I got a call the other day from Candice, she lost her engagement ring. It was in thick grass outside of a housing development. She knew the area she lost it within 20x20ft. She put me in touch with Eric her finance who would meet me at the location.
They were desperate. They had contacted RingFinders all over the directory some even 2 hours away. Eric had searched for over 9 hours! After the ring was lost (in the evening), and was swallowed by the thick grass, he searched with no success. He even went and bought a Harbor Freight metal detector! I have heard many people do this. I guess, most places don’t sell metal detectors, so people search out Harbor Freight. I can tell you, I have never heard anyone going this route and having success. I am not sure if the Harbor Freight detector is garbage, I assume it is. But even if it was something decent, like a Garrett ACE 250, metal detecting is not something you just go buy a detector and have immediate success with, it takes time and experience.
A huge storm was coming in, and Eric was about 40 min away. I immediately left and made way to him and met him at the location. I knew whatever we did we had to work quickly, because the storm was coming in. I had my CTX 3030 with a large coil on it, which was overkill, but I wasn’t going to take the time to change it. I also had the Equinox in tow as a backup. When he showed me the location, I immediately put my detector down. I pulled out two Garrett ProPointer AT’s (carrots), handed him one and gave him a quick lesson. I dropped a quarter into the grass and set the sensitivity on the pinpointers. I told him to take one side of the grid, and I the other, and we were just going to manually sweep the ground on our knees………this is the best approach.
When you know the area, and its quite small (20×20), and you know its going to be on the surface, you don’t need much tech. If you use a detector, then the approach is you turn sensitivity WAY down………you don’t want to pull in all the garbage, wires, etc underground. This worked well. I got an immediate hit, it was just a piece of can slaw 1 inch down, which I removed knowing it wasn’t the ring but I didn’t want it masking. Eric seemed a bit concerned because he wasn’t getting any hits, but he was going about it perfectly, fanning the grass and making a grid. I told him just keep it pressed into the ground so you get maximum depth.
In just minutes, Eric gets a hit and starts to zero in on it and I hear the pinpointer tones get more centered. I told him « That sounds promising! ». Eric digs, and says « Son of a bitch! »……and pulls up, his finances engagement ring!
Our strategy of divide and conquer worked great. We beat the storm! Took about 5 min from the time we started until recovery. Eric had good information to go off of, even though it was dark, he had good knowledge of *where* the ring likely landed, which is the most important thing.
A happy ending! I was so happy that Eric was able to recover the ring, it makes for a great story.
The picture below is of Eric, with his speedy recovery. He tried for 9 HOURS to find this ring, and even bought that Harbor Freight detector. Once he called RingFinders he quickly got his treasure back!
Brian
Great penmanship and great story!