Finding outdoor things that keep on giving

By By Otha Barham / outdoors editor
July 12, 2002
There is something about finding items of value out there in the woods that excites human beings. Perhaps that unexplained rush is at the heart of Easter egg hunts for kids and the inspiration for artifact hunters. My son and I got a lot of stimulating speculation about the origin of a perfect arrow head he found in a dry gulch in Wyoming during an antelope hunt. The memory of that find is more treasured than that of the fine buck we bagged later in the day.
A few items have managed to get themselves found by me as I wandered about wild places. Finding things is hampered by the fact that I am never looking for them; I am looking for deer or fish or elk or doves or something else I can eat. So if a lost item is to catch my eye it has got to be right in front of my nose and highly visible. Like the fine scabbard knife I tripped over in a Denver parking lot.
Valuable find
It was the Buck company's largest sheath knife, complete with its black leather sheath and there it was lying there not yet having been run over by a car. The knife became, and still is, my primary skinning knife for big game. I would not likely have ever bought one of these pricey Bucks, so it is a treasured knife that I am going to do my best not to lose.
Speaking of losing, which I am much better at than finding, I eventually lost two of my most cherished found things. Losing them seems worse than losing other stuff I have acquired. One was a pure wool pullover cap that I found in the Smoky Mountains on a special wild boar and bear hunt. For some reason that old orange stocking cap made its way into my heart. My hunting partner was a dear friend who had spent many days with me in the squirrel woods and on other adventures. Our camp was cold and the wool cap kept my head warm at night as the rest of me stayed comfortable inside the sleeping bag. Maybe these things contributed to my love for the orange cap.
Because the cap was wool, I visualized its original owner as being from somewhere up north – like Michigan. I carried that cap on jaunts into the cold woods of more states than I can remember, and I never put it on that I didn't daydream about its owner and recall those cold nights in the Smokies.
Well, I lost the cap while I was crawling toward a bugling elk near the continental divide in Colorado some 16 years ago. I don't know if I took it off and put it in a pocket from which it snagged a sprout and was dragged out, or if I laid it down to stop crawling and glass for the bull and then slithered away from it. Being orange, it would have been easy to spot on the ground, but when I hiked the mile or so in to the spot the next day to search for it, a four inch snow had fallen and my searching was fruitless.
Another knife
The other item on my found and lost list was another valuable knife. Like the Buck, it too was a sheath knife, though without the sheath. It lay shining brightly in the middle of a game trail in western Maryland. I believe its maker was Case and it had a deer antler handle that fit my hand perfectly. I got years of use from the knife before it simply disappeared. I hope to find it some day buried somewhere deep inside a box of worn out gear or some other place it shouldn't be. But for now it is lost.
When I find a knife it is a good one. The one most used for over 30 years is a large folding knife I found in the ashes of a campfire in East Texas. It has no name on the metal, but it is identical to the famous Old Timer knives, popular with big game hunters because it has two blades that are suitable for skinning. Its name was likely on the handles which the campfire had burned away. Its metal is soft and both blades need sharpening after skinning a single elk, but they will sharpen quickly. I can't count the game it has skinned and I would be lost without it in the leather sheath on my belt.
Yes, I have lost more things outdoors than I have found. But the special pleasures I have received from the few found items well compensate for the values I never realized from the departed ones.