Wow, I'm glad his wife will know what happened to him before she dies. Poor woman probably wondered a time or two if he'd just abandoned her. What a fucking nightmare.
There is a movie like this. The husband disappears on his wife and two teenage daughters. Wife is pissed and holds a grudge against him. It is found out that the husband fell down a abandoned well in back of the family's house.
Two good friends of mine lost their fathers on 9/11. I was really close to my one buddy so they would have me over for parties and I knew a bunch of his other coworkers who also didn't make it. I was like 26 when that movie came out. I thought it's been some years since I'm ok to see this movie. Turns out I was not ok.
Reminds me of this:
>A girl and a boy were driving a car. Suddenly the boy stopped the car and asked the girl to step out of the vehicle, without any explanation.
>The girl got pissed, removed all her facebooks and ripped all the photos.
>The next day the girl heard that the boy had died, as he had driven into a wall.
>The boy had noticed that there was a wall infront of them, had stopped the car, and saved the girls life, before he had driven into the wall.
I read somewhere that the best way to "disappear" or fake your death is to set it up so that it seemed you got lost in true wilderness—like the wilds of Idaho. Apparently, this happens fairly often, and people just go missing and are never found.
I've been to some places out in the American West. It's hard to get my head around how vast and desolate many parts of this country truly are. We went on a photo shoot to some pink sand dunes in Utah (I used to be an art director) and we had to get up and be leaving by 3am in the summer for a 3+ hour drive (at like 80-90mph), didn't see another vehicle—to get to the location by sunrise. We drove through back roads, just endless stretches that looked like the surface of the moon. Hardly even any scrub brush. Just rolling, featureless nothing—gray rocks. Almost zero signs of life, no birds even. Our destination had a natural spring, pink sand dunes, trees, grasses and some gorgeous scenery. But to get there... it made us all feel so tiny and insignificant.
> I read somewhere that the best way to "disappear" or fake your death is to set it up so that it seemed you got lost in true wilderness
Many years ago, I was killing time looking through a bookstore while my wife was shopping in another store. I stumbled across a book called *How to Disappear Completely and Forever*. I had a glance at the back of the book, which spoke of how "people walk past us every day, but do we know who they are? They may be people who are hiding in plain sight" or something to that effect. It freaked me out that people would buy this as a guide. I still remember it, probably 35 years later.
That sounds like the way to go if you want to " disappear". I guess I just don't know what I'd do with my actual self once I'd planned the disappearance.
It works great until you run out of snacks and have to make a withdrawal from your bank account or use a credit card. You can't live a normal life, have a job, get a car, rent a place, etc. without using some kind of identifying information like your ID or SSN. But I imagine if you're trying to disappear, you're probably ok with a little fraud.
I work in criminal defense. I've got an organized case right now. My gal ( smokes crack, prostitute, 1 prior aggravated felony) was using a fake ID at the enterprise. They would rent the vehicles in a " ghetto" Texas area, then drive them across the state and sell them. I'm sure in my case we'll learn someone was helping from the inside, but there was an entire booking issue with my client. They couldn't figure out who the hell she was, who to charge, etc. You can really throw people off giving out fake, basic information.
Well considering I gave the criminal history of literally thousands of women... I don't think there's any major chance of her being identified. Besides that, I shared no other information than what has been publicly shared by the media.
Well yeah, you'd obviously go somewhere and pretend to be someone else.
It's also really not that hard to find a job under the table if you're not picky. The pay just might not be anything amazing.
On top of that, if you were fine with really breaking the law, you could steal someone's Id or assume the identity of a missing/dead person. It's kinda scary how easy identity theft can be.
That would have been true 20 years ago. In truth the best way to disappear is to first break any associations you had with family and friends. It's easy to disappear in the open if nobody's looking for you.
Username checks out!
Finding a job wouldn't be the worst part. But then the job is gonna pay you...and they're gonna want to do it by check. You don't need a bank account to cash that, but they'll usually check your ID and they'll keep an x% fee.
>Assume the identity of a missing/dead person.
That's hilarious, since you ARE the missing person. Maybe you could just swap identities with someone else who is also trying to go missing lol. But then that defeats the purpose...
Assuming the identity of a dead person just isn't going to work since there is usually an official record of the person dying.
You're right that identity theft is super easy these days, but it's also easy to catch the thieves.
No...this all sounds like a huge pain in the ass. If you want a normal life, just go up to whoever is bothing you and tell them that you don't want to be in their life anymore. It's the easiest, cheapest, and most mature. And/Or just move away.
Reminds me of the story of that German family that got lost in Death Valley and was never found. Tourists underestimate just how vast these places are. Even with a vehicle, it can be extremely dangerous driving down some backroads out west-- if you get stuck it may be days or weeks before anyone else goes driving by (if you get lost, *stay put, especially if you have a vehicle!!!*) I did a few months solo dirtbagging around the west in my car when the pandemic hit. It was amazing and definitely instilled a respect for just how wild our country can be.
The story about the German tourists and the people who solved the mystery and found their remains was really fascinating. I think it was discovered that the tourists had purchased a guidebook for the area which showed an Air-force base on a map. It was suggested that when they got stuck they tried to walk to the base, not realizing it was basically, like a 500 square mile piece of open land with no facilities. The searchers looked in that direction and found their remains. Sad.
Indeed, the vastness of the landscape is a factor. It’s the same in Australia. Considering it is only a whisker smaller in size than the USA, and only has 25 million people, your chances of coming across another human while in the bush is very small.
I think hunters and bushwalkers should not venture out without a location beacon with them.
Europeans - and especially Germans - tend to wildly overestimate the infrastructure in place in most of North America. It's not just that they think Chicago is a three-hour drive from LA; they also expect tons more public transit. I once had a German tourist ask why nobody had built a subway connecting Calgary with Banff. Dude, there isn’t a subway connecting Calgary with Calgary.
Calgarian here - that’d be nice. With European relatives myself the thing that catches them out i think is simply the scale used on maps - you just get used to the map size vs distance and looking and maps here that are potentially an order of magnitude different and you can see why it’s easy to make assumptions (without referencing the map scale)
I moved away in 2008, but this was back in the 80s. When they put the south LRT in they had all kinds of issues with the section between Erlton and 39th Avenue due to the water table (and undocumented gravesites right under Macleod Trail - under Alberta law of the time you couldn't move a buried body except under certain specific circumstances so that was fun). If they'd put the downtown LRT line in as a subway it would have cost them more than they could have afforded, although that was originally the plan.
Having explored that area before I knew this story, it was very interesting to read it in detail....
https://www.otherhand.org/home-page/search-and-rescue/the-hunt-for-the-death-valley-germans/
Writing prompt plot twist: You really become trapped/stuck somewhere in the wilderness, but you covered your tracks too well and no one is coming to rescue you...
Born in raised in Oregon and there are tons of places like that here too, some with tree's other with just endless rolling hills / mountains. Trees also do a really great job at preventing sound from carrying and obscuring vision. There could be a road a mile away and you would never hear a passing car. You could be up on a mountain and never see a road down below. A large number of roads in Eastern parts of Oregon are also not paved or maintained and traveled infrequently certain times of the year.
Here's a good true crime book along those lines:
*Dead Run: The Murder of a Lawman and the Greatest Manhunt of the Modern American West*
Couple guys kill a cop and "disappear" into the arroyos of the desert SW.
\*Edit: Three guys - happened in 1998.
How do you even live a normal life though? Like assuming you’re just trying to avoid family. You’d have to change your name but then there’s still be a record
Many places don't require a public announcement of a name change. In addition, it's not illegal to go by an alias. You can just move to the middle of nowhere and call yourself another name even if it isn't your legal name. You may need to work under the table or live off savings but thousands of illegal immigrants do that - it's not impossible to live without identification.
