Nothing left here...not quite!

[REVIER]

Considering these all came from a totally scoured entry area site to an old park, by others for about 60 years and myself for the last 7 months, I must say these new monotone settings I am messing with seems to be working very well.
Using the big DD coil in this iron infested heavy mineralized environment too, getting excited to see what the standard concentric and my sniper DD can find using these settings...eventually.

My take from 2 short hunts....

An old padlock...says Yale and Townes on it and it had decades of rust on the shackle.
Found a pic of a better looking one online and that took some time so this Yale Junior lock might be a bit rare.

I got some old Lincoln cents which considering how thoroughly masked everything seems to be is a victory on every one, all were pretty shallow including a 51 wheat but that no date Buff came from a deeper region and another great surprise.

The flat button was cool, says BEST on the back and nothing on the front and I don't know the age but I don't think anything like this was lost in recent times and it also was pretty deep.
Military, civilian...who knows, any help or info on this would be appreciated.

Now this other target was deep and covered with a very thick cement like crust.
I thought at first an old washer but it seemed too thick and not exactly right so into the tumbler it went.
After many hours and after checking continually some details emerged and I was shocked to discover this was actually a coin.
Final had enough clues to figure out it was a French 5 centimes, and once I knew that I kept tumbling till I cleaned it off enough to find a date.
1918 so way cool!

The one theory I came up with how this thing was possibly lost here in Birmingham Ala.could be it might have been a good luck piece carried by a soldier who was stationed in France and fought in WW1.
1918 was when the war ended, if I was a soldier back then and made it through I would have wanted some sort of keepsake to take home to remember the experience.


Monotone, disc on 1, SL speed, thresh on -4, sense at 80-85....these settings are doing it for me even though this site has junk and bad soil galore, WiFi and power lines running g directly overhead too, and also using that big coil.
Right now the soil has just the perfect amount of moisture in the soil after a big rain a few days ago and I think that also is helping me getting all these really decent and pretty solid signals....that and moving that coil at even slower than a snails pace.
Doing it all pretty darn quietly, too...surprisingly quiet as a matter if fact.
Hopefully much more to come.

 

[tommygun]

Alabama!! Home sweet home and great finds.

 

[MikeyMinx]

Awesome !!!

 

[WhatTheBeep]

Great job in that tough soil and trash!! Congrats on the old centime and the buff too!

I'm sure the buff's signal in the ground might have been jumpy or strange, but did it ring up anywhere near 28 on the VDI out of curiosity?

 

[REVIER]

Great job in that tough soil and trash!! Congrats on the old centime and the buff too!

I'm sure the buff's signal in the ground might have been jumpy or strange, but did it ring up anywhere near 28 on the VDI out of curiosity?

Not even close.
The only time I ever get a classic or near nickel signal, 31-32 on my F70, is if it is very shallow at one or no more than two inches.
Sometime three, but even that is pushing it and at four inches or more the deeper you go the numbers start getting higher because of all the iron around here and the Fishers are designed to up average around iron.
This is a programming quirk I learned about awhile ago and I am very grateful for because I use it to my advantage to find deeper, masked non ferrous targets that have been missed for 60 years in this devil dirt.
Also I get no solid non jumping numbers here unless targets are 3" or less and sometimes not e even that deep if there is iron in the vicinity around or under it which there is more often than not, in this park anyway.
In Kansas even on the really deep stuff I got a bit of jumping sometimes but usually a small range of 2-3 numbers, maybe a bit more on the really deep stuff like at 8-10" or further.
Those signals usually stayed in that range with no dips down lower to iron
Here on anything at 4" or more, especially at the 5-8" range that I am aiming for and 8" is as deep as I have dug any good target so far which took a lot of learning to reach, the range is usually larger at a minimum of 5 numbers but sometimes more than that.
I look for a range of numbers that stay high no matter how big that range is with very few big jumps down lower and then I turn 180 degrees to see if it behaves the same.
If it does I dig it and I usually find an older coin as my reward for learning this new behavior pattern.
Once in awhile I do dig some deeper iron that behaves almost the same way but not often.
Iron usually will not repeat behavior hitting it from both directions but I still dig those signals from time to time because you never know.
A deep coin on edge might act the same way so if it sounds good to my ear no matter what is happening on the screen my optimism and digging instinct kicks in.
I actually have dug a few good targets on one way hits so darn it, that just keeps me digging some iron from time to time.

