Friday I went back to the site that coughed up the 3 dimes on Thanksgiving for a couple of hours, and got skunked. Oh well.
Sunday I had some business in a town about an hour and a half from where I live. I have a hunting buddy out that way, but we haven’t hooked up in forever due to the drive, but since I was out there, I hit him up, and he took me to a site where he had found a few reales and a capped bust half dime, as well as some coppers. Thanks buddy!
We hunted for about 3 or 4 hours, and the only old coin I found was a totally abused King George III copper. Its not even worth a pic. I read that some guys are jaded about finding modern silvers (I don’t think that will ever happen to me; I enjoy the experience on so many levels), but I know for certain I am totally jaded on finding abused coppers. To each their own, I guess.
Today I had a few hours to hunt a ballfield I last hunted on Jan 2nd of this year. It produced a silver that day, and a couple more before Christmas last year. Interesting that my notes on this site say “don’t get discouraged”. I have no memory of why I wrote that; usually my notes are more of a practical nature of the details of the site.
Whatever, put the Big Unit on, and give the site another go. The site only dates to the early 50s, and all the silvers I have found were dated in the 60s. Whatever. The sites I’ve been working recently (fields and more fields for the most part), have really been devoid of targets. It was nice to go to a site that at least was noisy for a change of pace.
Got the first rosie pretty quickly, a deep iffy signal, and that is the way the whole day went. All the top level clad had been cleaned out, and I was left chasing down deep, iffy signals all day. Everything was so deep that TID wasn’t working, so I had to dig an inordinate amount of clad and wheaties. Many sound good, even without TID, but one after another — wheatie, clad dime, clad quarter. I dug almost 40 such coins after that first rosie without a second shiny coin to show for it. Sheesh. I figured the dimes were just out of reach, given that silver dimes don’t leave the halo like clad and wheaties do.
But with just 10 minutes before I had to go, I got yet another deep, iffy one, no TID, but nice sound, and it was a worn ’39 merc. Whohoo. Then, 5 minutes later, a rosie on another deep one. I’m not sure if the machine heard it, as there was a wheatie in the hole as well, which is maybe what it heard.
So, at the end of the day, the ratios turned out to be good, but it was just good luck in the last few minutes (or regression to the mean, if you want to look at it that way).
Nice hunt! Do we actually have scientific proof that clad and wheaties have a bigger halo than silver? I had always assumed it, but wondered if there was legitimate science behind it.
The dirt is often darker around certain targets. These are always weaties or clads, never silvers, in my experience. IMHO, that dark is the halo. We have acidic soil around here, so I assume acid/water dissolving the copper and/or nickel. If you think about it, it makes sense, cause copper and nickel always come out corroded (at least around here). That corroded metal has to go somewhere, hence the putative halo. Silver doesn’t react to water or acid that way.
I’m no chemist, but that’s my theory, FWIW. Not scientific proof, more like “horse sense” after digging lots of deep clads, coppers, and silvers. I know some people debate the existence of the “halo” like the existence of sasquatch; the difference is I believe I’ve seen it so many times that it has to be real.