In some entry last week I speculated on the beauty and contentment of just doing a long field hunt, and after the difficult detecting of the past few days, I decided to throw the Big Unit on the E-Trac and hit some fields.  These fields are associated with the house where I found the holed 1818 large copper last week.

I don’t get much when I hunt fields, but I was surprised what I got today.  Started out pretty lame — bottle cap, zincoln, memorial penny (are you kidding me?, when hunting an old field, you have to dig all this crap, and, unlike park hunting, where bottlecaps are almost better than silver as tells, they suck here).

But, about an hour in, I got a large copper, just 3 inches deep.  That gives you the killer instinct and the confidence to tough out the cold and wind.  The copper turned out to be garbage, but was valuable as a confidence builder.

Pressing on, I get a buckle and a musket ball.  Some guys get excited about these relics; I’m not one of them, but at least they are nice 200 year old tells.  We’ll take ’em, cause you press on with hope.

Yikes that copper is ugly.  But after these nice tells, I got something not so ugly, a sweet 1803 1/2 reale.

When it popped out, I was hoping for a bigger fish, but we’ll take it.  Silver coins are hard to find, and old silver coins are even harder to find.  This is my 9th reale (in all denominations), compared to just 1 bust silver coin.  I wonder if that ratio is consistent with history.  We’ll call this one a medium fish, and keep hoping and swinging.

Anyway, we press on, and get a beautiful 9-46 sort of signal, I’m thinking I got my big fish now after the LC and the reale, and it turns out to be a 1971 clad quarter in the middle of a field.  Are you kidding me?  Talk about heartbreak hotel.

And even more heartbreak hotel is a deep high tone, the sort of thing that is a large conductive object, and, in the back of your mind, you always think cache, and you dig and you dig and you dig, and eventually you hit this, in the middle of a field —

The lid of a jar!  Are you kidding me?  But, just the lid.  No jar, no cache.  Heartbreak hotel.  We’ll take the 1/2 reale (who wouldn’t?), but I felt so close, yet so far away, from the big fish today.