Whats your worst experience?

[JakePhelps]

Whats the worst experience you have had detecting? I have never had a horrible experience but i have been chased by people with chainsaws, dogs, ect...then theres the time my back got eaten alive at the cape by bugs, then the poison ivy episode, then the banking full of pricker bushes i fell off of.... :P Whats your worst experience not detecting? dont even get me started

 

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[Monty]

Gosh Jake, my worse experience detecting I have already written about. But my worse experience not detecting would have to be when I was trimming tree limbs and had the platform collapse. I fell 14', landed on my back and broke my back in 3 places and broke 8 ribs at the same time. I spent 10 weeks in the hospital and had two surgeries. At one time was expected to be paralized from the waist down, fought off a staph infection, went through months of physical therapy and never did fully recover. I had to take an early retirement due to my remaining disability and there are days I can barely swing that coil. Now that's the worse thing that ever happended to me at any time! That's darn depressing. Are you sure that's what you want to hear? Anyway, I've remained positive in my attitude and enjoy the things I can still do. I love my grandkids, and thoroughly enjoy the good humor and fellowship with my friends and family and with you and the other members of the forum. JIM aka KS

 

[Andee]

I've never really had a bad MD'ing experience, but I have gone thru the usual crap about "This is public property, you can't tear up the lawn here", etc. Heck, that happened to me last weekend. And I found "tearing up the lawn" quite insulting, as I've gotten pretty good at filling in my holes. Obviously the guy saw some other careless "TH'er" wrecking the lawn and so he thought I was doing it too. Man, this hobby has gotten one nasty reputation!!

 

[mchamby]

I guess my worst experience would be getting yelled at for not having permission to hunt on this particular property. The guy came on in a real strong tone and unfriendly. I almost crumbled but Kept my composure and said I did have permision from the church and after a few more grumbles from him he said his line started at that post over there and pointed to it. I was about 3 feet on his property. I said I was very sorry and thought the church owned to the barn. He started calming down and in the end said if I filled in the holes good I could search around his barn. I said thank you and went closer to the church mding. I didn't search around his barn I was too upset.
I guess the worse day in my life would be the word cancer and pulmonary sarcosis which in my case is terminal. Mding has helped me find freedom from my thoughts so I can go out and enjoy myself without thinking about life as it is. I get out usually once a week but if I'm having a good week I can manage sometimes two or three times, needless to say not much gets down around the house but I know take priority over house cleaning. Was hoping to md today but we are expecting a cloud burst oh well the ground will be good for digging tomorrow. Have a good day
Mchamby

 

[neilo]

One bad experience was brought on by my own stupidity. I was in an area covered with hundreds of mine shafts I had been detecting around the old mullock heaps.This was a very old gold area and a lot of the shafts were very small going straight down about 50 ft with there entrances grown over with bushes. I was using my Minelab 18000 at the time I got a signal dug down and had a hunt but it turned out to be junk I stood up stepped backwards and fell into a shaft.The only thing that saved me was my detector I had hold of it half way down the shaft and it straddled the opening.I was able to pull myself out by the use of some exposed tree roots. Its not really nice hanging in mid air suspended by a detector one handed.
be careful seeya Neilo

 

[Andee]

Jeez, that IS bad. I'm always afraid I'm gonna get yelled at for MD'ing. Luckilly, it's only happened to me twice . It's too bad a few ruin it for many.

 

[DigEmAll]

Jake, just last Saturday, I swung my coil under a ledge in the bottom of a wash, and bees went everywhere! Living in southeast Arizona and disturbing a hive of bees is a HUGE no no. All the bees around here are killer bees. Luckily, I am a fast runner and didn't manage to get stung one time! But talk about getting the adrenalin flowing!!! I think I'll wait until winter to finish hunting that area!

 

[miester]

No bad times detecting. Not detecting, many ruff times, broken knee in 8 pieces from a fall, went thru the ice on Lake Michigan 2 miles from shore, it was an ice cave and the water was 6 ft. from the bottom of the ice. Caught in a tornado when it passed over the lake I was fishing on, it ripped my canvas top to shreds. My truck went thru the ice on L. Winnebago but that was not that bad, more funny than not.

