Got together with a friend last weekend for a research and hunting expedition to the deserts of So. CA (both high and low desert destinations).
These are areas where some of the earliest European contact occured in California. The first spot turned out to be a bust, mostly turn of the last century junk, and very little if anything to indicate it's early 1800's heritage.
The next spot, which admitadly we weren't expecting anything, turned out to be the best spot. Interestingly right where you would think would be good was almost devoid of targets, so we wandered the desert a bit and started finding target rich debris fields within a few hundred yards of our inital focal point. Definitely never hunted before, and although we didn't make any amazing finds there, we were only able to hunt it for a few hours, and there were plenty of conductors, many easy five star give me type signals.
One spot was just loaded with iron, well actually they all were, but one was far worse then the others. My F75 with 0 disc and 99 sensitivity sounded like a machine gun on every swing
Some of the better junk - a rim fire Henry's shell, the funky looking suspender clip type do-dad with the pointy ends has an 1850 patent date. I wish I could've found the rest of the silver watch chain, but it was no-where to be found. :
When I dug the top of the coin purse, I was really hoping there would be more, but nothing:
The 1901 V-nickle was on a rusting nail, you can see the rusted iron still stuck on the back. The TID on my F75 for it was 18, only three digits above iron. Also a nice little mid 1800's Spanish religious medallion from another site:
Also found this late 1800's little bottle thanks to it's aluminum top at a stage stop. On one side it says "One once true dentalloy, we guarantee an once of alloy not a bottle full". Seems to be some kind of silver dental powder used for fillings from what I could find online, kind of an odd find, but you just never know what you will run across at these old ghost town type of sites.
Thanks for looking,
Brian
These are areas where some of the earliest European contact occured in California. The first spot turned out to be a bust, mostly turn of the last century junk, and very little if anything to indicate it's early 1800's heritage.
The next spot, which admitadly we weren't expecting anything, turned out to be the best spot. Interestingly right where you would think would be good was almost devoid of targets, so we wandered the desert a bit and started finding target rich debris fields within a few hundred yards of our inital focal point. Definitely never hunted before, and although we didn't make any amazing finds there, we were only able to hunt it for a few hours, and there were plenty of conductors, many easy five star give me type signals.
One spot was just loaded with iron, well actually they all were, but one was far worse then the others. My F75 with 0 disc and 99 sensitivity sounded like a machine gun on every swing
Some of the better junk - a rim fire Henry's shell, the funky looking suspender clip type do-dad with the pointy ends has an 1850 patent date. I wish I could've found the rest of the silver watch chain, but it was no-where to be found. :
When I dug the top of the coin purse, I was really hoping there would be more, but nothing:
The 1901 V-nickle was on a rusting nail, you can see the rusted iron still stuck on the back. The TID on my F75 for it was 18, only three digits above iron. Also a nice little mid 1800's Spanish religious medallion from another site:
Also found this late 1800's little bottle thanks to it's aluminum top at a stage stop. On one side it says "One once true dentalloy, we guarantee an once of alloy not a bottle full". Seems to be some kind of silver dental powder used for fillings from what I could find online, kind of an odd find, but you just never know what you will run across at these old ghost town type of sites.
Thanks for looking,
Brian
Paul and I did quite a dance getting away from them.I didn't know I could crawl so fast.
I thought Frank was going to bust a gut laughing at us.