Lets talk hunted out!!

[M.L. Hinds]

I keep hearing hunted out and feel it might be driving a thought that people feel they have to find a virgin site to make great finds!! People this is not the case.. What you find is going to be how much research you do and time your willing to put in detecting to learn your equipment! Now there is some luck involved however, I truely believe that skill is a great big part of the finds folks are making. My son Weston for the first year or so was always getting mad at me cause I seemed to find more than he did where he had already hunted. I would pat him on the back and say "slow down be patient there is still lots of good stuff to find". Now due to his available time his collection of coins, rings, buttons, ect. is getting to be remarkable to say the least!! His best coin came from guess where?? A area that he was told was hunted out (penny worth around 300-400 dollars)! He was told by numerous elderly folks and other detectorist that it was hunted to death yet he remembered what dad told him and went to it anyway!! Now the great part he has been using a 200 dollar detector (Ace 250). He finally understands just what I am trying to tell everyone "THESE SITES ARE NOT HUNTED OUT" Weather it takes skill, better equipment, bigger coil, mother nature!! You can and will find stuff in these sites that they say has nothing left!

 

[ronaldj2]

I agree with you Mr. Hinds I believe there is no such thing as hunted out. And I am proof of this, as time and time again I have come back from (hunted out spots) with some pretty good finds. Maybe the term hunted hard, but not hunted out !! Now hardly hunted would be nice !!

 

[Richard@BackwoodsDetectors]

[size=large]200 % right !!!!!! I could not agree more....[/size]

[size=large]Richard[/size]

 

[ron_c]

When someone tells me that a certain place is "hunted out", I know what he's really saying is that everybody and their dogs have looked there and most of the good older stuff is gone and it's going to be harder to find the remaining targets. In the mid 70's I was told that a small town park was hunted out and I wouldn't find anything. When I ask who hunted the park and was told, I have seen these two hunt before and they hunted like chickens with their heads cut off. Look for 6 feet or so and then move somewhere else and look for another 6 feet before moving again. Anyway, this was one of two places that you found more dimes than any other coins and it was more Mercury's compared to Roosevelt's. For such a small park it had lots and lots of silver. Best coins found, a 1914D Buffalo and a 1895S half dollar. I almost didn't look because someone told me it was hunted out and I wouldn't find anything. This was a good lesson learned.

 

[Ray-Mo.]

Hunted out just means more of a challenge most of the time.I only know of one big park in my area that I consider "hunted out".It has nice black soil and is not filled anywhere.I have hit it for several hours several times with big and small coils and only found 3 old coins in the last year.It is over 120 years old and was loaded up untill the mid 80s.Every time I go back with a new attitude and still nothing.I keep thinking I would love to get a bunch of the very experienced minelab guy's to hit this park for a solid 6 to 8 hours someday and just see what developes.
The way I look at it is if it was easy to go find a pocket full of old coins everyone would be out hunting,Ray.

 

[JohnnyI]

I too agree with you 100% Mr. Hinds, particularly if you are hunting a place of some real age, and where you have confirmed previous finds at a substantial depth. People who hunt in Europe for instance, almost always have the possibility of deeper and sometimes ancient finds (particularly if they are hunting soil which has a history of being turned, and is does not have very shallow bedrock.) Even here in America when a plowed field is being hunted with some success and seems "worked out", the lower slopes of such a field will have accumulated far more topsoil and often hide much deeper targets. It's just a matter of tweeking the machines more and more, but in the end you are usually eventually rewarded with something of real age, if not value. Locations a little less old around homes also hide some finds , as every tree that was planted over the years, every drain pipe or electric line that was laid and backfilled, etc., turned soil and inevitably hid something at a greater depth.

