Why do you metal detect?
I love to find out how and why people get into metal detecting. What drives you?
So I ask: Why do you metal detect?
The responses have been fantastic!
I think it’s more appropriate to first ask why I started metal detecting.
Well I thought about it many years ago, but was persuaded not to by my x. One night after the big D, I was on Facebook and thought “I wonder if there are any metal detecting groups on here” and I found one in Europe.
Well it was enough for me to bite the bullet and buy a used Garrett 350. I have only been detecting just under 3 years, but boy do I have the MD bug. I have a lot of hobbies, but metal detecting is at the top. So why do I dig?
Well for someone with a high stress job, it’s my de-stressor. You never know what you’ll find and even a bad day hunting, is better than a good day at work.
My finds and the great people I have met, are all icing on the cake. Now to just find that elusive Indian. LOL.
YouTube
Barb Connell aka Diggin Chick
Facebook group
Metal detecting is like a drug.
There has never been an activity, sport or hobby that had made me feel so good, so calm, or so at peace with the world, or myself. It doesn’t matter what is going on in my life, once my focus switches to metal detecting mode, I think of nothing other than what I’m doing. It’s a general break from life, and an overall boost for my body and soul.
Then, there is the reward. It may be an old coin, jewelry or an interesting relic to add to my collection. Everyone has their favorite finds, and discovering a favorite just adds to the high.
That said though, the euphoria still exists, even if nothing much is found, and that is something that family, friends, or anyone who does not metal detect seems to have great difficulty comprehending.
Why would I want to go hunting all day long without the promise of a reward? Why would I still be in such a good mood even after returning empty handed? And this is probably one of the hardest things to explain, but it’s not all about the treasure. It’s the combination of the search, the mesmerizing swinging of the coil, the physical work out, being out of doors, the history attached to something, and of course if lucky, the reward. Happy Hunting!
Allyson Cohen
YouTube
Website
Because Women Detect Too!
Check out our review on the whites V3i click [HERE]
There are probably as many answers to this question as there are detectorists.
Someone else’s trash is a lot of fun to dig. Once I dig up my little treasure, then I get to figure out what it is. It is all fun. Even trash is fun. You get to puzzle over what it was originally.One of my strongest interests is History.
From the Greeks to Homesteaders in Owyhee county. I never get enough history. When you metal detect you are always digging 
up yesterday.
My metal detecting is focused on relic hunting. So when I metal detect I get to problem solve and find history.
What more could you want.
Gary aka dessert rat
YouTube Channel
I love being outdoors in the sun, wind, and even some rain. I have detected in the cold as well. Thru all the days I detected in the heat until I almost dropped….I still had fun.
I enjoy getting the exercise while enjoying something that I love and am very passionate about it.
I am fascinated with History and the thrill of saving something from the past. I enjoy getting my hands in the dirt and feeling part of the earth. 🙂
Tressala
I’ve been digging since I was 8 years old. My grandpa and I used to dig bottles and my passion started back then.
I went on my first civil war dig 8 years ago and my first signal was a 3 ringer and I’ve been hooked since! My dad passed the love of history on to me. He was killed in an accident almost 2 years ago and digging and detecting has helped me get through the pain and loss.
Any chance I get to detect I do and my passion is civil war sites and battles. Even if I don’t detect I pull the strength and bravery of those 
soldiers out. The rush of pulling out a bullet never gets old. Each one and relic tells a story. This is not just a hobby to me but a way of life. Meeting people who share the same passion is priceless too!!
Jewel Nolan Thatcher
Check out a great review of the Minelab e-trac Click [here]
I began my journey in 1965 or 66. My passion is as strong today as it was then.
It is a hobby that exemplifies some of the best in human nature. 
A metal detectorist / dirt digger/ coin shooter, does more to preserve, human history / culture than most people will ever know…….a dirt digger makes our playgrounds safer for our children and the rest of us as well.
The Metal detectorist aids in evidence collection for the police, help couples find there lost wedding bands, find property stakes, and remove more trash from the ground , than you could understand etc
With all that said about metal detecting, people are leaving messes, leaving trash and holes in the ground is untrue. Most detecting people are very conscious of this hobby, careful and extremely courteous to all and still we have MANY who are trying to shut down this hobby because there are a small number of careless, thoughtless, inconsiderate and simply do not care detectorists. They are the ones who need to be stopped, they give us all a bad reputation.
