Coolest Find While In the Woods?

[GaTrapper]

I found a really nice gold necklace as a kid. Still have the thing. Keep debating on selling it.

I have found several nice pocket knives as well.


What's everyones coolest finds while out in the woods?

[TroyC]

Found an old axe head that was probably used during a timber cut. Fixed it up and use it regularly.

[rusticretreater]

I have found an old axe head that I cleaned up and used, until I lost it too!

I have a folded machete that I found, though I can't remember where.  Old tire rim.  I also found a beat up brush hog in the bushes at the rear of a property of my home I bought new in 2006.  I sold that for scrap as the driveshafts on it were bent badly.

[Tom King]

I found a hydraulic shop press.  They had taken the jack, and left the rest of it.  The vertical part was out of plumb with the base, but a few new bolts fixed that.  They also left a few 5 gallon buckets of probably used hydraulic fluid, but the buckets had split and whatever was in them was long gone.  This is the only picture I have of it when I pressed new bushings in the John Deere front axle.   It's not real pretty, but works fine.

This was found years ago, before I found the mill stones, but in the same six acres that we bought about 20 years ago.

[Jeff]

I found this at an old homestead a mile back in the woods on a hike with Brother Noble in Drury Missouri.  He said if you want it, you gotta carry it out. Back then I had no garage, no polebarn, but Buddy Harold did, so I gifted to him. I'm helping him roof today, so I tooka pic of it. Pretty cool find for an old Motorhead.


 

[WhitePineJunky]

Mostly old bottles but also a 24" crosscut saw under duff layer in woods

[Wlmedley]

I was squirrel hunting about a mile or so from the house probably about 50 years ago and was sitting on the edge of a rock cliff which gave me a pretty good view of a large patch of hickory's.About the time I got comfortable I saw something sort of shiny and picked up a large Buck folding knife.Might as well been a bar of gold.I was tickled to death and mostly forgot about squirrel hunting and headed home to polish it up.Can't believe its been that long ago.Hard to type in 50 years.

[Jeff]

And then you just reminded me of something else I found out squirrel hunting as a kid, probably 12 or 13. It was a leather bota bag full of wine.

Later, when I show Mom, "Does it have anything in it?"  Me. "Nope"  ;D

[Jeff]

The rest of the Story was, that it turned out to be my older cousin Mick's who had been up to the old farm to hunt the week before. He was probably close to 30 then maybe. I returned it to him and he winked at me in front of my reverend dad and said, "Drat! Still empty"  

https://forestryforum.com/board/index.php?topic=22902.0

[hedgerow]

Best find in the woods for me was probably thirty years ago. One of our farms backs up to a state lake with no hunting allowed. We had about a three acre timber area at the back of that farm that we called the happy hunting ground. We would have hunters walk in from the north road and illegal hunt our farm and the lake ground. I would normally run cows on the stalks so I was over checking them and there was a brand new ten foot step ladder with the price tag on it leaning against a tree with a tree stand in the tree. The ladder went home with me and I gave the tree stand to a buddy. No one ever came looking for the ladder. 

[Southside]

I was about 16 or 17 deer hunting and came across a very old grave, that had been robbed.  Yup, it was open, right in the middle of no where.  There had been talk of "occult" types in the area for years, I do remember walking out of there with my 12ga shouldered the whole way and the hairs on my neck standing straight out.  Didn't feel any more comfortable having to go back in and show the Warden where it was.

Have not thought about that for decades.  Thanks GATrapper!   :D

[Texas Ranger]

Found (stumbled over) a broadax while cruising. carried it the rest of the day.  Found a still, marijuana and meth labs.  Three bodies.  Happens when you work the woods for long.  Those days we still had a lot of big woods around here, now mostly plantations.  The forest service said no guns on we field foresters.  For me that ended when law enforcement started finding bodies at the end of logging roads/fire lanes.  Four in less than a year, one domestic and three bad boys from the big city.  Could just see myself turning a corner and find some dude with his latest half out of the trunk.

[Old Greenhorn]

I recall one backpacking trip in the late 70's in a State Park where we happened on a campsite that was left shortly before we arrived. They had left their fire going and just piled rocks on it. So we started pulling the rocks off to properly douse the fire and clean up their mess. I rolled one rock and heard a metallic 'snap' There was an old Victor leg hold trap that was set under the rocks and in the fire. The heat of the fire took a lot of the temper out of the spring, but that was a bit too close. I still have that trap somewhere, but with a soft spring, it ain't much good. ;D
 There's a few hundred miles of hiking trails in that park and I covered most of them in 15 years. One time I found a pretty little switch blade. Not the street fighting kind, but a lovely little 2 blade pen knife. It had tiger eye bolsters and was a cute little thing. One blade was snapped off, but the other worked fine. I should look around for that thing.

