Club hunt ideas

rich_1833 said:

I'm new to the Metal Detecting scene and joined the local club today. They have ask us to come up hunt ideas. What kinds of hunts we would like to do this year. Well being new I have know idea what kinds there are. What kind of hunts to you like and how are they done?

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Are you talking about seeded hunts where you're gonna plant the coins? If so, one we did last year that was pretty neat was a war nickel hunt. There was hundreds of war nickels planted and only a handful of them were painted black which you could turn in for a bigger prize.

Yes seeded hunts.

My club started doing gold dollar hunts with the new gold dollar coins. Less expensive than planting silver and still felt like you had something in the end.
We painted and stamped a few for bigger prizes.

Maybe some kind of "relic hunt". Where they seed the area with relics. Not really a comp. but more of a fun hunt.

Dont know if it could be down but have nickels,dimes,Quarters seeding the feild. Try to get as close to a set amount without going over. It will mean you need to know your detector.

Small hunt ideas at meetings:

1. Penny poker - cut corners from decks of cards and tape to pennies. Bury where easy to find, say in the sand of a volleyball court. Entry fee of a $1 or whatever. Each entrant only digs up 5 total. Best poker hand wins the cash, ties split it. You can modify this several ways to do a 50/50 for raising club funds, have coin prizes instead, etc. Don't forget to recover any spare poker pieces after it's over! Card piece should be folded around penny and taped so they can't see till they open up after retrieving 5.

2. Bury and flag some known targets (not known to participants). Charge a $1 entry fee. Each entrant writes down his best estimate of what the target is. The person who has the most right wins. Again, 50/50, or the pot, or coin prizes, etc.

Large-Scale Seeded Hunts suggestions:

1. 100% entry fees go into hunt prizes / coins.
2. Bury whatever you can afford to make it enjoyable with plenty of targets but still nice number of prizes, be it silver coins, $1 coins, wheat pennies, etc. Wheat pennies are cheap and help to boost coin numbers.
3. Tokens I'd suggest to be copper (1981 or before) pennies stamped with numbers and painted on the other side a bright color. Modern detectors of course can tell a wheat penny from silver or $ coins, but if burying wheaties and these as tokens, if one ignores the pennies to focus on the higher value coins they also ignore the tokens.
4. Don't assign your prize numbers ahead of time. Have numbered discs, etc., corresponding to the penny token numbers and have a pre-made list of prizes. Work your way down the list drawing numbers after the hunt for each prize. Eliminates any "he knew where the good token was planted" thoughts anyone might get in their head. Also lets everyone easily see who won what in case they want to sell / trade prizes.
5. Person planting tokens should not hunt, ideally.
6. All coins/tokens buried should ideally be less than an inch under the ground and the slice should be more horizontal than vertical (hard to see the on edge as well). May take you a bit to find good volunteers to bury the items.

Just a few suggestions to help you on your way. All are ideas that evolved / have been used by my present club during it's 35+ years and work well.