Strangest non-hunting thing you came across while hunting.

[Culvercreek hunt club]

A post i made earlier sparked a memory of a strange hunt I had up North and was wondering if others had similiar encounters.

Here is mine. I hut a 225 acre piece in the northern zone. It is my uncles land. My father and I are the only ones that hunt it....besides the occasional trespasser. 2 weeks into gun season I was still hunting to my Dad (Keep in mind we hunted the entire previous week and I covered some ground that week too). All of a sudden I come across some wrist sized trees cut down by a chain saw. I started looking right away for a stand someone had put up. Since I was in a total hunting mind set, you can imagine my surprise to find myself standing in a PVC netted enclosure with miracle grow cartons strewn around the place. Now I am just a redneck kid and must hae not gotten out much growing up but It took me about 10 minutes to realize I was standing in the middle of a harvested pot field. There were probably 70 -80 plants in there all about 3 feet high that had had the tops already cut off. I have no idea how long it had been since they were harvested but I got a cold shiver thinking what might have happened if I had gotten up there for some early season scouting---which I hadn't that year. I came across 2 other areas all set up the same on that property. probably about 200 plants or so. I went and saw my uncle and he calle dthe cops and they came out that night and asked me to show them the area in the morning. They were a little surprised at the size of the operation. and suggested the next year if we scouted we may want to carry during our scouting. I know nothing about this but the cops said they would have estimated, from what they saw, that is could have been a $200,000 crop. Spooky crap!!

[Doewhacker]

How about Grave robbers.. I was young and tagging along with my Dad on a hunt at a really old farmstead that had graves and all of the desserted stuff you would expect. One night we found a freshly dug up grave and that creeped me out to no end. I guess they were after jewlery but I could never go through there with out getting nervous as a kid. Now it is a houseing development..haha

I wonder what they did to the graves?

[Culvercreek hunt club]

Makes me think of the movie Poltergiest

[fasteddie]

Digging up graves ? They had the President of the Groveland Historical Society in the news a few years ago . He was talking about graves being robbed in the Williamsburg Cemetary in Groveland . Graves of Military soldiers had been dug up and apparently the robbers were stealing uniform buttons , swords , belt buckles , etc ..  That is stooping pretty low .

[Culvercreek hunt club]

That is low...kinda makes one almost wish for a caze in during the operation ...huh?

[fasteddie]

I did fail to mention that it is a cemetary from the Civil War era and I think hunters who had parked nearby noticed the desceration and reported it to the authorities .

[Culvercreek hunt club]

Damn...I have to take a typing class....I meant cave in

[Fantail]

Hunting a side of state land 7M I found a grave site for a WWI corporal. It was sort of fencd off with long branches and cleared a bit. Part of the fence was busted so I fixed it up best I could and cut down some weeds around the stone.

[Doc]

A couple of old plow-points and a horse-drawn potato hiller. right in the middle of a fairly big mature woods. Also found an old horse skull and some other cow or horse bones.

Also, I am constantly running across old fencelines out in the middle of nowhere, and lots of piles of rocks right in the middle of a fairly mature woods. It kind of shows the extent of the farming back in the old days and how most of what is old woods now was once cleared and farmed.

Also, there was a time when I was hunting and came across a totally deserted, centuries old, cemetery in South Bristol that was completely over-grown with vines, fallen trees, weeds, and vines. It turned out that it was the graveyard of the town's original settlers (there were also gravestones of a couple Revolutionary war vets and one Civil War vet which means that the cemetary had been used for a lot of years. I went back later in the spring and took all kinds of pictures and forwarded them to one of the town web-sites. Shortly after that, the town had a big activity bringing the cemetary back to a reasonably well maintained condition. I kind of hope it was my pictures that spurred that effort.

I also found an old deer skull ( 7 point buck) in the bottom of our ravine that had a piece of an antler embedded just under the eye socket. A little evidence of a fatal deer fight.

Years ago, I came across the remnants of an old saphouse that was half way up our hill. There were all kinds of pieces of cast iron stoves, old bricks and pails and foundation stones that showed the outline of the building and scraps of evaporation pans and boilers. That was the second one that I found. There was another one on the other side of the valley that was a little more together with the actual building still pretty much intact. Can't even hardly find that one anymore. I knew the people who built that one.

About a quarter of a mile up our hill, I came across an old shallow dug well. It was full of leaves and crap. I have always wondered just what would cause anyone to dig a well up there in the middle of the hill. The only thing I could think of was that maybe someone found a flowing spring and decided to dig it out and wall it up and save it for some reason. Down by the farmhouse they have two dug wells with lots of more handy water, so I haven't got a clue why they went to all that work to develop a water source that was too far away to be of any use.

One more weird thing that I found while hunting was an old axe head. There was this big old hemlock, probably about 3+ feet in diameter that had a huge hole in the side. Inside the hole was an axe head laying there.

