132 year old mystery........what's leaning against that tree?

[Corley5]

There's a few more pictures of it on Great Basin National Park's Facebook Page.
https://www.facebook.com/GreatBasinNPS

[terry f]

    If its loaded, seeing if it was black powder would help the timeline a little. My guess is he missed a nice buck, leaned it against a tree, and went to town and bought a Marlin.

[loggah]

If it was a early 1873 Marlin wasn't building  any lever action rifles at the time. :laugh: well maybe the Ballard single shot. I have a 1894 Winchester saddle ring carbine that was a desert find, the wood is all dried out and eroded by windblown sand the metal is totally functional,but it was laying down so the barrel wasn't up to the rain.Don

[sawguy21]

Maybe he took a nature break and a bear grabbed him.  ;D When I was working at Canadian Helicopters a pilot came in with the remains of a Winchester 92 he found in the arctic barrens. An Inuit hunter would not survive without his gun, we wondered if a polar bear got him or he got lost in a storm.

[terry f]

   This one was made in 1882, cut that half of the tree down and count the rings.

[beenthere]

   This one was made in 1882, cut that half of the tree down and count the rings.

Why cut up the tree just to satisfy our curiosity? Save the poor tree. 

That would be like shooting the wolf to cut open it's stomach just to see what it ate for dinner.   ;) ;) ;)

[Don_Papenburg]

What about ; It was someone poaching in the park and the wardens were sighted  so the gun had to be stowed and the poacher walked about till the wardens went for donuts , then he could not find his hiding place again. 

[drobertson]

I have to question the time factor this gun was there, for the simple reason that many years would have taken a harder toll on the rifle, humidity or not.  I am of the camp believing that it was an old gun, true, but not anywhere near the time frame of it's original manufacturing date.   Unless it was somewhat restored then propped for pictorial purposes.  Head scratcher, maybe, advertising ploy, more like it,, who can say, but the ones that were there at the time of finding it, and this would be a good story for the network investigative teams.  Maybe on 60 minutes, or the today show, maybe fox, they like discussing issues involving guns, especially those left laying around,  I think it's a fluke, but I'm always wrong, and who cares, it's just an opinion, fun to talk about, but really makes no difference at the end of the day,  I bet there are folks here that find strange stuff everyday, look, think, and leave it lay, because it just don't matter.

[MrPete]

Nobody has mentioned that it may have been used in a crime.  Then was placed there so not to be found.  Stranger things have happened.

[okmulch]

   This one was made in 1882, cut that half of the tree down and count the rings.

Why cut up the tree just to satisfy our curiosity? Save the poor tree. 

That would be like shooting the wolf to cut open it's stomach just to see what it ate for dinner.   ;) ;) ;)

They do make increment borers.  ;D

[fishpharmer]

From photos I looked at , the tree had not grown around the rifle barrel.  I have seen pipes, barbed wire and other objects where the tree has grown around the object in much less time. 
Of course, I live in the south and maybe trees grow faster here?

[beenthere]

Prolly pretty slow-growing in this park in Nevada.

Here is a link to the flora (11 species of conifers) that are found there. Pretty dry spot, seems to be.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Basin_National_Park

[WDH]

Ol' Hatchet Jack
I, Hatchet Jack, being of sound mind and broke legs, do hereby leaveth my bear rifle to whatever finds it. It is a good rifle, and killt the bear that killt me. Anyway, I am dead. Yours truly, Hatchet Jack.

Couldn't be Hatchet Jack's rifle.  Hissin was a Hawken. 

[POSTON WIDEHEAD]

Where did you hear this????

[Magicman]

Old saying.

[POSTON WIDEHEAD]

Old saying.

;D

[submarinesailor]

Ol' Hatchet Jack
I, Hatchet Jack, being of sound mind and broke legs, do hereby leaveth my bear rifle to whatever finds it. It is a good rifle, and killt the bear that killt me. Anyway, I am dead. Yours truly, Hatchet Jack.

One of my favorite movies:  "Jeremiah Johnson".

Bruce

[WDH]

My all-time favorite movie. 

[barbender]

     From my experiences out west, I don't have a hard time at all believing that gun could have been leaning there for a hundred years or more. The wood on the rifle is very weathered, and the forearm looks half gone.
     My uncle has a ranch in northeast Wyoming, and I am amazed at the quality of some of the artifacts he has recovered out there over the years.  The climate is so much drier than my area, some of the old fences out there seem to use whatever scraps of wood that are available (likely ponderosa pine) for fence posts, and they last for many years. Pine would last about 2 years here- cedar gets you 10 or 15 at best. In fact, my uncle has an old muzzleloader he found in an old fallen in cabin. It's a Springfield, I can't remember the model but it was what the army was using before they went to the center fire 45/70. Model 1861 maybe? At any rate, that gun is still in good condition, it looks fully operational. It wasn't outside leaning on a tree, but if it was found in the same conditions in my area, there wouldn't be much left of it.