DIGGER27
In Memory Of
Ok, long one here...might be my last decent hunt of the year so I wanted to relive it a little.
Basically I found a war nickel in a very difficult site.
You coin guys not interested in all this bull just scroll down to the nice picture below.
Wanted to have a little fun and find just one more cool thing before the end of the year and I didn't feel like driving very far so what to do?
I know, I will just go to one of my close, most challenging, garbage and iron infested spots that I have hit a million times and that seems totally and hopelessly depleted to try to find just one more good target that is extra good at hiding in my challenging devil dirt.
A big victory if I am successful, I figure, for me overcoming challenges is even more fun than finding the really good stuff, sometimes.
Half the fun I have in this hobby is finding stuff, the other half is getting good enough with my tools to find the oh so very difficult little gems that have top notch ninja-like abilities that me, and everyone else, have missed over the decades.
Lately I haven't been as passionate about this hobby as in the past, I don't get out as much as I could have, maybe I am getting lazy in my old age.
I still hunt but just not quite as much.
For the last year and a half, or so, I have been using the Nox mostly and have done very well with it as it seems to have some unworldly abilities to get around the masking issues I have to deal with in this strange place.
I actually love using it and little by little I am getting more confident and my skill set is growing but on this hunt I decided to pull out the F70 for old times sake.
I spent many hundreds of not over 1000 hours standing behind that thing learning it and a whole lot more hours learning to deal with this devil dirt and all this trash and iron and became pretty good at it.
I don't know exactly how to explain this but even though the Nox works so well here so far, far better than I hoped it would, to me it has no soul...yet.
I have clicked with it but using it seems sterile, mechanical, perfunctory.
The perfect situation for some but for me I so enjoy the connection I have with my detectors and the tweaking that goes on behind the scenes that results in a difficult to find older treasure.
More of, it is the journey and not the destination, sort of thing I guess.
I am getting there with the Nox but I decided to use the F70, I KNOW we connect in so many different ways and on so many different levels.
Plus...fun.
I head over to a small park in my neighborhood, been there a million times and found a ton of clad, a couple older coins, one nice silver bracelet plus a few other very cool things.
I aimed for a small strip of grass next to a street that were the front lawns of a couple of older homes long ago.
This whole park used to be part of a huge old neighborhood but they razed it all when they built a major freeway through here.
That is typical of my sites, most everywhere I hunt is loaded with iron, nails, pieces of pipes and all the other garbage you find when you hunt old home sites where they seem to just knock down buildings and cover it all up with dirt leaving a ton of metal behind.
Add in the normal park trash and mineralized soil and we have the perfect storm of challenges to overcome around here.
So what...I figured I had a choice to move, drive a long way somewhere else to hunt or just learn to deal with this mess and try to find whatever is left to find.
I picked the latter which in hindsight was good because I have found a shocking amount of great treasure and even a few bucket list items in areas most have totally written off.
So I turn on the F70 which has my beloved Sharpshooter coil, and it...just...felt...good.
You know how you feel when you put on your best, most comfortable perfect pair of beloved jeans or favorite shirt or sweater and you just feel so satisfied?
So for the Patriot/F70 owners here are my settings in case you are interested.
Program 1 is my Silver Slayer Settings...Disc at 65...nickels and zinc notched back in.
Sense about 80-85...Thresh at -2, DE and 1 tone.
I figured I was going after old coins so these settings should hit nickels, nickel area gold, Indians, wheaties and all the other higher tone coins...also zincolns but what ya gonna do?
This was my check settings, only used when I found something interesting using my hunting settings in program 2.
I planned on hunting with these settings when I started but I had the feeling I was missing stuff to I went for my favorite iron site settings instead.
Hunting settings...beware, not for the squeamish, I call these my Blast-Through settings.
All metal, Sense at 99, Thresh at +5...SL speed.
Counterintuitive, I know, pedal to the medal in an area with so much trash and garbage literally inches from each other in this area I was about to hunt but I found after trying all kinds of settings and ways to hunt in my mineralized soil and massive iron this one is still the best...for me.
Took awhile to learn to do it this way but well worth it because it works here.