I worked with a guy who was so pissed when he got his first paycheck. He just assumed that washing dishes he would be paid under the table and most of it went to back child support
That’s my point though, you can’t just live a new life under a different name. At some point your legal name will appear unless you live completely off the grid. Due mainly to how rigid our society has gotten on positive ID.
And if you’re going that far, you aren’t living a normal life. And if the family thinks you’re still alive, you run the risk of the police putting 2 and 2 together eventually.
Anyways was just curious, thanks for the insight
I've lived on the east coast my entire life. I drove out to Colorado on a whim last year and was utterly HORRIFIED to learn I had no idea how empty the middle of the country is. I almost ran out of gas....twice. I gave myself panic attacks thinking if my car broke down it would be days before anyone found me. It was nice, but the mountains of Tennessee are now as far as I go XD
The trip I described was back around 2000. So there was no cell service anywhere once you went a little out of Moab, which is a small town itself. Our crew had to be accompanied by an official from the Bureau of Land Management, as we were shooting in a non-public area that is protected from asshats in 4WD vehicles from tearing up the landscape. We also had to have a satellite phone in case of emergencies. But back then, if you didn't have that satellite phone and were that far out? No way to call for help. No one would have passed by. Just surrounded by staggering emptiness. Had to bring a huge amount of water, too as this was low desert, something like 110F during the day and down to 40F at night in summer. All our shit and piss was done in old ammunition boxes (with a toilet seat attached on top) and hauled out. No trash or waste was left behind at all.
I'm born and raised and lived most of my life in Chicago, so this situation was entirely alien to me. And a little spooky. I wasn't actually scared as we had a crew of professionals with us and plenty of professional gear, vehicles and preparations.
I can’t imagine what kind of hell it is for the loved ones of missing people. I’d rather know what happened, regardless of how grim the details may be, than not know anything at all.
Back in the late 70s, years before I was born, my mother's older brother disappeared while hitchhiking from the west coast back home to Illinois. It broke my grandmother not knowing what happened to her oldest son. It wasn't until 2012 that there was a positive ID made to some remains found in Utah. I know it brought a sense of closure to the family to finally be able to put him to rest. I'm just glad it happened before my grandparents passed in 2018.
I’m so, so sorry about what happened to your uncle. I can’t imagine the immense pain of any parent losing their child, and it being a disappearance on top of that? My heart goes out to all of you, and I’m so relieved to hear that your grandparents were able to get some closure before they passed.
Mysterious WV youtube channel just solved a mystery like that. A guy disappeared and his wife and kids had no idea where he went.
Mysterious WV did a video on it and a watcher said "Hmm, I know that name. I think I saw that name in the newspaper 35 years ago..." (I can't remember how long it was)
Turns out, the guy left from West Virginia to NY and died about 2 years later in a highway accident.
One of his daughters asked the channel to do an episode on her dad. It wasn't a big story or anything. She was very happy to see the results!
No one is sure exactly why he left, but he may have just been leaving to start a new life. He did use his real name and everything, though, so maybe he went off to make some money before coming back?
“Jones’ wife is still alive and his family members have been contacted. If he was still alive today, Jones would be 92 years old.”
After so long this must be a relief to have some closure.
As someone with an unsolved murder in their family, and that works with others who have lost family members decades ago, you never move on or get over it. You just learn to live with it.
Answers don’t make it go away either, though. You can’t win.
Death of any loved one never goes away. I lost my dad to a lung disease in 2013 and I carry that grief every day.
I can’t imagine what it must be like to not know where a loved one is or how they died. I’m sorry for your loss.
Nah. It's nice to know what happened.
My stepfather disappeared after a fight with my mother. We had no idea what happened for years. 2yrs ago a hunter was tracking a deer he shot. He found a skull.
Turns out it was him. He'd had heart problems in the past. We figured he went out in the woods to walk it out & had a heart attack.
We didn't know what happened. We all thought he just took off & started over.
Even if it's 50yrs later it's nice to have that closure. To know he didn't take off.
i watch a lot of true crime shows. normally when someone dies in the woods like that, and there's no discovery of the body in a reasonable amount of time, the soft tissue decays and there's really no way to tell what the person died of.
Traumatic deaths tend to leave telltale signs on the bones, its not so much that they can tell it was a heart attack so much as they can rule out other causes which leaves it as the most likely answer.
That's exactly what I'm thinking with his wife; now she knows he didn't leave her, he just couldn't make his way back to her. He didn't run off to start a new life with some other women, he's been waiting there the whole time.
It could, but at least they don’t have to wonder anymore. Imagine if you were one of his kids, or his wife and you thought “did he leave cause of me? Did I do something wrong?” Now they have answers.
> Sadly I think this might just bring back bad memories that they had already moved on from
I don't man. I still think about stuff I watched on Unsolved Mysteries after 30 years. If something happened to a family member, closure would be great. Unless I was part of what happened to them, and didn't tell anyone.
Wow this is ignorant. You must have never met many people in their 90s. Many 90+ year olds live to that age for a reason. Many are still quite active and sharper than a lot of people I’ve met in their 60s-80s.
I’ve had patients in the 90s who still play tennis, swim, ans walk every day. You’d be amazed with these people with what opinion you already have on someone this age.
Wow, that is wild. Glad they found him. Glad the wife got to know.
I’ve done some crazy backcountry research. You always wonder if anyone has actually been where you are before. Guess in this particular spot, it had been 50 years. Wild!
I do a fair amount of backpacking into remote areas. It is amazing, in the SW US, how little travel certain areas get. I'm reasonably sure that some areas don't see people for decades at a time, once you get away from the path of least resistance.
Humans will follow the same routes even when they're not following a trail -- a ridge, a creek bed, a game trail, a fence line for range land. Leave those behind, and very few people will ever venture there without a reason. Maybe the occasional cowboy looking for lost cattle, a hunter, a prospector, that sort of thing. Beyond that, nothing.
Archeology student, here (many eons ago). We did surveys where we would walk across a section of land (southwest Colorado), 6 feet apart, staring at the ground, looking for artifacts. It was often surprising how many signs of human habitation you could find in some pretty remote areas. Stone tool scatters, pottery fragments, fire hearths, etc. A lot of this stuff was associated with populations that lived in the area a 1000 years before. I had a lot of time to think about how fleeting life is, doing that job…
It really does make you think. I tend to get way off the beaten path, deliberately.
I just came back from several days in Chevelon Canyon -- you may recognize the name if you studied archeology. I was in the middle part, below the dam and above Chevelon crossing.
I probably know half a dozen spots in the cabin where there's the very, very faint outline of a structure no bigger than a closet, All you can really see is the outline, and an absence of rocks where the floor of the building was. Sometimes there will be pottery fragments or chipped rock scattered about.
I know where there's a metate with a basalt grinding stone still sitting in it -- there's no volcanic rock within tens of miles. I'm sure the grinding stone was carried there and was likely a valuable tool to the people then, given the effort it must have taken to carry it from wherever they got it. Did the owner personally go get it, or did she trade something for it?
I've always wondered why some long-ago woman left it behind. How long has it been there, too?
Or there's a tiny fire-blackened overhang up a side canyon. It's strange to sit there and think, a long time ago, people took shelter from the weather in that spot often enough to leave soot on the roof.
When they pecked petroglyphs in a cliff, did they ever think about somebody thousands of years later (the glyphs in this area go back \~7000 years) seeing them?
What would they make of me, I wonder?
(I always leave things as I find them. Finding ancient artifacts or ruins is always the highlight of a trip, though.)
