It's a dog eat dog world in the river

     Being new to fossiling, I try to balance between helping other fossilers by sharing info on areas to dig, and being so tight-lipped about what I'm doing that anyone asking me for pointers might conclude I don't speak English.

    

     

     You have to be a little secretive when you find a good spot. In the beginning I would get excited and verbose when I found a good area and then watch in dismay as the old guys shamelessly moved in on it. I had to start containing my enthusiasm.  Jack told me that if I found a good spot, I shouldn't tell anyone and he added, laughing, "You shouldn't even tell me."

     No one owns the river; it's all fair game, and that lesson was hammered home one weekend with crushing clarity.  I was spending a Saturday working an area with Fossil Steve.  He is methodical and prefers to cover an area in a grid as opposed to "pot-holing" or digging willy nilly.  That day, I wasn't finding much at all and right before I had to pack up and leave, I gave a frustrated stab into the mucky clay at the bottom of our trench.  And I hit something.  It wasn't clay and it wasn't small gravel but it wasn't the solid rock of the river bottom either.  It was large chunks of tightly packed rock.  As I struggled to loosen them, Steve kindly moved right in to "help" me (I protested, to no avail).  Our first screens produced passable megs, horse teeth, large chunks of mammoth tooth, etc.  We began to dig frantically as we both had obligations that would force us to call it a day.

     Right about the time we had dug ourselves into a hole nearly chest deep a man comes canoeing along with his young son.  Steve and I looked at each other and our dismay was apparent.  The man said he wanted to "try" fossiling with his son but he had a boatload of gear and obviously wasn't a newbie.  We pointed to an area where we knew he would find shark teeth but he was studying us closely.  In an area of the river that wasn't even hip deep, Steve and I were stand shoulder to shoulder in a chest deep hole.  Kinda obvious.  But we had to leave, vowing to return on Monday.

     Less that 48 hours later we returned to find the whole spot dug out and a huge pile of discarded rock  poking up out of the river.  To the side of the discard pile was a castle and wall made out of rocks: the project of the young boy while his dad ROBBED US!  

     No, no, no...I know that's not how it is.  No one owns the river.  And let's be honest, I would've done the same damn thing.  

     We still worked the area for the rest of the day, finding some nice fossils including the biggest segments of mammoth tooth Jack had found to that date, but who knows what treasures our usurper took home that Saturday evening.