Strange finds
Whitetail Deer
Out looking for sheds this weekend on our farm in north central Iowa, came across what I believe to be a boars tusk in the creek. Probably washed from upstream after flooding many years back but who knows. I’ve pulled an elk antler out of this same creek and they haven’t roamed here in 200 years. My brother found a skull cap from a bull elk here as well. We still have that at home.
Any ideas on what I found? I’m assuming boar tusk until you guys give me some better responses...
What strange things have you come up with?
There was a grizzly skull found in the Arkansas river in SC Kansas a couple years ago and they sand pit finds all kinds of dinosaur bones etc. Cool find
My father in law found a buffalo skull in a sand bank in south central Ks not to many years ago. It must have been well over 100 years old.
The back end looks like it's been sawn off flat and then bored? My guess would be a discarded bone handle for a tool or utensil.
I found this down the road...In an old homesteaders dump.. Creepy... Found a huge bull bison skull in a limestone creek in the Bighorns, Wyo several years ago. Has to be over 150 years old. It was buried in gravel except for one horn, perfectly preserved, even has teeth, but no sheaths.
In a remote draw in the south Dakota black hills we found a Model T gas tank. Amazed us that someone drove a model T there. If that's what happened.
caribou77, I have no guess as to what it is you found but it sure is cool!
A friend of mine's dad found an old abandoned wagon in the middle of the Rockies (not sure of the state) back in the 60's. He told us there was actually a tree growing up through the center of the wagon. He brought home a bear trap that he found at the site. His family owned and operated a fur trading post and that bear trap hung on the wall for as long as I could remember until they closed in the 2000's. I always would admire that trap when I took my furs in when I was a kid.
I know someone that found a bison skull that was super huge had to be over 200 years. ;)-
My late wife found a huge grizzly canine tooth near my elk camp in N. CO. Had to be over 100 years old. We also found an extinct Wood Buffalo skull buried in the same area.
Aside from a stone knife and some other artifacts I've found, one of my real treasures was an intact purple quart whiskey bottle on the Continental Divide. It was just laying in the grass. The lettering says "Frank Tulledge and Sons, Cincinnati, OH". The Tulledges last made whiskey in the 1890s...
2 Partial Bison skulls (1 large and one small) in northern Nebraska
Old Indian stone hammer head
Old wagon axel with 2 wheels
Old wheel burrow without wheel high above timberline while sheep hunting
I would also lean toward boar's tusk. Very cool find! After the great flood in 2011 there was all kinds of crazy things that turned up on the banks of the Missouri river. Buffalo skulls, elk antlers, etc.
I don't think it's a tusk looks like a drilled antler tip?
I found a boar tusk in the woods shed hunting a city park years ago. No wild boar in the area and the last time that place would have held farm animals would have been decades earlier. It looked fresh and I still wonder how it ended up there.
I’ve found a lot of fossilized teeth and bones while diving in east coast rivers. But the strangest was a Nautilus fossil at around 4000 feet in Colorado.
Saying there are no elk in Iowa may be a stretch, these long legged guys are all over the midwest.
My buddy in Iowa found a dire wolf skull last year
I know a rancher in Wyoming who found a bison skull with a Native American arrow head imbedded in its skull below its right eye socket.
A friend found this in NE Nebraska. It's a petrified bison antiqous skull. Our university thought it was around 125k years old.
I found this in western Nebraska. Still unsure of what it means or was used for. The dots are raised like it was some sort of paint. I found it way up high on top of a butte.
yeager for the win! That is really a cool find too hess
I just finished trapping out a colony of beavers. When I broke the dam and the pond drained I found an the remains of a moonshine still. There was also an old carriage wheel laying beside a tree.
Man, when will bowhunters learn that headshots don't work?
Hey Caribou77, how long is that piece you found?
Yeager wins the internet today.
Hunting deer in north central Kansas, along a stream with a very high bank on one side, height was 15 ft of wind blown prairie sand and dirt from years back, at least 100 plus. years. I see this bone sticking out of the dirt bank 10 ft up so I went around to the top and with a long stick, dug and pried it out. It fell to the dry stream bed below. Upon examination, it was a femur bone, 14 inch long but from what? When I returned to Ft Collins Co, I contacted a forensic scientist at CSU and sent her pictures.
