Finding Useful Stuff In The Wild

I have been cruising past 31 miles of massive debris piles on Goat Island and Bolivar Peninsula, just east of Galveston, Tx. I have seen several boats, large and small, beached upright and upside down, capsized, and 1 even planted in the mud at it's stern, so that it's bow points to the heavens. I have seen some of the best lumber and timbers, seasoned and treated, plastic barrels, boxes, campers, 1 house (looked like Dorothy's house/Wizard of Oz after landing), several armed (shotguns) cadaver dog teams (yes, they are still searching the rubble), and many, many other useful items to someone in a survival situation.

That brings up the question, where are the best places to look for manmade items that would be useful to someone in a survival situation.

Water being more powerful than wind, I tend to look along creeks, streams, rivers, and lakes. Many things go over a waterfall to run aground just below the waterfall along the edge of the bowl. These items, among others seem to be common: large and small line, fishing line (with equipment attached), 5 gal plastic buckets, lumber, garden hose, life jackets and rings, and old cars, to name a few.

A motorcycle riding friend of mine, driving down old farm roads once came across an old southern style mansion, abandoned and vandalized. After looking over the house, he noticed a garbage pile in the backyard. Being a bottle collector, he started digging in the pile, searching,,,,until he came up against a door. The door led to a Fallout Shelter that was stocked with canned water, C-Rats, and boxes upon boxes of legal type records (land deeds and who knows what else).

What places would you tend to seek out to find materials in the mountains, snow covered hills up north, out on the plains, etc???

One might look around telecom sites (antenna farms and shelters or repeater shelters). Some are stocked with minimal supplies (rarely) and usually climate controlled. There is also a land line for the tech's to contact the network ops center during maintenance. You will have to break in though and they are alarmed. At least if lost with no comm's you would be found. (If you want to be.)

I often find interesting stuff along the railroad tracks, abandonned oil wells, and forsaken homesteads. Rivers and creek offer the the best, most consistant scavenging for useful things like rope, tarps, bottles, etc...

Oh yeah, I also find knives, cell phones, tools, shopes, etc by bumpy sections of ATV/4-wheeler tracks.

-Blast

1 thing I forgot to mention,,,,,,

Santa is actually only 3 foot tall and made of plastic. I know this because he's stretched out on the Goat Island Beach, on top of a sheet of plywood.

It just goes to prove that even Christmas decorations are available to the everyday lost-in-the-woods Outdoorsman/lady!!

On west coast beaches:
Miles of rope and fish nets, japanese fishing floats. Odd assortments of flotsam and jetsam and a surprising amount of heavier metal objects that wash in (God knows how because they certainly didn't float there.) Plus seafood if you understand how to fish and forage for it.

Northern forests:
Anything near a town, even a small town is likely vandalized or picked over too bad to help you much, but that means you are fairly close to town and help.
The problem is that with skidoos the kids can get 50 or 60 miles into the woods in the winter to wreck stuff like line shacks, construction and logging camps, rail sidings and their Jeep sheds.

Old mine camps. (be very careful because there might be open mine shafts in the area. If you fall down one you might not come out)

I have seen fairly recent mining camps that were simply abandoned when the mine ceased operations. They just shut the doors and walked away because they were not worth hauling out.
One included a fully equipped kitchen with pots, pans and the silverware. You would have been able to move right into the place if you needed shelter.
Older places are likely to have sheet metal, nails, wire, iron bars or pipes even if the buildings are gone.
Containers are common in their dumps. Tin and plastic was likely burned or is rusted and decayed to bad to be useful. You will find glass jars if the antique hunters did not beat you to it.

Old rail lines had tool sheds and often they simply left everything when they abandoned the line. There quite a few smaller rail spurs years ago. They are sometimes still marked on the topos.

Many of these mine, construction, rail and logging camps are noted on your topographic maps, but not all were. Keep an eye out for old roads.
Mines are all supposed to be noted on the geological and claims maps, but a lot of the older ones were never recorded. Again, watch out for old mine shafts and don't step into one. The worst are vent shafts because they are small enough for the bushes and moss to hide, but they might be hundreds of feet deep.
Think of falling down an abandoned well, same idea.

