News – Idaho hunter finds remains of man missing for 53 years

A bow hunter looking for a shortcut on Sept. 17 stumbled upon the remains of a man missing for 53 years.

Raymond Jones, a 39-year-old from Salmon, had been missing since 1968. He was bow hunting for mountain goats in the east fork of Hayden Creek in Lemhi County when he was last seen on Sept. 7, 1968.

A lot of people don’t understand just how big and, in many places, remote it can be out here. There are more than a few planes that took off and never were seen again, cars that left the garage and disappeared, and whole lot of people that walked into the woods and no one ever saw again.

But…it’s the fact that things like that can happen out here that is part of the attraction. Sometimes, you want to disappear.

28 thoughts on “News – Idaho hunter finds remains of man missing for 53 years

  1. Yes. And living a short walk or travel to edge of earth wilderness areas is a golden asset. I liken that terrain and depth of remoteness to an ally in regard to personal survivability. That aura of dangerous bear country will keep most of the city hordes and dorks away, as well as providing you a Rambo playground if needed. Embrace danger country and become one with it, your inner animal will easily arise.

    • Pay no attention to the fact that Hale was about to re-open congressional interest into JFK’s assassination. Just a coincidence. nothing to see here.

      Just the 1960s version of Arkancide.

      • Yeah. The guy who ordered the ” DallasEvent” was in charge of about everything. Story for another time.

  2. You left out the punchline:
    Jones’ wife is still alive and his family members have been contacted. If he was still alive today, Jones would be 92 years old.

    And he would have gotten the Mother Of All Earfuls from his wife, who must now suffer in silence at not being able to give ol’ Ray the taking-to she’s be saving up for 53 years.

    The open question is, what’d he die of?
    E.g., he wasn’t found encased in bear scat, so that rules out one possibility right off.

    • Sylvan Hart (The Last of the Mountain Men) was asked once if he was afraid of anything in the wilderness. He replied: “A cold wind!”

    • I’d say the open question is, Did he get his Mountain Goat or did the Goat get him?
      As for he wasn’t found encased in bear scat, may be they don’t go on who they eat.

  3. Lived in Alaska for a number of years and someone would go out in the bush never seen again so often it was accepted risk of living in the Last Frontier .

  4. I like the idea of disappearing – but not that permanently! At least, not yet. I’ve sort of joked that if I’m diagnosed with a terminal disease, I’ll take a long walk in the woods. It’s easy to get lost, but harder to get found – especially after the wildlife has been at your body.

  5. The mountains I live near here in the desert Southwest claim lives every year. Things go from civil to wilderness in the space of a half mile. People think “We’re OK. We’re not far from help. Look; I can SEE a town from here.” Yeah, kid, YOU can see the TOWN. Trouble is, the town CAN’T see YOU! It happens every year. Some “young couple” goes for a “day hike” wearing nothing but shorts and a t-shirt, carrying nothing but a bottle of water and an energy bar… EVERY.YEAR.

    Favorite survival story; an experienced hiker walked into the mountains. He disappeared. Just under a year later, another experienced hiker walked into the mountains and got lost. He was missing for about three weeks before he was found. How did he survive? He stumbled on the campsite of the guy who disappeared the year before! The tent was still up, sleeping bag inside. There was even freeze-dried food in the tent! The best part; this second hiker was rescued A YEAR TO THE DAY after the first hiker went missing… And yes, a subsequent search turned up the body of that guy…

    Folks, don’t underestimate the desert…

  6. I would add Idaho & Wyoming to Montana as the last best place. And unfortunately it’s becoming harder and harder to simply disappear. But if they really want to find you, ask yourself why is it all these “illegals” can simply disappear, and they can’t find em for deportation for not showing up for their hearing?
    With the advent and continuing reliance on technology for absolutely everything, it’s becoming a little easier to “disappear” though. Simply ditch cable/satellite TV, ditch the phone, internet, ditch the car, pickup, ditch anything requiring any form of registration or record keeping, invest in an occupation that can survive on cash, trade-able, or bartered goods & services. In short, be a dropout with no ties to the technology driven world.
    The Constitution and Declaration were designed to allow us these freedoms, we have only lost them because we’ve allowed congress & the courts to distort the intent of the Constitution. They have done this for their own personal gain. Follow the money, the trail tells no lies.

