Using a simple divining rod, a crotched stick like that used in 'witching' for water, he walked along dry creeks, across bald prairie and to the tops of hills and wherever else his nose and instinct led him. Rudimentary geology was often combined with bits of folklore and luck to lead the doodlebugger to oil deposits.

A doodlebug is a new device in prospecting which seemed to employ radar in locating likely ground (1948). IVĪ doodlebug is anyone of various unscientific devices with which it is claimed minerals and oil deposits can be located (1924). Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd Edition Vol. tiger-beetle, or the larvae of this or various other insects.

When seismic work started in 1932 and gradually refined into the science of geophysics, others in the industry thought this was a mysterious science, so seismic people or geophysicists were labelled Doodlebugs or Doodlebuggers.ĭoodlebug is a little insect that never settles in anyone place, he just picks up his home and moves off and lives elsewhere for a little while, and when he's tired of that he picks up and moves on again.ĭoodlebug is a U.S. which referred to the witchery they were conducting. The word doodlebug came from west Texas in the early teens and twenties from water well witchers who would go out with a willow stick and claimed that they could find the spot to drill for underground water wells – because their technology was you might say unscientific, the word Doodlebug was coined.

But when we were here and this idea came up, somebody said, well geophysical people are always digging holes in the ground – Percy Smith ran a seismic service company – he's the one who patented the name Doodlebug with the caricature of a bug. But a variety of responses is what I found.Ī doodlebug is a southern bug that digs a hole in the ground and stacks the dirt – that's what a doodlebug does is drill a hole and put charges in it and geologists always figured we were never scientific we were just doodlers.Īs far as I can recall there used to be a bug that digs a hole in the ground – it would make these little holes and it goes down and kicks up the dirt, and it was called a doodlebug – don't know where or when it started. A doodlebugger? What is a doodlebug and where did that name come from? A definitive answer was what I was searching for.

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