10 Silver halves in a year is alot. Its hard to describe how much an “alot” it is, but it is (suffice it to say that one silver half in a year is alot). Will never happen again, at least not to me. Anyway, managed to cross that milestone today, and what a weird day it was.
Went back to the site of the past couple days, and started off in the older zone (after a couple days of rain and a couple days of frustration in a not as old zone), which was the spot of yesterday’s entry where I found a pair of mercs in the same hole. Wouldn’t you?
First swing of the day, a foot away from yesterday’s double merc hole was a slam dunk rosie. 3 silvers in a row. Are you kidding me? I said to myself — this will be a double digit day, as I had just begun to scratch the surface of this zone, and had 3 found silvers already in it.
But it was not to be. This zone was much like the zone of the past 2 days. Evidence that it had not been hunted, evidence that it should be a 20 silver zone based on the deep clad count and dates, but “Reason X” (qv yesterday’s entry) seemed to apply to this older zone as well — everything good except the silver, but this this zone was 35 years older than the zone of the last 2 days. WTF? (I did do more research on the site last nite, and came up with a hypothesis for “Reason X”, and the possibility that ‘Reason X” applied to the whole site, not just the zone of the past 2 days — not sure if it meets the Occam’s Razor test (and of course since this is an MD blog we can’t spill the beans and give more details, as interesting as the philosophy would be, or 20 clowns who can’t do their own research would be swinging there when I showed up next (assuming, of course, I have 22 readers, and likely I have about 10% of that))).
Anyway, people read these blogs cause they want to read about finding silver, so lets try to get there. And it was hard. I moved from zone to zone looking not for the factors that usually indicate silver (since “Reason X” seemed to suggest that they do not apply), but for random actual silver (sort of in “eat fish” rather than “learn to fish” mode, if that makes sense). The site can probably be divided into about 20 or so distinct zones (all of which, realistically, should be treated as a new site, even if “Reason X” has pan effect), and I went from zone to zone, more of the same, until into the least promising zone of the batch, in my judgement, I pulled a merc, then a copper (1845 large cent; just like the other day, tho in worse condition), and then a rosie. I wasn’t gridding, but was doing cross transits, and marked the zone as promising. Three silvers and a copper now, after about 5 hours of hunting.
But there were more promising zones to try, and try we did. and it was like entering the 4th dimension. More and more deep clad that sounded like deep silver. Like most silver guys, I don’t dig clad except for the intel on the site, but this deep clad was different. It sounded like silver, and you had no choice but to dig it all. TIDs were whacked. Everything was deep, and everything sounded like silver. I dug deep clad after deep clad, and usually deep clad is constructive (it gives you the zone as non-hunted in the 80s), but when I dug a 1985 Q at 8 inches, after digging about 40 quarters already, and a mountain of 7 inch 70s memorial pennies, and only 1 silver outside the one zone, I said enough is enough.
81 deep clads that sounded like silver, and 1 silver, in this zone and those that are congruent. I guess I should have cut my losses sooner. At least that’s about $12, or a couple of Golden Monkeys.
Ok, so the detecting was bad, and the writing worse, as I failed to articulate the experience. That’s how it goes, sometimes. But, all I could do, failing to understand what was going on, other than “Reason X” and the possibility that the evil Fill and Grade twins had been all over the site (despite the lack of evidence of that), was to go back to the section of the site that had given up the pair of dimes and the copper earlier on the day.
And that turned out to be a good call. Pretty soon on, got me a merc. then on the same rank of the grid, got be a deep SLQ. The nice thing about these 2 coins in that they sounded like deep silver, and turned out to be deep silver. Its a fun experience; contrast to the previous 80 coins of the day. Maybe it is something in the dirt in the other zones. Who knows?
The rank I did left a gap between the transits I had done in this zone earlier, and sometimes being anal pays off. I said I have to close those gaps, and good thing I did, as I found a 1918S walker in there, for my 10th silver half of the year. Scratched the thing pretty bad, as it took me about 20 minutes to recover it — it was deep, in a maze of roots, and it was not a slam dunk silver signal. That’s how it goes sometimes.
Finished off one more rank of this zone and found a Washington Q for my 7th silver of the day, 6 in this most unpromising zone. Sometimes better to be lucky that smart. What a day — total hunt time 8hrs, 7 silvers, 5 wheats, 81 clads. And there’s more to write. much more, but I’m more burnt out than you, assuming you read this far. (Oh, it does feel good to write one of my MD stories again).
