Have you ever lost a gun but not in a boating accident? Or found one?

DISCLAIMER. Depending on your state laws, there is a risk of self incrimination in this thread. Make sure you aren't incriminating yourself due to draconian state laws in telling your story.

I'll be the first to confess. I have lost a Taurus PT-99 in that I knew I didn't have possession of it, I did not know where it was, I looked without finding it, and I wanted to know where it was. It was lost for about three years and I looked for it multiple times, even asked other family members if they had seen it. I knew it was either misplaced somewhere in the house or lost outside on private property and not stolen.

Turns out it was in the back of my fathers gun closet where he had stuck it after we had gone shooting and he had tossed it back there with his guns then promptly forgot all about it.

I have never lost a gun never-to-be-found again, but I personally know more than a few people who have. It usually seems to involve a tree and the urgent need to urinate.

Strangely enough I have never heard of someone finding one of those lost hunting rifles and I've never been lucky enough to find a gun. Found a couple of neat things but never a gun.

My father found a pretty beat up Ruger SA in .357 in a river one time. I don't remember much about it other than the grips were wrapped in electrical tape and the anodizing on the grip frame was worn completely off and the grip frame was pretty oxidized and pitted. He traded that off for my first hunting rifle, a J.C. Higgins M50 in good shape...essentially a commercial 30-06 FN Mauser action and chrome lined barrel in a decent no frills stock, a trade I'd definitely have made too if I were him.

So lets hear it.
Anybody got any lost or found gun stories they want to share?

 

I once found a Colt Police Positive in .38 S&W in the basement roof rafters of a old house i bought in 1983. I soaked the gun in a can of kerosene for a week to loosen up the hardened gun oil, and took off the side plate to clean the internal workings. Other than a few spots of rust on the barrel, the gun was in good shape. It was found wrapped in an oily cloth stuffed up under the insulation. It is now one of my home defense guns.

 

I lost several when we went through a fire in 2015. Most notably, and regrettably, as I’ve not replaced it, a marlin 1894c 357 magnum.

 

I got lucky. My car trunk opened itself on the drive to work. I had planned to go to the range after work so I had put my new Beretta PX4 in on top of a case of oil. I didn’t notice it was open until I got out at the office. Yep, gun wasn’t there.

I reported it lost. A few days later I got a call from a Sherif’s deputy telling me he had my gun. Someone had found it walking along the shoulder of the road and had called it in. He didn’t even know it had been reported lost, he had just called the gun store based on the sticker that was still on the plastic case. He’d actually had it for 2-3 days but had the flu and didn’t call until he was back at work. I drove down to the Sheriffs office, signed a form and brought it home.

That story could have had a MUCH worse ending.

 

I was going to the local court house. Walked by the open trunk of a car on my way in. There were multiple long guns inside. I told the deputy who was just inside the door. He got out there pronto.

 

I thought I had! About 15 years ago I moved about 100 miles for work and my family gave me a hand. Once I settled in I could not find my BHP! I was working 65 hours a week so I thought it would turn up when I had time to thorough dig around but no luck. Well, it was a year later that I mentioned to my sister that I must have lost it and she reminded me that I left it with her so it wouldn't get lost or stolen in the move. I got it back of course!

 

I have found guns in and around houses that I had recently moved into, in old furniture, in a partially-burned barn, under the porch of an old house, in a discarded tackle box, in a box of movies, in a hollowed-out book, sticking out of a trash can, laying in parking lots four times and in various rivers and lakes.
Then again, I moved a lot when I was a kid, ran a recycling business, ran a street sweeper when I was attending college, and I love to snorkel.

 

Back in 1975 I climbed down a big, overgrown, riverbank slope which had a public park at the top. There was a viewing spot there overlooking the river and I went down to the bottom just out of curiosity. At the waters edge was a small nickel plated revolver. The nickel was flaking off, the action had lots of slop in it and it may have been 32(?) caliber. Don't recall the make other than it was made in South America; wonder if it could have been an old Taurus ? I wasn't all that savvy on guns back then, especially handguns. It was right below ( about 200 ft. down), the viewing spot, apparently someone flung it from up there trying to get it into the river and it fell short. Sounds like someone wanted to ditch a murder weapon or something. It got turned in but that's all I know about it.

 

Criminy, I'm sorry it was stolen, glad it was recovered, sorry for the loss of the barrel,
but imagine what went through that scumbags mind when he opened that trunk.

Jackpot.

 

My grandson found a S&W 9mm by their back door after they returned home from running errands. Apparently a homeless woman had been loitering in their back yard and may have been frightened off when they got home. (She also dropped her purse).
Son called the police and an officer came by to pick it up.

 

Years ago when I was a kid in 3rd grade my parents were looking at a house for rent. My brother and I were in a back bedroom I was looking in a closet and found a snub nosed revolver and a box of cartridges on the top shelf. My brother had to give me a boost to look up there. It was a .38 Special. The ammo box said so and I was such a cop show fanatic, I just knew it was destiny that I have my very own “Dick Special”. I am pretty sure it was a Colt Detective but I am really not sure.
Anyway, my dream and my destiny were not to be. My other brother ran and told my Dad and the owner of the house that I had found a gun. Damn! Foiled again!