 

[Pistolero]

I have only been detecting a few times so I have had no really bad experiences. But two frustrating things have happened to me. One, in north Alabama, near Athens, I took a buddy to a Civil War camp site that had taken about two years of research and hours of driving and studying maps to find and pin point. Well within minutes of getting out of the vehicle he found a minie ball. All I found was what appeared to be a cobbler's station, a mass of small heel nails and a heel iron.

Another time a couple of years ago I drove to up and found the site of Ebenezer Church where Gen Forrest ambushed Gen Wilson in 1865, and in which area they fought for a day or two. It is a spot where two roads going towards Selma converge forming a "Y". Anyway, a family has seven acres of land right in the middle of that "Y". I got permission to hunt it. We went during the summer. I was in my late forties, overweight, it was nigh onto 105*, 95% humidity. Gosh it was hot and humid! Anyway, within minutes my buddy found a fired yankee Spencer bullet.? After looking for a few hours, fighting insects, yellow jackets, bushes and scrub growth, I finally went and layed down in the shade next to my truck, soaked with sweat and exausted. All I had found were old nails, pieces of old wire, and a modern ballpeen hammer. I still have that hammer. I also found some big piece of iron shaped funny. I think it was some sort of plow blade.

Anyway, although I would never dig up a grave, being too superstitious for one thing and believing in respecting the dead, I did try detecting around the graves of some union dead there. In the book "Yankee Blitzkrieg", a book about Wilson's Raid into the heart of Alabama, in which were excerpts from diaries, etc, it said that some yankees killed in the battle were interred in the cemetery by the church (it is no longer there, removed later and rebuilt down on the main road to Selma) amongst a cedar grove. Now the cemetery is still there and still in use. At one end are a few huge cedar trees. I went and looked and sho' nuff, although there are no individual grave markers, there is a big nice granite marker saying that union dead kiled in the battle were buried at that spot. I found it ironic that a marker for union dead, foreign invaders to our country, was erected by the United Daughters of the Confederacy, and not one marker or grave anywhere I know of around there for our own Confederate dead who died defending our country. I did speak to one local who said that there were several rows of what he thinks are unmarked Confederate graves, sunken in, on his property (He did not even want to talk about my going there).

But figuring that the union soldiers were probably hastily thrown in shallow holes and covered up, and thinking that perhaps the growing cedar trees and their roots might have carried some buttons or something closer to the surface, I tried DTing around them. All I found was some old square type nails. Perhaps they were put in coffins and those nails were from them? If I had've had a MD that would go a bit deeper than mine perhaps a button or something would have shown up! Who knows?
Just thought y'all would find the above interesting.
Take care,
Pistolero
Millbrook, Al..

 

[cm5838]

heres one for ya, wasn't metal detecting, but looking around in old mines for goodies, i found a metal canister marked "union carbide" it had some weight to it, so i tried to open it but the lid was rusted on good, so i grabbed my pick hammer and started to forcfully remove the lid, when i got it open i saw an old pair of pants in it so i grabbed the pants pulled them out and a jar fell out of them, I quickly picked up the jar hoping to find a good stach of gold, but it was full of a yellowish brown liquid, after looking at it for a few seconds it donned on me what it was, nitro glycerin. the blm had it blown up on site and that caved in most of the tunnel. that is my worst experience treasure hunting. I was amazed it didn't go off while i was beating on the can with my pick hammer.
Charles

 

[Pistolero]

Hey Charles,
Man, you are one lucky dude is that is what it was! I wonder if being stored for so long would make it lose its power the way a coke goes flat.
Pistolero

 

[cm5838]

the blm guy that reported it said it was blasting oil, basically the same as nitro. and according to him gets worse with age. I am going on what he said, but supposedly if it was just some other liquid when they blew it up with the small charge they used it wouldn't have caused the damage it did. Also they say it is not too uncommen to run into old dinomite and other explosives in these old mines. But some good did come out of it, i now will not hammer on anything if i do not know exactly what it is, he also said some of them used to bury their blasting oil in metal boxes to keep it cool, that would be a bad thing to find with a shovel. By the way, blm didn't blow it up, they called a local bomb squad from the sherrifs dept.
Charles