Finding dead bodies while hunting
Whitetail Deer
Who here has found dead bodies in the woods
I was curious...about this issue. I've hunted land and fished the rivers where the bodies of people who had been killed, killed themselves, or died of natural causes (exposure), etc.
Last month, a lady went missing on her way to church. She left a friends house and one week later they found her car stuck in a field where I hunt. They showed the car on the news and i recognized the parking area. Initially after finding the car, searchers went out and could not find any sign of her. Another week passes and a hunter went out and was able to find the body. I had plans to go out to the location and do some shed hunting, but now I'm glad I didn't go...now. The sheriffs department said she was intact, but wouldn't give any more info on the body.
A fishing story...another location where I would fish is on the Mississippi river. One of my friends was snagging for spoonbill and snagged a large plastic trashbag. He pulled it in and made the mistake of opening it. Inside was the body of a young prostitute who had been thrown into the river. It ruined him and now he won't go anywhere near that place. The police shut down the spot for two days while they investigated. I was on my way there, and was delayed about two hours. He found it 1 hour before i got there.
Same location, but a year later...a guy was drunk and about to get a divorce. Looked at the river and ran and jumped off the mooring docks for the barges. A bunch of snaggers saw him do this and before he went down he begged for help to get out. Several men tried snagging him with their treble hooks and 100lb test line...but they all missed. Divers found his body wedged about a week later under the large concrete mooring docks...they couldn't get his body out in one piece. Sad...
One of my friends found a guy in July who had hung himself on state land. He was a hunter who decided to climb into his stand, tie a rope to the limb above him and jump out. It was messy...think July (90-100 degrees) and body contents outside of the body. Clean up crew was in hazmat suits and throwing up in them. It was horrible.
Ok...so let's hear some stories.
Many years ago a guy I knew in New Jersey was bird hunting in north Jersey and found the body of a young woman. He reported it and was afraid that he'd get in trouble because he was trespassing. He didn't. I guess they were happy that someone found her remains before it went the way of nature.
There was another incident not too far from where I live in northern Illinois about 20 years ago. A man who rented a room at restaurant/motel disappeared and a month later a guy had his dogs out for a run and they found the dismembered guy's body in a grave in the woods. The owner of the restaurant was convicted of the murder. He'd used a butchers band saw to cut the body up with.
I mean,your REALLY talking about other dead deer,correct.The human thing is a metaphor??? Gotta say this is a Bowsite original
Only the war hero I was guiding on an elk hunt who died in my arms on the mountain..
Last sound he heard was five bull elk all bugling over each other.
years ago some friends were chasing a Mt. Lion when they found the skeletal remains of a guy who had been missing for some time, he had been shot.
No, and I hope I never do. I did ice fish on a pond a couple years ago where they had to give up the search until spring and that was a creepy feeling.
A friend of mine found a dead human body while bowhunting in southern WV. It turned out to be a guy that had went “missing” 3-4 years before he found it. We formed a lease in another county and there was a big suitcase stuffed full along one of the roads. We drove by it for years and looked at it but we never opened it.
Was at the Monahans TX state park and ran across a mostly skeleton in the sand dunes there. Still some skin showing. Just reburied him. Didn't tell anyone.
The reinterment was a tribute to a fellow bowhunter. The knapped points and knife that were buried with him indicated that he was a bowhunter too.
Terry
"Last sound he heard was five bull elk all bugling over each other"
Now that's the way to check out, cool story Lou, but I guess it was tough for you to be there.
Didn't find them, but spent an awful night on the water searching for a cousin and his friend who had disappeared while duck hunting. They were found submerged the next morning after their capsized boat was found. We'd been through that area several times in the dark but hadn't spotted anything.
It was one of the worst nights of my life. I hope to never repeat it
I mean,your REALLY talking about other dead deer,correct.The human thing is a metaphor??? Gotta say this is a Bowsite original
People have talked about this on other threads...both here and Archerytalk.
Sorry for your loss Blake.
Years ago, a friends cousin found an old airplane crash site (he thought). As he checked it over, he noticed a microphone hanging out of the cockpit. As he got closer, he found the pilot still inside the plane! The plane had been flying on autopilot to an airport 50 miles away. It had crashed a week or 2 before and hadn't been found despite searches. The plane had gone down along a powerline cut and had gone into trees. Since leaves were still on, it couldn't be seen from the air.
He was dubbed "the bodyfinder!"
A week later, while driving along the road below where this happened, we saw a car off the road, down a steep bank. The cars headlights were still on. Since the bodyfinder wasn't with us, we debated who had to go look to see if anyone was in the car. I was ruled out as being the youngest and finally my buddy John went down. He was relieved to see that nobody was in the car and there was no blood or teeth visible.
I've never found a human body, but I HAVE thrown up in a HazMat suit.
Bake, I'm truly sorry for your loss.
I don't think they found that University of Michigan Student who rented an airplane and jumped out of it over northern Ontario last March... They found the plane that had been flying on autopilot until it crashed in the woods......
So if any of you are hunting up near Marathon Ontario maybe you'll stumble across him.
When I was a kid my uncle and I were fishing off a dock on the Colorado river. We kept hearing and feeling this rhythmic thumping coming from under the dock. My uncle got down to peer through a crack between the boards of the dock, and then stuck his head over the side and looked under. When he stood back up he was ghost white and ushered me out of there ASAP. Next thing I know there were sherrifs all over the place. Apparently some guy had fallen off a boat several days prior and his body was stuck under that dock.
Another time I was fishing on my own boat in a remote part of the Sea of Cortez Baja Mexico. I saw a seagull standing on top of a floating object on the surface. We motored closer and I still have no idea what I saw. It was a hunk of flesh of some sort. All wrinkled and white. Didn't look like a part of a whale or seal, which I've seen a bunch of times. I won't let my mind go there, but I have my suspicions. Still haunts me a little.
Year's ago, a friend was fishing the river near by and saw a body floating, he snagged it and brought it in. Another friend found a frozen body along the same river, he had new shoes, his size, so he took them. This was many years ago
I got sent to one 2 summers ago that some kids found in the woods. It was pretty badly decomposed. I couldn't tell if it was male or female or race. Turned out to be an elderly missing man that wandered into the woods. Someone reported that they saw him 6 weeks earlier wandering in there and asked if he needed help but said he was OK. Very sad.
My sympathies Bake. I can't imagine looking for anyone's body, but looking for someone you know has got to be awful.
My folks had a place on the Mississippi Rv., on Bootleg Island, Waukon Jnct,Ia. for over 30 yrs and it wasn't uncommon that a body would be found in the back backwaters in the spring after the breakup. Some were either self-inflicted or dumped off by someone else. Back in the 20-30s there were several floating bars and one took their life in their own hands when going to them, rough place at one time.
Similar story to Pat ... during my college days at Michigan Tech in the mid 80s. We were both in the South Portage Entry of the Keweenaw Peninsula in the UP. After noticing a lot of plane activity, we went up to another boat and found there was a drowning. So we helped out with the grid search but thankfully someone else found the body. Turned out a MTU prof has fallen off of his sailboat.
I consider myself very fortunate to not have had any direct exposure to bodies. Kudos to the police and paramedics who deal with the worst of this on a daily basics.
In PA, a few bodies would always turn up each year during the deer gun opener as the hunters scoured the woods.
Thanks Mark..... Part of my job is crime scene photography so taking pics of dead people is my job.... just had a hanging yesterday....
My nephew is at Michigan Tech this year. He's a city boy from down here by Detroit.... and doesn't like it up there..... I love it up there !!!!
If any of you guys REALLY want to see something creepy..... Google the Suicide forest of Japan...... and watch some of the footage on that. People go into the woods there to kill themselves. Several hundred a year.
This isn't a hunting story, but I guess it could be called hunting for our neighbor. When I was a kid back on my Dad's farm we had an old bachelor farmer as our closest neighbor. He was typical in that he wasn't the friendliest person in the world and, therefore, didn't have many people who stopped by his place. One evening another farmer from a few miles away, who was one of the few people to have anything resembling a regular interaction with him stopped by our house and wanted us to come with him to check on Silvarius, since he was supposed to have done something a day or two ago and hadn't heard from him. He also was kind of squeamish and didn't want to go over there alone in case it turned out for the worst. It did. So, my Dad and I went over, saw lights on inside, knocked on the door, didn't get any response and opened the door. I can't describe the wall of smell that we ran into. Decomposing humans have a very distinctive smell and is one that will stay with you forever and instantly recognize. I think it might trigger something instinctual and hard-wired into our brains, actually. Long story short is that he probably died 3-4 days earlier sitting in his rocking chair in front of his roaring oil-burning heater that stood in the middle of his living room. The house temperature was in the high 80's when we got there. I remember seeing him briefly before my Dad shooed me out of the house because 10 year olds really shouldn't see things like that. I think it helped in that I was a farm kid and had plenty of exposure to animal death that was comparable, so it wasn't so much of a shock, but I can still picture him in my mind just like I was standing there. I think it also triggered some bad memories for my Dad, since he was a WWII pacific theatre combat vet. He suffered severe PTSD and used alcohol to self-medicate, and I remember he went on a big drinking binge right after that. They had to tear up and burn the flooring for about an 8 foot radius around him and the smell never left that house. A family did move into that house a year or two later, but how they stayed there I have no idea.