It turns out the prior tenants left it behind but I never heard anything more about it.

My Mom gave me heck for even thinking I could own a real gun. She really wasn’t buying my schtick that cap guns were for little kids and that I needed a real gun…and besides, all the best cops on TV had a snub nosed revolver. I would only hold it when watching Adam 12 or Dragnet…She didn’t buy it so it was cap guns for me again…I did get a really cool cap gun that looked like a real snubbie. That was cool.

 

In another life I worked as a trash guy for a friend’s dad. He had routes in an older working class area of the city I grew up in. We were picking one morning and I hauled bags out of 4 cans in one alley and glanced in to make sure I had gotten everything. Found an old .32 revolver in there and grabbed it, unloaded it and brought it to the boss. We called it in back at the house, came back clean. Boss gave it to me. Pretty loose and sloppy, gun shop said it wasn’t worth saving. Got a hundo at a gun buy back.

Found an overturned Jeep on a lonely two track road during the deer season. All the windows busted out of the back, 3 cased rifles laying there. Nobody around, no sign of injury, no blood, no airbags, waited as long as I could to leave for my hunting spot a couple miles away. Took all 3 rifles with me. Never opened them up. Left a note with my name and the phone at my uncles cabin. Jeep was still there on the way out for lunch. Back at the cabin I called the local sheriff, told him who I was and what I had. He asked my location and drove to me. Said that yes, there was an accident, another hunting group hauled the guy to the hospital. Sounds like the family’s last thought was what was in the Jeep, but they sure were glad to hear from the sheriff.

 

Not a gun, but once I got halfway through a road trip and realized I was missing a carry magazine. A week later it was sitting in my mailbox. I guess I dropped it in the snow, and when it melted someone found it.

I know a guy who left a pistol box with two guns sitting on top of his car when he drove off to attend a training class, and when he got there they were long gone. Never heard another word about them.

My dad spent the summer of 1985 tying fishing flies to trade to the local sporting goods store for a new S&W (Howa) Model 1500 in .270. He used it for deer season for years. It went missing, and he pointedly asked my brother-in-law of questionable repute if he knew anything about it. He indignantly replied no. Me and my brother found a nearly identical one in a pawn shop and bought it for him, and.....he found the old one. It was in a corner under some gear. (I still have it. My brother kept the replacement.)

 

When I was in college up in Eureka, Ca. I had an Iver Johnson TP-22 and a big jar of coins stolen in a burglary.

I got the gun back about four years later when it was found in the possession of some loony tune who had trespassed on the local utility company yard.

I had a housekeeper snork my Beretta Jetfire .25 when my ex wife hired some friend of a friends-friend to help out around the house. I didn’t realize it was missing until a few weeks after she stopped showing up. (The Beretta, and the ex, are both long-gone and out of my life.)

The only gun anyone in my family found was a nickel-plated, third-model top-break S&W in .38 S&W. When it was found he said it had one empty casing and four unfired LRN rounds in the cylinder.

It was in the grass on the side of a ranch road. I guess a glint of sunlight off the finish caught my Grandfather’s eye so he stopped and picked it up. He told me that he called both local sheriffs offices (The family ranch straddled the Kerr/Bandera county lines) and let them know what he found.

I guess no one ever reported a crime with it because they never called him back about it. He kept it in the drawer of the gun cabinet for decades, as kids we used to take it out and cycle the action out in the garden every once in a while. (He never had any ammo for it.) When he passed I have no idea who inherited it or if it was sold.

Stay safe.

 

Yup,

Either real or imagined, I do remember finding a long gun in the crotch of a tree, with the tree growing around it behind our homestead over 55 years ago.
My memory is showing it to Dad with him saying to leave it there as it was not on our property.
Wonder what it was?
The firearm or real or imagined.........

 

I’m +1 and -1 at the same time. And in the same year too I think… been a while.

Lost- was roughly 13 years ago. I was squirrel hunting at a friends family farm. Friends brother was with us, also another close friend. Fresh out of college, down on funds but high on energy (that we usually spent chasing girls that we knew weren’t interested). We walked what is essentially a W shaped path over the 120ish acre property and then cut back across the top of the W to get back to the truck. The path we followed is well trod. We stayed on the path with very few exceptions which were easily remembered and recreated. We sat down on a fallen tree at the top of the hill (upper middle point of the W) and caught our breath. I know I had my carry gun at that point because it poked me when I sat down and I adjusted it. When we got to the Mexican restaurant that evening I went to put it in the truck since we would be drinking margaritas before a 3rd friend took us home. SOoo we are talking back half of the hunt. 4 people, all back there the next afternoon. Was a bit muddy so boot prints still in the clay. We walked that path at least 5 times. Friends uncle and grandpa who actually owned the place walked it several more times with a metal detector. Someday, somebody will find a Keltec p11 so rusted out that they will probably just throw it back down.

