I ran into a few guys when I was detecting a south west florida beach... my buddy and I had gotten then very early before anyone and hit the dry sand and started working the water. We saw the first guy water hunting clearly a local and we were sure to keep our distance out of respect and headed the other direction. Eventually when we were working back towards him and him to us we crossed paths nodded and started chatting. He was a super nice guy, and we exchanged stories about finds for the day. He pulled out a very nice gold band he had just found and we congratulated him on his find. I was laughing because he found it about 10' outside the area I was working... an area I set for myself to give him his space.
Then we ran into an older couple who have been detecting for about 30 years. Husband and wife team, some real pros who travel the world to hunt. These two will chat your ear off and everything they say is a gold nugget of wisdom. If you are FL hunter you probably know who they are. Eventually I insisted that while I will gladly listen to their stories as long as they will tell them, we should break it up so they could enjoy their hunt together and I thanked them deeply for the great conversation and metal detecting advice. I learned more in 15 minutes from these two than I had learned from many of the books I'd read. If there is a list of ambassadors to the hobby of detecting this couple is on that list.
I figure the people who are angry just aren't very good at detecting. Perhaps they spent $2000 on a machine and equipment they don't know how to use effectively.
If they were successful at hunting they would have no reason to be angry.
I ran into a guy like end of your quote - bout 10 yrs ago - I was winter hunting at a CT. saltwater bch
I got in before low tide and saw a guy fiddling with his Excal bout 100 yrds to my right
I jumped in and ended up in a small winter washout - I found a 1929 class ring within a few minutes - I looked it over and was excited I got gold early-
guy down the beach sees me examining it and starts heading my way - bout 6 feet away I get a small gold coin ring - another oldie
I see him getting closer and slip It in my pouch . I don't get far and he is in my back pocket - and then holds his machine out to me
and says "I cant get this to work properly" - no Hi or hello - mean while I have to stop cause he is driving my PI crazy - I told him nicely - that his was driving mine nuts - he didn't care and he pretty much demanded I help him - I finally told him
"That's a Minelab ..I use a Whites...I cant help you" - He kept holding it out to me saying "well I see your finding stuff..so you must be good at this"
I said, "I been doing this for quite some time and I have lot of friends that have that machine but Ive never used one myself and its not the same as what I have" He pouted and started to work away from me ... I finally can hear my machine again - 6 feet away from the last one ...another class ring - think it was from the 60s
I cant believe the spot Im in ...slip it in my pouch and turn and he is in my back pocket again and *****ing to me that he cant get it to work - I told him "maybe you need to go to the guy you bought it from and have him teach you how to use it." He again lifts it towards me and tells me to give it a try
meanwhile I getting tons of feed back from mine arguing with his machine
I told him I was not going to do that -" its a new machine - and Im not gonna risk breaking it ". So he drops his coil right next to me and starts swinging - Im
like wtf ..and tell him "your raising hell with my machine ...you cant be that close to me." He shrugged and continued to work right around me - I had to move away ...I found some older coins here and there away from him - looked back hoping he would leave that spot ..tide was already coming in and I would not be able to get in there soon ...1/2 hr later he gives up, I raced over ...I got a 750 gold religious medal but tide pushed me out - who knows what else was in there - went back next day but over night it had filled in ---I'll help any one when I can - I helped 3 different new dry sand hunters this year that had probs - but they had simple low level land machines but this guy was kind of a jerk - and even though I was having a good day - he kinda of ruined it (not that Im greedy but I ended up actually hunting like 1 1/2 hrs when I should have been able to hunt for 3 hrs and Im giving the short version of the day- never remember running into him again - so maybe he gave it up
