Back to our recent project, expanding the grid further into the wide open field, and there is sort of a quiet area, at the end where the old timer’s halfs may be, and where the 60s clad is, and a quieter than dead area at the other end, but that end is transected by an imaginary line, if you extend the hot zone along it, so you figure you ought to keep doing both.  Besides, really dead quiet open fields can be good, cause you dig every iffy signal; signals you might not even hear above the din of noisier areas.

So, I decide I’ll go one more rank thru the quieter than dead area and back, and if I don’t get a tell, I’ll bag that end, and spend more time where the better tells are.

I get a few iffy signals down there, all of which are ferrous falses, until I get one that pops out a small grey disk which no doubt is a silver dime.  Not only that, there’s no doubt in my mind that its a seated dime, given how deep and tarnished it is.  Seated dimes are so rare for me (I’ve only found 2 in over 20,000 coins), so I’m pretty stoked.  Problem is that it is caked in dirt, and you don;t want to rub the dirt off in case its a valuable date, cause it will show up as cleaned, so I just stuff it in the pill bottle caked in dirt.

This was early in the hunt, and the hunt goes on without much happening, but at least I’m happy I probably have a seated.  Its all I thought about, and it was killing me not knowing til not only after I got home, but after work as well.  I was thinking of all the things I was gonna write about my seated.

Near the end of the hunt, I got a beautiful deep silver quarter signal nearby, and figured, wow, maybe I have a seated or barber quarter as well, but it turned out to be a clad Q.  Are you kidding me?  Everything seems to read high at this site.

I did get a few more deep silver signals, almost all of which turned out to be clad (the worst was a 09-47 to 01-45 near yesterday’s old timer half that was clad), but as can be seen in the above pic, I did squeak in a few modern silvers at the end of the hunt.  That’s 51 now for this site, my 7th site to reach 50 or more, and best site since last fall.

As for the seated, turned out to be a 1901 barber dime.  D’oh!  I was certain I had one, too.  Well, its only my 23rd barber dime, so I suppose I should be happy, but I really wanted that seated, especially after waiting all day to find out.  Oh well.  Be happy with any silver.  And, at least I had the joy of thinking I had a seated most of the day.

Well, tomorrow is Farewell Farewell Friday (which of course is every Friday at a good site, whether I’m ready to farewell it or not).  Just haven’t been able to do that since the last fall, for any number of reasons, including trying to lose weight, not having good sites, bad weather, or so forth.  Got a great restaurant picked out, and it should be fun.  Hopefully my wife can join me.

Geez, botched that one (would have been better if it actually was a seated), but its month end time, and I’ll be working ’til midnight, so I had to be quick.  Maybe it will look better after the morning edit, but silver always looks good, no matter how tarnished, or lame the writing.

Back to the honeyhole, and there are basically 4 choices.  Imagine an L shaped grid that represents the hot zone of recent posts — choice 1 is the inside of the L and is what should be the hottest section, but I believe has been filled.  Out from the bottom of the L is just field, but it goes along an old road towards where an old house was.  Out from the back of the L is field for as far as the eye can see; what used to be old farmland, and where I found yesterday’s copper.  And 4th, just loose ends, connecting the L up to the road, embankments, and so forth.  Wish I should show my Google Earth grid, but I don’t want 50 guys there tomorrow (as if even 5 people read this).

(BTW, here’s an example of how I do my grids for all my sites on Google Earth using the path tool.  Its very handy, tho if I had that CTX 3030, I hear the built in GPS does this automatically; what a sweet feature, if it really works as I would like (this is from another site I don’t care if 50 guys are crawling over tomorrow, have at it)) —

So, the obvious choice is down from the bottom of the L, thru the fields by the old road, towards the old house.  This is also the closest section to the hottest part of the hot zone (the bottom of the L).  But, in a half hour of expanding the grid out that direction, I got zero coins.  Not even clad.  Are you kidding me?  This is 30 feet from a section that gave up over 30 silvers in the past month.  Just 3 high tones — 2 bottlecaps and a piece of copper tubing.  I’ll never figure this game out.  And, assuming the inside of the L is dead as well, go figure?

