Yesterday I thought I had a chance at a double digit day, but didn’t come close. Nailed it today tho, baby!
So, in yesterday’s entry, I tried to articulate (probably poorly), how my grid seemed to be running perpendicular to a hot zone. That is, as I transected the grid across the piece of the site I thought was most promising, the silvers seemed to show up in a line at one particular place in the transect.
So, its like duh, why wouldn’t you just change your grid to run into the putative intersecting hot zone? Easy to say, but it does take a couple of days of gridding to get a visual picture of the site, especially when the aerials and other research don’t give you any reason to believe in said putative linear hot zone.
So today was the day, brutally cold and windy, to set up a grid around the presumed hot zone. And it worked. Hot dog, baby! Started at 10:30, and after I pulled my 6th silver, looked at my watch, and it was only 12:00. Are you kidding me? That’s a rare run rate, and I was too giddy to do the math. You can’t get an adrenaline like this from other games (at least the ones I’ve played). Not only that, after I looked at my watch, pulled my 7th on the day just 5 minutes later. Are you kidding me?
At that point is was 2 Q’s and 5 mercs, giving me a dollar day, which are rare enough, but I wanted a double. I mean, it was only noon after all (and I skipped lunch, being on this roll, wouldn’t you?).
And it wasn’t much longer before I pulled a another merc and a rosie, the latter of which didn’t come in with an FE number lower than 25 on the E-Trac. Its the sort of target many would not have dug, and I may have been among them, except it had that sound and that precise pinpoint, and the ground is rough, so you gotta pull it, especially when you are on a roll, and the adrenaline is flowing and the prospect of a double is in the air. 9 at this point, baby.
But the 10th took some work. I was getting a ton of good high tones, but they turned out to be high tone trash, wheates, or a stray clad. I know I was swinging too fast, as the adrenaline was pumping. I kept saying to myself: SLOW DOWN! You have an E-Trac. If you see the coil is moving, you are swinging too fast.
Then I got some good luck that looked like bad luck at first. A local came over to talk to me. I generally don’t like it when people come up to talk to me (always the prospect of park people or some asshole with a ‘tude), but it actually almost always ends well in my experience, and this was no exception. I hope to have more to write about this local’s conversation later (as it was way cool), but the proximate effect was to slow me down, and get me to stop thinking about the double.
And at 1:24, I got a beautiful deep 11-47 which I was certain was a deep silver Q, and turned out to be my first walker of the season. 10 silvers in less than 3 hours! Are you kidding me? And wait ’til you see this walker. Nothing trumps the site of deep, big silver in the hole.
Got another rosie a bit later for my 11th of the day, and as I moved away from the linear hot zone, got not much more on the day. I was, at this point, moving towards a section that previous prospecting suggested was dry, and it was. And it sounded that way. The cold biting wind, and 11 silvers pulled gave me a nice excuse to call it a day.
21 from this site now. I’m gonna downgrade it to a 25 site from a 35 site, however, as there is no evidence of anything outside this narrow band, and the endpoints of the band seem tapered. What you do is try to construct why a site is as it is from the evidence, use the reconstruction to guide your detecting, and find more silvers based on this reconstruction (an article on this, called “flow paradigms”, seems appropriate, but is for another day). But, its a huge site, so maybe more than the estimate will be forthcoming. We’ll see. And, I have not clue why there is this strip of silvers across a huge site. I’m still expecting some scattereds, but it will take some patience working more low density areas.
A note on the weather. It was brutal. A cold, icy wind. But when you have a 6 silver day yesterday, and belief in more from the site, and are getting them, you have to do it. You tough it out. Who wouldn’t?
But wait, there’s more. When you drop a double, the adrenaline doesn’t let up, and you feel the need to keep writing. In this case, it is actually a tip, which I meant to post yesterday, (and yeah, its more on noise cancel, but here it is): If you get an iffy target, go as close to the target as you can to get a clean threshold, do a noise cancel, then go back over the target. Most times, the target will ID better. The principle here is that you wan the channel that works best in the local target’s dirt. Try it. It works (at least for me, in our highly variable soil).
So, lets look at that shiny cleaned up, and then that beautiful walker (which, unfortunately, seems a bit out of focus).
Well, I didn’t nail this one, but when you have a day like today, sometimes you just don’t care, baby!
Nice job. I was prolly one who asked if “anyone in your area has a detector” on the forums at one time or another. Hope you get around to the flow paradigms article sometime.
Its definitely not you, but I guess it is a valid comment anyway no matter who it is. There are areas around here that are dead, and some that are loaded, and I’ve just never figured it out, so it is definitely valid.
Sometimes, tho, there seems too much boasting and an air of competition on those forums, and I’d rather just do without all that. That’s all. Sometimes I’d just like these people to say “wow, you really know your machine, and how to work a site” instead, or just say “nice finds”, rather than throw in a comment that in any way minimizes the accomplishment.
In any case, I knew when I wrote it that it would not make the morning edit, but I really felt like it last night for some reason.
Flow paradigms is actually a pretty simple concept, and I seem to have written about it before, maybe on a forum. All it is is that you look for where people walked, like a road coming from a old town on one edge of the site, to a ballfield on the other, and where they had to walk thru (they didn’t drive and park as much then). I’ve done well along those presumed paths at large sites. This site does have a road at the correct angle to be consistent with the linear hot zone, but there is no place anyone would want to go on the other side (at least that I know of), so who knows?
Congrats on a great day! And for that tip!
I hope you can tell us about your conversation with that local. I also have found that these conversations go well and sometimes pay off. But I never intentionally go up to people. Usually I try to stay away to myself. Just leave me alone and I will leave you alone.
The conversation with the old timer was interesting cause he told me where all this stuff used to be on the site back in the day — old building, playground, equipment, macadam, and so forth. All the sort of stuff that is absolute gold for a detectorist; problem is that I’ve studied the aerials from the 30s and 50s very carefully and have never seen these features. So who knows?
The most interesting thing he told me was a custom he and his friends had of burying half dollars as some sort of good luck ritual to get girls. Silver half dollars. Are you kidding me? I googled around and could not find mention of such a custom or ritual. Anyway, he said the first thing he did when he got a detector was to go try to find them, but never could. He pointed to the spot, and said go for it. I’m guessing either his memory is off, or they were gotten in the 80s, but I’ll certainly make a go of finding one when the ground thaws again, which looks to be a week out.
He’s detected the site, but not all of it, and has found old coins there. Not sure what sort of machine he has. He’s more of a gold bling guy, tho, and tends to focus on that sort of thing. I may hunt with him next time I am there, tho. We’ll see.