Echols

Don Echols was born in the fall of 1944 during the peak of WWII. His first relic hunt wasn't until twenty years later on a very hot day in July of 64. The location was behind the White Elephant Antique Shop in Centerville, Va. where he recovered the center section of a small snake buckle thought to have been used by the Confederates. This find, along with a few .69 caliber bullets, and he was hooked for life

( I asked Don a few questions regarding his life and relic hunting and his responses were so eloquent, I decided to leave it in his words.)

I did very poorly in high school except in History classes. To me school was for sports but I did like reading about American history and in particular Virginia’s role in the Civil War. While at a family get-together I listened with interest to my uncle Paul describe a new hobby called metal detecting. (He and his brother Dennis are in the Crouch relic book) His supervisor at work (Harry Viscar-look him up in the Crouch book) had introduced him to the hobby and both had become fanatics. I ask if I could go with him sometimes and I finally got my chance as stated above.

I started out in Fairfax Co. but quickly expanded to all of northern Virginia. I have hunted in Md., Pa., W. Va., N.C. & N.M. Recently most of my hunting has been in Culpeper, Madison & Orange counties.

In the very early days I was dependant on invitations from my uncle because I had to use his extra metal detector. As soon as I could afford my first Metrotec hunting became automatic on the weekends & evenings in the summer.

The borrowed detector I first used was a homemade Heath Kit detector. If you’ve never seen one you can’t imagine how crude these things were. The ear phones were nothing like today's. They looked like something from a war movie & were very uncomfortable. I discovered that I could tape a transistor radio to the side of the machine and tune it in to the detector frequency and I had an external speaker. This saved the agony of using those ear phones. Next came all the different models of the Metrotec. I’ve put at least a 100,000 miles on those machines. They solved the earphone problem by developing a plug in external speaker. My first motion machine was a Whites 6 DB which came out +/- 1980. I still have this machine and it works. I’ve had other Whites, a Bounty Hunter and currently I have a Minelab Explorer II and two Whites MXTs.

While hunting in a New York Cavalry camp near Warrenton I found a near perfect set of lead knuckles. I had visions of a city boy cavalry soldier using up all his rifle & pistol rounds, then fighting with his saber & when that failed he went back to his street training, put on his “knucks” & duked it out with the Rebs. I also found an SNY & US box plate with these knuckles. Another unusual find was a US box plate with a carving in the lead back. It was of a particular part of the female anatomy that indicated the soldier was thinking of his lady back home.

All relic hunters dream of finding plates from both armies. The ultimate find for a Virginia relic hunter is a Virginia belt buckle. Most never experience the thrill of this find but this year in April I had the good fortune to find one at a house site. It is now the center piece of my collection.

More so then ever. I retired in 2000 and became more serious about digging than I had been in years. I now hunt as much as 20 hours a week in the winter and as much as I can stand in the heat of summer. (I’m going out this morning)

Do you have any interesting or unusual stories from your relic hunting days? Please elaborate.