I lived in this state before and started my career here.
I used a Compadre, an F2 and even a deep seeking Vaq with a big DD coil but rarely dug anything past 3"...4" was rare and unless it was in wet ground 5" was usually a dream.
I still did more than well, plenty of clad, lots of shallow jewelry in silver and some gold and even a few older coins from time to time that were shallow, but all at no more than that 3" depth.
I didn't have near the experience I have now and even with that deep Vaquero I didn't have the understanding I really needed.
Now I am back with way more of all of that stuff and a new tool the F70 which seems to be handling this crazy soil more than well...thank goodness.
I honestly considered buying and started to gather information about hunting with a TDI PI unit before I came back but now I don't think I need that detector anymore.

To answer fully your question this nickel was at about 4", jumpy and in a range from about high 50's to mid 60's from what I remember...it wasn't iron and those numbers weren't all over the place but stayed in that same range from 2 directions so I dug it like I do all other signals like that at this site.

I have also dug deep IH's, wheats and silver dimes out of here that all had numbers in the high 80's to low 90's where regular numbers would be the zinc section on the Indians and low to mid 70's on those dimes.
I have dug a few other deep nickels here too and at other sites.
One V nickel at almost 8", a couple of silver war nickels, another buff or two and a couple of early 40's regular Jefferson nickels and one of those had a bullet hole in it.
All were in the 6" or deeper range, all came in at those same high 80's to low 90's which was a bit of a surprise when nickels came up instead of higher conductive coins.

By the way that flat button which I thought was cool actually might end up to be one of my greatest finds ever so far.
It is in the lower range out if the ground but also came in high like those other coins because it was also in the 7-8" range.
According to a hunter way more expert than I in these things said it probably dates back to between 1820 and 1840 which makes it pretty much the oldest target I have ever dug up to this point.
Not counting rocks which are millions of years older.

I have said many times I had to learn a new language and behavior patterns to hunt successfully here and that is what I meant.
The only reason I can pick out these good targets left for me by all the others that hunted these sites since the 60's is because I cracked the code and started to figure out what these signals actually were.
I used to say and think this soil is so bad around here that most of us usually can't get further than 5" deep which is the average deep depth I have heard most other hunters mention they can get to when talking to them about this stuff...even the ones that knock on doors and hunt private homes.
Now I have a different theory after witnessing all this...I think detectors can get deeper around here in this devil dirt but past 4-5" targets don't make much sense or behave in a normal or logical way so they stay buried.
This is great for me because one by one I am rescuing these really hidden and masked targets thanks to my anal nature and stubbornness when I need to learn something useful...and these skills are much more than useful here.

 

[calabash digger]

Great finds now I know your secret your in trouble lol im in n.c no worries!

 

[REVIER]

Great finds now I know your secret your in trouble lol im in n.c no worries!

What!!???
You didn't sign the nondisclosure agreement?
Heads will roll!!!

 

[WhatTheBeep]

Awesome info, and thanks for the write up Digger. I'm pretty sure your soil is worse than mine, and I thought mine was pretty bad with iron ore, etc. Most of my older coins are 4-5" down and ring up on the money with a pegged confidence meter. Saturday I finally hit a penny at 7.5" deep and it was reading from about 47 to 62 on the VDI from all directions. Hadn't found much that day and thought I'd see what it was, hoping for an IHC but figured it was trash. When I spotted the coin I was surprised to see a 1951 wheat cent. Very next signal was about 10 feet away and was a 1938 wheat cent but only 4" deep. Then I realized a bit of dirt work had been done a few months ago and some must have been added over the deeper coin.

