gamestalker
member
I brought this topic up after remembering an amazing event while hunting bear in the Rim country of Northern Arizona back in the 1980's. I was sitting on a cliff with my tripod, and was glassing and calling for black bear. Mind you I was in the absolute middle of no where, public lands where you can only enter on foot, very desolate wilderness country.
After hours of glassing and moving from one spot to another, I was glassing and kind of digging my fingers into the dirt, just something to do, no real purpose. Suddenly my fingers felt something other than dirt or rock, when I pulled what felt like card board out of the ground, it was a wallet. So I pulled it out of the dirt, it was almost entirely decomposed, but there was a driver license, credit cards, some money, and the other usual stuff one sticks in their wallet. Most of the contents was well beyond identifying, but as I carefully pulled everything out, trying not to destroy it completely, I looked at the driver license, credit cards, and other I.D., out of pure curiosity. I almost fell over, it was my best friends wallet.
It gets better. I went over to his house the next day and said, hey Jim, take a look at what I found up in the Rim country yesterday while glassing. When I handed it to him I could tell he knew immediately what it was, but couldn't believe his eye's. Where the heck did you find this? As it turned out, you guessed it, he had lost it more than 17 years earlier while glassing for bear! He had just dropped a big black bear and was trying to find a way down the cliffs, so he had no idea where he lost it, as he said he didn't have any idea when it fell out of his back pocket. He was about 20 yrs. old in college at NAU when he lost it, and he was 38 yrs. old when I found it.
The week before I found it, I was trying to pry some secret spots out of him, be Without knowing how remote, and how far from any marked trail or path it was, and that it is in wilderness territory, one can't really grasp how unbelievable this was. The Rim country, or the Mogollon Rim as it is referred to, is over 200 miles long, and consists of cliff faces that extend as high as 2,000 feet straight up in places. And having never hunted this terrain prior, I had no idea where to start glassing, not a single clue. I just kept thinking, where would Jim glass for bears, bingo.
GS
After hours of glassing and moving from one spot to another, I was glassing and kind of digging my fingers into the dirt, just something to do, no real purpose. Suddenly my fingers felt something other than dirt or rock, when I pulled what felt like card board out of the ground, it was a wallet. So I pulled it out of the dirt, it was almost entirely decomposed, but there was a driver license, credit cards, some money, and the other usual stuff one sticks in their wallet. Most of the contents was well beyond identifying, but as I carefully pulled everything out, trying not to destroy it completely, I looked at the driver license, credit cards, and other I.D., out of pure curiosity. I almost fell over, it was my best friends wallet.
It gets better. I went over to his house the next day and said, hey Jim, take a look at what I found up in the Rim country yesterday while glassing. When I handed it to him I could tell he knew immediately what it was, but couldn't believe his eye's. Where the heck did you find this? As it turned out, you guessed it, he had lost it more than 17 years earlier while glassing for bear! He had just dropped a big black bear and was trying to find a way down the cliffs, so he had no idea where he lost it, as he said he didn't have any idea when it fell out of his back pocket. He was about 20 yrs. old in college at NAU when he lost it, and he was 38 yrs. old when I found it.
The week before I found it, I was trying to pry some secret spots out of him, be Without knowing how remote, and how far from any marked trail or path it was, and that it is in wilderness territory, one can't really grasp how unbelievable this was. The Rim country, or the Mogollon Rim as it is referred to, is over 200 miles long, and consists of cliff faces that extend as high as 2,000 feet straight up in places. And having never hunted this terrain prior, I had no idea where to start glassing, not a single clue. I just kept thinking, where would Jim glass for bears, bingo.
GS