So I start moving slow and find nothing great for awhile, I have scoured this area many times over and over with all my detectors for the past few years so not surprising.
Every detector I own has been to this exact spot at least 6-8 times or more, a couple way more than that.
I dug some junk, got fooled by some iron, (with settings this high even smaller iron can wrap around and come in at some pretty solid 90 numbers), and then I got this signal.
Multiple iron hits but also another one, a bit jumpy from 35-39, high nickels into tabs, and really small, I could only hit it with some repeatable numbers from only a couple of ways by maneuvering that coil.
I switch to my check settings and same thing, tons of iron but I still got that quick one in the high 30's from only a couple of directions so I dug and from about 4" up pops a dirty nickel.
Had to be standing up vertical with a very short, small signal like that.
There was iron all around it, after I dug the thing I moved the coil a few inches away and went around the hole in a circle and got at least 6 iron signals...04, 06, 11, 07, 05, 12...like that.
Close enough that even though small that Sharpshooter coil still caught at least some of these along with that 30's target.
It was very dirty so I figured a modern nickel, the back had a lot of black on it I couldn't rub off but I could see part of Monticello, hoping for a V since I found one here before but not this time.
I turn it over and rub the dirt encrusted other side and, wait a minute...this side is cleaning off much easier and there is some shiny there...could it be?
Yep, I reveal the date and I see 1944 so I turn it back over and rub the heck out of the thing until I finally can see a big ole capital P above the dome.
Coool, a silver war nickel, mission accomplished and I did it together with a favorite, old hunting partner.
The F70 never alerted me to this thing before despite dozens of visits, neither did the Nox despite the fact that it hits on nickels like it was religion.
It was missed by the Compadre and Mojave too but I am not disappointed in any of that in any way.
On this day at that moment the dirt was just moist enough and I happened to move my coil over that spot from just the right direction that my tool of choice was able to tell me there was something interesting down there...and I was on my game enough at that moment to notice it.
Just an old nickel and it could have happened with any of my detectors at another time but I am so happy I hit my goal on this hunt and that I was able to do it with such an old friend.
Basically I found a war nickel in a very difficult site.
You coin guys not interested in all this bull just scroll down to the nice picture below.
Wanted to have a little fun and find just one more cool thing before the end of the year and I didn't feel like driving very far so what to do?
I know, I will just go to one of my close, most challenging, garbage and iron infested spots that I have hit a million times and that seems totally and hopelessly depleted to try to find just one more good target that is extra good at hiding in my challenging devil dirt.
A big victory if I am successful, I figure, for me overcoming challenges is even more fun than finding the really good stuff, sometimes.
Half the fun I have in this hobby is finding stuff, the other half is getting good enough with my tools to find the oh so very difficult little gems that have top notch ninja-like abilities that me, and everyone else, have missed over the decades.
Lately I haven't been as passionate about this hobby as in the past, I don't get out as much as I could have, maybe I am getting lazy in my old age.
I still hunt but just not quite as much.
For the last year and a half, or so, I have been using the Nox mostly and have done very well with it as it seems to have some unworldly abilities to get around the masking issues I have to deal with in this strange place.
I actually love using it and little by little I am getting more confident and my skill set is growing but on this hunt I decided to pull out the F70 for old times sake.
I spent many hundreds of not over 1000 hours standing behind that thing learning it and a whole lot more hours learning to deal with this devil dirt and all this trash and iron and became pretty good at it.
I don't know exactly how to explain this but even though the Nox works so well here so far, far better than I hoped it would, to me it has no soul...yet.
I have clicked with it but using it seems sterile, mechanical, perfunctory.
The perfect situation for some but for me I so enjoy the connection I have with my detectors and the tweaking that goes on behind the scenes that results in a difficult to find older treasure.
More of, it is the journey and not the destination, sort of thing I guess.
I am getting there with the Nox but I decided to use the F70, I KNOW we connect in so many different ways and on so many different levels.
Plus...fun.
I head over to a small park in my neighborhood, been there a million times and found a ton of clad, a couple older coins, one nice silver bracelet plus a few other very cool things.