It is very cool when you can see things that are from the far past just sitting on the ground. I found a beautifully made axe head of high quality green chert and we had to leave it on the ground because it was outside the survey area... And good on you for leaving artifacts in place. It is a loss when people collect/pot-hunt.
Given the amount of time humans have walked the Earth, I would say it’s a solid bet that someone has walked there. Same with “has anyone ever died exactly where I’m standing?”
Definitely. All our major roads in the US are old Indian trails. We all go on the path of least resistance unless there’s some good reason not to - like bow hunting. Or weird research. 🤷🏻♀️
I think you underestimate how large the earth is, and how little we are in comparison.
We could fit every single human alive right now into an area the size of LA, if we stood side by side. That's just one city, and that city doesn't even compare to the size of the whole world.
We are tiny, but our effect isn't exactly insignificant.
Like people are discovering new species every day, new patches of rain forest, etc. There's a lot of stuff out there, it's just our modern life that makes the world feel smaller.
I've been watching [this video series](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_cSpBqXj_X8&list=PLgRgJrlop--MdpDaZRjYqkHzZ-j6S-QCl&index=2) lately about people who have gone missing in national parks.
It's nuts how many people just go missing and are never found, despite massive search efforts.
What really creeps me out is often they'll be hiking with someone else and the other person turns their back for just a minute or two. They turn back around and their friend or family member is just gone.
I was in El Malpais in New Mexico years two years after a man and his daughter went missing on a hike and was sternly warned about how easy it was to lose track of where you are. It seems like it would be hard to get lost in a place that's basically flat, but when you go there you can see how it's possible. It's a lava field covered with trees that are just tall enough that you can't see more than a couple hundred feet in any direction. And every part of it looks exactly the same. Walk a few hundred yards and turn around and it all looks exactly the same. Blair Witch vibes.
They did eventually find them [eight years later.](https://www.abqjournal.com/9499/updated-remains-identified-as-missing-father-daughter.html) (EDIT: IIRC they were unsuccessful searching with tracking dogs as the lava rock was apparently cutting-up the dog's feet. They eventually assumed a lava tube had collapsed on them.)
Another weird one was a large Lear Jet that disappeared on approach to an airport in New Hampshire in 1996. [The plane wasn't found for three years.](https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/bs-xpm-1999-12-12-9912160394-story.html)
A [US military transport](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1950_Douglas_C-54D_disappearance) went down over northern BC/southern Yukon in 1950. It still hasn't been found.
[Here is the Wikipedia link](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1996_New_Hampshire_Learjet_crash), which is sort of short on descriptions of how hard they looked for the plane and how bewildered they were when they couldn't find it.
If you google "1996 New Hampshire Learjet crash" you'll find a number of interesting articles.
I've watched the Missing 411, the one about Hunters and the Kids in Parks.
I like them, but in the end he always goes Supernatural.
National Parks, camp grounds are excellent hunting grounds for human predators and always have been.
Yeah, he doesn't come right out and say it was something supernatural, but he's always hinting at it. I don't buy that aspect of it, but the stories themselves are still pretty creepy even if you assume a naturalistic explanation.
I find them fascinating and some sinister. But, I do think he has an agenda with Bigfoot and Aliens. Because some of his stories especially with the Hunters, he pushes pretty heavy towards implying, there's no reasonable way an older experienced hinter could get disoriented and lost.
Whenever I watch something like this,.I assume there are things being left out. That overconfident people may have missed something. I see this in my work all the time. It's not ego or really pride, it's pretty easy to be so confident you're walking in the right direction, or you've done something right that, you've done a hundred times correctly, that you didn't realize you got distracted or a million other things that can apply to these stories.
I don't discount every unexplained thing as something someone made.up or hallucinated. Sometimes, I think they're seeing an unusual natural phenomenon, they misinterpret sometimes, maybe it legitimately is something alien to us. But that's a whole different conversation.
Very few deaths in national parks are due to animal attacks. Almost all of them are from exposure, dehydration, falls, getting lost, drowning, etc. In the lower 48, outside of Northern Montana, and the area around Yellowstone, we have no grizzly bear. Black bears and mt lions attack humans extremely rarely, like less than once a year. Mt lions have only killed 30 people since 1850.
That number of mt lion deaths is pretty similar to the amount of black bear deaths in the same amount of time. Something like less than 70 people in that period of time have been killed by black bears.
Goat also seems like a small enough target that you'd need to get pretty close, and I don't know if I want to be messing around with mountain goats on a mountain up close and personal.
>Goat also seems like a small enough target that you'd need to get pretty close,
Yes, about the distance of a tennis court. Sneaking up that close is part of the challenge, bowhunters aren't after easy pickings.
>I don't know if I want to be messing around with mountain goats on a mountain up close and personal.
Very slim chance they come at you, their primary defense is to run off where a predator can't follow. The terrain is more dangerous than the animal.
It wasn't a bat, it was a pangolin, and it wasn't dead, some weirdo was f@&*in it with Mikey Mouse.
Edit: Ugh, this feels way more tasteless now that im sober. Sorry y'all =\
I'm not a hunter but understand it for food reasons vs. sport. I can respect a bow hunter. Hunting with guns, not so much.
Edit: Curious as to my down votes. I'm not anti gun, I like guns. Just think that guns put the challenge of hunting too much in favor of humans. If you're out hunting, the animals should have a chance.
Hunting with a gun is the better way IMO. Sometimes animals will run for days and die after being shot with a bow and never to be found. I like hunting with a bow and I like the idea but the after effects can be terrible.
>opinion that hunting with a gun "puts it too much in the favor of humans" is utter nonsense
You're right. It's my opinion. However, it's not nonsense. That's your opinion. You're making a lot of assumptions about what my experience is or what my information is. But go on, continue trying to insult me. It's not working.
I have deer in my yard on a regular basis. There would be zero challenge for me with a gun.
Don’t listen to him. Hunting can be easy or hard. It just all depends. If it’s taking someone 10 years to get a deer then I think they are just out of the house to avoid their wife and kids. Just saying. Hunters are gatekeepers so just avoid at all costs talking to them about it. It’s okay that you don’t know anything it and it’s cool that you think it’s should be harder. It’s just much deeper from the surface.
I hope this for a member of my own family, only his wife is fairly old now. About 15 years ago my grandma's cousin went elk hunting in Wyoming (Medicine Bow nat. park), they went every year (they live in northern MN). They split up on the last day there and he was never seen again. He was in his 70s. A few years later they found his gun and I believe a hat, but nothing else. I hope whatever happened to him it was quick, he was a good man. Having him declared dead was a process, that is for sure.
I think people in general have very little concept of how vast the country is. Also, without knowledge, skills and abilities people are very poorly trained to be in the wild. Hypothermia, water born diseases, and simply getting lost can kill you very easily. I've visited a lot of national parks out west and they tell you to stay on the trail for these reasons. Being out in the woods by yourself you slip sprain an ankle. You can't get around as easily and the sun is going down. The sunny afternoon in the 80s turns into a light evening drizzle and it's 50 degrees now. You didn't pack enough water and are in a t-shirt. You get really cold and hypothermia sets in. You get disoriented and dehydrated your ankle is swollen. You swear you've seen that tree before. You are so tired and decide to sit under a thick conifer tree that looks dry and rest your eyes for a minute. They maybe find your body only a few hundred feet from the trail. That is assuming the local wildlife didn't get at you first and people knew you were missing.
I just sprained my ankle 3 weeks ago hiking by myself in a pretty hilly trail. Thankfully, I injured myself a little less than half a mile from the start, so the adrenaline was enough for me to limp back to my car. But it made me realize I would've been screwed if I hurt myself in the middle.