  7. Another person that found out the hard way that the universe doesn’t recognize the right to life. As my dad was fond of saying: “When you leave the pavement, you become part of the food chain.”

  8. It’s very common in the western US for hunters to discover decades-old crashed airplanes, or to discover them after a fire burns off the ground cover…It is a big place.

    • Lots of missing persons are found in big droughts as well when the bodies of water near road ways dry up and the submerged cars are found. It doesn’t take very deep muddy water to make a submerged car completely disappear. This make a search pretty hard when a car goes missing on a trip through the country side.

    • As a private pilot, I’ve done a lot of flying over the Oregon Outback; Idaho and Nevada too. I’m always mindful of where would I set it down if I had to. There are plenty of spaces out here thirty miles from the nearest road–a road that MIGHT see two or three cars a day of traffic. That’s one reason I always fly as high as my bugsmasher can comfortably go–it’s more time between me and the ground to at least get close to one of those roads.

  9. Thousands of people disappear from cities in this country. In the wild and rural areas its not an uncommon occurrence. That’s part of the thing trying to make the knuckle draggers in the Party of Marx understand the need for non city dwellers to carry or own and poccess firearms. My neighbor has lost a couple of pet cats to coyotes. And they were in a fenced in backyard.
    Rabid critters are frequently encountered.
    But it’s isn’t amazing to me that people can and do go missing. In my county we have 6 open dissappearences that are up to a decade plus old. In my State which includes. The Upper Peninsula. There are dozens.
    Thankfully all the searches I worked resulted in positive out comes but one. That case is still open and is 15 years old. Preparing can reduce the numbers of people who never are found. Many people don’t know the basic rules of rescue. Or when to try a self rescue.
    A recent case in a county next to mine resulted in a murder investigation after a 61 year old woman went missing while out for a morning walk. She was found dead. Foul play has been suspected.

    • At least your area has a better chance of crimes being solved then where I grew up. I was raised on a fare in south east kansas between 3 small Mayberry like towns where nothing more serious than a car accident hardly ever happens, except when it does. 7 murders and 2 kidnappings occurred within 5 miles of home when i was a school kid in the 90’s. One was a 90+ year old WW1 vet that was a family friend and closest neighbor. He was murdered a quarter mile from our farm shot in the face point blank as he answered the door. Another was a secretary from the nearest’s towns school was raped and murdered – her body was dumped in a ditch about 3 miles a way. Another neighbor found 2 bodies in a abandoned truck in his barn. The truck wasn’t his and it’s license plate and vin numbers had been removed- the bodies were identified years later as missing persons from Oklahoma. Another was a somewhat famous case where a husband and wife were murdered and their young teen daughter and her visiting friend were taken and never found. Having a small town life is great but Barney Fife won’t even be able to solve your murder let alone show up in time for a rescue. The murder/rapist is believed to have been a local but the ww1 vet and the family are believed to have been killed by gang members to get made in the gang. The executed (executed in the barn apparently) bodies found in the barn were tied to gangs in Tulsa OK . Myself and some other locals believe that some of the gangs started raiding the country side for Initiation victims due to the remoteness and the likely hood of the crime being tied to them as being nonexistent, it was the same idea with the strangers that were found executed in the barn the locals didn’t have the resources to handle that level of crime investigation and no one was able to tie the John and Jane Does to actual missing people for years. I love the country side but you are on your own no matter if it is man or nature you face. I do find it interesting that neither my parent’s or siblings came to this understanding even when I tried to explain it to them. For years my mother was scandalized by the thought of locking the doors at night let alone carrying concealed. Some people will just say there is nothing to worry about no matter how ill advised.