Later she responded and stated, you were lucky that it was not human. Mostly a young bison. If it had been human, there could have been an investigation and I would have guessed it was from a few 100 years back, mostly Indian.
“ I know a rancher in Wyoming who found a bison skull with a Native American arrow head imbedded in its skull below its right eye socket.”
Why do I have a bad feeling that that ended poorly for the Indian?
I’m pretty sure I did find a meteorite; beyond that, I’ve got nothin!
i did not find it and can't confirm but i was told that a guy found a deer on a CT live hunt once. unverified.
Yeager neat skull ! I know of another ancient bison skull with the skull cap smashed out, was told that's how the indians accessed the brains for tanning purposes.
Neat finds guys, pretty cool stuff, thanks for sharing.
"Why do I have a bad feeling that that ended poorly for the Indian?" As steve mentioned above, it looks like the Indians might have won that one.
Bou….funny, but you do tend to set that volleyball up nicely for the spike :)
Cobie33 it’s just over 3”
Thanks guys........that rancher is pretty humble about all the artifacts he has found. They also found a full dinosaur skeleton on his property which I believe is in the Smithsonian Museum......they wanted him to go for the induction ceremony but he declined, so his wife went instead.
Yeager- Yes! That is one of the coolest things ever! I believe Gene Wensel has something similar?
TrapperK....I found the balance of your creepy find.....give me a minute....
Same feeling as walking through an old graveyard at 1st light.......
Caribou77, does that have a really sharp flattened edge? Or is it more or less rounded?
Boar's top and bottom tusks rub each other and can be very sharp.
I found about a dozen of these about 20 years ago, on an exotic hunt West of Hondo, TX. This is perfectly round, and is not metal, but seems a bit heavy for it's size. The other ones are roundish, and even a few look like peanuts, two roundish objects fused together in the middle. They're either brown, maroon, and yellowish. If anyone has an idea what is I'd love to know. They were all on the surface of one of their dirt roads. The other ones aren't easy to get pics if, they're on my lifesize black buck mount.
Not a boar tusk, they aren’t round and they are mostly hollow. This one split some time after it was removed from the host, as they all will, but I didn’t know that at the time.
Cool stuff.
Knife those may be concretions. Naturally occurring phenomenon. Explains the inconsistencies. I’ve found large ones in Montana and smaller ones here in South Carolina.
Thanks BrentC, Google showing much better results than 'round rock'.
That second picture looks like a canine tooth that has been drilled. Is it fossilized?
Knife, I've found similar on the CO plains.
“ As steve mentioned above, it looks like the Indians might have won that one.”
Indians (PLURAL) might have won; nothing but our imaginations to tell what happened to the Indian (SINGULAR) who sent the arrow here....
Also, I wonder.... if I had the chance to extract a serviceable BH from an animal I had killed, I probably would, given the scarcity of good materials and time invested in each head....
But maybe he decided that a head that won’t kill on a short-range headshot was an inferior design and not worth re-using..... LOL
.........Or he switched to mechanicals
ki-ke, that is spooky, but it made me laugh! Someone beheaded my find! Do you live near Jeffrey Dahmer? Here they are, re-united! drycreek, you need to trim your nails... ;) caribou, I think that's the tip of a tusk. Tips generally more solid.
Was at the Kermit TX sand hills. Would wander the hills with my ATV. Miles from anything came upon 2 golf balls. Figure someone started out practicing their sand shots and finally figured lost them.
Came upon a skeleton Human, nothing but bleached bones. Figured it was an indian burial as there were beads and arrow heads surrounding the skeleton. Gave the lat lon to the local historical society and they sent someone out there but reported they found nothing. Sands had probably covered them again.
Terry
Not old, but unlikely and unlucky. In Idaho. Choose your bike parking spot carefully.
I found this skull in one of my creek beds here in central Wisconsin... Any ideas?
Damn! That’s SOMETHING right there!
What’s the length?
And could it be a sturgeon or a gar? Some massive muscle attachment there....
Duke, that looks like a wooly mammoth skull.
Another awesome Bowsite thread.
That is wild lookin duke! Whoa... I cant think of an animal that has that shape of a noggin. I am intrigued!
That is a hip bone Duke, not a skull.. Possibly a horse...
