Always a nice title.

Friday’s Hunt

First, a little about Friday’s hunt; I did have a really overly long and baroque writeup, even  for me, if that is possible, but it sucked too bad, so I blew it out of there pretty quickly.  The bottom line is that I found those 2 silvers in what I’ll call the “upper zone” of the site.  Until then, despite the place being huge and having many zones, I’ve only ever found them in the lower zone, and an embankment.

The upper zone is old, and should have old stuff, it just never has despite my many attempts.  But on Friday, I got my first wheatie up there, and kept at it, and eventually got a rosie.  Got the Q at the very end of the hunt, in the tailings from where it looks like they just stumped and rooted out an old growth tree.  Pretty much luck, and not a great tell, but always check the spots of recently removed old trees.  3 time this has happened for me.

Well, that’s 36 silvers from this place now.  The upper zone is large enough to have a few more, but not sure it will.  Its a really hard site — both trash and mineralization.  And, I’ve never heard anything deep in the upper zone (the lower zone has much less trash, making it easier to hear the deep ones).  While I have faith in the big unit coil for both trash and mineralization, I want to drop down to the pro coil for this section just to see. (Still waiting for my backup lower shaft hardware from that dealer, which I paid for nearly a month ago (like the other small dealer who didn’t even respond, I guess he doesn’t want to sell me a CTX 3030 someday either).  Next time I’ll just use KellyCo.  I like supporting smaller dealers, but I expect reasonable service at least.  Say what you want about KellyCo, they have always served me fine).

Sunday SAR

I did get out Sunday to help an SAR team find some lost personal effects from an apparent suicide from December.  I’ve never done this before, and it was quite interesting.  There were about 15 detectorists from our club on the project, and I missed being the one to find what they were looking for by a foot.  A sometime hunting buddy of mine found the goods, buried just under the ground.  It was in a heavily wooded, off the beaten path of a thorny park, so I didn’t expect to find anything but what they were looking for, but did find a colonial era shoe buckle and some recent buckshot, even tho hunting is illegal here.  Of course, I didn’t mind not finding anything; I like doing my civic duty when I get the chance.  A writeup in a local newspaper of the suicide is here.   (As an aside, I don’t feel right blogging additional details of the event that we were given).

Today’s Hunt

Onto today’s hunt, which was a new site, cause I’m still waiting for my coil hardware, and they are not good about mowing the grass at Friday’s site, which is finally getting long a month late (tho this week is still feeling like the endless winter again).

Today was one of the deadest sites I can remember.  After about an hour, I had a total of 3 coins, and I only left 2 clad coins in the ground.  And this is a site that is still in use.  Are you kidding me?  I got the impression that someone must be working it on a daily basis.  No surface clad.  No midrange clad.  No deep clad.

One thing that I noticed about the site was that it was very lightly mineralized (auto rec at 28, and it let me use channel 9, which is pretty much best case; channel 9 is the best, but it is often bad in crappy dirt).  I decided to hit the edge, and go really really slow: I often make jokes about how slow you have to swing the E-Trac: “If you see the coil moving, you are going too fast”, “There are two speeds, stop and slower than that”.

That’s the way it usually is with me, but I went even slower than normal, and hit a wheatie, measured at 10 inches, not counting the grass.  I rarely get small coins deeper than 5 or 6 inches (and often note it when I do), and also wonder about those who claim to be pulling silver dimes at 11 inches.  Not that I doubt their claims, but do they carry a tape measure like I do?  It can be surprisingly subjective.  OTOH, I never get dirt this clean around here, so I can see how folks are hitting them if they have clean dirt.  That was the deepest small coin I can remember hitting in quite some time, if ever, tho my memory isn’t what it used to be.

So, that was the game, go glacially slow, and dig any deep, iffy signal.  I figured I wasn’t gonna get a dime at that depth, cause dimes are smaller and don’t halo like wheaties, but I figured I had a shot at a quarter.  At least it was nice that someone had cleaned out all the trash and clad, but I was still digging my share of iron falses that sounded like they could be deep silvers or wheaties.  You really had no choice.

Then I got one out of the blue, a deep 02-48, 01-46, that sort of thing, which turned out to be a walker at 9 inches.  Are you kidding me? Sounded great, and I was almost certain it would be a silver quarter.  Was surprised it was a silver half, in this totally dead site.  Unbelievable.  But we’ll take it, obviously.  Always a sweet sight at the bottom of the hole.

I didn’t find much more.  A few more wheaties, all deep, and a rosie, for my 100th silver coin of the year.  Whohoo!  This coin actually wasn’t that deep, but it was a real pain in the ass.  It was at the very edge of the site, in a real gravely area, where the pinpointer went off on everything.  Like there are little pieces of coal and iron in the gravel.  It didn’t even sound like a silver.  The first time I opened the hole, that’s all I was getting, pinpointer hits on everything, and no coin.  I decided F this, and lets move on, but rescanned, and still heard it (sounded like a wheatie), and gave it one more try, a little off where the old plug was, pinpointer was still useless, and I eventually poked it out of a tangle of roots.  I was actually surprised it was a silver.  I wonder how many other silvers I’ve left out there like this, cause I ain’t patient unless I’m at least 80% certain its a silver.

So, despite finding 2 silvers in 3 hours at this new place, I’m not sure I can justify going back.  It just felt so dead everywhere, and as I expanded out from the edge where the stuff was to the middle, I could not muster a single coin.  But. we’ll see.

So, that’s that.  I think most of the words are spelled right.  But the cleaned up walker looks alot shinier in person for some reason.