tell us about a firearm you found, not bought, not given to you...simply found.

[358429]

My "found" H&R 20 ga 490 Jr. It had fallen from the tractor and got "disced" the round before.....fixed it and gave it to my girlfriend then married her to keep it!
I hope to "find" my Hi-point 9mm that my Blue heeler probably carried off in a Ruger pistol rug....
I'm not a gun finder, apparently!

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Is that a lanyard strap on the back of the slide?

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[fatnhappy]

20 or so years ago I was walking down a railroad bed on land I used to hunt. On the far embankment I saw a sleeping bag that was unrolled with rope tied around it. I said a few expletives think I was looking at a body before it occurred to me I should be smelling it

It was full of long guns stolen during a burglary. The cops started to give me the 3rd degree. I called my lawyer right then and there.

[Harter66]

I don't find things like that .......

My Dad found 2 95' Mauser barrled actions in a bucket of rebar that was about 20 minutes from going to the scrap yard . One of them made a pretty nice 257 Roberts . The other a test bed for a rimless 45-70 class 45 Raptor .

My Grandmother gave me Grampas Model 10 38 Special .
I traded my Dad an 1894C 38/357 for Auto 5 Mag made in Belgium . Unfortunately I got the 1894 back about 15 yr sooner than I expected .

I don't remember now what the chain was but I was given an 1866 Chessipot with an 1871 issue stamp on the butt stock .

Mom has given me most of the guns now with a dated letter 6/75 as a receipt for them all . Makes me a little sad while bringing joy in knowing that I might get to shoot my Grandpa's bought brand new in 1957 1957 M70 with my grandkids .

[Sasquatch-1]

I found a lot of them. The problem was I was a D. C. Police office and they all had to be turned in as evidence.

[Ed K]

My brother purchased a car in the Miami/Ft Lauderdale vicinity and flew south to pick it up. Traveled home via 95 through the unfriendly states of NJ,NY,CT,MA on his way home to NH. Got home, began detailing the car the next day to find a loaded Glock 17 under the driver's seat. Reported it to the police and despite living in a good state the entire interchange between NH and FL turned into a big hassle. Having read all the posts in the thread I think I detect a trend in this regard and would think hard about what to do about anything I may "find".

[Idaho45guy]

I've never found a firearm, but have a couple of great stories of folks that have...

First was my buddy in Prescott, AZ. He and his brother used to explore the old mines in the area when they were young and dumb. He told me that once they were way deep in a gold mine with timber shoring and his brother stopped to rest and put his hands on a horizontal shoring timber. He felt something cold and metallic and it turned out to be a Colt pistol. Single-action and smaller caliber from the 1800s. They took it home and played with it until their dad found out and confiscated it. He had a very nice new deer rifle that hunting season...

Other story was of a Sharps rolling block rifle that was discovered in Wyoming in 1918. It was wrapped in a buffalo hide and stuffed in a tree trunk on the plains. When it was found, there was not much left of the stock, but it wasn't rusted too badly. The individual who found it brought it home and stuck it in the attic as a future project.

His grandson was a friend of my dad's and eventually inherited the rifle. My dad bought it in the 90's and had it completely restored. All he could use was the action, as the barrel was too far gone.

I thought that rifle was the coolest thing I had ever seen and hoped to inherit it someday. Talked to my dad last week about it and he said that he sold it a year ago or so. Made me sad.

[Wisest.fool]

In college i bought a couch for 25$ from a yard sale. it had seen better days but i needed something to sit on in my dorm room and it didn't smell tooo bad. hauled it up several flights of stairs to my room. later i lost my remote for the tv and started diggin in the couch for it and found a loaded 25 acp semi-auto(With one in the chamber). I dropped that couch several times trying to get it up the stairs! and been sitting on a loaded gun for a couple months.

Being as I wasn't allowed firearms in the dorms and it was not something i cared for i turned it into the police. they didn't give me any hassle just asked that i write a report for them.

[Win94ae]

Found a bolt action shotgun in the trash, the bolt was missing. It is high on the wall of our camping cabin, with a few dowel rods serving as a fake bolt.

[Kraschenbirn]

Back in the mid-1990s, I inherity my grandfather's house in a small town down in southern Illinois and I took a coupld guys from my remodeling crew down there to prep it for sale. During the cleanout, on back of an upper shelf in the attic, I found a S&W break-top .32 wrapped up in an oily rag. Gun was in fair shape but nothing to brag about and, eventually, I traded it off for something I don't even recall but I've occasionally wondered about it. My grandfather had been a railroad policemen for the old Illinois Central line for a while in the 1930s but had a preference for Colts and generally looked upon any .32 as a "pop-gun" so I can't really imagining him buying one. One the other hand, if he picked that one up in a trade or, maybe, on the job, why did he hang on to it all those years?

