Update to the Hunt
Well, I went to sleep last night at midnight after working all day putting down a hardwood floor in my bedroom, woke up at 3am and left my house to arrive onsite at 4am. I found this to be a great travel time. Normally this would have taken me about 2 hours to get there, and made it in just under an hour. I wish the roads were like this all the time.
I met the client who furnished me with a complete description of the ring including photograph and inscription. We retraced their steps and I carefully staked out the area with some wooden stakes. (I made these yesterday out of 1x2 pieces of wood and painted them blue so they would stand out.) We covered an area about 50ft x 25ft and then I added about another 10ft out in each direction from his estimates.
Off I went MD'ing in a 3ft wide lanes in the grid, digging each and every target that gave me even the slightest signal. After covering all of his area, I went into my area which each time I covered it, I kept increasing it out in 10ft slices and covering that in 3 4ft sweeps overlapping about a foot. After a while of uncovering TONS of targets;
3 BB's
2 Staples
4 Bobby Pins
2 hair clips
2 Hypodermic Needles
1 Bottle of something the needles get inserted in
1 4ft long steel dowel
23 tent stakes
76 bottle caps
1 part of a zipper
3 very small pieces of unidentifiable iron
1 Nail
3 Screws
5 Pieces of foil
2 Metal Juice packets
1 Empty Cigarette Wrapper
1 Rock that contains metal (Looks like a piece of Slate)
1 Heart Pendant (Costume Jewelery with fake diamonds)
1 Nickel
3 Quarters
1 Screw Driver (Snap on, in perfect condition) Kept that
1 Hammer (Craftsman in perfect condition) Kept that
1 Small Change Purse (empty)
2 Pre-Paid phone cards next to a bottle cap (Already consumed, Tried them)
1 Set of keys
6 Energizer Alkaline batteries sealed in plastic but rusted inside
1 Motorola Cell phone (Dead and in bad shape)
1 HTC Cell Phone (Broken screen and dead) May have broke by the scoop hitting it, don't know
5 Misc pieces of wire
2 Fishing Hooks attached to a lot of line
1 Vibrator (Yes you heard right, and no I didn't pick it up, just scooped it up and dumped it in the trash.
1 Earring back (14K suspected) near worthless
1 Buck Knife (Rusted)
1 Dollar Bill found in the sand while digging a pull tab
4 Pull tabs
1 Match Box Car (Hummer to be exact)
8 Misc unidentifiable pieces of something connected to plastic (All Different)
3 Cigarette lighters
1 WWII Land Mine (just kidding here)
All that found on a very low traffic private beach. I hunted till 10:30am so I worked this beach hard for about 6 1/2 hours. I got 3 blisters on my hands from all the scoop digging I did and my back is about ready to call it a day. I spent all day yesterday till about 10pm putting down a wood floor in my house and now I have to finish it and get a few hours of sleep in before I have to get up for work at 3pm and work till 3am. Talk about A DAY!
So that was my day. The client, although sad that it was not able to be recovered, saw all the hard work I did and was amazed of all the stuff I dug out of the "BEAUTIFUL CLEAN BEACH" he thought it was. He rewarded me with $100 anyway for my efforts and travel and we left this case open. I have exact measurements of where I hunted and will be heading back to this location again in a few days. The client doesn't go back to him home country for 3 more weeks and has completely put his trust in me finding it if it was indeed lost on that beach near that location as I had proven to him without a doubt if it's there, I WILL find it. Until it is recovered, the location will remain (undisclosed).
Until next time when hopefully I have a Success Story to report. This is FL-Hunter's Report.