As I posted in another thread, I'm on my tenth year of my place of 300 years , which I guarantee would be considered totally "worked out". My understanding wife has allowed me to occasionally start up the Kubota to backdrag a new flower garden or two, and this has confirmed for me what is hidden, and what is "temporarily" out of reach...occasionally a well worn coin, buttons, pewter, and lots of square nails. I've had the e-trac now three days, and on this small worked out area (which I've covered every inch of many many times) I've now found two wheat pennys at about seven or eight inches, two brass buttons, a pewter spoon handle, a fragment of a shoe buckle, lead colonial net weights, bronze square nail, and various non-ferrous fragments. The place was a poor fisherman's house, a "Rogerine", and they were known for their thrift, so I doubt any big silver ever fouind its way here to this place in the once desolate pine barrens. Even the "expensive" pewter is scant compared to a richer precolonial home sites I've covered in Pennsylvania. The little stuff is still here though, the half dime, the half reale or worn farthing that dropped in the snow one day, and I intend to find it! I'm going out now to do just that.
P.S. Tip, If you decide to buy an old place on which to wile away the years metal detecting , go for a place that was owned by either a rich drunk, or one who had many rich children who enjoyed doing summersaults on the lawn! The owner of this place was apparently sober and childless.

 

[DrBobinMO]

Hey Ray, i'm up for the challenge. Let's do it sometime soon.

 

[drodda777]

I am new to the hobby. I have had my E-trac for over three weeks now. I read many posts on this forum and TNet and read about the term hunted out. My question is how do you determine the best places to spend your time? I have many places in my local area to hunt. Some private and some public. I have been doing as much research as possible to get the history of the area. I have already made some great finds. However it seems the really good finds are coming from places that I would never have expected. Then I spend all day at an old 1900 schoolhouse that has been closed since 1945 and find 2 wheats. I realize that you have to put your time in to get good with your MD. Is there a way to prioritize sites based on certain factors that might allow a newbie to increase his chances of finding older coins and relics? I don't have any Experienced older MD hunters in my immediate area. I have been wanting to get into this hobby since I was a kid. I finally said heck with it and bought a MD and figured I would learn from trial and error. However I am feeling the luck is less and less and the experience is a very high part of success at this hobby.

HH,

Dave

 

[TerryR]

That's all there is mostly in the midwest, hunted out, by me, I thought. It's amazing how much I missed. Just getting to the real good stuff now after 30 years.

 

[dreamweaver43]

Try this one......

I was at our club meeting and I would ask the guys where are the really hunted out spots. Nobody has any trouble giving that info out. They pointed me to a park, in a po-dunk town that was "hunted to death","no signals left to dig","It was a great spot in the 80's" etc. etc. etc.

(I didn't have the heart to tell them about the barbers and indians that showed up.....actually one of the coins pictured in Andy's book happend to pop out of the ground at this park.)

"Hunted out" really means "this is a good spot"

Brad

 

[Kal]

Your right Lee. Its like saying a lake is all fished out. Its amazing how many coins and other goodies are still being masked by junk targets!

 

[M.L. Hinds]

n/t

 

[Ray-Mo.]

I am ready. This park is about 2 hours from Springfield I would say,North and West.Let me know

 

[JohnnyI]

It's my third day with the new machine, and I am still concentrating on a very small square nail laden area in the front yard which, after ten years with both the xlt, fisher, and early model explorer, has resulted in no discernable non ferrous signals over the last couple of years. After first experimenting with the coin mode and presets over the last two days to give them a fair try, ( two wheat pennys the result), I re-tuned the detector to the trash mode (possibly a mistake?) , difficult ground, audio +3, and probably most importantly, ferrous audio. I was able to dig a very small forged bronze tack about the size of a shoe tack, and then a 1917 mercury dime, again in a very small area which was covered litterally hundreds of times with no signal. The dime signal was high pitched, very erratic and broken, could only be detected on one vector, and was impossible for me to pinpoint accurately. After digging six or seven inches the signal vanished, but further digging eventually produced it. Were it not for the high pitched audio signal, I would never have had a chance with this target. It's just my opinion, but I think the learning curve can be greatly shortened if you concentrate on a small area which is "worked out", and hit it and hit it with each new "tweak" as you learn them. That way you know for sure if your enhancements are really working, or whether you are just getting lucky.