Found a little green tribe...

[digger27]

I have an old park 1/2 block from my home that is big and has been hunted so much all the club guys and most everyone else around here gave up on it many years ago.
I spend a crazy amount of time here because it is so close and convenient and I don't find fantastic stuff on every hunt but over time I have found a shocking amount of great old coins, jewelry and other treasures.
Bucket list stuff on a lot of them, I guess it is an advantage when you hunt the same site hundreds of times eventually you come across small areas where some good stuff is still hiding.
Yesterday I found another little hotspot where I got some nice hits as I was swinging and walking through on my way to another area.
Three nice green Indians showed up...2 of them got me into the 1800's so...cool.

The heat and humidity chased me away but I will return and concentrate on that area a little better...more Indians and old silver is my goal.

 

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[Digger RJ]

Very Nice!!! Congrats!!!

 

[digger27]

Thanks!

 

[thursdaythunder]

Nice job digger27 ! Way to pound the park and rescue a few indians

 

[RVRoamer74]

Gotta love those IHC's. Love that green patina. Bet those 3 had been hiding a long time until you saved them. Congrats!

 

[JeffInMass]

Great job finding those in that hunted to death park- Strong work!

 

[CalReg]

Just goes to show ya...no place is ever "hunted out"...nice hunt!

 

[Professor of Engineering]

Love the old copper IH cents!

 

[digger27]

And thank you too all!

Add up the open areas plus about 10-20% of it that has some woods it is about 100 acres.
I talked to a guy once from the local club and says many guys used to hunt this place since detectors were invented but nobody comes here anymore because they all think they got it all and it is completely hunted out.
Don't understand that...100 acres, targets that take up about 1 square inch, coils that have relatively small footprints...how can you even consider this place fully scanned no matter how many hunters visited here?
What those old guys culled were the easy, shallow finds but the targets in the out of the way areas and a ton more that are severely masked they never suspected were hiding and never dug are all still here.
That's fine...more for me.
Like this bucket lister I found at the same park in 2015.

 

[Trezurehunter]

Nice job on the 3 Indians.

 

[xcopperstax]

Very nice green IHP's! if you clean those up with some andre's pencils you will surely have some really nice looking coins! I'm a huge advocate of the pencils!

 

[digger27]

Nice job on the 3 Indians.

Thank you.

 

[digger27]

Very nice green IHP's! if you clean those up with some andre's pencils you will surely have some really nice looking coins! I'm a huge advocate of the pencils!

Good to know...thanks!

 

[dieselfool]

Nice Indians! Now go find the yellow chief that says 'TEN DOLLARS' on it!

 

[xr7ator]

Is it chock full of pulltabs and you just dig the high tones? Or, do you dig ALL the pull tab/nickel signals, too?

Grats on the tribe and that peace dollar is awesome!

 

[digger27]

Nice Indians! Now go find the yellow chief that says 'TEN DOLLARS' on it!

The would be fantastic if I did...might be possible at this old park so maybe one day...and thanks!

Is it chock full of pulltabs and you just dig the high tones? Or, do you dig ALL the pull tab/nickel signals, too?

Grats on the tribe and that peace dollar is awesome!

Thanks.
This is a long reply because I just feel like writing this morning.

This park is chock full of extra heaping helpings of everything...most of it bad.
Most areas and sites I hunt around here, including lawns at private homes, are the same.
We have some areas of black dirt but that is rare, most areas that have any black dirt is 1-2" then the red stuff starts, mineralization is just something we deal with around here but that is actually the least of our problems, iron and masking issues are way worse.
This park was dedicated in the mid 20's but people have been hanging out here way longer than that in some areas and never seemed to understand what trashcans are used for, plus, there used to be several homes scattered about that were knocked down long ago but remnants are buried everywhere.
Then there is my iron issues...massive amounts of that from tiny to huge.
Depth is pitiful here, after several years I formed the opinion that many detectors actually can get past the typical 4-5" barrier where most detectors and brands hit and can go no further and so many hunters think it is their limit but I found it is really just that most signals past 5" get so screwed up and unrecognizable with such unusual and jumpy ID's that nobody in their right mind would dig them.
But I am not in my right mind so I spent many hours using several different detectors looking for odd, but repeatable behavior, to get deeper but more importantly understand the way masking affects everything and notice decent ID's and have been pretty successful .
Luckily, there is still a layer of great targets that lies at the 4-6" range because we have that red dirt mixed with clay that don't let much sink too much further than that in many areas so I have learned to look for good targets that are far from normal but still indicate something decent might be severely masked hiding.

To answer your question this is a pic of what I dug in my first 4 hour hunt using my Vaquero and my first time using a DD coil so I dug it all that day learning that coil...not counting most iron that I disced out on this hunt.


