i was new to this hobby once too/ just reminiscing

[GRAY GHOST]

hello all, i can remember some of the major mistakes [haha] that i made in this hobby early on, so here goes: i guess i was about 14 or so, had my first radio shack detector and green as grass. barely controlling myself, i snuck out to my uncle joes 16 acres in pa. and proceeded to dig up the whole yard! with a stolen butterknife! oh, that hurt! i didnt have the sense to go to the shed and get a shovel. dug every beep, and soon had a stack of junk. the treasure had to be here somewhere! well, it wasnt, and a couple of years later bought an old whites for 5 dollars, quite a sum back then, boy was i excited, what a step up! i put the batteries in... and... nothing. all the inside wiring and controls were gone! man, i was dejected then. it seemed i was the only one in the whole world who metal detected. id never even seen anybody else in the area detecting. by chance came across an old coinmaster 3, for 15 bucks. i tried it out this time though, and it was on! youve never seen such an excited 17 year old running across the fields and creeks, only to be tired when i got there. if wealth was measured in poptops...had the bad habit of cramming all my finds in my pants pockets, until holes appeared. then the dumb thing - i kept wearing them, and consequently losing all the good stuff back to the ground! what a hardhead! and lost my new batteries too. so here i am, in the middle of my first good [and actually planned] hunt, the machine dies and no batteries. it was a long walk. its not been forgotten since either. or the time me and cousin joel were shot by rocksalt by farmer evans for trespassing and tearing up his cornfield! OUCH! that did hurt. all that just because i wanted to detect his cornfield. without his permission, of course. these are still to this day oh-so-hard learned lessons, that i chuckle at today. what were yours? hh,

 

[Elton]

Like you when I started not many people detecting except maybe the beaches.. Just about everywhere I went people tried to give me money for food.
One lady sent her husband and he asked if I would like to join them for dinner... HAHAHAHHAHA funny !! I was known as the guy who looked for food money.

The kids thought it was great..In that time in our world kids were allowed to speak to you and ask questions.. " I am looking for spending money for hamburgers"
I told one young man..he spread that all over town.....I had one lady ask if I had eaten today..I assured her in fact that I had. I then explained about the machine and told her what it cost etc etc..well pretty soon the food offers stopped.Later on She laughed about approaching me that day, and said she told everyone in church I wasn't a bum, and in fact lived on Park Ave......in the town where this took place. people I knew laughed for months about my being the town bum looking for food money....Soon after that people began asking me where could they get one of those "Geiger counters"........next thing I knew a lot of people were using them and still are.... memories aren't they wonderful ??

 

[tabdog]

The first time I went metal detecting was with a group and just two detectors. We were hunting at Pea Ridge Battle Field before it was against the law to detect there. We found a couple of artifacts and ran into a Modle-T Ford that had just kind of sunk into the ground. We spent the rest of the day trying to dig up rusted out car parts. Left with nothing much to show. I personally had nothing.

When I was older I got an old Technatics. One of the early VLF motion discreminators. I would desc out stuff and quit if it got too hard to find things. I got into a habbit of quitting and going to an easier place. Even though I made some good finds, I thought that finding the good stuff was beyond of my ability to detect.

Now that I have started back in this hobby, I have learned not to give up. As a matter of fact, when I get wooped, it just makes me more determined to find a way to succeed.

I have learned confidence, which just may be one of the most important things I can take into the field with me.

HH,

 

[mattockman]

I wish I had gotten into this when you older guys where starting out. I have always been a digger. I lived in Guam and use to hear storys of buried treasure and when you got close to it you will find peices of wood....in intervales....so I use to dig here, there and every where and when I found wood I kept digging......I moved to NH and use to dig under the porch alot......still trying to find treasure. Never found it. I never even heard of metaldetectors then....I was 8 or 9 and was watching a housed moved and a new cellar hole being dug and later that week kids were talking about old bottles and Indian head pennys being found at the site. I ran up to the site and was finding them too. I was very excited then. I have never seen a Indian head penny before. That is all I remenber cause then teenage came into play. Girls were the big ta do.....and by 35 I got back introduced to treasure. A longtime bud of mine was doing it and I jumped to radio shack and bought a $200 rig. It was great....it was what it said it was and pinpointed dead on. Funny thing was I never found any old stuff.He had a whites IDX and he found old coins. So One year I decided to invest in a good detector with the help of my incometax return and after alot of reading on line I came to my conclusion the Minelab XS was the detector to buy. When I first got it I was in ahwwwwwww. It drove me nuts with all the wacky flutey sounds it made. It took me a few months to get a rane on the big dog but I figured it out and have since enjoyed the old coins ever since. The problem with the radio shack was masking. I was in the right place but with the wrong detector. I can hunt anywhere now and feel very confident if it is there and I am over it I will dig it.....to an extent.....cause there are all sorts of varialbles to any site......But what is reilly wierd is I am thinking of trying a new detector and have been reading alot again and can't find any good reason to try a new one.......I guess I am just gonna be a Minelab freak forever.........