Quitters of Arrowhead Hunting

[Cecilia]

I missed this! But, now I found…

[gregszybala]

No, well said.

[antmike915]

I haven't quit yet, but I know my last hunt will come one day (hopefully later than sooner).

[Uncle Trav]

Sorry for the rambling post😵💫

[Uncle Trav]

I’ve only been hunting artifacts for just over a year and a half now. I consider myself a casual hunter. If I find something it’s a great day and if I don’t it’s still a great day outside. History and all it’s different stories is a constant driver for me. More often than not I’ll fall down a rabbit hole following some interesting aspect of history. If I put all of those rabbit holes in one field it would resemble a bombed out battleground. If I based my continuing interest in hunting artifacts on the number of finds I get I would have quit after a couple of trips to the fields. There are so many different facets of our hobby that my interest hasn’t waned. Now with our fields covered with snow it’s hard to keep the spark of hunting artifacts alive. I’ll tread lightly because that snow cover may be hiding another rabbit hole I may fall down.

[CMD]

We went from an average of 125 complete points/year in the 1990’s to 8 points, some broken, in 2021. A function of far fewer hunts, but also a function of regular spots playing out, even as more people hunt them now. I hunt less because there is less out there, and there is less out there because of the decades of pressure my wife and I put on those sites.

My wife very seldom hunts at all anymore, but numerous serious injuries have not helped her. If my spots still produced to the point that I felt encouraged at the start of each hunt, I’d go out more. But when you expect to strike out, you hunt less.

I also do not feel like starting over again: hunting out new potential spots, seeking permission, determining the hot spots; all that is a lot of driving and leg work, and I’m just not really inspired enough to go through all that. Instead, I will look in the old spots once in awhile, and get lucky a few times a year.

Also recently lost our most productive, “cannot miss”, field to development. Hundreds of points over the years. Where I took my sisters when they wanted to find their first point, because it was a true “cannot miss” spot, and they found their first. I did manage to fill in the salvage archaeology crew as to what the site represented, so that was good. After 30 years, I was able to get the site properly understood and recorded. But, one more spot gone forever.

I feel as if hunting points is close to “over”, and I’m fine with that. I can’t bring back our version of “the good ole days”, so why cry about it? We put our time in, we did good.

[dougachim]

I go out every chance I get.

[JoshinMO]

Digging and kidnapping are things I'd like to do. Been years since I did either. Nice Points and words All.

[Hal Gorges]

Triple giggles on that one 🙏

[Narrow Way Knapper]

Glad you had a chance to re-live the glory days. I'm pretty sure that if there was something of historical significance you would have found it. 😉

[UpNorth]

Go gettum Florida boy….✌️

[UpNorth]

👍

[UpNorth]

Rule 2 … thou shall never quit.
It’s in your blood….. I “quit” this valley, only to find myself going back…… keep kick’n dirt….✌️

[Hal Gorges]

Knapping...Yes, yes..🐟

[Hal Gorges]

Take up knappin..I drove by a construction site today and the dang car engine just quit on me so I coasted in and took a look..No luck but I had just as big a thrill as when I was in my prime and hunting ..Oh yeah, wouldn’t ya know it, as soon as I got back to that ornery car , well you know what happened, and I was late for a doctors appointment to boot..All in all I’d say I had a great day, and now I’m sittin up in bed on a heatin pad..Moral of the story: Good day bad day, get reved up about it cuzz none of us got too many left