So,  I cut my losses and expand out from the back of the L into the great expanse of the fields; this is a huge grid rank taking about a half hour for one rank, and things go a bit better.  Clad dime, then a pair of silver dimes back to back.

Near the top of the L is the section where the old timer supposedly buried the halfs, and I actually get one in that area.  Are you kidding me?  It was a weird signal, a 03-46 or 03-48 or something like that, and it turns out to be a silver clad JFK.  I’ve had 28 silver halfs, and 12 clad halfs, but this is my first silver clad half.  Its only 40% silver, but just like a war nickel, it counts (some try to argue that war nickels and other coins with less than 50% silver don’t count, but they can all pound sand.  If it contains one atom of silver, it counts in my book).

So, is this one of the old timer’s halfs?  Who knows?  Its 45 years old, and assuming he was 15 when he buried it, that makes him 60, and that’s about right.  Of course, all the clad in this area was dated 65-71, so it is consistent with that as well.  Occam’s Razor says go with the simplest explanation that fits the facts, and I’m still a bit dubious of that burying the halfs story.  OTOH, for me, silver clad halfs are as rare as bust half dimes, so who knows?  I do know if I find another one over there consistent with the date, I’ll believe the old timer’s story, and think it is really cool.

So, on we go, into the great wide open of the field, and it gets rather quiet, and I keep hoping for a tell that says the action of the hot zone spread even farther into the field, and I get a couple of wheaties, and that’s good, then, also near the old timer zone, I get a beautiful 01-44, which I assume is the second old timer half, and adrenaline is pumping, but it turns out to be a silver Q (not bad of course, but I got this half story in my mind).  I figure at that reading, its gotta be a spill, but it isn’t.  TID is always whacked here, I guess I should just get used to it.

So, perhaps there is some more life at this place, tho it is definitely getting quieter as  I expand out.  Maybe squeeze a couple more out of it, we’ll see.  Then onto the challenge of finding a new place.  That’s the problem with honeyholes, they always end (but I am yet hopeful that I am wrong about the inside of the L being filled).

Back to yesterday’s site.  The weatherman claimed it was getting up to 48 today, but it didn’t even feel close.  No sun, and a biting chill wind.  Felt like it was 28.  Well, at least I’m fortunate enough to detect now as others deal with snow, so I should stop whining about the weather.

I’ll whine about Chester County coppers instead, as that is a favorite topic around here.  Pulled this treasure today.

What’s interesting about it is that it is larger than a large cent or your typical British George II/G III copper.  Its a hefty 17.54 gr, 32mm diameter, and 2mm thick.  Its diameter, at least, is consistent with a couple of the more exotic coppers in the early pages of the Redbook.

(And I swear, before I looked in the Redbook, when I put it under water, it seemed there was a bust with a weird neckline and unusual hair, and the typical wreath on the back; features exactly consistent (along with the diameter), of the birch cent.  It even appears to have lettering on the edge, tho I can only make out what looks like one or two of the letters.  There are only 8 or so known of them, so its not that — amazing what the mind will do when it tries to fit ambiguity.  Too bad I’ll never know what it is (and you don’t want it to be something that rare, cause you feel even worse that it is so abused).  Oh, and if you are a copper expert a know a copper that fits those measurements, please post a comment.

As for silver, continued to work the grid in the same direction per yesterday’s entry, and made up a little on the whacked dime/quarter ratio, pulling 4 rosies, 3 of them barely legal.  We’ll take em.

And the rest of the hunt produced a pic that is even harder on the eyes than that copper.  A massive pile of clad.  Yuck!  That’s $5.50 worth of dirty money.  Are you kidding me?  I haven’t dug that much in a very long time. (Just an interesting fact for those reading who are not detectorists — just those 4 dimes above are worth over $8, compared to that junk below (of course its about the sport, not the money, but I figured I’d point that out for reference)).

