It is my 5th day fossil hunting and I belive that looking for fossils is much like looking for relics just alot less expensive. In this way I mean, you go out and buy a thousand dollar machine just to look for say civil war relics, but for fossil hunting all you have is your time,gas, and cost of the sifter if you use one, now by my book that only around $960 cheaper.

With that being said I would like to introduce myself, my name is matt I live in Winterville NC and I have been a civil war relic hunter for almost 9 years now, I have traveled the east coast looking for relics and have been in over 23 different states and recovered history, I also have a great deal of my relics in museums, vistors centers, and schools across the US. Metal detecting is fun as can be anything but I always make sure that I have the permission of the landowner or the state official before I procede to dig anywhere, this will ensure and I am sure its the same in fossil hunting that the hobby stays in good standing for a long time.

Just recently a good friend of mine that I hunt relics with in the state of Maryland got me introduced in the world of fossil hunting, he hunts the "calvert cliffs" in maryland quite a bit as well as has a good size collection in the calvert county museum. He took me to the Aurura fossil fesitval in 2010 for the 1st time, and I have to say that I had a blast, I had no idea that there were even such teeth as big as the ones that I saw and had no idea that this many people were involved in fossil hunting. Well I had to go, I had caught the itch and the little spoilage piles at the event just were not easing the pain of seeing all those HUGE teeth. I knew deep down I wasnt gonna find a 6 incher my first day, but it was always nice to think of such.

A day after the return to Greenville and 300 tiny sharkteeth later I figured that me and my neighboor would go try GMR "Green Mill Run" in Greenville NC. Now I grew up only 2 miles from GMR and knew about it the whole time it just never registered that it had fossils in it. The 1st day there again we really didnt know what we were doing and this was only my 2nd time ever looking fossils. Sure we found some by digging and sifting but again all baby teeth. Well after about 7 hours of my back throbbing and again alot of small teeth we decided to call it quits. Upon getting home I was starting to reconsider my fossil hunting adventures and think that this might not be for me. Got online and asked to meet up with some better knowleged people and maybe learn a few skills from them.

Sunday roles around and I figured I would go out one last time and try it on my own this way, there would be noisy neighboor talking and I could concentrate until my help arrived, walked down to the creek in the same spot and started digging and sifting small tooth after small tooth and when I say small I mean like 1/8 of an inch. 4 hours later I finally see someone walking down the creek with a shovel and a sifter, so out I come and I start following him. I didnt want to take his secret spot or annoy the man just wanted to see if it was the person that I had talked to on the internet the night before. Finally I caught up to him and he was just as nice as he could be explaining that he drove all the way from Tenn. just to come hunt GMR, he told me about the differnent fossils and what to look for, feel for and how to dig. After seeing him pull a monosaur tooth at about 1 1/2" I wanted to dig, so I picked a spot beside an old fallen tree and started digging...

At first the same results small teeth and bone, THEN my first actual big tooth, now what I was considering big was anything bigger than an 8th of an inch,lol. So I stayed right in that spot pulling good sized teeth out left and right apparently someone had missed that one little spot, it wasnt until the guy that I had spoken to on the internet arrived that I finally realized how many teeth I actually had. This guy was from Raliegh NC and he asked if we were finding anything, I reached in my pocket and to my suprise pulled out about 14 teeth all measuring anywhere from 1" to 2.14" only 4 of these 14 were almost perfect with the root and tooth still intact. Well needless to say I was freaking hooked like fish now. The day finally ended and my total was around 16 or so good sized teeth, but I wasnt done I was gonna come back the next day and hunt that hole out.

Monday the 7th myself and 2 frineds go back to that spot where I pulled all the bigger teeth from and start digging, before to long we all are pulling meg chuncks then a few nice GW's here and there. Well one of our buddies had to leave b/c he had to work 3rd shift and had to get some sleep. So we continued to dig I dug out my original hole as big as I could until I was getting into the sand that I had sifted out the day before. I ended up with about 6 more GW teeth, huge bone fragments, meg chunks, fossilized fern print and a snail. Bobby did pretty good as well, he got around 4-5 GW's in great condition and lots of other fossils as well. About the time that we gonna leave a man approached us introduced hiself as a photographer for the Daily Reflector Paper here in Greenville NC and wanted to know if he could take some pics of us. He snapped a few pic and asked a few questions and we answered them to the best of our knowledge, and then all of a sudden we made the front page of the local section that following Thursday.

It only took me 7 years to make the paper in Relic Hunting but yet only took 4 days in the fossil world. Anyway this is my story and how I am now a certified relic and fossil hunter.

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