Giving Up On The Old Homesite
Hey folks.
Beautiful spring weather means one thing around here – back to detecting!
I was able to get out for a couple of hours the other day. It was a rather impromptu hunt, so I hit “The old home…” again.
I’ve hit this site several times with several detectors using more than a couple coil combinations under varying weather/soil conditions. Finds? Not much. As a matter of fact the best day there was the hunt I wrote about back in July.
I was hoping that the Minelab X-terra 70 with the little DD coil might pick a couple goodies out of the trash, but after an hour or so it just wasn’t going to happen.
This site has officially made it to the “Written Off” list. You know these sites – for whatever reason it just doesn’t produce. I figure I’ve been there half a dozen times at least and it just ain’t happening.
That’s ok though. I have some great ideas in mind for other detecting spots. Hopefully I’ll be writing about some great hunts soon.
In the meantime…do you have some “awesome” sites that just don’t produce? Do you have a “Written Off” list?
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As a beach hunter my target areas are ever changing but there are a couple of islands that most locals call “party islands” and for good reasons. The islands have been hunted a few times but most don’t bother because of the amount of trash verses good finds.
Late last year a friend and I decided the public access area just weren’t producing very well so we decided to hit the written off party island, and dig trash we did. Then for whatever reason, tide was right, moon and stars aligned, mojo was on our side??? the trash stopped and the clad started showing up.
We were running grid lines that were just over ten feet long and in two hours only managed to work about fifty yards of beach between the two of us, when your digging allot distance covered is less.
We each had over $5.00 in clad when it happened, my buddy yelled “I knew there was jewelery out here” He had hit on a rather heavy .925 ring. After heading back to my grid line I had a hard hit, it sounded like a big fishing weight and would be expected on party island. Well fishing weight it wasn’t…12.6grams of Platinum it was.
Writing off an area usually has it’s reasons but be careful of a total write off, most others most likely don’t hunt it much either and when the stars align in the right order, well it’s always good to be able to say “I found a cool target in a hunted out area”
Dave´s last blog ..New Gold Prospecting book by Fisher’s Dave Johnson
Thanks for the comment Dave.
I’ve only beach hunted twice. The first time was on the gulf coast of Alabama, and the other was Myrtle Beach. Enjoyed it both times, but Myrtle Beach was the only productive hunt. Managed a couple of sterling rings in a pretty short amount of time. I’d probably do a little more of it if I wasn’t six hours from the shore. Can’t beat the possibility of the gold and shiny stuff, not to mention that the sites replenish themselves!
HH
Goods and trash do in fact replenish on public beaches, trash 2 to one over goods most of the time.
I’m not sure where your coming from but next time you head to the east coast give me a shout, I’m about an hour north of Myrtle Beach.
Two rings is more than some regular beach hunters find in a year,congrats.
Your finding that Myrtle Beach produces more than the Gulf Shores is something others have found also, but just like some fields seem to be too trashy or empty of any targets isn’t reason enough for me not to hunt em, just not to hunt em as often. Some of my best finds came from places that were either a known trash pile, like party island, or hunted to death.
There’s a pier here that is easy to find, has a big parking lot and lots of hotels around it. Anyone that hunts has hunted it, tourists on vacation that have a detector hunt it. It’s not unusual to see three of four detectors out there all day, every day in the summer.
Most local hunters don’t hunt there much in the summer because it’s hunted so had and so often, yet last year it gave me two Chinese money coins, in the summer.
If you want to try to hunt a heavily hunted area, a trashy area or a hunted out area the biggest mistake, and one I’ve seen done all too often, is to hunt the same area, using the same style as everyone else.
Most folks will enter a field, pick an area and hunt it… but the area most often chosen area will be an easy access, easy to walk and hunt, free of pot holes, loose angles and underbrush.
We are all creatures of habit and programed to find the easiest path, both are survival. Try to find a way to hunt it different, you just may find something that will surprise ya.
Dave´s last blog ..New Gold Prospecting book by Fisher’s Dave Johnson