I keep my Racers and FORS ready-to-go on the back seat and with all accessory coils, even the big one, in a long plastic tote just in case I need to make a change. One I won't change, however, is my first, pre-production, Racer as I keep the excellent small '
OOR' coil mounted on it full-time. It is my most often grabbed and used detector/coil combination, but that might be due to the number or very trashy sites I hunt.
The "green up" can sure be a frustrating challenge that we often don't know when to expect at many old sites we hunt "out west." A friend and I worked a ghost town in March and it had to be close to ideal conditions. Hardly any surface vegetation, and the ground was reasonably soft and you could 'toe-scuff' a lot of it, only needing a Lesche Digger in a few places where trucks, tractors and cattle had compacted it.
We returned a couple of weeks ago in April, only to find it very "greened up" with a lot of very dense weedy growth that was about 5 inches to 7 or 8 inches high over the bulk of the otherwise huntable area, most open and perfect one month before. In the brush or in what more open areas we could hunt, the former 'ideal' ground was now dry and hardened and all you could do was get down and dig ... often calling for a lot of effort to recover a target.
Here in my little town I have been trying to track down the owners of a lot of the hillside where kids used to play in "the early days" that is up from where the old school used to be. The soil isn't all that bad to hunt in, when you can get to it, and it amazes me how we have to work so hard to try and grow things we want to eat, but the wild grasses that cover the hillside have gone from their fallen-over winter-time appearance to tall, green grass that waves in our windier climate.
And it wasn't from a lot of watering, either. As of 3:10 AM our annual rainfall for four months and a day is only 2.[size=small]64[/size]". We had some dry winds yesterday with a high of 84°, but it's relatively calm now and will be a more comfortable sunny and 76° or so pleasant day today for our local rodeo. I sure wish some areas wouldn't be so quick to grow and over-vegetate some huntable ground, but I only have a week to go and I'll be off to several ghost towns. Odds are they can't all be "greened-up" and those who come on out to join our outing in mid-May might be wishing they had more 'green,' such as big shady trees, to relax under.
Sorry to hear your relic sites will be unhuntable 'til fall, but I wish you the best of success in the parks and yards you'll hunt this summer. If you can get away in mid-May [size=small](the 16th & 17th and days that follow)[/size], you, or anyone, are welcome to come on out to Wendover on the Utah/Nevada border that we're using as a "base camp" to hunt several old ghost towns They are trashy, and they have been hunted, but any opportunity might be a rewarding opportunity.
Monte
