Shortly after the first of the year I met up with Pam to search for a good digging spot. We started paddling upstream, working the river bottom with our probes all along the way. Pam expressed interest in stopping at a shallow, well-dug area and scraping the thing layer of debris along the rock bottom. I know fossils can be found that way and due to the nature of the hobby, a lot of good fossils fall off of shovels on their way from the under the water to our floating screens but I had an intense desire to find a pocket that hadn't been dug before. Understand, the Peace River has been HEAVILY dug for decades by tens of thousands of people. An undug spot is a rarity.
I told Pam I was going to keep paddling and she, being a very good sport, came with me. We paddled for a long time without finding any gravel at all and when we finally got to a rocky area (obvious signs of other digging, of course) I announced that I was stopping right there coz I wasn't going to paddle another stroke (remember: I'm not a fan of paddling). Pam started digging about 20 yards upstream from me while I found a layer of rock and gravel and began my own search.
Almost immediately, I pulled up the first complete horse tooth I had ever found. After months of listening to the old guys call out, "Horse tooth!" I finally got to do the same!
Over the course of a few more visits, I found over 50 horse teeth, many in excellent condition, including a few teeth from extinct 3-toed horses. That first day, Pam wasn't having any luck so I encouraged her to dig by me...but NOT exactly where I was digging, lol. She also began to find good fossils although not to the degree that I was. Every screen yielded treasures and as a beginner, they were all pretty much new to my collection.
I found my first large chunks of mammoth and mastodon teeth, including an almost complete baby mammoth tooth, as well as beautiful bison, camel and tapir teeth. My first tooth from a giant ground sloth, a little banged up but a keeper all the same. Several perfect armor scutes from glyptodons and giant armadillos, turtle fossils galore. Vertebra, teeth and ear bones from marine mammals and several gator teeth. A list of list of animal fossils so varied and extensive that Pam was inspired to nickname me the Zookeeper.
The above photos are the front and back of a horse's wolf tooth. I didn't even know they had such a thing!
I took Jack to my location, once again crazy protective of the very small pocket I had found that was the most productive, and he also found great fossils. He sternly instructed me NOT to tell anyone else where the location was so I had to laugh when went by myself one morning and found a youth group and chaperones, numbering close to 40 people, camped in the immediate vicinity. Nothing is truly secret on the Peace River.
After a couple more visits, Jack, a veteran fossiler, wrote to me in an email, "This is the single best Peace River location that I have seen or heard about since I started looking [several] years ago--that includes me and anyone I know. No spot has produced as much as this one this quickly. Treasure your digging there--it will be over too soon and finding another like it may take years..."
And the "gold rush" part of my honey hole did end within a few visits. I've often imagined a 3-d image of this pocket of treasures, undisturbed for who knows how long, until I happened upon it.
Horse incisor, minus the root.
Skill and experience factor heavily but sometimes it's just luck.
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