I guess that it is statistical revenge, cause up to now, this site has had very favorable clad/silver ratio, but I wasted alot of time digging it today.  Problem was, they were mostly deep and iffy, and many sounded good due to nearby trash and perhaps the added effects of the heavy mineralization.  You gotta dig ’em, and it is painful. You don’t know how many times I was certain I had a silver Q. And, speaking of the Q’s all 13 I dug today were dated 65-71, most 65-67.  Are you kidding me?

Also pulled a silver ring (the one on the left).  The silver cub scout ring on the right was pulled yesterday; forgot about it yesterday’s writeup.

As for working the site, its sort of in who knows? mode now.  I pretty much finished up the last of the most promising section today (which, BTW, took me right into the heart of where the old timer’s halfs supposedly were, got about 3 or 4 good, deep half dollar signals, but lots of wasted adrenaline, as it was all junk).

So, we got a few loose ends here, the section I think is filled/dead, and acres and acres of expanding away from the hot area into nondescript fields.  I got to at least clean up the loose ends, and try a couple of days expanding into those fields, especially given that copper, but it may have given up its last silver today.  Lets hope not, but we’ll see.  43 tho, ain’t too bad.

Frozen dirt and other bad weather, family time, work time, doing the taxes (yuck!, and this marks the latest I’ve ever gotten them done), added up to a whole lot of not detecting.  Last hunt (not counting that 15 minute attempt that got snowed on the other day) was the niner of 2/15, so it was nice to get back in the saddle today, given the 48 degree weather (and you know you are warm-deprived when you celebrate such a hideously low temp).

And it ended well, a dollar day, and we don’t get too many of them.

The last time we were at this site, we thought it might be petering, due to the last two hours of grid extension giving up nothing after 9 silvers at a record run rate.  Moreover, adding a rank to the grid on that snowed out day with not a single coin only added to that sentiment.

So, what did I try today?  Keep extending the grid in that direction.  It was rational, given that it was a) heading into a trashy area; b) heading towards the road; and c) heading into an embankment.  All, experience suggests, its where you want to be, but it ended up in 26 cents in clad, and no wheaties.  Are you kidding me?  Just goes to show that probably everything I’ve written over the last 18 months is garbage, and it is all luck.

So, we all know when to cut our losses, so I tried to expand in the direction where I found that putative vanity silver piece, hoping to find the rest of it.  There was a nice tell at the edge of that side of the grid (a deep 65 Q), but the fish weren’t biting in that direction either. 2 hours in, and not even a wheatie yet.

Fortunately, it is a huge site, and there is one more direction to go (actually 3, one is unknown, and the other leads into the presumed filled area; these for another time, perhaps), so we go in the remaining direction, and keep getting deep clad, and a couple of bottlecaps.  God I love deep bottlecaps. These are the tells, so you go at it and go at it until the shiny comes out, and eventually I got the merc.  Quite an iffy signal, but we’ll take it.  This is the first silver I’ve gotten from this site that is not in the linear flow paradigm as described in previous entries, so there is hope after all.

Not long after the merc, its a strange signal that is quite high tonish, and open it up, and out pops a nickel.  Are you kidding me?  I know there’s high tone in there, (figure its a clad spill), and poke around with the pinpointer, and out pops a silver Q.  Sweet baby!  Poke in again, and again the propointer goes off, and out pops another silver Q.  Got a silver spill goin’, baby!  Poke in again, and another silver comes out, this time a rosie.  But that’s the end of it.  Ties my record largest silver spill at 3, but at 60 cents, is my largest in terms of face value.

So, we continue to work the grid, which is basically skirting around what I think is the filled area, and things are pretty dead.  Also working towards where the old timer says he buried the halfs (not that I believe him, but who wouldn’t give it a try?). Have 2 silver events (feels like a 2 silver day, even tho we have 4, in terms of judging the local density), in this paradigm.  Dead dead dead, until it is almost time to go.  Not enough time to do another rank of the grid, so I just freestyle off the edge of it, and randomly nail a silver Q.  Are you kidding me?  I guess that just opened up continuing the grid that direction.