Portage points. Often you find useful stuff at the start or end of a portage trail. It was likely left there to help you, or the old trapper who used to travel that line, get over the portage.
Trappers often stashed canoes at the end of a portage to save themselves carrying it over the portage again. He would land his canoe and carry his stuff to the canoe at the other end of the portage, then paddle to the next portage and repeat. Reverse direction on the way back out.

Dam sites. There was likely a camp for it and a portage around it.

I am not suggesting you deliberately go out of your way to seek these types of places out just for scavenging.
If you have to travel it is much easier to walk down an old rail line or road than be breaking your own trail. You might be lucky enough to have an old road going your way.
That might be better than the materials you might find.
These places are often the reason those roads are there.

I concur with Blast- I grew up "walking the tracks", amazing what was left behind, plus was a good, flat, elevated way to walk between several wooded areas quickly.

But in the spirit of the original post, I would look in garages and barns. People stow things away (in fact, I think I'm guilty of that!), thinkin', "I'm gonna need that some day".

There is a local semi-rural road here named "Powderhouse". Named so because back in the days that what is now a nuke missile base used to be a cavalry fort and they had an underground cache of rifles and powder in the area. Over the course of time the exact location was forgotten. One of these days someone will be digging a foundation for a house or ditches for water lines and find it. As the story goes it contains the "treasure" of rifles and kegs of black powder.

A friends family bought property south of Laramie Wyoming in the 80s and found an intact "dugout" style house on the property after they had it about 5 years. There were still plates sitting on the table, clothes on the beds and the pantry stocked with cans and jars, the most recent label read 1903. No records in the county seat of anyone ever living on the property or any structures being built.

One thing I'd hit in a search for useable stuff is an auto junk yard. Being a "car guy" take my word for it, you can run into some handy stuff. Cars get totalled in accidents and towed off, often the owners forget what was in the trunk etc and never bother to reclaim it. I've seen blankets, clothes, tools, knives, even a rusty old gun on one occasion.

In walks the voice of caution.....

In this day and age of illicit "farming and cooking" operations, please remember that the abandoned shack and the field it is in may be in use.

In the days of old one of my jobs in the National Guard (after active duty) was to help clear the pot fields of booby traps before the troops came in to cut the field. I have found rusted fish hooks hung at eye level, punji stake pits, home made shotguns using a rat trap & trip wire and even one honest to God claymore mine. The person who set the claymore had some serious skill too. SOB almost killed me with it. If I had tripped that mine I would have been mush in a bag. (he had enough skill to turn a command det mine into a trip mine with it's own power for the cap)

Next on the list is the chemicals used in the making of crystal meth. None of them are good and you don't want to be near them. No way do you want to be around the folks using/cooking.

Then you have your property owners. Some states (Texas [castle doctrine]) will let you pop a trespasser and then if he lives ask him what he wanted.

Yeah, I know all gloom and doom but please be cautious out there.

While dangerous as hell, and illegal in lots of places, the shoulders of interstate highways. Folks have a flat at night, unload the trunk, put on the spare, throw the flat into the trunk, and often forget to reload their stuff in the trunk before they drive off. I have found bag phones (back when they were in style), wrapped Christmas presents, lots and lots of tools, you name it. (and yes, I turned the stuff in, or at least most of it, per departmental policy)...

Old foundations are fun to poke around, amazing what you find in or near them. I've found bottle worth some reasonable money buried near old foundations and trash heaps in the woods

Very good points.
A lot of that applies to old industrial sites in the wilderness too.
It is not that they were deliberately booby trapped, it is just that they were full of industrial hazards back then, and then they were just abandoned to decay. They left pits to fall into, and things that could fall. I mentioned old open mine shafts, but even if they covered them you have no way of knowing of the cover will support you. Then there might be chemicals in leaking barrels, or maybe just spread out from the effects of time.
Caution is very important.
As an example you could step into some old shack and fall through the floor into the basement, or the roof could fall on your head.
Large piles of flotsam present the same risks. So do old log jams.
You really need to be careful.

