Time to get set up

Getting set up for the hunt starts early in the morning. From setting up the hunt field at 7am with flags to setting up the prize and registration tent. We started out with a mixture of sun, clouds, and wind that made it interesting to get the covering up without it taking us all down the boardwalk. As always I had to get a sunrise shot albeit well after sunrise.

Every time we have an event like this we want to take group photos of everyone that participates. Some have been attending for years and we like to have a visual record to go along with our registrations of those that attend.

Before we started the first hunt at 9:30 we had a quick review of the rules and provided a quick safety briefing. Keeping everyone safe with potential hazards was one of our many concerns during an event with so many people that may be unfamiliar with the area.

The first hunt of the day is a chance for everyone to check that their detectors are operational and tuned for the environment and sand conditions. Its also a chance to check out the techniques of your competitors to see how each person patterns the hunt field. So with a "Detectors Ready! Go!" call the day of metal detecting starts.

Current Prices of Gold make it nearly impossible to have a Gold Hunt. While we have had them in the past it is even difficult with Silver prices to have one as well. During this particular hunt only silver coins and tokens for silver items are placed in the hunt field. The hit ratio goes down so its critical to form a search pattern quickly to find everything that is seeded. This hunt generally lasts about 30 minutes.

During our lunch break we set up the hunt field for our Kids Hunt. This year we got some help with the flags from some of our youth members. While all seeding is done by someone that is not hunting its always nice to see the enthusiasm to help our from our younger members. As you can see from the photos we had some dark clouds move in. We were lucky and didn't get a drop of rain out of them though. Soon after these photos were taken the sun came out and most of the dark clouds cleared away.

 

Our future is our children and what better way to have them be part of the hunt is to have a smaller one set up just for them. This consists of smaller hunt field with lots of chances to find tokens and money seeded in the field. We encourage parents involvement and is always a lot of fun to see the kids faces light up with the detector goes off revealing a find.

Our Kids Hunt started at 12:15 this year after our early lunch. For the first 10 minutes we let the kids use their detectors to try and find items on their own. This usually results in the kids working the detectors while mom or dad use the digging scoops to find the treasure. The last few minutes we have the adults switch roles and allow them to operate the detector while their kids dig up any finds. This year all but 1 dime and 1 nickel were recovered in the kids hunt which is fantastic.

Our Final Hunt of the day involves the most tokens and the most targets per person of any of the hunts. By this time the weather had cleared up and the sun was shining brightly with a constant breeze and a few small gusts of hot wind. Everyone was in good sprits and wanted to get started. The quicker we started the quicker they could get t the awards ceremony to see what their tokens were good for on the prize tables. See our awards page for more information. We started at 1:15 and finished up 30 minutes later.