Tomorrow I'm headed to a site out of town I haven't hit for quite a while that was a public event place in the mid 1800s and a school in the late 1800s where clad from the 1990s is even 5" deep. So... I'm going to be looking for the deeper stuff and am pretty sure it won't be reading anything near what it does in the air.

 

[REVIER]

Thanks.
Honestly I never look at the confidence meter, can't remember doing it more than a couple times since I started hunting with this thing, I only listen to the tones and watch the number behavior.
I should make an effort to notice that meter more...could be some extra clues that might help.

The soil in the outlying areas around here is not quite as bad, the suburbs are better and lots of the lawns have a lot less iron although there usually some mineralization everywhere.
Here in the city it is pretty bad, and this park near me where I have doing most of my hunting is loaded with all kinds of problems and iron is everywhere.
There are a few areas in this park and some others at a few sites I have been to in the past with much better decent black dirt but that is rare.
I was just learning my F2 years ago at a park in another city in some really nice black fill dirt next to a baseball field and I got a dime signal clear and loud and the pinpoint depth number said 7" and there actually was a dime down there at 7".
Shocking...I had never seen that number before, for 18 months hunting all over the Birmingham area and out to about 30 miles I can count on the fingers of one hand how many times I saw depth numbers past 3-4" or stopped to examine some really jumpy or odd signals to check out the depth
Even using a Vaq and the big DD coil I never dug much that was past that mark.
Now I am thinking I probably got signals on some good deeper targets back then but just didn't realize it at the time.
Then I had 3 years experience hunting in almost perfect soil all over the Kansas/Missouri area where everything was way different and normal plus several times I went back home to Michigan on vacations and hunted in that great soil too.
I told everyone I could at my MD club meetings that they really had to appreciate the kind of soil they hunted in because this was not at all the same in other parts of the country but most of them knew nothing else so they took it all for granted.
Not me...I said a prayer to the MD gods just about every time I went out to hunt because I knew better...and I was so grateful.
On the other hand I have friends here that only hunted in Alabama, never hunted anywhere else and know nothing else so they think this is all normal.
I tell them if they ever went to other states with better dirt and saw how different hunting is in those situations when they returned back here they would not be happy.
It is probably better that they don't know...ignorance truly is bliss in this case.

Hunting here at this park with extra unusual problems is like taking classes in learning a new language.
Confusing at first but given enough time you can learn to communicate with others.
Also I look at it from another angle because looking at the would in a glass half full way is more logical to me.
If you need to learn new skills doing it under the worst possible conditions might be frustrating at first but in the long run will be an advantage.
Step into a batting cage at learn to hit fast balls with a leaded bat twice the weight of normal.
It would seem impossible at first, but spend enough time and effort, gain the strength techniques and muscle memory to actually be able to do it then eventually switch back to a normal weighted bat and see what happens.

That's kinda how I feel about all this.
All in all I am actually pretty lucky that I spent so much time in the last several months at this difficult park and others like it gaining these new skills and knowledge about the strange target behavior on deeper metal objects.
I am blessed to have gone through the boot camp to learn it all and now I am able to use these new skills in a neighborhood park so close I can walk to it that still has a shocking amount of great treasure left to be found in a site where I don't think many even suspected this much could still be hiding here.
In the last few months I have found silver jewelry here, a stellar large heavy 14k gold religious medallion, several old wheats back to 1910 and Indian heads back further than that, silver dimes, a V nickel from the 1880's and let's not forget a few bucket listers like a SLQ, a seated dime and a 1922 Peace dollar...plus other cool things that aren't coin related.
All found as I was learning.
Not bad for a park that most gave up on years ago.
Now more and more great things keep popping up as I bring all this new knowledge to the table and I am lucky to have a tool I really seem to click with to do it all.

Life is good...what a great hobby!