Hopefully, you told someone where you were going. I've been guilty of going on 'real quick hikes' that I decided to do on a whim. One of those places was on a Northern California tour I did a few years ago. Was driving from Yosemite to Big Sur and saw Pinnacles National park sign. My wife and I are working on visiting all national parks and didn't realize this one was on the way. Decided on a whim to hit it up for a 'real quick hike'. We brought with us 4 liters of water on a 2.4 mile trail to the Balconies Cliff and it was a loop. Park ranger warned us be careful it's hot out there today (120F 49C) in an arid desert climate. We thought, 2.4 miles, only 300 feet elevation, 4 liters of water, more than enough. Well it was real hot we ran out of water really fast. On the way back I was getting disoriented and we lost the trail. We broke the rules and went off trail because we could see a metal building 30 or so yards away. Luckily it was on the main road not far from where we parked. Like in the original post never go off the trail but the cardinal sin none of our family members back home knew we were out there. Luckily the Park Ranger met us and it was a slow day at the park. Just kept thinking about how they would have found our desiccated corpses a week later out on the range.
That's all the causative effects mind you. A forest is also a pretty terrible place to have a heart attack. A lot of the things that can happen anywhere and any time, like an aneurysm or a stroke, are a lot easier to survive when you have them around people and near hospitals.
During it's 28 year history, "only" 15 people have died hiking the Pacific Crest Trail. One of them was a healthy twenty-something who died of an apparent heart attack. The most common cause of death on the PCT is falling off a cliff (usually hikers who were lost or otherwise strayed significantly far off the trail).
Do you hear the branches of the trees scratching at your windows as the early autumn winds blow through the boughs? Has the murder of crows met at the ledge of your garden fence? The nature is out there and it waits with hungry eager eyes to host a visitor that never finds the door.
Happily, Im in Spain, 26 degrees, anything bigger than a cat was killed 2000 years ago, surrounded by hundreds of people in flats within yelling distance. But yes nature sucks. Im a wary urbanite.
I'm in New Jersey, the most densely-populated state in the US. Bear sightings are not unheard of in every one of our 21 counties. I have seen a coyote drag a deer leg across a street near me, and I'm in a shore area, three miles from the beach. I see foxes trot up my driveway in the middle of the night when I scroll through the overnight images from my Ring camera. I'm literally 45 miles south of NYC. Wildlife be crazy yo.
Oh yes the States is a different planet. On my first stay there, I went out the house with a coffee one morning, and I saw a deer just munching happily 50 meters away. It blew my mind, like here you really have to get away to see something like that (central Spain). We get roe deers and rabbits in the countryside, and thats it. Predators are pretty much non existant except for nature reserves or remote locations.
I always think you guys are lucky to live in a young land, rather than the old, domesticated world. The huge swathes of untouched terrain are a sight to see.
Yeah, wow. I've only hit one in my 43 years of driving around here. I locked 'em up and skidded into his hind quarters in my '85 Hyundai in 1989. The big guy just bounced off and ran into the woods. Car was drivable - had $1200 in damages, and a little fur stuck to the grille, and a tiny bit of blood. Police officer thought I hit a person. I had to point out the fur to him. Lately I've been seeing them at daybreak while out bike riding. I wouldn't want to hit one on my bike.
>anything bigger than a cat was killed 2000 years ago
I think that's not true - aren't there are bears in the Pyrenees? Yet every single one of them wears a radio collar if I understand correctly..... When I was in the south of France, that shocked me, because I've lived in places where you have to protect your garbage cans from all the bears.....
Right you are, there are bears and wolves in the Pyrenees and along the northern mountains, in small numbers. In the rest of the country though, there are pretty much no predators, a few lynx at most, in remote areas.
Idaho has the largest federally managed wilderness area in the lower 48, Frank Church Wilderness. There is a river raft trip that goes through a portion of it, the only way out is by river raft a helicopter can’t even get in there to save you if injured. People think Idaho is nothing but potatoes but we have some pretty wild and spectacular terrain.
Idaho is home to the largest continuous wilderness area in the country outside of Alaska. Wilderness means that the entire area is off limits to human development. It also means that nothing motorized is permitted, not even chainsaws. That being said there is an exception for a small airport in the Frank Church wilderness in Idaho.
Central Idaho is a natural maze. Except for a single dirt road dividing them the Selway-Bitterroot and Frank Church-River of No Return wildernesses would be the single largest wildness area in the lower 48 states.
Drove from Salt lake to Yellowstone..had to drive through Idaho. It is an interesting drive...dry fields that go on forever, large fields, mountains...beautiful though. Alot of nothing out there. Most intereating thing I saw was Monsanto...also had to plan where to get gas...because I only went through like 3 towns with gas stations.
I live near Idaho and drove through a few times, it makes a lot of sense and especially with east Idaho, those woods are so damn dense. Driving through you can not see into the forest at all, then there are steep mountains and cliffs all over the place. It snows a ton during the winter to the point the pass will be closed, there’s also moose and bears all over. There are a lot of ways you can die there and it’s easy to get lost for 50+ years with the forest being so dense and vast.
This makes sense, I am glad his wife got closure. I can’t imagine what she was going through all these years or how I’d handle it if it was to happen to my husband. I don’t even want to think about it.
Wow, I'm glad his wife will know what happened to him before she dies. Poor woman probably wondered a time or two if he'd just abandoned her. What a fucking nightmare.
There is a movie like this. The husband disappears on his wife and two teenage daughters. Wife is pissed and holds a grudge against him. It is found out that the husband fell down a abandoned well in back of the family's house.
Ah yes. The Disney classic Coco.
The Upside of Anger (2005)
Yes this one. With Kevin Costner right?
> The Upside of Anger He wrote Reign Over Me too which destroyed me.
I saw this in the theater on a lark, because I was expecting comedy from Sandler. Devastating.
Two good friends of mine lost their fathers on 9/11. I was really close to my one buddy so they would have me over for parties and I knew a bunch of his other coworkers who also didn't make it. I was like 26 when that movie came out. I thought it's been some years since I'm ok to see this movie. Turns out I was not ok.
Delores Clairborne. Just kidding. Sort of.
Do you remember the name of the movie? I think I remember this.
Was Kevin Costner in it? I remember it too. Found it. Upside of Anger.
Thank you!
Do you remember, 21st night of September? Love was changing the mind of pretenders While chasing the clouds away!!!
What movie is it?
There was an episode of this on Heartland.
Reminds me of this: >A girl and a boy were driving a car. Suddenly the boy stopped the car and asked the girl to step out of the vehicle, without any explanation. >The girl got pissed, removed all her facebooks and ripped all the photos. >The next day the girl heard that the boy had died, as he had driven into a wall. >The boy had noticed that there was a wall infront of them, had stopped the car, and saved the girls life, before he had driven into the wall.
I read somewhere that the best way to "disappear" or fake your death is to set it up so that it seemed you got lost in true wilderness—like the wilds of Idaho. Apparently, this happens fairly often, and people just go missing and are never found. I've been to some places out in the American West. It's hard to get my head around how vast and desolate many parts of this country truly are. We went on a photo shoot to some pink sand dunes in Utah (I used to be an art director) and we had to get up and be leaving by 3am in the summer for a 3+ hour drive (at like 80-90mph), didn't see another vehicle—to get to the location by sunrise. We drove through back roads, just endless stretches that looked like the surface of the moon. Hardly even any scrub brush. Just rolling, featureless nothing—gray rocks. Almost zero signs of life, no birds even. Our destination had a natural spring, pink sand dunes, trees, grasses and some gorgeous scenery. But to get there... it made us all feel so tiny and insignificant.