Edit: I was probably around 15 when this happened, not 10. I was 10 when we moved to that farm and this happened a number of years after we moved there, so was actually mid-teens.
^^^^. Been there... done that dozens and dozens of times.... been to ones where the dog fed on the body for awhile before the dog died too.....
Not hunting but my wife and I had a camp in the Adirondacks on Pine Lake and this gentlemen in his early 80's would swim acrossed the lake every morning. I will not mention his name but everyone new him as the "Mayor". We were out fishing one early morning and my wife spotted something floating in the lake. It was the "Mayor" they later said he died of an apparent hard attack while taking his morning swim. Shawn
Oddly enough, I have found two-one fresh and one very, very old. The fresh one was a woman, bound with duct tape and killed bu her boyfriend. She was dumped on some land I had leased and had been dead less than 12-hours. Not at all a pleasant experience. The other, was believed to be a Native American and had been dead many years-nothing but skeletal remains. I also found a man dead in his car-apparent heart attack but I wasn't hunting, just saw the car off in the ditch and stopped to see if I could help.
A colleague I taught Bio with found a human skull in the woods and had it sitting on his desk. Word got out about it and next thing we knew State police visited us at school. The skull belonged to an old guy who wandered away from the county nursing home the winter before. We had a ball back then. I would bring my muskrats in I trapped and the girls in my wildlife bio class would skin them, and they were good at it. The warden let me have a roadkilled deer and the class dissected it, buthered it, and we split up the meat, along with frying up tenderloin for lunch. That was before politically correct ruined everything.
A buddy of mine 30-40 years ago was fishing in a local lake. No swimming was allowed but, After enough alcohol someone always tried. The sheriffs office sent some deputies out but the local search & rescue was busy, so the called him to shore told him they needed his boat. He said they could use it but, he didn't want anyone else operating it. 30-45 minutes later they located the body and pulled it into his boat. Said the smell of alcohol was staggering.
I have a nephew that's been missing soon to be four years. The last signs of him was back a dead end road. Had all kind of rescue search teams / dogs involved, even one from CO. I never hiked so much in one year.
Two other times I've been hunting and ended up being in the middle of searches.
Sorry for your experience Bake.
I was Turkey hunting about thirty years ago when I came upon what I thought was a mannequin holding a shotgun next to a tree where I had to go through to hunt. I figured someone set this up to make it look like someone was already hunting the area since you could see it a way off . I started to leave but curiosity got the best of me and just had to get a closer look. When I got a closer look I realized a guy shot his head mostly off with a pump 12 gauge. He had a five pack of buckshot next to him and a mostly empty six pack of beer next to him. The odd thing was the fired round was ejected from the gun and a second live round was in the barrel ready to fire again the other three shells were still in the box. I guess the recoil after the shot and reflexes chambered the round. I found out later it was all about a woman leaving him. To bad He did not think about this for a while He may have drank the beer for a different reason.
Never found a body or anything like that but an interesting story. I was out bowhunting one evening in a state park near where I live. It's not at all uncommon to see funny things in the woods there. I'm in my stand and a gentleman comes running through the woods. He didn't see me in the tree and kept on his way. I didn't think much of it other than it probably ruined my hunt. Well about 20 minutes later I hear baying hounds and along comes a handful of Sherriff's deputies with their bloodhounds along the same track as the guy that had come by 20 minutes earlier. Now I'm thinking to myself what the hell did I get into the middle of here? The Sherriff's deputies didn't see me either and when they got near my tree I hollered at them to let them know I was in the area and to let them know which way the guy had gone. Turns out it was just a training exercise and they went on their way but I had delusions of a serial killer and a man hunt in my head for sure when I heard those hounds baying!
In Eastern VA, if you want to hunt, you have to join a club that leases private land. Typically, those cubs will use deer hounds during general firearms season. Not really my cup of tea but I joined a reputable cub and wound up in a small group of guys that spent the majority of our time not hunting but radio tracking the dogs and making sure each one got back after every hunt. That usually meant a lot of late nights with just a couple of guys and a receiver in a truck. You learn a lot about folks spending time like that and it was always some mix of the same 5 guys.
Anyway, one night, one of the 5, Tim drove down a logging road tracking a little gyp that he was very found of. According to the investigators, on his way back, he must have gotten distracted and looked down because they had no other explanation for why he drove headlong into a partially open pole gate. The pole lanced through the windshield and killed him instantly. A couple of my buddies found him. I left earlier for a family commitment.
In a horrible twist of fate, the guy that called to inform me of Tim's passing died about a month and a half later from stomach cancer. He was terminal and hid it from everyone. Rob was a young fellow in his twenties. The last hunt he took was a squirrel hunt with me and my dogs right before he died. He was pale as a fish belly and could barely hike to the trees. He told me he had bronchitis but wanted to keep hunting because it was probably the last hunt of the season. We did a lot of sitting and taking that day. So, while I've never found a dead body, I have hunted with a ghost.
Found this out in our pasture a few years back in July. I was for sure it was some drunk high school kids until I started looking around and heard some singing that was coming from a patch of black berries. Turns out an elderly lady got off her meds and went for a joy ride, plowed through our gate, drove around our whole pasture and ended up in our pond. This was on a Monday morning when I found her, she went missing on Friday night. Somehow she survived in over 100 degree temps with no water for over 2 days. Had I not been out there that morning, I would have eventually found a dead body for sure.
In 2017 I was involved in the search and recovery of five people. Three were drownings, one was suicide, and one was an ATV accident. Not how I want to remember the year.
I didn't find one but a fellow hunter who was hunting a place I had permission to hunt did. I was bowhunting a private piece of land with a Co Sherriff and a police academy student (fellow martial arts student). Heard about a pheasant hunters dog who found a dismembered girl on the place. When I went to ask for permission to hunt the next season the landowner told me some more of the details. Apparently the police and multiple investigators came out to find the rest of the body and cover the scene. He was told not to mention any details to the media, family members, etc. However, someone on the police force leaked out info anyway. He didn't much appreciate that. Long story short they caught and convicted the man who did it. The story was he met a woman at a local bar/dance hall (one some of us at work and college were going to at the time-real popular spot). She wasn't too interested in hooking up with him and he probably abducted and killed her, dumping the body on the private land. Mr. Kieger's (I think that was the name) story was that he came outside of the bar, his place, etc. and found her in the bed of the pick-up truck, got scared and just disposed of her-wasn't involved in her death (yeah right). Hopefully still in prison as this was back in the 1980s.
That land owner was a great guy, let a lot of people on his place for bowhunting, small game and duck hunting. Had a ATV trail system that he and his children enjoyed too. As far as I know never let anyone on his place again due to the police actions, bringing a lot of attention to him and his family, the disposal location, etc.
Geez, some interesting experiences here for sure. I've often thought about this and havent had the experience, not so sure I want walk up on one either, however, I'd change my tune in a hurry if someone asked me to do a search and rescue.
40+ responses! I wonder if this would be the norm for all people having this experience, or it has to do with the fact that outdoors people spend far more time in the woods and waters than the average person?
Was fishing in the keys 20+ years ago(I was in my teens)when a call came over the radio. A fisherman and crew had found a boat full of immigrants(all dead, and some floating around the homemade boat) they radioed the coast guard and were told to stay until they arrived. Got the play by play over the radio of blacktip sharks moving in and eating everyone in the water. Sh$( still haunts me to this day.
Not hunting related, but when I was about 14 my grandmother asked me to go down into the bottom and check on Pa as I called him. Me and a buddy took the wheelers down and found him dead on his tractor with the fertilizer buggy attached. He was trying to beat the rain and lightning got him. It was a tough time for our family. He was a great man!
I also found one who was not dead but had a 12 gauge slug hole though his upper right chest, but that is another story or another creepy thread!! Shawn
About 20 years ago I was having lunch with the owner of a hotel in extreme northern SK. His manager came into the restaurant and asked the owner for a private conversation. There was a helicopter pilot staying there that had not reported for work. The manager opened the room to check on him; the guy was in the bathroom but would not respond. We went to see what was happening and when we opened the bathroom door the guy was naked on the floor facing away from us in the fetal position. The manager asked if he was dead; I knew he was as soon as I saw him and sorta gave him a slight kick in the arse; stiff as a board and long expired. They looked at me kinda weird. “What?” I said. The owner said “That was kinda cold booting a dead guy in the ass. “ We phoned the RCMP, they were 30 minutes away. The hotel owner called his buddy the coroner; he showed up pretty quick and we took him to check out the pilot. When we got there he booted the guy in the ass and proclaimed “Yup he’s deader than a hammer. “
I never found any while hunting but I sure saw my share when I was a police sergeant. Don't want to see any more The dead babies and children I saw still haunt me.
