A rough week (but with some good coins), but no silver, and I needed a fix, so I went to a park which has given up the goods in the past, Just a 3 silver park, last visit was Jan 2012. I don’t always walk into these places when I need a fix and drop a hat trick, but it is sweet when I do, isn’t it? 🙂
I could write more, but I’m swamped. I thought the park was mostly dead last time I was there, except the out of the box section I worked at the time, but now that I’ve gotten better, and have a big unit, I figured I’d give it a go.
Merc was on the edge of the park. Silver Q was with a memorial penny (weird signal, but should have been dug by the competition), rosie was a slam dunk, After that, about 90 minutes of dead. So now, a 6 silver site, not sure if there is more. Tough to read,
Attaway. The big unit is a game-changer IMO. Improved skills too, fer sure. Spring-time conditions with moisture in the soil. I know you don’t agree, but I do think if you are in an area where the ground freezes, “something” happens underground to shift the coins (or at least how the coil sees them) and give us a fresh crack at them each spring. But then I’m also the guy who thinks barometric pressure, the moon and tides have something to do with it. Otherwise I can’t explain how once a year, when it “feels right” I can pull multiple keepers from a site that is pounded and dead to me the other 364 days of the year.
There might be something to that freeze thaw thing. I’m so scientifically minded, tho, that I don’t believe in something like that unless I can verify it, and there is no good way to do that. I do know I have gone over areas I’ve cleaned out, then gone over them again a couple years later, and never really found anything, but even if I did, that would still not prove that theory.
I can see how it can happen — a coin is deep on its side, and gets pushed flat by ice, burrowing rodents, insects, etc., but that would seem to be a multi-year process. Maybe I’ll go over my really hot areas again in 5 years.
I don’t know why some days are good, and some days bad at the same site, but I do know what you mean. I always chalked it up to luck — statistically, there will be outlier days at both ends. The brain is conditioned to notice them, so I think it is a noticing fallacy. Could be an attitude thing as well, I know some days I’m just not into it, and I don’t do as well. My better days come when I find a silver early, and while that is obvious why that should be so, statistically, I also think there is a mental component that focuses you more, and gives you that killer instinct. Detecting is such a mental game, really — you are basically weeding thru tons of information from the machine, and trying to optimize, at least that’s the way I do it. Physical factors such as moist soil certainly have an effect (but not as much as people think, IMHO — the main one IMHO being that soft ground is more efficient to dig in, allows you to go for iffy targets with less cost, and thus leads to less burnout), but I’m not sure about barometric pressure 🙂
Well, this comment was a bit much 🙂 Could have been a real blog entry.