phorester]

Found a short length of hand forged chain and a splitting wedge against the base of a tree.  Turns out it is a chain used on civil war era cannons to keep it from rolling when fired.  You can see them on fully restored cannons.  It's the short chain on the carriage behind the breech.  You just threaded'em through the wheel spokes.

Found an old double bit axe while on a forest fire.  Put a new handle in it and use it.  

The best find though was on a hot, humid august day when I saw a beer can in a little mountain stream.  Picked it up just to carry it out and found out it was unopened! Best darn beer I've ever had.

[Oregon_Sawyer]

One time when I was hauling rock on an old logging road I found and old crosscut saw.  Someday it will go on the wall of our house. (My wife just told me no it won't,  we'll see )

While in junior high my dad was logging  a ravine that had had a canning facility at the head of it around  the turn of the century.  I got to dig bottles to my heart's content.  We also dug bottles at a couple of old homesteads.  Some where I still have some of them.

Once while hunting we found a pair of binoculars.

Loren

[chet]

A couple of years ago I came across the remains of 6 charcoal Iron Furnaces. One of which was almost 100% intact.

[Frank_Pender]

Loren, I think that Julia might just donate that saw for my collection in the Mill Building. ;D 8) 8) 8) 8)  I will hve to speak to here about it.  

[Texas Ranger]

I have told about the space shuttle parts.  But earlier equipment comes to mind.  Found a quartzite anvil used by the indians in making stone points.  Found a broad ax in the side of a road cut.  Used to find turpentine cups in the old long leaf pine woods used to collect resin.  One of the more interesting was a bottle dump used by a doctor back in the old horse and buggy days.  Used to have a picture of the doc taken in the area, but the bottles I gave out to a pharmacist friend.

Worse finds were were two bodies, back while I was in the fire fighting business, one a suicide out in the woods when we went to a fire, the other a heart attack victim, older lady, at her cabin where she had tried to fight a fire.

[Corley5]

Hand forged log tongs in an opening I was discing, OLD bottles in the remains of an OLD manure pile next the remains of a barn where I was dozing to level up a spot for a fence tp keep the deer away from some English oak transplants, pudding stones ;D ;D, old axe heads, an old trappers shack in Beaver Basin in da U.P., and I too found a suicide victim who had ended it with a 20 gauge shot to the face.  Not a good way to start your day :( :(

[Frank_Pender]

 This might be a bit to one side for actually finding in the woods, but here goes.  After comeing back from the Oregon Coast to watch the Sun rise on a Sunday morning; my date (our first) suggested we go for a walk on her farm.  While we were walking through a 60 year old stand of natural reprod Douglas Fir, I looked up intothe tree tops and turned to my "date" and said, "Let's get married."  Her instant response was, "YES!"   8) 8)  8) 8) 8) 8) Twenty four years later, that stand of trees are still standing and the trail is named, "Engagement Drive", even though the only thing that runs on the trail are the gators or the tractor from time to time

    So, you might say I found a tree farm while walking in the woods.  Who says, I can't see the forest for the trees? :D.

[Patty]

My find hardly compares to Frank's new bride find. Norm & I were out walking in our woods a couple years ago. I was leaning up against a tree to rest and spotted a flattened pieace of lead from a shotgun slug imbedded in the tree. I'd say we've got one lucky deer running around!  :D

[craigc90]

http://forestry.about.com/library/graphics/tunnel.jpg
 This is a picture of the railroad tunnel on my place.

      

[Frank_Pender]

Wow!  If I had a site like that on this place I would either live in it or set up the mill on the inside. 8)

[Stephen_Wiley]

Hey Frank.............that might me called: ' Tunnel vision '  :D

[Stephen_Wiley]

Craig,  tell us more about the history of that tunnel.  :P

BTW it looks like an attempt to seal off the opening must have given away to a final load smashing through the cynder blocks / bricks.

[craigc90]

The tunnel  was put into service 1850 and closed in 1950.The inside of the tunnel is like the day it was built storm drains and everthing it is cut sandstone about 12 feet high inside and then brick around the rest of the ceiling. The tracks were removed and the ends were sealed off. I dont know when but probably shortly after kids busted the blocks out and I can get my Ford Ranger inside the opening and drive frome one side of the ridge straight thru to the other side. Talk about a shortcut. The tunnel is 1300 feet long and has a smooth gravel floor. I can hit 5th gear on my fourwheeler befor I get to the other end. In 1950 they blasted a new railroad cut about a quarter of a mile north of the tunnel. They said the tunnel was to small for double tracks with oversize box cars. One of these days I am going to come up with a good use for it but right now its just a neat conversation starter. If you look close in the picture there is a number 7 cut into the keystone. there were originaly 8 of these tunnels in a 10 mile stretch of rail coming out of the Ohio River valley. They have all been closed but one and it is 1 mile long.we used to walk thru it when we were kids. Talk about not being able to see your hand in front of your face. Its dark. We would get enough courage up a couple times a year to use it as a shortcut when we were out fishing.

[craigc90]

http://forums.about.com/n/mb/at.asp?webtag=ab-forestry&guid=BF16308C-B153-11D5-92BA-0003477293FC&frames=no
  This is a picture of the CCC dam right up the creek from the mouth of the railroad tunnel.