pothunter

Definitions

noun One who hunts game for food, ignoring the rules of sport.
noun One who participates in contests simply to win prizes.
noun A person who seeks artifacts from past civilizations for personal use, sometimes by illegal means, without adhering to professional standards of archaeology.

noun A person who hunts animals for food (for the pot) rather than as sport.
noun sports, by extension A person who competes solely to win prizes.
noun archaeology An amateur archaeologist, especially one who seeks artifacts to sell without regard to their cultural importance.

pot +‎ hunter – in hunting sense, “for the (cooking) pot (to eat)”; in the archeology sense, “seeking old pots (to sell)”.

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He had already assaulted a convicted pothunter in Blanding, Utah, and had shot a round.

Riding for the Brand 2005
"I used to be a pothunter," he told me one spring.

Overkill 2003
"I used to be a pothunter," he told me one spring.

Overkill 2003
All were on public land, out in the sagebrush country, sites that only a trained archeologist or an experienced pothunter could have detected in the first place.

KOKOPELLI’S FLUTE WILL HOBBS 1995
Suddenly I recalled packrats running through the legs of the pothunter who wore a gun, and a packrat entranced by the sound of a flute I had put to my lips.

KOKOPELLI’S FLUTE WILL HOBBS 1995
This time the pothunter with the bandanna over his nose and mouth paused and listened, and his hand went to the revolver on his hip.

KOKOPELLI’S FLUTE WILL HOBBS 1995
Had my dad been a pothunter, I would have been one too, happily booting a shovel into the ground right next to him.

NPR Topics: News 2010
Had my dad been a pothunter, I would have been one too, happily booting a shovel into the ground right next to him.

NPR Topics: News 2010
For a chronic pothunter of which there are so many in the West, the lure of the loot is so strong that they can't give it up. "

Riding for the Brand 2005
She could’ve given us away if the pothunter hadn’t been making so much noise dragging out the packrat rubbish.

KOKOPELLI’S FLUTE WILL HOBBS 1995