Gold probably is one of the easiest things in the world to cheat an absentee owner out of. He would generally have no way of really knowing if a guy had found 3 nuggets or 30 nuggets on his claim.

As I laid in my Jeep and tried to get some rest, I began to realize how tired I was. I felt like a little kid who walked around Disneyland for 12 hours with his parents.

My next strategy was to walk anywhere and everywhere that I had been inside this home and garage. I looked on the floor, in the bathroom, I checked the bathroom trash can, and I even pulled the shower curtain back and looked in the bathtub.

…being sneaky, I filled in the hole, and buried therein some trash items that I had previously found, just to discourage any other detectorist that might come along.

All of this made me have to conclude that those dummies just didn’t know what they were doing. It was a couple of years later before the solution for this puzzle became clear to me.

My right rib cage took the brunt of the blow from the fall, which left me feeling partially paralyzed and in immense pain.

He could tell that the top part just slid partway down over the bottom half. So, he tried to twist it apart with his hands. No go!