I joined a volunteer Search and Rescue team this last summer. We were on a search this past winter where a middle-aged guy with dementia walked out of a mental-assistance home. (I smell a good lawsuit coming up). It was during one of the freezing cold weeks this last winter. He walked out on a Monday morning and his body was found on Thursday I think. He walked out at like 8 in the morning in socks and pajamas, walked down about 3 streets and ended up freezing to death in a fence row about 50 feet behind someone’s house a half mile away from the home. Makes you feel weird when you realize people still freeze to death in the middle of urban situations.
Just imagine how many people would never been found if not for hunters and fisherman.
(Found three dead on a search and rescue. Mom and her kids.) (Had a friend die while doing CPR on him at work.) (Watched my uncle take his last breath.) (Took three last request from good friends. before they died.) (Was close enough to a murder to here the shot but did not realize what happened until all the Game Wardens started to show up.) (On another search and rescue I watch the divers pull up a 14 year old girl. This one haunts me.)
(I found a man lost in the woods and showed him out.) (A group of us formed a search and rescue and we found a Mom and her daughter alive after being lost in the woods.) (I stopped at a car accident where a women was bleeding out and put pressure on her wounds until the ambulance arrived and then went with her to the ER holding her hand. I had to leave immediately after and deploy so I never knew if she lived or not.)
Everyone dies so if you live long enough you are almost certain to see it. I almost did not post this as it still lives in my memories.
Never have - thankfully. Used to freak me out, when my dad told stories of being a teen in high school working for the city DPW. He and some other kids were clearing brush along a water line near the river that flowed through the area and found a dead man. Pretty wild.
A couple years ago, a large plastic bin (like many of us store hunting clothes in) showed up about 100yds off the road on a mountain bike trail I ride a lot on state forest land. It was a green bin, and the thing was duct taped shut like it was fort knox. It just felt wrong, so my wife and I called it in - asking to know what was found. Someone had put their dog in - the local PD was pretty sure it was dead prior to be putting in since there was no evidence the dog struggled to get out. Weird.
Every time I see one of these threads I get wigged out.
I also worked for a local municipality and one of the summer kids found a guy rolled up in a carpet and dumped in the woods. he went to take a leak and started yelling. They called it on the radio so several trucks with their workers arrived. Everyone decided not to go look as we did not want to mess with it as it was obviously a crime scene. Turns out guy was a landlord and bludgeoned to death with a hammer by one of his female tenants when he bought her an eviction notice. It was july and the smell was brutal!! Shawn
My last boss before I retired was a bowhunter and hunted all over. The local Pharmacist decided to go on an elk hunt with him. As I remember it was a drop camp but, could have been guided. Woke up about the 2nd or 3rd morning and the pharmacist said he wanted to sleep in, my boss went on out and hunted. Came in about noon and the guy wasn't up yet so Denny went in to wake him. No response so he grabbed his sleeping bag pulling it down and the guy had committed suicide with his hand gun. Never said anything to give my boss anything was wrong prior to that.
We always take new recruits to death scenes at the opportunity..... If they can't handle seeing gruesome death and or decomposition..... they had better rethink their career choice.
That's why you guys don't get paid NEAR enough BEAR! You earn it!
When I was about 7 years old while out fishing a canyon creek near our house with my Dad, we spotted a car that had driven off the road and down a steep embankment. My Dad went and looked and I stayed back. There was a dead person in the car, but I didn't see it, so technically yes I have found one.
A group of friends of mine went on a hiking trip down at Lake Havasu, on the hike out there was a group of three sitting on a picnic table just off the trail. It was a breezy gusty day, but nothing crazy. They were about 20' away from the group and a large branch fell off a nearby cottonwood tree and struck all 3. The woman had her head completely smashed in, one man was in critical condition, and the other suffered a broken arm. Not only did they find a dead body, but unfortunately saw it happen....and at very close range. One of the members in the group was a doctor and immediately rendered aid to the one in critical condition and didn't even look at the woman means how most of her brain was on the table. They ended up hauling the guy in critical condition to an area where life-flight could get to them, hiked out with the injured guy and left the woman until the officials could retrieve her with a body bag. So glad I didn't go on that trip.
I bought some acreage a few years back which I later found out had been the site of a suicide. A guy from Buffalo, NY (about 70 miles away) had simply walked out into the woods, climbed a big maple tree, tried a rope to one of the tree limbs, tied the other end to his neck, then leaped out of the tree. Hunters found him quite some time later, purplish black in color, and the story goes that he was almost 8' long.....local dark humor had nicknamed him "Stretch"..... His wallet (which was still on him) contained almost $3,000.00. Was headed home late one night during the late hunting season, and was taking my time because the snow made the roads pretty slippery, when a vehicle (coming from the other direction) suddenly veered across the centerline and crossed the road right in front of me. The vehicle stopped when the undercarriage got hung up on the curb and shoulder of the road. I pulled over and checked on the driver....when I opened the driver's door, I could see his breath....but the the guy was already whitish grey in color. I checked his pulse....none. I called 911 and waited for the first responders....Come to find out, he had been smoking a cigarette while driving, and when the heart attack killed him, the cigarette had fallen inside of his shirt.....giving the appearance of him still breathing.
My buddy and I were driving home after a long day of fishing up Cheeseman Canyon, it was getting late and we were tired. As we crossed a bridge I was looking out the window and could have sworn I caught a millisecond glimpse of a light-colored thing in the river about 50 yards upstream, that looked almost like a body. But, it was late and I was exhausted so I figured my mind was playing tricks on me. The next day I saw this story on the news.
When I was 13 I found a tibia while on a canoe trip. It was very old and while I was pretty sure that I was holding what used to be part of someone's leg, it left me with more of a sense of mortality than fear.
Years later, I was returning home from a canoe trip and came across a Suburban that was destroyed and covered in blood in between Atikokan and Thunder Bay. Later, I mentioned it to my buddy and he told me that he knew the guys. They hit a moose. It came over the hood, took the top of the truck off and decapitated three of the four guys in the truck.
I lived across the street from Lake Michigan for several years. There was a small beach with a sand spit that would collect things that floated by. My dog and I were there in the early morning on a couple of occasions when the same woman discovered yet another body. Over the time that I lived their, she had found something like seven bodies herself.
Cops, coroners, anyone who has to deal with water soaked bodies has my respect. I don't think that I could do that.
Had a serial killer who worked for a customer. He was odd, but no one I would've predicted to be a murderer.
But none of those creepy things has anything to do with hunting...
In the early, pre dawn light, I saw a splayed body lying on He had a T-shirt on its stomach. He was naked from the waist down with both legs stuffed Into one sleeve of a hoody. No shoes, socks, pants or underwear to be seen.
I walked up slowly, trying to see if he was breathing, but saw no rise or fall of his chest/back. He didn't respond to any inquiries. I knelt down near his head and gently prodded his shoulder with my bow.
His eyes popped open and he yelled some sort of unintelligible noise.
It startled me so badly that I jumped up, my legs were probably looking like something out of a cartoon and I almost killed the guy.
Finding a body while wandering around has always been a weird fear of mind since I was about 10 years old. My friends and I spent a lot of time hiking in swamps and woods just off the edges of roads an highways when I was kid. I vividly remember many news stories of people finding bodies dumped in just such locations.
A few years ago hiking/scouting far of the beaten path in September I glassed up what looked like a nice goose down puffy jacket wedged in between some boulders at the bottom of an avalanche chute. I hiked down to it and as I got closer I could see back of the jacket with the hood tucked in the rocks slowly rippling in the wind. It looked like someone had curled up to shelter themselves from the wind.......As I got right up on it I see the sun had faded the fabric and I thought it was skier or snowboarder who was swept up in a slide from the previous winter. I poked the back of the jacket with my trekking pole and was relived when it struck a rock. I still have that "dead guy" jacket in my car as a backup just in case.
Sandbrew
Never hunting, only at work like B.B...
AAARRRRRRRGGGGGGHHHHHH!!! That's it....I ain't ever going in the woods again 'Never get out of the boat...'
Ironic Medicine man, why didn't you start CPR? I assume you and your family would want the same done for you?
Orion: You should have just "booted him in the ass"! ;-)
Yeah, Lou. I recognize that I employed improper technique. If anything remotely similar ever happens again, I think I'll go with a long stick.
Yep, one here.
Was bow-hunting one day on the edge of a swamp and had a guy walk up below my stand. He was having trouble walking, and I told him he was trespassing, and asked him what he was doing. He told me he was looking for his model rocket that he had lost,then headed back where he came from. A day later I get a call from my dad said they where looking for a guy that I had seen as he was missing and never returned home. He apparently had advanced Parkinson disease and was a model rocket enthusiast. I called the police and met them on the farm where I saw him. They called in a helicopter with infra red to search the swamp and found nothing.
Fast forward to 6 weeks later, the swamp was frozen over and my dad and I where pheasant hunting with my sons along when we came across his body. He apparently fell and drowned and his body was cooled down so the helicopter did not detect him. The creepy part for us was his hand was out of the ice sticking up, and you could see his body underneath the clear Ice.
He was about 70 yards from where I last saw him and where we looked. If it wasn't frozen over and us hunting I doubt he would have ever been found and his family would still be wondering today.