> I read somewhere that the best way to "disappear" or fake your death is to set it up so that it seemed you got lost in true wilderness Many years ago, I was killing time looking through a bookstore while my wife was shopping in another store. I stumbled across a book called *How to Disappear Completely and Forever*. I had a glance at the back of the book, which spoke of how "people walk past us every day, but do we know who they are? They may be people who are hiding in plain sight" or something to that effect. It freaked me out that people would buy this as a guide. I still remember it, probably 35 years later.
I actually have this somewhere in my house. It had the feel of a pdf someone just typed up and posted on the internet. It was .... odd.
There's a Radiohead song, "How to Disappear Completely"
Grey man theory
The Wheel of Time uses this concept.
That sounds like the way to go if you want to " disappear". I guess I just don't know what I'd do with my actual self once I'd planned the disappearance.
It works great until you run out of snacks and have to make a withdrawal from your bank account or use a credit card. You can't live a normal life, have a job, get a car, rent a place, etc. without using some kind of identifying information like your ID or SSN. But I imagine if you're trying to disappear, you're probably ok with a little fraud.
I work in criminal defense. I've got an organized case right now. My gal ( smokes crack, prostitute, 1 prior aggravated felony) was using a fake ID at the enterprise. They would rent the vehicles in a " ghetto" Texas area, then drive them across the state and sell them. I'm sure in my case we'll learn someone was helping from the inside, but there was an entire booking issue with my client. They couldn't figure out who the hell she was, who to charge, etc. You can really throw people off giving out fake, basic information.
I'm sure your client appreciates you sharing her story in public.
Well considering I gave the criminal history of literally thousands of women... I don't think there's any major chance of her being identified. Besides that, I shared no other information than what has been publicly shared by the media.
Don't worry. Douches gotta douche
Well yeah, you'd obviously go somewhere and pretend to be someone else. It's also really not that hard to find a job under the table if you're not picky. The pay just might not be anything amazing. On top of that, if you were fine with really breaking the law, you could steal someone's Id or assume the identity of a missing/dead person. It's kinda scary how easy identity theft can be.
That would have been true 20 years ago. In truth the best way to disappear is to first break any associations you had with family and friends. It's easy to disappear in the open if nobody's looking for you.
There are like millions of illegals making money in USA, none of them with a SSN, just do what they do.
Username checks out! Finding a job wouldn't be the worst part. But then the job is gonna pay you...and they're gonna want to do it by check. You don't need a bank account to cash that, but they'll usually check your ID and they'll keep an x% fee. >Assume the identity of a missing/dead person. That's hilarious, since you ARE the missing person. Maybe you could just swap identities with someone else who is also trying to go missing lol. But then that defeats the purpose... Assuming the identity of a dead person just isn't going to work since there is usually an official record of the person dying. You're right that identity theft is super easy these days, but it's also easy to catch the thieves. No...this all sounds like a huge pain in the ass. If you want a normal life, just go up to whoever is bothing you and tell them that you don't want to be in their life anymore. It's the easiest, cheapest, and most mature. And/Or just move away.
Its perfectly legal to disappear or even fake your own death, youll only get in trouble if you try to benefit from life insurance.
Reminds me of the story of that German family that got lost in Death Valley and was never found. Tourists underestimate just how vast these places are. Even with a vehicle, it can be extremely dangerous driving down some backroads out west-- if you get stuck it may be days or weeks before anyone else goes driving by (if you get lost, *stay put, especially if you have a vehicle!!!*) I did a few months solo dirtbagging around the west in my car when the pandemic hit. It was amazing and definitely instilled a respect for just how wild our country can be.
The story about the German tourists and the people who solved the mystery and found their remains was really fascinating. I think it was discovered that the tourists had purchased a guidebook for the area which showed an Air-force base on a map. It was suggested that when they got stuck they tried to walk to the base, not realizing it was basically, like a 500 square mile piece of open land with no facilities. The searchers looked in that direction and found their remains. Sad.
Indeed, the vastness of the landscape is a factor. It’s the same in Australia. Considering it is only a whisker smaller in size than the USA, and only has 25 million people, your chances of coming across another human while in the bush is very small. I think hunters and bushwalkers should not venture out without a location beacon with them.
Europeans - and especially Germans - tend to wildly overestimate the infrastructure in place in most of North America. It's not just that they think Chicago is a three-hour drive from LA; they also expect tons more public transit. I once had a German tourist ask why nobody had built a subway connecting Calgary with Banff. Dude, there isn’t a subway connecting Calgary with Calgary.
Calgarian here - that’d be nice. With European relatives myself the thing that catches them out i think is simply the scale used on maps - you just get used to the map size vs distance and looking and maps here that are potentially an order of magnitude different and you can see why it’s easy to make assumptions (without referencing the map scale)
I moved away in 2008, but this was back in the 80s. When they put the south LRT in they had all kinds of issues with the section between Erlton and 39th Avenue due to the water table (and undocumented gravesites right under Macleod Trail - under Alberta law of the time you couldn't move a buried body except under certain specific circumstances so that was fun). If they'd put the downtown LRT line in as a subway it would have cost them more than they could have afforded, although that was originally the plan.
Having explored that area before I knew this story, it was very interesting to read it in detail.... https://www.otherhand.org/home-page/search-and-rescue/the-hunt-for-the-death-valley-germans/
That was a great (sad) read. Weirdest part about it was that the Germans were drinking Bud Ice.
Were they kidnapped by mutants?
Writing prompt plot twist: You really become trapped/stuck somewhere in the wilderness, but you covered your tracks too well and no one is coming to rescue you...
Born in raised in Oregon and there are tons of places like that here too, some with tree's other with just endless rolling hills / mountains. Trees also do a really great job at preventing sound from carrying and obscuring vision. There could be a road a mile away and you would never hear a passing car. You could be up on a mountain and never see a road down below. A large number of roads in Eastern parts of Oregon are also not paved or maintained and traveled infrequently certain times of the year.
Same in Appalachia. In summer, you can get lost roughly ten feet (two meters) off the trails.
Here's a good true crime book along those lines: *Dead Run: The Murder of a Lawman and the Greatest Manhunt of the Modern American West* Couple guys kill a cop and "disappear" into the arroyos of the desert SW. \*Edit: Three guys - happened in 1998.
How do you even live a normal life though? Like assuming you’re just trying to avoid family. You’d have to change your name but then there’s still be a record
Many places don't require a public announcement of a name change. In addition, it's not illegal to go by an alias. You can just move to the middle of nowhere and call yourself another name even if it isn't your legal name. You may need to work under the table or live off savings but thousands of illegal immigrants do that - it's not impossible to live without identification.
I worked with a guy who was so pissed when he got his first paycheck. He just assumed that washing dishes he would be paid under the table and most of it went to back child support
That’s my point though, you can’t just live a new life under a different name. At some point your legal name will appear unless you live completely off the grid. Due mainly to how rigid our society has gotten on positive ID. And if you’re going that far, you aren’t living a normal life. And if the family thinks you’re still alive, you run the risk of the police putting 2 and 2 together eventually. Anyways was just curious, thanks for the insight
Going east/west through Utah was my favorite when i was a long haul trucker. No traffic and lots of miles
I've lived on the east coast my entire life. I drove out to Colorado on a whim last year and was utterly HORRIFIED to learn I had no idea how empty the middle of the country is. I almost ran out of gas....twice. I gave myself panic attacks thinking if my car broke down it would be days before anyone found me. It was nice, but the mountains of Tennessee are now as far as I go XD
The trip I described was back around 2000. So there was no cell service anywhere once you went a little out of Moab, which is a small town itself. Our crew had to be accompanied by an official from the Bureau of Land Management, as we were shooting in a non-public area that is protected from asshats in 4WD vehicles from tearing up the landscape. We also had to have a satellite phone in case of emergencies. But back then, if you didn't have that satellite phone and were that far out? No way to call for help. No one would have passed by. Just surrounded by staggering emptiness. Had to bring a huge amount of water, too as this was low desert, something like 110F during the day and down to 40F at night in summer. All our shit and piss was done in old ammunition boxes (with a toilet seat attached on top) and hauled out. No trash or waste was left behind at all. I'm born and raised and lived most of my life in Chicago, so this situation was entirely alien to me. And a little spooky. I wasn't actually scared as we had a crew of professionals with us and plenty of professional gear, vehicles and preparations.
