Could it had been that where both the rifle and tree is located, maybe in an area that is pretty much isolated?
So THAT”S where I left it. Dang!
There may have been a body or fragmentary remains somewhere within a five hundred yard distance nearby.
Someone sets rifle down to take a dumper, gets mauled by a bear.
Scavengers scatter remains.
Might be only tiny bits left.
Was it still loaded?
Pretty cool....
Personally, I blame Jimmy Stewart.
CC
VERY Cool!!!!
However, barring there being some historic significance behind the rifle, pretty much it’s just a ‘wall hanger’. Very interesting story, which would make it serve that role well, as it will also be an excellent conversation piece.
interesting,,, I’ve somehow been losing my rifles in Big Basin State Park over the years....
I’m amazed the rifle was so free, still movable; I’ve seen where a rifle was left beside a tree and the tree grew completely around it. Granted this pine may not grow as fast as a Minnesota deciduous, but how small must it have been a century ago?
In other words, the rifle was confiscated.
A man was teaching his son to hunt. He wanted his young 13-year-old son to set up his shots carefully, not just pop off a bunch and hope for the best; so the father removed the rifle’s lifter so that the boy could only discharge one cartridge at a time. And so the man and his son went hunting, leaving the lifter back in the man’s one-room house to be put back into the rifle when the boy matured a bit and learned to hunt the right way.
One day, while out on a hunt with his father, the young man, being easily distracted as youth are wont to become, put his gun up against the tree and went exploring around. When his dad finally caught up with him, he asked him, “Where’s your rifle, son?” The boy said, “Oh, it’s over there up against the tree, Dad.” His father said, “Which tree? Where?” “Over there, Dad!” “I don’t see it, son. Let’s go get it.”
So they looked, but the boy forgot where exactly it was, and the trees all looked dauntingly similar. And the boy forgot how far and in which direction he had traveled. So the boy and his father looked all afternoon, but they eventually had to go home because Mama had a pot roast in the stove for supper.
They tried over the next few months to find that rifle, but they never did find it. Then, 132 years later, the rifle was found by a society that hates guns, loves sodomy and frowns upon fatherhood. The gun was happy to be found but went into a major depressive episode later because the free and wild society that offered so much promise of Liberty to Americans and the world was turned into a sniveling little European nanny state. The rifle pined for the day when he could finally go hunting with a free child and his loving father again, but he found that, like the Constitution that protected the boy’s freedom, he was put under glass and consigned to a slow spiritual death by cultural malaise and general apathy.