Is the peace river still worth it?

[Piratelife]

In everyone who has been or frequents the Peace river in your opinion is it worth the trip? I’ve been many times and it seems like many of the good spots are all but tapped. I know there are always new fossils eroding out of the banks but still is it worth it for sifting?

[Harry Pristis]

No, I collected most of the good fossils 30 years ago, and ShellSeeker has collected the rest of them.  Forget the Peace River -- it's collected out!   

[digit]

The easily accessible spots in the Peace were hit hard over the last 2 years. Many folks looking for socially distanced activities to get themselves out of the house took up fossil hunting. There were a record number of permits issued in 2020 & 2021.

 

I still see dedicated hunters pulling enviable fossils out of the Peace but Harry speaks much truth in his jest--it is significantly more difficult to find areas that are not tapped out. The demand is outstripping the supply. Years with significant storms (e.g. Hurricane Irma) do a lot of erosion during the "fossil hiding" season to recharge the river for the "fossil hunting" season but the accumulation of fossil material before widespread hunting has certainly been depleted.

 

I had a hard time even turning up small shark teeth at some of the sites I've frequented over the years but I did also pull out a few nice fossils that were missed by the other hunters.

 

Time and persistence--the only key to success.

 

 

Cheers.

 

-Ken

[Shellseeker]

15 hours ago, Harry Pristis said:

No, I collected most of the good fossils 30 years ago, and ShellSeeker has collected the rest of them.  Forget the Peace River -- it's collected out!   

I agree with Harry!!! but even he and I did not get them all. There were a few people who pre_dated us. One of them was Nancy Jane Bauman,  lived in Wauchula and hunted the Peace River in the 1960s.  With her husband, she would take a Carolina skiff from Zolfo to Arcadia after the summer floods, camping on the Peace River. Never used a shovel, just picked up the fossils that were laying on the sand bar in plain sight. Said they found 167 complete Mammoth teeth and 86 Mastodon teeth, plus a number of tusks..

https://www.pongerkaysgrady.com/memsol.cgi?user_id=1960536

She invited me to see her collection in October , 2013. She still had 10 of the tusks.

 

I kept on searching for those tusks, but never found a complete one.  Maybe Harry got them. I keep on hunting . Maybe he missed one.

 

 

[Bone Daddy]

Agree that many parts of the Peace are overhunted and tapped out.`I've been out 3 times in the last two weeks to different sites, and all of them showed signs of heavy hunting pressure. There were holes and spoil piles everywhere. Zolfo Springs in particular looks very hard hit - stretches of it looked like it had been carpet-bombed, there were so many craters. We didn't find anything of note in those heavily-hit areas - just common stuff like turtle scutes, small dugong rib sections, and tiny bone bits that nobody wants apparently. 

 

Tip : when you are digging and sifting a gravel bar and you don't find any shark teeth in your sifter - then you know you are resifting gravel that has already been searched. Everybody keeps shark teeth, even the small-ish ones, so if you are moving a lot of gravel and not finding at least a handful of teeth in every sifter, then you are probably wasting your time in that spot. 

 

Tip #2 : if the spot is not a major PITA to reach, then other people will hunt it out. Everything within easy reach of a publicly-accessible ramp or launch point will be hunted out. Be prepared to paddle against the current for *hours* or have a motor. And even with a motor, the water is often too shallow and rocky to use it when the water levels are slow and low.

 

Edit : I am not trying to discourage anyone. It's possible to get lucky and find something that the other hunters missed. But, realistically speaking, it's getting a lot harder to find good quality fossils in the Peace now, unless you are prepared to cover some considerable distance away from the ramps.

Edited April 7, 2022 by Bone Daddy