My horses live in 30 acre pastures and the answer is… slowly… painfully…
I use Map My Walk to start a “walk” and go in a grid pattern. I find many interesting things - fly boots, fly masks, shoes, bones!
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I’ve found a fellow boarder’s debit card, lots of garbage, and a badge skull one time. I also find and try to fill in the huge gopher/badger holes.
My horse has had special shoes from the vet school and when he pulled one of those (literally cost $200+ for a single shoe), I was determined to find it. I grid walked that pasture every day for 3 days and finally found it by literally walking over the top of it in an area not far from the gate that I had walked 2 times already.
I spent 2+ hours looking for a shoe this summer and never found it - that’s super frustrating.
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any one else find golf balls in their pastures?
The nearest golf course is about two miles to the west… but I often find a golf ball in the pasture, my guess is one of the crows or other birds bring it in as an offering for the water we make sure they have access to.
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Weirdest things I’ve found in my pastures have been fish! Dropped by the Ospreys that hunt over the nearby lake.
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I find golf balls constantly in my pasture - nearest golf course is about 5 miles away. I do have a resident clan of crows so perhaps it’s rent for their nest in the hay shed?
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You don’t!
Our fields are three quarters of a mile square, complete with brush, shrub, slough and other hazards, so what is lost, stays lost!
That being said, mine lost a shoe in a dry lot a couple of weeks ago, I figure he must of eaten it.
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I found a dead crab at my paddock gate last year! Silly ospreys.
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My horse rarely loses a shoe. I tried really hard to find it because the farrier was on her way. No luck. I headed back to the gate and tripped over it.
I had to find one at our new barn. Memorial Day weekend and a small historic family cemetery next to his turnout. He didn’t care about the ceremony until the bagpipes started up. Neighbors said he took off headed straight for the back gate, got caught on something, bent the top section of the gate and didn’t jump. I don’t know how he did it. There wasn’t a hair askew anywhere. They promised they will let us know in advance.
The serious way to do search and rescue on the water is by making squares, basically an expanding box. It is much easier to make an accurate straight line and extend it further to move out from the starting point. You can inspect the area evenly on either side of the line. Don’t focus too much. We notice a lot of things in our peripheral vision. In the words of Centered Riding, soft eyes.
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Main problem we have when looking for something on the ground is that we often aren’t actually looking at the ground. Develop a disciplined pattern of scanning a 3x3ft grid while at a standstill, then take a step forward (which for most people is 2.5-3ft), and scan the next 3ft square. Force yourself to count leaves, twigs, clover flowers, etc in the grid, to train your brain on not glossing over the space that you’re in. When you get better you can walk a little more continuously, but at first it takes a lot of concentration to really, truly look at (and ONLY at) the ground that’s right in front of you.
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