Maunu Tag | The Ring Finders

Commercial Keys Lost While Mowing in Whangarei- Found Two Days Later.

  • from Paihia (New Zealand)
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Steve is a Lawnmowing Contractor who, after finishing a job returned to his truck only to find his keys had vanished.

He throughly searched the property, and even lifted two storm drain covers and fished around in the ooze with a rake to try and find them, with no luck.

Reluctantly he arranged to have his truck and mowing gear towed home.

On phoning the Automobile Association the AA chap had seen my other recent key recovery from the side of the highway and recommended that Steve contact me, not having considered the metal detecting aspect of recoveries Steve was quickly on the phone.

Despite being an hour and a half away, I drove down straight from work to sort his troubles.

Steve took me through where he had been – and showed me the two drain gratings right where he had been fussing around the truck…

With some careful questions, I was able to put the drains right at the bottom of the list, although I had the waterproof remote camera and the nitrile gloves onboard, just in case!

I started the systematic grid of the garden, I could tell Steve was watching me with a funny look.  The keys would have stood out easily on the manicured lawn, however the secret to success is to have a method, and stick to it rigidly. Nothing would be worse than having a no-find and starting to second guess where you may have missed them.

The formality of searching the back lawn was over very quickly.  I started around the edges where shrubs overhung the grass, progressively crossing areas off and working my way towards the front yard – and those drains…

Then I got a good signal from under a bush on the other side of the path, I peered under and there they were.

Job done, the keys were exchanged for a good handshake and I headed off on the long trip home.

 

 

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Lost ring in Garden, Found after Two and a Half Years…

  • from Paihia (New Zealand)
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Two and a half years ago, Mary was doing some gardening at the retirement accommodation where she lives in Whangarei. Some time after weeding, gardening, and repotting a fern, she noticed her gold wedding ring of some forty years was missing.

Staff members at the time searched through the garden and fern, with no success.
As is often the case, the ring was given up as lost.

Recently on hearing about my recovery service, one of the staff members contacted me to see if there was any chance of finding it.
Mary was apparently sceptical about a recovery given the time that had elapsed though.
Her confidence was boosted when shortly after the enquiry, I successfully recovered a ring lost in a farm paddock that had been missing for an equivalent period of time.

I duly arrived at the accommodation and was met by Mary, who talked me through the loss.
Constantly assessing the different locations I was shown, I shifted them up and down my mental list in order of probability as we went.
After a few further questions, I had a good idea of the likely scenarios that might have led to this lost ring and got kitted up.

A quick reconnaissance sweep of the garden yielded only the usual decomposing nails, bits of brass and plumbing that are the usual background in urban searches.
Molesting the poor fern with the pinpointer was only met with silence from the probe. Cross that one off the list, which meant it wasn’t where it was supposed to be – they rarely are.

I returned to the car to get the ‘big guns’ out, time to get serious.
10 minutes later, in the lawn, a beautiful gold signal sounded in the headphones. I parted the grass and moss and after wiping the surface mud off, there was the shining edge of a ring.

It must have been lost while Mary was gardening then knelt or stepped on, into the soil surface. This would have prevented it from being found by the many searchers and almost certainly saved it from death-by-mower.

I left it there and tapped on the door of the unit.
When Mary came to the door, I simply said, “I’ve got something of yours”.

I let Mary pick it out of the soil where it had fallen two and a half years ago.

Had it not been for a caring staff member who took the initiative to contact me, it would still be lost.

Many rings lay in gardens, lost but not forgotten.  Waiting for an experienced Ringfinder…

 

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Key Fob(s) Lost in Whangarei Paddock – Ring Finders to the Rescue

  • from Paihia (New Zealand)
Contact:

Ring Finder – Ring Recovery Specialist…Lost ring? Lost necklace? Lost keys?… Metal Detector Service – Call ASAP 021 401626

Barge Park Showgrounds in Whangarei is a popular location for exercising dogs with a large off leash area, and where Holly had taken her dog for a run around yesterday.
After some time, and a considerable area of knee high weeds – her car fob was missing.
Not just her keys though, but her partners spare key fob for his truck as well…
After searching for some time, she reached out to me for help.

I met Holly at Barge Park this morning and asked her to describe how/when she thought she had lost them.
As she recounted the events the SAR tracker in me was assessing the various stories being told in the tracks through the grass and weeds.
Well, RingFinders is a form of Search and Rescue 🙂

I could see someone, probably Holly yesterday, had walked in that direction, then apparently randomly turned and headed over there…Possibly the meanderings of someone looking for something? The fresh growth displaced under a foot fall and held under tension, springing back when released telling me it was recent, the lay of the grass showing me direction of travel. Erratic flattened areas in a short line possibly a from dog bounding around? Over there, a quad bike had travelled up the side of the search area before someone had later crossed it’s tracks.
Many events written temporarily in the grass helping to build a story of where people had gone, one of whom had dropped some keys…
And importantly where they had NOT gone, allowing me to discount large areas that were devoid of human tracks making the potentially large and uncertain search area so much smaller.

Starting the grid in the area of highest probability, I opted to run the machine ‘hot’ in order to be able to sweep over the top of the weeds, stopping occasionally to jab the pinpointer into the grass to discount a target as being subsurface. After a while it became clear there was a LOT of loud metallic targets, probably horseshoes etc but I couldn’t afford to discriminate it out without the risk of partially masking the keys.

On the third run I got a ‘kick’ in the threshold tone, looked down, and tucked under the matted grass thatch was a flash of silver.
Job done.
What could have taken many hours, reduced to 20 minutes.
Tracking used for a different sort of Search and Rescue 🙂

The Scene

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