Arrowhead and other historic/pre-historic collections

Here's my dad's. Haven't found one in many years. I think that big one is 6 or 7 lbs. Would have to weigh it again. They found a 10 pounder up the road some years back.

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The three quarter in the middle is stunning!!!!!
 
It's really polished. We see some black stone stuff but definitely in the minority. I think Ohio has some famous black materials? Indians could've traded or travelled to get it. Or just some oddball rocks that came in the glacier.
 
This 1 was pretty lucky last year. Had just pulled into a field and was unfolding the planter. Watching it unfold I could see a little white rock under the row unit.

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Its maybe not that interesting to most... but I found an elk shed here in central Minnesota in a dried up slough bottom. There hasnt been elk here since the late 1800's. Its not a big one and ts in rough shape... but a interesting chunk of history I guess.
I found half of an old elk antler in SE MN in a trout stream after a huge flood scoured out some new areas. The antler was black just like the color of the mud it was in for 150+ years. It was sitting in a logjam that lodged on the edge of the stream. My friend also found part of a giant elk antler in SE MN in the middle of a large trout stream. They are out there, but you just have to get really lucky to find one.
 
Found these, and quite a few less-intact pieces, yrs ago, when we plowed 12 acres here around the house & barns to plant hemp.
 

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Yes you do here of them! That’s very interesting! I imagine this big dead was black as well when he found it, 40 years on the garage took care of that!
 
When I was 15, I fenced off a little 3/4 acre open plot on the back side of the home farm, in Lee Co., AL, and plowed it with a 2-bottom plow...saw the bottom half of this one turn up. We disced and planted that food plot every year, and almost always found more points/pieces, and pottery shards. 25 yrs later, I disced it, midsummer, so the kids could hunt arrowheads...son found the tip...I knew what it was the moment I saw it.
 

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Points in bottom half of this case came off the AL farm I grew up on. Most were amorphous quartz...Ive done a bit of flintknapping, and was amazed that they were able to make ANYTHING out of that crappy stuff. We know they traded for points or more workable materials that were not native...like the chart point below my son's photo, holding it - first point he ever found, lying in the middle of a roadway on Dad's farm.
Points in the top 1/3 of the case are some of the better ones I've found on this KY farm, most within a couple hundred yards of the house.
 

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Looks like maybe a Paleo point in that frame? That's a good collection. Cool how you found broken pieces from the same point years apart. One or 2 more and the puzzle is put back together! The closest I can come to that is that I found the same arrowhead twice. My kid put it in his pocket and then lost it somehow. I found it elsewhere in the field a few weeks later.
 
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Some of the stuff I have found while farming over the years, good points/broken points/scrapers/Celt/hatchet head.
Almost all were found while sitting on a tractor cultivating or side dressing anhydrous…I would be watching just one row back and forth and spot them , and I picked up quite a few horse shoes.

Like a dumbass I sold a few of the nice ones I found like turkey tails. Guy that worked for us found a big hatchet head on our place then gave it to his son in law.

They find a bunch of artifacts in southern Ohio, must have had way more Indians there than we did.

We had a huge Indian battle here around 1800 in the southern part of our county at Ft Recovery, over a third of the continental army was killed.
Chief Little Turtle Blue Jacket and some others really put it on them in the first battle. A couple years later General Anthony Wayne paid them back at the same fort and pushed them across the state half way through Indiana.

On the elk thing;
Local farmer about five miles south of us found a complete bull elk skeleton while tiling his field at a place that used to be called cranberry prairie. A 1000 acre spot that the Indians used to burn annually to keep the forest open for hunting.
The bull elk skull is in our county museum.
 
An older fellow who hunted them hard once told me, "Save every piece you find, even the broken ones... you never know when you might find the other half. That certainly was true for that big red point we found in the 'Indian Plot'.
The AL farm sold for development back in 2005, so I won't be finding any more points there. Don't think that they've yet developed the area where the 'Indian Plot' was, but...

I've found a couple of pieces on gravel bars in the creek here, but most of my finds here have been when we've plowed to plant something - or sometimes they just work their way to the surface and I just find them lying there ...like these two I found in the middle of the lane coming up to the barn...found this point and flattened trichobezoar(hairball/madstone) in virtually the same spot at two different times. I tell folks the arrowhead was left behind in a bison the Indians killed and butchered on this spot, and the bezoar was in its rumen (hairballs in the rumen often get a hard mineral coating, like this one, while those that build up in the abomasum don't. ),
 

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A neighbor hunts a lot of the same creeks and lakeshore that I do. Every few years we round up our broken pieces, dump them out on tables and try to match up pieces between the two collections. I don't think we have matched up any between the two, we have matched up one or two from his collection. It is a fun afternoon trying to match pieces and busting each others balls. My pile of broken and misc (below) is puny next to this.20220426_105153.jpg
 
Mozark that is unbelievable. Looks like a lot of trophies in your broken/misc pile! Some true heartbreakers too.

You guys have any tips on creek hunting? Our creek is stone bottom. We just can't seem to narrow down an appropriate spot to search. If artifacts are in the fields on the farm, wouldn't you assume there would have to be some in the creek as well?
 
Mozark that is unbelievable. Looks like a lot of trophies in your broken/misc pile! Some true heartbreakers too.

You guys have any tips on creek hunting? Our creek is stone bottom. We just can't seem to narrow down an appropriate spot to search. If artifacts are in the fields on the farm, wouldn't you assume there would have to be some in the creek as well?
If I get a chance sunday morning, I will head to the creek and point out a few places.
 
Mozark that is unbelievable. Looks like a lot of trophies in your broken/misc pile! Some true heartbreakers too.

You guys have any tips on creek hunting? Our creek is stone bottom. We just can't seem to narrow down an appropriate spot to search. If artifacts are in the fields on the farm, wouldn't you assume there would have to be some in the creek as well?
It seems like some of our best gravel beds are right after sharp turns in the creek. That isn't always the case though.

I would focus more on the sizes and weights of rocks in gravel beds for artifacts you are looking for. The water naturally sorts and stratifies rocks based off of their size and mass. It's really just a numbers game and getting lucky.

If the creek is a really fast moving one, you are probably going to have more broken points. I think small washout creeks at the base of ravines are probably a little bit more likely to hold intact points and are also less likely to have been searched by other people. Yes even on private property where you don't think you have people trespassing very often, you may get somebody who's getting in there first. We have way more trespassing pressure from arrowhead hunters then from people trespassing for morels or actually hunting.

We head out and search after every rainstorm that rains more than half an inch or so, But that will depend on the size of the creek. The deck essentially gets reshuffled each time, But I would definitely check after really big rain storms.
 
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Bethany scores again. Mozark and Hoyt, need your identification skills. I took the boys on an arrowhead hunt today at our best farm. We hunted hard for 90 minutes then the tornado watch chased us home. No artifacts but 20 pieces of flint chips and debitage. Fast forward a few hours and the rain split and went around us. So I needed to head in a different direction and check on the dryness of a field. Jumped out of the truck and she found it within forty feet.

This point is probably re-sharpened? It is left hand beveled on both sides. Appears to have an intentional flute on 1 side. Serrated edges, nice and sharp. Any ideas on type? Mozark, those frames are so nice. Your efforts have paid off.

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Wow, you guys have some amazing stuff. I'd love to find just one.
 
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