Are coins shallower in heavy woods ???

[Rick73]

I recently returned to a picnic grove that was active from about 1900-1940. I tried hunting it in 1978 when I bought my first detector. I found nothing but junk and never went back. I went back a couple of weeks ago for the first time since 1978. The grove is almost impossible to search because of the brush and broken limbs from the trees. I have found about 30 coins there in maybe 4 hours. The oldest is 1901 and the newest is 1934. The deepest coins have been about 4 inches. There is a lot of trash but technology has made it much easier to discriminate compared to 1978. Is this common to have shallow old coins in thick groves.

 

[Steve O]

Some of my shallowest coin finds have been in the woods. You would think after a hundred plus years with the leaf composition and gravity, coins would be deep. Around here we have clay under the top soil, with rocks mixed in.
The rocks, roots, freezing and thawing, water, etc. move things up, down and sideways. My guess is, it's a crap shoot and the dice aren't loaded.

 

[jim tn]

Almost all my woods found coins were and are fairly shallow...3-5," some less. Our ground here seldom freezes and never in the woods. I just always chalked the shallow coins up to roots from vegetation holding the coins up shallower?? HH jim tn

 

[GKMan]

I'll say that most of the time they are.. Here in the northeast most of the woods you see were fields for a while, so I believe some of the deeper coins I have found were plowed under to the depth I found them at. Conversely, my 1793 Liberty Cap was plowed to within three inches of the surface... So, you never know exactly what depth you will find the target at.

 

[MarkCZ]

Heavy wooded areas don't get the increase in top soil like mowed lawns, parks, and ball fields where the grass clippings are left and not raked up. Grass roots also produce top soil from dying and regeneration. In normal conditions its the growth of the top soil that builds up over the objects. I got a chance to hunt an old golf course a couple of years ago, in one area they had a caddy bench out behind the pro-shop, this was just a slope of unmaintained wooded area with just leaves and underbrush. Around the fringe of some of the greens we got to hunt Wheat Cents were around 5" deep, below the caddy bench the beaver tail tabs and Wheat Cents were at the surface to no more than 2" deep.

Mark