One thing I did not see mentioned was old telegraph or telephone lines. These often went through areas that are no longer inhabited. Old telephone wire is usually about #9 steel wire. It is good if you need heavy steel wire for anything, kind of the big brother of haywire.

Old fence lines can be worth checking along.

I should mention that what I think of as useful in a wild setting is stuff that helps give me shelter, helps feed me or gets me found.

Yes the sides of roads are full of stuff like tools and car parts, but if I am on the side of a highway in a survival situation I would likely be more interested in finding something like a cop car full of cops.

Three reasons to reconsider the old telegraph/telephone lines:

1) Believe it or not, some of the ancient open wire lines (especially near RR tracks) are still in use and it can be high voltage. (I was knocked off an 18' pole once. 480VAC HURTS)

2) The old open wire picks up induction current better that almost any other wire on a pole. If it does not have a path to ground, it has spent years picking up a charge and is waiting for you to be a path to ground.

3) The old open wire sometimes holds a memory of the coil it was in. When cut, it will recoil and could whip you.

Again, just be careful.

Yes, again very good advice, and I mean it.
I often assume people naturally know a lot of this stuff, and I need to be reminded.
If my older brother Tom was not with Lines and Stations Ontario Hydro Northern I doubt if I would know it either.

When I mentioned getting wire I was really thinking about the stuff already on the ground.
Not only do old lines fall down but the old line crews often left coils of wire near poles so they would have something to repair breaks with.
(They were also lazy about carrying all of their junk out)


(1) Don't touch live wires!
Well of course not, if it is still in the air it is still likely in use.
Besides, if you are not using a belt and spurs then poles are not so easy to climb. It would be far too easy to fall and injure yourself.
The odds of having spurs and a climbing harness with you is pretty low.

(2) Even if the line is not in use you can still get zapped!
Very much so, and long runs have a lot of capacitance. You can get high voltages and high currents. Line crews have to use grounding poles to discharge lines after they have shut the power off, the grounds must stay connected as long as they are working near the line. what a lot of people are surprised by is that they need to do the same thing even if the line has never had power in it.
Static electricity is still electricity too and in addition to currents induced by magnetics and ground currents a run of wire in the air can pick up a static charge from the air moving past it. It does not take much of a breeze to create quite the charge.

(3) When cut the wire will recoil!
There are no ifs, ands or buts about that one.
The wires are under an awful lot of tension if they are still hanging in the air and will recoil with a lot of speed.
If you, or anybody else, are in the way you can be cut very badly

Thanks very much for pointing all that out.

There are a couple of other points about telephone and hydro lines.

If it is on your map you have at least one L.O.P. fixed.

If it is strung and seems maintained then it becomes a guideline.
You know it leads to people somewhere too.
Because the brush is cut underneath them they are easier to travel along.
Moose and other large game often use them as travel routes and to feed in because of the shrubs at the edges.
Crews travel the lines constantly and they are often flown over by helicopters inspecting them.
You could just light a fire at the base of a pole or two, burn them down, and wait for a line crew to come and repair it.

If it is a true survival situation I would rather be sued...

Shopes?

Oops, "shoes"

-Blast

Seriously??? shoes? ok. Sorry I find that kind of funny.

Once, on the Highway, north of Superior, near Montreal River, I had to stop a truck on the shoulder and take a short break.
When I got out of the cab and walked around to the side away from the road I noticed a pair of boots.
They were sitting neatly side by side.
Laced and knotted.
They were not large.
A pair of neat and tidy woman's hiking boots.
There were no people around, no other sign of people except the highway and the mine's supply truck sitting there grumbling in the early evening... no tracks into the bushes, nothing in the ditch, not a note or even a gum wrapper...
just me... and that odd, improbable, unexplainable, perfectly matched, neat and tidy, enigmatic, pair of woman's hiking boots, on the shoulder of the road, on a long empty stretch, of the Trans Canada highway.

I wonder why they were set there like that, so neatly, and if she ever returned for them, who ever she might have been.

This is surreal-

As my wife and I drive home from San Fran every day, we have driving game we play called "find the other shoe".

We will see a perfectly good shoe, and try to see where the other one landed. I would estimate that we have seen no less than 20 pairs of shoes in the last 4 months between San Fran and San Rafael, roughly.

