Hunted Out or Not

[SaginawIan]

Hey all,

There is a very obvious huge old park dating from 1850 ( in fact, there is a huge monument that tells the age of the park). I have always assumed that it was so well hunted that it wasn't worth checking. I always see people with detectors hunting there. This past weekend I hunted a small area for a couple hours and suprisingly I found an old gold ring, a gold charm, a very old brass button w/ initials, an 1889 indian head, 9 60's and 70's dimes, and 2 quarters. I found no wheat head pennies at all, but many new ones. All items were within 6 inches and all were clear signals. I thought was pretty good for such an obvious spot. I used a DFX

Question: Wouldn't these items be gone already if this was hunted heavily? Is this a good sign that there is more? I'm going back, no question, I'm just wondering what could also be there. If anyone had an experience like this or can tell me why these things would still be there, I would appreciate it.

ian

 

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[Ole Mole]

Just goes to show you that nothing is hunted out.

 

[hollowpointred]

just because a place has been hunted doesnt necessarilly mean that its been hunted out. it depends if the people before you gridded off the area, overlapped thier swings, dug all the low tones and trash targets, etc. just the way that a detector works makes it almost impossible to cover everything. figure your coil emits a signal that kinda looks like an upside down cone. (vvvvv) wider at the top than at the bottom. even if you overlapped all of your swings by a half you would still be missing a lot of ground. it sounds to me like the guys that hunted your park before you didnt want to dig trash. thats why they missed the gold items and the indian. since they ring in as a mid tone they were probably mistaken for trash. ill bet there is still a lot of stuff left to find. it just may be tougher to find it. try searching some of the less obvious places, like the outer edges of the park and the woods if there are any woods. also under bushes. sometimes woods werent as thick as they are today, and sometimes bushes werent there at all. i have found stuff at a couple of old sites that i know were hit to death. i have even found stuff in areas that i hit to death. sometimes i think it depends on if you are lucky enough to get your coil over that coin just right.

 

[John D.]

I have found many coins, rings, Civil War buttoms etc in a "hunted out park". Someone once said "The only way to know an area has been hunted out is scrape an entire foot of dirt and sift every bit of it."

 

[Sandman]

Hollowpointed covers this subject very well. Many "Newbies" don't overlap the sweeps or don't keep the coil level with the ground and miss 90% of the ground under the coil. Add to this no ground balance and to high a discrimination or to much sensitivity and things don't register with the machine. You did very well. Not everyone that hunts your area knows what they are doing.

Take care,
Sandman

 

[dfx_maui]

It is so funny I found this thread tonight. This afternoon I went out to an old elementary school to check out my brand new DFX . I actually fooled around with the DFX this past Wednesday for a few minutes at a community center where I located and dug up my first find - scrap copper tubing . Any way, after I was swinging my DFX around for an half an hour at the school, a custodian who said he worked there for nine years mentioned to me that he has seen quite a few detectorists lurking around the campus grounds a while ago. He said they came a few weekends and scavenged the grounds even looking under some buildings. The custodian said to me "you won't find anything here". I got a little disappointed but thanked him for coming forth and letting me know about the previous exploits of other treasure hunters.

But when I got home, I got to thinking maybe that area wasn't really hunted out. The custodian didn't mention how long ago he seen this group (since he worked there for about nine years now). Technology for metal detectors change and I've got one of the latest and greatest units in metal detecting . I know the campus pretty well (I went to school there many moons ago) and now I see this thread which gives me a bit of hope. I will be going back there again real soon and who knows what I'll find!

 

[ringding]

In this link there is discussion about how the metal detecting opportunities are limitless. For example, a park may be hunted out but then something changes a week later - construction, or sod removal, etc.

http://forum.treasurenet.com/index.php/topic,42006.0.html

 

[dfx_maui]

Yes, I won't give up trying to find stuff at that old school of mine. It's all luck by luck and a little technology mixed in. It is now to make time and go out and find it.

 

[Gadget]

Those folks may be cherry picking silver and skipping the nickel range targets. So they get the silver and you get the gold. Keep up the good work!

 

[Mirage]

My definition of hunted out is different than others - I feel a place is "hunted out" to me when I spend xx hours and don't even get squat. Places do get hunted out. If you have a front yard that is 20x60 ft. You will hunt it out fast - especially if you dig everything. Only exception might be if you have great soil and there is stuff deep at 10-14". Then it might be hunted out until the right conditions enable you to get deeper.

Mirage

 

[Mirage]

One other story/experience. We always have older people come and tell us what they have found at the place we are detecting...some tell us not to waste our time, etc. 99% of the time we still find good stuff. There was one park that an old timer told us what he found and we spent a good amount of time there without any good finds. That park still kinda "haunts" me because all other times I have succeeded but this one park is not giving it up.

 

[bk]

Check out the post I did back in late May. There was a park that had been hit hard for 30 years. Very little was left to find there until they scraped off about 2" to 4" inches of sod over the entire park. In the first two hours of detecting I found 16 Indianhead cents, a Barber dime, and two Seated Liberty dimes. That extra couple of inches made all the difference.

 

[BIG61AL]

I use a whites prizm with a big foot coil and set the descimination to reject iron and foil targets only. i dig every thing that gives a nice signal. I searched a park with loads of aluminum trash and I found someone else's very large hole with a dead plug and a aluminim can in the hole. Not even two feet from that hole I found a quarter not even 1/2 each below the surface. It was impossible to miss and yet I found it and they didn't. Yes alot of parks have given up the easy old targets but they are still more out there.

 

[sounder]

I could be wrong, but I feel that nobody gets everything, and there is always some more stuff to be found.

sounder

 

[BuckleBoy]

Two weeks ago, I hunted an old church yard in West Virginia that had been pounded. Although someone had been thorough in the front yard, I found a handfull of wheats, a few Indian cents, and a nice silver ring on the far side of the parking lot (where someone hadn't thought to look). About six years ago, I was at a "poor farm" for unemployed/homeless workers during the late 1800's. I had heard great stories from the people who had hunted it (evidently the former inhabitants were subject to loss like we all are, despite their financial woes). Turns out the place had been hunted to death by at least four different detectorists. I went outside of the current fence row to bag a nice old military button and an Indian Head penny. Then I crawled around on my belly with the detector under the huge, sprawling lilac bushes out front and dug a beautiful Barber dime underneath there at only 4 inches deep. I like to work previously hunted sites in reverse. First of all, I go to the fringe areas; I crawl under bushes; I get right up to the foundations of buildings. Then I look for clues on the site. I found two silver dimes and a silver quarter at a site after I had hunted in the yard for three hours with no luck. The coins were found when I went out of the yard and started swinging the searchcoil on the way to an old mailbox on the road. When I hunt wooded Civil War sites, I turn my discrimination settings way down and pay special attention to get right up around and underneath bushes, shrubs, etc. That way I can at least get a weak signal even if I don't pass over the object directly with the coil, and I will know to stop and double check the spot to see if the signal improves with a more direct swipe. It can be done. Oh, and by the way. Those of you with park stories, I'll trade you parks! The massive, old parks in Louisville KY have failed to give up even a single old coin after 40 hours of hunting.