Bill

[jonp]

Found 2. One was a 1911 in a ditch not far from a bar notorious for shootings. Figured the gun was thrown out a window so called the sheriff.
Second was not long ago. Driving my route one morning on a major road i looked over at an enterance ramp and saw an AR15 lying on the shoulder. Locked my semi's brakes and waited till the sheriff showed up.

I did find a hand grenade on the kitchen counter of a house I was buying on final walkthrough. Lady real estate agent saw it and let out a squawk then ran into the yard which i thought was a bit much

[David2011]

My brother purchased a car in the Miami/Ft Lauderdale vicinity and flew south to pick it up. Traveled home via 95 through the unfriendly states of NJ,NY,CT,MA on his way home to NH. Got home, began detailing the car the next day to find a loaded Glock 17 under the driver's seat. Reported it to the police and despite living in a good state the entire interchange between NH and FL turned into a big hassle. Having read all the posts in the thread I think I detect a trend in this regard and would think hard about what to do about anything I may "find".

The concern in understandable but I would NOT want to be caught with a stolen firearm or one that could be traced to a crime.

[Outpost75]

The concern in understandable but I would NOT want to be caught with a stolen firearm or one that could be traced to a crime.

And trust me, you don't want to explain the explosive ordnance, tins of gold Krugerands and multiple passports either....

[fastdadio]

And trust me, you don't want to explain the explosive ordnance, tins of gold Krugerands and multiple passports either....

Nothing illegal about ordnance tins or Krugerands...... Multiple passports might take some splainin though.

[NEKVT]

In 1969 when I was 15 our basement flooded from unusual heavy spring rains. When the rain stopped and the basement got pumped out we started cleaning up the mess. Under a mattress against a wall I found a Winchester Model 60A single shot 22 rifle. It belonged to my father who got it in the mid 1930's when he was a teen. I had last see it about ten years earlier when he shot it off our picnic table in the backyard at a spoon stuck in a dirt pile. Apparently some time after that my mother hid it there and it was forgotten about. All the metal was orange with surface rust which I cleaned off and cold blued and then refinished the stock with Linspeed. The bore was in good shape for being under water which I figured was from being coated with the wax lube on the 22 bullets back then. I shot it for about a year or two taking a few squirrels and woodchucks with it.

Then one day a friend and I were plinking at some cans in woods behind some houses and a guy walked up and asked my friend to hand it over saying the bullets were ricocheting by his house. He gave it to him and I wondered how I was going to explain the rifle going "missing" again and under these circumstances. Luckily the subject of the rifle never came up but it ate away at me until I moved out on my own a few years later and I never really could forget about it.

And then out of the blue about 15 years later another friend showed up at my house and said he had something for me and pulled the rifle from his car. A friend of his was the nephew of the guy who took the rifle and was given it at some point and somehow my friend made the connection and it was given to him to return to me. For the past 35 years I've had the rifle in my possession and still shoot and hunt with it occasionally but it will never be beyond my reach when out of the safe until it gets passed down.

[Ed K]

The concern in understandable but I would NOT want to be caught with a stolen firearm or one that could be traced to a crime.

Agreed, however you could "unfind it", destroy it, other...

[fastdadio]

I was doing a boiler inspection for a home owner that had recently bought a typical turn of the century farm house. Half basement, half crawl space under the house. I put my ladder up and used a flash light to peer back into the crawl space area to check the piping and hanger condition. I happened to look directly down, and right under my nose was an Ithica M37 12ga. Sadly the gun had been cut down to minimum at both ends. Barrel and stock both hacked off. Some gangsta wannabe ruined a nice gun. It had a light patina of rust from laying in the dirt for years. When the home owner came back down stairs we discussed the boiler condition, then I asked him if he knew about the gun. He did not. I got it down and showed it to him, and then explained the federal penalties for possession of a short shot gun, and the fact that it would cost more to repair than it was worth. He said I could have it. I removed the barrel right there, crushed and folded it in half in my vice, handed it to him, and told him to throw it away.
My daughter is a Dallas LEO, so I called her and had her run the serial number. It came back as 'no record'. So, I basically ended up with a free receiver.
Cash was tight at my house, so I bought an Ithica 18" cylinder bore barrel and a cheap pistol grip for it, cleaned and loobed it up, took it out with a box of game loads and found it to cycle them all without a hiccup. figuring it would make a dandy house gun, I leaned it in the corner behind my desk and it sat there for years.
I ended up needing knee surgery last summer and had 8 weeks off. Loves me some Ithica M37, so I decided that would be a good time for a project. I ordered a replacement stock set from the new Ithica Co. and gave it a make over. It had a Bubba job weaver rail drilled into the receiver, so I removed and filled the holes and polished it out to 800 grit. Despite the external abuse, I was pleasantly suprised to find the action to have little wear. I painted the metal with Brownell's Aluma-hyde and reassembled it. I think it came out pretty nice and it's a fine shooter.

