This is really interesting.
http://www.wspa.com/story/27853238/132-year-old-mystery-surrounds-what-archaeologists-found-leaning-against-a-tree
years ago when i was younger i was squirrel hunting when i had to pee so, i leaned my gun against a tree .i some how got side tracked and must have left it behind :D
I saw Jimmy Stewert win that rifle at a Turkey Shoot.
Quote from: red oaks lumber on January 15, 2015, 07:44:21 PM
years ago when i was younger i was squirrel hunting when i had to pee so, i leaned my gun against a tree .i some how got side tracked and must have left it behind :D
Were you using the .375 Magnum rounds or .38 Spl?????????? :D :D :D :D ;D ;D :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o
From the Winchester Website: ROUND 20" BARREL WITH FULL-LENGTH MAGAZINE TUBE holds 10 rounds of 357 Magnum or 11 rounds of 38 Special ammunition.
Bruce
When I was stationed in South Dakota I found a Browning A-Bolt 270 leaning against a tree, up in the Black Hills.
Put notice in a couple of local gunshops and about 4-5 months later got a call and the guy identified the rifle, then came to the house and got it!
It hadn't been there all that long and a little wiping down cleaned up most of the blemishes!
How can one leave a gun on a tree ::) ??? ??? ???
Last thing I'd forget :) I'd leave the deer before I left the rifle. Some Hoppe's, Blue Creeper, a good bore brushing and that old Winchester will be good as new :) :)
I guess he leaned it up against that tree to take a break and was shot with an arrow. Just guessing. ::)
Quote from: Peter Drouin on January 15, 2015, 09:56:16 PM
How can one leave a gun on a tree ::) ??? ??? ???
The bear won :D :D
My cousin and late uncle tore down an old garage that had been bought and moved decades earlier by my grandpa to the place, they found one tucked under the floor but in very poor condition, would be nice to know the story behind these things.
The rifle is 132 years old but how long was it really there? Maybe it's only been there 50 years ???
Didn't catch in the story.. but was it loaded? cocked? None of the articles want to say..
I think they want to believe it was there for a very long time, when maybe it wasn't.
Didn't say in this article
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2015/01/15/132-year-old-winchester-rifle-found-propped-under-desert-tree/
Left there by a bear to lure more prey :D. The bear's descendants probably continued the tradition :D.
Quote from: POSTONLT40HD on January 15, 2015, 10:18:13 PM
I guess he leaned it up against that tree to take a break and was shot with an arrow. Just guessing. ::)
Maybe if they go back they will find the person's bones somewhere there :D :D :D
That gun stock,made out of wood, was touching the ground,for 132 years and looked like that?? :o ??? I might be able to understand if it was up in a tree,but on the ground.
Quote from: thecfarm on January 16, 2015, 06:40:10 AM
That gun stock,made out of wood, was touching the ground,for 132 years and looked like that?? :o ??? I might be able to understand if it was up in a tree,but on the ground.
Its drier than a popcorn out in that area. Petrified wood kind of dry. Here, two three years and it would not be recognizable, about the same as Maine.
Ayup,now I can understand.
Quote from: Peter Drouin on January 15, 2015, 09:56:16 PM
How can one leave a gun on a tree ::) ??? ??? ???
A lot of things can go through a persons mind when they shoot a deer.
The guy told me that he leaned the rifle on the tree and gutted out his deer, then dragged the deer to his truck (maybe 1/4 mile) and then went back to get the rifle and couldn't find it, or the gut pile and after several hours, gave up!
Good on you Chuck for taking the time to find the owner.
Not many people would've bothered.
I saw this on Wiki that I thought interesting...
Winchester established a One of One Thousand grade in 1875. All barrels were test-fired for accuracy during the manufacturing process. Barrels producing unusually small groups were fitted to rifles with set triggers and special finish and marked One of One Thousand to be sold at a price of $100. A second grade of barrels producing above average accuracy were fitted to rifles marked One of One Hundred and sold for a price $20 higher than list. Approximately 136 One of One Thousand Model 1873 rifles were sold with only eight Model 1873s of the One of One Hundred grade.
Maybe he shot at a big buck, the old gun failed to fire and in disgust the left the old piece of junk there.
Kind of reminds me of Hatchet Jack frozen to a tree with his .50 cal Hawken in Jeremiah Johnson. If Johnson hadn't found him, the Coyotes or Wolves would've picked over Jacks bones and the rifle would still be there.
Bill, my cousin found that information somehow too (this was before the www, but he collects all sorts of guns and books) that was the first thing we checked for :D. Unfortunately it didn't pan out for him, and there was no wood left on his gun whatsoever after being under the floor of the shed for ? years.
Corely5
That's entirely possible, or could be any one of a gazillion scenarios, and any number of years ago.
Maybe the guy was lost and thirsty and tired, and decided he wasn't going to carry the additional weight of the gun. But also couldn't retrace his steps to find it again.
Only he and his maker knows.. but there is a now a bunch of Parks people working hard to make up a good story around somebody back in the late 1800's or early 1900's, whereas it could have been just 40-50 yrs ago give or take.
Would be very helpful to know if there was ammo in the chamber and the tube.
Maybe he was out of ammo (lost and fired all his ammo to shout out his location) and being out, no reason to lug the gun any further.
Quote from: Chuck White on January 16, 2015, 07:24:14 AM
Quote from: Peter Drouin on January 15, 2015, 09:56:16 PM
How can one leave a gun on a tree ::) ??? ??? ???
A lot of things can go through a persons mind when they shoot a deer.
The guy told me that he leaned the rifle on the tree and gutted out his deer, then dragged the deer to his truck (maybe 1/4 mile) and then went back to get the rifle and couldn't find it, or the gut pile and after several hours, gave up!
You put the gun in the deer if you have to and drag it all out.
You can clean the gun when you get home. :D ;)
For how ever long it had been there, it had been there long enough for the barrel to have rust through. Note the holes in the last picture near the left edge of the photo. The barrels back them were of virgin steel (recycling hadn't been invented yet) and were thicker than today's barrels. So it has been in the elements (there or elsewhere) for a while.
There's a few more pictures of it on Great Basin National Park's Facebook Page.
https://www.facebook.com/GreatBasinNPS
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.
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
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.
This one was made in 1882, cut that half of the tree down and count the rings.
Quote from: terry f on January 16, 2015, 08:58:09 PM
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. ;) ;) ;)
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.
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.
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.
Quote from: beenthere on January 16, 2015, 09:09:55 PM
Quote from: terry f on January 16, 2015, 08:58:09 PM
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
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?
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
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.
Where did you hear this????
Old saying.
Quote from: WDH on January 17, 2015, 09:11:53 PM
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
My all-time favorite movie.
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.