Actually, not a horse, I just looked at the stuff on your bench. Way too small. I'll do some research and try to find out what it is.
Maybe an old hog skull?
Edit: Jumped the gun.......just looked up pics of hog skulls & it's not that
Looks to me like the pectoral girdle (Hip bone structure) of a bird, maybe a turkey? How big is it?
Ki-ke, Gene Wensel bought a bison vertebrae with an embedded stone point for something like $20.....
Holy crap, I meant PELVIC girdle. I'm getting old...
^^^ that's correct. I've found a few of these turkey pelvis bones and thought it was something special as well. I believe they're around 8-10" long.
I was on the Baja Peninsula of Mexico with Loesshillsarcher about ten years ago when Ned was bowhunting for Desert Bighorn Sheep. I was several miles from the ocean when I located about a nine foot blue marlin out in the middle of the "desert". My guess is that a local fisherman caught the marlin, cut all of the meat off of the fish to sell to local restaurants, and dumped the carcus out in the middle of nowhere. It's probably not that unlikely of a scenario......but when you are glassing for sheep in the mountains, one of the less common things that you would expect to find is a large billfish. LOL
Was hunting in the San Juan's near Cortez, CO. around 1999. Middle of nowhere, I see this sharp edge sticking out of the sand. Turned out to be a Wells Fargo credit card. It had been there a long time but was still readable. Expiration was 1990 or so. When I got home, I called Wells Fargo and they had no record of the person or card number. Seems it was a counterfeit card. Very strange and weird place to lose a card unless it was thrown or flushed out of a plane.
Knife2sharp, I could be wrong, but I'm guessing what you found are "Coprolites" or fossilized feces. In other words, Dinosaur Poo. Especially if you found them in a group or near each other. I found a couple on a geology field camp spring break trip in Tennessee while in college. They look just like the ones you found.
While hunting elk in unit 22 New Mexico my partner and I were walking a narrow mountain trail at a high elevation, it was heavily wooded and up ahead there appeared to be something laying beside the trail. When we got there, it was 2 dead horses laying side by side, right beside the trail, in a sorta spooning configuration. They were not yet deteriorating. So, every day we had to walk past these two horses to get to where the elk were, it was impossible to go around. By the end of the 10 days, we were walking past a bed of maggots.
My daughter and I pick up these round rocks, or geodes, in the Weaubleau crater in Missouri. Really common on the farm I hunt. But unique to this crater supposedly (and maybe another crater in South America).
We’re gonna do something with them at our new house. Just not sure what yet
One year in PA, the month of February I found a garter snake out on top of the snow. It made one small move when I nudged it and then apparently died. I've also stumbled onto the remains of two plane wrecks here in MT.
“Ki-ke, Gene Wensel bought a bison vertebrae with an embedded stone point for something like $20.....”
I believe the story went a rancher found it and Gene tried buying for quite a while... Finally the rancher said he would sell it but would need a good penny for it. And jumped at when he said $100..
Then he sent it to be carbon dated when the lab called to tell him the item wasn’t historic ... he disappointed thinking the guy just made it himself... then the lab told him it was pre- historic.
Shaft, some do look a little like poo.
That was a bit blurry, this one has four, you can see the varying colors and shapes.
Several more in this one.
Mice, shrews and a few small birds impaled on thorn bushes.
Apparently, there was a loggerhead shrike in the area.
Isn’t this the time of year when you start seeing skunks dangling from tree branches?
I know great horned owls prey on them preferentially… I guess that stripe is like the lights on a runway for them…
I just always find it a little comical to see a limp skunk dangling 30 feet up…
Tonybear61, I have seen quite a few song birds impaled on barb wire here, always suspected the shrikes, although I've never seen one here.
Knife2sharp, one of my fossilized Coprolites....I did wash my hands after this photo just to be safe.
This is one of the best threads I’ve seen in awhile
Not my find but I now own it. My mother now 83 was playing with her brother and sister in the creek below their house. She found a piece of copper. It ended up being an arrow head. Cool thing is it has a part that wraps around the shaft of an arrow then the head itself. (socketed tang points) Wisconsin Historical Society aged it at over 3000 years old. Will probably donate it to them as long as my mother is given recognition.
https://www.ifish.net/threads/weird-findings-in-the-woods.148441/page-76#post-3725080
I’ve found several wrecked planes over the years
Jeff Holchin, yes you are correct, I was lucky enough to actually handle that vertebrae at Gene's place in Iowa while he told me how he obtained it ! Cool stuff indeed !
