found in center of 85 yr old tree

[woodshop]

I dropped an 80 yr old Catalpa tree this past weekend, was about 30 inches at the base. Going to mill it into 8x8 timbers for base of a lumber drying platform as Catalpa is real rot resistant stuff. However, looking at the end of that butt log, I noticed a shiny metal object in the center of the log, right behind the hinge. Right away it looked a little thicker than an 8 or 10 penny nail, and much worse than a little barbed wire I get in some trees along that old road. My heart sank thinking I had just dulled the chain hitting a pretty large chunk of metal, as I had just spent the time sharpening the thing, and it was a 32 inch bar, not the 20 I usually run on the MS460. But looked again, and it was REAL shiny. Poked at it with my knife, and dang if it wasn't soft... lead. I popped out the front half of a .22 long rifle slug. It was buried around the 4th ring of the 85 year old tree, so I figure somebody had shot into that (then) Catalpa sapling about 1925. Maybe shooting at a rabbit or groundhog, the little slug to be found by me 80 years later with my chainsaw. What are the chances!

 

[tony marks]

well did the lead dull the chain as much as if it were a nail etc. just curious.
seems to me lead is soft so mabe not ,huh.

 

[woodshop]

The soft lead did not dull that chain in the slightest, any more than tool steel would get dull milling aluminum stock. Keep in mind I was using a 32 inch bar, standard RS chain, lots of teeth, and Catalpa is pretty soft, so with the MS460 that bar was moving through that log pretty fast. I'm not sure all of the teeth even touched the lead before it sawed through that little slug.

 

[Sylvatica]

Slim odds of finding that bullet, and also that the nose, crimp, and cannelure would be perfectly intact. I would guess that the soft, unplated lead bullet escaped deformation/mushrooming because it was at the end of its trajectory and was running out of velocity, combined with hitting a flexible object which moved slightly, absorbing and decellerating the projectile. It may also hve been from a lower velocity loading such as a .22 Short.

 

[Vman]

i agree with alot said by Sylvatica, hard to believe there is no "mushroom" at all on the bullet....i don't even see rifling!! maybe the original owner of that bullet dropped it in the dirt and the tree grew engulfing the bullet? i find alot of trees by me like that with rocks grown into them. was there brass in the other end of the wood?

 

[trimmmed]

Hi Dave. I'd say the odds are good, lol

White ash and lead

 

[woodshop]

interesting... never thought the slug might not have been actually fired into that sapling in 1925. But if dropped on the ground and "picked up" by the tree which then grew around it, where is the casing? Also, upon closer examination... I can see the slug IS slightly flattened, and there is a nick or gouge on the one side of the head of it. I wonder if it had ricochet off of a branch or something, thus slowing it down, and that is why it did not mushroom upon impact with the 4 year old sapling. As far as no rifling... maybe it was shot from a smooth bore like a little derringer? Another clue... the slug was oriented slightly up wards, say about 30 degrees, as if it was shot into the tree from below. The tree does sit up on a slight slope, so that is possible, although from the terrain below, not probable. Then again, terrain can change a lot in 80 years. The landowner tells me there was once a pond down below this tree where the bullet would have had to have been fired given how it was oriented in the log, but it is all filled in woods now.

its a mystery

 

[woodshop]

Hi Dave. I'd say the odds are good, lol

White ash and lead

neat... that one looks like it was dead center, in the pith almost. Hey there are still some trees at Gettysburg here in PA where the battles were fought that were alive in 1860's, although small trees then. I wonder if you go poking around in those trees if you will find lead. I'll bet you would.

 

[Vman]

in any event that is an amazing and a "once in a lifetime" find. too bad we cannot find out the story!!

But if dropped on the ground and "picked up" by the tree which then grew around it, where is the casing?

thats why i asked if there was brass in the other end of the tree.

darn!! i wanna know the story!!

ahhhhh, in the practice of safety, the squirrel hunter had a mis-fire or "bum round". he removed the bullet from the case before throwing it away.

or........

he was a fisherman at the pond and carried 22's for lead weights/split-shots and dropped one at the sapling that he used to lean his fishing rod against.

or.......

the pond was much bigger at that time, it came all the way to that tree which was in the swampy part of the pond, the rifleman used to shoot into the water after consuming a barrel of beer (the water would not deform the bullet).

my neighbor took down a very large tree that was on an old fenceline. just below the crotch of the tree there was a very old horseshoe inside the tree. the conclusion was that someone hung the horseshoe on a branch and over the years the tree grew around it. (the tree was 3ft+ in diameter and crotched out into 3 seperate trees about 4 ft above the ground).

