Yes friends, I have a story...
I went to West Virginia to check out a site that a friend had suggested. She had "eyeballed" two coins there in the years playing in the woods around her house. One was an 1827 Quarter and the other a Spanish silver Coin from the 18th century. I had just imagined the place crawling with coins of that caliber under each swing of a detector. Although the week was filled with a other great finds like a handful of wheat and Indian cents, a silver ring, a fantastic gold ring (more on that later), and even a few Civil War artifacts, the old silver in those woods eluded us. Two metal detectors in that expanse of woods didn't amount to a drop in the bucket after hours of tireless hunting.
Anyhow, so back to yellow jackets. The first time I dug into a yellow jackets nest, I was in the middle of the woods on a mountain top in Virginia and my diggin buddy had just unearthed a Civil War ram rod. My blood was pumping so hard from his find, that it took a second to realize what the swarm of bees expanding upward towards my face was. In that split second, I was stung...and stung again...and again. 20 stings total on my legs and arms, including two on my face. Those @#$% things got up my pants legs, and I had to endure an excruciating week afterward.
On this past trip, I encountered them again, this time at an old schoolhouse site. I had placed my Fisher 1266-X on the ground, and pierced the ground with my shovel when I saw the swarm balloon upward. I immediately knew what was up and yelled to my diggin buddy and we both got the heck out of there (I was not about to bend toward the swarm to rescue my metal detector!). I managed to escape with one sting and my buddy and I regrouped about 30 yards away. The sky was threatening rain, and I realized only then that my shovel was stuck upright in the earth and my detector was laying there on the ground, turned on, and crawling with bees. At that point I decided in a brave act to grab a 20 foot long tree limb and "hook" the metal detector to lift it out of there. What a crazy sight to see. I have decided that of all the flora and fauna I have come into contact with while diggin' (angry bulls, snakes, bears, poison ivy, and ants), yellow jackets suck the most.
BuckleBoy
I went to West Virginia to check out a site that a friend had suggested. She had "eyeballed" two coins there in the years playing in the woods around her house. One was an 1827 Quarter and the other a Spanish silver Coin from the 18th century. I had just imagined the place crawling with coins of that caliber under each swing of a detector. Although the week was filled with a other great finds like a handful of wheat and Indian cents, a silver ring, a fantastic gold ring (more on that later), and even a few Civil War artifacts, the old silver in those woods eluded us. Two metal detectors in that expanse of woods didn't amount to a drop in the bucket after hours of tireless hunting.
Anyhow, so back to yellow jackets. The first time I dug into a yellow jackets nest, I was in the middle of the woods on a mountain top in Virginia and my diggin buddy had just unearthed a Civil War ram rod. My blood was pumping so hard from his find, that it took a second to realize what the swarm of bees expanding upward towards my face was. In that split second, I was stung...and stung again...and again. 20 stings total on my legs and arms, including two on my face. Those @#$% things got up my pants legs, and I had to endure an excruciating week afterward.
On this past trip, I encountered them again, this time at an old schoolhouse site. I had placed my Fisher 1266-X on the ground, and pierced the ground with my shovel when I saw the swarm balloon upward. I immediately knew what was up and yelled to my diggin buddy and we both got the heck out of there (I was not about to bend toward the swarm to rescue my metal detector!). I managed to escape with one sting and my buddy and I regrouped about 30 yards away. The sky was threatening rain, and I realized only then that my shovel was stuck upright in the earth and my detector was laying there on the ground, turned on, and crawling with bees. At that point I decided in a brave act to grab a 20 foot long tree limb and "hook" the metal detector to lift it out of there. What a crazy sight to see. I have decided that of all the flora and fauna I have come into contact with while diggin' (angry bulls, snakes, bears, poison ivy, and ants), yellow jackets suck the most.
BuckleBoy
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I sympathize with you, dont know if the stings or the drugs they gave me were worse, was in a fog for a few days. Yeah.........yellowjackets suck!
Yeah, not funny, I know. My other half was out trimming bushes around the base of a pine tree one day with a chain saw. Evidently he woke up a nest of them. By the time he realized what was happening, they were all over him. Meanwhile, I'm in the house and hear, "OPEN THE DOOR! OPEN THE DOOR!" Here he comes tearing across the yard, headed for the "open door." I managed to see the (running) chain saw go flying in one direction while he's running 90 miles an hour in the other direction. About the time he got to the door, his shirt went flying. Those things were stinging him through his jeans, and they were "stuck on" him. Mean little devils. We killed about a dozen before we got his clothes off. By now, though, they're flying around the kitchen, madder'n hell! My poor hubby was puffed up and bruised (from my swings and licks trying to kill the little buggers) for a couple of days. The chain saw finally ran out of gas and quit.
Them rascals HURT!!