I aimed for a small strip of grass next to a street that were the front lawns of a couple of older homes long ago.
This whole park used to be part of a huge old neighborhood but they razed it all when they built a major freeway through here.
That is typical of my sites, most everywhere I hunt is loaded with iron, nails, pieces of pipes and all the other garbage you find when you hunt old home sites where they seem to just knock down buildings and cover it all up with dirt leaving a ton of metal behind.
Add in the normal park trash and mineralized soil and we have the perfect storm of challenges to overcome around here.
So what...I figured I had a choice to move, drive a long way somewhere else to hunt or just learn to deal with this mess and try to find whatever is left to find.
I picked the latter which in hindsight was good because I have found a shocking amount of great treasure and even a few bucket list items in areas most have totally written off.
So I turn on the F70 which has my beloved Sharpshooter coil, and it...just...felt...good.
You know how you feel when you put on your best, most comfortable perfect pair of beloved jeans or favorite shirt or sweater and you just feel so satisfied?
So for the Patriot/F70 owners here are my settings in case you are interested.
Program 1 is my Silver Slayer Settings...Disc at 65...nickels and zinc notched back in.
Sense about 80-85...Thresh at -2, DE and 1 tone.
I figured I was going after old coins so these settings should hit nickels, nickel area gold, Indians, wheaties and all the other higher tone coins...also zincolns but what ya gonna do?
This was my check settings, only used when I found something interesting using my hunting settings in program 2.
I planned on hunting with these settings when I started but I had the feeling I was missing stuff to I went for my favorite iron site settings instead.
Hunting settings...beware, not for the squeamish, I call these my Blast-Through settings.
All metal, Sense at 99, Thresh at +5...SL speed.
Counterintuitive, I know, pedal to the medal in an area with so much trash and garbage literally inches from each other in this area I was about to hunt but I found after trying all kinds of settings and ways to hunt in my mineralized soil and massive iron this one is still the best...for me.
Took awhile to learn to do it this way but well worth it because it works here.
So I start moving slow and find nothing great for awhile, I have scoured this area many times over and over with all my detectors for the past few years so not surprising.
Every detector I own has been to this exact spot at least 6-8 times or more, a couple way more than that.
I dug some junk, got fooled by some iron, (with settings this high even smaller iron can wrap around and come in at some pretty solid 90 numbers), and then I got this signal.
Multiple iron hits but also another one, a bit jumpy from 35-39, high nickels into tabs, and really small, I could only hit it with some repeatable numbers from only a couple of ways by maneuvering that coil.
I switch to my check settings and same thing, tons of iron but I still got that quick one in the high 30's from only a couple of directions so I dug and from about 4" up pops a dirty nickel.
Had to be standing up vertical with a very short, small signal like that.
There was iron all around it, after I dug the thing I moved the coil a few inches away and went around the hole in a circle and got at least 6 iron signals...04, 06, 11, 07, 05, 12...like that.
Close enough that even though small that Sharpshooter coil still caught at least some of these along with that 30's target.
It was very dirty so I figured a modern nickel, the back had a lot of black on it I couldn't rub off but I could see part of Monticello, hoping for a V since I found one here before but not this time.
I turn it over and rub the dirt encrusted other side and, wait a minute...this side is cleaning off much easier and there is some shiny there...could it be?
Yep, I reveal the date and I see 1944 so I turn it back over and rub the heck out of the thing until I finally can see a big ole capital P above the dome.
Coool, a silver war nickel, mission accomplished and I did it together with a favorite, old hunting partner.
The F70 never alerted me to this thing before despite dozens of visits, neither did the Nox despite the fact that it hits on nickels like it was religion.
It was missed by the Compadre and Mojave too but I am not disappointed in any of that in any way.
On this day at that moment the dirt was just moist enough and I happened to move my coil over that spot from just the right direction that my tool of choice was able to tell me there was something interesting down there...and I was on my game enough at that moment to notice it.
Just an old nickel and it could have happened with any of my detectors at another time but I am so happy I hit my goal on this hunt and that I was able to do it with such an old friend.
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