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Things you've found on a canoe trip

Alan Gage

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Nothing too special for me. A few tent stakes, a fillet knife, and a paddle. I left the paddle where I found it since I didn't need it and it was a very remote area. It might come in handy for someone else down the line.

Actually, I think I left the fillet knife as well. Again, I didn't need it and I didn't have a way to carry an unsheathed knife. I'm sure someone else was happy to find it.

Alan
 
I've found a few canoes, including a Coleman and the aluminum one renamed"the Battleship".

We found a kayak paddle last month on the Eno.

I found quite a few license plates in the rivers of West Virginia's southern coalfields. Sometimes with the cars attached to them.

We've found two box turtle shells. I guess they can't swim very well. This one has been repurposed as a spacious home for a wolf spider.

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Not me but one of my students found a new headlamp on one of our overnight trips. Other than that, I can't think of anything else that was found over the years either by me or someone I was with.

That's all for now. Take care and until next time...be well.

snapper
 
Over the years: a plastic Casio watch (found in early spring just after ice out, so it had spent the winter under the fallen leaves; numerous tent pegs; a few pieces of line left in trees; and a well used but still functional lock blade knife. On a Wabakimi trip in 2008 I found a nice military digital camo boonie hat which I still use. When I used to do some whitewater canoeing I found a few paddles.
 
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This paddle was my best find. It was a sugar island style abandoned at a portage with a broken blade. I took it home and turned it into an otter tail and now it is my "go to" tripping paddle. My second best find was probably a small box of spinners and spoons that someone left on a beaver lodge on a river. Other than that I've found a cheap fishing pole and a 22/410 over and under. I have also found many cached items that I sometimes used but never took.


On the natural side I've found a few moose sheds, a dead bald eagle and a dead bull moose that apparently broke through the river ice and died months before when it still had it's antlers.
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I found this item near a run down trappers cabin in LaVerendrye, Quebec. It might have something to do with Gil nets as there is a falls nearby (Chute Henault), but I’m not sure. I also found a nice filet knife hanging on a tree at a campsite.
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I also returned to a campsite on the Marshall Lake route a couple/3 years after my initial visit, one of the group found my chain fish stringer I left there, still hanging in on a tree. I let her keep it. It came in handy later in the trip.

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Perhaps the best item was a Raven Bent Carbon paddle floating in an eddy on the Wanipigow River downstream of the Broadleaf River.
Also in the Wanipigow downstream from Wallace Lake, a Bell Alaskan broken in half below portage #5 I believe. At portage 6, and still there although we first encountered it in 2008, a Dolphin Canoe with a small hole in the bow. Made a great stove stand although Christy set it on fire one year with a run away Coleman Naptha stove.
 

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Found the remains of an old weather balloon once, still had a national weather service tag on it. Also found remains of an old wooden rowboat in the BWCA and 1/2 of an aluminum canoe at the bottom of a rocky rapids.
 
I found this item near a run down trappers cabin in LaVerendrye, Quebec. It might have something to do with Gil nets as there is a falls nearby (Chute Henault), but I’m not sure. I also found a nice filet knife hanging on a tree at a campsite.
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I also returned to a campsite on the Marshall Lake route a couple/3 years after my initial visit, one of the group found my chain fish stringer I left there, still hanging in on a tree. I let her keep it. It came in handy later in the trip.

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That looks like Mem's Spirit 2 barge in the background.
 
@lowangle al - Sounds like you may have been following a group of college kids 😉

Until next time...be well.

snapper
I don't think so Snapper. I was never a BIG beer drinker in college, but the ones that I knew at Penn State would have never left any unopened beers behind. I saw the group that I'm pretty sure left them the day before on my way in and they seemed to have a buzz on. They were too old for college, I was in my early thirties and they had about 5 to 10 years on me. I think they had the hearts and minds of younger men, but their livers didn't keep up.

The wine was left by a Japanese national. I don't remember how I knew this, I think there was a hand written note with it. I ended up sharing my campsite that night with a European couple who asked if I minded if they stayed with me. The women was menstrating and they were afraid to be out there with no gun. We shared the campfire and seemed to have a nice time. Sometime after I was asleep in my tent the guy came over and asked me to leave because his girlfriend couldn't sleep with me there. I packed up in the dark and left, never knowing what, if anything, that I did to make them more afraid of me than a grizzly bear. On at least three occasions on this lake,(Swan Lake) I've had Europeans ask to share my campsite. They are very friendly, especially in bear country when you have a gun and they don't.
 
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Headless baby doll with the big toes sliced off. Found this behind Cat Island in the Wheeler Marsh of the Housatonic. It is the second headless baby doll that I've found in that area. Pretty sure there's a cult.
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Through 15 years of trips in NE Ontario, Wabakimi and Crown Lands, we have come across numerous destroyed and abandoned aluminum boats and canoes. Some of this debris was pretty dramatic, like the 3 ft bow piece of a Grumman canoe which looked like it had been blown off in an explosion.

There is a small fortune in aluminum scrap up there which would probably take a small fortune to fly out. The Friends of Wabakimi has funded, through Ontario Parks, one legacy trash removal flight.
 
Back in my college days, in the BWCA, I found a Maytag cast aluminum washing machine lid. Back in those days, they were coveted for use as camp fire griddles. They worked great for frying fish fillets, burgers and pancakes. Slid into a sack to keep soot off other gear they formed a nice big flat surface on the inside back a Duluth pack, to rest smoothly against the portager’s back.
On a Thomas or Fraser Lake island, found a beaver trappers, 55 gallon band top barrel, with a wall tent, stove, axe, saw and a couple dozen #4 jump traps in it. Would never have found it but a bear had been engaged in trying to get into it, had rolled it out from its hiding place under a ledge rock outcropping into an open area. We rolled it back to where it had obviously came from. Back then beaver trapping in the spring was a a big part of some local people’s annual income. If you are wondering how someone managed to get a 55 gallon barrel that far back into the Boundary Waters? It was easy then, as snow machine travel was legal on the then common motorized routes.
I also found a large two blade Case Trappers folding knife stuck in a log near a beaver dam. I have gotten a lot of use out of that old knife.
On Vera Lake, on the route to Knife Lake, I found a lacey black 34/C bra hanging from a make shift clothes line near a camp site. Spent years looking for the owner.
 
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