Personally never found one but have worked several scenes where bodies have been found by hunters or fisherman. Everything from natural cause deaths, Indian burials, suicides, and homicides, always have felt bad for the people who have discovered them. It's just something they will never forget.
Years back on my way to the Bahamas, I was in the tower as usual looking for weed lines or something floating to fish on. Saw a bunch of birds diving, so slowed down to check it out and get some lines ready. Ended up being a body of a Bahamian floating. Called the Coasties, they had me stay with the body till they could get to my location. They even wanted me to try and get a PFD on him. Waited 4 hours for them. Wasn’t a good day. I have also seen many make shift rafts floating out there with no one on them, can only imagine what those people went through.
Yes, I did. So living in Ohio on the shore of Lake Erie, between Sandusky and Huron Ohio at the western end of the lake; I was 16 years old and would hike the beach along the duck marshes and shoot crows with the shot gun. Lake Erie would partly freeze and the incoming waves would pile up the ice along the shore and sometimes 20 feet high slanting down towards the beach. A great place to sled down. But one had to be careful not to fall off the lake side of the ice mound, as it was steep and then into the icy, ice choked water. Well a kid did just that and his body was not found that winter. So a month later and towards spring time and meld down, I was a mile up the isolated beach hunting crows when I saw this boot sticking out from the sand along the shore. Sure enough, as I approach closer, I saw blue jeans, then a leg, a hand and arm. The rest of the body including the head, was covered with sand. I ran all of the way home to tell of my find. My mom called the sheriff which arrived shortly. Riding in the sheriff's car was cool but the mission at hand was not. We drove around and found an access road near the beach, hiked to the body, recovered it, and finely brought closure to the parents. I remember later, the parents came to my house and gave me a Johnson Spinning Reel and a big thanks for finding their young son.
I know a guy from new jersey, he told me a story about when he was a kid in the 60s they were hunting in the NJ pine barrens and found a body. They called the police who came and collected the body. a week later it was in the papers. He said "I never could figure out how that man committed suicide with his hands tied behind his back like that."
Similar to the "Stand By Me" movie scenario, in '59 or '60 I was ice fishing on Black Pond near Meriden, CT. A body had been found the day before of a guy who supposedly died of natural causes. As I was walking along checking the ice conditions something caught my eye. The guy had apparently died face down on the ice. His body heat melted a perfect "face mask" into the clear ice. There was also some frozen blood in the mouth/nose area. Pretty scary when you're a teenager. bw
My daughters (7 and 8) and I were walking through the woods looking for mushrooms. My 8 year old yelled hey look at this. She walked up on a trash bag next to the river. Before I could tell her not to open it she ripped into it. I could only think of the smell of the body that was inside. (Former EMT that has the smell embedded forever.) She reached inside and pulled out a nice neoprene life jacket and said wow! I think it will fit! Ended up have two in there! Nice find but I thought she was going to be ruined from mushroom hunting for life!
YES! But old. Here is a mass grave my buddy and I discovered on Unimak Island in the Aleutians. I've posted pictures from this site a couple times over the past decade. I counted a minimum of six craniums.
A year ago on Kodiak I found this frontal lobe from a human skull and a pair of longbones a few feet from the edge of a small bluff above the tidal zone.
So what did you do with that Steve ?? I would imagine the authorities in Alaska would consider that some kind of native burial ground and leave it alone.....??
Pat: Yes .. I remember tracking you on that mountain that overlooks Black Pond when you were a little kid. After studying your tracks I remember thinking, "this kid is up to no good" bw
never while hunting but this was on the way to a hunt............. was the second civilian to arrive at a car wreck and was holding the hand of a seven year old boy when he died. His mom was already dead in the drivers seat. horrific.
Came upon a young man who had rolled his pickup early one morning on my way to hunt. That is never a pleasant memory climbing over the fence with a flashlight looking for something that I didn't really want to find. Came across another rolled vehicle in a ditch that fortunately didn't have anyone inside.
Well, I've never found anyone dead while doing anything but I can't stop coming back to this thread to see each new post. A bit ghoulish but I am glad to not be on the list of finders!!
I was a kid when some pheasant hunters found the body of a girl not far from my home. I don't think they ever identified her. As it was the 60's, and the girl was black, the authorities didn't spend a lot of time on it. Sad.
This thread is awesome, in a bad way. Crazy stories.
Interesting thread for sure, a lot more people have found bodies than I would have expected. I haven't, but here is a story I can share.
When I was a teenager, we hunted in MN with a crew of 12 or so, split between two cabins. My dad and I sat in the same stand then, close enough to the road into our area that we could see vehicles drive by. On opening day we noticed there were a lot of vehicles going in and out in the afternoon, and heard a siren go off for a second or two. This was weird since it was private access that only our party and a couple other groups could get into. We thought maybe the warden was snooping around or something, we couldn't think of any other possibilities.
When we got back to the cabin after dark we found out that an elderly member of our party had died of a heart attack in his stand. Apparently his daughters found him when they went to check on him during lunch time. It was a sad day in camp, but I think it would be a good place to meet your end.
I have another but I did not post as I thought they should be related to finding bodies in the woods. My wife and I were heading to Myrtle Beach and we were on I-17 which is a truck route around Washington DC. It was 2 am and all of a sudden it looked like a bomb went off in front of us. Then a real axle from a tractor trailer with tires attached literally bounced over our car. I slammed on the brakes and pulled over asap. Turns out a tractor trailer had jack knifed and flipped on its side and another tractor trailer traveling 70 mph hit it. Delaware phone books scattered all over the road and a debris field for a quarter mile. The guy that hit the one in the road was driver a flat nosed cab design and it was about 300 yards down the road from the point of impact. I ran down and climbed up on the cab and some women was screaming I had to check on the driver and check for a pulse. He was pushed all the way to the far back of the sleeper cab. I had a flashlight in my mouth and pulled the debris and shattered windshield away. There was no need to see if there was a pulse. The poor gentlemen was pretty much missing from the waist up. I still see that image and this was 30 years ago. I was interviewed by the insurance company about 8 months later and was told his widow and 3 kids were getting a lousy 50 grand for his lose of life as the other truck driver was found negligent in the crash!! Shawn
I started reading this and thought "Yea I'll share my story no big deal". The more stories I read, it suddenly hit me. There are times it really doesn't bother me. Other times, it still haunts.
Last year on April 2nd I stepped out of my house to let the dog out in the morning. It was a beautiful spring morning. I heard 3 shots in the distance, strange for that time of year yet not so strange for all the hunting camps around. I went on my merry business and had a great day.
The next morning I get a phone call from the neighbor at 6 AM. The sheriff wants to talk to me. Tells me an old hunting buddy/friend that I hadn't seen for a few years was missing from 3 hours away and they found his truck nearby with an empty holster on the seat and keys on the dash. His only connection to the area was our hunting camp. They needed me to take them through the woods and search for him. I jumped on my ATV and lead 2 deputies through the woods to the shack and some stands the guy had hunted from. Unfortunately we didn't find him. We went to the location of his truck and I spoke with the lead investigator. Knowing the guy's state of mind and circumstances I told the cops to start at his truck and when you get to the edge of the swamp you'll find him. I went home. They found his body 3 hours later. The 3 shots I heard were his. Apparently a person test fires the weapon to make get up the courage and ensure it's going to work.
Many unanswered questions and "if only thoughts" still in my head today. Thank God I wasn't the one to find his body. This was really difficult to share. I wish I hadn't heard the shots.
Not a dead body but, I was coming home from bear hunting in Idaho a few years ago. I came around a curve and saw a lumber loaded semi laying on its side. I slowed down and at first figured it was being taken care of, until I saw gas and oil leaking out on the road. I pulled over and went up to the cab and called out. The driver answered me back, and turns out I was the first on the scene. The guy said his back was hurt and he couldn't move. I couldn't get the door open so I ran back to the truck and grabbed my fire wood axe. Couldn't believe how much mess a glass window from a door makes. Thankfully some more folks stopped by, one of whom was a nurse, and we stabilized the guy with a makeshift stretcher from the lumber load he was hauling. Pulled him out through the drivers side window. No reception in the area so another guy drove up the road to a house and called 911. I held the drivers hand and talked to him until the first responders had it under control. He kept saying he couldn't feel anything and would then switch over to talking about his daughter. He also kept mentioning that a car had cut him off which was why he swerved and lost control. They landed a chopper right on the highway and airlifted him out. I called the local hospital a few days later and was told he had been checked out. I'm guessing he was not as bad hurt as he was making out, and wanted to play it up in order to keep his job. Never did find out what ultimately happened. Pretty crazy being the first one to an accident scene.
The mountain behind here - 'Whiskey Hill' - is where a hunter found evidence that led to the remains of a young woman who had been kidnapped. Still unsolved.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Molly_Bish
Fortunately, I’ve never found one. I lived out in the country in western Oklahoman in the mid 80s-early 90s, and had a neighbor whose mom lived up the road 1/4 mile from me. He lived in OKC, about 2 hrs to the ESE, but came out to his Mom’s all the time, as he had cattle on pasture that he took care of. He cleared a lot of cedars with a dozer and was always burning brushpiles. He would let me hunt his place and always seemed to be a very friendly guy, to me at least.
