Peace River first time

[jpip]

First time to the peace river, after reading everything on here I was dying to get out there. I rented a canoe and stopped about a 1/4 mile from the launch on a gravel pit. Ended up staying in that spot all day. We maybe found 1000 teeth in total. We weren't sure if finding small teeth was a good sign for finding larger teeth or if it is irrelevant. 

I think I found a few baby megalodons and broken 2 Broken Makos. Not completely sure however. And 3 alligator/crocodile teeth. Nothing larger than about an inch. 

I plan on going back this week to look for larger teeth before this weeks rain brings the water up to high. 

 

[jpip]

[jpip]

[jpip]

[thelivingdead531]

Nice finds!

[PODIGGER]

Nice haul!  You did very well for your first trip to the Peace.  Plenty of Tigers, some nice Hemi's and small megs.  Your right about the weather - I am hoping to get at least one more trip in before the water gets too high. 

[jcbshark]

That’s quite the haul for your first trip! Congrats 

[sharko69]

Great bunch of teeth! Would love the opportunity to hunt there.

[digit]

On 5/25/2020 at 11:37 AM, jpip said:

We weren't sure if finding small teeth was a good sign for finding larger teeth or if it is irrelevant. 

Yes and no.

 

Finding lots of small teeth is an indication that you are digging in an area that has not seen a lot of hunting pressure. When I'm digging in a well-known spot, I prospect a bit before settling on a location to dig for a while. If I'm not even seeing even smaller teeth in my sifting screen for several screens in a row I start suspecting that what I'm digging in is a redistributed (by the river) spoil pile that someone has already picked the goodies from. While prospecting for a place to spend an hour or two digging I am encouraged by obvious fossils (megs, horse teeth, large shark teeth like "makos" or good size tigers or hemis) that most hunters would have taken if they had the chance. Experienced hunters have often had their fill of broken dugong rib bones and even some of the less complete or distinctive turtle shell fragments and so I do not consider finding those an indication of virgin material.

 

As far as small teeth indicating larger teeth in the same spot, I believe there is a bit of a negative correlation there. I tell novice fossil hunters that fossils don't know they are fossils and they think they are just plain rocks.  The river (through complex mechanisms of hydrological forces) tends to aggregate gravel into patches and gravel bars--concentrating the gravel and winnowing out much of the finer sand which continues further downstream. Quite often this gravel sorts by size with the larger gravel dropping out of suspension first and finer (thus lighter) gravel carrying further on by slower currents.

 

I have 3 spots I usually take friends to when I'm hunting the Peace River between Brownville Park and Arcadia. The first is a well known site just downstream of the put-in at Brownville. It has what I would consider "medium" gravel with the chunks somewhere in the chickpea to walnut size class (wouldn't it be great if there were official size classes named for food items?) and the fossils I find there are generally of the same size. I find decent size shark teeth there and things like horse, bison, and camel teeth along with turtle shell fragments and small fragments of mammoth and mastodon teeth.

 

The next spot I usually stop at, after introducing new hunters to the concept of digging and sifting at this first site, is a site with very large gravel. There is some finer material but this spot is dominated by larger chunks--orange or grapefruit size pieces all the way up to bowling ball boulders (decidedly NOT a food item). It is a pain in the butt to dig into as you often have to wiggle the shovel down between these big chunks which can be a challenge. A chunk of matrix the size of a softball or bowling ball can easily sink a sifting screen so these pieces are usually quickly tossed aside. You get a lot of extra exercise launching these far enough away not to get splashed by the "depth charge" splash when these hit the water. The reason for putting up with all this extra work is that a site with very coarse gravel (and basically large chunky rocks) is also the kind of spot where larger fossils would lodge themselves during the summer flood stage when the river is "hiding" fossils for the following season. I have pulled up some nice larger fossils from this site and it is the place where most of my large pieces of mammoth tooth have come from. There are a lot less larger fossils than smaller fossils in the river (or anywhere for that matter) and so it is a quality over quantity game at this site. You might go several sifting screens without even spotting smaller shark teeth (and only having half a dozen chunks of dugong rib bone) but then all that effort is rewarded by a large horse tooth, a big gator osteoderm, or a large fragment of mammoth or mastodon tooth.

 

The final spot I visit if we have younger kids with us is one that has very fine gravel--it is marked in my GPS as the site 'fine'. This gravel is what I would call pea-gravel as it is barely large enough to be held back by a 1/4" screen. The chances of finding larger items at this site is pretty slim (though I did pull a perfect 2" meg just moments after declaring that such a thing would never be found at this site). This is a site that promises lots of smaller shark teeth. We often have competitions where each group can put in 3 shovels of gravel and then see who can pull the most small shark teeth from the sifting screen. Our record is somewhere in the low 30s. It's a good place to "bulk up" on smaller teeth so that people can build a nice collection of these. I have found other small fossils at this last site (a Holmesina floridanus molar and some really nice ray dermal denticles) but generally this is not the place you'd expect to be finding a mammoth tooth or a large (and complete) meg tooth.

 

So, in general, finding lots of small teeth is an indication that you may continue to do the same--a great way of amassing a nice bowl full of these teeth which makes a great display. You might get lucky and find some larger items but your chances are much greater if you are digging in a spot that has gravel as large as the items you are hoping to find. There are more smaller fossils than larger ones so you can pick your site if you feel like winning a lot of $1 scratch-off lottery tickets or taking your chances at the longer odds of hitting the powerball jackpot. Having a mixture of spots with different size gravel is a recipe for a satisfying day on the river.

 

 

Cheers.

 

-Ken

[jpip]

On 5/28/2020 at 1:20 PM, digit said:

 

-Ken

Ken,

 

Thank you so much for the insight! This is a all new to me so I am trying to pick up as much info as I can, I really appreciate you spending the time to write all that.  That was pretty much everything I was looking to find out lol.

 

 

[digit]

Information (and knowledge) is best when it is shared. TFF is a great place to share knowledge.

 

 

Cheers.

 

-Ken