ToySoldier
Forum Supporter
My attempts to find a hunting buddy in my Kentucky days were fraught with tribulation. No one shared a spirit of camaraderie. It was alway highly competitive and void of any fun. This one guy was obsessively competitive and he haphazardly covered about an acre of a park in one hour. I call him "The John Deere Man" because, hellfire and Kingdom Creation, he went so fast and angrily across the park fields with his search coil that there was no need for a 48" razor sharp lawn mower blade. He was pretty good with his digging and hole filling, though, but there was a weird anger about him and he had Charles Manson eyes and an ice cold "Judicial judgement by backwoods town citizen supremascist" mentality about him. When he drove away, I felt like I had escaped the oll-polished double bladed gallows that day.
Unfortunate for you, but this might be one of my favorite posts. I know exactly the sort of guys you are talking about.
As far as the competitive thing, or just getting in the way of each other (especially when a hot spot is found), one thing I've done with hunting buddies is play a game of "switch places". We'll flip a coin to see who gets the front yard or back yard (or whatever way of dividing things up makes sense). Every 30 minutes we show each other what we've found and switch spots. We might do that for several hours. It's fun to hunt behind somebody, and humbling when somebody hunts behind you.