butch...ar
New member
recently, going through finally cleaning out my computer desk, in preparation of my move---I discovered some very old floppy disks. On one of them was a short story about one of my first expierences metal detecting years ago------this place is now, grown up so bad a wabbit cannot even enter it------the window of opportunity was open to make some fantastic finds at this old place deep n the piney forrests of southern arkansas----the pics are of some of the stuff I pulled from under the old hidden smokehouse
The Smokehouse
by Butch Voss
Back in Sept,97 when I bought my first detector, I did mainly to hunt at 100 old home places that I knew where were from being a bottle digger 30 years ago. When Deer season in Arkansas rolled around,it was too hot to hunt deer, so I would take my Landstar and go hunt an old place for coins or what have you.(first detector was a bounty hunter landstar) I broke that one over a mad bull chasing me across a 40 acre field one day and bought the white's XLT after that run with that bull
One of these old sites still had the rock foundation markers still in place. Now my grandfather had pulled several of them up in 1899 to build his house where he raised 13 kids. My Dad, was the 6th born,in 1913 and he told of going by this old site for years, with his dad as they wagoned their crops to trade with other farmers. This site is deep in the woods, far from a main road. Having dug bottles around this place 30 years earlier, I never stumbled upon the remains of the old "SMOKEHOUSE" and still would not have without my detector.
After a fall soaking rain, I drove my 4x4 pickup as far as I could, then unloaded my Yamaha Timberwolf 4-wheeler and drove another 3 miles into the woods. Ground balancing the detector, I started to hunt but was having extremely difficult times keeping it from chattering too much at one particular spot. It was on the side of a small flat hill top about 50 yards from the house. Every time I would ground balance it still acted up. Kneeling down and pulling back the leaves and pine straw, I could smell the faint odor of wet salt. At the far corner of the hill, an armadillo had made a small hole in the ground and being nosy, I stuck the coil in the hole and got a copper signal, but the coil rod was all the way in the hole. I went to the 4 wheeler, got my short shovel and went back and started opening the hole up bigger.
When I got it big enough to get my head in, I saw a room about 8 ft. wide and 6 ft. across and just deep enough to duck crawl in. Over head was huge 8x8 creosote timbers, that had tested time gone by. On top of the ground once again I started digging, until I hit the timbers but, went thru a whole lot of mineralize soil (OLD SUGAR CURE SALT).
My guess was that the smokehouse had been in one corner of a larger building at one time and the false bottom floor was where the farmer did his sugar curing over the top of the hidden crawl space. Why? I really don
The Smokehouse
by Butch Voss
Back in Sept,97 when I bought my first detector, I did mainly to hunt at 100 old home places that I knew where were from being a bottle digger 30 years ago. When Deer season in Arkansas rolled around,it was too hot to hunt deer, so I would take my Landstar and go hunt an old place for coins or what have you.(first detector was a bounty hunter landstar) I broke that one over a mad bull chasing me across a 40 acre field one day and bought the white's XLT after that run with that bull
One of these old sites still had the rock foundation markers still in place. Now my grandfather had pulled several of them up in 1899 to build his house where he raised 13 kids. My Dad, was the 6th born,in 1913 and he told of going by this old site for years, with his dad as they wagoned their crops to trade with other farmers. This site is deep in the woods, far from a main road. Having dug bottles around this place 30 years earlier, I never stumbled upon the remains of the old "SMOKEHOUSE" and still would not have without my detector.
After a fall soaking rain, I drove my 4x4 pickup as far as I could, then unloaded my Yamaha Timberwolf 4-wheeler and drove another 3 miles into the woods. Ground balancing the detector, I started to hunt but was having extremely difficult times keeping it from chattering too much at one particular spot. It was on the side of a small flat hill top about 50 yards from the house. Every time I would ground balance it still acted up. Kneeling down and pulling back the leaves and pine straw, I could smell the faint odor of wet salt. At the far corner of the hill, an armadillo had made a small hole in the ground and being nosy, I stuck the coil in the hole and got a copper signal, but the coil rod was all the way in the hole. I went to the 4 wheeler, got my short shovel and went back and started opening the hole up bigger.
When I got it big enough to get my head in, I saw a room about 8 ft. wide and 6 ft. across and just deep enough to duck crawl in. Over head was huge 8x8 creosote timbers, that had tested time gone by. On top of the ground once again I started digging, until I hit the timbers but, went thru a whole lot of mineralize soil (OLD SUGAR CURE SALT).
My guess was that the smokehouse had been in one corner of a larger building at one time and the false bottom floor was where the farmer did his sugar curing over the top of the hidden crawl space. Why? I really don