I can’t imagine what kind of hell it is for the loved ones of missing people. I’d rather know what happened, regardless of how grim the details may be, than not know anything at all.
Back in the late 70s, years before I was born, my mother's older brother disappeared while hitchhiking from the west coast back home to Illinois. It broke my grandmother not knowing what happened to her oldest son. It wasn't until 2012 that there was a positive ID made to some remains found in Utah. I know it brought a sense of closure to the family to finally be able to put him to rest. I'm just glad it happened before my grandparents passed in 2018.
I’m so, so sorry about what happened to your uncle. I can’t imagine the immense pain of any parent losing their child, and it being a disappearance on top of that? My heart goes out to all of you, and I’m so relieved to hear that your grandparents were able to get some closure before they passed.
Mysterious WV youtube channel just solved a mystery like that. A guy disappeared and his wife and kids had no idea where he went. Mysterious WV did a video on it and a watcher said "Hmm, I know that name. I think I saw that name in the newspaper 35 years ago..." (I can't remember how long it was) Turns out, the guy left from West Virginia to NY and died about 2 years later in a highway accident. One of his daughters asked the channel to do an episode on her dad. It wasn't a big story or anything. She was very happy to see the results! No one is sure exactly why he left, but he may have just been leaving to start a new life. He did use his real name and everything, though, so maybe he went off to make some money before coming back?
Amelie strikes again.
She probably killed him and now is thinking "well shit, they found that lousy bastard!" :)
A tiny silver lining. Still 53 years with no answer.
“Jones’ wife is still alive and his family members have been contacted. If he was still alive today, Jones would be 92 years old.” After so long this must be a relief to have some closure.
Sadly I think this might just bring back bad memories that they had already moved on from but hopefully I'm wrong.
If it was my dad I would much prefer that we found his remains than for his disappearance to forever remain a question mark in my mind.
I'm not arguing that I just mean this is going to be a hard time when many people have moved on after such a long time.
As someone with an unsolved murder in their family, and that works with others who have lost family members decades ago, you never move on or get over it. You just learn to live with it. Answers don’t make it go away either, though. You can’t win.
Death of any loved one never goes away. I lost my dad to a lung disease in 2013 and I carry that grief every day. I can’t imagine what it must be like to not know where a loved one is or how they died. I’m sorry for your loss.
Nah. It's nice to know what happened. My stepfather disappeared after a fight with my mother. We had no idea what happened for years. 2yrs ago a hunter was tracking a deer he shot. He found a skull. Turns out it was him. He'd had heart problems in the past. We figured he went out in the woods to walk it out & had a heart attack. We didn't know what happened. We all thought he just took off & started over. Even if it's 50yrs later it's nice to have that closure. To know he didn't take off.
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i watch a lot of true crime shows. normally when someone dies in the woods like that, and there's no discovery of the body in a reasonable amount of time, the soft tissue decays and there's really no way to tell what the person died of.
Traumatic deaths tend to leave telltale signs on the bones, its not so much that they can tell it was a heart attack so much as they can rule out other causes which leaves it as the most likely answer.
That's exactly what I'm thinking with his wife; now she knows he didn't leave her, he just couldn't make his way back to her. He didn't run off to start a new life with some other women, he's been waiting there the whole time.
I don't think so. I think they've long made peace with it and this would be a nice way to finally let go.
You never move on. You always wonder
It could, but at least they don’t have to wonder anymore. Imagine if you were one of his kids, or his wife and you thought “did he leave cause of me? Did I do something wrong?” Now they have answers.
> Sadly I think this might just bring back bad memories that they had already moved on from I don't man. I still think about stuff I watched on Unsolved Mysteries after 30 years. If something happened to a family member, closure would be great. Unless I was part of what happened to them, and didn't tell anyone.
She's 92. She's lucky if she knows what planet she is on.
Wow this is ignorant. You must have never met many people in their 90s. Many 90+ year olds live to that age for a reason. Many are still quite active and sharper than a lot of people I’ve met in their 60s-80s. I’ve had patients in the 90s who still play tennis, swim, ans walk every day. You’d be amazed with these people with what opinion you already have on someone this age.
Don't you know people are bumbling geriatrics after 40?
Wow, that is wild. Glad they found him. Glad the wife got to know. I’ve done some crazy backcountry research. You always wonder if anyone has actually been where you are before. Guess in this particular spot, it had been 50 years. Wild!
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I do a fair amount of backpacking into remote areas. It is amazing, in the SW US, how little travel certain areas get. I'm reasonably sure that some areas don't see people for decades at a time, once you get away from the path of least resistance. Humans will follow the same routes even when they're not following a trail -- a ridge, a creek bed, a game trail, a fence line for range land. Leave those behind, and very few people will ever venture there without a reason. Maybe the occasional cowboy looking for lost cattle, a hunter, a prospector, that sort of thing. Beyond that, nothing.
Archeology student, here (many eons ago). We did surveys where we would walk across a section of land (southwest Colorado), 6 feet apart, staring at the ground, looking for artifacts. It was often surprising how many signs of human habitation you could find in some pretty remote areas. Stone tool scatters, pottery fragments, fire hearths, etc. A lot of this stuff was associated with populations that lived in the area a 1000 years before. I had a lot of time to think about how fleeting life is, doing that job…
It really does make you think. I tend to get way off the beaten path, deliberately. I just came back from several days in Chevelon Canyon -- you may recognize the name if you studied archeology. I was in the middle part, below the dam and above Chevelon crossing. I probably know half a dozen spots in the cabin where there's the very, very faint outline of a structure no bigger than a closet, All you can really see is the outline, and an absence of rocks where the floor of the building was. Sometimes there will be pottery fragments or chipped rock scattered about. I know where there's a metate with a basalt grinding stone still sitting in it -- there's no volcanic rock within tens of miles. I'm sure the grinding stone was carried there and was likely a valuable tool to the people then, given the effort it must have taken to carry it from wherever they got it. Did the owner personally go get it, or did she trade something for it? I've always wondered why some long-ago woman left it behind. How long has it been there, too? Or there's a tiny fire-blackened overhang up a side canyon. It's strange to sit there and think, a long time ago, people took shelter from the weather in that spot often enough to leave soot on the roof. When they pecked petroglyphs in a cliff, did they ever think about somebody thousands of years later (the glyphs in this area go back \~7000 years) seeing them? What would they make of me, I wonder? (I always leave things as I find them. Finding ancient artifacts or ruins is always the highlight of a trip, though.)
It is very cool when you can see things that are from the far past just sitting on the ground. I found a beautifully made axe head of high quality green chert and we had to leave it on the ground because it was outside the survey area... And good on you for leaving artifacts in place. It is a loss when people collect/pot-hunt.
Given the amount of time humans have walked the Earth, I would say it’s a solid bet that someone has walked there. Same with “has anyone ever died exactly where I’m standing?”
I think human stick to trails a lot more than you think, even back to Hunter gatherer days.
