Its nice to have a presumed honeyhole in your back pocket, as this month, while there have been quite a few silvers, has seemed slow, and a proven honeyhole is a nice slump breaker and morale booster.

But the site gave up only two dimes, which certainly isn’t bad; we’ll take ’em, but all things must pass.

Gets me thinking about the non-sustainability of this hobby again.  With hunting and fishing, it always regenerates.  People are always planting letterboxes.  Even orienteering people are always setting new courses (but rarely coming up with new, interesting venues, and letting quality decline while charging more for the lessened experience).

But silvers don’t regenerate.  Hunted to extinction is hunted to extinction.  Will bigger, deeper machines come along and save the day?  Won’t help much in this area, as mineralization and bedrock limit the effective depth coins can be found. Does the “freeze/thaw” cycle push coins around as some claim?  I don’t think so; sounds pretty wacky, but even so, there can’t be a huge source of sustainability from that.  Feeling a bit sad about it today.

(Also yesterday pulled a dime from an urban site that I never thought had much potential, but wanted to check it out. Looks like someone beat me to the site by a day; saw their plugs everywhere.  Wonder what they found?).

Just a couple of rosies today (no pics, just rosies), but the second marks my career silver 700. I had only 2 in 2008, and 19 in 2009, so almost all have been in the past couple of years.  (I’m a stats freak, as will most likely become apparent).

I’ve found nearly 700 silvers, most in the past couple of years, but only 5 from this huge, old site that should have more.  Its also the site where I found my second ever silver, back in 2008.  I spent alot of time here as a newbie.

For some reason, I never spend much time here since (prolly cause I ain’t got much silver from it), sort of written off, but I’ve never been there with the skill level I have now, so back I went today to see if I could turn this into a honeyhole.

It went well, as pulled 3 dimes, but I was working the very edge of the site, and in heavy trash.  The targets were actually few and far between.  I’ll definitely have to work this site more, but there is no urgency; I’ve let it sit since 2008 after all, with the occasional random visit and the occasional random silver.

Have been swamped lately, but have been getting out a bit.  Nothing interesting to write about, just 4 silver dimes (only two pictured), an abused IH, and a religious pendant over 4 hunts, which includes a skunked day.  Like everyone, I have my share of skunked days; I just don’t like logging them. (I did tho, last year, have a streak of 52 hunts with at least one silver coin — I’ll never forget that, and its nice to think about it when things are slow and don’t seem sustainable).

Trying to revive life into sites I had written off under inferior conditions, an inferior machine, and inferior talent isn’t going as well as I had hoped, but I still think the exercise is valuable.  It is giving me a really good sense of how to analyze sites and make the best of my time.

One thing my honeyhole of last week, and grassy site of this week got me thinking about, is hit some sites now that were written off, while the ground is wet, the grass is as short as it will ever be, and before the snow hits (which hasn’t really, yet this winter).  As much as I’d like to get back to my honeyhole, it seems safe, as it is a bit out of the box, and it certainly seems no one has hit it in the past two years.

I’ll take my chances now on hitting other sites I had given up on with the V3, while the detecting conditions are ideal. This intel will be valuable while I can get it; if I wait ’til summer, I may give up on them again.

To that end, today I hit a site I had written off with the V3, and pulled a pair of deep silver dimes (no pics today).  This site is no honeyhole; the targets are few and far between, but there is no doubt more silver there for the patient. Its huge, and has been logged for future reference.

My yearly silver goal is 30 for the year, and I reached that today, at yesterday’s grassy site.  Another long hunt pulled just one silver, but it was a 1924 SLQ.  These are so fun to find, especially when they have a date (which is barely readable in this case).

The site also surrendered a silver spoon, which was quite twisted when it came out of the ground.  This is the way you usually seem them posted, which makes the one I found last month so special.

While this site has surrendered a walker and an SLQ, it took many, many hours to get those 2 silvers.  This site needs to be tabled until I get an even better opportunity, with freshly-mowed grass, if that ever happens.

Maybe I should talk to the powers that be.  Hey, can you mow that grass down real low, just for me?  We haven’t had much snow this winter; if we get some real snow, maybe it will get matted down more.

This was a site I had known about for a long while and had been dying to hit, but the grass was always very tall, giving no real opportunity to detect it.  This being winter tho, it didn’t seem so bad today, so I gave it a try.

It was tough working around tufts of grass, but I did manage one silver coin, and it was a big one, a walker, which appears to have been abused by a lawnmower or some other machine (ironically, as they don’t seem to mow this site now).  This is my fourth silver half dollar of the calendar year.

I imagine there might be smaller silver here, but difficult to reach due to the grass.  I also imagine it has been hunted pretty hard; the walker, as they usually are, was at the edge of the site, and there wasn’t too much in the middle, tho it is hard to guess how much use the site got back in the day.

Had some business in Maryland today, and decided to make a day of it, and check out a few sites I had researched that would be on the way.  All were duds; either failed to get permission, the evil fill and grade twins had been there, you get the drill, you can just tell when a site is a dud.

Then decided to press on and hit a site I knew about in Maryland, but had never hit before, and right off the bat, got two dimes within 15 minutes of each other.  Was sort of an out of the box site, so I thought I had a good shot at a monster site, but nothing after the dimes except an occasional wheatie.

How can you get two dimes within ten feet of parking, and 15 minutes of each other, and then nothing for three hours?  Oh well, I will try the site again sometime.

I don’t know if I’m ready to call this site a honeyhole yet, but it is certainly feeling that way.  Pulled 5 more silver coins from it today, for a total of 12 in the last three hunts.  Most were what I would call “E-Trac silvers”, deep, in the trash, or both.

Itching to get back to the yesterday’s site where I pulled a barber half and a couple of dimes; I was not disappointed, as a pulled a fourspot of rosies.  All were very deep, in trash, or both.

This site certainly appears to be one to get excited about.