Critterhunter
New member
A neighbor asked me if I could locate their gas and water line service caps in their front yard with my detector. I of course said sure, but then of course asked "Would you mind me cherry picking a few coins out of there while I'm at it if I suspect they might be silver?" They agreed, and though time was short I figured I'd at least give it about a half hour real quick just to feel out the potential.
The house was bought new at around 1960, so not much hope of very old silver there with it's age, as I know the history of this land and it never had anything on it prior to that, and was for the most part a vacant meadow way back in the day until developed. Still, you never know what history might have passed over such land in several centuries of America since it's birth.
Just the same, even with a 1960+ history potential, I've pulled more rings out of yards than any other place on land, due to the activities of yard care and play in them, along with the usual lack of trash as people aren't prone to be throwing things like pull tabs and other junk into their own yards. Not always the case, of course, as I've hunted some rather trashy yards, but in general they tend to be pretty clean, where if you get a foil or nickel hit or any other signal below coin, there is a better than average chance it might be some kind of keeper, gold or not.
And besides, even with a 1960+ time span of coin finds, often big silver lurks in yards, not having been plucked long ago due to it's large size by years gone by of more primitive machines. I dug a peace dollar once in a yard of about this same age, and silver quarters and such in yards such as this.
So anyway, I only had a very short amount of time to hunt due to other obligations, but in that span of minutes, all the while trying to locate their gas and water access caps, I dug right away 3 wheats, 2 copper memorials (IE: non-zincs), and one nickel. Not one piece of trash. Didn't locate their access service caps, even using PP mode to trace out larger iron hits if I ran across them, but I'll be back on another day to finish the job in both respects.
I cut 3 sided plugs as I try to do these days, so that it'll act as a hinge and drop the plug right back into the hole the proper way for even better hiding abilities of the act, and stepped on them with good force to make sure no air was left around the roots to dry the grass out, even though it's very wet around here this time of year.
I almost always use noise band 2 so things like nickels match the old charts, but I found that band 1 allowed a bit higher sensitivity setting there today with the present EMI. Just had to make a mental note of nickels then reading about 3 to 5 digits higher or so than they'd normally do. I've dug nickels in band 1 that read as high as perhaps 149, versus the typical 143 to 146 or so.
I tried Auto sensitivity but found that with manual at about the 3PM position things were stable, so I figured that would probably give me more depth than an Auto setting, and still a few of these wheats were in about the 6" depth range with solid hard hits with no problems. I even switched over to Auto on those deeper ones just to judge their response with it, and found they still hit hard.
Part of this might be the 12x10. It's so stable around EMI and minerals that I suspect it doesn't cause Auto to lower as much in it's sensitivity levels. Not that these were super deep, but I've dug silver coins in Auto sensitivity around 7.5" deep before with plenty of room to spare in how hard they hit to where they could have been deeper.
One of these deeper wheats which banged hard/easy, when I removed it I re-swept the hole in PP mode, and could hear some iron mixed in the whole. Switching back to disc it was obvious as well, due to the null I was getting. The 12x10 strikes again. It'll sniper coins right out of junk with it's fantastic left/right separation, not to mention the seemingly amazing abilities of Iron Mask ON on the Sovereign to sniff non-ferrous items right out of iron junk. The iron response in PP was right in the middle of the plug where I had plucked the wheat, so I know they had to be very close to each other.
Yea, nothing great to report on this very short hunt, but I'm going to try to remember to shuffle my digital camcorder over there on the next more lengthy hunt, and try to get some digs on film when I suspect a silver coin or at least a wheat is going to be waiting for me at the bottom of the hole. I want to mount the camera on the shaft so as to not only capture the meter's traits, but also to capture the coil's movement when wiggling over a target, so it can demonstrate things to newbies to the Sovereign in how to work up a target and watch the ID and hear it's response to judge things.
Also, I need to rig up my stereo jack with a splitter so I can wear headphones while filming and also have more direct audio outputted to the digital camcorder, because it always irks me to see Sovereign videos using the built in speaker, which makes it's audio horrible and nothing like what you hear with headphones on. I bet a lot of people were turned off to the Sovereign when watching pretty much all the youtube videos out there with the harsh, scratchy, and junky audio of the built in external speaker used for filming. That alone I bet cost this machine some sales in the past.
That's part of the reason I haven't filmed any hunts on my channel yet, because I want to rig up the audio so I'm not showing target responses on that nightmare of built in speaker the Sovereign uses. Not only is it terrible, but it doesn't relate target traits or the smooth as warm butter threshold of this machine, and I think that's a darn shame with videos giving that impression, a few of mine included here where I used the built in speaker when filming...
PS- I gave her the coins, and in particular remarked to her that perhaps her dad, which bought that house new, might have lost those wheats in the earlier years doing yard work such as mowing the lawn. Her dad had passed away in the 90's, so I figured she might want to hang onto them as some kind of connection to memories she fondly looks back on. Told her also that if I was lucky enough to find a gold ring I'd be happy to split the scrap value with her, or of course give her the ring if it was something a family member had lost in years gone by...