Found- was squirrel hunting another friends family farm. Either same year or maybe the next. That friend had a Jeep and we would play with it every chance we got. He cut trails out wider for it to fit and we put in a few good places to get technical with odd angle climbs and such. We had just bush-hogged the front field because his uncle was in poor health and couldn’t do it. So now it’s time to play in the Jeep in the woods with 22s handy just in case we saw a squirrel. I saw 1 squirrel. Up close and personal. Not a red squirrel (the ones there are the size of a cat) or a gray squirrel (rare in that part of the county) but a Marlin squirrel. It bounced off of the fender flare and off into the woods. I got him to stop and went back to find it. Apparently we broke the stock because the break was fresh but the gun had clearly been there a while as it was pretty rusty and full of crud. Still, we put out feelers to other folks who hunted there and nobody was missing a rifle. Uncle talked to the neighbors and found the owner. It was a Amish boy who had been out running wild drinking and smoking cigarettes. Got drunk and lost the gun. They were offered the gun back even though I had already stripped it and cleaned it up, got it pretty functional again complete with duct taped stock. I still have it. It eventually got a used stock that somebody had practiced spray can camo on. I sprayed the whole gun black with rattle can bed liner. My grandpa had it at his place for a few years as a bedside gun. Decided he wanted a shotgun instead so now he has a single shot 410 as a bedside companion. But he still goes for the 25acp in the nightstand. At 97 years young he can work miracles with that old 25. Coke can accurate to about 20 yards. I may just take that 22 back to his place and conveniently forget to bring it home. It’s just a 22 but in a single wide trailer with a long hall to his bedroom those 20 rounds on tap will do enough damage to make any intruder think twice.

 

Another one that’s interesting. Not my story but a former coworker. S&W 44 Russian. I have tried to buy the gun a hundred times and he just won’t budge.

World War 2 time period. Grandpa lived in a rural area a dozen miles or so from an army base. 2 track dirt road, nobody traveled the road unless they lived on it or had business on the road. Always with a Irish accent he would say that grandpa was minding his own business out in the barn when some damned ol motor-sickle came thumping by. Guy was wearing army uniform, musta been from the base. Stopped a half mile down the road and threw a package over in the bushes. Next day grandpa went to find it. Was this old gun wrapped up in a bed sheet. Grandpa was poor and figured he could sell it but got scared that the gun might be tied to some local murder about that time so he never said a word. Just hid the gun under the house for a while and by the time he dragged it back out he couldn’t find any bullets for it. Gun hasn’t been shot in 80 years.

Now mind you, this is my kind of gun. Functionally sound, visually rough. Story worth a million bucks tied to it.

 

Shoot, I forgot, I do have one funny story about a lost and found gun.
A couple buddies of mine a few years ago were chantrelle picking. If you know chantrelles then you know what kind of territory they are in...heavy dense mixed conifer/maple timber, low light, heavy covering of needle and leaf duff, ferns, and greenery. Anyways, my buddy's RIA 1911 fell out of his holster while he was climbing over a log pile. He didn't realize it until they were getting into the truck at dark. He knew it was next to a logpile, as he felt something fall down his leg and hit the ground when he was going over, but he didn't know where the logpile was.

It took us a week of mushroom picking to find the darned thing and I didn't think we'd find it, but sure enough, as soon as we ran across that logpile again he found it within a few minutes, right where he said it would be. A week in a temperate rain forest gave it some permanent character, lol, but no serious damage

 

Oh, yeah.
There was one other.
I found a Taurus .357 mag and holster on the tank of a toilet at a gas station.
I checked with the local cops and it came back clean.
On my next fill-up at that gas station, the attendant (who looked like Junior Samples run to pot) asked if I had found a gun.
I had him describe the gun in question, he did, so I got the gun out of the truck and gave it to him.

By the way, two of the guns that I found in a parking lot were police guns that I promptly returned.
Both were in clip-on holsters and one had a gold badge... .

 

The wife called me at work one day and said she had signed for a UPS package from Palmetto State Armory addressed to me. Knowing that I had not ordered anything recently, I told her to open it up and see what it was. She called back and said "it's a gun" and had I bought one. Told her no I hadn't, but even if I had, it couldn't be shipped directly to me by UPS. When I got home to look at it, I discovered PSA had shipped me a 9mm AR pistol.

 

I had a buddy down in Oklahoma find a Franchi 20 gauge shot gun leaning by a gate on a dirt road. It was pretty "used" but functional. He checked around but nobody claimed it so he had a new quail gun.
I found a kerambit style knife and sheath and in a parking lot a few years ago but no guns.

 

A housekeeper story, not a gun story: At one point back in the 70's I had a little side business with a friend, importing various items from Austria, including hand-painted enamel jewelry. Really dumb housekeeper stole one of the necklaces and showed up for work one day wearing it. I am not making this up.