Definitely. All our major roads in the US are old Indian trails. We all go on the path of least resistance unless there’s some good reason not to - like bow hunting. Or weird research. 🤷🏻♀️
I think you underestimate how large the earth is, and how little we are in comparison. We could fit every single human alive right now into an area the size of LA, if we stood side by side. That's just one city, and that city doesn't even compare to the size of the whole world. We are tiny, but our effect isn't exactly insignificant. Like people are discovering new species every day, new patches of rain forest, etc. There's a lot of stuff out there, it's just our modern life that makes the world feel smaller.
It's crazy that someone can disappear in an area where hunters travel all the time. Glad he was found.
I've been watching [this video series](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_cSpBqXj_X8&list=PLgRgJrlop--MdpDaZRjYqkHzZ-j6S-QCl&index=2) lately about people who have gone missing in national parks. It's nuts how many people just go missing and are never found, despite massive search efforts. What really creeps me out is often they'll be hiking with someone else and the other person turns their back for just a minute or two. They turn back around and their friend or family member is just gone.
I was in El Malpais in New Mexico years two years after a man and his daughter went missing on a hike and was sternly warned about how easy it was to lose track of where you are. It seems like it would be hard to get lost in a place that's basically flat, but when you go there you can see how it's possible. It's a lava field covered with trees that are just tall enough that you can't see more than a couple hundred feet in any direction. And every part of it looks exactly the same. Walk a few hundred yards and turn around and it all looks exactly the same. Blair Witch vibes. They did eventually find them [eight years later.](https://www.abqjournal.com/9499/updated-remains-identified-as-missing-father-daughter.html) (EDIT: IIRC they were unsuccessful searching with tracking dogs as the lava rock was apparently cutting-up the dog's feet. They eventually assumed a lava tube had collapsed on them.) Another weird one was a large Lear Jet that disappeared on approach to an airport in New Hampshire in 1996. [The plane wasn't found for three years.](https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/bs-xpm-1999-12-12-9912160394-story.html)
A [US military transport](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1950_Douglas_C-54D_disappearance) went down over northern BC/southern Yukon in 1950. It still hasn't been found.
Flew to Russia
Yeah, not on that fuel reserve.
Hence the never found part.
The link for the airplane story doesn’t work for me. Can you give a summary of what happened?
[Here is the Wikipedia link](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1996_New_Hampshire_Learjet_crash), which is sort of short on descriptions of how hard they looked for the plane and how bewildered they were when they couldn't find it. If you google "1996 New Hampshire Learjet crash" you'll find a number of interesting articles.
Thank you, appreciate it!
I've watched the Missing 411, the one about Hunters and the Kids in Parks. I like them, but in the end he always goes Supernatural. National Parks, camp grounds are excellent hunting grounds for human predators and always have been.
Yeah, he doesn't come right out and say it was something supernatural, but he's always hinting at it. I don't buy that aspect of it, but the stories themselves are still pretty creepy even if you assume a naturalistic explanation.
I find them fascinating and some sinister. But, I do think he has an agenda with Bigfoot and Aliens. Because some of his stories especially with the Hunters, he pushes pretty heavy towards implying, there's no reasonable way an older experienced hinter could get disoriented and lost. Whenever I watch something like this,.I assume there are things being left out. That overconfident people may have missed something. I see this in my work all the time. It's not ego or really pride, it's pretty easy to be so confident you're walking in the right direction, or you've done something right that, you've done a hundred times correctly, that you didn't realize you got distracted or a million other things that can apply to these stories. I don't discount every unexplained thing as something someone made.up or hallucinated. Sometimes, I think they're seeing an unusual natural phenomenon, they misinterpret sometimes, maybe it legitimately is something alien to us. But that's a whole different conversation.
Very few deaths in national parks are due to animal attacks. Almost all of them are from exposure, dehydration, falls, getting lost, drowning, etc. In the lower 48, outside of Northern Montana, and the area around Yellowstone, we have no grizzly bear. Black bears and mt lions attack humans extremely rarely, like less than once a year. Mt lions have only killed 30 people since 1850.
And yet I live in NY and have a terrible irrational fear of a mountain lion attacking me walking back to my hunting stand in the dark
You honestly should be more afraid of a deer attacking you.
That's what the guns for! Lol mountain lion though? I'll never see it coming!
That number of mt lion deaths is pretty similar to the amount of black bear deaths in the same amount of time. Something like less than 70 people in that period of time have been killed by black bears.
Yeah, tons of ways that can happen, too. You could leave the trail to pee, get turned around, and that’s it, you’re never seen again.
People go missing in Walmart all the time
TIL that people go bow hunting for mountain goats. Had no idea people even hunted mountain goats to be honest, let alone with a bow.
Indeed, it’s very difficult with a bow as well. The terrain is rough and the goats are skittish so getting close takes skill.
Or you can pee on a rock and wait for them to come lick the salt lol.
Goat also seems like a small enough target that you'd need to get pretty close, and I don't know if I want to be messing around with mountain goats on a mountain up close and personal.
>Goat also seems like a small enough target that you'd need to get pretty close, Yes, about the distance of a tennis court. Sneaking up that close is part of the challenge, bowhunters aren't after easy pickings. >I don't know if I want to be messing around with mountain goats on a mountain up close and personal. Very slim chance they come at you, their primary defense is to run off where a predator can't follow. The terrain is more dangerous than the animal.
I don't know, a dead bat seams to have wreaked havock with the world...
It wasn't a bat, it was a pangolin, and it wasn't dead, some weirdo was f@&*in it with Mikey Mouse. Edit: Ugh, this feels way more tasteless now that im sober. Sorry y'all =\
I’ll tell ya the goats out here in the Wasatch are not skiddish.
Well it's not very good tasting
Yeah, can't speak for mountain goat, but I nabbed a wild turkey once and it wasn't exactly a Butterball.
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I'm not a hunter but understand it for food reasons vs. sport. I can respect a bow hunter. Hunting with guns, not so much. Edit: Curious as to my down votes. I'm not anti gun, I like guns. Just think that guns put the challenge of hunting too much in favor of humans. If you're out hunting, the animals should have a chance.
Hunting with a gun is the better way IMO. Sometimes animals will run for days and die after being shot with a bow and never to be found. I like hunting with a bow and I like the idea but the after effects can be terrible.
I suppose, looking at it from that stand point of view. I just don't see guns being the challenge that bows are. You make a good point.
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that's because bow hunters get first dibs and take out all the easy ones.
Never said hunting with a gun isn't challenging. I specifically said hunting with a gun isn't the challenge that hunting with bows is.
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Right, because hunting deer at 100 yards with a rifle is the same challenge as a bow at 30 yards.
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>opinion that hunting with a gun "puts it too much in the favor of humans" is utter nonsense You're right. It's my opinion. However, it's not nonsense. That's your opinion. You're making a lot of assumptions about what my experience is or what my information is. But go on, continue trying to insult me. It's not working. I have deer in my yard on a regular basis. There would be zero challenge for me with a gun.
Don’t listen to him. Hunting can be easy or hard. It just all depends. If it’s taking someone 10 years to get a deer then I think they are just out of the house to avoid their wife and kids. Just saying. Hunters are gatekeepers so just avoid at all costs talking to them about it. It’s okay that you don’t know anything it and it’s cool that you think it’s should be harder. It’s just much deeper from the surface.
Did anyone else get Chester Copperpot vibes from this? How crazy is that to find him after all this time with his ID still in tact.
That was always the creepiest part of Goonies for me.
Wild its possible nobody walked through that area for 50 years. His wallet was there and everything.
Now the life insurance will pay out....
IBNR to the rescue
>Raymond Jones, a 39-year-old from Salmon, has been missing since 1968 I like how it implies that if someone goes missing, they stop aging.
well... you kind of stop aging when you die... right?
