Discover the Truth: Metal Detecting Through a Kid’s Eyes with 8-Year-Old Emily Copeland

 

It’s tempting to say Emily Copeland is not like other 8-year-olds, but the truth is she’s a curious, inquisitive little girl like any other.

She just has the right tools to indulge her curiosity.

On this episode of Discover the Truth by Garrett Metal Detectors, host Shelby Skrhak sat down with young metal detectorist Emily Copeland to discuss how she got into detecting and how she’s encouraging others to try out the sport.

Emily began metal detecting with her dad, Shannon Copeland, when she was 4 years old.

“My dad said, ‘Here try this,'” Copeland said. While her dad held the top of the metal detector and she held the bottom, she made her first discovery.

“I swung it and found my first pull tab. I didn’t really care if it was trash or not. I was so excited, I felt my face was going to blow up,” she said.

She began documenting her finds on social media and her own YouTube channel, Little Dirt Diggers, where she’s posted 150 videos that have more than 25,000 views, and she’s garnered more than 600 subscribers, young and old.

Copeland takes her Garrett AT Pro everywhere, from her parents’ and grandparents’ rural properties to historic Civil War sites and the beach in Florida. She was hunting a Civil War encampment in the woods near Adairsville, Georgia when she found a U.S. box plate, or soldier belt buckle.

Another time, she found something more personal than she could have imagined — a brass, hammered bracelet belonging to her great great great grandmother and engraved with her initials.

The beach was less fruitful for her, but she takes disappointment in stride.

“It’s not that frustrating to me, just a little tiny bit,” Copeland said. She encourages newcomers to the sport to stick with it and have fun, whether you find anything or not.

“You have to find the trash to find the good stuff,” Copeland said. “That’s what I always say.”

For the latest news, videos, and podcasts in the Sports & Entertainment Industry, be sure to subscribe to our industry publication.

Follow us on social media for the latest updates in B2B!
Twitter – @MarketScale
Facebook – facebook.com/marketscale
LinkedIn – linkedin.com/company/marketscale

Follow us on social media for the latest updates in B2B!

Image

Latest

Radar
Physical Retail’s Next Infrastructure Layer: Item-Level Intelligence with Radar
June 4, 2026

Physical retail is under pressure to become as measurable and responsive as e-commerce. While retailers have spent years optimizing digital channels with real-time data, store teams have often had to make decisions with incomplete inventory visibility and delayed operational signals. That gap matters because stores still account for 80% of U.S. retail sales, making…

Read More
Healthcare in Pakistan
From Institutional Excellence to Population-Level Access: How Pakistan Can Bridge Its Healthcare Divide
June 1, 2026

Healthcare systems are under pressure almost everywhere, but the strain is especially visible in lower-resource settings where demand is rising faster than infrastructure. In Pakistan, that pressure is playing out across a system that has to serve more than 250 million people with limited public investment. Public health spending remains below 1% of GDP,…

Read More
Engineering
Scaling Experiential Learning in the Curriculum: How Iron Range Engineering Transformed Engineering Education
June 1, 2026

Engineering has transformed nearly every part of modern life, from the phones in our pockets to the systems powering global industry. But the way engineers are educated has often moved far more slowly than the profession itself. Employers are asking for graduates who can navigate ambiguity, communicate across teams, and contribute meaningfully from the…

Read More
vascular surgeon
When Geography Meets Purpose: How One Move Reshaped a Vascular Surgeon’s Career
May 28, 2026

Medicine isn’t what it used to be—not for the people practicing it. Independent physicians are becoming the exception, not the norm, as more doctors move into hospital systems, corporate groups, and academic networks. At the same time, the pipeline of specialists isn’t keeping pace with growing patient needs, particularly in complex fields like vascular…

Read More