Relic Hunters Strike the West Woods

While wandering the West Woods earlier this month, I noticed a number of three to five inch deep holes that had been freshly dug.

We are used to our ground hogs burrowing deep holes throughout the field but these had a different look to them. I took a photo and then reported it to Rangers.

It turns out that relic hunters had visited the ground in the night sometime during the first week of October and dug over 40 holes in the West Woods.

There is a lot of junk in the ground (the Woods was an active farmstead until fairly recently) and I can only hope that what they found were nails, horse shoes, and other metallic debris from the late nineteenth century to today. But I know they didn't and for that we are all the poorer for it.