I had just recently gone archery cow elk hunting with my wife and my sister. Our plans were to stay out for a week. We would go and set up a couple of ground blinds for them to hunt in. I was to watch my two boys while the girls would sit and wait for the elk to come to water.
The boys and I could spend the day detecting with my E-TRAC and Sunray X5 Coil, we targeted areas that others had camped, finding mostly bullets and brass.
After several days of elk hunting with no luck, my wife and sister decided to spend the entire day sitting in the blinds waiting to see if any animals would come to water. The boys and I decided to go check out some old camp spots in another canyon.
I didn't expect to find much of anything out in the area but decided to give it a try anyway. I found a few clad coins, one 1956 wheat penny, and a bunch of bullets. At one of the sites that I detected I found a nice gold toned St. Christopher Medal.
After several hours of detecting we decided to try another spot that was a little closer to my wife and sister. As we were riding down the road, my 8 year old looked to the right and said “Dad I think you should detect this site.”
I pulled over and saw a two track road going around some pine trees. I walked around the trees and saw a bunch of cans piled up in a clearing. I decided to try my luck detecting this old dump site.
After about an hour of detecting around the dump and not finding any good signals, I figured that there was too much trash. So I started detecting my way back and about half way back to my rig when I got a sweet signal.
The signal came in at 12-14 on my E-TRAC. I kicked some dirt away and about an inch down, I came across this amazing little 14k gold pendant with 22 small diamonds and an 1851 Liberty Head gold dollar in it.
I hunted some other sites, after finding the pendant. Finding more bullets and Brass. The only other item that I found that was interesting was a silver plated spoon that is in pretty good shape where an old mining camp was.
While this pendant is a find of a lifetime for me, my wife and sister walked away from their hunt empty handed. My two boys helped me dig a lot of holes when they were not climbing trees or chasing lizards around the mountains. Till the next hunt…
Bill - Nevada, USA
