SHELL ROCK -- Ray Skierka was 6 and growing up on his family's 28,000-acre ranch when he found a rock shaped like the state of Montana.

It was along Montana's Flathead River, where the ranch bumped up against Glacier National Park, and Skierka couldn't believe his luck. He was hooked.

Whether it was on horseback or on foot, the young rockhound kept his eyes down on the ground, gathering up arrowheads, Montana agates and fossils. He learned to cut stone with a rock saw and make agate jewelry.

"I was 9 and 10 years old and sold $800 worth of jewelry. Wow -- it was hobby I loved and I could make money at it. It was the Great Depression and nobody had any money. It was hard times. I bought my first car with money I made from selling my jewelry," recalls the 70-something collector. He and his wife, Sandy, now live in Shell Rock.

Since those early discoveries, Skierka has gone digging for sapphires, opals, topaz, emeralds, turquoise and gold. He is credited with discovering three dinosaurs in Montana, and made news when he found a karrite (ammonite) fossil at Karmic Mine in Canada, in 1981. It is roughly the size of a 20- or 30-gallon garbage can lid.

Skierka will present "Trips & Treasures" as part of the 48th annual Gem, Mineral and Fossil Show next Sunday at the Waterloo Center for the Arts. He will have mapped areas and information on destinations for collecting gems, fossils and crystals. Portions of his collection will be on display.

The rock hunter has explored all but five states. This year, he plans to knock another off his list when he travels to Florida to hunt for fossilized shark's teeth. "It's the thrill of the hunt," says Skierka, grinning. "Sometimes you don't find anything, but if you go out with the idea that you've got to find something, it's no fun."

When he was introduced to sapphire hunting at Montana's Eldorado Mine, he found one that weighed 32 carats. That mine is now closed, but Montana has other sapphire mines where he has found success, too. At one time, Skierka's uncle owned a gold mine in Arizona where Skierka mined gold for about three weeks.

He found his first dinosaur in 1954 while running a combine on the ranch. "I looked out and saw this funny-looking rock. I got down and picked it up and my dad said it looked like a vertebrae or rib. It turned out to be a vertebrae and I found the complete skeleton except for the head. It was a duckbill, a plant eater. I eventually found two more dinosaurs but never whole bodies," Skierka says.

"When you're down along the banks of stream on a warm day, looking for dinosaur bones and a shadow falls over you, you're suddenly transported back 75 million years. You look up to see what could pick you up. It's only an eagle, but it sure feels for a minute like you could be lunch."

Another unusual find was a collection of petrified sand dollars he excavated in north central Montana. "'This can't be,' I told myself, but that's what they were. I called a friend of mine at the Royal

Tyrrell Museum in Drumheller, Alberta , Canada. He couldn't believe it. He came to see them. Then I took him out to were I was digging and he dug and found some more sand dollars. They don't know how they got there … they're on the wrong side of the rift. You're supposed to find them on the West Coast, not Montana," Skierka explains.

The retiree shows no signs of slowing down, in spite of a hip replacement. He's retrofitting a building on his property to house his extensive fossil, rock and gem collection, as well as a stamp and book collection and Depression-era glass.

This summer he and Sandy are participating in an emerald dig in North Carolina, and in the fall plan to visit Murfreesboro to dig for diamonds at the Crater of Diamonds State Park.