Club meetings are presently held on the third Sunday of each month. We provide our members with training in the proper use of their detectors and tools. In joining the Granite State Treasure Hunters Club, you as a member and will receive the club patch, club pin, ID card and copy of the club's By-Laws. This membership entitles you to participate in all functions of the club with regard to applicable fees. In 1980 our newsletter, the Diggers Digest was created in order to keep our members abreast of conditions in the hobby and which is mailed each month to members.
The club was instrumental in 1979, with representation by Don Wilson, on House Bill 595, State of New Hampshire (an Antiquities Bill) to get a fair and just rendering of the Bill. Calling metal detector and sport diving enthusiasts "burglars", it would have forced us to a permit system and imposed fines and/or imprisonment for failure to report found objects over fifty years old. Recognized by the State for his 100% attendance in committee, Don was instrumental in making this bill acceptable for metal detector enthusiasts.
The club was subsequently called upon to take up the fight in the State of Vermont where the state's Forest, Parks & Recreation Department had banned metal detecting on all park lands and further banning recreational prospecting through those lands. Don was amongst the few that gained concessions with the State and saw to metal detecting within those State Parks as we see it today. Instrumental again in the public hearings before the Department of Water Resources, State of Vermont at Waterbury he presented himself and brought out our ideas toward the rules and regulations for prospecting the streams and rivers of Vermont. Rather than have the rivers closed to prospecting, these hearings were successful in having the conventional hand panning techniques continued without permit.
Called upon again in 1992 with the passage of House Bill 1265-FN, the club responded in June with the representation of John Manning, Ron Pinard and Don Wilson before the public hearing of the Wetlands Board in an open discussion of the proposed rules relating to gold dredging. As we see it today the Code of Administrative Rules for the Wetlands Board (WT304-14 & WT504) reflecting no permit system for recreational gold panning and/or sluice box use limited to 19 sq. ft. and the permit fee system for gold dredging is the results of these hearings efforts. With the closings of public lands in Massachusetts, Connecticut and other areas to metal detectors and in new Hampshire and Maine to sport hunters we must recognize that our rights to public lands are in jeopardy. An too many federal lands are closed to metal detecting and with legislation in Congress giving control to the Sates, it could expand on this legislation and limit or ban metal detecting on state lands. We need to see legislation developed to give our hobby some recognition, for discovering artifacts that would otherwise never have been discovered. We don't need more laws restricting our rights, we need recognition as responsible members of the community, not as "destroyers" or "burglars" of historic places. Will metal detecting continue to provide the same excitement and enjoyment for us five or ten years from now? The future of the hobby, as a whole, depends on all of us, and it's time that we all work together to make the public aware of it. We must all start thinking of our hobby before its too late, this means representation and governing of the hobby, and the treasure hunter himself, whether you are a coin shooter, relic hunter, bottle digger, cache hunter or weekend prospector, we need to insure the future of the hobby.
Your membership and the participation in any club is an essential part of being and we need you, as active members to keep the hobby in the forefront of today's changing legislation to curtail our activities. As dues are minimal and activities are but once a month, usually, being active will insure us a place by representation for the continuation of our hobby.
We thank you for reading this information about our club and we hope that the information we have given you is enough to interest you to want become a member of the Granite State Treasure Hunters Club for Historic Preservation. We do not restrict the membership nor limit the members to the state of New Hampshire, as we have members from Maine and Massachusetts as well.
Thank You: the membership