Some do find so much more than others, I used to be one that did quite well back a few years ago and seen days where 15 silver was no problem in a day, now its been rare to even find silver and when I do it is the older ones as I like to go to all those sites others gave up on as they cant find anything anymore. I like these sites as all the loud hits are gone from the clad and much of the trash so I can pay attention to those weak and iffy signals. For the last few years I find it tough to get out because of my health, so I stay close to home more and rework old parks and ball fields.
Now I have a couple of guy locally that get around 250-350 silver a year with most detecting is on weekends and they do put the time in. The secret is they do a lot of research of the area they are going to hunt and maybe drive 200-300 miles one way and have several different spot they will check out before they leave home in case one or more sites are a bust. They have good detectors and make sure they have extra headphones, batteries plus digging tools in case they have a problem Sometimes they leave 3 in the morning for here in ND and don't get back home until 3 in the morning the next day and sometime they will stay over nite if they hit a great spot. The one that does the best it seems has used the same model detector since 2000 as he knows it well (Explorer XS) while the other 2 use a E-Trac and sometime one does better then the others and sometime that person don't. It all about knowing your detector and doing the research.
Once in a while something odd happens as 2 of the guy were looking for a site out of town where was a old picnic ground, they stopped in town to get something to drink and seen some tall light which means possibly a ball field. The checked it out and it look like a nice ball field that wasn't very old, but further back one guy seen what may have been a older one so he tried it and notice he was getting some deeper hits and went for them and they were silver, he got 55 pieces of silver with 3 of them half's while they guy he was detecting with got 45 pieces of silver, that's right 100 silver between them. This was in June of 2014 in a town that has around 3500 people in in MN. They checked the newer ball field and all the surface coins were gone, but did get a little clad. Like I say it was odd that whoever detected that before didn't notice the older field, or they didn't know there detector or had one that had no depth at all.
Two of the guys left ND a couple of weeks ago on a Friday and went down to Kansas as they wanted to find some thawed out place to detect and was back home later on the following Monday and hit a few ball fields and parks and got around 12 silver each plus some nice trade tokens and one got a nice silver ring too and I know one got 5 IH pennies too from sites others have detected I am sure. Neither one does much house sites, but they do once in a while as they like areas where a lot of people been at.
Secret as I say is a good detector and knowing it well plus do the research of all old maps and we also like the towns centennial books as there is a lot of good info in them of picnic grounds from the early 1900 or late 1800s or where everyone met for ball games and such, even some of the older churches are found in those books that are long gone.
Rick