I have helped detect plane crash sites, murder & suicide scenes and made numerous attempts at locating lost items for friends. My most unusual hunt occurred in a jail. I was at work in Manassas and got a call from my police investigator brother-in-law. He knew I metal detected & he ask me if I could detect a bullet in a persons body. Not knowing where he was going with this I said sure I can do it!!! What followed was bizarre. The police had captured a fugitive that had been at large for several years. He had been charged with murder, captured in Ohio and brought back to Virginia for trial. Years before he had been involved in a shoot-out with police and there was blood at the scene so the police knew he had been hit but still got away. Due to the evidence of a bullet wound in his leg they speculated that if the bullet was still in him they could get a court order to have it removed and do ballistics tests that would be advantageous to their case. Before they let me check him out a police detective hid a bullet on his person and ask me to find it. Each time I got a reading I ask him if he had metal in that area & each time it was something other that the bullet. Finally I got down to his shoe & got a reading. I ask him to move over in case I was getting a ground reading & I was not. I them ask him to raise his foot off the ground & I still got the reading. I told him the bullet or some metal object was in his shoe. He grinned & said I had passed the test. He took his shoe off and removed a .38 pistol round. Then it was off to the “Bull Pen” and my meeting with “Bad Charley” the murderer. Six or more burley investigators brought out Bad Charley who was dressed in his orange coveralls. They told him that if he made a wrong move they would beat him to a pulp. I’m thinking, man, what have I gotten myself into this time. I started checking his legs and was not getting any readings. I mentioned that it was difficult to tell how close I was to his legs because of the baggy coveralls. I couldn’t believe it when they told him to strip down to his underwear. I’m thinking that now he is really whizzed & I’m wondering how much damage he could do to me before they got him under control. I started checking the area on his leg where the scars were but got no readings. I was using a Whites motion machine & while moving the coil quickly over the scarred area above his knee I accidentally hit him in the family jewels. He flinched & groaned & I thought I was dead. All the big investigators moved in a step and nothing happened. Finally I had to tell them that in my opinion there was no bullet in this guy’s leg. From all the scarring it appeared that he had had it removed probably by someone that was not a surgeon. I got out alive and told my brother-in-law I wanted no more of that kind of metal detecting.

What would be your best advice for someone who wants to begin relic hunting?

Before investing in an expensive detector borrow one from an established hunter & do some hunting with that person. Most people will find that the hobby is not for them unless they have an above average optimistic personality. Relic hunting (metal detecting) is time consuming, expensive, hard work, and finds are usually very minimal. If a person is not willing to keep trying after countless hours of searching with little to show for the effort their expensive detector will end up in a closet or on e-bay. Those that stay with it will be rewarded with an occasional fantastic find that makes it all worthwhile.

Over the years April has seemed to be my lucky month. My wife, my daughter and one of my grandsons were all born in April. Last year on April 6^th I had the great fortune of finally finding my first complete CS belt buckle after nearly forty-two years of on again off again metal detecting. It was a Virginia style two piece tongue and wreath and both pieces were found less than two feet apart. It looked like the troopers belt had broken while he was on the move and he did not stop to retrieve the remains.

This year April got off a little slow but on the anniversary of the CS find I could not wait to get in the woods and see what might happen. Well, not much! I got one Gardner bullet, one carved bullet, a buck ball and a percussion cap. Did I really think there was hope for another buckle after it had taken 42 years to find the first one????? I’m always an optimist when it comes to relic hunting and even if I go five straight hunts and find nothing I am just as eager to get out on day six as if I had found a truck load on each previous hunt.

On the seventh a buddy called and wanted to get out for a few hours but neither of us had a prospective site that we were confident would give up much. We opted to go to a house site that I had hunted several times and on each trip it gave a hint of relics but no concentration. My friend found one three ringer and I got an 1826 penny and a clad quarter. We pretty much got thumped. We gave it up after three hours.

By the 11^th my fever for hunting was raging again but I couldn’t find anyone that could get out that day and I still didn’t have a good site to go to. There was a threat of afternoon rain so I opted to go back to the same house site hoping to get another old coin. No one to hunt with, not much time to hunt, and impending rain was the setting and expectations were very low on the scale. These are perfect conditions for a great find.

Went back to the area I had found the coin & got nothing. I decided to move to the side of the house in an adjacent field to try my luck. As soon as I moved I noticed that the ground was wet & there appeared to be a spring near by plus I could see the indentation of an old road running by the site. Not bad signs!! A few feet further and I got a nice artillery fuse. Things were looking up. About twenty feet further & I got a rock solid buckle reading on the MXT…Pulse rate goes up slightly as I start the dig but shoots to the top when I see a solid green rectangular edge looking up at me. I grabbed it out of the dirt but it was only a heavy style sling buckle. It’s a great find but a bit of a let down at the same time. I started working the area in a circular pattern around this find and about ten feet down the hill I got another good signal but it was only a 1911 Wheat penny. A foot away the MXT got a signal that was about as strong as the penny so naturally I thought maybe there was going to be a coin spill. Was I ever surprised when a near perfect Virginia style wreath rolled out of the dirt. Now the pulse rate is really slamming in anticipation of an instant replay of last years buckle. Alas, this time it was not to be. I hunted until the rain ran me out but no tongue this time. As I retreated from the rain I did get a nice rosette. I have since been back several times and scoured the ground for a hundred yards in every direction but no tongue, yet the April story is not over.

