Found?

[Gerald Martin]

Saw some petrified elk poop and petrified elk tracks.

 

[JohnCushman]

I once shared a camp with a guy that doesn't drink beer around the campfire at night...that was unusual for me

 

[Djfan]

I have found pictographs in the high dessert of So Cal.

Left my new glasses in the stream beds east of Sheridan, WY in October this year.

 

[Gerald Martin]

He didn't drink your beer but he sure ate your chili. I heard about a guy that found a black bag in the woods that another guy on this website lost while on a goat hunt.

I found an ancient bison skull like Theat posted earlier in this thread. It was back in 2002 and was partially embedded in the side of a muddy creek bank. I was in a hurry and like an idiot, tried to pull it loose. It came apart in my hands and I left it there. I've kicked myself many times since then for being so stupid. I still can't believe I didn't realize what I had at the time.

 

[Big Slick]

I've never found anything strange but I did find a 1918 Colorado license plate on Fort Carson.

 

[Nameless Range]

A couple summers ago I found a bison skull where Arrastra Creek meets the Blackfoot. That's quite a way from the prairies, and sort of sparked my imagination as to whether or not there were timber bison roaming the country before the white man came.

When I was little I found quite a few arrowheads on Prickly Pear Creek by Clancy. My dad still has them.

I think few things are as interesting as prehistory. One of the neat things about the West is that the trails of yesteryear have yet to be plowed under in a lot of places.How cool would it be to come across the remnants of the carcass of some dude who got buried in an avalanche 12,000 years ago? Imagine the stories a guy could tell, if one morning 13,000 years ago he woke up on a mountaintop in western Montana, looks down in the valley below, and watches the ice dam that formed glacial Lake Missoula catastrophically fail, sending a wall of water the size of its own Mountain all the way to the Pacific. It's a shame they didn't have smartphones and YouTube back then, because I'd like to see that.

 

[shoots-straight]

I found a buffalo skull also in the Anaconda Pintler Wilderness. I found a dead woman hunting bear one year.

 

[powderburn]

My boys and I spent many a weekend on foot checking for trails through the old growth that we could access with the horses to get into new area's. All this stuff was miles from any usable trails. Came across an old woodpecker stump about 10 foot tall. Found an old insulator nailed about 7 ft up the side of it.




We stopped to make a quick coffee and had the feeling we were being watched. Looked around and found this guy. I talked to an old Elder from the local reserve and he said it was a sacred place. He had heard of it many years ago as a kid.





Also funny cuts on an old deadfall. A saw cut then chipped out bottom cut with small notches chopped about every foot of the length of the tree.

 

[MTsage]

The strangest thing I have found was a log tree house that an outlaw had been living in for several years in a wilderness area outside of Missoula. It was about 20' up in a cluster of large firs. Underneath it he had a dozen drums filled with oatmeal, flour, rice, ect. The tree house was insulated with tarps and blankets and had two small rooms. He had an exercise bike rigged up with magnets to generate electricity to charge his collection of car batteries. There was a small tv and radio rigged up to an antenna he had way up one of the trees. By the time we found it, he had already fled after some of his friends in town that he had pissed off reported him to the police. The forest service was planning to haul his stuff out and burn the tree house so they told us we could have whatever we wanted. We went back and grabbed a couple of his drums and the wood stove. I don't have any pics of it on this computer but I will try and find them when I get home.

Found a few sheds too
View attachment 30916

That would be cool to see pics of that treehouse if you find them.

Did that haul of elk sheds come off public or private? It would be nice to know a day like that could be had on public land...

 

[shoots-straight]

Powderburn, those insulators ran wire to lookout towers and old guard stations in the day. There's still many of them in the forests.

 

[James Riley]

My boys and I spent many a weekend on foot checking for trails through the old growth that we could access with the horses to get into new area's. All this stuff was miles from any usable trails. Came across an old woodpecker stump about 10 foot tall. Found an old insulator nailed about 7 ft up the side of it.
. . .
Also funny cuts on an old deadfall. A saw cut then chipped out bottom cut with small notches chopped about every foot of the length of the tree.

