Club Fall Hunt fun

[Viddy]

Today was my local metal detecting club's 'Fall Hunt'. We all met for breakfast while the 'hunt team' seeded the field at a local park where the Spring and Fall hunts are every year. Turned out to be 16 of us today, while we were expecting between 20-24 show up. Oh well... 'more for me!', I thought. After breakfast we all drove down to the park for the hunt.

We got down to the park and found out that the park puts away the picnic tables and benches for the winter since a few have seemed to walk-off over the years. Really?!?! That left one portable table, and everyone sitting on the ground. LOL. No one really cared though... minor detail. The field was seeded with about 1100 coins and tokens. Everything is only about 1-2 inches down. It was an interesting breakdown for this hunt. There was:

• clad quarters
• half dollars
• Ike dollars
• marked quarters to turn in for silver dimes (barbers/mercs)
• one 'football-shaped' token for each person for a silver half-dollar prize
• 4 small containers. 3 have a loser tag, but one was a winner tag. You trade the winning box in for a coin box filled with coins. They are coins that the previous winner (Spring Hunt 2013) put in it for the next person. It carries over every hunt like that. I guess you hope the previous winner before you is generous! I had a losing box. bah!
• 3-digit numbered tokens and you could find as many as you want They raffled off coins and prize packages if they called the number. So not all were winners, but the more you find the better your chances of winning.

Garrett donates a good prize package for the hunt, and it must pay off for good advertisement, as many members became Garrett fans and there are a lot of AT Pro and ACE swingers. I used my Etrac. as usual. DiggerBee, my GF, used my AT Pro (or as she calls it 'her AT Pro). We also has a member who's detector died before the hunt or something happened to it. I let him use my V3i I brought along as my back-up unit. It was quite an upgrade from his ACE250. He was all excited about the wireless headphones, VDI, and especially the icons on the color screen. I had to give him a quick lesson on pinpointing it. On a hunt like this, if it beeps-you dig!

They blew the horn and the hunt began!

After the finish horn sounded, probably about an hour and 15 minutes, I came away with a good amount of halves, marked quarters, and prize tokens. I only got 3 Ikes dollars though! Those usually hit hard on the Etrac. maybe I just didn't go over them? I won some nice coins on the token raffle, but was hoping to win the new Garrett Pro Pointer that a member and friend, who is a dealer, as well as member of T-Net, Saltwater_Max, donated!! It a good twist-of-fate, there were 2 members that do not own pinpointers, who are starting out detecting, and one of them won the Pro Pointer! It couldn't have worked out better. I also found a non-seeded quarter someone lost and a spark plug at about 4 inches. The spark plug got a lot of laughs. One member also dug up a 1961 silver dime at about 6 inches that was not 'planted'. LOL.

After we were all done and gave our coind totals to the club President, we found out that there were still 20 Ikes not found in the field! Many members left, but a few of us went back out there for clean-up!

I know some people hate 'seeded hunts' and hate the finds from them, but it is more about the fun you have with a group of people who share the same hobby, and seeing them as excited about their finds as you are. It's about learning something new, 'speed hunting' where you put your foot on one target and find a second before you bend down and dig both, as well as helping out some people newer to the hobby. After seeing a new member of the club with a brand new Bounty Hunter ask someone 'how he had no idea how he was going to dig in the packed field dirt with a composite digger he got for free when he bought his detector?', I gave him a Gator digger and side-pouch (he was going to put the finds in his pockets). Both of those items have been sitting in the bottom of my gear back for years. They were from package deals that I never was going to use. I told him to 'Keep them! Just save some coins for me!' Good times!

I included some pictures from the hunt, including my coins after I cleaned them up!

 

[housemom6]

I haven't been able to do much detecting since my brother gave me his machine. I had 2 knee replacement surgery 4 months apart but a seeded hunt looks like fun. I think we have a club in Louisville. I need to check it out. Thanks for the pics

 

[stillrollin300]

That sounds like a great day in my book. Nothing beats spending time out with others enjoying our hobby.