Yes, a true coin shooter takes all trash with him/her and disposes of it properly, we still get rid of it… Getting rid of it is what we do… We are performing a service that should be Recognized and Respected and not Disrespected.
Will leave the areas in good condition always and we are a collective of good metal detectorists
BE PROUD!
Larry Kadra
I was always fascinated with items from years past. Who hasn’t dreamt of getting in a time machine and going back in time? Well, there is no such thing as a time machine but you can go back to the past…sort of.
There is no other feeling as when you unearth an item from a long gone era.
You’re in awe and wonderment. You have in your hand a lost piece of history. You can literary feel a connection with the person who last dropped it. What were they doing here? How did it get lost? What were they feeling when they realized it was gone?
Rather it a coin, a button or a buckle. It doesn’t matter, I get to go back in time and that’s the true treasure….. and that’s why I metal detect.
You can always find me on Facebook at
My web site global-detecting.com
Hear me on The Global Detection Adventures Podcast.
Dave DiNatale
Check out a great review of the Garrett AT PRO click [here]
We metal detect as a family, my husband our two girls and I.
We love that detecting gets us outside as a family! My favorite part about it all is learning new things with my kids. They have developed such an interest in history from detecting!
We love to speculate about HOW a coin or relic ended up where it did, or WHO may have lost that item. Tracing relics to owners, places or time periods is a lot of fun. Learning the history behind a specific item is something we spend a lot of time doing. 
I love that we can pass down interests like this to our children. Digging something up, and knowing you are likely the first person to have touched that item in a hundred or more years, is an amazing feeling that never gets old!
Seeing the excitement on my children’s faces when they get a signal is priceless. It’s great to see in this day and age, that our kids are into the outdoors and history.
Even better is that they are into sharing their passion with others! We detect not only to find and save history, but to pass it on to our children and preserve it for the future!
YouTube
I saw an older gentlemen detecting the baseball parking area after the games. His name was Alvin Cohoon. He was using a White’s Discriminator metal detector.
He showed me a lot about detecting. So I ended up buying a White’s TR Discriminator with my paper route money.
My first coin I found was a 1922 Peace Dollar and I have been bit by the big since.
Over the years I used detecting as a stress reliever in my jobs. I retired from law enforcement after 36 years and 7 months in the career. I also put in a 18 year career in Firefighter/EMT.
I enjoy getting out and getting some exercise in the spring, summer, and fall.
Three years ago I decided to make my hobby and passion a full time business and took over Ground View Metal Detector Sales & Rental from Kevin Clark of Spenser, WI.
I am a Authorized White’s and Garrett’s Dealer.
I’m located at 706 E Grand Ave Chippewa Falls, WI. 54729
Website:
www.groundviewmetaldetectors.
Check out our review on the FISHER F2 click [here]
I’ve only been metal detecting for under two years.
I’m really enjoying it. I guess it’s like most hobbies. You get out for hours or a day and you focus on something you enjoy doing. I can get away from the stresses of work and life. I’ve let the whole day slip away detecting before, thinking it had only been a couple hours. Time flies when detecting.
I started as a grade school kid looking at Grandpas Goldbug, hanging on the wall. Just the intrigue and anticipation of imagined gold and treasure to be found was enough to have me hooked before I ever swung a detector and it’s stuck with me all this time.
Today, after years of being a casual detectorist, I have found myself switching gears into detecting being my main hobby. It makes great sense with my busy life. Detecting is affordable, challenging and fun. All I needed to renew my interest in a big way was the powerful, easy to use, powerful, White’s Mx Sport and I have been on my way.
Detecting makes a great way to relieve stress, be outside, explore, treasure hunt, make friends and network with limited time and on a dad budget. Detecting is also a great sport for the whole family and my kids have found a new reason to think it’s fun to hang out with dad.
Did I mention treasure?! No matter how old I get… treasure!!!
Skyler Duckworth
Website
http://www.utahtreasurehunters.com/
@UtahTreasureHunters
@Dog210sky
Check out a great review on the Whites coin master click [HERE]
I truly believe I was born with treasure hunting in my blood. Some of my earliest and fondest childhood memories involved the trips to the local dump. I know that sounds strange but let me explain. When my dad would load up that old Datsun pickup with junk laying around the house, I started to get real excited. I knew I was about to have an amazing adventure and find some amazing stuff.
I just couldn’t believe the things people threw away. It was amazing and it was all treasure to me. I loved it so much that I aspired to become a garbage man when I grew up so I could have my pick of all that good stuff before it even made it to the dump.