Just this evening, by the refinery in Richmond, there were both shoes (sorry, "shopes"), fairly new Vans, about a quarter mile apart (the wifee spotted the #2 shope), if I could have gotten out of the car without risking injury, I'd have snagged them.

Not to wear, but to mount above the fireplace, proudly.

Follow the wind, esp the prevailing wind for the area. (In the wide open areas, that's usually west-to-east most of the day, although sometimes opposite in the morning.

Follow the wind and look for buildings, bushes, mesh or barbed wire fences, logs, rocks, old abandoned vehicles. The wind will blow many things until it finds something that will hold it: plastic bags (usually rotted by UV), paper, bandanas and other cloth items, plastic bottles, cans, kindling, fishing line, baseball caps. I've never seen any shopes, but I did find a knit cap once.

One time on I-5, I saw (in order), a baseball cap, a windbreaker, a long-sleeved plaid shirt, a pair of chinos, a t-shirt, a pair of shoes, a pair of socks, and striped jockey shorts. A whole outfit just for the picking up!

Sue

Once I was taking my fishing dinghy on an early morning trip through the fog from Marina Del Ray up to Point Dume in Malibu. It was eerily delightful with barely-penetrating sunlight illuminating a small area around me, almost like in the old dream scenes in the movies. I could see maybe 20 yards in any direction. The ocean was as flat as a pancake, and in it I spied a floating object. I motored slowly up to it and discovered a very old highly-carved canoe paddle, complete with a laced rawhide handgrip. The blade of the paddle had a large carved beaver on one side, and on the other a complete scene of two canoeists running a rapids with the inscription "A man is the happiest whose pleasures are the cheapest." I thought it was a great find, and it's hanging on the wall in my cabin. I have no idea where it came from, but I estimate it had to have floated quite a ways down the coast because there are no scenes like those carved on the paddle anywhere around here. You often see floating objects out in the ocean miles from anywhere, but this was the coolest thing I've ever found.

I want my paddle back!!!!

Just a joke

My niece found a plastic tote containing a new MSR stove, fuel bottle, water bottle, Princeton Tech headlamp, sleeping bag, foam pad and a pair of hiking boots. All neatly contained in the tote, which had apparently fallen out of a pickup or off the roof of an RV, and had laid along the highway for several days until she got curiouser and curiouser and finally checked it out.
I've found all kinds of neat stuff, from tent pegs and rope to ammunition and guns, by checking around often used campsites in the USFS after summer tourist rush and again after hunting season end. I keep lesser stuff, but turn in the guns and other valuable stuff to the Sheriff's office. After a time, they often give it back to me, except the guns, if no one has claimed it.

I should have posted this before.
I keep an eye out along the first few miles of any long distance hiking trail, and the same thing after the first few regular camping spots on that trail.
It is very common for people to start out with heavier packs than they can really handle. The result is they lighten their loads as they go.
Often they stash heavier articles just off the side of the trail.
They might be intending to return for them, but they almost never do.

When we were camping and hiking in the Canadian Yukon in 1997, we found many many items from people who on the way to the gold fields had abandoned these items beside trails. These items were ~100 years old....It was very surreal picking up and examining old ax heads, shovels, parts of stoves, mining equipment etc and wondering what happened to the people who left these items behind. Did they ever make it rich or return home or die penniless? As a person who loves history, the 3 weeks spent there are still immeasurable in how fascinating this experience was.

Er, how do you know they never return for them? If you pick up the articles, how do you know they aren't coming along on the trail right behind you?

Articles of value (cameras, etc) I take to the nearest Forest Service office; trash I pack out; articles that may be cached or cast off I leave in place. Let someone else battle the ethical demons of removing someone's stuff.

Well I am glad that someone also agrees on this. I thought I might be the only one who felt this way and kept my thoughts to myself initially.

Every spring and summer, we are out hiking somewhere as we live very close to some of the greatest mountain country in NA. It is not uncommon to see gear left beside a trail when people need to lighten the load for a steep hike up a peak, lookout point etc. The unwritten rule / code of conduct is that you never mess with nor touch another persons gear without their permission...period. We have never had a problem following this nor have we ever worried that our fellow hikers may not abide by it.

