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Select Here to View the MDHTALK's December News Brief in Adobe .PDF |
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| December 2017 | Metal Detecting Hobby Talk News Brief Volume 8 Number 93 | |
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Support The Hobby I would like to point out to the News Brief readers that there are a number of organizations taking on the challenge against various types of legislation dealing with metal detecting and gold prospecting. MDHTALK's recommendation is to visit their website and give strong consideration to joining the fight. In some cases your support may be to send emails and / or write a letter to specific legislators or to provide funds to help with the fight. Here are the organizations and a link to their website. |
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MDHTALK News Pages U.S. & W.W. News U.K. News U.S. Archaeology U.S. Legislation W.W. Meteoritic Other Media MDHTALK Article Links Return Stories MDHTALK Find a Club Read Newsletters FaceBook Clubs MDHTALK Event Calendar December |
What is a News Brief? The news brief provides a brief look into any news event. The intent of the news brief is to provide you, the reader, with news clips on what was taking place in the hobby last month. To read the whole story select the Article Link or go to MDHTALK.org. There are more news stories placed on the MDHTALK website for November the news stories listed in the MDHTALK News Brief are just a portion of all the hobby related news reported the past month. The news Brief is now available in Adobe PDF format, there is a link at the top of this webpage. The news brief is no longer emailed; it is only available on the MDHTALK website and can be downloaded. The Website's featured article for this month: Roaming Access to Public Lands has Disappeared for Metal Detectorist and Others Download To Read The Complete Article The Ideal Situation is to have complete access to public lands with no restrictions but alas that is far from today's reality. Today's Reality is that more and more public lands are being put behind man made barriers. These barriers come in the form of laws, regulations and rules that prohibit or limit many personal outdoor activities on public lands. This is the biggest single issue facing many out door activities (recreational metal detecting, gold prospecting, fossil and mineral collecting, rock hounding, off road vehicles, etc). Access to public lands is not just a metal detecting issue but is also the single most important major issue for the many outdoor recreational activities. Why are more and more public lands being put off limits to metal detectorist? Metal detectorist are being pushed off of public land because the hobby is considered to be destructive by many public land managers, archaeologist and nature preservationists. Public land managers find that their many parks, school yards and ball fields are being heavily damaged by irresponsible detectorist. Many new detectorist have entered the hobby and have not taken the time to learn how to correctly recovery a target from the turf. The result is that there is a great deal of damage caused to manicured public parks grass, ball fields, etc. All detectorists must afford the same consideration, care and non-destructive behavior toward public lands as he / she would towards their own lawn and property. National, state and local historical sites have been plundered for profit by a small number of individuals without any regard to the historical value and significance to the public. Generally, these individuals plunder for profit and in some cases for their private collection. |
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General U.S. and World Wide Hobby News
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Other News
Season Number Three Episode One Video Link Episode Two Video Link Episode Three Video Link Episode Four Video Link |
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Hello to the FMDAC Membership.
A big thank you to all who attended the Gettysburg function. Everyone appeared to have a good time. The weather was great on Saturday. Sunday was a different story. The forecast predicted a total washout to begin early morning and continue non stop. Somehow the gods looked down on us and had pity. Marge Cleaves said it was her late husband Doug's intervention. So thank you Doug! The sky was fairly clear and the rain held off throughout the first hunt. The second was moved up 2 hours and it began misting before it ended. When the original hunt time came around there was a soaking rain that lasted the rest of the day. We were all cleaned up and on our way out by then. The Saturday hunt was put on by the Central region director Don Hayes. The token for a Tecknetics T2 (donated by Mike Race) was won by the FMDAC secretary Frank Colletti. After the hunt everyone was off in various directions. Some went to the Civil War Relic show some went to tour the battlefield, and some to the many shops, museums and other attractions scattered throughout the area. On Saturday evening we gathered in the breakfast area at the host hotel. Pizza and drinks were served. That was followed by a talk by VP Ed Burke whose ancestor was present at Gettysburg. His great grandfather was in the 56th PA infantry who fought in the first days battle. They were forced to flee through the streets of the town being vastly outnumbered by the Confederate forces. A second speaker then took the “stage”. Mary Shafer talked about her book “Metal detecting for beginners”. Mary became frustrated when she started detecting. She found it tough to understand the vernacular, the rules and all the other basic stuff. So she put it all together in a book to help out other newcomers. I have only flipped through her book and I will tell you that it is good advice for not just the novice but a good refresher for the old-timers. We then had a free drawing for a bunch of prizes, some silver and a Minelab Go-find (won by William Purkey). Sundays hunts went off well. Both hunts were concluded before the drenching began. As we were in a major Civil War area I thought it only right that there were a few relics in the ground for all to find. I purchased a couple dozen bullets at the show and buried them throughout the fields. All