My mother still has proof of this desire. In early grade school, I was asked to draw a picture of what I wanted to be when I grew up. I drew a picture of a garbage man. I was already hooked even before I lost all my baby teeth.
Fast forward a few years, I remember listening to metal detecting stories and tales of buried treasure between my dad and uncle. Man! that was so cool.
They took me out detecting once or twice but I didn’t quite have the attention span required to swing a detector. I was a digging machine though. I forgot about that dump when I starting seeing all the cool stuff that was buried in that Oklahoma Red Clay. Wow! That was so much cooler than digging through the mountain of garbage.
On one of those adventures I remember digging a hole and out popped an old lead toy horse. Bam! I was really hooked then. I still have that horse. I started showing interest in using a metal detector in Junior high and High School.
History was my favorite subject and especially Oklahoma History. This love of history combined with this treasure hunting bug came together when my day acquired an 1898 map of the county where I grew up. We didn’t find much during those adventures but that’s what got me started.
High School, College and a few years beyond I never lost the passion to digging up history but my interests and priorities shifted toward my career and starting a family. I didn’t detect but maybe once a year.
Finally, let’s fast forward to about five years ago. One day at work, I received a phone call from back home. My mom informed me my grandfather is very ill and has only a few days left. He passed away that next week.
When I flew back home, I started hearing of a story my grandfather told to the entire family on his death bed. It was a story of buried outlaw treasure where he grew up. He was adamant that there was still a very large cache of gold buried on this property.
This intrigued me. My cousin and I were talking after the funeral and both felt like we should dust off those old detectors sitting in my parent’s garage and head out to that property where he grew up.
After duct taping the shaft back together on one and buying a set of headphones and an adapter from the dollar store for the other one we set out to find that treasure. We didn’t find any gold or treasure that day but I discovered more valuable than that.
I rediscovered my love for history and the passion for discovering and preserving it. That’s the greatest treasure of all in my opinion. I have metal detected every single week since that moment to the present. I miss my grandpa very much but each time I go detecting, I feel like he is right along side me on each adventure.
I metal detect Because of the history, the mystery and the joy it can give people you would never meet other wise. Let me explain.
I mentioned the joy. Recently my good buddy Steve Huffman found an old high school ring from the 1970s smack in the middle of hay field in southern Maryland. He didn’t know where to start looking so we teamed up and found the owner.Check out our review of the Ace 350 click [HERE]
The popularity of treasure hunting and metal detecting shows on television has brought a resurgence back to this pastime.
Onlookers of this hobby are under the impression that people who metal detect are seeking the “holy grail”, however, recreational detectors will tell you that for every decent find pulled out of the ground there are at least ten finds of junk metal.
Metal detector enthusiasts not only unearth coins and the occasional piece of jewelry but they by the metal detecting code of properly disposing the scrap metal they find, not only environmental purposes but for safety of mankind.
Getting punctured by a hypodermic needle or getting cut by a rusty piece of metal can cause a variety of health risks.
To create a safer environment for our children to play in, we must consider how much metal is unearthed on a weekly basis by metal detector hobbyists. On Average, a person metal detecting for six hours for one day a week, can easily pull up and properly dispose of at least one pound of junk metal.
This number may not be alarming until it is compared to how many people are metal detecting. A conservative estimate of twenty people per town/city detecting on a regular weekly basis would equate to twenty pounds a week or 1,040 pounds of potential dangerous metals pulled up on an annual basis.
To compound these numbers even further, we will continue to use these conservative figures and break it out by the number of towns and cities a state might have. A small state like Massachusetts has roughly 300 towns and cities. If we multiply the number of municipalities by the number of people metal detecting, we can easily estimate 6000 pounds a week or 312,000 pounds per year.
To further explore these calculations, imagine if we were able to gauge these figures on a national level. Again, to be conservative we will use a small state like Massachusetts as our base when approximating the number of towns/cities. These figures are staggering, as the people of the metal detecting community will be extracting 300,000 pounds of metals on a weekly basis 15,600,000 pounds annually.
As the famous saying goes, “figures don’t lie, liars figure”. The numbers are in black and white and are there to benefit both hobbyists and families who enjoy the beaches, parks, and their own backyards.
Engaging in metal detecting lowers our country’s carbon footprint as well as preventing injuries, doctors’ visits and tetanus shots
This is why I metal detect
Adam Sherman
Check out our review on the Bounty hunter land ranger Pro Click [here]
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