Found an old coin

[Bull Creek Cole]

Yesterday, while looking for something else, I re-found an old coin that I hadn't seen for many years. On the last day of 1995 I was quail hunting with a friend of mine near Coffeyville, KS. We busted a covey and several flew off to my right into a slough in the pasture. Since we were near the end of the hedge row, we took the dogs and went after the singles and cut across the pasture to another hedge row. As I cut across the slough towards the other hedge row I noticed a partial circle sticking out of the mud. I usually spend most of my time hunting and fishiing with my head down looking for arrowheads, horseshoes, old metal, neat rocks, or whatever. About the time I reached down and pried out the old thing my buddy yelled that he had a dog on point so I shoved the hunk of mud into my game bag and hurried across the slough to where the dog was. I didn't give it much thought until later that evening when we were sitting around the wood stove having a beer and recounting the afternoon hunt. When we got around to talking about this particular covey I remembered the object I found in the mud and went and pulled it out of my hunting vest. Much to our surprise, as we rinsed it off with a little beer, we found that it was an 1895 half dollar. Over the years we've had many conversaqtions surmising how that coin got to the pasture and when it was deposited. I can only imagine some old cowboy heading into town on a saturday night only to find that his drinking money had fallen through a hole in his pocket. Or maybe, he had his pay in his saddlebags and his horse threw him while crossing the slough and scattered the contents of his saddle bags in the process. Could have been a lot of things, but one thing is for sure, it wasn't part of the Dalton Gang loot because they never made it out of Coffeyville.

 

Happy 4th of July!

[Pulp, SASS#28319]

Cool story.

 

Coffeyville is (at least was, I haven't been there in years) a really neat town. I went to Jr High at Lenapah, OK, about 10 miles south.

 

Like you I spend as much time looking at the ground while hunting as I do looking for game. Probably why I don't kill much game. Once while deer hunting in Alabama I came across a bed of sea critter fossils. I had a field day there. I even found a piece of petrified wood that had sea critter fossils on it. Proves this old world has gone through a lot of changes through the years.

[Tom Muley]

I think I would get my metal detector and go back to that spot and search for the rest of the loot. Never know, might be connected to some kind of bank or stage hold-up and the saddle bag with the rest the silver and gold coins is there just waiting for you.