I ended up moving about 1 1/2 hrs south of there, but went back later in the fall to go quail hunting with a friend on my old landlords place. She asked me if I had been following the details on the news about my old neighbor. Until that point, I hadn’t made the connection. He had murdered his ex-wife, but they couldn’t find her body. They did, however, find bones in a couple of those burned brush piles. It was my understanding that they proved that they were human bones but couldn’t positively determine if they were indeed, his ex wife. He still got convicted of her murder. Those brushpiles weren’t much more than a stone’s throw from my trailerhouse. I remember him burning some brush piles in the winter
We also had a puke that had moved into my hometown 4-5 years ago that abducted 2 pre-teen girls. One of them escaped, and the manhunt was on for this guy in hopes that they would find the other girl safe. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case. This scumbag ended up committing suicide without revealing what he had done with the girl. They were searching up and down the river corridor near where the abductions had taken place. I live right on the river, and within 6 miles of where the girls were taken.
I had just buried our family dog down by the river a couple of days before this manhunt began. There were people all over the place looking for this girl. I figured I had better call the authorities and let them know about that grave before somebody stumbled upon it. The guy had indeed abused and murdered that poor little girl and dumped her body in the river downstream from my place a few miles. The POS didn’t even have the decency to leave a note or anything to help them find this girl. They didn’t find the body for several months.
How many of you that found this bone in the woods would say "oh, its just a deer"!
I had a fisherman die on us at one of our outpost camps. The two other gentlemen carried him out back into the shade till I flew in to check on the old fellas. They decided to keep fishing and made sure nothing disturbed the sleeping bag with their friend inside. Then had a hunter die on me also. Both sad but I'd sure both passed doing what they would rather be doing at the time.
When I was 11 I found my father frozen in his car sleeping it off in near 40 below. Doesn't haunt me but rarely a day goes by without that vision of me trying to wake him up. To this day I am grateful my mom did not go to the garage to see if that's where he was. Even when young I had thick skin but thinking back, the $hits for a little guy.
Of course my point is many of us probably come across human bones but don't recognize them for what they are!
I'd recognize that mandible but maybe not the other
Not in the woods, but talk about deaths that haunt!
When I first started law enforcement I was dispatched to the call from a frantic 19 year old mother who's baby wasn't breathing. Upon arrival she was setting on the floor cradling the infant and crying hysterically while rocking back and forth.
She was screaming for me to save her baby, I had to literally pry her hands away from the baby and as soon as I did I could tell rigor had already set in. I did cpr until the ambulance arrived - they loaded the baby and I drove the ambulance to the hospital while they worked on him. I had nightmares about that for many years. I almost turned my badge in that same afternoon. That was 30 years ago and I'm still haunted by it.
About 25 years ago my Dad and his buddy were hunting in colorado. They were going to mule deer hunt for a few days then relocate for a 2 week elk hunt. First morning opening day my dad had a doe come by him that had been shot a little far back. It still had the arrow hanging out of it. After the morning hunt on his way out he noticed some 4 wheeler tires sticking up in a meadow. He said it didn't click right away that something could be wrong. He went and met his buddy and decided to go back up the road and check it out. When he walked up to the 4 wheeler he said he could see some camo clothing about 20yrds in front of the bike. It was an 11 or 12 year old boy with his head caved in on a rock. The best he could figure was maybe the boy was the person who shot the doe he seen that morning. He got on his 4 wheeler with no helmet and was taking a short cut to get his dad. With the tall grass in the meadow he didn't see the rock that sent him over the handle bars. There was only 1 rock in a 20yrd radius of where he landed. It just happened to be where his head hit the ground. He sat with the kid while his buddy went to get help. Messed my dad up for a while. He never did make it elk hunting that year.
I had a buddy that got permission to hunt a small tract of land on the outskirts of Atlanta. He found a human skull on the property and called the police - cops told him all the teeth had been pulled from the skull. Never found any more parts of the body.
Lee
Inshart; The craziest thing I ever saw was when an old woman called 911 because her husband was in the garage trying to kill himself with a power drill......... When we pulled up he was standing in the garage with the electric power drill. When he saw us walking up the driveway he frantically continued to drill into his temple and neck and head.... over and over and over.... his left eye bulged out of his head where he drilled in behind it into his temple. We rushed him to the hospital but he died..........
The babies and kids are the worst to deal with.... drownings,, sids deaths..... a mother who set her baby down in the car seat behind her car to load up her other kids.... then forgot the baby and backed the car over the baby..... she thought she was backing over the Sunday paper so she gunned it to back over it.......
Decomposed bodies when a person dies in their home and has no next of kin... doesn't even phase me anymore.... don't use Vicks... no mask.... just the job.......
Last week The mother of my daughter’s friend committed suicide in the WMA that I spend much of my free time in. This time of year I like to scout, shed hunt out there but I’m not so enthusiastic about going right now.
A number of years ago a body was found at my gun club. It occurred to me I had been there close to the time it was found. Cops determined the guy had fallen and shot himself in the chest accidentally.
A co-worker’s friend was mtn lion hunting east of my house a week or so ago and came across a girl who has been missing since October. From my understanding, she was in a very hard to access location. Bad deal.
^^^. Yikes...... We have a missing young lady from Farmington Hills Michigan..... It is believed that she was raped and killed and dumped ..... but she hasn't been found... I think it's been 2 years now.....
The suspect in the case tried to abduct another girl and rape her on a walking path. That girl got away and he was subsequently arrested and tried..... and is currently in prison. He denies killing the first girl although a lot of circumstantial evidence points at him. The prosecutor won't likely charge him until the body is found....
Body Farm and Dead Angler books go into details of things such as this.
A few years ago the guy I teach bowhunter Education with had to help police recover a body at a special metro hunt. My brother and I had met the gentleman the day before. Fell out of his tree stand on a tree with a significant lean. Was wearing a chest strap, not a full body harness. Couldn't get back into the tree and almost was able to crawl out of the death noose, but was unsuccessful. From the description it was pretty gruesome. As I recall didn't have a whistle (now required equipment) to summon help. As part of that incident any metro hunts now require, full body harness and a whistle, flashlight on the person at all times while hunting. Cells phones are strongly encouraged.
Many year ago, I was coming from one of our farms, I took a shortcut through the woods, had to cross the ST. JOHN bayou. There was a old bridge, as I started across. I saw a 4020 JD tractor lying upside down. Looking down the embankment, I could see a body underneath the the tractor, walk down to see if maybe, he was still alive, not so, the tractor wheel was on his head, when we finally got the tractor off of him, I did know him, I can still see this man, name Casper laying there.
Not hunting...but while rafting.
I was with a couple buddies that guided on the American and Stanislaus rivers here in Ca and we were first to the scene of a guy that got wrapped on a boulder and Maytagged big time. The water had him pinned under the rock in the middle of the river.
Sheriffs showed and were successful in winching the raft off the boulder but [I heard later] they couldn't get to the body until the water went down in summer.
This year, early September,Left my house in Eastern Pa. at midnight, for my 2000 mile drive to Western Wyoming with my son on a DIY elk hunt. Around 4:00 am we were going through the Allegany mts.on route 80 with my son asleep in the passenger seat. I came up over a rise doing about 75 and as I started down the other side I noticed tail lights in the right lane ahead about a half mile out. It soon became apparent that the car was stopped, and I shouted to my son. As he woke up, and I drew nearer to the vehicle, I swerved to go around it I saw a large body in the middle of the highway, right on the middle line, about 50 yards before I got to the car. I said "Jake, did you see that?" He said "Ya dad, that was a body, are you gonna stop?"
I said "Hell no, someone else will come barreling over that hill and run us all over, besides, it took me three years to draw this tag, and I'm not gonna get stuck here in some investigation!" Never did hear anything about it
bowjoe at the risk of getting trolled. That was an awful decision you made.
Wow, I have been enjoying this thread up until the bowjo post. Absolutely ridiculous. Guy could have been alive still until next car over hill ran him over. Stupid decision and even worse to admit it.
Bowjo, surely you aren’t serious?
My wife and I were kayaking a remote section of stream in Pennsylvania. I was fishing, she was just kayaking, and had gotten out in front of my by a few hundred yards. I looked up and she was frantically waving her arms for me to come to her.
When I got to her, she told me there was a body laying on the stream bank. I could only see about half of the guy laying there, so I had her stay on the opposite side of the stream while I went to investigate. I told her that if I yelled, for her to call 911.
I got onto the bank and walked up to within about 20’ of the guy, his entire right side was buried in the mud bank, so you could tell he had been there for at least a few days.
I’m not sure why, but I tossed a few rocks at him and the last one hit him in the face, and he moved and groaned.
Now at this point, we are at least a mile from any road, and for what ever reason, on that day, I didn’t bring my pistol, all I had on me was a kayak paddle.
I yelled at the guy a few times, after a minute of so, he just got up, half covered in mud, looked me square and the eyes, grunted at me like a bear, and walked off into the woods. I know that guy had to have been laying there for a couple of days. There were no foot prints around him in the mud.