But it gets even crazier.  Its past time to go, and I just start heading back to the car, which takes me across the previous hot zone (which I believe I’ve gridded out). and I get a slam dunk silver dime silver in the zone I’ve diligently worked.  Are you kidding me?  Silver number 6 on the day.  I feel too embarrassed to write this part up, and it will likely not survive the morning edit.

All I can say was, it was sort of on the edge of the hot zone grid, and sometimes it is tough to remember grid boundaries in featureless fields.  OTOH, as I’m driving home trying to think of the reasons for this miss (as always, thinking of things like channel management), I remember what I wrote re the double digit day: there’s no question in my mind I left a few in the ground.  This one was in that zone.  Geez.  At least I got a lucky do over.  I don’t ever go over my grids again (who has the patience?), so I guess there are more in that zone for the competition.  Ouch.  I guess its true that no site is ever hunted out (at least my grids aren’t apparently).

Well, number 39 from this site, ranking it as my 10th best all time, and just one from officially becoming a honeyhole.  Fascinating site.  If the weather holds, hopefully more updates, and hopefully a post showing all those old timer’s halfs.  We’ll see, as we work the grid in that direction.

And, of course, gotta post it all shinied up —

Alright, here goes.  Lets try not to be as obnoxious as the entry from the other day, but pulling silver is hard, and damn exciting, so sometimes its tough not to be.  The adrenaline takes time to drain sometimes, and it rarely drains by writing time (but of course its all gone by the time of the morning edit).

57 degrees today, and all the snow melted, so back to the prospective honeyhole of recent entries, working the grid towards the road (as opposed to the direction that produced that silver frame thingy and the putative area of the old timer’s buried halfs), and the second noise cancel gives me a channel 3, which is the lowest of the low on my opinion of E-Trac channels, and what I do when I get a crap channel is run in it for about 3 minutes and NC again hoping to get a good one (there is a method to this madness, which I may write up better sometime), but pretty much after I got that NC 3  I got a beautiful silver signal that blew my ears off.  A walker at 3 inches.  Are you kidding me?  And, my first silver ever found on E-Trac channel 3 (yeah, I track this, shouldn’t you?), but of course, a Radio Shack detector could have found this one.  I rarely get slam dunk half dollars, this may be a first (usually they are either deep, affected, or on edge or on the edge of or in out of the box locations of the site).

So that’s a good start, but it gets better.  Merc, then merc, both tough.  This “towards the road section” is both highly mineralized, and trashy, which is a double whammy.  Then we get a beautiful 10-48 which almost always ends well, and this one did — not one, but 2 silver quarters in the hole.  At first, it looked like one was clad, and one was silver, but fortunately they both came in shiny.  Rock on, baby! and it wasn’t even lunch time.

But it gets even better, if you can believe it.  Silver #6 was a slam dunk rosie, and #7 was a silver Q awkwardly positioned between two pieces of iron.  I ran over, ran over, ran over that signal trying to separate it, and eventually just dug in, unable to pinpoint, hoping for the best, not one of my better plugs (and my plugs are usually masterpieces), but I got the damn thing.  Sometimes better to be lucky that good.  While I never saw a good number, I always heard a good sound, and E-Trac newbies have to pay attention to this point — its about “that sound”, not so much about the numbers.  That’s why I rarely post numbers in my writeups (aside the fact that I usually don’t remember them).

So we’re thinking we got a double today, and not soon after, silver #8 comes in, an iffy merc that all I honestly remember about was that after I dug the plug, it somehow ended up in the grass beside the plug.  Quite a problem to find, but we’ll take it.

At this point, I had 8 silvers by 12:30.  A 4 per hour run rate, and that’s not accounting for my lunch.  Are you kidding me?  I think that’s unprecedented for me.