[Southside]

I didn't "find" it but I did have to baby sit a shallow grave one night when the medical examiner had to stop digging it up until daylight came back. A bear hunter stumbled across it looking for a spot to set a bait.  Two mobsters, drivers licenses in their back pockets.  

[Otis1]

Funny this came up. Just today I found this old plow? not sure what it is. In the National Forest northern Wisconsin, out in the middle of nowhere and a few hundred feet from the nearest old logging road. There's a FS gate at the main road about a mile away, so not many people have been down there. Guessing the last time the logging road was used was 1960's. This area was probably cut over sometime around 90-100 years ago. There's not really any agriculture for miles in any direction.   

 

 

[dougtrr2]

I found the head to a brush hook.  I think it was from the 30's, when the cross country pipeline was installed through my property.  I think back then there was a lot of manual brush clearing.

Doug in SW IA

[bluthum]

50 years I discovered a novaculite stone quarry that was apparently undisturbed since the stone age. It was on a very steep rough place on forested public land where few would have reason to be or happen onto by accident. There were  exposed ledges of black novaculite with an occasional sandstone hammerstone or worked piece of novaculite laying about. The hammerstones were from fist sized to 20#ers and were brought up from  a creek bed below. The site is on the national register of historic sites now but the exact location isn't public for obvious reasons. Novaculite was prized by stone age people for tool material and much later by Europeans for whetstones. Nearly all of the stone age sites were later reworked by Europeans, the quest for the stone was one of the leading reasons for early European explorers to explore SW Arkansas.

[bluthum]

And in the small forestry related stuff I've found was a steel buggy axle which had apparently been used as a single tree for skidding. I took it home and forged a digging point one end and an angled pryer on the other. It's done a fair amount of work in the 50 years since.

[Dakota]

I found a horse drawn log arch with wooden spoke wheels.

[Don P]

A train, or a few remains of a narrow gauge dinky engine below what would have been a high trestle in some rough mountain land in NC. These were logging trains back in the day and I had heard of wrecks up there. It had all washed out in the 40's. Locals talked about sitting up in the woods and hearing boulders rolling down the creeks during the flood. I carried one of the small wheels a mile or two closer to the road for the next guy.

Tree planting in SC my hoedad turned up a sword point in a scabbard. In rough shape and on an old homesite. I figured the old soldiers bones were there somewhere nearby and replanted it.

[sawguy21]

One of our helicopter pilots brought a Winchester 92 he found on the tundra, we could only guess how long it had been there and why. An Inuit hunter would have been without a means of survival without it.

[JD Guy]

I found a really nice gold necklace as a kid. Still have the thing. Keep debating on selling it.

I have found several nice pocket knives as well.


What's everyones coolest finds while out in the woods?

I am more likely to lose things in the woods, can I check your pocket knives to see if any of them are related to me?  :D

[JD Guy]

Funny this came up. Just today I found this old plow? not sure what it is. In the National Forest northern Wisconsin, out in the middle of nowhere and a few hundred feet from the nearest old logging road. There's a FS gate at the main road about a mile away, so not many people have been down there. Guessing the last time the logging road was used was 1960's. This area was probably cut over sometime around 90-100 years ago. There's not really any agriculture for miles in any direction.  

 

 

How was the Grouse hunting? In the Nicolet or Cheuamegon?

[Bert]

I have stumbled across two old hand dug coal mines. One you could almost stand up in the other was a crawl. I did not go in far but found an axe chopped post I figure was to help support the "roof". Wish the post could tell the tale huh-smiley. I am guessing someone dug house coal way before my time. One had a few glass jars around the perimeter. Maybe a still in prohibition?  

[moodnacreek]

Down the road and just in the woods My son found a large round porcelain coated Texico sign from a gas station/ store that closed about the time i was born [1949]. I remember the abandoned clock face gas pumps there. The sign hung across the road. My grandparents used to go there for pie on their Indian motorcycle . It now hangs on the sawmill. A good find of mine is a mortar stone the Indians left for me.