Man’s Ring Found in Vermont River
8/3/2019
Another “needle in a haystack” search…
Got a call last Sunday morning while I was outside splitting firewood. There was a very sad sounding gentleman on the other end of the line. He had been out tubing on a large river here in Central Vermont, when he lost a very special ring. It was special for at least 2 large reasons, he had recently got engaged to the woman he wants to spend his life with and the ring had been handed down from his dad for the occasion.
He and his fiancee were on their way to go search the 1/2 mile stretch of river with goggles only. He asked me if it made any sense for me to come try with a metal detector. I told him I would love to come help. So, I closed down my wood splitting chores (gladly!), loaded my water searching equipment into the car, and hit the road.
I met them there about an hour later and they showed me the search area. At first I had those overwhelming thoughts about how huge the search area was, but the only thing to do was to get started and peck away at it as much as possible. I knew the odds were against me because there were some very deep areas and some quite fast areas, too.
That first day we searched for about 5 hours. I covered about 200 or 300 feet of the river, finding only scrap metal. Hopefully I saved a few feet from being cut on that scrap! They also had no luck. So we decided to give it another try on the following weekend. Sometime midweek, his fiancee went back with a friend to search, no luck.
Today I got there a little before them and got started on the search. I was searching in a bit of fast water just upstream from where they had told me they had beached their tube and left the river. I had a strong feeling that he might have lost it in this area because I figured he did some strong padding with his hands to cross the current there. After digging several signals with my scoop and dumping it out on the sandy bank, I got a real promising signal and scooped it up. When I dumped this one on the sand, I saw a beautiful gold ring in the pile! What an awesome feeling, I couldn’t wait for them to arrive so I could hand it to him!
I love this hobby!
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