Park and Playground search

Oz...

Does that whistle have a butterfly etched in it? I found a similar one water hunting recently.

Cfmct-PI said:

Oz...

Does that whistle have a butterfly etched in it? I found a similar one water hunting recently.

Click to expand...

Nope, just a simple coaches whistle I would guess as they have football and soccer games at the park.

...Still a bad day of detecting is still better than; working, sitting around the house, doing the groceries, and taking the wife shopping!

LOL...OZ, I'll glad to see someone else is having my luck at the tot lots..actually , your luck is a little better...first one I even tried was out of town ( didn't want anyone I know to see me diggin' under a kiddie slide for pennies ) and I thought, "man, this is the way to go " ..found 4 quarters in about 15 seconds, and pretty much cleaned up on the first time out...since then I've been back 4 times and found one penny...guess I must have gotten the local hunter's attention and he now collects on a daiiy basis...actually, with what I found, it might get hunted twice daily..good luck Roarunner_426

How do you guys approach these tot lots ? I hit the obvious places, bottom of slide; inside the monkey cage; under the swings.
After this brief check either I continue and do it all (if I find a lot ) or I check only other places. Like away from the swings but parallel with them ( the bail out area); between the play objects where the kids walk from one to the other; around the outer perimeter of the sand or chipbark (if there is one).
People seem to miss a few feet away from the parallel bars; 10-15 ft away from the swings and of course right under the play things that you have to crawl to get to. I have dug many gold & silver things there.

So what else do you all do in these places ? Steve in so az

Steve - I DO IT ALL! I am also very successful under the metal playground equipment - between the big metal poles that holds it up. Especially if it has walkways overhead that have holes big enough for coins to go through them and land in the sand below. Since I go with my son whose shorter, I mark and he gets in to sift the stuff out. I usually have to bring my sensitivity down a lot so that me detector doesn't go bonkers. If I can't finiish it all in one outing, I'll mark a reference point for when I return

Someone told me to drag out the sand/chhipbark from where it gets built up arouind the metal parts and detect this. i have done this and frequently find coins that would otherwise be missed due to the metal. i can get my 8 inch coil pretty close to the metal before it goes off. Lots of goodies there then, steve

Steve, thanks for the tip about pulling the sand/chips away from the metal...hadn't thought of that, but will definitely give it a try...like Felix, I check the entire area...I also have someting of an unusual situation..most of the tot lots in town are in parks and I was informed by a park employee in May that there was an ordinance prohibiting detecting on ALL city property...for the most part, I've left them alone...I have obtained permission to hunt about 20 out of town parks and do so when I'm in one of those areas...I've no doubt the tot lots at those parks are real producers; but hunting them once every couple of weeks when the locals are there every day just doesn't leave much...as I said in the other post , the 1st time I hunted one park in particular, I did very well...don't think it had been hunted for several days, but my surprise attack evidently got the attention of somebody and there's been almost nothing there the last 4 visits....back to the local situation ; I phoned the mayor's office to request a copy of the ordinance prohibiting detection on city prop. , and was told by the City Cleck that she didn't know of any such ordinance and that she didn't think it would be a problem for me to search the parks...several e-mails to the Parks Director have gone unanswered, which I have decided to take as indifference..so I will be hunting the local lots until someone gives me a good reason to stop...interestingly enough, the largest and most promising is a 5 minute walk from my home...the park itself has been posted for over 20 years....a few weeks ago I got up at dawn and decided to give the tot lot area a go, knowing that it would only take a few minutes to determine if it was a coin mine or if somebody had been ignoring the " no metal detector on park property " sign...I'd say it had probably been a month or so since it was last hunted....plan to give it another go tomorrow..HH Roadrunner_426

In my area I have 17 parks in my own township, and each of the neighboring townships have at least a dozen or more. There are about 40 of them within a 20 minute drive. There are also three large school districts and 3 smaller ones, so there are about the same number of schools as there are parks. I have started a systematic schedule that will put each site on an annual basis to allow for replenishment. Now all I have to do is get the time to actually detect. (Things should change after my vacation). I plan on doing the tot lots when everything else is frozen. Doesn't seem to be anyone else detecting around here, so I feel that the annual visit should work until I see otherwise. If you can, do a "Google Earth" view of your area with parks, schools, and churches enabled. You will be surprised.

I went to my county's website, in addition to all the smaller incorporated citie's ones and went to the "Parks and Recreation Dept." section. All of them had the list of their parks and there amenities. :!: I copied and pasted them all onto a list. This is now my hunting list! As I do each park I hi-lite them and put the date I did it. You may be surprised to know how many parks are in the vecinity that you may not be aware of.