{"id":2199,"date":"2013-10-29T16:24:38","date_gmt":"2013-10-29T20:24:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mapsurfer.com\/blog\/?p=2199"},"modified":"2013-10-29T16:38:12","modified_gmt":"2013-10-29T20:38:12","slug":"hunted-out-site-slq","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.puzzlemaze.org\/df\/blog\/archives\/2199","title":{"rendered":"Hunted Out Site SLQ"},"content":{"rendered":"

Well, that gives it away, doesn’t it?\u00a0 I pride myself on pulling silver from hunted out sites, in fact, if I have a specialty, that is likely it.\u00a0 But it is a bit embarrassing to pull such from a site I<\/em> allegedly hunted out, especially after mountains of blog blather — technique this, grid that and so on.<\/p>\n

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Ok, there’s the pic, lets see what sort of story writes itself today.\u00a0 There’s always the morning edit if its absolute garbage.<\/p>\n

I don’t have a killer site at present (I have a ton in the “almost close me out, but there might be a few more here” state), and have had no time to research, and the weather is beautiful, so its best to not waste a beautiful day, even if you have no where to go.\u00a0 Research is for rainy days.\u00a0 So, when in these situations, I go over my old sites and try to close them out, or at least transcribe my paper logs of the site into Google Earth, or look for areas of the site I may have missed.<\/p>\n

Today’s site for that treatment was a 38 silver site I worked pretty hard in late spring of last year.\u00a0 Its a huge permission site; I worked the best areas day after day, then called it a site, but never really closed out, since there is so much terrain left.\u00a0 The remaining terrain could be good, but there was no positive evidence that it would be, so I moved on.<\/p>\n

Later, I discovered a 100 year old map of the site that showed a house in an area that is now overgrown fields and woods.\u00a0 Of course, I made a note of it in my site database (tip — if you are a newbie reading this, design a reasonable and easy to use site database, and maintain it meticulously.\u00a0 It helps, trust me).<\/p>\n

Anyway, today’s plan was to hunt the fields and woods near where the house was.\u00a0 I was a little queasy on permission etiquette — the permission from the power that was, was “yeah, no problem”, and for 6 weeks last year, it was, “yeah, no problem”.\u00a0 But, do these permissions ever expire?\u00a0\u00a0 Its an interesting ethical question after 17 months, but the bottom line is that I didn’t sweat it.\u00a0 Should I have?<\/p>\n

So, onto the site, and I figured this was a good chance at a big fish; an out of the box section of a permission site with an old mansion that was at least 100 years old, likely older.\u00a0 And, fighting tall grass, woods, vines, poison ivy (tip — if you are a newbie reading this, wear gloves.\u00a0 Of course, you already knew this; I don’t think clueless newbies could even find this page), and I was surprised at the number of high tone targets.\u00a0 The competition had not been here, or, if they had been, they were brilliant cherry pickers, cause all I found was wheaties.\u00a0 Are you kidding me?<\/p>\n

Here I am in chest high grass, killer poison ivy, brambles, out the box on a permission site with an old mansion on the old maps, and every high tone is a wheatie.\u00a0 Give me a pfuc [well nevermind] break.\u00a0\u00a0 Eventually I a got a sweet high tone, a 10-48 or some such, and what was it — a massive clad spill.\u00a0 Are you kidding me?\u00a0 A 6 coin 70’s clad spill at some random spot in the woods.\u00a0 Of course, it wasn’t totally random — there were beer cans everywhere, obviously a 70s party site.\u00a0 Based on the brands of beer represented, it was clear that the partiers had no cultural acumen to know not to throw bad brand beer cans around on a prime metal detecting site (much less drink that swill, which is obviously the larger crime).\u00a0 Sheesh.\u00a0 Who educates these people?<\/p>\n

8 wheaties, no silvers, and that zone is done.\u00a0 No big fish.\u00a0 No little fish.\u00a0 No minnows.<\/p>\n

So, its back to the car, back to work, which has me traversing the area I had gridded out last spring.\u00a0 I had a bit of time, so I decided I’d run a transect across this hunted out area from the woods to my car. and out pops that SLQ.\u00a0 Are you kidding me?\u00a0 From an area that I had marked as hunted out.<\/p>\n

I understand when you grid out a site, you might miss a deep, thin dime (and my grids are meticulous), but to miss a Q.\u00a0 And it was as loud as a heavy metal band; I knew it was a silver Q before I dug it.<\/p>\n

Of course, this isn’t a controlled experiment.\u00a0 Chanel may have been different last spring,\u00a0 Ground may have been drier,\u00a0 I know the grass was thicker, costing me an inch last spring; today it was cut like a putting green.\u00a0 The coin was also somewhat on its side — if perfectly on its side is 90 degrees, this one was at 75-80 degrees.\u00a0 Maybe it shifted in the past 17 months.\u00a0 The other factor is that I was using the big unit today, but the stock coil at that time last year.<\/p>\n

But, all the pseudo science BS aside, I should have got it last time.\u00a0 I just didn’t, and that’s that.\u00a0 BTW, I have done this many times — transected areas and grids during the closing process that I figured I’ve cleaned out, and only once ever found a silver.\u00a0 I do this to validate my approach — just goes to show that no site is ever hunted out, and those who think they are perfectly meticulous are really just perfectly arrogant about their skill.\u00a0 I guess I fall in that category, at least on this one.\u00a0 I do know, however, that the run rate at the sites where I’ve missed ’em would be so low as to try my patience, so its sort of an opportunity cost and time optimization problem at that point (gotta throw some econ jargon in, don’t we — its what we do — but I personally believe an approach to metal detecting from an economist’s point of view simply leads to more silvers.\u00a0 JMHO, of course).<\/p>\n

Yikes.\u00a0 Don’t think I’m gonna like this one in the morning, but I don’t think there are too many bad words, so I suppose it will stand, as in the larger zeitgeist of metal detecting, it works, at least for me.\u00a0 Now I have to go to work.\u00a0 Bummer.\u00a0 At least I can gaze at this beauty all shinyied up (forgetting the tarnish and so forth) —<\/p>\n

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Well, that gives it away, doesn’t it?\u00a0 I pride myself on pulling silver from hunted out sites, in fact, if I have a specialty, that is likely it.\u00a0 But it is a bit embarrassing to pull such from a site … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.puzzlemaze.org\/df\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2199"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.puzzlemaze.org\/df\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.puzzlemaze.org\/df\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.puzzlemaze.org\/df\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.puzzlemaze.org\/df\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2199"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.puzzlemaze.org\/df\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2199\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2203,"href":"https:\/\/www.puzzlemaze.org\/df\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2199\/revisions\/2203"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.puzzlemaze.org\/df\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2199"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.puzzlemaze.org\/df\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2199"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.puzzlemaze.org\/df\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2199"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}