Alaska Treasurer Seekers “05 Spring Hunt”
Considering it was 29 degrees above “0” and it was suppose to snow, the weatherperson had it all wrong, it was somewhat sunny and we only had about 3 inches of snow to hunt in. We had 15 adults and 2 youth enter the hunt, and 8 others showed up to watch or just enjoy hot coffee or hot chocolate, along with an assortment of other foods. We had a number of folks just stop by to ask what we were doing and wanted to know about the club and metal detectors.
This year Dennis Lundine planted the tokens and they were not your average round brass token as we had used in previous hunts. This year the tokens were from the “2005 Wild Turkey Federation Dinner.” A test token was placed on a stick pedestal next to the refreshment stand so folks could see what they were looking for and test or tune their detectors. Before the hunt, Dennis explained the rules of the hunt, “pickup and bring back everything in the hunt area”.
We had a couple of members rejoin the club during the hunt, even had a couple who just had moved here from Valdez. He said that he seen the flyer and decided to get back into metal detecting after a 20 year hiatus. He said that he had to blow the dust off of his old Garrett Ground Hog Metal Detector; he said that he couldn’t find any of his other loops except for a small 3 inch Ground Hog Loop. Now laugh if you want, but there is truth to an area is never hunted out. We were standing just inside of the hunt area boundary, when John got a loud buzzing sound. He started digging in the snow, and couldn’t find the coin or the leg band. When he went back over the area, he got the hit again. I told John that we didn’t bury any coins below the frost line this year, but that he might have hit a coin from last year. Well, John started scraping away at the frozen ground and to both our astonishment he found a silver ring with a wrap of jade around the center.
As for other members, it was fund and a great club outing.
What did you need for this hunt, warm shoes, some gloves and any metal detector that worked. One of our new participants, Lisa Wagner, found 3 tokens. She was using a Garrett 150, just like the one the club bought for the main prize. I got a chance to sling it for a couple of minutes, and was quite surprised at its performance. It’s got a number of whistles and bells that equal some of the more expense machines that I have. It is light and has an easy swing. After the hunt was officially over I had a chance to test it on the test token. I was able to pickup a heavy tone sound at 8 inches, equal to my Fisher CZ 5 and my White’s MXT. Guess what I’m buying next for a coin machine (package deal is $179 for the detector, headset and carrying case).
Everyone had fun as is evident from the smile on Christopher’s face- he found 4 tokens and a pile of change.
This year we did something different when we awarded the prizes. If you had a token, you came and stuck your arm into a large black bag and pulled out a sealed lunch bag, with the instructions not to open the bag until all the bags were pulled out. We also had a large jar full of candy with a one dollar bill taped to the inside of it and a number of coins sprinkled throughout the candy. Tickets were sold for the jar of candy, with a little twist, the first ticket pulled got the jar of candy, after which, we’d pull for tickets for the remaining sealed bags if not all the tokens were found. Everyone bought extra tickets.
Everyone was instructed to open their bags; we had several donated prizes from individuals, including a White’s Bulleyes Pin Pointer donated by Alaska Mining and Diving, won by Bonnie Tisler.
Everyone started looking around for who had won the New Garrett Ace 150. What I didn’t tell folks was that the that the person who won the Garrett Baseball Cap also won the Garrett Detector. Jacob Miller was trying to trade his hat off to his mom for her prize, telling her, “He wasn’t a hat person”. When I asked who had the Garrett Hat? His mom said he didn’t want it. I asked him if it fit, he tried it on and then I said that the hat went with his New Garrett Ace 150. A pic-ture is worth a thousand words….
It was definitely a great feed- Hot Dogs, Hot Chocolate, Hot Coffee, assorted salads and cakes. A thank you goes out to Leo for barbequing the hot dogs. Hope to see you all at the next scavenger hunt in May. After that, the next big outing will be the Gold Show at Crow Creek June 18th and 19th, 2005.