What Inspired you to Metal Detect?

[Myth legend]

I've been loving this community, especially getting to see stuff out of the ground that's older than me. And sometimes older than most of yall XD. However, I have to wonder, what inspired any of you, ladies and gentlemen to metal detect? I know when I got into metal detecting, I always wanted to do it when I was a young lad, and actually brought my first metal detector at 19 the (Bounty tracker IV) I think that's what you call it. I never used it as much, i then brought the at pro, and still haven't used that one as much, mainly because college has been keeping me distracted.

Hope to hear your comments, have a safe day, and happy holidays.

 

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[Treasure_Hunter]

I use to hunt Indian artifacts in Missouri, I moved back to Florida and the "finds" law had changed, can't hunt any city, county, state, or fed land, cant remove points from the fields, creeks, streams, and rivers unless on private property, I missed the thrill of the hunt so took up metal detecting.

 

[ARC]

Not a "what"... but a "who"... inspired me... Mel Fisher... In 1980.
<-- On this day... my Avatar.

 

[Myth legend]

I use to hunt Indian artifacts in Missouri, I moved back to Florida and the "finds" law had changed, can't hunt any city, county, state, or fed land, cant remove points from the fields, creeks, streams, and rivers unless on private property, I missed the thrill of the hunt so took up metal detecting.

Thats really good to know. I know in certain states its okay to metal detect in city parks.

 

[Relichunter1]

I am sure I am not alone on this but I read a lot of books about pirates and treasure, but I would say my scout leader was the one that introduced me to metal detecting. He invited us on a hunt on a school ball field in Cicero Illinois. I was hooked after that, in 6th grade I ordered my first detector from a magazine. It cost around 125 bucks it was a Detectron Model 7-t I still have it. I found a few silver coins mostly clad. When I moved to California I got into gold prospecting and nuggethunting, still hooked after 40 years !!

 

[USERNAME IS VALID]

I dunno, probably finding stuff as a kid digging underground forts and watching too many cartoons about finding buried treasure. I like slot machines which are similar, pull the handle and you never know where the wheels will stop but once in a while you hit a jackpot.

 

[DanU]

Something I have wanted to do for a long time. I remember my grandfather having a metal detector. Work had limited my time for many years, so what time I had, I spent doing things with the family. Now that the kids are grown and the wife has passed, I can devote time to the hobby. Like many, I hope to find valuables but the thrill of the hunt is what attacks me.

 

[Digstuff]

I started metal detecting about 3-4 years ago.
When i was younger (I'm only 14 and 3/4) I loved digging up old stuff, and had a knack for losing my own stuff, (like my precious pocket knife, among other kid treasures), so I saved up allowance for over a year and bought myself a Bounty Hunter Tracker IV. Still use it to this day.

 

[Terry Soloman]

As a young boy, I rode into the Superstition, and Bradshaw mountains with my dad, prospecting for gold. That started my treasure hunting fever. During my last year in the Army (1976), I was sent to southern Germany. One day while my unit was out in the field doing infiltration exercises, we saw a German guy with what turned out to be a Garrett VLF/TR detector, and my Sargent sent me over to check him out. He spoke perfect English, and we talked for a couple of minutes before the rest of the squad sauntered over. We were all amazed by his finds that morning, including some WWII coins, a gold Nazi ring, and a Roman coin! When I saw the gold ring my brain went immediately to the gold nuggets my dad and I would find in the Bradshaw mountains. When I went home to Phoenix, AZ, later that year, the first thing I bought myself was a Garrett Master Hunter. I have been hooked hard ever since!

 

[FreeBirdTim]

I liked digging for old bottles and always got annoyed at all the rusty cans mixed in with them. But then I realized they were a blessing in disguise. I could locate bottle dump sites that were hidden from view with a metal detector.

Most dump sites are obvious because no one bothers to completely cover the trash up. But I have found many bottle dumps with my detector that were carefully covered up, so I never would have found them without one. I still use it to look for bottle dumps to this day, but my main interests now are pre-1900 coins and colonial relics.

 

[Mackaydon]

A metal detecting class at UCLA nearly 50 years ago.
The instructor was a dear friend, Dr. Roy William Roush, PhD.

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Don....

