Alot goin’ on here.  Lets try to nail it.  Not too optimistic on that score, but we’ll see.

First off, the title refers to a hideous statistic that dates back to my last entry (1/15), and that is 17 straight wheaties dug without a silver coin.  Are you kidding me?  Hell could not be worse.

On 1/15, we dug a merc, then 8 wheaties, then whined about it (wouldn’t you?).  Rained on 1/17, had to work most of the day 1/18, but found some time to get out to a local park I’ve never been to, and would never plan to be to, except that it was close, and had not the time to travel far, so I hit it up, and dug 4 more wheaties.  Site has promise actually, given the deep high tones I dug, but it is a project for another day.

But today it was 34 degrees and windy, the perfect day to stay inside, except when driving home from Tuesday’s site, I drove by a field and said to myself — that’s a 25-75 silver site.  Finally I had a day to attack it (after spending the rainy day Wednesday at the court house to see if the site was public property), and attack it today I did, in 6 layers (those who read me know I consider 80 degrees cold; I’m in my comfort zone at 95 and humid).

But it did not start well.  I found only 2 coins in the first hour, a wheatie and a clad dime.  But the wheatie was good, I guess.  The one thing I did notice was that the ground was lumpy, and this was supposed to be an old baseball field (yeah, I cheated, there is more to the game than just driving by, I looked at the old aerials as well).  Baseball fields aren’t lumpy, so I figured the evil fill and grade twins had been here (well, just fill in this case), so I focused my attention right along the road where some old trees were.  Fill and grade don’t mess with those).  When I was nailing deep clad there, I surmised the problem with the baseball field area was indeed fill and grade, rather than that hunted, and his sister out, had paid a visit.  I was in business (at least in terms of solving part of the site).

The trick was to find a part of the site where fill and grade hadn’t been, and with alot of terraced grading at the site, you just use your detector and listen for high tones.  Eventually I got a section where there were some more wheaties (4 more to be exact), giving me 17 in a row with no silver, but at least the ground seemed natural (or more accurately, graded before the silver era usage).

Finally, I got me an 11-45 which I knew was a silver (it had “that sound”, as E-Trac users know), then another, then the Q.  Are you kidding me?  17 wheaties in a row, then 3 silvers.  Yes, I was “due”, but economists/statisticians will tell you that that is “gambler’s fallacy” to be “due”, but well take it.  Not only that, pulled a 5 gr silver ring as the next target (yeah, there are 4 silver coins in the pic, hopefully I’ll close that off, we’ll see).

So, of course you are going to set up a grid in this area, (after the first hour produced just 2 coins in a different area), and that went ok.  I pulled 9 more wheaties, and as the final target of the day, another rosie (which is the 4th rosie in the above pic).  14 wheaties and 4 silvers on the day, coupled with 12 wheaties and 1 silver over the previous 2 days.  Ouch.  I want my new Ultimate 13 (tho, admittedly, most of this ratio failure is not the fault of the pro coil, but due to prospecting (where we dig more wheaties than normal at new sites), and brutal mineralization at the current site (where TID fails so you have to dig em all), and just bad luck (I guess, anyway, or lack of focus/distraction due to the brutal cold wind).

At least a couple of the wheaties were old (a ’10 and a ’17).

Going forward, this site is huge, but the best part appears to have been filled.  I’m downgrading it to a 5-25 silver site, we’ll see.  (Too bad it looks like the ground will freeze next week; might be a while before we get back).

As for the rest of this entry, was gonna do some killer Friday Afternoon Album entries, but I’m shot.  And of course, this entry is way to long as it is, but I mostly nailed it.  Just have to drop a cleaned up pic of that shiny, cause its my first multi day of the year.