By Harry Niemeyer - Our FMDAC Rep

Last month we had visited with Boy Scout Troop #210 from Monroeville PA. After our detecting presentation we were invited to come to the Boy Scout camp for more instructions and on hands use of metal detectors. One of our original demonstrators could not make the trip so George Pasvantis agreed to come along. I got up at four AM on the morning of November 13, 2004 to find there was ice on my truck windows and it was 28 degrees outside. Winter has finally come to the Pittsburgh, PA area.

I picked up George than we drove north a bit to meet Tom McCarthy who had set up this project. Of course the trip was delayed by thinking we had time for breakfast in Indiana PA. We figured we were only a half hour from the site, little did we know that our directions were not well written. During the next couple of hours we got to see plenty of the prettiest Western PA scenery there is0. We also had the pleasure of meeting several Pennsylvania Amish farmers who helped us find our way.

When we finally arrived the Scouts were just finishing their breakfast. Glen Dzaack the Scout Master and all the scouts made us feel very welcome to their camp. The camp is on a private farm that the owners generously allow the scouts to use anytime they need it for their outings.

The plan for the day was for the Scouts to go about their program while we were permitted to detect the farm until the one PM time set aside for our presentation.

The Scouts started their program of shooting clay pigeons while we stayed up in the woods searching for treasurers. Tom found a couple of old encrusted buffalo nickels and some wheat cents along with some Lincoln Memorial Pennies. George found some old silverware, a buffalo nickel and a button he believes is from the Civil War era. I found two Wheat cents, an old spoon and a 1940 silver Mercury dime.

We all found some old horseshoes, pieces of metal and the usual trash from long ago.

Around noon we stopped hunting and decided to have a small lunch. After a brief break we set up a hunt area with some flags and seeded it with a bagful of wheat cents, some clad dimes, silver dimes, a few Indian heads, and three numbered silver coin tokens. The tokens were for prizes that Tom, George and I donated out of our own collection of stuff we have found in the past.

The scouts were now finished with their morning program and after their lunch they were ready for us.

We took them up to a small field and gave each Scout a detector and digger to use. There were Tesoros, Whites, & Shadows which we bought from home. We explained our hopes that the Boy Scouts National Council will approve our desire to create a metal detecting merit badge program. We followed this by telling them about asking permission and the code of ethics. After a demonstration on how to operate each machine, how to properly dig a plug and how to replace the plug so it looks like you were never there they were turned loose to hunt the upper fields so that they could learn how to search, pinpoint and recover a target.

After about forty minutes we took them down to the hunt field. We explained the rules of competition hunting and that there were three prize tokens in the field. We gave a start signal and the scouts went to work collecting various targets. This was where we really got to help and show them how to pinpoint and recover their targets. We had them hunt without headphones so we could assist them when they pinpointed. The boys stayed until we finally had to call the hunt for dinner. They had found practically every thing we planted. They all were excited and had a very nice hunt with a new appreciation of our hobby. I understand several will be attending our January meeting and possibly joining our club.

We finally cleared the field by a small guessing game to decide who picks up the flags for us.

I asked them all to gather around and had them guess my age. They were very close and one boy hit it on the nose. The two that were over lost and had to gather up all the flag