Trapper- HAHAHA!! “Spawn of Jason”
Friend of mine found this. Took a few days to figure it out. What do y’all think it is??
A NYC Bowsiter had the answer when I first posted it...let’s see if you uppity west of the Mississippians can figure it out....
Ki-ke.......I remember it from the last time you posted it, so I won’t give it away. I AM west of the Mississippi, but no mocha lattes or avocado toast for me!
T
I’m amazed you even know what an avocado is.....
I went to Omaha once.....
Found this sticking out of a river bank in WY. Pretty sure know what it is. Guesses....
I wondered onto this find... NW Ontario.
I wondered onto this find... NW Ontario.
In 1996 my parents bought property in Cody Wyoming. My friend and I took a two week trip and ended up there walking around the place. I see the butt of a pistol sticking up. Walk over sure enough a Ruger 44 mag still in the holster. This was in March and it was lost in November. I turned it in to Park county Sheriffs. Turns out the gentleman who owned it died in a ice fishing accident. The pistol was returned to his son. When we got home I had a nice letter from the widow thanking me seems her husband had two boys and two firearms.
I did find a buffalo skull when I was 12, I stepped on the horn when I was climbing the bank up out of a creek. Went and got in the truck, then said to dad, ya know I stepped on a horn sticking out of the bank when I climbed up. He turned the truck around and we went and dug it out. Way cool event in my live, I had it on the wall when my parents divorced, and It went in a box while dad and I lived in a camper for a while, and I have never seen it again. That and some other 12 year old type treasures. hmmmm wonder where that box is. Thanks for this post guys, brought back some great memories.
I have found other items, but not things I would consider strange. mining camp trash, steam engine in the mining camp, logging chokers and parts there of, the coolest of all those was a mining cashe. I found a log cabin that had eroded down to just two logs high, and you could tell what it was that was about it. As I was circling the cabin I found a shovel head leaning against a tree nearby. Along with the shovel head was a gold pan, several chisels, and a hand forged drill bit that was about 4 feet long with a spoon hammered into one end and a drill bit in the other.
I also found a rusted old 22 revolver in the creek, somewhere way back in the Bob Marshal wilderness, it was too far gone to make functional. that is also in the missing box of treasures belonging to a 12 year old.
Ok lots of memories, thanks guys. oz
T-Roy-
That was my 1st thought until I saw the 2nd pic....??
It wasn’t while hunting but while working. I was doing bat mist-netting surveys with a longtime friend and coworker. We would set up nets right before sundown and check them all night. He would go scout for survey sites in the afternoon while I got the gear ready and loaded. When he got back we headed out to the site he had picked. We got the nets all setup and we caught a lot of bats right after sundown. So here we are sitting in the middle of the woods around 1am when there is a typical slow period for bat activity. It’s all quiet with the frogs sounding off...pretty peaceful. He breaks the sound of the night woods and says, “Hey, guess what I found at this site while scouting.” I see him wake his phone up and it illuminates his face in the pitch black night. He hands me his phone and shows me a picture. I was speechless.
There on his phone is a photo of dry creek bed a life-size silicone sex doll laying in the mud. He explains that he rounded the bend of the creek he could see what he thought was a dead body. He slowly approach. He described himself getting flush with anxiety then his brain focuses and he realizes it’s a sex doll as he got closer to his relief. Then his relief quickly fades and the anxiety is back when he deduced that someone living nearby had a life-size sex doll and dumped it in this creek.
My reply, “Why the hell did you wait until 1am in the middle of these woods and the pitch black to tell me?” He said, “I need you to help me load it when we are done. She will clean up good.” That was followed by great laughter.
Absolutely true story. I have a picture of it but it will likely get me banned or this thread proofed.
Just weird s#%
Yup. Most likely, anyway.
One day during a biosampling exercise outside of Laramie, a friend of mine picked up a few inches of horn tip. It had probably been lying there for 100 years & change.
I was SO envious....
Nothing weird about it, but just SO cool....