I used to guide elk hunts in the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness and we'd find those insulators in the most unlikely of places. My boss' dad had been in there since the early 1900s and always used to remind us that country was over-run with people back in the old days.

I wonder if that notched tree used to lean up against another tree and be a ladder up to a stand? I've seen things like that at Mesa Verde where the Indians used them. All they needed was little finger and toe holds.

 

[The Hedgehog]

Somebody's will probably find a nice new garmin GPS with mt maps in the gallatin. Fell out of somebody's pocket while tracking bulls in November.

 

[mtlion]

Up to four bison skulls for me...One of them west of the divide.

Care to share more of this story SS?

I found a dead woman hunting bear one year.

 

[sra61]

A few years ago I was way spring bear hunting back in the Skyland Rd. country up by Marias Pass. I had put a stalk on a bear way up high in a slide almost to the peak. Of course when I got up there the bear was gone. It was really steep, so I worked my way over onto a little finger ridge with some stunted trees so I had something to grab ahold of. As I was crawling over a log I looked down at the ground under the log and noticed something that looked like a curved, rusted piece of metal. I reached down and pulled on it and it was a good sized bear trap that was buried in the dirt under the log! It was sprung and had a little hair stuck in the jaws. It was pretty damned heavy, but I packed it down anyway. Way down lower but close to the spot is an Outfitter's camp that has been there for a long time. I could only guess that maybe a long time ago somebody was having bear troubles and set that trap, but didn't have it chained down good, and the bear took off with the trap and lost it up on top of that mountain. I don't know but it's cool.

 

[Muley Crazy]

My best find was a mammoth tooth in Alaska North of the Brooks range. Took it to the museum and they verified it was indeed a tooth. I was very heavy and we where on a float trip so weight was a big deal so we broke it in half to bring out just a piece... Dam that was stupid

Another time mother nature was calling so I headed over to what looked like a great place to go, low and behold TP piles everywhere so i moved off down hill 10 yards and find someone's hunting pack FULL of gear. I mean everything but a gun. It had been there several days. looked around for a body but never found the owner. Even called to make sure no one was missing. My guess is they where going to the bathroom and saw a smoker buck and just took off after it and where never able to figure out where they left there pack.

 

[Don K]

Found a body of a guy that was missing for months when we where cutting across a frozen swamp. One hand sticking out of the Ice, everything else under. Clear Ice and you could see the person face up.

Happy the family was able to put the man to rest but this bothered me for a long time.

 

[Ben Long]

Hunting pronghorn on the CMR my hunting partner found a whole bunch of dinosaur bones. Femurs longer than our rifles. We took photos and sent them to Montana State University. They said they were duck-billed hadrosaurs. Also on a tributary of the Milk River we found a bottom of a buffalo jump, just spilling bison skulls and all sorts of bones. Some buried under three feet of silt, cut out by spring floods.

 

[Hatchie Dawg]

Found a body in a local fishing lake. Fully clothed and face down in the water. Took a deputy and then the sheriff out to the body by boat. The sheriff said there was no missing person's report. They took our info and such. We watched the local news and paper for a couple of weeks. Never saw one report. Still wonder what the deal was.
HD

 

[James Riley]

If you people only knew how all your stories about bison skulls run up my green flag of envy! Consider yourselves blessed. I don't know how many miles and hours I've spent specifically looking for them. I can count the number I've found on my fingers. Montana sounds like the place to be. P.S. Pictures would be greatly appreciated. If anyone wants to see my few I can post them here or . . .

 

[powderburn]

Last fall while glassing some sheep at 6800ft I looked down and saw a telephoto lens. I took it home and hooked it up to my old Olympus and it still worked.



Found an offering to the spirit world about a mile back off the road. I showed it to an elder off the reserve and he told me what it was, He also told me it was a younger person that left it there because of the plastic used.



After the heavy flooding last year this was laying washed out creek bed.



The number 1 find of my lifetime a chunk of quartz laced with gold.