But things slowed down, and silver #9, another Q, came in a half hour later.  I still had an hour an a half before I had to get back, so there was little doubt about getting a double.

But it was not to be.  The next 90 minutes produced plenty of deep wheaties and clad, and many moments of “here it is, baby!”, but here it wasn’t.  The worst was when I got a beautiful deep 06-48, and this is at a site that has been coughing up silver, so you know its gonna be a silver, and it was two high tone buttons.  Are you kidding me?  D’oh!

So, that’s that.  A 9 silver day, but a $1.90 day was well.  Sort of like a 19 silver day, if you think about it.  My 5th best day in terms of face value, all time.  We’ll take it.  Who wouldn’t?

But, there’s more.  There always is.  This direction of grid towards the road seemed dead after the entry of the other day.  I was ready to call it a 25 silver site.  Then, I hit another hot zone, then more dead.  What’s happening, I think, is that in the hot zones, the bedrock is shallow, and in the dead zones, the bedrock is deep.  That’s been my digging experience.  So, it might not be a case of “what was going on in these hot zones”, but more a case of the “silver has sunk beyond detecting range” in the dead zones.  Who knows?  This still doesn’t explain the linear path of the silvers along my grid, which after a few hunts here, I’ve finally got going the right direction.

Weird and interesting site, but now seemingly dead in the direction of the grid towards the road.  Still have the direction of the silver thingy, and the old-timers halfs, and overall have covered only about 3% of the site (tho I feel by far the hottest section).  At 33, close to hitting my original call of 35, and blowing out my revised call of 25.  Could still end up be a honeyhole, tho, we’ll see, and lets hope so.

And lets see that shiny all cleaned up —

Nailed this one baby (and no, I didn’t nail that trainwreck from the other day, but at least kept my word not to edit it).  I like this one tho; I don’t think I’ll be editing it.

And besides, who has the time?  Tomorrow morning (and all day, and all weekend), is a Celtic festival I’ll be at, which will not only feature Barleyjuice (previously blogged about), but Brother and Albannach as well.   Tribal Celtic fusion.  Are you kidding me?   Too bad I don’t have the time to blog about the latter two, but google and download the sound.  You will not be disappointed.

Sitting at home watching the snow melt today. unbelievable that others were out detecting in the sleet and snow last night.  My feet get cold and my machine gets wacky.  Some people are certainly more hardcore that I am.

Anyway, I posted pics of that thingy from yesterday to my Facebook group.  Piece of a picture frame, piece or trim of a mirror, trim from a vanity (I don’t even know what a vanity is, but I imagine it is in the mirror space), were some of the guesses.  All sound reasonable to me.  Maybe there are many more pieces of it to be found; I found it very near the end of the day.  We’ll see.  I don’t have much luck on that sort of thing, but I did once find both of a pair of silver earrings.

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) —

Should have waited one more day to post, and avoided yesterday’s totally lame post, cause today we can just as easily do the same, but at least I was able to detect today, and this one involves silver.  Gotta love it, squeezing in the silver on the days you can.

Ground seemed to be thawing more, and as much as I am aching to get back to my 11 silvers on 1/31 site, I decided heading south or east was a good idea, and, given that I had errands in that direction anyway, in was the obvious choice for what was promising to be a mid 40s and sunny day, with thawed ground (at least in that direction).

Hit a site I last remember hitting in the fall of 2011.  This site is a bit of a shrine for me, as it played a big part in my longest consecutive silver streak (52 hunts a row), and I remember one day scrambling for hours at this site to keep the streak alive, and pulled it out with a merc with just 10 minutes left before I had to get back to work.   This is also the same town where I did 112 silvers in 17 days at a different site (and wrote it up for Minelab back in the fall of 2011), so the town is quite a shrine as well (that site ended up producing 140 silvers, and it is still not closed, tho it is probably mostly dead).  Needless to say, it is by far my largest producing municipality.  (Too bad I wasn’t blogging in those days; tho I did take copious notes and pics, and one day may write it up, but who has the time?).

