Tomorrow it's going to be above freezing a bit. The ground is covered with snow but not too much, so I'll going to head for the woods and see if I can find a patch of ground devoid of snow due to the wind's obscurities in where it lays the snow through ridges and valleys. Often I've found this to be the case, and often I've found that while mowed grass might be frozen rock solid, the soil in the woods in some spots is not due to tree cover holding in warmth at night or the heat generated by rotting ground litter. A lot of times a nice layer or rotting leafs or other forest debri keeps the ground warm and unfrozen.
I've about had enough of not being able to hunt here, since the day I got the silver coins like the seated quarter and the gold chain. That day was so good to me that I'm just itching to get out and dig again. When I get in this thirsty mood to hunt, those are the days I'm just happy to dig any signal above iron, and by doing that often come up with some great finds.
Remember when you were new to detecting, and were just thrilled with the mindset of digging any and all signals like it was magic? I remember those days, and on those days I made many good finds that read much lower than coins on the scale, or even silver coins that were so badly masked that you would have never bet would have turned out to be a coin.
I really like it when I get into those moods again here and there. I've had a hard enough time trying to train myself to no longer wander looking for classic clean deep silver signals at sites that don't permit coins to sink below the depth of other machines. These days those easy 7 to 8" clean coin hits are just about gone. I only look for those clean deepies these days now when I know the soil conditions might let coins sink to the 8" to deeper range, beyond the reach of most machines in my soil, but not out of the reach for my GT and 12x10.
So instead of looking for those wandering for hours when the site doesn't permit such depths beyond other machines, I now try to get into the habit of digging each and every iffy coin hit, no matter how bad it sounds. So long as it hints any form of a high tone for a split micro second, those are the ones I want to make more of a practice of digging now at those sites were stuff just ain't sinking beyond the depth of other machine's abilities. I figure I'd rather dig 20 real iffy coin hits, with the chance of just one being a coin, then to wander two hours looking for the classic silver hit and not dig anything. That gets boring real fast, and I think the act of digging more often makes the day much more interesting.
Don't get me wrong, I have sites where I still roam for the deepies, because I know they can get that deep there and the GT/12x10 is able to go beyond the depth of many machines in my soil and find those, but to use the same approach at many of my sites were the soil substructure makes sinking to those depths a impossibility, I figure far better use of my time to dig all the "junky" coin hits most pass right by.
A few years back comes to mind, where I was in the woods and got a really bad coin hit. It's scratchy audio and warble made me real sure it was a piece of junk, but since there weren't many hits in this patch of ground I figured I'd dig it. Turns out it was a merc with a roofing nail laying right on top of it in the hole. About 5 feet away I got a barber quarter, which wasn't masked by was right on the side of a rather steep embankment. I figure somebody used that as a handy seat to rest and the coin fell out of their pocket. Never pass by hills or slopes. Some of my best coins have come from those kinds of spots. People will use them to sit or to lay on to take a rest.
Jim
Getting back uphill might be a bit problematic... but you can pack snowhoes on the sled I suppose.