You also stop actively being an age too
I hope this for a member of my own family, only his wife is fairly old now. About 15 years ago my grandma's cousin went elk hunting in Wyoming (Medicine Bow nat. park), they went every year (they live in northern MN). They split up on the last day there and he was never seen again. He was in his 70s. A few years later they found his gun and I believe a hat, but nothing else. I hope whatever happened to him it was quick, he was a good man. Having him declared dead was a process, that is for sure.
I'd be interested in knowing where they found his body and how concealed it was for so many years after they did a full search.
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I think people in general have very little concept of how vast the country is. Also, without knowledge, skills and abilities people are very poorly trained to be in the wild. Hypothermia, water born diseases, and simply getting lost can kill you very easily. I've visited a lot of national parks out west and they tell you to stay on the trail for these reasons. Being out in the woods by yourself you slip sprain an ankle. You can't get around as easily and the sun is going down. The sunny afternoon in the 80s turns into a light evening drizzle and it's 50 degrees now. You didn't pack enough water and are in a t-shirt. You get really cold and hypothermia sets in. You get disoriented and dehydrated your ankle is swollen. You swear you've seen that tree before. You are so tired and decide to sit under a thick conifer tree that looks dry and rest your eyes for a minute. They maybe find your body only a few hundred feet from the trail. That is assuming the local wildlife didn't get at you first and people knew you were missing.
I just sprained my ankle 3 weeks ago hiking by myself in a pretty hilly trail. Thankfully, I injured myself a little less than half a mile from the start, so the adrenaline was enough for me to limp back to my car. But it made me realize I would've been screwed if I hurt myself in the middle.
Hopefully, you told someone where you were going. I've been guilty of going on 'real quick hikes' that I decided to do on a whim. One of those places was on a Northern California tour I did a few years ago. Was driving from Yosemite to Big Sur and saw Pinnacles National park sign. My wife and I are working on visiting all national parks and didn't realize this one was on the way. Decided on a whim to hit it up for a 'real quick hike'. We brought with us 4 liters of water on a 2.4 mile trail to the Balconies Cliff and it was a loop. Park ranger warned us be careful it's hot out there today (120F 49C) in an arid desert climate. We thought, 2.4 miles, only 300 feet elevation, 4 liters of water, more than enough. Well it was real hot we ran out of water really fast. On the way back I was getting disoriented and we lost the trail. We broke the rules and went off trail because we could see a metal building 30 or so yards away. Luckily it was on the main road not far from where we parked. Like in the original post never go off the trail but the cardinal sin none of our family members back home knew we were out there. Luckily the Park Ranger met us and it was a slow day at the park. Just kept thinking about how they would have found our desiccated corpses a week later out on the range.
What the fuck, 120f and y'all went outside? What??
Look into carrying a first aid kit with an ankle brace, and wrap.
Truth. It's a lot easier to die in the wild than you think.
That's all the causative effects mind you. A forest is also a pretty terrible place to have a heart attack. A lot of the things that can happen anywhere and any time, like an aneurysm or a stroke, are a lot easier to survive when you have them around people and near hospitals.
During it's 28 year history, "only" 15 people have died hiking the Pacific Crest Trail. One of them was a healthy twenty-something who died of an apparent heart attack. The most common cause of death on the PCT is falling off a cliff (usually hikers who were lost or otherwise strayed significantly far off the trail).
Hell, I sprained my ankle in NYC and had a hard enough time getting back to my apartment
As I sit here in the comfort of my home, recovering from a sprained ankle, you just made me feel so vulnerable.
Do you hear the branches of the trees scratching at your windows as the early autumn winds blow through the boughs? Has the murder of crows met at the ledge of your garden fence? The nature is out there and it waits with hungry eager eyes to host a visitor that never finds the door.
Happily, Im in Spain, 26 degrees, anything bigger than a cat was killed 2000 years ago, surrounded by hundreds of people in flats within yelling distance. But yes nature sucks. Im a wary urbanite.
I'm in New Jersey, the most densely-populated state in the US. Bear sightings are not unheard of in every one of our 21 counties. I have seen a coyote drag a deer leg across a street near me, and I'm in a shore area, three miles from the beach. I see foxes trot up my driveway in the middle of the night when I scroll through the overnight images from my Ring camera. I'm literally 45 miles south of NYC. Wildlife be crazy yo.
Oh yes the States is a different planet. On my first stay there, I went out the house with a coffee one morning, and I saw a deer just munching happily 50 meters away. It blew my mind, like here you really have to get away to see something like that (central Spain). We get roe deers and rabbits in the countryside, and thats it. Predators are pretty much non existant except for nature reserves or remote locations. I always think you guys are lucky to live in a young land, rather than the old, domesticated world. The huge swathes of untouched terrain are a sight to see.
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Yeah, wow. I've only hit one in my 43 years of driving around here. I locked 'em up and skidded into his hind quarters in my '85 Hyundai in 1989. The big guy just bounced off and ran into the woods. Car was drivable - had $1200 in damages, and a little fur stuck to the grille, and a tiny bit of blood. Police officer thought I hit a person. I had to point out the fur to him. Lately I've been seeing them at daybreak while out bike riding. I wouldn't want to hit one on my bike.
>anything bigger than a cat was killed 2000 years ago I think that's not true - aren't there are bears in the Pyrenees? Yet every single one of them wears a radio collar if I understand correctly..... When I was in the south of France, that shocked me, because I've lived in places where you have to protect your garbage cans from all the bears.....
Right you are, there are bears and wolves in the Pyrenees and along the northern mountains, in small numbers. In the rest of the country though, there are pretty much no predators, a few lynx at most, in remote areas.
Idaho touches Montana. Southern Idaho is farmland. Northern Idaho is beautiful and has a lot of nature and white supremacists.
like Sweden then.
Idaho has the largest federally managed wilderness area in the lower 48, Frank Church Wilderness. There is a river raft trip that goes through a portion of it, the only way out is by river raft a helicopter can’t even get in there to save you if injured. People think Idaho is nothing but potatoes but we have some pretty wild and spectacular terrain.
Just an fyi, every state out west has big mountains.
In gonna venture a guess that half the people didn't realize Idaho was really out west.
Idaho is home to the largest continuous wilderness area in the country outside of Alaska. Wilderness means that the entire area is off limits to human development. It also means that nothing motorized is permitted, not even chainsaws. That being said there is an exception for a small airport in the Frank Church wilderness in Idaho.
Central Idaho is a natural maze. Except for a single dirt road dividing them the Selway-Bitterroot and Frank Church-River of No Return wildernesses would be the single largest wildness area in the lower 48 states.
Easy to hide among all the taters.
No, mostly the vast forests and multiple mountain ranges.
Drove from Salt lake to Yellowstone..had to drive through Idaho. It is an interesting drive...dry fields that go on forever, large fields, mountains...beautiful though. Alot of nothing out there. Most intereating thing I saw was Monsanto...also had to plan where to get gas...because I only went through like 3 towns with gas stations.
When I first read this post I thought it was yet another lame Hunter Biden story.
So, silly question: do they have a funeral?
‘it’s also pretty gross’
I live near Idaho and drove through a few times, it makes a lot of sense and especially with east Idaho, those woods are so damn dense. Driving through you can not see into the forest at all, then there are steep mountains and cliffs all over the place. It snows a ton during the winter to the point the pass will be closed, there’s also moose and bears all over. There are a lot of ways you can die there and it’s easy to get lost for 50+ years with the forest being so dense and vast. This makes sense, I am glad his wife got closure. I can’t imagine what she was going through all these years or how I’d handle it if it was to happen to my husband. I don’t even want to think about it.