Discover the Truth – Détails, épisodes et analyse

From scuba diving to treasure hunting, the need for adventure could be part of Discovery Daisy’s DNA. When a friend introduced Daisy to metal detecting, a new passion was born. She spoke with Tyler Kern about her love of metal detecting.

While Daisy's involvement with metal detecting only began in 2020, her love of scuba diving started in 2016. Now, she combines the two activities. "I use a smaller, compact detector when I'm underwater, whereas I use the Garrett AT Pro when detecting on land most of the time," Daisy said.

There is a strong metal detecting community, and Daisy said the group she has met does many things together. She looks forward to meeting other female metal detectors, and she hopes her YouTube page will encourage people of all ages to catch the bug for detecting and treasure hunting. She even conducted a course for kindergarteners to spark interest.

Host Tyler Kern welcomed Gary Penta to the podcast “Discover the Truth,” where the pair discussed Penta’s history with metal detecting. Penta started his pastime as a metal detector after retiring from the Air Force.

“When I came back, I wanted a hobby,” said Penta. He caught a television program highlighting the activity and thought, “Who are these guys?” Not long afterwards he bought his own equipment and started hunting in Texas, where he was living at the time. Penta and his wife, also a veteran, now reside in Florida.

Penta is a member of the Ring Finders Club. “Ring Finders is a pretty interesting organization,” explained Penta. After signing up, members are given locations and sent out to look out for items, almost always rings. Penta is Scooba diver, and he has discovered his fair share of rings, as well as items like iPhones.

For his day job, his diving skills take center stage. As a treasure salvage diver, Penta works for a search and salvage business. “It has to do with the 1750 fleet, where the Spanish ships washed ashore on the east coast of Florida. 11 or 12 ships broke up, give or take, and millions upon millions of gold coins, silver coins… basically emptied into the shore… so here it is, hundreds of years later and we’re still looking for this stuff.”

Penta also treasure hunts on Florida’s west coast, where he looks for fossils. “We go on these boats, and we dive, and it sounds crazy, but we can actually find 10,000-year-old megalodon teeth just sitting on the ocean floor.”

In his spare time, he makes miniature models and complete dioramas, which he started several years ago as a form of therapy after losing his son in Afghanistan. “I started with miniature metal detectors,” of course. His work can be found at mydetecting.com, as well as his Facebook page: Gary Penta. He showcased several examples on the podcast.

Penta also had tips for aspiring metal detectors. “The best advice I can give for someone is find a hunting buddy or better yet find a club, join a club. Get yourself a machine, learn your machine, you gotta know what this machine sounds like, you gotta do testing.”

“When you swing your detector, keep your coil to the ground.” When you use an upswing, he explained. the coil should be level to the ground. “Low and slow.”

It's tempting to say Emily Copeland is not like other 8-year-olds, but the truth is she's a curious, inquisitive little girl like any other.

She just has the right tools to indulge her curiosity.

On this episode of Discover the Truth by Garrett Metal Detectors, host Shelby Skrhak sat down with young metal detectorist Emily Copeland to discuss how she got into detecting and how she's encouraging others to try out the sport.

Emily began metal detecting with her dad, Shannon Copeland, when she was 4 years old.

"My dad said, 'Here try this,'" Copeland said. While her dad held the top of the metal detector and she held the bottom, she made her first discovery.

"I swung it and found my first pull tab. I didn't really care if it was trash or not. I was so excited, I felt my face was going to blow up," she said.

She began documenting her finds on social media and her own YouTube channel, Little Dirt Diggers, where she's posted 150 videos that have more than 25,000 views, and she's garnered more than 600 subscribers, young and old.

Copeland takes her Garrett AT Pro everywhere, from her parents' and grandparents' rural properties to historic Civil War sites and the beach in Florida. She was hunting a Civil War encampment in the woods near Adairsville, Georgia when she found a U.S. box plate, or soldier belt buckle.

Another time, she found something more personal than she could have imagined -- a brass, hammered bracelet belonging to her great great great grandmother and engraved with her initials.

The beach was less fruitful for her, but she takes disappointment in stride.

"It's not that frustrating to me, just a little tiny bit," Copeland said. She encourages newcomers to the sport to stick with it and have fun, whether you find anything or not.