I honestly think it would have shaken me up less if he would have been dead, because he totally freaked me out.
Needless to say, I now carry when we kayak
I've come upon two dead bodies in the road when coming back from hunting. Both within about three miles of each other.
One was a solo free climber who fell and landed on the pavement. The second was a crotch-rocket motorcyclist who hit so hard it shattered his helmet and blood was running down the road from his skull. I was second arrival on both scenes and both were deceased. That's a dangerous road (CO Hwy 14) for motorcyclists, who love to rock around the curves at high speed. Unfortunately the sand left over from winter sanding trucks sometimes lays them over.
Wow, time to lighten things up a bit... during the 70's my brother and I hunting whitetail on neighbour's property, we hear one shot and start heading in that direction... I see my neighbor Mr. M laying on his back feet and legs hanging over a small creek bank... I yell out Mr. M, Mr M he just lays there, I tell my brother run to Mr. Ms house and get an ambulance... brother goes, i'm sitting close crying thinkn my neighbor is shot, he wakes up says what's up? I say I thought your were dead and sent my brother to your house... He said my wife is gonna have a heart attack... she didn't, he did say thank your for the quick thinking... he didn't hear the shotgun blast not more then 50 yds from where he lay dozing! He wasn't much of a hunter...actually he told me that was his first and last time hunting!
I seriously hope you didn't really leave someone laying in the middle of the road Bowjo.....
There was a high school student from Northville Michigan who stopped to assist on a crash on the freeway last year. A lady doctor also stopped.... They both got hit by another car. She died and the young man lost his leg. They did the right thing. It was a tragic ending.
Not hunting and not tragic, but a less grave situation where I hopped in my truck and drove away, leaving the mess behind.
I was returning from a trip up North camping and fishing with the wife and kids. I was driving. Traffic was sporadic.
A maroon Explorer was 75-100 yards in front of us when, I think, his right front wheel came off. He suddenly veered to the right and impacted the butt end of a guard rail that shielded the abutment of an overpass.
It was like some special effect in a movie. The guardrail popped off the supports and rose up in a rolling wave, as if you were flicking an extension cord. The Eplorer flipped, back end over front and had to have gotten at least fifteen feet of air. It came down on the rear of the truck and started cartwheeling end over end down the highway. Along the way, it started to roll sideways. It came to rest lying on the passenger side, undercarriage facing traffic, front end on the center line, rear end on the shoulder. Every side and corner smashed.
I had been slowing down, checked traffic, moved into the left lane around the accident, pulled over onto the shoulder just past the overpass, told my wife to call 911 and ran back, dreading what I was going to find.
I took a quick glance through the windshield opening, saw nothing and ducked to the back to look in and be out of the line of potential traffic.
Other people were starting to arrive on the scene and pulling phones out to call it in. There was a guy running across the median yelling that he was an EMT and not to move anyone.
I gritted my teeth and looked through the crumpled rear hatch expecting the worst because i figured no seat belts had been worn. No one was in the front seats.
I couldn't see anyone in the truck. At all.
I stepped back, starting to look around, wondering how I missed anyone being ejected from the truck.
And then realized that a guy talking on his phone on the shoulder had blood on his arm.
The driver had crawled out of the back of the truck and was calling his buddy for a ride!
The EMT made sure no one else was in the truck and started checking him out. It appeared that the cut on his arm was about the extent of his injuries at that point.
I'm not an EMT or a doctor, so I left it to the professional, ran back to my truck and took off. My wife and kids were asking how bad it was and my wife thought I was shielding the kids when I said that the guy was walking around on his phone. Later that night, she asked me, "How bad was it, really?"
I don't want to ever put them to the test, but that accident left me amazed at the engineering of the safety features in vehicles. I do not understand how that guy didn't die or have a broken back, legs, arms...
Surely Bowjo is telling a tall one. At least I hope so. I've stopped at too many over the years and will continue to do so.
"Decomposed bodies when a person dies in their home and has no next of kin... doesn't even phase me anymore.... don't use Vicks... no mask.... just the job......."
As a first responder for the volunteer fire department, we get called out on those calls sometimes. I remember a few years back we went to a trailer it was late June and we were a couple of days too late. I was the first on scene and I had forgotten to throw the vicks in my bag. Let me tell you it was awful. When the director of the funeral home/coroner (handy to be both), got there, he asked for our help in bagging the body, I pulled rank as head of the first responders and sent a couple of our young pups in. They came out pretty quick and headed for the corner of the trailer. I ended up having to bag the large man anyway.
Never found one, but when I was younger I went on a biking trip with a group of friends. We stopped at a swimming area that was closed for the season and swam. We started to play tag game in the water. I remember I was running through about 3-4 feet of water, to avoid getting tagged and turned around to check how close the "it" person while walking backward. I still remember the feeling of my foot stepping down on something that felt like a human torso which startled me because I thought I had stepped on one of my friend, but when I looked back there was nothing and got creeped out. I ran back out of the water and continued to play but never went back to "that" part of area. Sure enough, the next day on the news there was a story about DNR finding a body of missing fishing man at the swimming area we were at. I often wonder if I had actually stepped on the missing fishing man body? I will never know.
I was coming back toward the house on I-20 one day when I came up on a car in the edge of the woods. There was already someone stopped and neither of us wanted to do what had to be done, so we just walked down to the car together. The closer we got the harder I looked, but when we got right up to the car there was nobody in it. I was relieved!! I jept looking around and noticed a bar code sticker on the windshield and saw that there was no tag. Come to find out it fell off of a car hauler going down the interstate!! I often wonder what that guy thought when he realized he was missing a car. There wasn’t a scratch on it that I could see.
I’ve never found one hunting but like many, you travel enough you’ll come across one. I was first to find a high school buddy that flipped his vehicle going to school and I have held a ladies hand and talked to her as she died while paramedics were on the way. Neither haunt me, I can’t believe anyone would just keep on driving, that’s a piece a crap human that would do that.
Since this has morphed into a body/almost body anywhere anytime thread.........
When I was running a dozer in the oil patch, and on a rig-up job, we had multiple trucks on location unloading various pieces of a drilling rig. This was in the old days before cranes were used to load, unload, and rig up. At the time we used gin trucks, big trucks with winches and gin poles, to load and unload rig pieces. One older guy had climbed up onto his load, which was derrick legs, and unchained them. I was on the side, on stand-by, in case the dozer was needed. While the gin truck was backing up to unload the derrick legs, the load suddenly shifted and fell off the truck. The driver just disappeared on the other side from me, and I had been looking right at him. I jumped off the dozer, and a couple other guys jumped out of their trucks, and we converged from both ends of the truck only to see him under one of the derrick legs. His head, right arm, and right leg were caught under thousands of pounds of steel. His hard hat looked like a clam shell. I'm not week stomached nor faint of heart, but I never want to see that again.
Not hunting related but did involve a heck of a buck......Driving to work one morning on the Blue Ridge Parkway, a very popular road for motorcyclist. I had just topped a knoll and saw stuff all over the road. I then saw a motorcycle about 50 yards off the road laying in the field that joined the road, guy laying on the ground in front of the bike...bike still running. I thought the worst. I stopped the car and was going to check on him and luckily he was getting up. He had hit a huge 10 pointer. The buck was lying a good bit further into the field than the motorcycle. The rider then took his helmet off and ran over to the dead deer yelling and cussing at it for totaling his new Harley. I called 911 then managed to get him to sit down a calm down until the paramedics could arrive. He was very lucky to be alive from the looks of him,the bike,and the deer, but he was only worried about the motorcycle. I told him insurance would cover it and to be thankful he breathing. Ambulance got there pretty quick and I headed on to work.
I'll chime in. I was part of the rescue/recovery of two logging fatalities. The first one was a tree that fell wrong and pinned the logger to his skidder. Blunt trauma from that. The second was a chain saw kick back that got the logger in the femoral artery. That was ugly as there was blood everywhere. Logging continues to be one of the highest in fatalities.
One more non hunting post if you will oblige me.
Just a little less than an hour ago, we were paged out to a residence. 911 just told us "50 year old non responsive female." Pretty obvious when we got there what had happened. Railing broke on the stairs and she was at the foot of them tangled up. Grown son and step dad lived a little ways up the dirt road and hadn't heard from her for a day and a half so they went to check on her. Probably happened yesterday. Here's the part that really got to me on this one. Son was shaking as he threw down his cigarette, looked at me and said, "I was going to fix that railing yesterday and didn't get over here." EMT's said they could get by without me this time so I left. The son grabbed me and hugged me, he just needed a hug from someone.
Only reason I'm posting this is to say, don't take things for granted, hug your loved ones today, as the EMT said, every day is a gift.
are u a serial killer? or want to be?
I've never found a body while hunting or fishing but have had to deal with too many to count in the last 20 years in Law Enforcement. Car wrecks, motorcycle wrecks, hangings, overdoses, fires, natural causes ,drownings, SIDS babies. None of them are good but the children and the people that die in front of you are terrible to see. I'm so sorry for anybody who has had to see any of the above and had a hard time getting over it, I understand.
Biker, how was that in reference to?!?!