the prize tokens were found which is always a positive. There were 5 top tokens that were randomly placed among the numbered tokens. The finders were called up in the order the tokens were turned in and drew an envelope for the prize. The winners were; Gary Pennington Fisher F44 Mike Raback Garrett Z-Lynk Tom Metz Garrett Pinpointer Jack Armstrong Minelab Pinpointer Richard Otterbourgh Garrett AT-Pro The Raffle for a Fisher F44 was won by Tammy Kepler and a red, white and blue afghan made by my wife Kathy was won by Mike Race. Thank you to all who attended and to all who helped out and donated to the event. The relic show was fantastic and we talked to a lot of people. The artifacts at the show were sometimes in the WOW category. Those who looked around carefully were able to see a very rare belt plate. An Arkansas state plate was there and available for purchase. There are only 5 known. It could be yours for the paltry sum of $75,000! I am very happy to say that I have now seen 2 of the 5. The first was on display (not for sale) at the 2017 American Digger Civil War Relic Show in Charleston, SC. If you are in the Charleston area the first weekend of January then stop in to the show and say hi. The FMDAC will have an informational table there. We will also be at the American Digger Civil War show in Chattanooga, TN the last weekend of July 2018. I want to thank the board members of the FMDAC for helping to put on the weekend events. Also to Nancy Burke, Peggy Hayes and Sandy Troyer for helping out at the table in the show hall. It cannot be done by one person. It takes a group effort to make it a success. I especially want to thank all who donated: Garrett, First Texas, Minelab, Whites, American Digger, Lost Treasure, Mike and Sue Race, Ed Burke/Pot O Gold, FMDAC Central Region, Andy Blessing Check out the face book page for photos of the event. |
We do not have our next event scheduled yet and are always looking for a place to hold it and also for someone or club
to help us put it together. If there is an event in your area that we might hook up with then let us know. Or maybe you
are in an area that would lend itself to people wanting to visit. Our Southern Region director Art DiFilippo is checking
into the possibility of holding one in the Charleston, SC area. Let us know if you are interested in attending there. No
dates or anything at this time as we are just looking at the possibilities. But let us know as it will help us make a determination.
Our board meeting was held on Friday. A lot was discussed. Part of which was to be more active on the social media type sites, including YouTube. None of us are really savvy in that area right now but we will need to be. The intent is to put some of our messages into video format as well as written. We will start again sending out a regular news brief. Our temporary legislative officer Lee Weise offered to do this. If you do not receive this through your club then you need to check with your club officers. The information is sent to them to disseminate to their members. The target recovery program will get off the ground in 2018. The kick off is planned for Treasure Week which takes place at Fox Den Acres Campground in New Stanton, PA in July. The program is meant to be a hands-on certification. There will be a lecture period followed by demonstrations of the techniques. After that will be a practice session. Once each person feels confident in the recovery techniques they will need to demonstrate them in front of an instructor. After completion they will receive a card that they have been trained in proper recovery techniques. Now there are many who will easily be able to pass this. There will be others who will need to brush up on their techniques and unfortunately there may be a few who need a lot of work. The whole intent of this program is to educate our own hobby. To curb the growing sloppy recovery techniques that we see rising over the last decade. It is on full display on the internet. Many of the videos display less then desirable techniques. People (newbie's) watch this and think that it is proper. So they follow it and some of them even make videos. The problem is getting worse and IT MUST STOP! We intend to make this program portable so it can be taught all over the country. Now we will not be able to travel all over. It is to cost prohibitive. However we plan on certifying instructors around the country. There will be video made available online but that will not result in certification. Anyone can click a start button for a video and then click print that they watched it. It means nothing. In order to pass this program each person will have to demonstrate that they can properly recover a target. This way we know they can do it as they have demonstrated that they can. So there will be no reason after that for sloppy recovery. This could be very useful in situations where a park is about to be closed or even in attempting to open up any closed areas. It could be part of a permit system or even the permit itself. This will be a work in progress. Our Southern region Director Art DiFilippo is working on setting up a donation page for the website. Any individual or business can donate to the FMDAC with a few clicks. Those donations are tax deductible. More info will be available on this when it is up and running. Last of all…Its election time. Know this is short notice but if you wish to run for an office or to nominate someone then let us know ASAP. Emails went out recently from the secretary concerning this. Nominations should be sent to the secretary - Frank Colletti by Dec 1. Once again I must say that anytime you hear of an issue popping up that would be a detriment to the hobby then let us know. We cannot help out if we do not know it is happening. Mark Schuessler, FMDAC National President |
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Metal Detecting & Gold Prospecting Events. Now is the time to start planning and getting your club's 2018/19 hunt information on the web. The sooner it is out and available to the metal detecting community the greater the chance for people to see it and give your event some consideration. Add Your Event Information Here |
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the Complete Event Details for December |
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