Mike Moutray - St.Louis MO
Member
With my kid away at summer camp and a day off yesterday, I had ALL day long to do nothing but get out and enjoy the nice weather! I started at the old, extremely hunted out park. I didn't expect much of anything, I just like hunting there... Not 15 minutes into the hunt I get a very promising silver hit in a wash out. 
This kind of signal is almost non-existant out there anymore. It turned out to be a beautiful 1910 Barber Dime!
Then about 3 hours of fruitless, shoulder-aching swinging goes by and I center up on another promising hit! This one definitely sounded better than all the iffy iron hits I had been digging... I turned up another sweet dime - 1923 Merc!
A couple minutes later and I get a deep pulltab hit. I started digging but hit a giant twisted root-wad!
after a good 5-10 minutes of cutting and chopping my back started barking and I had to stand up a minute. I contemplated filling in the hole and giving up... "probably just a deep pulltab or chunk of crap" I thought. I don't give up easily though, so back to chopping I went. I had to dig off to the side, down and come back up under the roots from the side. By now I had a mess in front of me and started to get self-conscious that anyone walking by would think I was doing my best to destroy the park. I finally got a breakthrough under the root-wad and scooped out some old looking dirt when I caught a glimpse of shiny yellow metal! 
I wiped off the dirt and found a neat old gold heart shaped locket! It was smashed flat and gouged up bad before it was lost, but it's still GOLD! and not plated or filled. It tests out at about 12 KT and weighs in at about $55.00 in gold.
I hunted another hour without anything else. I left to go get lunch and try another park. I get onto the highway and hear a noise on the roof of my van of something sliding off and hitting the highway. I didn't see anything in the mirror, but knew right away what it was... I sat my spare battery pack on the roof when I got back to my van and forgot to take it off!
I pulled over on the shoulder and backed up a quarter mile back to the entrance ramp, but I didn't see a trace of the battery pack anywhere on the pavement or shoulder. No debris from a smashed one, nothing.... It just disappeared! That kind of bummed me out as those things are not cheap.
I hunted the rest of the day with no success, so today had its ups and downs. At least I'm on a hot streak for gold...
Take care and HH, Mike.
This kind of signal is almost non-existant out there anymore. It turned out to be a beautiful 1910 Barber Dime! Then about 3 hours of fruitless, shoulder-aching swinging goes by and I center up on another promising hit! This one definitely sounded better than all the iffy iron hits I had been digging... I turned up another sweet dime - 1923 Merc!
A couple minutes later and I get a deep pulltab hit. I started digging but hit a giant twisted root-wad!
after a good 5-10 minutes of cutting and chopping my back started barking and I had to stand up a minute. I contemplated filling in the hole and giving up... "probably just a deep pulltab or chunk of crap" I thought. I don't give up easily though, so back to chopping I went. I had to dig off to the side, down and come back up under the roots from the side. By now I had a mess in front of me and started to get self-conscious that anyone walking by would think I was doing my best to destroy the park. I finally got a breakthrough under the root-wad and scooped out some old looking dirt when I caught a glimpse of shiny yellow metal! I wiped off the dirt and found a neat old gold heart shaped locket! It was smashed flat and gouged up bad before it was lost, but it's still GOLD! and not plated or filled. It tests out at about 12 KT and weighs in at about $55.00 in gold.
I hunted another hour without anything else. I left to go get lunch and try another park. I get onto the highway and hear a noise on the roof of my van of something sliding off and hitting the highway. I didn't see anything in the mirror, but knew right away what it was... I sat my spare battery pack on the roof when I got back to my van and forgot to take it off!
I pulled over on the shoulder and backed up a quarter mile back to the entrance ramp, but I didn't see a trace of the battery pack anywhere on the pavement or shoulder. No debris from a smashed one, nothing.... It just disappeared! That kind of bummed me out as those things are not cheap.
I hunted the rest of the day with no success, so today had its ups and downs. At least I'm on a hot streak for gold...
Take care and HH, Mike.