That's what I was wondering to whom was that directed to?
I found a body when I was hunting here in Colorado one time. I was out by myself senior year of high school. I sat down by a tree and was planning on staying until dark. I heard a loud big branch break sounds right behind me. Sounded like a big ponderosa branch getting hit against a tree feet from me. I looked behind me and didn’t see anything. My hairs were standing up on my neck and I got this overwhelming sense that I needed to leave. So I started the hike back to the truck earlier than planned. Along the way some bones caught my eye and o went over to investigate. I scratched my head as I started at a human skull with a bullet hole in the head. I called authorities when I got home and it ended up being a the body of a 18 year old missing kid.
It was wild to think that what ever had spooked me if that had not occurred I would have never found it because I would have been hiking out in the dark. Kind of made me believe in spirits.
Came close once. One day shed hunting in a large industrial park in SE PA, I came across a tarp strung between trees and a collapsed tent under it. Empty water bottles strewn all around. I had a bad feeling. I carefully snuck over and noticed a sleeping bag sticking out of the tent which seemed to have someone in it. I took a branch and peeled back the tent material to expose the bag but could not see the head end to tell if anyone was in it so I used the branch to pull the top of the bag open. Nothing but clothes stuffed in the bag. I guess it was a transient homeless person but they must have been there a while. I counted nearly 100 empty water bottles, numerous bags of fast food trash, and a lot of random clothes. I thought for sure I was going to find a body in there. This was less than 30 yards from the local Little League fields.
Anyone that would see a wreck and keep on driving is a POS. Anyone that would teach their kid that must be liberal POS.
I know BOWJO personally and find it hard to believe he would do such a thing. The guy is compassionate enough to run a huge Disabled Hunter Banquet here in PA to take guys less fortunate health wise, on hunts all over the country so there must be more to the story. It is confusing and I wish he would explain himself especially since he said he could see the flashers 1/2 mile ahead. Could not have been a worry about getting run over himself. At least call 911!!! The guy may have pulled over and got out because he was having a heart attack. I'm truly hoping there is more to this. No elk or hunt is worth letting someone die along the road.
Looking at all the responses that I got on here and on archerytalk, I am amazed how most of us have been close or worse yet have found the lost. I posted this mainly as a sigh of relief and of regret. I was going to go out to the spot where the lady from my area was found, but could not make it. Three days later she was found where I would have been looking for sheds. My relief was that I didn't have that burned into my memory...I've seen how my friend was after finding the young lady in the trash bag. This was where I was going to be but was delayed...and that is a thankful relief. My regret is that I didn't go out there and find the body and give the family the closure they needed as it was 3-4 days later that she was found. 3-4 days of hell the family had to go through...and according to the sheriff she died of exposure. What if she was found earlier...and had been still alive. That is my regret...and no I'm not blaming myself. I don't ever want to find a body that was murdered in the woods...but I would gladly accept the responsibility of finding a person who needed my help in the woods. This isn't a morbid desire...but I'm glad she was found (and all the others) who have been found by hunters to give the family closure and to give justice to those who deserve it. Unfortunately, this past weekend another lady was found that was missing from my area. She too was found by another hunter...in a creek bed...dozens of miles from where she lived. Seriously, I hope it's just a fluke and not a tell-tale sign of someone more sinister.
I took BOWJO’s post as a feeble attempt at humor.....I hope I’m right!
I don't know BOWJO, but will agree with t-roy, I kind of smiled when I read it - shot at humor is how I took it.
"I took BOWJO’s post as a feeble attempt at humor.....I hope I’m right!"
Given the tone of the thread. Anyone with common sense would have said something like. But in all seriousness, then went on to explain how they helped the person. His lack of explanation after getting flamed. Leads me to believe he really wasn't kidding. We all make poor decisions at one time. But to joke about one like this...
Similar story to one previous, but not while hunting. I ws on the road home from the Hood to Coast Relay in ''98. As messaged to the other poster above: "I was the first upon a wreck in the Columbia Gorge in around '98, coming home from the Hood to Coast Relay without sleep for nearly 30 hours, approaching my exit at Cascade Locks, there was a fire in the woods alongside the road. I stopped and there was a light pole down, and a car with its top ripped off (or convertible with top burned off), on fire with flames surrounding it 20 ft in every direction. I could not approach due to heat. All of a sudden, a person in the passenger seat rose up completely engulfed in flames, screaming double screams and trying to crawl over the door. screaming, screaming. until they slumped quietly back onto the floor of the passenger seat side. Never so horrified in my life, helplessly watching this person die burning alive, breathing fire. Turned out to be a minister's son and his date (the girl lay on the ground dead unseen by me, thrown from the car, found by others who stopped - I never saw her). They were coming from their first date in Portland, back home. Must have fallen asleep. Just pathetically helpless feeling - I will never get those images and sounds out of my mind." TK
I also witnessed a three car accident right next to Drano Lake in WA, as it happened ahead of me. I got to it first and there was a woman in the driver seat of a small comp0act slumped over facing the back seat, with a huge clot of blood coming from her face, but she was breathing. Her shoulder was mangled from the windshield blanketed over her. Her baby in the car seat in back was fine, but she was near death. Other came, and we all helped her, turns out she was in coma for 6 days but lived and healed up fine. broken femur, massive head injury, etc. but thank God she lived.
Yeah BOWJO, (just read that) really poor judgement driving by him, even vastly more stupid justifying, and then even admitting it. Wow, some people. That's why I trust NO ONE with anything - guys like you are way too common. Then again, there are a lot of trustworthy guys too, on here I can tell, but you never know who will appear first.
I was an EMT 10 years and able help roadside accidents while on personal time in addition to call time.
I do warn my kids to be cautious to not become a victim when trying to help someone else. Also to be leery of a body lying alongside a road at night where someone could be hiding in the ditch or around a corner.... just call 911 if it doesn't look right.
This must have been a battle.
Steve H has me questioning the bones I found above my house last year. I found some long bones that I could not positively Identify. After finding the first one my son search around and found a few other bones, but none that help me identify what it was. I'm pretty good at figuring out the bones but this one has me stumped. One of my first conclusions was that it was human, but I talked myself out of it. I left the bones where I found them. If you question if a bone is human do not move or touch, take pictures and get the pictures to your local police department. They can send them off to experts that usually can tell just by the pictures. Be sure to mark the location so you can find your way back.
Twice. Once when I was a really little kid with my grandfather. I dont remember much about that one as they kept me away. Remember thinking the guys shoes looked huge. That one was a suicide. Then when we were young teenagers we found a guy dead in the woods along some sewer lines. We thought it was a prank and the guy was going to jump up and scare us but my friend finally got the nerve to go check for a pulse on his neck. He was dead. We ran out and got a guy that had told us previously he used to be a police officer. He went down and checked him. Then he called police and ambulance. Turned out that guy had been working on the sewer lines and was overcome by methane gas. Tried to get out and slumped over climbing out the access. What a way to go.
All these stories of coming up on or being the first to arrive at the scene of a wreck has me thinking of a family friend who was a volunteer fireman. In back-to-back years he responded to crashes on a hwy near his house and due to proximity to the hwy was the first on the scene for both crashes. The first crash he pulled his dead 18 yr old daughter out the wreck and the next year he pulled his dead 16 yr old daughter out of the wreck. Those were the only children he had.
Crest - that had to be awful - can't imagine............
Hats off to those that do the work I could not....First responders, police, fire ect I have the utmost respect for you. I am going to keep my horror stories to myself.
My friends were shed hunting in northern Indiana and walked up on some "bone" but quickly noticed the bones were wearing boots. Seriously creeped out, they called the police, come to find out, it was an elderly man who had wandered off and was not found. Another friend was fishing a large river and spotted an old car directly under their boat in the bright sunlight. The dive team said it was from several years earlier and had a body in it.
Crestedbutte's post has me seriously wishing I would have never opened this thread. My 15 soon to be 16 year old daughter gets her license in April. Her getting in a bad accident is my worst nightmare. I couldn't imagine being the one to find it. My Dad was the founder of the ambulance service in the small town I'm from. I could always tell when the calls were friends or relatives. He would go from a very laid back happy guy to very depressed and somber for days. It's why after 27 years of being an EMT and police officer he quit. He missed helping people but the ones he couldn't help were too hard on him.
Yeah, sorry about that. It was tough to write that post and got pretty teary eyed doing it. Brought up some long surpressed feelings and memories of how bad my parents friends were hurting for many, many years after....especially Charles who dug each of his daughters out of separate crashes. In each case the daughters left the house that night in their own cars but at some point got into and we’re riding around in friends cars.
When Charles responded the first time, he didn’t recognize the car and when pulling out the woman to perform CPR he was staring into the face of his own dead 18 yr old daughter. When he responded to the other crash (that happened about a year later) he recognized that it looked like the make and model of his daughters friends car but wasn’t sure if the color was the same. So as he approached he held out hope that it wasn’t. That hope vanished when he stuck his head through the shattered out passenger side window.
Rut-n-Strut...know how you feel. I have identical twin 14 yr old daughters and scares me to death seeing the inattentive drivers on the roads these days made worse by cell phone/text usage while driving.
