Midway Through The 2023 Detecting Season.
Well as we know from my previous posts. This year (year 2 ) of metal Detecting I had decided to move from Minelab products and get into the Nokta products.
Late last season in 2022 I purchased a Nokta Legend at their sale price which ended up being a great decision. Just how great? Well I purchased the pro pack with many extra items for under $1000 after taxes. Today, if I were to purchase the exact same package deal, it would cost well over $1500CDN. So I’m glad I bought when I did.
Moving forward to the early spring of 2023 I had called a meeting with the detectorists that were part of the Dirt Diggers Of Kingston Facebook group. I rented a conference room out of the Picton @ the Picton Harbour INN because I felt that would be a fairly central location for where most of our group members would be coming from. Now a couple weeks prior to that meeting I had asked about 6 individuals on that social media group if they wanted to meet for breakfast? They did.
Out of the breakfast meeting, it was determined that several people would be interested in entertaining the idea of putting an actual club together for the area.
On March 21st I gathered around 20 detectorists from the area and brought them all together in one room at the Picton Harbour INN where we all decided after a 3.5 hour meeting that the area was over due for a metal Detecting club. And that we would be willing to make a go out of it.
Some items were decided at this meeting. 1st that the Name Dirt Diggers Of Kingston needed to be changed in order to best describe what our club represented. And since kingston was really just a small area in comparison to where our members would be coming from we decided the name must be changed.
2nd – we all decided that to start, everyone at that meeting was willing to participate in organizing and creating the club.
& 3rd we needed to make a few positions within the members, for example. We voted on a treasurer, and yours truly was voted in as the first club president.
We as a new club have a long way to go before we get things organized enough that things are smooth sailing. However for now I believe slow and steady wins the race.
The first order of business was to make sure there was a definitive difference between our facebook page and club membership. We knew that we would utilize the Facebook page for communication between members however the problem is that some people who do not wish to be a part of the club could still be part of the social media group.
So I decided that members would need to give me their emails so that any business strictly meant for members would get their information in 2 formats. The 1st being through e-mail. And the 2nd being through a members only accessible page on the clubs website.
Foolproof right? Nope wrong. Some people still do not understand the difference between the website and the Facebook page, & some members have no idea we even have a website let alone capable of checking their emails lol. This problem needs to get rectified over the next few months or people will end up missing out on events.
Ok so next up was the club name change. I thought it best to involve as many people as possible so I created a competition within the Facebook group to choose or come up with a new name for the club as this was the old name and logo This is a metal sign given to me by Ryan Pugh ( Member)
within a certain date. 6 members chose the best 3 names and then we put another public vote in the form of a (voting pole) on the Facebook page. We gave 48 hours for people to cast their vote and then we did the same process for a logo for the club.
The out come of everybody that participated was this The new logo and name to our metal Detecting club.
So now that we had a name, logo, members, and a few chosen positions within the club, we needed to get people excited about being a part of the club. So next up was to create a club hunt.
Many hours and several meeting took place in order to put together our first ever club hunt. But we needed a few things to fall into place for this to happen.
1st – we needed a place to go that would be able to comfortably host between 10 to 25 members? Luckily we had a member volunteer one of his permissions but he would of course need to get the permission of the property owner first.
Within about a week we had the permission we needed and the invitation went out to our members. May 6 2023 was to be the date of the first ever South Eastern Ontario Metal Detecting Club, Club hunt.
To be honest I think the event went off without a hitch. We had about 21 people show up and we had attained several prizes for draw prizes and there were actually 2 fields we were able to utilize.
On the first field the permission holder and his detecting partner (Paul, & Dave) spent several hours seeding, or planting coins for the members to find. These coins ranged from old foreign coins, to modern day clad coins. This allowed everyone a good chance at finding something special.
Personally I was able to dig a few firsts of my own. I was able to get myself a 1908 Canadian large cent. A large cent has been on my bucket list since I started this hobby over a year ago. I’ve seen so many other Detectorists dog these coins out of the ground yet I’ve never managed to get one myself. Well today was the day for me, it was my turn.
A few members had gone to the unseeded field across the road which was the other permission we had that day. Most of the seasoned detectorists went over to that field so that all the new to the hobby folks had a chance to dig up some great items. They did not have to do that but it was nice to see them wanting and encouraging new detectorists like that.
In the unseeded field. There really was not too much found. However a few items were managed to be dug by member Darcy. A musket ball. A buckle, and a small cent (KG5) and part of a pewter spoon handle?
I just love coins that come out of the ground with that green patina on them.
The day came to a close and I think everyone enjoyed themselves. They had won some prizes, dug up old coins, and met a fair amount of new faces. Our first club hunt was a successful venture.
Just about 1 week after our event. A member by the name of Ryan, had a request from someone to see if he could find a lost ring ( 20 years ago) it took Ryan approx 1.5 hours, but he managed the recovery and was rewarded by the look on the gentleman’s face when his gold and Ruby ring were returned to the rightful owner. Congratulations Ryan on a successful ring return.
Next on the agenda is a metal detecting hunt in Toronto at Woodbine beach hosted by Radioworld and sponsored by none other than
Treasure Hunting Legend 