Anyway, onto the detecting.  I proceeded to build out from the grid I built in the fall of 2011, but seemed to be dying out, as it was going from more dense to low density sections, but experience tells us that even these low density sections have the occasional random silver.

The mineralization was tough.  I could not get auto rec above 20.  I don’t remember this being a problem in the past at this site, but I could be wrong.  What I was getting was moderately deepish clads and wheaties (but no deep quarters) — deepish clad is usually a good tell.  Deep clad quarters usually an even better tell.  What this was telling me was that the big unit was getting deepish, small high tone targets that the competition was missing (the competition was obviously getting the deepish quarters), but, on the other hand, I was struggling to hit these targets (most of the signals were very iffy), and in fact, both the silver cross pendant and the merc and the clads were not extraordinarily deep (as these things go compared to other sites) — (tho I am certain the cross was on its side; not sure about the merc, cause I just pulled a deep pile of dirt onto my drop cloth, and there she was).  (If you managed to parse that massive run on, congrats!).

What this all lead to was conflicting thoughts.  Maybe I’m getting deeper stuff here that others missed.  OTOH, I was struggling on the deep ones (that didn’t really seem that deep in an absolute sense), so maybe the smaller pro coil is a better choice at a consistently highly mineralized site than the big unit.  It has never felt like an issue before, but it did today.  Too bad I didn’t have both so I could swap out and test (not that I would have wanted to — I’m both lazy and impatient, but the scientist in me wants to get this right),

Anyway, today’s merc puts this as a 20 silver site.  Not bad. Want to get back to my double digit site tho, so it may be a while before I’m back in this area.  Unfortunately, weather looks foul going forward, so we’ll see what happens next.

Well, I didn’t nail this one, but at least it won’t require the traditional next morning edit.

Tried to get out for the first time this month today.  Valley Forge Park, were I run in the morning, seemed mostly thawed, which made me optimistic, but the site I went to today was totally frozen, which surprised me, since it has full, all day exposure to the sun.  I didn’t bother to try to go anywhere else around here, since there is a thin layer of snow everywhere, which suggests that it is still frozen everywhere.

Thought about hitting a tot lot today.  Haven’t done that since I was a newbie.  Still not that desperate, tho.  When is the last time anyone has found silver in a tot lot?  (Though, unbelievably, I found a V nickel in one when I was a newbie.  Are you kidding me?).

A few guys around here are getting out.  They’ve commented that the ground is not frozen where they are hunting.  I’m not sure where that is, but it must be to the east and south of me.  Some guys also dig the frozen dirt.  I’m not one of them.  I figure I’m gonna run out of silver producing sites sooner rather than later, so might as well enjoy them when it is 70 and sunny.

Supposed to be 50 today.  50 my curvy butt.  Lucky if we get above 39.  But its not gonna get too cold at night, so, if we can get the sun beating down for a few days, it might thaw this week.  In any case, may try to head east tomorrow to a couple sites I’ve worked pretty good, but have not finished, and a couple of prospective sites in the same township.  We’ll see.

So, I’ve spent the downtime working extensively on my music collection  — stressing over important issues such as whether, Elvis, Fine Young Cannibals, or Rusted Root has recorded the best version of Suspicious Minds, and which one to download.  In the unlikely event that you are a big music fan and spend alot of time working your collection, chime in on your opinion of that question (I gave my family a ear test on the question, and discussing the results turned out to be quite interesting).

And, if you don’t have a streaming service, and want a good one, use MOG.  If you click on this link and sign up (its free), I get even more free music (and like MLM, you can do the same).  Shameless incentivized promotion for sure, but what’s the harm?  Its fun to play along once in a while.

Well, this may be the last entry before the ground thaws and I actually find some silver again (unless I do a Wiz-War entry in the meantime, which is well overdue).