"You have to find the trash to find the good stuff," Copeland said. "That's what I always say."

Stories about hidden caches of money and valuables from the western settlers and easterners riding the rails float around Montana for young men and women like George Wyant.

These stories motivated Wyant to start poking around old cabins and structures in his home state looking for treasures. He said it’s always been in his blood to look for treasure.

Now, "King George," as they call him, is a reality TV star and expert treasure hunter.

“I was always the best at finding silver dollars,” Wyant told Daniel Litwin on an episode of Discover the Truth. “My buddies started saying I was the king of silver – that’s how the nickname started.”

Wyant is a star of the National Geographic reality television show, "Diggers." He and his partner, Tim Saylor, have been looking for treasure together for more than 10 years.

“When we first started, we decided to finally get a metal detector,” Wyant said. “He told me he was getting a $1,000 Garrett Metal Detector. Well, I couldn’t let him get a better machine than me, so I got one, too.”

The show ran from January 1, 2013 to October 19, 2019. Wyant said being on the show was hard, and he was adamant that neither he nor Tim would ever fake a find by planting something in the ground ahead of time.

Despite being arguably one of the best treasure hunters on the planet, Wyant did have some advice for beginners.

“I would try to find an old house or playground, some place that doesn’t have a lot of other stuff like trash and debris,” he said. “That, and trust your machine. You’re going to have to dig a lot of holes, but after a while, you’re going to be able to pick out the treasure among all the trash.”

Before working for Garrett Metal Detectors, Miguel Ardito did not realize that people metal detected as a hobby. Miguel is a jack of all trades at Garrett Metal Detectors - he’s a graphic designer, photographer and videographer for the company. However, he now understands why metal detecting is such a tight-knit community.

Miguel said that working in the marketing department, he learned that, for some, it is a way of life.

Miguel joined host Tyler Kern to talk about his experiences working in the position and how it introduced him to the hobby that's now formed into a passion. He said that the first time he took home a Garrett metal detector, he went to a park and found two silver rings.

After this experience, he was instantly hooked.

Talking about his experience in the position, Miguel said that he was fortunate enough to travel to Australia for two weeks with NatGeo’s “Diggers” while they were filming a new TV series.

He said that the job and the hobby have created connections and friends for him around the world. The two briefly talked about the other metal detectors that Garrett makes and the purpose they serve for security in venues, schools and other public spaces. Miguel also gave some tips for beginners in the metal detecting hobby.

On this episode of Discover the Truth from Garrett Metal Detectors, D.J. Dowling, better known as the “Red Beard Relic Hunter,” joined host Tyler Kern to explore his nearly two-decade career in metal detecting.

“The way it started is, when I was young, I was always obsessed with pirates,” Dowling said. “The treasure that they might have buried … I was at a park one day, and I saw a guy with something that looked like a UFO. It was like a spaceship. I’d never seen anything like it. It was actually an old Garrett metal detector.”

The man told Dowling it found treasure, then promptly found a diamond ring buried in the sand. Needless to say, Dowling was hooked.

Kern and Dowling dove into the “Red Beard Relic Hunter’s” passion for connecting people with their own past and family through finding objects thought to be lost, his process for researching spots and hunting them when he heads out, and his most valuable find – a one-of-a-kind silver token appraised at anywhere from $1,700 over $2,000.

“Everything I find, to me, is priceless,” he said. “I could never put a price on putting something back in someone’s hands.”
You can check out Dowling’s YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbHAPn_MEbVUai_brILp8YQ

You know the old saying, the couple that metal detects together, stays together. Alright, maybe no one has ever said that, but it’s no secret that many happy couples enjoy sharing hobbies. 10 years ago when Adventure Archaeology and his wife got married, she became enamored with a television program about metal detecting. She was thrilled when her husband informed her they could start metal detecting together. “I said, well, you know, we could do that, we could go out and hunt for old coins and rings and jewelry, all that kind of fun stuff,” he said.

As it turns out, metal detecting runs in the family, “Truthfully, I'm a second generation treasure hunter. So my dad's been metal detecting and model digging since the early 1980s. And he actually still has his original 1982 Garrett machine that he swears by,” he said. The newlyweds borrowed one of his dad's machines and took it out, “She found her first set of coins. And from there she was hooked,” he explained.

