BURIED CLUES, real or imagined?

When you are following a trail to what you hope will be a buried treasure (and not an empty hole) you are always following specific information given to you by a map and or markers in the field.

When working on an outlaw treasure trail you will occasionally run across the hidden or buried clue. Most of the time these clues are metal but they can also be carved rocks or other objects that the outlaw had handy at the time. There seems to be a proliferation of information out there indicating these metal buried or hidden clues are just everywhere.

When you are working on a trail and think you might have a buried or hidden clue the first question you should ask yourself is; “how would the person or group who put this in the ground get back to it”? Most of these treasures were put in the ground before 1900 and the people who put them in the ground sure weren’t expecting to use a metal detector to find their own buried clues. So how would you find a buried or hidden clue that would be important to working the trail?

It has been my experience that any clue, buried or otherwise, if it is important to the trail, is marked on the map or in the carving. They didn’t leave clues at a site just for the fun of it so all of the clues would be important. This means that if they expected to find the clue there would HAVE to be something in the map or carving that tells them EXACTLY where to look and maybe even what to look for. Without this information they would be wondering around the woods like we all have, wondering what they are missing.

When working with carvings or maps the creators of the map can (and will) be very ingenious in how they hide information. A carving can appear to be “sloppy” with the lines running long or being square when you think the should be curved, etc. Sometimes a carving is just as it appears but when dealing with the outlaws, they can be pretty damn sneaky in hiding information in the carving or drawing. You have to look at every mark just to make sure it isn’t some additional piece of information you may need to work the map.

The information that leads you to a clue has to be specific, so if you find a piece of metal out in the middle of an open field, is it really a clue? Is there something specific that took you to it, giving you the exact distance and direction to go so that there wouldn’t be any guesswork involved about where it was?

Treasure hunting is as much about being logical as it is about being diligent and persistent.