Archaeologists find 1882 rifle leaning against Nevada desert tree

Archaeologists conducting a survey in Great Basin National Park in eastern Nevada have stumbled upon a 132-year-old Winchester rifle propped against a tree, possibly having been left there more than a century ago. The rifle, which records show was manufactured and shipped by the gun maker in 1882, had been leaning against the Juniper tree for so long that the wood of its stock was cracked and deteriorated from the desert sun, its barrel rusted. "It really is a mystery," said Nichole Andler, a public information officer for Great Basin National Park. "We know it has been out there awhile because the stock was buried in dirt. But we do not know for how exactly how long." Andler said more than 700,000 Winchester Model 1783 rifles were manufactured by the company between 1873 and 1916, becoming known as the "gun that won the West" because of its popularity. The remote, rugged area now encompassed by the park, in the high desert of eastern Nevada near the Utah border, was used primarily for mining and ranching at the time the rifle was sold. Great Basin National Park was established there in 1986, known for its 5,000-year-old pine trees and other desert flora and fauna. So far experts have not been able to establish who purchased the gun or where it has been in the 132 years since. It was first spotted in November by a member of a park archaeology team surveying the area and Andler said it might have been overlooked in the past because the gray stock of the wood blended in with the tree. Andler said the rifle would be conserved by experts to keep it from deteriorating any further but not be restored to newer-looking condition before it is put on display at the park.

Wow - the ultrs-rare “Winchester 1783”! You would think that even the geniuses at Yahoo or the “archeologists” who found the rifle would: 1. Recognize an 1873 Winchester with the octagon barrrel, full magazine, curved steel butt as a very common artifact of its time and 2. Read the serial number at the wrist and then give the Cody museum a call to see the exact date of manufacture and to whom it was sold from the factory. 3. Then, if their brains were really in full gear, examine the chamber and magazine to see if it’s loaded and after clearing it, read the head stamp on the cartridges to get an idea when it was loaded and where the ammo might have been purchased. But it’s just Yahoo. They were just lucky to recognize that it was an old rifle.

At least they didn't call it an AK1873.....

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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