Pioneer Press Treasure Hunt winner David Jotblad (1994) swears by his lucky garden hoe. Mike Madland says son Don was his lucky charm in 1988. And last year's winners, Steve Doyle and sister Maureen Hursey, hunters since childhood, admit that winters spent in the "school of hard digging" may have helped unearth the medallion.
Whether they rely on luck, longevity or strategy, all of them soon will be among the hundreds – if not thousands – searching for a blue plastic medallion buried on public land somewhere in Ramsey County. This year's prize promises up to $10,000, more than double the usual payoff, to celebrate the Pioneer Press' 150th anniversary.
"I think I'm hooked – I like the money, too," said Jotblad, 31, who started hunting as a teen-ager. But 1994 was the first year he used the hoe. "When it breaks, I'll be really mad."
Since the treasure hunt began in 1952, Minnesotans have braved negative double-digit windchills at times to shovel and sift through piles of snow, usually at a park in St. Paul.
Longtime diggers and winners confide they have a system of sorts, including logbooks filled with minutiae on previous hunts and comparing notes with other winners and wanna-bes.
But first, they must decipher the rhyming clues published in the newspaper and posted online – www.pioneerplanet.com – starting with this Sunday's issue, in the Local section.
"There's no real pattern in the clues; they're pretty much different every year," said Madland, 45, who has hunted since age 4. The year he won was the first time he brought his then 8-year-old son, Don, with him. This year, Don will fly home from Arizona State University for a weekend to help with the hunt.
Doyle advises that anagrams can play a "big part in deciphering the clues." He's considered compiling a glossary of sorts.
During the nearly two-week contest that overlaps with the St. Paul Winter Carnival, die-hard diggers will line up before 11 p.m. outside the newspaper's downtown office to buy an early edition of the next day's paper. Armed with cell phones, they'll call partners posted in the field and discuss hunches, anagrams and other hidden meanings.
Others will stay in heated homes, eyes on their computers, hands glued to a mouse to click onto the paper's Web site at the magic hour: 11:30 p.m. They'll call shivering friends and family with news of the clues.
In the high-tech late 1990s, some hunters have lugged laptop computers to the parks along with lanterns, flashlights and spelunking helmets.
All this nocturnal effort may be for naught, though, because few have found the medallion at night.
Even so, White Bear Lake retiree Rachel Olson, who found the 1995 medallion in daylight after just six clues, says the night sleuthing is a sight worth seeing. According to Pioneer Press records, it usually takes five clues to figure out the park and five to seven more clues to pinpoint the medallion.
"Depending on the weather, it's just a fun thing to be out in a park at 2 o'clock in the morning," said Olson, now a retiree who has hunted with two bridge-playing buddies since the mid-1960s. "All you see are lanterns, flashlights and dark bodies, and you hear the click of shovels in the snow."
Some say that scene is a defining one for St. Paul.
Once the hunt is under way, Olson and her friends set up daily conference calls to discuss and/or cuss at the clues. "Every other year, we really get annoyed with whoever's writing them," she says.
Between sips of coffee, they consult their notebooks, which contain plastic-sheathed maps of parks and details on past hunts. The year they dug up the medallion in Battle Creek Park, they figured out in six clues that the first letter of the first sentence in each clue collectively spelled B-A-T-T-L-E.
Steve Worthman, who in 1996 wrote "St. Paul Parks: A Treasure Hunter's Guide," figures he's saved several hundred folks some gas money and wasted trips across town. The guide includes detailed maps of each city park and recreation center along with notations about such oddities as the "large cement shoe you can sit in" at the Desnoyer Recreation Center.
"The best advice I should say is don't jump to the park on the first or second clue because it's a needle in the haystack," said Worthman, who has yet to find a medallion. "I tell myself every year that I won't hunt until the eighth clue, but I find myself out there by the fifth."
Many diggers go online to visit the PioneerPlanet chat room devoted to the hunt. And this year, there's a new Web site dedicated to diggers: www.coolercrew.com. Get this: It's run by a guy in Milwaukee. Still, Greg Sax, 28, is a St. Paul native, and he will take vacation to join other diggers.
Sax, who has spent countless hours in the library digging up articles about every hunt and the clues, has compiled analyses of clues for each year for online users.
"It's my hobby," says Sax, who uncovered in his research a 1950s newspaper photo of his father's family enjoying the hunt. "That proved to me it was in my genes."
While some say the online chat room and Web site provide an extra advantage, 1969 winner Bill Gralish says just talking with and tracking the hunters in the parks is as helpful. A strong camaraderie builds over the years, he says.
Gralish, who has participated in every hunt since 1962, is known as the "Winnebago Man" because he and his stepdaughter travel to the parks in a 30-foot recreation vehicle, which he insists is not a Winnebago. He's come very close to winning again.
"Some people have told me they just ride around and look for the Winnebago" to figure out which park to dig up, said Gralish, who retreats to the RV when he's cold, hungry or in need of coffee. "I've also had some say that one of these years my truck is going to be one of the clues."
Copyright 1999 Pioneer Press.
