Burnout

I motivate myself by having goals for the year...the most total $ in clad ever, $383 (68 percent there, it'll be a near thing), ten silver items (have 9), three gold items (have one), etc. I keep exhaustive spreadsheets of finds (tracking by detector and by type of location). Right now I'm in the middle of a study comparing $ per hour recovery rates at a two-soccer-field, new to me school near here. More data, I need more data!

I've also hung the beeper up and turned to other hobbies for a year or more, then come back to detecting. After getting married I made the mistake of selling all my equipment and then had to start over with a bottom of the line unit, and then build back up,
 

Thanks for all the ideas and input. It is what I haven't found yet that keeps me going. Still looking for first silver coin. Still want to find first class ring. May not find civil war stuff as this is Montana, but there were cavalry here and some forts, so something that they left is on bucket list. And also the thing you were not even expecting is always in the back of my mind. Plus the added benefit of learning the nuances of my machine is a daily challenge. The F5 is so adaptable that there are years of learning there. It is nice when I can call out a target when I couldn't before. Yea some days I get tired and only find junk. But all it takes is that one good find to make it all worth while.
 

I've been at it near 40 years now. The first year or so was just more a pastime type interest but once I got serious, I got serious. It was my passion/obsession for the next 25 years even to the point where I would go hunting after work till the sun went down every day and on weekends I'd hunt from sun up to sun down. Some times I even hunted by flashlight at night. I now have boxes and boxes of stuff I have found over the years and many fond memories. That was when I was in my 20's and I am now closing in on 60. I now hunt maybe once or twice after work for maybe 45 minutes or so and a few hours on the weekends. My passion is still there but the obsession is gone.

My Avatar picture on the right is of me in my younger days showing off some of my goodies. This picture was also in one of the old treasure magazines years ago.
 

I've been at it near 40 years now. The first year or so was just more a pastime type interest but once I got serious, I got serious. It was my passion/obsession for the next 25 years even to the point where I would go hunting after work till the sun went down every day and on weekends I'd hunt from sun up to sun down. Some times I even hunted by flashlight at night. I now have boxes and boxes of stuff I have found over the years and many fond memories. That was when I was in my 20's and I am now closing in on 60. I now hunt maybe once or twice after work for maybe 45 minutes or so and a few hours on the weekends. My passion is still there but the obsession is gone.

My Avatar picture on the right is of me in my younger days showing off some of my goodies. This picture was also in one of the old treasure magazines years ago.

Yea, the TV gave away the age of the picture.
I think we go thru stages. The casual first hunt, the first target of value, then pumping in hours of hunting. When we get older we realize it's not the hours we put in that counts, but the quality of the results. We don't hunt more, we hunt smarter. We know our detectors and the best places to take them. And then when some of us shift into cache hunting, It really gets interesting.
Just my reflections. Frank...- 111-2 de Vinci.jpg
 

yup has happened to me too, think its just a part of being new to the hobby and being stuck to parks. I havent had any luck with private property owners and have been turned down very rudely in all but 1 place, which my luck be had was too overgrown to do anything lol. So now i just go a few times a week to the park and not for long. Im in the land of not sure what to do anymore. Best way to explain it is having a hobby you love doing, but cant do it because of things beyond your control. Really sucks. But i do got something to look forward to. We are moving to colorado in march, so i can supplement my metal detecting, to detecting old panning and gold rush sites while also panning for gold, or do a lil of both at different times here and there. Cant wait either, colorado land is alot more public in alot of areas now owned by the bureau of land management and they welcome the public :)
Hope to see you up in Summit County when y'all get here. Lot of public land up here, but pay attention. There are still active mining claims that you can't detect or pan on, and BLM is not as welcoming to the public as you may think. Still, plenty of places you can pan or detect with no problem. But don't get your hopes up. Those old miners really didn't have a lot of ready change and apparently if they lost a nickel they organized a search party to find it. GH!
 

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