 

[Gare]

In 1968 I shot at a Buck deer with aluminum arrows 4 TIMES> I missed and lost the arrows. I went and bought a cheap detector to find them. NEVER FOUND a ARROW. Did find a quarter and i have been hooked ever since !!1

 

[E-Trac-Ohio]

I've always done a lot of historical research.
I dove on shipwrecks for over 25 years - Ocean Liners -U-Boats - WW2 - Spanish Treasure wrecks, etc.
Many years ago I said to myself ... "some day in the future I'm going to get seriously involved in Metal Detecting"
When we moved inland, 400 miles from the ocean - I did.
14 years ago, after a lot of reading and videos I bought my first high quality metal detector - a Minelab E-Trac.
This is, without a doubt, one of the best hobbies on Earth !

Good Hunting !

 

[Tahts-a-dats-ago]

Curiosity

Back in the early 1970's I had the opportunity to help a university archeological dig (Pawnee camp) nearby the farm I grew up on. I found it amazing and loved learning about people's lives. A few years after helping out on the Pawnee camp site I started exploring abandoned farm homes (with permission) from the dustbowl/depression era. Oftentimes they left most of their possessions behind, so I got a very vivid look into what their lives were like.

About 20-25 years ago I became friends with a guy who was passionate about metal detecting. He showed me a lot of the stuff he had found, and seeing his finds took me back to my youth when I participated on the archeological dig and explored old homesteads.

I was hooked almost immediately and purchased my first metal detector. I mostly hunt for old coins and jewelry, but my real interest isn't the target found: it's the history behind the item, the stories that the item could tell, and the people involved. Mostly stories that I'll never actually know, but the found items help satisfy my curiosity somewhat.

 

[faribo]

I started because all of the glory of being me was being wasted on not having one more hobby that pays me to play.

 

[bezerk]

In 1979 I was at Quantico, Virginia, running young officer candidates on hill trails. One of my men pointed out depressions in the ground that I thought were fighting positions. "No sir", he said. "They are hut sites from a Civil War Tennessee company that was here in 1861." I was hooked. He later showed me numerous Confederate camps and hut sites near the Quantico golf course. In those days digging wasn't prohibited and we found many Confederate items over the next few years. Yankee camps were closer to what is now I-95. Many great years digging in the Fredericksburg area.

 

[Back-of-the-boat]

When I was a kid in grade school, I went to a one room school house, one of the last in California and we would have detectorists roaming the grounds on the weekends looking for old treasures and it was an open campus, so myself and my friends would use the swings and such to play. Well one weekend a couple were there detecting, so I showed them where the original school had stood until it burned down it was at the back of the property where no one went and they started finding old burned artifacts and they had a blast and seeing how much they were enjoying themselves got me hooked on it, but I never was able to afford a detector until much later in life but the wonder and thrill was still there for me. I just wish I had owned a detector then because there was a ton of history around my hometown. I now live about 500 miles from there.

 

[Back-of-the-boat]

In 1968 I shot at a Buck deer with aluminum arrows 4 TIMES> I missed and lost the arrows. I went and bought a cheap detector to find them. NEVER FOUND a ARROW. Did find a quarter and i have been hooked ever since !!1

Yep as a fellow archer I know them arrows weren't cheap.

 

[oldkoot]

I actually had messed around with a old detector a friend had in 98 or 99 never really got into metal detecting until my wife and I moved to Ohio from Arizona in 2009, we purchased a house in Ohio that was built in 1889 the house was on a acre and half of land the back yard was completely fence in and was about 3/4 of an acre when we researched the house we found out it was one of two homes first built on the road we lived on, we also found out that two bank robbers had been arrested in our house back in the early 50s so my wife and i decided to purchase a couple of detectors shortly after we moved into that house the AT PRO came out the shop we purchased the ATP from also had a used Xterra 705 so we also purchased it the ATP my wife would use and i used the 705 the age of our house and some of the history was what got me into metal detecting had we never purchased that home i probably never would have gotten into this fantastic hobby, I hunted that house all the way up to the end of 2013 I found many many great finds in the front and back yards but my best find was not in the yards but under the house in the crawl space.

 

[ToddsPoint]

A guy I worked with bought a White's 6000D and quickly found a valuable diamond ring. That was 1981. He said he'd never find anything better and sold the 6000D to me. I used it in town until I moved to the country in '93. Found my share of coins. I bought a sawmill about '98 and needed a detector to check the logs for metal. Bought an Ace 250. Worked for the logs then one day I scanned the ground and found a nickel. Here we go again! Bought an AT Pro then a Nox 800.