Yeah, I could go on and on with all kinds of stuff that I have come across, but I suppose this is really starting to get pretty boring by now. Most of this is pretty interesting to me, but to everyone else ....... probably not so much....lol.

There's all kinds of things laying around to find if you keep your eyes open. A lot of them give clues to local history and what has gone on there in the past. It's all interesting and really sparks the imagination.

Doc

[Culvercreek hunt club]

I love that stuff, Doc. I have come across old foundation corners and such. It does make you sit back and thing what, why and when. I don't know if you ever got into metal detecting but my Brother in law does it and it is just those type of areas he looks for. Old abandoned and forgotten. He does hunt and uses it as little scouting trips. Pretty cool

[fasteddie]

About 8 years ago I was putting up Posted signs on my sister in law's property in Geneseo . I had to be on her neighbor's property in order to do this . His northern horse pasture lot had brush that was 15 feet or more  deep . My foot felt something . I looked and it was a shotgun . It was a rusty Remington 20 ga pump . I couldn't cycle it but it had birdshot shells in it . I gave it to my sil's neighbor and he had no idea who left it there . How could anyone leave a shotgun in the woods ?

[Culvercreek hunt club]

That guy probably has most of his golf clubs on a course too...I can picture the scene....missed all day and the last miss was teh last straw...lol...fling into the bushes...lol. I have forgotten stuff in the woods before...but never a gun

[fasteddie]

That guy probably has most of his golf clubs on a course too...I can picture the scene....missed all day and the last miss was teh last straw...lol...fling into the bushes...lol. I have forgotten stuff in the woods before...but never a gun

All kidding aside , it's only about 1 1/2 miles (as the crow flies) from the Livingston Country Club . 

[Daveboone]

In the late 70s we were hunting in the Bear Swamp area, near New Hope. It was mainly an overgrown farm type area. I stumbled upon an area of several dozen mouldering cow skeletons. They were an spooky greenish color, and soft as sponge. An old two story farmhouse was nearby, still standing. We couldnt figure out what had happened. We guessed the herd was shot and just left decades before.

[Geno C]

those are some crazy stories guys... WOW...

[ADKSasquatch]

I've found some stuff out there. 

I too have found a pot plantation, but mine was unharvested.  State Troopers came out and took care of it. 

I found a moonshine still in an old foundation.

Plenty of cars and trucks.

A noose in a tree (hopefully unused)

A cast iron stove in the middle of nowhere.. and I mean nowhere...

A tree wearing ladies undergarments.

All kinds of old logging equipment, axes, saws, tractor treds, etc.

You spend enough time in the woods, you'll find the weird stuff...

[Bleitten04]

a noose? thats crazy!!!

[outdoorstom]

This isn't about something I found, rather something I witnessed while in a treestand. I'm just sitting there relaxed, scanning the woods, when all of a sudden something falls from the sky, right in front of me. I look down and there's a squirrel laying there that had fallen at least 30 or 40 feet. He didn't move a muscle for about 5 minutes, then sat up and sat there for about half an hour. He finally slowly walked off.....wonder if he had any internal injuries?

[ADKSasquatch]

a noose? thats crazy!!!

Yeah, it looked old.  I scanned the area for any human remains, but didn't find anything (thank god).  I was afraid that I was looking at an old suicide or something.

[hang fyre]

I have found various pieces of old farm equipment one was a horse drawn plow made by john deere with a patent from late 1800's.  This was in the middle of heavy pine forest on state land.  On another mtn a friend found a large diameter steel cable running vertically up the hill. we figured it might have been a ski slope at one time. 

[papabear]

when hunting rabbits with my brother in Pilgrim state we came across what we thought was a Mahican we were bored and just about to shoot it when we noticed the hands tied be hind it back turned out it was a girl who was killed by her boyfriend  he tied to make it look like she was rapped at the time i was working for Pinelawn cemeteries and I was one of the guys on the crew that placed her in the mosalum

Papabear

[wztirem]

Mahican - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia  The Mahicans (also Mohicans) are an Eastern Algonquian Native American tribe, originally settling in the Hudson River Valley (around Albany, NY). ...

  History - In popular culture - Notable members - References        Are you sure it was a Mahican?

[Culvercreek hunt club]

Maniquin....I think he meant

[jimbodwb]

Up until 2009 I leased a 155 acre parcel of land at Lake Desolation in Saratoga county. Finch Pruyn sold the land to the Nature Concervancy and my lease ended. The land became public so we hunted there opening weekend last year. My dad calls me then next evening to tell me that on Monday a hunter found the remains of a body on the land. It turns out the body had been there since 2006. I had a spot I liked to stand at in the area the body was found and I never saw it. It is kinda creepy to me. I will hunt this land this year again but I will stay away from that spot.

[papabear]

Maniquin....I think he meant

Thank you spelling is not my Strong point