https://shop.brownells.com/gunsmith-...074f789e38134c

[Gator 45/70]

I was doing a boiler inspection for a home owner that had recently bought a typical turn of the century farm house. Half basement, half crawl space under the house. I put my ladder up and used a flash light to peer back into the crawl space area to check the piping and hanger condition. I happened to look directly down, and right under my nose was an Ithica M37 12ga. Sadly the gun had been cut down to minimum at both ends. Barrel and stock both hacked off. Some gangsta wannabe ruined a nice gun. It had a light patina of rust from laying in the dirt for years. When the home owner came back down stairs we discussed the boiler condition, then I asked him if he knew about the gun. He did not. I got it down and showed it to him, and then explained the federal penalties for possession of a short shot gun, and the fact that it would cost more to repair than it was worth. He said I could have it. I removed the barrel right there, crushed and folded it in half in my vice, handed it to him, and told him to throw it away.
My daughter is a Dallas LEO, so I called her and had her run the serial number. It came back as 'no record'. So, I basically ended up with a free receiver.
Cash was tight at my house, so I bought an Ithica 18" cylinder bore barrel and a cheap pistol grip for it, cleaned and loobed it up, took it out with a box of game loads and found it to cycle them all without a hiccup. figuring it would make a dandy house gun, I leaned it in the corner behind my desk and it sat there for years.
I ended up needing knee surgery last summer and had 8 weeks off. Loves me some Ithica M37, so I decided that would be a good time for a project. I ordered a replacement stock set from the new Ithica Co. and gave it a make over. It had a Bubba job weaver rail drilled into the receiver, so I removed and filled the holes and polished it out to 800 grit. Despite the external abuse, I was pleasantly suprised to find the action to have little wear. I painted the metal with Brownell's Aluma-hyde and reassembled it. I think it came out pretty nice and it's a fine shooter.

https://shop.brownells.com/gunsmith-...074f789e38134c

Very nice make-over, What's the deal with the head shaped rock?

[fastdadio]

Very nice make-over, What's the deal with the head shaped rock?

Thanks, it's now one of my favorite guns. The rock is an original antique, experts date it at about 22,000 years old, it's very unique, and is one of a kind. Came with the house along with a few others scattered about the lot. Too big to move, so there it sits.

[funnyjim014]

Found a 22 revolver when I bought my house . A high standard. With a box of 22 shorts. Turned it in to the police. I tried to get it back but required to many hoops ( NY) it didn't quite work right either. I suspect the timing was gummed up

[Idaho45guy]

I was doing a boiler inspection for a home owner that had recently bought a typical turn of the century farm house. Half basement, half crawl space under the house. I put my ladder up and used a flash light to peer back into the crawl space area to check the piping and hanger condition. I happened to look directly down, and right under my nose was an Ithica M37 12ga. Sadly the gun had been cut down to minimum at both ends. Barrel and stock both hacked off. Some gangsta wannabe ruined a nice gun. It had a light patina of rust from laying in the dirt for years. When the home owner came back down stairs we discussed the boiler condition, then I asked him if he knew about the gun. He did not. I got it down and showed it to him, and then explained the federal penalties for possession of a short shot gun, and the fact that it would cost more to repair than it was worth. He said I could have it. I removed the barrel right there, crushed and folded it in half in my vice, handed it to him, and told him to throw it away.
My daughter is a Dallas LEO, so I called her and had her run the serial number. It came back as 'no record'. So, I basically ended up with a free receiver.
Cash was tight at my house, so I bought an Ithica 18" cylinder bore barrel and a cheap pistol grip for it, cleaned and loobed it up, took it out with a box of game loads and found it to cycle them all without a hiccup. figuring it would make a dandy house gun, I leaned it in the corner behind my desk and it sat there for years.
I ended up needing knee surgery last summer and had 8 weeks off. Loves me some Ithica M37, so I decided that would be a good time for a project. I ordered a replacement stock set from the new Ithica Co. and gave it a make over. It had a Bubba job weaver rail drilled into the receiver, so I removed and filled the holes and polished it out to 800 grit. Despite the external abuse, I was pleasantly suprised to find the action to have little wear. I painted the metal with Brownell's Aluma-hyde and reassembled it. I think it came out pretty nice and it's a fine shooter.

https://shop.brownells.com/gunsmith-...074f789e38134c

Great story! Thanks for sharing! That shotgun turned out awesome.