My goldilocks shovel

maxxkatt

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Sep 20, 2015
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Location
North Atlanta, GA
In Atlanta summers we either have rock hard dirt lots of rain almost every day. So I have my Lesche for the rock hard clay. But never was happy with my lesche for soft dirt. Too short at 31" to dig one handed without bending over (ouch) or kneeling (ouch).

So I took two shovels and switched out the large shovel head with the smaller shovel head. I don't like walking around attracting attention with a fat big shovel head and really don't need a big one.

What I needed was a longer shaft on the smaller headed shovel so I could dig plugs with one foot and one hand much like at the beach. Then I run my detector over the hole and plug to see where I need to look for the target. If out in the woods (I almost always am) i can just bust up the clod in half and check it again with the detector to find out which half it is in. Thus a lot of targets I can recover the target without kneeling or bending over. A real plus at my age. Then I just use my foot to scrape the dirt back into the hole followed by a couple of tamp downs. This speeds up my hunting a fair amount and I don't get as tired with all the up and down digging.

The new hybrid shovel is perfect for me at 38 inches and weighing only 2 lbs.

The new hybrid my Ace-Blue Hawk is in the background and the remnants of the two shoves is in the foreground.

So this got me to thinking, maybe I need to reconsider all the stuff I take on a hunt after I leave the car. Here his what I have stripped down to.

My 800 with Coiltek 10 x 5 and Steve's detector rods carbon shaft.
My Ace-Blue Hawk light weight shovel at 2 lbs.
My long 18" light probing screwdriver.
My Minelab Pro Find 35 pinpointer.
My new finds/trash bag which you can find on Amazon for $6.99 under meejaa dump pouch.

All this stuff is light weight. The Meejaa dump pouch is an ammo pouch, but perfect size to put on your existing belt without having to undo your belt due to two nice sized metal press snaps. My 18" screwdriver probe slips easily through one of the side narrow mesh pockets. My pinpointer just easily rests deeply in the finds pocket.

Took all out for a test drive where I had to hike 1.5 miles to an old moonshine still in the woods. Losing a lot of the accessory weight is very noticeable in terms of getting tired. Now it is more like just a hike in the woods. The hybrid shovel eliminates a lot of bending and kneeling. Dig the clog, kick the clog and swing over it and the hole and narrow down the target quickly. Can often see the target after a few kicks and scoop it up with the shovel. Hard to find a 2 lb but sturdy shovel on the market. Both shovels for my hybrid cost $31.00 plus about 30 minutes of my time making the blade switch. Had to drill and file out the steel rivets in each shovel.
 

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