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Showing results for tags 'theisons quarry'.
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Hey everyone, As some may already know I’m in Austin Texas until Sunday. Leading up to the trip I couldn’t pinpoint any reliable Texas locations due to water level reports and people warning about water levels at some localities. Some of the places I was interested in were on rivers. I could have wasted a lot of time if I showed up with high water levels. I’m only here once to I needed to chose something with less of a gamble. So I figured I would just scratch my trilobite itch up in Oklahoma!! We arrived in Austin on Tuesday and I had arranged a hunt with Leon for Wednesday. This way I would be back to Austin Wednesday night. Turns out Leon and Alan Lang are best friends of over 30 years! Leon actually called Alan to ask who I was and I passed the test haha. Small tangent but needs to be said......Leon, like Alan Lang interview people before letting them in. Sadly the intentions of some people are not pure. Also some people gripe and groan about prices as if complaining will be enough to get a discount. Or people get too pushy and try to dicker price making the whole thing awkward...It doesn’t work like that. Yes Leon’s and Lang’s are pay to dig. Yes we all want free fossils and for the most part free fossils are available all over the country/world. They are nice to even let us in. People don’t really appreciate or I should really say “understand” the investment it takes to own these places. They don’t have to let us in at all. Think of Caleb’s quarry (Rochester shale) and the quarry exposing the Trenton group with exquisite trilobites. Good luck even getting access to those places. I hear the owners of Caleb’s quarry are very nice people but it’s private. Privately owned and privately dug. There are places like this all over the world....privately owned and privately dug. I’ve seen a lot of stuff on the forum kinda knocking the pay to dig quarries and I think it’s a matter of perspective and possibly jealousy...heck I’m legit extremely jealous!!! If I told you how much money these guys poured into these places (especially Lang x10) you would ask...”why aren’t they charging more!” After one conversation in person you would probably change your tone and realize these guys are just like us....fossil crazy and actually quite nice. Ok back on topic I met Leon in Coleman, Oaklahoma at 8am yesterday (Wednesday) and I immediately recognized him. He’s actually on Alan Lang’s website prepping a multi plate. I didn’t realize it was him from the website! We chatted for a moment and off we went! You can’t stumble on this place...and Leon has many stories from 20-30 years ago about people sneaking in and selling fossils before the land was sold to Leon. One story about a particular poacher brought some laughs. Leon’s a funny dude. After the gate we had to literally drive through cow pastures. We saw deer, coyotes (yea coyotes!), cows and a bull! Just driving through the fields ha. The black one further away is a bull.
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