Finally got to get out.

Decided to hit an old homesite that I had discovered while enjoying another hobby of mine (new post coming soon about finding detecting spots). I had attempted to hunt this place a couple weeks ago, but tall grass halted any success.

Swung by right after work and walked to the location of the old chimney in a beautiful spot. Left the detector in the car as I wasn’t sure if the grass situation would be conducive to detecting. And you guessed it – a recent bush hogging had reduced the knee high grass to a respectible level. A collection of ankle-deep grass clippings would be all I would have to contend with.

I nearly sprinted back to the car to get the F70, took a quick
Deep-Woods Off bath, and jogged back to the site.

What we have is a beautiful old home site, complete with standing chimney and, well, that’s pretty much it. You could envision the view the folks had who lived here.

I unpacked the detector, donned the old headphone, and fired her up. Did a nice ground balance and was a little surprised at the GB number…90? Oh well. Started off with sens at 80, had the discrim at around 15, nothing notched, DE mode, and went at it. The height of the thick grass clippings kept the coil at least 3” from dirt, so after several minutes of iron grunts I decided to experiment with SL mode to get a little extra depth.

Gotta admit, my first real experience with SL was pretty favorable. Slowed my swing down a little, and I could really isolate some mid and high tones from the grunts. My first good signal turned out to be a spoon at about 3 inches. Given the distance the coil was from dirt put it at more like 6 inches.

Played around with settings a little more for the little time I had left. Went back to DE and was able to run Sens to max, but had to drop my threshold setting to -4 or so to settle it down.

Over the course of the next hour I pulled two more spoons, a decorative top to some kind of case (identified by my wife) and some farming left-overs. Even found some pieces of porcelain plates in holes. I really “dug” digging the spoons. There’s something really personal about items like that. It brought the location “alive” and took me back into time a little bit. Real people lived here, worked here. Played here.

Someone’s mother, grandma, granddaddy.

Eventually the setting sun sent me on my way. As I was gathering up my gear I took a minute to just soak in the silence and the view. Again I imagined the family who lived here, had stood where I stood.

What a hobby.