Well I actually walked a lot of my 300 acre site yesterday just to scout it out. My new Fisher ID Edge will arrive next week. I don't plan on hunting the site until I get more familiar with the unit. I have considerable experience with the Fisher Gold bug in locating likely gold deposits in streams, but none in coin hunting. I don't think anyone has hunted it much if at all since i is down a long private road with a gate and posted. I did find a huge hornet or yellow jacket nest in an overturned tree roots/dirt and mosquitos and different annoying bugs. Note to my self keep bug spay in pack.
I did look at the site carefully with Google maps and discovered. Two additional 15 acre fields in addition to the 40 acre field. It is owned by a distant relative and managed by my nephew. At one time they had a tent and rv campsite on it back in the sixties and it was popular because it was about 4 miles south of the dam. But they stopped operating the camp site I think in the 80's. I have already identified two home foundations and from memory also know where four outbuildings were located, but don't remember them being near any homes. My memories come from being a boy visiting there in the late 50's.
On my trip yesterday found out two of the smaller fields were completely grown up with blackberry thickets and pine trees and other saplings about 10 feet high. So the dates on the google map must be wrong since it said 2007 and I don't think it can go from a field to that in 2 years. It would be impossible to even walk in those blackberry thickets let alone hunt. But the other field had been mowed recently so it will be a good site. There are two main creeks that flow 100% of the time and about a 20 feet wide creek bed of rock, sand and some bedrock, but the actual width of the water is 2 - 6 feet and mostly ankle deep in most areas but some are deeper than my springer spaniel who jumped into one thinking ti was shallow.
Along the river there is double drop in elevation. The first drop from one of the fields near the river is about 20 feet and then it has a gentle slope going to the river of about 20 feet wide and then another drop off about six feet to another gentle slope to the river bank. The river bank is about 12 feet above the river bottom when the river is low. When we have 2-3 days of thunderstorms, the river comes up to the top and often overflows the 12 foot bank. No signs of building in the river flood plain area, and that makes sense. When the river is down, lots of places to walk among the rocks and looks like more mud than sand, but there are some sandy places. I may search the river later, but that is my last priority just due to the muddy 12 bank and paths down to it are very slippery.
Once when I was in the etowah river in waders and metal detector I slipped and fell. The river was only about 20 feet across at that point, but it was a mountain river and I had no idea of the strong water force. I was lucky, I was told always to have a tight belt around the waders so they would not fill up. Had I not done that, I am not sure how far downstream I would have gone. My boys were with me, but they could not even hear my shouts over the noise of the river and were looking at something in the other direction. Now I respect all rivers, especially the Chattahoochee when they start letting water out of the dam to generate electricity. About 1 - 2 people are drowned each year because of that increase in water volume that catches people by surprise in spite of the warning sirens.
Also the aforementioned field has two dry wash like creek beds coming towards the river and join to form a single one into the river. These only have water during a rain. I was wondering if there ever were any coins in the field would they have washed down towards the river. I know that is how 99% of the gold does get into small streams by being in rocks and tumbling down the hills in heavy rains (over millions of years) but I am not sure how round coins would do in a rain storm. I would assume they would move also , but I am just guessing.
In the woods there are several suspicious sites. These are sites where there are two to three old growth trees (i call them old growth because their diameters are probably 4 - 5 feet) and no other trees at all growing under or near them and the brush is very, very low brush less than 1 foot high or just fallen leaves and branches. These are also very close to two known homesite foundations. Most of the other threes in the woods are six to 20 inches in diameter. I am not sure how long it takes for a hardwood to grow to those sizes of 6 - 20 inches.
Since this site is very close to my home, 2 miles, it will be easy to hunt in my free time during the week and since I work from my home with my own business i can get away when I get tired of being on the computer.
So when I start searching I will concentrate on homesites, old out building sites, the old rv camping area, creek beds and then the fields, and the several known moonshine sites. After that I will just random test different areas in the woods and especially near the old growth trees. There is one huge tree that is very interesting, and it has a lot of faint initials carved all in it at a higher level than you would normally think. Also there are barbed wire fences pieces up about 15 feet on some trees that are 20 inches in diameter. So this also leads me to believe there were fields many years ago where there now are woods. This area dates back to the days (1800's) when the Chereokee indian territory was on the west side of the river and the federal lands (settlers) was on the east side of the river. The indians were removed in 1838 since gold was found in N. Georgia.
I also plan to put a test garden in my back yard. I used my old gold bug last week and it provided me with lots of pull tops, rusty nails and washers, and foil and a 14 K wedding band. I am planning to bury also clad and silver coins since the Fisher ID Edge is supposed to be able to tell the difference. I will plant one of each type at different depths. Any suggestions on the different depths to learn from?
I am assuming older coins will be generally found deep than clad coins or pop tops.
Any help is greatly appreciated. I can hardly wait till my Fisher ID Edge gets here. I know there are better ones available, but budgets these days for me are tighter.
and made finds