jordanmills
Senior Member
Jordan,
Thanks for sharing your story. It sounds like your willing to put in the work, both in doing research and in being patient during the hunt.
I haven't been detecting long either. I started 2 1/2 years ago with a Fisher F22. I detected with it for 4 months during the Fall of 2018 and from March through August of 2019. That $225 machine was great at finding clad anywhere up to 4-5 inches down. Not much of anything deeper, unless it was huge. I found about $350 in clad with that thing and was just lucky enough to find 3 silver dimes with, actually a trifecta, one Rosie, one Merc, and one Barber. I certainly wasn't looking for the silver when I found it, it just happened to be in the right place and at the right depth. Found the Rosie at a ballfield built in the last 30 years, the Barber in an old park in a small town, and the Merc in my Mother in Laws front yard of her 1950's farm house that had a previous house on property. Point it, I got so good at knowing I was digging clad (quarters, dimes, and copper pennies) that I was rarely pulling anything else out of the ground. I was knowingly skipping over nickel and zinc penny signals because of all the pull tabs and shape of the zincs. This most likely cost me a few good finds in terms of jewelry, but oh well.
Anyway, bought the Nox 600 back in early June and have enjoyed using it this year. I'm up to about 20 silvers and 5 Indians here in Central Iowa. I will admit, it's been an learning curve and probably the most difficult lesson was the fact that the silver just isn't easy to find. A LOT of it has already been plucked. I was first faced with this reality back in mid-July when I was detecting a nearby park that I knew went back to the late 1800's. The park is in a County Seat, 6000 people, and sits next to the County Fairgrounds and used to house both a pool and the HS football field until the 1980's. Point is, this park had gotten lots of use for decades upon decades. I'm in the middle of my hunt and an older gentleman (in his late 60's) drives up and yells from 50 feet away, "Hey, your swinging the Nox 600, that's a great machine! I've got one too!" Turns out, he's been hunting my neighborhood for the better part of the last 40 years. Pretty much everywhere I'd researched, he had stories of being there and what he'd found over the years. He even gave me a detecting business card and said he'd hook me up with some sweet spots and invited me along. I haven't taken him up on it yet due to the Covid, but plan to this next year when/if all settles down.
Sorry this is so long-winded. Another idea, some people are better visual learners. Have you watched Youtube videos? I know Plugmaster Ford and Missouri Mike swing Nokta's and put out quality videos detecting in Southern Missouri. I think they use Anfibios but they really tout the Nokta brand. They are big into private house permissions. Also, MDing East Texas with Kevin is another guy putting out quality videos in your area. He has a bit of a different approach, mostly schools and ballfields, but is more of a "dig it all" sort. He used to mostly use an AT Pro, but switched to the Nox 600 this year. Check out their vids if you haven't already.
Good luck with the hunt!
Thanks for sharing. Yep I've watched plenty of videos. I guess I'm doing about what they're doing. Just need better places.
I went out for a bit after work to do a park, strips, and lots in an old part of town that's had houses for a hundred years. To say it was full of metallic trash would be an understatement. I got one clad quarter and one clad dime among a bunch of trash. For the most part, I couldn't even pick a stable signal out of all the noise.
To top it off, the last spot I went to was a mostly cleared block. It probably had a dozen houses on it at one time, but had one left that was falling apart, and two that were apparently occupied and in decent shape. Trash everywhere, especially on the curb strips with hundred year old oak trees. And then I noticed that someone had dug a couple dozen plugs and left them laying out on the ground. Sure it was already trashed and about to be re-graded, but that just seems lazy. And it means I was just a few days late to get the most recent pickings.