Alot goin’ on here.  Didn’t have time to think of a cool title, but the one we’ve got seems fine for a metal detecting blog, doesn’t it?  Lets try to nail this one without a tomorrow morning edit (cause who has the time?); here goes (can we do it in under 10 minutes? we’ll see) —

Running at 6 AM and the ground is rock hard frozen, and they are calling for a winter storm to hit around 2PM, so lets see if we can squeeze some dirt fishing in between.  Headed for the site of 01/31 which gave up a double (who wouldn’t, free of constraints?), and the ground was like chocolate pudding when I got there.  Rock on, baby!

As I recall from the last hunt, I pulled 9 silvers rather quickly, and as I tried to expand the grid further, pulled in a couple more, but it was a struggle.  Figured that direction was somewhat beat, but it didn’t have much to go to butt up against the area I figured was filled (from my prospecting at the first hunt at this site), so I decided to start off by closing that off, just to be anal.

And I pulled 2 silvers and 4 wheaties in the first 15 minutes.  Are you kidding me?  No question in my mind that I left a couple in the ground re my 01/31 entry due to the adrenaline of the prospect of a double (was swinging too fast, no doubt), but what is done is done.  Happy to take a 2 spot, cause silver coins are hard to find, and one silver day is a good day.

Closed off the grid against the contoured area which I’ve assumed is the fill, and not much happening ’til I got quite close, and got a deep 12-40, and to my surprise, pulled an Indian head.  I don’t pull too many Indian heads (this is only my career 25th, compared to 32 silvers just this year) for various reasons (some guys are excited by them; I’m not one of them, but I’ll leave that for another day).  The thing about this find was that it was kinda odd, cause a), its not an IH old kinda site (but anything built on 300 year old farmland is possible), and b) IH’s are usually at a quite lower CO number.  I’ll chalk it up to difficult TID at this site (more on that later, maybe, since this is a no edit take).  In any case, here it is, in all its beauty  (are you kidding me — some folks get excited about these; they obviously do not live in Chester County) (OK, enough editorializing; I know guys get on my shit for getting excited about 64 roses (and believe me, I do); to each their own)  —

So now I’m looking at a grid working out from a hot zone that seems dead in all directions, but got 2 sides going into hundreds and hundreds of acres of field, and one side going towards the road.  Which way would you go?

Duh?  Its actually a tough choice, cause the road is obvious, but, as such, the area by the road is obvious to the competition as well.  On the other hand, the great wide open fields are an obvious no go, but are so peaceful (and remember the story in my comments from the 01/31 entry; the prospect of finding the half dollars buried by the old timer, which are more in the field direction)..

So of course I go for the road direction, cause its trashier, and trash is your friend. If the detecting is hard, you have a better chance.  And while the grid in that direction was much more sparse than in the hot zone, I did manage to pull a merc (next to some sort of large high tone trash, which managed to mask it, I imagine, for some of the competition with machines with slower separation), giving me my third silver coin of the day.  Also pulled a 7.5 gram silver ring that was under a memorial penny.  Got it on the rescan (and it sounded like a silver Q; d’oh!).  Note to newbies — always rescan your holes.  Of course you do, don’t you?

But, there’s more.  Of course, there always is.  First, lets honor the promise to talk about target ID.  It was brutal.  It was random.  I dug 13 wheaties, and a hideous 17 memorial pennies.  Are you kidding me?  Many sounded quite sweet.  I also dug 5 clad dimes and one clad quarter.  Economists love looking at stats, and the first one that jumps out is just one clad Q against all those other coins.  That’s good — it shows I was lucky enough to hear high tones the competition was missing (one in 5 to one in 6 coins is normally a clad Q).  OTOH, clad and wheaties were sounding like silver in many cases, which is why I wasted so much of my precious day digging them.  I think what is happening is that the particular characteristics of this site (high particle mineralization), are adding to the target.  I was also digging plenty of high conductive coins (copper pennies), at FE numbers that did not drop lower than 25.  Just like the last time I was here, when I dug a silver dime with a high FE number.  Sometimes it just works out that way.  Beware, and be open minded when the site has weird ground.  Or, maybe it was my settings.  Or maybe the big unit. Or maybe the alignment of the planets.  Who knows?  Just be open minded and flexible, and most importantly, lucky.

So, the actual more for the “but, there’s more”, is this thing, a silver relic.  This was in the direction of the wide open fields when I got burnt out working the trashy direction towards the road.  I have no clue what it is, but it looks really old.  Firstly, its tarnished (and most of the coinage I’ve pulled here is not), and it is not stamped, which means it is older than 1905.  If you know what it is, please comment (fingers provided for perspective (sorry, had to say that :))).

So, this today was my 24th silver coin from this site, ranking it 13th all time for me in terms of sites.  The interesting thing about sites that get to 21 silvers for me (the “possible honeyhole” level), they almost always get to the “honeyhole” level at 40 silvers.  Weird how that works, and why I have my levels where they are, but I’m still calling this a 25 silver site.  We’ll see, and hopefully it is more like a honeyhole.  That will take finding the old-timer’s buried halfs.  Good luck with that.

Nailed this one baby! (tho it took more like 20 minutes.  Maybe just start posting: here’s the silver; cause who has the time to both read and write this?).  Anyway, here are the cleaned finds (forgetting whatever that silver relic is, cause that was processed separately) —