Likely Depths, Various Objects and Terrains

[PermissionsPlease]

Greetings

I need your help understanding the likelihood of finding various objects at various depths and in various terrains. I understand just about any object can be found at any depth in any terrain, but I am just trying to get a feel for judging a probability.

For example, am I more likely to find a quarter between 0 and 5 inches than between 0 - 10 inches in a park? Or a gold ring between 0 and 3 inches on a beach? These are just examples. I suspect there are no definite answers to this question. I am trying to tap into the experience of those of you who have been hunting for awhile.

Being a newbie this may be a dumb question and forgive me if that is the case. Also, am I asking this in the correct forum?

Thanks for your time.


Jerry

 

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[Johnnybravo300]

I like to hunt old cabin ruin sites here in Colorado but nothing is ever deep. Even in the thick forest you can find their trash dumps by eyesight and whatever i dig up is within inches of the surface.
Some have been 150+ years old and not buried deep.

 

[PermissionsPlease]

I like to hunt old cabin ruin sites here in Colorado but nothing is ever deep. Even in the thick forest you can find their trash dumps by eyesight and whatever i dig up is within inches of the surface.
Some have been 150+ years old and not buried deep.

Thank you Johnnybravo300. :-)

 

[VaGent]

I mainly hunt relics in wooded areas of central Va. It varies widely, so much of the land has been worked, logged, tilled, etc. there is no way to predict. I have raked civil war buttons out of loose leaves, and have also found modern coins a foot deep in the middle of nowhere. I would suspect beach hunting is the same, especially anywhere that storms and flood tides occur. Parks may be the only exception to this; I would expect stuff to be fairly consistently shallow in that type of setting.

 

[gunsil]

Unless the soil has been modified by landscaping or filled in with silt from flooding most coins here in the US will be 8" or less in depth. I have found colonial coins at undisturbed and still standing homes that were 4-6 inches deep. The ocean beach is a different story, coins and jewelry can be very deep due to sand and wave action. Of course on the ocean beaches items will be found at all depths from too deep for detectors to on the surface.

 

[SD51]

Jerry, great question! I have found coins at 10" and usually that coin is still there because there is a piece of trash (nail) closer to the surface and just slightly off to the side of the coin. I'm not saying to dig every piece of trash, but that is what can hide the coin. My detector actually picked-up the nail and the coin because I was using a small (6" by 8") coil and I sweep the coil very slowly. Once I removed the nail, the detector and the pin-pointer still sounded off on the coin.

Here's the method I use when detecting a large, old park that should have silver coins. Don't attempt to work as much ground as possible, but pick a small area and as an example, pick a tree about 50' away. Work a straight path directly at that tree, and slowly cover every square foot of ground slowly until you get to the tree. Then return back to the starting point, and shift left or right from the original path and search that same distance again.

Your detector will let you know how much trash (pulltabs) there are. Sometimes I detect as many as three to four pulltabs per swing of the coil. Sometimes I will dig and remove every one of those beauties in a small area just to see if they are hiding some good targets. Remember, if trash is positioned directly over the top of a good target, your detector will only show the trash item.