When asked what he loves to share with others about metal detecting, Adventure Archaeology said, the thrill of the hunt is one of the best parts. “Every time you go out, whether you're hunting for cloud coins in a park or you're out in an old abandoned colonial site or a civil war battlefield, you never know what you're gonna find. But every time one thing is guaranteed. You're gonna have a blast while you're doing it,” he said.

On this episode of Discover the Truth by Garrett Metal Detectors, Warren McGrath of NQ Explorers joined host Tyler Kern to explore his own history with the hobby and professional that has enraptured so many over the decades.

McGrath’s particular interest in metal detecting was spurred on by a desire to understand the history of Australia from the late 18th century all the way to our modern society.

“Just like in the U.S., the Australian inland is scattered with old ghost towns and silver and gold mines and copper mines and various ‘failed ventures,’ if you like,” he said. “You can unearth the history and find those very personal items that our very hardy pioneers left behind.”

There is also a plethora of World War II relics in the country, which have special meaning to McGrath and his family, which has a long military history.

Overall, though, McGrath shares the passion of many fellow detectors – it’s just one big treasure hunt.

“It’s like a small child who’s finding treasure in a sand pit,” he said. “It’s just the thrill of discovery, whether it’s gold or historic relics. You can be spending hours in the bush, and you’re hot and tired and thirsty, and, all of the sudden, your day turns around because, out of the ground, comes this incredible find.”

It all started during a simple game of hide and seek. Digger Dawn, metal detector expert and YouTuber, was tasked with waiting for her friends to hide so she could seek. While waiting, she discovered something that would ignite a lifelong passion. “As I was counting, I was sticking my foot into the mud and was on a building site at the time. So the ground has been dug up. And as I was digging the foot in the ground, I saw a little bit of glint of gold come out of the ground and I pulled it out,” Dawn said. It was a coin from 1780. And it was a George the Third gold spade guinea.

She didn’t know what she’d uncovered at the time, but according to Dawn, “It just set me off, it set my imagination off...I always used to look at things and wonder what was that? I didn't know anybody to, you know, go ask about metal detecting or I didn't even know where there was any metal detecting shops or anything in those days,” Dawn said.

Today, Dawn hosts a YouTube channel that provides the resources she didn’t have access to as a child. She originally started her channel as a way to record and save her memories of her time spent metal detecting, “I didn't really think anybody looked at YouTube, I thought you have to have some sort of special knowledge,” Dawn explained. Fast forward and the YouTube channel she started for her only her own enjoyment, began to pick up steam. “I was absolutely shocked that people started watching it. You know I really can't believe it,” Dawn noted.

Dawn loves sharing her experiences with other passionate metal detectors, “It fills me with a lot of joy actually, because I get such lovely comments off people and emails telling me you know, how they've been down and have cheered them up, or how I’ve helped them learn. Or all the tips that I've tried to share and things in the language that they can understand, because I try to keep things simple and yeah, I just I love my YouTube channel to be honest with you,” Dawn said.

On this episode of Discover the Truth from Garrett Metal Detectors, D.J. Dowling, better known as the “Red Beard Relic Hunter,” joined host Tyler Kern to explore his nearly two-decade career in metal detecting.

“The way it started is, when I was young, I was always obsessed with pirates,” Dowling said. “The treasure that they might have buried … I was at a park one day, and I saw a guy with something that looked like a UFO. It was like a spaceship. I’d never seen anything like it. It was actually an old Garrett metal detector.”

The man told Dowling it found treasure, then promptly found a diamond ring buried in the sand. Needless to say, Dowling was hooked.

Kern and Dowling dove into the “Red Beard Relic Hunter’s” passion for connecting people with their own past and family through finding objects thought to be lost, his process for researching spots and hunting them when he heads out, and his most valuable find – a one-of-a-kind silver token appraised at anywhere from $1,700 over $2,000.

“Everything I find, to me, is priceless,” he said. “I could never put a price on putting something back in someone’s hands.”

You can check out Dowling’s YouTube channel here.