My friend and I were recently hunting for 3 known gold caches and were hunting along a tree line of huge old trees behind an old homestead circa 1890. The trees were probably 80 to 120 years old. Just at the base of an old western red cedar I got a huge signal from my Etrac which sent it into "Overload" mode. Usually very big iron or big iron close to the surface. There was a thick mat of humus from the leaves, needles and fine root structures which took a long time to cut through with the Lesche, about 4 or 5 inches down...Clink! Oh...I have a love/hate relationship with that sound...
. Turned out to be an old pickle jar I had broken but it was empty. Then another type of mason jar was found at a 90 degree angle to the pickle jar. This pint sized Drey Mason jar was intact and sealed, but nothing inside. While removing these another huge iron sound was detected and a rusted intact collar of an old dairy can was below the mason jars.... WHEEEEEE! I am thinking "C'mon mother-lode!" But alas it was not to be...only pieces remained below the collar. After digging down to about 2 feet, the pieces of metal diminished. Bummed out...but once this was found, we had a clue on where the others might be...
Checking below the tree line, I got a another huge signal that sent my Etrac into "Overload" mode. 1 to 2 inches under the soil a nice old horseshoe turned over easily. When I thought about it later, the pointed ends of the horseshoe seemed to be pointed at the treeline where 4 trees were circled with a middle area about 2 by 4 feet open between them. I was sort of headed back that way already and when I put my coil in the center area of those trees it overloaded again. I started digging, carefully this time, and about 6 inches down I hit metal. At first it seemed to be a tin box but as I cleared the dirt away it showed concentric circles and eventually the border which was perfectly circular. It lay flat in the hole about 12 inches in diameter. Depression era tin trashcan lid? I could not find anything like it on the web. I was amazed and anticipating something very good under it so I called my friend over. "Should I get the camera?" he asked. "Naw." Being disappointed before I just wanted to actually find something this time. Carefully putting the tip of the Lesche under the edge of the metal "lid" I turned it over...nothing visible but smooth, flat earth...almost as if it had been patted down and smoothed out.
Ugh...
Etrac coil back over the hole...dong! dong! Coin sized sound but I am in relic mode so probably iron, I think...sure enough a 3 inch square head nail... Rechecked the area, nothing more. Looking back I see that the site is directly in line with not only the tree line but the other cache site that was empty as well. Hmm...Looking to the other end of the tree line there was a large, very old Dutch Elm. Huge girth and maybe 200 feet or more of branch spread. Going over to it, my friend and I started to detect around the base the of the trunk. He soon gets a signal, I came over to check it out and got a mixed signal that matched the mason jar lid and, for the first time that day, a gold coin type of signal. We start to dig and lo and behold we immediately run into a HUGE root. 8 to 10 inches wide and round. Cleaning out all around it, other smaller roots but still of significant size. We quickly determine that the signal is pint mason jar sized and about 2 feet down and DIRECTLY UNDER THE HUGE ROOT and trending back under the tree itself. Apparently as the tree grew it pushed the cache down under its roots. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.....
So, stuck for now as we need to find a way to get at it without killing the tree.
But the story shows me that people do indeed leave things intact after finding caches...in this case, we believe the first cache was probably found by a daughter of the initial property owner who had told his 2 daughters and 1 son that he was going to hide a cache for each of them and leave them clues to find them. The one cache we know of that was found was $400 face value in gold pieces. My own personal theory is that once that cache was found, the other one was quickly found after that since it was not far away and in the same tree line. However, the 3rd cache could not be recovered as it was deeper having been pushed down by the tree growth. The cache finder put everything back as it was, maybe so as to not upset the father if he came to look for them and see if anyone had found them?
Anyways, that is the sad story of my recent cache hunt...any ideas on how to get that cache out without killing the tree?
I'd dig it out entirely and then search again but it may be that it was already emptied by whomever placed it there--that is, if it ever did have anything inside it to start with. 