Funny thing... the vertebrae is up for auction...
https://davisbrothersauction.hibid.com/catalog/272835/montana-masterpieces---day-2/
Mine’s not for sale! Just cool conversation piece.
I found this one year on an elk hunt in NM. Was laying on a big boulder in some nasty, thick brush going up a mt. I figure somebody must have sat down on that rock to get to the next rock and it fell out of their holster and didn't realize it. All I can read thru the rust is "Colt Automatic .32 smokeless". Probably sat on that rock for decades until I stumbled upon it.
Not exactly my find or a strange one but in the Big Belts of Montana we came across a cabin tucked back into some big pines. When we looked inside, everything was exactly as it had been when the settler family left at some point in the early 1900s. Canned goods on the shelves, plates set on the table and everything in its place. It was like they just up and left in a hurry and did not take anything with them. Cool but kind of spooky. We told the Outfitter and he said that its been that way for as long as he could remember and that he occasionally does maintenance on it to keep it water tight and safe but never moves anything inside.
Griz, that is very cool, although I can't believe a bear has not ransacked place ! LOL
My coolest find....
I was helping complete a beaver census in Itasca State Park up in Minnesota (in January) and was snowshoeing from pond to pond checking on beaver lodges; I was using a map and compass and had kind of gotten used to spotting the next clearing (usually a pond) out ahead where there was a bit more daylight coming through the trees.
So I kinda got in the habit of steering from clearing to clearing. And at one point between ponds, I stepped out into a clearing in the pines which was clearly NOT a lake. OK nothing terribly ofd there… But then I noticed a lot of downed logs, all of which had fallen perpendicular to my path. That seemed a little bit unlikely, but hey, whatever. Beavers to count.
At any rate, the direction to the next pond was straight across the center of this clearing, so I just kept on truckin’.... until i got to the center. That was when I realized two things. One was just how almost exactly circular this clearing seemed to be. The other thing, as I stood there in the center of the clearing, was that no matter what direction I looked, the logs were all perpendicular to my line of sight.
VERY odd, I thought.
But I had beavers to count and coyote crap to pick up, so I just continued toward the next pond,… Moving across that first clearing, through a patch of woods, and into another clearing. Where once again, there were many downed jack pines, all perpendicular to my line of travel.
That was when I noticed once again that the clearing was seemingly a perfect circle. So I headed for the very center of it and when I got there, sure enough, all the trees were knocked down in essentially concentric circles.
I recall that I found two more clearings just like it by the time I got to that next pond I had been looking for, and somewhere about the center of the second clearing, I realized that I was seeing a spot where a tornado had touched down, and apparently it had bounced across the landscape creating I think at least 3 or 4 almost perfectly circular clearings.
Nothing weird or spooky or supernatural, but it was a little bit of a jolt to come across such a display of the power of weather.
Found this a while back.
Found this a while back.
A friend was pushing some hogs by me. As they ran by about 7 yards I swung thru with my longbow and thought I made a good shot. We slow trailed not knowing for sure. On the trail we found 6 shed antlers then the pig. Right next to the pig was a pile of flint arrowheads in a 6' area. In all we got 37 of em plus the sheds.
OTC_Bowhunter what do you think that is ?
Looks like some kind of concrete lawn ornament, to me.
This is the arming device from a recoiless rifle used in avalanche control. Took awhile to figure out what it was. Found it at about 9,000’ on a ridge.
OTC_Bowhunter, I think I know what that is and where you found it. Schoharie County, NY?
Steve, A sun dial with 13 notches? Good guess though.
Overland, Right state, wrong county.
turtle stones are basically concretions, or sedimentary mud deposits, that have hardened into rock. The “turtle shell” pattern of unusual-looking oval shapes, separated by angular cracks of crystallized minerals, was created by the seepage of water over time.
Caribou looks like a sabre tooth canine complete with nerve root hole.
Caribou looks like a sabre tooth canine complete with nerve root hole.
otc, I thought that's what it was. Here are a few of the ones I've found.
Those are nice. Mine was in a ravine with water flowing on it, which washed away some of the sediment holding it together.
Yeah petedrummond, I was thinking caribou77's may be a Sabretooth too...
Ah ha, Turtle stones. Now I know the rest of the story.