Crested, those are heartbreaking tales, that poor devastated man and his family. Prayers up for them even this far removed from it all. As for being creeped out when finding bones, I always go by the saying 'fear the living, not the dead'. That said, I will take the advice of the guy above who said beware of bodies laying by the road, someone may be lying in wait. Good suggestion... I guess.
The 'finding dead bodies while hunting' title kind of makes me chuckle too. Luckily, I have never found any 'live' bodies. :)' AKA Zombies.
Never hunting, but no lie, found a body in a suburban park after school one day in an upscale part of San Diego. Some 6 year old kid saw that man laying on the ground from a long ways away and noticed that his eyes were open. He was too scared to go over, but when I went up to him it was pretty clear he was dead.
I never have, but my hunting buddy did last fall. Two buddies were bow hunting western Colorado for their first time elk hunting last fall. Not long after dark their first night in they heard a single engine style plane flying overhead. It was unusually because it was sleeting and snowing pretty hard and the plane was flying low. Then they heard a crash followed by a bright flash of light from about a mile or two away. They were pretty sure the plane had crashed, but decided to wait until morning to investigate due to the nasty weather.
Next morning they hiked to the spot where they had seen the flash of light. One of them made it to the scene just before the search and rescue helicopter landed. I'll save the details, but it was bad. It was a family of four flying from Fort Collins, CO to Moab, Utah. No one survived.
I arrived at camp later that day, but it wasnt until we got cell service several days later that we learned the details. Pretty bad deal that had my buddies pretty shook up. I hope I never have to see anything like that. God bless our nations first responders who have to deal with these tragedies.
Bear track - can’t imagine finding your father dead. So sorry.
My 53 year old uncle never came home from his day hunt in southern Ohio. Another uncle went looking for him next morning and found him dead sitting at the base of a tree. He had blood on his hands so they followed his tracks back and found a 300 lb giant 13 pt whitetail he had killed, drug a long ways then buried with leaves when he knew he couldn’t do it. Heart attack. They mounted that buck for his son my cousin and all these years later it’s still in his room with him. At least he died doing what he loved.
Over 30 years a cop. Couldn't begin to tell them all.
After reading every post. I think I have had a pretty boring life, and would like to keep it that way. I have never found a dead person
Unfortunately I can add to this list with a Couple.... I was Bowfishing for Carp in DUCK ISLAND N.J. as a Teen and missed an easy Shot being too anxious and while retrieving my arrow from the muck and swamp juices I missed the Carp but Hit a human skull ?? that was down there unseen..And being a Stupid Teen while driving home in the back of a buddies Pickup I thought it was Cool to hold it up like a Stupid Teen would do..And Thank God I was spotted by someone who called the police and we were pulled over..And it turned out after alot of explaining that it was Young women Murdered by her Husband and dumped there bragging they would never find her Body..And the only good of my Young Stupid ways was that he ATE THOSE WORDS.And to this day is still in Jail for taking her life.That was in 1985 I'm pretty sure.. And then in the same area but this time in the Delaware River across from the swamps we Bowfish I snagged a Dead women while Herring fishing and Again just a yr or 2 after the Skull incident I got the Smell Nobody will ever forget once you first get a wife of it..Once her body broke the Surface it cleared the whole wall of probaly 50 people standing side by side trying to fill thier buckets with Herring...And I had to stay there with this women on the end of my line until First responders arrived..And I'll never forget the images of a decomposing Human being that's been in the water for some time..Im pretty sure that she was listed as a Drowning Accident..You learn alot you want to forget as a teen.But these are a couple that will never be forgotten..
a few college buddies and i were bigfoot hunting in washington state back in the early 80s and came across what appeared to be the remains of an old parachute...pile of old bones...and a bunch of cash wrapped in rubber bands. there was a wallet nearby with a drivers license in it that said dd hooper...db cooper...bb pooper or something like that. we were broke college kids and we wanted to split the cash and use it to pay off our student loans...so we never told anyone about it. we deserved it.
Gotta give you at least a little bit of credit for paying off your own student loan debt, Ricky….
Went on an afternoon hunt with a friend on his property, he went to his ladder stand while I roamed with my climber. I just got settled in and I see him walking towards my stand, he got to the base of my tree and was visible shaking and crying. I got down as fast as I could, and we sat down, and he told me what happened. As he approached his ladder stand, something was hanging from his stand, a teenage girl committed suicide by hanging herself from his stand. He called 911 and we waited for the State Police to show. State Police said she left a note behind explaining why. Apparently "bullying" was the reason. I will tell you this, my friend was never the same, it haunted him until his untimely death.
That's sad to hear Ken..poor girl, I feel for her parents.
Ricky, did you ever spot Bigfoot?
In high school a good buddy was rabbit hunting near our house one day I couldn’t go. He found a dead guy hanging from his belt. Apparently he was fighting with his wife a told her to pull over on the highway. He got out & walked off to be found several days later. Bothered him for a long time.
Since Ricky has resorted to bold face lies, I should tell about the time I found a trapper frozen to death with his Hawken rifle in his hands. But….I’m sure y’all don’t want to hear about how I broke his frozen fingers…………
Found some human bones in the spoil mound of a groundhog hole in an old abandoned cemetery once. Never a body or body parts from violent death or foul play
Only in the sense that I was "hunting" for what I hoped I wouldn't find. Around Memorial Day 2022, we hadn't been seeing a neighbor in over a week. She was about 71 years old and lived alone, and we always tried to look out for her. When asking around, there was always a plausible explanation, until the Wednesday following the holiday. Another neighbor called us that morning asking if we knew about a pick-up truck off the road and almost out of sight down in a steep ravine, that she noticed while walking her dog on our property. I met her husband where she had described, and we each drove right by it the first time without seeing it. After we spotted it, I followed the debris field down to the truck, steeling myself to what I would find, but also trying to piece together what had happened. She had driven off the road in a very steep section, probably trying to avoid a deer. Somehow the truck didn't start to roll immediately. It stopped forward movement when it hit a rock outcropping, then evidently started a slow-motion rolling down the mountain. It came to rest with the passenger side door up against another rock outcropping and at a steep list to that side over about a ten foot vertical drop. When I looked in the truck, she wasn't there, and there was no blood anywhere. She always wore a seat belt, but it was hanging up as if it were released. The roof was partially crushed in on the driver's side and all the windows were broken out. I finally noticed her at the bottom of the drop off below the truck in a semi-fetal position. She had heavy gloves on even though it had been hot out - one glove was off her hand and under her cheek, and that hand was on the top side of her head covering a depressed skull fracture. Judging from the grocery receipts we found, it had happened on Saturday. I concluded that she had survived the wreck without much injury. She couldn't easily get out on the driver's (uphill) side, so she put gloves on to protect her hands from the glass and climbed out the passenger side window, and fell head first into the rocks below. The coroner, came to the same conclusions except that she died of a broken neck.
Nothing too fresh, but have found skeletons while hunting Mexico.
Nope, never stumbled across a dead body while out hunting. Poked a few drunks in town to see if they were still living. But I have watched four inmates take their last breath on separate occasions. And then went elk hunting.
Strangely enough, I stopped by after shift to be with family as my uncle had passed away. Hospice rolled in and one of the guys was a recent release inmate from my yard.
"Ricky, did you ever spot Bigfoot?"
not on that particular trip...but we did see a few dancing in a club in portland one time.
A couple of members of my archery club found bodies or parts of bodies. One was attributed to the LI serial killer. I'm came really close one time. A woman was missing for a few months before hunting season and I was hunting about forty yards from a road but never came in that way since that is where the deer came. Anyway I walked in as normal from a road a couple of hundred yards away and hunt my stand and only a few small bucks came by. It had been warm so I didn't need my kom jacket so tossed in down from my stand and it got caught up on some brush six feet off the ground. So i got down, packed up my stand and climbing sticks and walked out. When i was in my truck I remembered the jacket so I decided to walk in from the road close to the stand since that was my way home. There was a moon out so i didn't use a flashlight and just walked in and got my jacket and then walked out. A few days later I'm in the stand again for the evening hunt and I see a guy walking around taking pictures around 3:00pm and then he leaves. About an hour later I see another guy and he looks like he is tracking a deer and he walks by my stand and sees me. Says he was looking for a deer he shot that morning and then tells me not twenty yards from my stand he found the missing woman hanging from a tree. She was all shrunken up face wise and looked horrible. I had to walk within ten feet of her the other night and thank god I wasn't using a light otherwise i would have stumbled across the body.
Went for a walk yesterday. Found some bigger bones. Made me think of this thread. No idea what kind of bones they were. Likely deer.
Every week when we operated on the border.
Added a new dimension while chasing down, "wonder what those buzzards are eating"
They just found some body parts in a public park less than a mile from my house. They have some suspects but with NY's stupid no bail law they are still walking around while they build a case for murder.
Not while bowhunting but while Musky fishing we found a lady, makes for a bad day.
What is interesting about this 2018 post is that so many of the guys that posted are not on the site any more for one reason or another.
I was thinking the same thing Paul, some blasts from the past. scentman
