[ARC5] A Letter from the pCAF

[David Stinson]

Todd, KA1KAQ wrote:

> Before anyone gets all pissy about 'raiding crash sites',...

I get "all pissy" with people who get "all pissy" about that.
I see nothing noble or honorable about letting historic
artifacts rot in the ground.  The loss of thousands of
American Civil War artifacts because of a misguided "no dig"
policy at our national parks is a disgrace.  Congress is never
going to fund official digs at these places; at least, not many.
Why not train people, give them some simple standards
and turn them loose to recover these irreplaceable items?
As long as you document at least well enough for someone
to find where you dug
and take a couple of photos, I say get it out of the ground
and preserve it.  My brother and I used to hunt artifacts
from the Red River Campaign and we documented the location of
every major find.  I still have the book somewhere.
Good thing we did, too, because many of those places we
hunted are now a surface-stripped coal mine, lost forever.
The artifacts we missed are lost forever, too.
What's the honor in that??
D.S.