      • I live in southwestern Michigan in what’s referred to as the 4 county area. We have had MS13 gang members arrested here. Most of the problems around here are drug related. The I-94 corridor that runs from Chicongo to Detoilet sees huge amounts of drugs being carried from both cities to smaller ones in between.
        But transients are suspected in several unsolved murders in my area. People who live on the road. Going from place to place seeing targets of opportunity to obtain needed cash. Many of these go unsolved because mostly these types live on the fringes of society so they have very few or no local contacts. Nothing that triggers a memory in a local resident.
        The best defense is for people to understand the world is a very dangerous place. A great lot can be laid at the feet of a single political party.
        So like American Express. If you have a gun. Never leave home without it.

  10. Here in the upstate of SC, we had numerous plane crashes. One was on SC Hwy 107 in Oconee County;

    A B-25 Army Air Corps plane crashed into a mountain top at night on March 10, 1943—21 miles north of Walhalla and just one mile south of the Fish Hatchery off highway 107. The crash killed five service members on their way from Meridian, Mississippi to Donaldson Army Air Base in Greenville. Jerry Dyar, Oconee Veterans Affairs Director, says a memorial marker with the names of the servicemen will be placed in an area known as “Burrell’s Place Pull-off” at 2 o’clock Friday afternoon, March 21. “We thought March 21, seventy-one (71) years to the day after the wreckage was found would be a good time to display and dedicate the site,” Dyar said. On March 21, 1943 a 15-year old boy, Seab Crane, was riding his horse along Moody Trail to visit his friends near the Fish Hatchery when his horse suddenly became “spooked” by an unknown foreign object on the riding trail. The object turned out to be one of the plane’s engines. And that’s what led to the discovery of the downed plane.[4]

  11. Many times the natural world gives up that which it secrets. Lake Superior is a place that doesn’t. Coldest lake in this part if the world. I’ve put my hands in that lake in August and got cramps from the cold. Many people lay in the Arms of the Lake Spirit which guards that lake. A guy I used to work with lost a son to that lake. He was kayaking and never came back. Found the boat. Superior still holds him. The indigenous people of the Great Lakes claim Superior is haunted by evil spirits. Many who have seen that lake when she’s in full fury agree. She’s cold and evil.

  12. A good reason to buy, and more importantly CARRY a rescue beacon. SPOTs are getting cheaper and better all the time, and there are other brands out there as well. The newest ones can be used for SATCOM text messaging, a weather forecast source and can be used as a backup GPS.

    They are now cheap enough that there is really no excuse not to have one.

  13. Maybe you folks who know about old plane wrecks can help me with a memory. Somewhere in the mid-60s Reader’s Digest had an article about a small plane that crashed in a wooded area. My memory want’s to say New York, but I wouldn’t swear to it. All survived the crash, none were badly hurt. But they all died of starvation. Why? Apparently they just sat there waiting to be rescued. Traffic on a nearby road was audible. They had the time & energy to make playing cards from the seat upholstery. But no one bothered to walk to the road or make a signal for help. I wish I could remember more about the story.
    That was my introduction to self-sufficiency.

  14. I remember that case with Claude Dallas. While the Leo’s were looking high and low for him in remote areas. In Idaho if memory serves. He was hiding out in Chicago.
    Sometimes it’s best to hide out where your just another one amoung many.

    • Actually I looked it up last night. He was found living in Bakersfield Commiefornia. Served 22 years. Then was released. Last known place of residence was South Carolina.

  15. On a similar note, I was driving down the road one day and saw the police sitting beside the husk of a van the had been pulled from a canal. I later found out that the van belonged to an 18 year old kid who just vanished 30 years prior. I just tried to imagine the frustration of the kids family, who for thirty years, had no idea where their child had disappeared to. It was kind of sad, but at least they finally got closure.

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