The house was bought new at around 1960, so not much hope of very old silver there with it's age, as I know the history of this land and it never had anything on it prior to that, and was for the most part a vacant meadow way back in the day until developed. Still, you never know what history might have passed over such land in several centuries of America since it's birth.
Just the same, even with a 1960+ history potential, I've pulled more rings out of yards than any other place on land, due to the activities of yard care and play in them, along with the usual lack of trash as people aren't prone to be throwing things like pull tabs and other junk into their own yards. Not always the case, of course, as I've hunted some rather trashy yards, but in general they tend to be pretty clean, where if you get a foil or nickel hit or any other signal below coin, there is a better than average chance it might be some kind of keeper, gold or not.
And besides, even with a 1960+ time span of coin finds, often big silver lurks in yards, not having been plucked long ago due to it's large size by years gone by of more primitive machines. I dug a peace dollar once in a yard of about this same age, and silver quarters and such in yards such as this.
So anyway, I only had a very short amount of time to hunt due to other obligations, but in that span of minutes, all the while trying to locate their gas and water access caps, I dug right away 3 wheats, 2 copper memorials (IE: non-zincs), and one nickel. Not one piece of trash. Didn't locate their access service caps, even using PP mode to trace out larger iron hits if I ran across them, but I'll be back on another day to finish the job in both respects.
I cut 3 sided plugs as I try to do these days, so that it'll act as a hinge and drop the plug right back into the hole the proper way for even better hiding abilities of the act, and stepped on them with good force to make sure no air was left around the roots to dry the grass out, even though it's very wet around here this time of year.
I almost always use noise band 2 so things like nickels match the old charts, but I found that band 1 allowed a bit higher sensitivity setting there today with the present EMI. Just had to make a mental note of nickels then reading about 3 to 5 digits higher or so than they'd normally do. I've dug nickels in band 1 that read as high as perhaps 149, versus the typical 143 to 146 or so.
I tried Auto sensitivity but found that with manual at about the 3PM position things were stable, so I figured that would probably give me more depth than an Auto setting, and still a few of these wheats were in about the 6" depth range with solid hard hits with no problems. I even switched over to Auto on those deeper ones just to judge their response with it, and found they still hit hard.
Part of this might be the 12x10. It's so stable around EMI and minerals that I suspect it doesn't cause Auto to lower as much in it's sensitivity levels. Not that these were super deep, but I've dug silver coins in Auto sensitivity around 7.5" deep before with plenty of room to spare in how hard they hit to where they could have been deeper.
One of these deeper wheats which banged hard/easy, when I removed it I re-swept the hole in PP mode, and could hear some iron mixed in the whole. Switching back to disc it was obvious as well, due to the null I was getting. The 12x10 strikes again. It'll sniper coins right out of junk with it's fantastic left/right separation, not to mention the seemingly amazing abilities of Iron Mask ON on the Sovereign to sniff non-ferrous items right out of iron junk. The iron response in PP was right in the middle of the plug where I had plucked the wheat, so I know they had to be very close to each other.
Yea, nothing great to report on this very short hunt, but I'm going to try to remember to shuffle my digital camcorder over there on the next more lengthy hunt, and try to get some digs on film when I suspect a silver coin or at least a wheat is going to be waiting for me at the bottom of the hole. I want to mount the camera on the shaft so as to not only capture the meter's traits, but also to capture the coil's movement when wiggling over a target, so it can demonstrate things to newbies to the Sovereign in how to work up a target and watch the ID and hear it's response to judge things.
Also, I need to rig up my stereo jack with a splitter so I can wear headphones while filming and also have more direct audio outputted to the digital camcorder, because it always irks me to see Sovereign videos using the built in speaker, which makes it's audio horrible and nothing like what you hear with headphones on. I bet a lot of people were turned off to the Sovereign when watching pretty much all the youtube videos out there with the harsh, scratchy, and junky audio of the built in external speaker used for filming. That alone I bet cost this machine some sales in the past.
That's part of the reason I haven't filmed any hunts on my channel yet, because I want to rig up the audio so I'm not showing target responses on that nightmare of built in speaker the Sovereign uses. Not only is it terrible, but it doesn't relate target traits or the smooth as warm butter threshold of this machine, and I think that's a darn shame with videos giving that impression, a few of mine included here where I used the built in speaker when filming...
PS- I gave her the coins, and in particular remarked to her that perhaps her dad, which bought that house new, might have lost those wheats in the earlier years doing yard work such as mowing the lawn. Her dad had passed away in the 90's, so I figured she might want to hang onto them as some kind of connection to memories she fondly looks back on. Told her also that if I was lucky enough to find a gold ring I'd be happy to split the scrap value with her, or of course give her the ring if it was something a family member had lost in years gone by...