C.A.S.H. Bash Competition Hunt In Connecticut
Metal Detecting Competition Day
When I returned back to the car, Primo and Tim were waiting for me. The rain hit harder, and we decided to go back to the camp and maybe participate in the second "Natural Finds Hunt" on the camp grounds.
When we arrived there, detectorists were digging up something at every spot of the area around cabins. The targets they were digging up turned out to be modern clad coins, some "wheat" pennies, and game tokens. Here are Carol's finds for two days of metal detecting in the area.
The judging for the best natural finds was commenced at 3 pm and a pine Tree Shilling recovered by Jeremia Burr took the first prize. In the evening, a grand dinner was held in the meeting hall. Raft tickets were given to each detectorist so many eneded up winning silver coins of all kinds. Then it was time for me to give a speech on my treasure hunting adventures in Europe (see My Metal Detecting Stories page).
I had not had time to prepare my speech. Jerry Burr asked me to do it at the last minute because none of the expected speakers could come to the event. I brought some of those 16th century hammered coins to show to my friends, so it turned out to be a right thing to do - I passed them around during my lecture and they produced an awesome effect. Some people wanted to go metal detetcting in Russia right away! I think I did great as I received a huge wave of applause and many thankful words at the end.
After the dinner, a dozen of people did not retire into their cabins and RVs but stayed in the hall and asked me a thousand more questions about treasure hunting abroad, early Russian coins, my Explorer programs, and metal detecting in general. Again, it was an enjoyable time spent. But we had a tough day of competitions ahead of us...
DAY 3, Sunday
The first competition hunt was a Team Hunt. We had Tim, Primo, Vlad, and me in our team. Jerry informed everybody about the kind of tokens to be seeded a day before, so I tuned my Explorer II only to detect the modern pennies. I was going to do the same with Tim's Explorer when the hunt was about to start. I was tuning Tim's machine while we were running to the field! All I could accomplish was to set it up on "Coins" mode of discrimination. We had a few seconds to find a spot in line of detectorists standing along the field's perimeter.
