A bit of an update (with the usual YT production values; at least mixup98 is a gun guy).
Winchester 1873 Rifle Found In Nevada - What Happened To It?" [YouTube posted by mixup98]
Posted on 01/14/2015 6:40:49 PM PST by jazusamo
Archaeologists traversing the Great Basin National Park in Nevada came across an interesting find: a 132-year-old Winchester Model 1873 repeating rifle.
The Facebook page for Great Basin National Park said in a post last week that researchers found the rifle, known as “the gun that won the West,” leaning up against a tree.
“The 132 year-old rifle, exposed to sun, wind, snow, and rain was found leaning against a tree in the park. The cracked wood stock, weathered to grey, and the brown rusted barrel blended into the colors of the old juniper tree in a remote rocky outcrop, keeping the rifle hidden for many years,” Great Basin National Park said in a statement.
The website said that “Model 1873” was distinctively engraved on the weapon and that the serial number corresponds with Winchester records held at the Center for the West, Cody Firearms Museum in Cody, Wyoming, with a manufacture and shipping date of 1882.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
Cliff Robertson was the all-time demerit king at Oklahoma Military Academy. (When they were giving you a rest, it was what people call “hazing” today.)
Thanks, this is very interesting. I too wonder what happened to the owner. And how the gun remained there untouched for so long.
Very cool discovery. I’d say don’t restore it but stabilize it and display it in the visitor center.
I once was hunting so deep in the Eglin AFB reservation that I was wondering to myself if anyone else had ever been there. I had only moved a few steps when I saw an empty cigarette pack on the ground.
My guess is, the rifle was abandoned by an old-timer who died somewhere nearby in the 1940s or 1950s at the latest, since those decades have suddenly gotten pretty far back in time. If the rifle had been propped against that tree for 130 years, I very much doubt it would be in this kind of shape, particularly the stock, which really doesn’t look too bad. Granted, we have much more rain around here, but being poor rural folk, we have a lot of experience with exposed 19th century wood. :’) Wow, that didn’t sound quite right.
No one would just leave a rifle and not go back, unless they’d arrived by air, or died nearby, IMHO.
Have you ever watched Grizzly Adams?
I believe a .50 cal was retrieved.
The Great Basin is a lot dryer than around Austin. The gun is probably in shootable shape, after a good cleaning. I bought a .20 .25 Winchester trapper lever action for 100.00 one time. It had zero finish on the stock, zero finish on the metal, and even had a small wood screw holding the stock on the receiver. I took it to the Dallas gun show in 1999 or 2000 and got 2500 for it! I was shocked. I also sold anything else I had with Winchester or Colt on it or WWII 1911 .45’s for huge profit.
Why didn’t the tree grow up and around it?
Froze to death or died of natural causes, but the yotes or other critters took what was left. Could have been there 100 years, 75, 50, or who knows but starting around 1960 that rifle would have been a high dollar collectors rifle and nobody’s going to leave that behind or forget about it.
Wonder if it was still loaded or empty? Were there any empty cases left around it? What caliber 44-40 or 38 -40?
It is a fun mystery to stumble upon. I have found old knives and bottles in the high Sierra’s above 10,000 ft. elevation and pieces of aircraft from crash sites, but a Win 1873 would have been an epic find.
I assume the owner was killed or had an accident of some kind.
Trees grow slowly in the west. I’ve seen a ponderosa pine (faster growing than the juniper in the picture) that at less than 2 feet diameter, germinated in 1642 according to a core sample taken.
One of our local detector forum members kids found an 1854 Colt revolver grown into a tree root up in the Sierra a few years back. They sawed the root off on both sides to keep it in it for display.
Very cool. These kids will be treasure hunters for life. Great hobby!
I bet the old gun was useless dead weight to a man out of water just trying to survive another day. The original story clearly says the old rifle was empty. They could have died where they lay in the shade of that very tree their remains long ago scavenged by everything that call the park home.
He was eaten by the bear while he was carrying his game to camp and left the gun by the tree.
A bit of an update (with the usual YT production values; at least mixup98 is a gun guy).
Winchester 1873 Rifle Found In Nevada - What Happened To It?" [YouTube posted by mixup98]
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.
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