 

[NevadaWalrus]

Was stated this is a soft wood. How soft? Is it possible this was a larger tree shot at much more recently and soft enough the bullet would penetrate without deforming??

 

[underwor]

I used to have a slab of wood off a large elm that had 1/2 of a 16 penny nail in it, cut the long way. Guess what happened to the other half? If I find it again I will post a picture. That one did dull the saw.

 

[turnkey4099]

I used to have a slab of wood off a large elm that had 1/2 of a 16 penny nail in it, cut the long way. Guess what happened to the other half? If I find it again I will post a picture. That one did dull the saw.

Same here. Big Maple with an 8 penny in it when it was a sapling. did a great job of rocking out a chain on one side only. Had to be the falling cut of course so had to 'whittle' to finish the falling cut.

Harry K

 

[smcowboy1974]

Shotgun slug

I've found barbed wire, stone, nails, a shotgun slug, and two brodheads from arrows. And yes I've had some fun times trying to get the chainsaw chain back into shape after hitting some of these buried Treasures!

 

[max2cam]

I have a locally milled pine board in a wall that has a small lead bullet cut in half right in the board.

I myself have only found barbed and smooth wire in trees....

 

[Vman]

Was stated this is a soft wood. How soft? Is it possible this was a larger tree shot at much more recently and soft enough the bullet would penetrate without deforming??

NevadaWalrus.....IMO, i doubt it, a .22 is not gonna penetrate like that, and the bullet is lead...it is gonna deform pretty much no matter what it hits, it is not jacketed.

only the bullets onwer will know

 

[woodshop]

The slug did not penetrate the tree far, as there was no "trail" through the wood for one thing. Catalpa is soft in the sense that it is not hard like maple or birch, but it's harder than white pine for example. Treeco is right of course, a tree grows out, like layers of an onion, not up. A nail or spike hammered into the side of a tree will not move up or down as the tree grows around it.

Here is another pic of the other side of the bullet showing that slight gouge in the side, which is filled with Catalpa wood fibers. My take is the slug hit a small branch or something, which gave it that gouge before it then penetrated the sapling only enough for it to stick there. Then the tree grew around it for 80 years. Only fly in that soup, is upon looking at it under a 22X lab scope at work, I can see no rifling as vman noted. The lead is a little pitted, perhaps from acids in the wood, and the slug itself is a bit flattened, but intact and with no apparent rifling. The slug was found vertically in the tree about 6 inches from the ground.

no rifling is the mystery... but then I am no expert, and don't know what rifling on a spent 22 slug really looks like. Maybe there is and I just don't know what to look for. Anybody pulled a 22 slug from a groundhog or squirrel and looked at it and thus knows what rifling looks like?

 

[NWCS]

the rifling marks on a bullet would resemble a barber pole.. spiral marks on it.
i have shot a 22 CB load into a sand pile and recovered the slug, they look rather cool.

attached is a picture comparing a standard 22LR to a 22CB load.. the CB makes minimal noise and is about the same sound as a C02 powered BB gun.

 

[Vman]

dedcow...yikes!!! stay away from those copper/lead composite rounds!!
maybe i am a lil too "anal" about that. i shoot smallbore competition and get pretty finicky about ammo that goes in my rifles.


woodshop...nice pic!! i see that ding! hmmmm, putting pieces together, another member mentioned the possibility of the bullet coming out of a smoothbore barrel such as a derringer since no rifling grooves are apparent. he may of hit that on the head!! by the time .22 rimfire was developed, all the rifles/handguns had rifling except some of the derringers which were nothing more than mini-zip-gun with drilled barrels for the most part. without rifling, the bullet would come out of the barrel tumbling, that would account for the ding on the side (point of impact on the bullet against the tree) with no deformation at the nose. than again, maybe just a ricochet as you said.
who knows?
sorry if i got too excited on this thread, as u can see, something like this lights a fire under me!!
Vman

winchester 52 E
winchester 52 D (2 of those)
winchester 52 C (custom/match)
anschutz 54 (custom/match)
anschutz 54 1807
and assorteed others

 

[tony marks]

well today i was taking dn an old tree in a yard. i got lucky enuff to find an old drill bit somebody left there yrs. ago. totally ruined a new 95 vp chain.
oh well just venting. these nails and other metal stuck in old yard trees are just gonna happen. if u get unlucky

 

[NWCS]

vman: the 22LR rounds i use are PMC zapper, one of the only loads that feeds properly in my old ruger Mk1. also works very nicely in my restored winchester pump carnival gun. whoever restored the winchester did it with no matching numbers.. so it does not have much if any collector value.