MD'ing in a CW Trench... no luck

[popsmoke]

Hey -

Yesterday I was out hunting in a CW trench, well acutually two of them - they ran for a hundred yards,(on private property with permission of course). This particular one was from a well documented CW occupation. There were rock walls and in some areas very well defined trench patterns, and plenty of sign of old roads leading in an out of the area. Now, I've seen my share of CW trenches and some can look pretty smoothed over but some are still fairly deep - there were both kinds here.
At any rate I swang all over that area for about 5 hours and didnt find anything in the trenchs or surrounding areas - nothing. I did find some medium size bits of cast iron from the period - maybe a bit of a broken pot. No bullets, no fuzes, but plenty of barbed wire, alot of nails.
I was using a DFX with DD1400 in mixed mode - there were no positive numbers all day - plenty of iron trash scoring -95.

How have you all had sucess hunting trenches? Come to think of it, I've hunted quite a few trenches and havnt found too much in them.

 

[bulldozer1]

Are the trenches in the woods or at the edge of a field? How deep are they. Your problem might be that there is to much dirt in there for your detector to get to the stuff. Remember that trench was about 6 foot deep at one point. That just my opinion.

 

[popsmoke]

They are in the woods along the side of a mountain. The edges are still farily distinct. They vary in depth, some areas about 6' deep, other areas are barely a trench. Probably at one time they were much deeper. The outward side is fortified with a stone wall which is still intact. There must be plenty of dropped stuff in the trench - I just wasnt getting any signal.

Maybe a PI detector, maybe dig some of it out ???!! who knows.

 

[jbow]

I usually find stuff in the area away from them, like 100 or 200 ft away. I don't know why but I alway's do better away from the trench line. Another reason, other than the dirt having built up in the trench, putting any target out of range, is that everyone else that has ever hunted the area has hunted the trenchline too.

Move away from it and try again... good luck!!!

Julien

 

[BEAR]

I found a place just like this on the side of a mountain. It was in an area where there was alot of Civil War action. I had found alot of relics everywhere and thought I had found a place that had never been hunted. I hunted it 3 days and only found 2 horse shoes and one flat file. Then I looked at the bottom of the mountain where I was hunting and saw a old home place. All I could figure out was it was trenched out to stop the water from washing down on the old house??????? BEAR

 

[stumpr]

In most cases, trenches have been surface hunted to death over the years. If you are sure these trenches were occuppied and not just defensive "what if" positions, now is the time to begin digging them out. Outside of a shell, you are not going to hear a signal that is two foot deep. I would first begin by raking out the trench and then listening for DEEP iron. Even this can be a waste of time as many of the ration cans that the troops used have decayed to such a point that you won't get much of an all metal signal until you have almost within 6-9" of the target. Digging out the trench with the landowners permission and using a tarp will hel keep the area looking less disturbed. Unfortunately, hard work is the only way you are going to find anything in a trench line outside of the occassional dropped bullet that someone has missed. Hope this helps!

 

[popsmoke]

Thanks for the replys...

I think you all are right, except for diggin out the trench it would be tough to get anything out of it. I did find some metal 'hoops' - they were wire bent into a rectangular shape about 5 x 12 inches, and one piece around not spliced or twined. They seemed definately of the period. Any ideas of what that could be?

I dont think it was dug as irrigation but thats an interesting observation - thanks.

 

[Bottlecap2]

There's a couple of possibilities.

Most of the time, the first order of business for troops when moving to a new position was to dig the fortifications. Here in Georgia, you'll find lots of trenches that were dug but never fully manned. It's my opinion that unless there was a actual or threatened direct assault on the position, usually there was only a light force posted on the site. As other folks have said, try looking out a hundred yards or so in front for the skirmish line. Many times, there would be contact between forces but not a hot fight. The trenches were dug 'just in case'.

I used to picture these trenches filled shoulder-to-shoulder with men, but now I figure that most of the troops were in camp unless there was a fight brewing... both sides kept scouts posted so that there was at least some warning of an attack, and you can imagine it would have been a lot of hassle posting a thousand men or more to a line for all day. Water, food and other needs would have caused problems after a while.

Whether or not there was a battle at the site, you can count on it being pounded by over a hundred other guys. Probably one of the best strategies is to figure out where they came and went - the paths to the closest road would be a good bet. If they were there any time at all there had to be a supply wagon coming by. I've had good success finding such a place, and there's usually a few drops around where the troops got new ammo.

Digging out trenches can pay off, but it's tough work with tree roots and such. I've know guys who spent hours on it and never found a thing. Plus, it really goes against the spirit of the hobby since you're damaging a piece of history. I wouldn't even try unless it was going to be destroyed by construction anyway, and even then it's a whole lot of work and just a shot in the dark.

Try taking the entire site into consideration. There might have been a lookout point, and a small camp there. We found such a place several hundred yards from a large creek, not a place you would normally think of as a good place to camp. But, it had an excellent view of the valley, and it produced over 60 dropped bullets.