Tabs of all kinds and all ages, bottle caps galore from modern to very old both screw on and crown caps, cans and can slaw pieces of all sizes, aluminum, wires, nails, like pieces and junk from razed old homes...plus more iron than you will believe because of the history of my city that was built on the iron and steel industry profits because coal mines, steel and cast iron plants dominated for several decades.
Our dirt holds all the ingredients needed to make iron so we have naturally occurring iron ore plus slag from those plants that were discarded and mixed into fill dirt that eventually was spread all over the city as it was built up since the 1800's.
The perfect storm of iron, trash, garbage and mineralization...hunting here ain't for sissy's and I have met at least two guys when I was hunting curb strips in a few neighborhoods that told me they once tried this hobby but gave it up very quickly because all they ever dug was junk.
Amateurs...we who hunt here that have been pretty successful only got that way by spending hours learning how but so many still haven't or never did and only got the easy to find shallow stuff and then declared parks like this were totally hunted out because good target volumes went to nothing...for them.
They were wrong, some great targets are still here but you have to think outside the box to find them.
Sometimes way outside the box which I am pretty good at mostly because I had to but easy for me because I love to experiment...that is a big, pleasurable part of this hobby for me.
Here is a merc I found in a private lawn on my block in an area I must have scanned 30 times previously and missed every time until one day I tried some different settings and had recently learned about some different, but repeating, behavior that finally unmasked this thing.
The two iron pieces were laying near this fine pretty much at the distance you see in this pic with the small piece at the same level and the bigger piece about an inch lower.
Pretty typical if you open a hole around here with some jumpy, iron falsing, high tone signals.
Lucky for me I expanded my rules a bit recently to include a little larger range of what I considered a solid signal to be.


I lived and hunted in Kansas and Missouri for three years so I know what beautiful black, low mineralized dirt is and how different detectors behave in it so I have seen both ends of the spectrum.
This place is the opposite of that and the reason I call the soil and sites I hunt in devil dirt.
It's daunting, but you either learn to hunt here and deal with it or give up and find another hobby.
I am way to stubborn to give up and using three Tesoros, an F2 and especially an F70 and a Nox I unlocked at least part of the puzzle around here and became more successful than I thought possible over the years.

I rarely ever just cherry pick and dug just the high tones unless I get real lazy, as much as I love digging old coins I am really a jewelry hunter at my core, something I became long ago when I started my career hunting here and decided looking for old coins was a big hassle but jewelry can be anywhere and sometimes not too deep so easier and less frustrating to find...for me.
I have graduated and expanded my skill set and bought a few detectors that can deal with all my issues decently and that I spent many hours learning well so finding older, deeper coins here is a bit easier, now, but jewelry is still my favorite thing.
I also try to always avoid digging about 80% of the signals I come across because digging tons of garbage got old for me long ago but I still dig ALL SOLID SIGNALS, no matter where they are from foil on up, my high percentage method I call this, and have been doing it this way for years and have done way better than you might think doing it this way.

I have dug many buffs, some V and war nickels, a lot of wheats, some more Indians, several silver dimes both rosies and mercs plus a couple of silver quarters including a Barber...all from this park that were down there for decades, some pretty shallow, and that everyone missed because most of them were masked so well.

Here are a couple of better targets I have found at this park which were all solid signals so they got dug while I was avoiding most of the more jumpy signals.

Recently I found this gold ring with my Nox which has tech that seems to deal with my, mineralization, iron and masking issues pretty well.
A super solid 12, nickel signal, and the solid signal junk I dug in that same hunt.
The pic with the tabs, nickels and those few other things were all solid 11-13 nickel signals, can't count how many signals in that same range I didn't dig in this hunt because they jumped too much.
The ring was surrounded by a few tabs and some can slaw and I hit several because I was using the bigger, standard coil but the Nox locked onto the ring despite that so it got dug.







Here is an 8.9 gram 14k gold religious medallion that is so big and blingy the wife actually rejected it.
Found in an area in this park next to a little stream that used to flow from a natural spring so at one time a nice spot for people to hang out, maybe picnic and relax.
This area was filled with all kinds of junk and especially tons of beaver tail tabs that all came in around the low 40's on my F70.
I dug a few of the jumpier low 40's on that day just to make sure they were actually tabs and then I stopped and only went after the super solid ones that came in nicely from at least 2 directions after that.
Glad I did, this was a dead solid 41 from every direction and was missed by many over the years, including me, until I got good enough to notice it and lucky enough because I was definitely using that high performance method that day.



Here was a shocking coin, found in this park next to another natural spring that is still there and flowing.
This had to be an area that every hunter that ever came here hunted because it is in a spot next to that spring, and an old, shallow swimming hole that was built in the 20's and fed and filled by that spring and was a major entrance to this park at one time.
I believe this dime was on edge and was sitting in an area with some hard, very compressed red dirt that in the dry times was almost impossible to dig down more than an inch or two.
It wasn't deep, maybe about that 4-5" level, but it had rained recently so I was able to dig down to it fairly easily and maybe that rain helped the signal that day, also...or at the very least I rolled over it from the exact right angle for my F70 to see it clearly and for it to let me know it did.



So that's the way I do it, I dig ALL the solid signals I come across, avoid most of the rest but sometimes I dig a few jumpy ones if they act weird or pique my interest in some other way but mostly just the solid ones.
There is enough solid trash out there to keep me busy digging despite that high performance, avoiding most jumpy signals thing I do, and from time to time some cool things still pop up here and there...like all these targets and those 3 Indians.
Just gotta have patience and a decent amount of knowledge about the tools I use and the strange dirt I am forced to hunt in.