There's one creature that doesn't hibernate in the dead of winter. Species: Medallionis venator, or medallion hunters. Often seen roaming local parks with heavy parkas, shovels and lanterns. Some members of species gather in boisterous flocks, while others prefer hunting alone. Keeps wary eye on potential competitors.
They're nocturnal. They're diurnal. Heck, they're out all the time.
The $10,000 Pioneer Press Treasure Hunt is in full swing, and the peculiar breed known as medallion hunters are swarming over local parks and digging more holes than Minnesota has lakes.
"When the hunt comes, that's all I do," said M.K. Everts of Stillwater, who was searching Battle Creek Park on Thursday. "The dishes pile up. The clothes don't get cleaned."
The hardcore medallion hunters are birds of a certain feather. They take leaves from work and some sober-minded friends wonder if they've taken leave of their senses, too. They wait in line to get the first edition of the Pioneer Press at 11 p.m. with the next day's clue and use cell phones or laptop computers to relay information to allies in the field. They dissect clues with the intensity of scholars deciphering ancient text.
Some spend the night digging in the snow and then log onto the Internet message board to chat with other hunters. By Thursday night, the message board had logged about 19,000 messages. "I just looked at the clock again," wrote one treasure hunter at 3:38 a.m. "Wow! I gotta turn in."
Jake Ingebrigtson admits he is obsessed with the 51-year-old St. Paul Winter Carnival tradition.
"I dream about finding the medallion once every couple weeks, ones that I remember anyway," he said. "I find it everywhere, my cousin's front yard, the Road America Racetrack in Elkhart Lake, Wis., and Idaho—and I've never been to Idaho."
Ingebrigtson said he once stayed up for 71 hours straight looking for the medallion and often goes for days without showering or brushing his teeth. Instead of returning to his home in Columbia Heights, he is crashing at a friend's house to stay closer to the hunt.
"I used to think the hunt was the dumbest thing. Now I'm hooked," said Ingebrigtson. "I took a week and a half off. Last October, I was offered a promotion, but I told them that if I had to work during the hunt, I didn't want it."
Does such fixation sound like something out of a movie? A pair of documentary filmmakers are shooting a film titled "No Time for Cold Feet" about the subculture of fanatical medallion hunters.
"We were out at 3 a.m. filming people at Como digging with lanterns and bonfires and trying to be up at dawn and filming the early diggers," said filmmaker Jackie Garry. "The obsession is what makes it an interesting film. There's a certain subculture which is obsessed with this thing that happens every year."
Garry, a native of Rochester, Minn., and her husband, Trent Tooley, became interested in the medallion hunt after witnessing the zealotry of the hunters on the Pioneer Press Water Cooler message board. Last year, they came to the Twin Cities and followed several groups of medallion hunters, including the Coolerheads, who take their name from the message board, and The Camo Crue, a group of burly men who the filmmakers liken to the front line of the Minnesota Vikings with camouflage uniforms and matching hoes.
Tooley and Garry found themselves swept up in the hunt. They became immersed in analyzing clues, conspiracy theories and rivalries between the hunters. After the medallion was found, they were surprised to feel the same kind of letdown experienced by the hunters.
The filmmakers screened a rough cut of the documentary at a festival last year and have returned to St. Paul to continue shooting this year's hunt. They hope to have a public screening of the documentary in the Twin Cities later this year.
"It's so easy to make a movie about this event," said Tooley. "It's beautiful out there with the snow. There's drama as each day passes. You have these incredibly interesting people hunting. ... People who are obsessed with something become interesting subjects."
One such character is Dave Young, a white-bearded man known to fellow hunters as "Santa Dave" who has been seeking the treasure for 20 years. On Thursday, he pulled into Battle Creek Park in a rumbling car crammed to the windows with gear such as a propane heater, a treasure hunters' guide book and a shovel.
"It's the $10,000 prize," Young explained. "When you're digging for $10,000, you can do a lot of digging."
Young was not alone. Battle Creek and other parks were dotted with hunters Thursday who poked through the thinning snow hoping to strike it rich.
"It's the hunt," said Joy Mensing of South St. Paul, who was out digging with her brother and sister. "You read the clue and you get that Winter Carnival itch."
"And the money," added her brother, Jordan Hoeft.
They spent the day searching. After a dinner break, they planned to return with additional members of the family as reinforcements.
"We've been out here all day," said Mensing. "If we aren't out here, we've been thinking about it in our heads and making a plan of attack."
Copyright 2002 Pioneer Press.
