EXPLOSIVE find by my 11 year old and a date with a dead President! (PICS)

pitdiggers

Full Member
Feb 16, 2009
178
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Northern Virginia
Detector(s) used
Whites MXT, Shadow X5, Tesoro Cibola, Minelab XTerra
Primary Interest:
All Treasure Hunting
Just got out to a new spot that we have wanted to hunt for many years. It was one awesome day. As we left the car and headed down to a creek bottom we started to find shrapnel and sabot lead but that soon stopped. So we walked upstream and the creek bent around a small hill. My son went to the top of the hill and immediately started to pull different types of bullets and indian head pennies.

At the bottom of the hill my other son and I started finding horseshoes everywhere and the occasional piece of shrapnel. As soon as we started up the hill the signals started to ring out everywhere. All of a sudden as we reached the top of the hill my 11 year old son was bent over digging a huge signal. 8 inches down lay a perfectly intact Parrot shell! Watching him do the dance was awesome.

I did not really think it could get any better but a few minutes after all the excitement died down I popped a coin/token. Major General Zachary Taylor 1848 was staring back at me from the ground. Going to be hard to top this day. Having a hard time finding anything out about this find so a little help would be appreciated!
 

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Great day! :thumbsup: I bet the little box made your heart skip a beat!
 

Alsome hunt I would be getting back to that place soon......Matt
 

pitdiggers said:
Just got out to a new spot that we have wanted to hunt for many years. It was one awesome day. As we left the car and headed down to a creek bottom we started to find shrapnel and sabot lead but that soon stopped. So we walked upstream and the creek bent around a small hill. My son went to the top of the hill and immediately started to pull different types of bullets and indian head pennies.

At the bottom of the hill my other son and I started finding horseshoes everywhere and the occasional piece of shrapnel. As soon as we started up the hill the signals started to ring out everywhere. All of a sudden as we reached the top of the hill my 11 year old son was bent over digging a huge signal. 8 inches down lay a perfectly intact Parrot shell! Watching him the the dance was awesome.

I did not really think it could get any better but a few minutes after all the excitement died down I popped a coin/token. Major General Zachary Taylor 1848 was staring back at me from the ground. Going to be hard to top this day. Having a hard time finding anything out about this find so a little help would be appreciated!
I tried to post this when this first popped up but for whatever reason it didn't go up.
I dont want to read about this in the news . GET THAT OUT OF THE HOUSE! People ( in the know ) have gotten killed handling those. I especially wouldn't let the kids handle that. I hope I'm wrong but that looks like a child's hands on that. I'm kind of surprised no one else has commented on this yet.
 

I have to agree, as these things re-acclimatize to our atmosphere and re-exposure to oxygen, they can explode. If that happens, and you or your children are in the area, you OR YOUR CHILDREN could be killed. Please, for the safety of yourself, and your family, CALL A PROFESSIONAL to diffuse that thing. It's a beautiful find, but it could turn out to be the worst dig of your life, please don't let that happen.
 

gold fish said:
I have to agree, as these things re-acclimatize to our atmosphere and re-exposure to oxygen, they can explode. If that happens, and you or your children are in the area, you OR YOUR CHILDREN could be killed. Please, for the safety of yourself, and your family, CALL A PROFESSIONAL to diffuse that thing. It's a beautiful find, but it could turn out to be the worst dig of your life, please don't let that happen.

I know the PitDiggers well.. the shell IS NOT in his house.. and he has had many shells defused and always by professionals, same thing he will do with this one. I understand the concern since lots of people are very reckless with ordnance but he is not one of them... if he was... I would not ride around in hos SUV!! ;-)

MonkeyBoy
 

Thanks for your comments folks and concerns. When I first started in this hobby(many years ago) I was amazed at some peoples collections of LIVE shells in their home.(Nice dry and warm homes). That is not for me! Lucky for me I live near a respected civil war historian who happens to render these projectiles inert. Unfortunately the hobby has had some terrible accidents of which all can be attributed to careless handling of these objects.

FYI once my son realized that this item was larger than a horseshoe he called me over and I took over from there.

Safety first...collectibles second. Happy hunting!
 

gold fish said:
I have to agree, as these things re-acclimatize to our atmosphere and re-exposure to oxygen, they can explode. If that happens, and you or your children are in the area, you OR YOUR CHILDREN could be killed. Please, for the safety of yourself, and your family, CALL A PROFESSIONAL to diffuse that thing. It's a beautiful find, but it could turn out to be the worst dig of your life, please don't let that happen.
I guess my question was answered.. thank you!!
 

Not quite sure what the box thing is but it was found down by the creek. It may not be as old as the civil war because i swear the mark on the bottom says chile.
 

Looks like you had a good day! Congrats on the finds!
 

Whoa nice digs! Ya'll are on to a gold mine! Hammer that place good and let us see the results!
Mike
 

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