Some reading material and advice...Some greatest hits...

Resqsarge03 said:

Digger- I've got to figure out a way to automatically subscribe to anything you post! Very informative and the closest thing i have to being able to follow an "old timer" around while he detects, picking his brain in the process.

BB courts had not entered my mind as good spots until I read some of your posts about BB courts and hunting in trashy soil. Then the light bulb went off and I realized that we have a good number of those around where I live.

I had some time the other day to go MDing so I stopped at one of our small city parks. This is a small southern town that grew up around the railroad and several textile mills. The park was probably about as old as the surrounding homes- 1950s I guess. The area has changed over the years and now it is pretty rough and economically depressed. While I felt out of place, it was the middle of the day and no one was around except an old guy on the front porch of a house across the street who nodded when I gave him a wave.

I started hunting in the 4 foot border of dirt and low weeds/grass at the gate into the park right next to the court. I got multiple hits right away with my ace 250 before my feet even left the sidewalk. I was showing lots of "foil" and a few solid coin signals. I chose to dig the penny signal first and turned up a clad penny. I spent 20 minutes in that 5x5 ft area, digging tabs, pennies, crushed cans, screw tops, and bits of foil. Surprisingly, about 50% of the hits were coins even if they were only clad.

I soon became tired of the trash and decided to concentrate my time on solid/repeatable coin signals which cut my number of digs way down but made me wonder what I was missing. I never turned up anything old and no jewelry (not surprising I guess based on what I was doing). I kept thinking back to Diggers post and wished I had decided to use my newly acquired sniper coil.

I became a little more uncomfortable about my location after being eyeballed by several small groups of "youts" who passed through the park. It was only after a loud verbal "communication session" happened in the street down the block that I thought maybe I should rethink this.

Instead, I decided to invite my friend and fellow new-detectorist to come join me. I have to admit I wanted to have the park to myself, but the spidey-senses I've acquired over 30+ years of emergency services work told me something had to change. My buddy agreed to come join me, which provided another set of eyes to improve our situational awareness, and the added sense of security a certain piece of heavy metallic hardware always adds to one's feeling of security .

By the time he arrived, I had decided to give the borders of the BB court a break and work across the grass to the new tot lot. He and I worked the grass around it (having to keep about 10 feet apart at least because the ACE 250's apparently like to detect each other....who knew...not this noob lol).

He and I kept hitting lots of clad in various denominations and I relaxed enough to become more methodical and attentive to my detecting.
We only covered about 1/4 of this small park including the wood chips around the play equipment. I gave the picnic tables a quick swing before we quit but was discouraged by all the trashy signals.

Anyway, it was a great experience in a park that apparently has not been hunted much if at all. It was also enough of a successful hunt to make me resolve to come back with the sniper coil and enough time with a detecting partner to more thoroughly search the BB court area.

Sorry if this is too wordy but, at least for me, I like to read about other folk's experiences and not just two or three sentences with a picture of the coin they found. OK- those are fine too but they are just not very informative.

So thanks again to all of you for sharing your hunts, your tactics, and your wisdom with the rest of us.

-Sarge

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RSavage said:

How many if these you gonna make? LOL

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