Weed Whacker- Mazonia?

[Megalodoodle]

I’ve heard that Mazonia is pretty overgrown and the fossils are difficult to get at. Are weed whackers allowed there?

[connorp]

Like, an electric one? Of course not.

[Mark Kmiecik]

A weed whacker would do you no good there. The overgrowth is thick and heavy. Chainsaw and explosives would be in order. Of course they'd have a BIG problem with those. Digging will do you no good either because of the amount of thick roots you'd run into. The best thing is to let nature do the work of exposing them, and you just walk around and pick them up. It might be a tight squeeze to get to some of what you see exposed, but those are the ones worth getting. The season for fossil hunting there opens March 1st and closes October 1st. If you plan to come up some time, try to go with someone who is experienced. On your own it will take 3 or 4 trips before you get the hang of where and how. And then, opening them to see what you've found can take months if done correctly. This is not a site that provides instant gratification often. I have some that I've been freezing and thawing on and off since 2003 (the best way to not screw up good finds). This is not a fossil area for the impatient.

[deutscheben]

Yeah, tools like a small hand rake or walking stick to clear debris or push branches out of your way is about it. Bushwhacking with a machete or weed whacker is not permitted as far as I know, you really just have to work with nature as much as possible, find deer trails or gaps in the brush to take advantage of. It’s not easy, as @Mark Kmiecik said.

[Megalodoodle]

Too bad, it was a ridiculous idea in the first place. I’m surprised that machetes aren’t allowed though. 

36 minutes ago, deutscheben said:

Yeah, tools like a small hand rake or walking stick to clear debris or push branches out of your way is about it. Bushwhacking with a machete or weed whacker is not permitted as far as I know, you really just have to work with nature as much as possible, find deer trails or gaps in the brush to take advantage of. It’s not easy, as @Mark Kmiecik said.

 

Edited February 6, 2022 by Megalodoodle

[connorp]

1 hour ago, Megalodoodle said:

Too bad, it was a ridiculous idea in the first place. I’m surprised that machetes aren’t allowed though. 

 

Machete wielding fossil hunters in a state park full of hikers?

[Mark Kmiecik]

2 hours ago, Megalodoodle said:

Too bad, it was a ridiculous idea in the first place. I’m surprised that machetes aren’t allowed though. 

 

 

You couldn't get through it with a machete. You'd give up chopping after 5 minutes, drenched in sweat, with the deer flies, mosquitoes, ticks and chiggers just loving your scent.

[Bobby Rico]

16 minutes ago, Mark Kmiecik said:

You couldn't get through it with a machete. You'd give up chopping after 5 minutes, drenched in sweat, with the deer flies, mosquitoes, ticks and chiggers just loving your scent.

You had me at deer flies 

[Megalodoodle]

47 minutes ago, Mark Kmiecik said:

 

You couldn't get through it with a machete. You'd give up chopping after 5 minutes, drenched in sweat, with the deer flies, mosquitoes, ticks and chiggers just loving your scent.

Ahhh but a Tully Monster would be worth the effort, eh?

[Wrangellian]

On 2/5/2022 at 6:28 PM, Mark Kmiecik said:

 I have some that I've been freezing and thawing on and off since 2003 (the best way to not screw up good finds). This is not a fossil area for the impatient.

Wow!

[Mark Kmiecik]

11 hours ago, Wrangellian said:

Wow!

 

It's not as crazy as it sounds. This amounts to 100 to 150 freeze thaw cycles over that period of time for the ones that have not cracked yet. You put the obstinate ones aside to make room in the freezer for the ones you haven't started yet. Let's say you can get 20 in the freezer each day (the wife generally has something to say about what's in the freezer) and you have 27 5-gallon buckets in the garage full of concretions and each has 200 concretions in it on average, and the average amount of cycles to crack is about 20. Do the math. Some days you forget to thaw them; sometimes you don't for other reasons. If you start with 10,000 concretions it will take many years to finish them all assuming you get to the tough ones you set aside in short order. Sometimes life interferes with your plans, etc. So if you're lucky and serious enough to collect a large quantity of concretions it will take some time. That's why many people use the hammer on them. You have to weigh the risk of damage versus reward versus time spent. How much of a chance are you willing to take on ruining the find of a lifetime? If you have hundreds of thousands of concretions available to work with then it's a faster job using the hammer like the people who collected while the strip mines were still in operation and shortly thereafter. Nowadays, it's more prudent to avoid the hammer whenever possible.