Shortly after the 11^th my wife began to develop a health issue and for about two weeks I was not able to get out and hunt. On the 25^th she was well enough that I was comfortable leaving her with a family member and I made some calls and scheduled a hunt. My hunting buddy Earl & I went back to another house site to try our luck. We found that the weeds were so bad near the house that we decided to hunt in a field that had not yet been planted. By lunch time he had found one Gardner & a pistol round & I had a 1909 Barber quarter. We’re not doing to good! After a lunch break we moved into a horse paddock that was adjacent to the house site to try our luck. At first the horses kept their distance but they finally moved in on Earl in hopes of getting something to eat. When they were unsuccessful they came after me. They pushed me around with their noses, nibbled at my relic bag and then the most aggressive one bit a plug out of my back. I said the heck with this; I would rather deal with the high weeds, snakes and ticks then get chomped on by hungry horses. Earl followed me into the jungle to escape the horses.

As we moved around the house site it was obvious that the place had once been a spectacular plantation manor. There were gigantic boxwoods, brick walkways, a fountain, and signs of several other building. We began forming a plan for some serious digging and sifting when winter returns. We had visions of massive bottle dumps, many old coins and possibly our first attempt at a privy dig. As we took it all in we were swinging our detectors at least a foot off the ground and usually more since the weeds were so bad. Both of us were getting numerous iron signals but we were content to pass them up since we knew conditions would be better next fall. As we started to move back down a row of boxwoods toward the truck I got a good brass signal. Earl was about 30 feet off to my left when I started swinging away at the weeds with my shovel. I got a spot cleared and pinpointed the target and it was a strong buckle reading. Now at a house site this usually doesn’t mean much and I thought it would probably be a piece of brass trash. It took only one shovel full of dirt to bring the item up and I could see a thick green brass edge. I’m still calm when I reached down and flipped over a Virginia Saber buckle. I gasped in some air and yelled, “Holy Sh**”! Earl heard the difference in my voice and thought a snake had nailed me. He started toward me with his shovel at the ready but when I held up the buckle he yelled “HolySh**”. I’ve found many relics over the years but never did I get as excited as on this day. I was literally shacking all over. Earl had to remind me that I had my camera and we needed to document the event. The shot of the buckle in the hole was set up but the one of me holding the plate was not. I gave him the camera to get the shot and some how I pushed something that made it take black & white pictures. I didn’t even know the camera would do that & haven’t been able to do it again since. I called my wife on the cell phone and she could sense my excitement & thought one of us had been hurt. When I explained to her what I had found she suggested that I let Earl drive us back to the house.

I was ready to leave as soon as I calmed a little but I wanted Earl to have a chance at finding something good. We tried for a little longer and I finally said I just couldn’t concentrate & was probably walking over good signals. He said he couldn’t either and suggested we get out of there. We went back to my house and cleaned the plate, took more pictures and posted it on the internet forums.

Since that day we have gone back to the site several times and have not found any other Civil War relics. We had thought there might be a concentration since there are nearby Confederate camp sites. Maybe we will find more when the weeds die down but for now it looks like this buckle may have been lost in the yard by the homeowner who was a Confederate Captain of Artillery. The buckle is numbered 820 and it’s a shame that no records were kept showing to which officer they were issued.

April has passed now and I have found very little since but come November we will be back at the house site. It was built in the 1700’s & burned after 1900. The potential for relics and bottles is unlimited…..and then April of 08 will be just around the corner.. O yeah, one other thing, I’ve got to get back over there and take that horse a bag of carrots!!!