The only exceptions to this if it is apparent that an item was dropped by accident. If the item is a shirt, jacket, water bottle or other small piece of gear, we pick the item up and move it to a safe but very visible spot beside the trail.

On the other hand, if the item is of any real value we will pick it up and ask people along the trail or in camps if they lost xxxxxx item then ask them to describe in detail what brand/model, possible identifying marks etc. For items that no one claims, it is turned over to the proper authorities.

No, I know the trail.
They almost never bother to return and pick up their stuff.
It is not usually really expensive gear.
I am not talking about somebody hung their camera on a branch when they stopped to relieve themselves beside the local dayhiking trail.
I specifically mention long distance hiking trails.

When you see the stuff still left in the bushes at the end of the season you understand. When you see it still there the next year you understand even better.
Most of it is the same item over and over.

This is stuff discarded.

They booked a time to hike the trail, and paid big money to an outfitter for the permit a year in advance.
Then they bought hiking gear , loaded up their pack with 65, 70 or 80 pounds of it, walked around the local park a bit and decided they could handle it.

They hiked through on a permit in season and are not allowed back without another permit, which takes a year to get, and their vacation is over anyhow.
To get back to the trailhead is a 4 hour drive from where they end up, and they want to get cleaned up and they have a plane to catch.

One spring before the season started I counted 23 umbrellas from the third mile to the 8th mile of the West Coast Trail.
Just shoved into the bushes.
They thought umbrellas would keep them dry on a 60 mile hike through the rainforest.
People start with one idea and find out that it is not a good one, so they just throw it away.
This is not somebody setting some gear down to do a side branch of the trail.
This is stuff discarded.

Heck, If I am walking down a sidewalk and see a glove or hat in the snow I put it up where it can be seen.
Whoever lost that glove will likely walk past it again tomorrow and be glad they found it again.

Are you sure you know the trail?

By your comments, I assume you are inferring this all occurred on the West Coast Trail as you mentioned this trail by name.

I have hiked this great trail 4 times over 11 years and have never seen the trail littered as you have described. The trail wardens, workers, First Nations people and the hikers do an incredible job in maintaining this trail. Perhaps I went through with blinders on....but I doubt it, as I generally keep a watchful eye at all times. Then you never know, we may of been fortunate that we hiked the trail in good years.

If year after year, you see the same item in the same location as you claim, it is quite obvious that these items have been abandoned and have no historical relevance. If this is the case, why not take develop good land stewardship and pack it out....or at the very least report it. This applies to any trail in general.

Also the WCT trail is only 47 miles at it's most extreme length...not 60 miles and trail use permits open April 1st for same season hikes only. I highly recommend this trail to any person who is in physical shape to hike it.

It maybe that too many people consider their gear disposable when it is an inconvience. If you are setting up a cache or stash then you have the responsibility to identify it as such and also include some contact information if it is not used or recovered in a reasonable time. People just get lazy and drop or toss what they are being burdened with when the going gets tough. We do not live in a society that respects other peoples property absolutly. If it is abandoned or lost then it is trash and fair game, but if it is labled then it should always be repected. To the dropee, you set it down you take your chances, that's just world in which we live. It is a hard call for others to decide what should and should not be picked up. I will not condemn any one for picking up or leaving that which appears abandoned. It is a call, you have to make and live with yourself. The resposiblity for this conumdrum, wheather through carelessness or deliberate action, belongs to the dropee and not the finder. Never the less this is not an excuse to take that which is obviuosly not yours.

And what exactly do you think the native kids are busy cleaning up?
YOUR JUNK!!!
The trail permits may open April fools day, but try getting one.
They are all bought up by the outfitters selling them advanced.

We have many such trails in Canada.
Mostly used by Japanese and American computer wizards on their vacations.

I used to travel that trail in January, February and March.

Anyway, if you are in a survival situation you will use whatever you find, and in my opinion be very welcome to it.
If you were wrecked and at such a place you should certainly use whatever keeps you alive.

The real sad joke is there is no place except the Carmanagh Valley that I can not drive to within a half hours walk of on the wet coast trail.