It was November 5th, 2005, the 3rd and final day of diggin at the Diggin in Virginia IV hunt near Fredericksburg, VA. Around 9am I was diggin in a hut we found the day before and was tired from shoveling dirt for the past 1/2 hour. As I sat on the side of the hut to take a break I asked Tucker if he wanted to get his metal detector and check the dirt I just moved to see if he could find anything. He found a bullet in the dirt pile and no other signals, I asked him to check the sidewalls of the hut to see if he heard anything there. He checked the walls and said he only heard a signal in one spot on the wall. I was still taking a break so I told him to go ahead and dig the signal. He dug back in the wall about 4 inches or so and got his machine to see if the signal was in the dirt he removed.  It wasn't in the dirt so he checked the sidewall again and said "Yep, still in there" He went back to diggin, by now I'm sitting near him, watching him dig. He put the knife blade down low and scraped and I saw about a 1/2 inch of something white. I told him "there's your signal, it's a bullet". He continued digging further and all the sudden the 1/2 inch white spot grew to about 1 inch. I immediately yelled "STOP!". I jumped down in the hut and rubbed my fingers around the white spot and exposed the edge of a plate. I had no idea what kind of plate it was because just the edge was exposed. I told Tucker,"you just dug your first plate, that's a plate laying there". I stood up and yelled to the other diggers in the area "Tucker just dug a plate!", they all came running to see all the excitement. After everyone got to the hut I sorta sat back and watched Tucker as there were about 10 people standing around him taking pictures and congratulating him on his great find. It is a moment I will never forget!

Click the play button in the window below to see a video of Tucker diggin his first Eagle Breast Plate.