ironman200081
Active member
It has been a few weeks since I played in the dirt, so today moreb and I took our Manticores out to one of my old haunts. This spot is a fairground site and I slayed the silver here with the E-Trac and CTX a decade ago. I first learned the deadly combination of the 8x5 SEF coil and the E-trac here in 2010-2012 and the silvers practically jumped out of the ground back then. I have hit it front ways, cross ways, and every which way. About 2016 with my CTX, I was sure I had pulled the "last" silver from this place and wrote it off. We figured this was a perfect spot to test the unmasking ability of the Manticore.
Now, sometimes in this silly hobby, you stumble on some dumb luck. Over the past 9 months, moreb and I have been fortunate enough to get on two killer old sites right after dirt was dozed from the sweet spot (check out the article "Time Traveling Detectorists" in the March/April 2025 issue of American Digger Magazine). When we arrived at this 120-year-old fairground site, we saw that the arena dirt had been freshly bulldozed!! Dumb luck, I tell ya. This spot actually gets dozed quite often, every 5 or so years, but the dirt had not been spread back down yet. While we were excited to see the bare ground, it was pretty muddy. Apparently, this was the only spot in Mid-MO that saw rain in the past 2 days. We didn't pack our mud boots, but we didn't care.
The arena area is heavy trash, both iron and pull tabs and aluminum and crown caps. Everywhere. I cannot recall a time today where I didn't have multiple iron and pull tab hits in each sweep. The Manticore handled it like a champ. I ran ATHC with recovery 5, nothing notched, upper/lower FE at 7/3, stabilizer off. We both used the M9 coils. Thanks to the bulldozer action, nothing was very deep. I was able to pull 6 silver dimes - 4 Mercs and 2 Roosies, and one of my Merc dimes was on the soil surface! Moreb finally got his first Manticore silver score with a Merc dime and he found a really neat silver dime love token with an "x" on each side. Both sides were polished smooth, so we could not tell what type of dime it was to begin with, but the reeding on the edge was still present.
I am not exaggerating when I say there were multiple junk signals in every sweep. This ground is filthy. But despite all of the trash, the Manticore did its thing and made this old site seem new again. We only lasted 4 hours in the withering Missouri sun and 183 percent humidity, but we sure hit it hard. The bright sun meant I was temporarily blinded by the screen glare if I looked at the screen during the sweep (is there an aftermarket part to fix this?) The blazing sun did make those silvers shine bright when we popped them from the dirt.
I am really loving this machine. We are pretty excited to see what other finds the Manticore can unmask in our "hunted out" spots.
Now, sometimes in this silly hobby, you stumble on some dumb luck. Over the past 9 months, moreb and I have been fortunate enough to get on two killer old sites right after dirt was dozed from the sweet spot (check out the article "Time Traveling Detectorists" in the March/April 2025 issue of American Digger Magazine). When we arrived at this 120-year-old fairground site, we saw that the arena dirt had been freshly bulldozed!! Dumb luck, I tell ya. This spot actually gets dozed quite often, every 5 or so years, but the dirt had not been spread back down yet. While we were excited to see the bare ground, it was pretty muddy. Apparently, this was the only spot in Mid-MO that saw rain in the past 2 days. We didn't pack our mud boots, but we didn't care.
The arena area is heavy trash, both iron and pull tabs and aluminum and crown caps. Everywhere. I cannot recall a time today where I didn't have multiple iron and pull tab hits in each sweep. The Manticore handled it like a champ. I ran ATHC with recovery 5, nothing notched, upper/lower FE at 7/3, stabilizer off. We both used the M9 coils. Thanks to the bulldozer action, nothing was very deep. I was able to pull 6 silver dimes - 4 Mercs and 2 Roosies, and one of my Merc dimes was on the soil surface! Moreb finally got his first Manticore silver score with a Merc dime and he found a really neat silver dime love token with an "x" on each side. Both sides were polished smooth, so we could not tell what type of dime it was to begin with, but the reeding on the edge was still present.
I am not exaggerating when I say there were multiple junk signals in every sweep. This ground is filthy. But despite all of the trash, the Manticore did its thing and made this old site seem new again. We only lasted 4 hours in the withering Missouri sun and 183 percent humidity, but we sure hit it hard. The bright sun meant I was temporarily blinded by the screen glare if I looked at the screen during the sweep (is there an aftermarket part to fix this?) The blazing sun did make those silvers shine bright when we popped them from the dirt.
I am really loving this machine. We are pretty excited to see what other finds the Manticore can unmask in our "hunted out" spots.
