If you’re the only one to hit the site then it IS there but it may take a deep plow to bring it up
Yeah it’s a real problem for us hobbyists. I took careful records of a super good site, where I had lots of data points—not just one silver or button here or there but 300 flat buttons and 180 musketballs the first year. Then I recorded after each plowing how much came up. Consistently is was 66% each time after, compared to the first number. That tells me that we are getting FAR less than a third of what’s there if it’s not being plowed. Maybe only 10-15%. If you want the other 80-90% then you have to dig down to plow bottom depth across the entire site.
Done well once again with the hunting.
The type of plowing they do here makes sites give 2/3 as much as they did the first time. That’s from careful record keeping with types of items where the data points are in the hundreds of examples. Until a site is plowed everything is at reasonable depth or masked by iron. After it’s plowed the first time, there’s no turning back. It’s hunt the plowed field for decades or dig down to undisturbed soil and detect it all. I bet your site hadn’t been plowed before, then got plowed first time (or deeper than it was before).
