Deserted plane crash now among 'peculiar' things discovered by Utah hunter


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PARK VALLEY, Box Elder County — The great outdoors holds a lot of undiscovered country and surprises, and a Utah hunter said he's never seen anything like what he came across Wednesday along a remote stretch of land southwest of Park Valley.

"There's nobody out there — it's sagebrush," said Tom Austin, who runs a predator-only guide service called, Predator Strikeforce.

"We saw something shiny."

Austin and others in his group moved closer, and couldn't believe what was in front of them.

"It was an airplane on its lid," he said. "I was dreading going over there and finding a pilot still trapped inside."

To Austin's surprise, however, he could see nobody in or around the small plane.

"There was one vehicle track coming in and [it] circled around the plane, a couple foot tracks coming out to the vehicle, and … gone," he described.

Finding nobody around the overturned Cessna 205, Austin said he and his group backed away in hopes of leaving the site as undisturbed as possible, and then called the Box Elder County Sheriff's Office.

According to a statement issued by Box Elder County Sheriff's Chief Deputy Dale Ward, a detective subsequently contacted the Federal Aviation Administration.

An investigator from the FAA told the detective the crash had been reported Tuesday, and that the two men onboard the plane were unharmed and were safely at home, the statement said.

The statement offered no details of the cause of the crash, and efforts to reach the FAA for additional information Wednesday afternoon did not result in an immediate response.

A relative of the owner of the plane declined comment when contacted Wednesday evening.

Austin said it wasn't the first plane crash he had encountered in the wilds, but was different because the previous one was marked off by tape and appeared to have been investigated.

It also hasn't been the only unusual find on the hunt for Austin, who said he had also come across burned-out cars, abandoned suitcases containing children's clothing, and people in need of rescue.

"I found a 15-year-old girl that had been digging herself out of a snowbank with her bare hands for about four hours," he said.

Austin said he was relieved to learn that the people in this accident were not injured.

"Last thing I want is for somebody to be injured, you know — especially out there," Austin said. "Scary place."

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