[Wrangellian]

16 hours ago, Mark Kmiecik said:

 

It's not as crazy as it sounds. This amounts to 100 to 150 freeze thaw cycles over that period of time for the ones that have not cracked yet. You put the obstinate ones aside to make room in the freezer for the ones you haven't started yet. Let's say you can get 20 in the freezer each day (the wife generally has something to say about what's in the freezer) and you have 27 5-gallon buckets in the garage full of concretions and each has 200 concretions in it on average, and the average amount of cycles to crack is about 20. Do the math. Some days you forget to thaw them; sometimes you don't for other reasons. If you start with 10,000 concretions it will take many years to finish them all assuming you get to the tough ones you set aside in short order. Sometimes life interferes with your plans, etc. So if you're lucky and serious enough to collect a large quantity of concretions it will take some time. That's why many people use the hammer on them. You have to weigh the risk of damage versus reward versus time spent. How much of a chance are you willing to take on ruining the find of a lifetime? If you have hundreds of thousands of concretions available to work with then it's a faster job using the hammer like the people who collected while the strip mines were still in operation and shortly thereafter. Nowadays, it's more prudent to avoid the hammer whenever possible.

Do you find fossils in ones that take 100-150 cycles? If it were me I would have gotten impatient after about 25-50 cycles or so, and whacked it. The one time I received a small batch of them, I tried freeze-thawing, as recommended... I think someone mentioned the average of 20 cycles for them to pop open, and as I recall, most popped within that time but none had anything in them except for one small Essexella which I later noticed (almost missed it) after informing the Forum that I had found nothing, but its outer crust had crumbled away leaving a not-so-attractive specimen, but I was not about to throw it away as it was all I got. I guess I needed a larger batch.

Edited February 14, 2022 by Wrangellian

[Nimravis]

I put aside certain concretions that I feel have a great shape and I freeze them over the Winter. Now This year on only put a few hundred outside to freeze, not all of the ones that I put aside. The ones that I have outside have been there before for a few Winters , hopefully some of them pop this year. Most of the concretions that I have I will hit with a hammer because I still have many to go and the time frame for freezing is too long. Do I damage some nice fossils from whacking them? Yes I do, but it is a chance that I am willing to take. I have also have nice fossils pop in the freezing, but but the time Spring came and the buckets froze and thawed over the Winter, the fossil got damaged and sometimes you cannot find all of the pieces.

 

When it comes to Mazon Creek fossils, it is rarely a place for instant gratification, like places such as the rivers and creeks in Florida or Texas. With MC stuff you have to make a personal decision on how long you are willing to wait. That is why I freeze some and whack many. 

[Mark Kmiecik]

7 hours ago, Wrangellian said:

Do you find fossils in ones that take 100-150 cycles? If it were me I would have gotten impatient after about 25-50 cycles or so, and whacked it. The one time I received a small batch of them, I tried freeze-thawing, as recommended... I think someone mentioned the average of 20 cycles for them to pop open, and as I recall, most popped within that time but none had anything in them except for one small Essexella which I later noticed (almost missed it) after informing the Forum that I had found nothing, but its outer crust had crumbled away leaving a not-so-attractive specimen, but I was not about to throw it away as it was all I got. I guess I needed a larger batch.

 

Some. Very few, actually. I guesstimate about 1 out of 10 or 20, depending on the location where they were found. It also depends on how long the fossils have been exposed in nature, besides the density of the matrix. It's complicated. I have a couple from a specific location (south Paradise lakes) that are going on to their 150th cycle or so. I can see part of the fossil in each poking its head out and teasing me to hammer it. They're going to be good ones, so I'll just keep freezing them. I can wait. The average number of cycles is about 20. Some locations pop in 2-3 and some pop in 70-80. That's how the average (mean) became 20-25. It's a guideline, not a rule. Like Ralph said above, if you're looking for instant gratification, you've come to the wrong fossil. You have to put a value on your time, and it seems the values are inverted. The old farts with little time left can wait, while the young'uns are impatient.

Edited February 14, 2022 by Mark Kmiecik

[Wrangellian]

Got it. I think my impatience hinged on the idea that the ones that were resistant to splitting were less likely to h ave anything in them. When I whacked them, I didn't see any hint of a fossil so I think I saved myself a lot of effort freeing and thawing. I guess if I had more of them and continued acquiring then as you do, I might adopt your methods... or maybe Ralph's.

[Mark Kmiecik]

7 hours ago, Wrangellian said:

When I whacked them, I didn't see any hint of a fossil so I think I saved myself a lot of effort freeing and thawing.

 

While it's true that there is much less of a chance of the resistant ones to yield a specimen of any kind, I think it's because they end up splitting in a plane other than the one in which the fossil lies. The trick is to get them to split revealing the fossil. If the fossil is small and the concretion is larger than average, or if there are multiple specimens in different layers the concretion doesn't really react well to freeze/thaw or hammering. However, the freeze/thaw method is the better choice if you want to avoid ruining what would have a really great and very rare specimen. I've seen some parts of tullymonsters in the field left behind as scrap when shattered with a hammer. The hammering method is an art unto itself as well. It is more like "controlled extreme tapping" than hammering a nail into a 2x4. It takes many, many concretions to develop the feel for it. Again, if you have tens of thousands of concretions on which to develop your skills, go for it. If you have a couple dozen and won't see many more any time soon, then you'll probably destroy most of the good specimens before you develop sufficient skill. If you saw all the fossils I ended up throwing away because I screwed them up beyond repair, you would cry.