Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, July 15, 1993 TAG: 9307150298
SECTION: NEIGHBORS PAGE: S-11 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: KAREN DAVIS SPECIAL TO THE ROANOKE TIMES & WORLD-NEWS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Treasure hunting.
Steve Feazell's speciality is hunting for Civil War relics with a metal detector. Anna Feazell accompanies her husband mainly on organized treasure hunts.
"When we go on vacation, we go on hunts," said Feazell, president of the Roanoke Valley Treasure Hunters' Association.
The club organized its second annual daylong treasure hunt June 5 at Camp Alta Mons in Shawsville.
More than 70 people from six states paid a $60 entry fee to come and scour the countryside with metal detectors, looking for silver coins and prize tokens buried by club members. Sometimes their finds can make the trip worthwhile.
Hunters who find the buried treasures, called "targets," stand to win valuable merchandise such as metal detectors, CD players, luggage, sterling silver necklaces, gold coins, 10-ounce silver bars and decorative birdhouses.
Altogether, 12 club members spent a day burying 9,000 targets for the treasure hunt, Feazell said. All targets were found.
The little-known club, founded in 1982, has about 28 members who meet at 7:30 p.m. on the first Tuesday of each month at Center in the Square.
"We go over what everybody found the previous month," said Anna Feazell, club secretary and treasurer. "Then we vote on the best coin, jewelry or relic."
The club also invites speakers to talk on coin collecting and relic hunting.
Civil War relic hunting requires a lot of reading to retrace soldiers' steps through an area, Steve Feazell said.
He spends a lot of time in libraries poring over diaries and battle books with maps and details about troop movements.
"You have to picture it as it was 130 years ago, not as it is today," he said.
He and his three brothers, also club members, prefer to hunt in winter when insects and snakes in dense underbrush are not a threat.
"We hunt from daylight to dark." From books, "you might know where a Civil War camp was, but it still might take you a month to find it," Feazell said.
A treasure hunter first suspects he's stumbled across an encampment or battle site when he detects lead bullets and spent casings.
Feazell said the most valuable relic he's ever found is a U.S. belt buckle from the Civil War.
"I found it in Appomattox on the retreat route," he said.
He said his brother, Kenneth Alvin, has found Confederate buttons and a belt buckle valued between $500 to $1,000.
The hope of uncovering more such relics, "the challenge and the friendly competition" is what keeps him out in the woods and fields with his metal detector, Feazell said.
Once the metal detector's sound alerts the hunter that he's found something, a depth meter tells him how far down he must dig to uncover the target.
The digging aspect of the hobby has prompted public parks in some areas to make their grounds off limits to metal detectors. Their concern, of course, is the potential for property destruction.
For that reason, treasure hunters must get a permit to hunt in Roanoke city parks.
"Our club belongs to a federation that sends lobbyists to Washington to keep parks from being closed to metal detectors," Anna Feazell said.
Steve Feazell said that when he digs up a target, he cuts out a plug of sod over the buried object, then carefully tamps the plug back down in the hole afterward.
"That way you can't even tell the ground has been disturbed."
He said all club members are equally conscientious about digging, and new members are instructed to do likewise.
Members are sometimes called upon to find valuables, mostly jewelry, that people lose while working in the yard or swimming, Feazell said. Some treasure hunters specialize in hunting underwater with detectors made for that purpose.
Once, Feazell found a high school ring buried on the Breckenridge Junior High School campus. From the ring's inscription, he traced it back to the owner and returned it.
"He was thrilled to get it back," Feazell said.
The young man had lost the ring three years earlier; it flew off his finger when he threw a football.
Feazell also finds a lot of new money, which he puts back into circulation.
"I was at Lakeside park the day it was sold, hunting in snow in about 10-degree weather. I found over 10,000 coins there," hidden in pavement cracks around the ticket booths, he said.
"That's what pays for my hobby," said Feazell, who works in an ABC store.
"It can be an expensive hobby," he said. "Many people drive 500 or 600 miles to participate in organized hunts." Plus, metal detectors cost about $650.
But it's the mystery of lost treasure, the challenge of the hunt and the thrill of the find that draw them to big events like Treasure Week, a nine-day annual hunt in Indiana.
It's the ultimate experience for treasure fans, sponsored in part by metal detector manufacturers and special-interest magazines. And Steve and Anna Feazell already have the map marked for a future vacation there.
by CNB