He’s dug up working watches, unearthed rings and coins, and exhumed old irons.

But the last thing souvenir hunter Jeremy Revoy thought he’d stumble on in a lakefront stroll was the very object metal detectors are designed to find: a bomb.

The husband and father of two was out on an evening treasure mission at Whitby’s Intrepid Park — former grounds of the top-secret Camp X spy training school — on Tuesday when his detector snarled its first report.

“‘Reearrr!’ That’s what it went like,” said Revoy, 34.

After homing in on a patch of marshy turf, he started to dig a mini-trench around the underground artifact with a grass knife.

“All I seen was a rusty object at first, and it ain’t moving,” he said.

Revoy didn’t know it yet, but just three centimeters underground lay the tip of a tail fin to a Second World War smoke mortar round. He scraped away more dirt and plucked the detached fin from the earth.

The hobbyist didn’t stop there. Egged on by his metal detector, Revoy eventually hauled out body of the rust-encrusted projectile, buried further down.

“I thought it might have been an oil filter or a part from a tractor or a lawn mower or something,” Revoy said. So he made a phone call and got some sage, sound advice.

“My stepdad seen a picture I sent him, and he’s like, ‘Get away from it and call the police.’ ”

Revoy did. Within 10 minutes a Durham Regional Police officer was on the scene, cordoning it off. Within 30 minutes at least a half-dozen more cruisers pulled up, he said.

Police blocked off a nearby waterfront trail and barred access to the area, though not before Revoy had steered an unsuspecting rollerblader off the path.

“I also told a parked truck driver, ‘Get away from there, go!’ ” he recalled.

Soon a police helicopter was circling overhead, while Revoy forked over his photos of the ballistic relic. “The chopper was there until I left, like an hour later, maybe longer,” he said.

“This is the first report I’ve seen regarding a find like this,” Durham police spokesperson Sgt. Bill Calder said.

A bomb disposal team was dispatched from Canadian Forces Base Trenton early Wednesday morning.

Cpl. Dorian Ellert, an air weapons systems technician, said that “there was a very high probability that it still was holding its charge.”

The team dug a narrow hole in a marshy part of the park, placed the five-kilogram mortar round inside and set it off with plastic explosives around 8 a.m., Ellert said.

Doug Delaney, a history professor at the Royal Military College in Kingston, noted the hazard even a long-buried bomb can pose.

“They’re always dangerous,” he said. “You don’t mess around with something like that. You destroy it and just remove the potential for hurting somebody.”

The mortar round was likely more than 70 years old and used during training at Camp X, Delaney said.

During the Second World War and the Korean War, Canadian soldiers used the small smoke bombs — one mortar per platoon — “to screen your way out of something,” he said.

Subtler tools of sabotage and intrigue have emerged from the old Camp X grounds in the past.

A dagger hidden in a lipstick, a poison-gas fountain pen and a revolver in a hollowed-out book were all among the “James Bond toys” included in a collection of wartime artifacts accumulated by a private collector last century.

The area near the Whitby-Oshawa border, where Allied agents trained during the Second World War, also played host to James Bond creator and former Camp X trainee Ian Fleming, who applied what he learned there to his famous “007” character.

That mystique is partly what attracted Revoy, who’s been “detecting” since last fall.

While he doesn’t subscribe to Treasure Hunting, American Digger, or Lost Treasure magazines — or belong to the 71-member Oshawa Metal Detecting Club — Revoy is enthralled with “the thrill of the hunt.

“It’s holding a piece of the past, undiscovered for years,” he said.

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The hobby combines archeology-lite with quasi-military apparel, but it’s the prospect of “the big historical score” that drives him onto sub-terra incognita, he said.

“Nobody else has found it, and you get to show everybody.”

His sons, 5 and 8, love it too, especially the eldest — “only he calls it treasure hunting.”

Revoy chalks up his latest find to “fate.” A screw fell off his metal detector right after he came across the buried bomb, unhinging a plate and ruling out further exploration for the evening.

“My mum said, ‘You got some guardian angel watching you.’ ”

With files from Evelyn Kwong, Ebyan Abdigir and Carola Vyhnak

Metal scores

Jeremy Revoy has bagged a bundle of buried “loot” with his metal detector over the past year. Here are a few of his finds:

Fossil watch

Revoy nabbed this $160 watch in Oshawa’s Galahad Park. Still ticking, the Fossil wrist clock is waterproof, and bears an appropriate name given it was dug out of the ground.

Second World War-era bullet shell

“I bothered my parents and my wife to get me a metal detector for about a year,” Revoy said. One of his first finds after receiving the gift last fall was the shell of a bullet from Camp X’s glory days — he thinks. The casing could also be a relic from one of the hundreds of farms that dotted the Oshawa area more than half a century ago.

Iron

This stove-heated iron dates back to 1901, the date forged on the bottom of the hefty appliance. Revoy discovered it under the sand along Oshawa beach, and bathed it in vinegar to remove the rust.

Rings

Revoy recovered these false treasures on Whitby beach. “I’m pretty sure they’re fake, but I have a hard time letting stuff go when I find it,” he said. You may be out there for six hours and find diddly squat, but I’ve got a lot of patience.”

Coins

Revoy has found “piles of change” underground, which sit on the mini-fridge, he said. His 8-year-old son jumps at the chance to dig up nickels and dimes. “He runs over and shows it to mum right away . . . or he takes the treasure from me and puts it in his pocket,” he said. “I’m not in it for the money.”