I was just reading about some experiments by T.C. Lethbridge that seem to indicate that the length of the string between fingers and pendulum has an effect on sensitivity to particular substances. Most sensitive to silver at 22 inches, gold at 29, tin at 28, and truffles at 17 inches. It would never even have occurred to me to go dowsing for truffles.

Has anyone else here ever heard of this string length/substance sensitivity idea before?

Has anyone here ever gone dowsing for truffles?

I have, from the same book by Lethbridge.
No, I never dowsed for truffles but it sounds interesting and potentially really lucrative.
Best of luck!!!

First time on the string length for me, too. Don't know that I'll worry about it much, though. I will be going to France in September, so maybe I can try for truffles then! In the meantime, I hear pigs are the most effective truffle finders...

Best,
Paul

I didn't know pigs could dowse! Do you suppose they use deviceless dowsing? And I wonder how they keep the pig from eating the truffle?

No pigs can't dowse
but they can smell better than we can, so I guess one can train them to smell truffles underground.
In italy they use poodle dogs to find truffles. You can train a dog not to eat the prey when hunting, so I assume you can do the same with a pig. I heard they are quite intelligent animals.

Maybe for truffle hunting we could come up with a hybrid method using the traditional approach (trained pigs) and dowsing: Hang a trained pig on a string! OK, maybe you'd need something stouter than a string (pig-size dependent). Or maybe we should just eat caviar instead, LOL.

(I promise to be more serious next time -- but this topic was just too hard to resist!)