Hunters scouting for ducks find human remains in North Carolina

Two duck hunters scouting a wooded area in rural North Carolina ended up finding human remains, authorities said Tuesday, in the latest grim discovery made by hunters in recent months.

The human remains were discovered early Monday evening by two local hunters in the woods near a highway close to Taylorsville, which is about 60 miles north of Charlotte, the Alexander County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement.

The area was secured and processed by deputies and agents from the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation, officials said. The identity of the remains was not immediately known, and the death is under investigation.

Police did not say how long the remains were estimated to have been there, and no other details about the case were released.

Hunters have previously stumbled upon human remains at various locations across the U.S. In September, authorities confirmed that skeletal remains found by a deer hunter in Wisconsin were those of a preschool-age boy named Elijah Vue who had been missing since February.

Also last year, authorities in South Carolina said a hunter found a human skull that experts said had likely been there for more than a decade. Just weeks before that, state troopers launched an investigation after a hunter found a human skull in a wooded area in Pennsylvania.

In 2023, two hunters found skeletal remains in a wooded area near Perryville, Maryland, and a deer hunter in Tennessee discovered a human skull.

The year before that, a waterfowl hunter found skeletal human remains while hunting in Lake County, Indiana.