need help with ideas on how to hunt area

[burried gold]

ok here is the deal. i have a park that is totally infested with trash and pulltabs. i have made some good find there in the past. it is a huge park but the area i am interested in is only about one acre. i have been thinking about trying to clear the place out of all targets. there has to be some good stuff in there. anaul event draws 10 to 20 thousand people to this area of the park durring the hottest part of the summer sunset to sundown over a three day event with drinking being one the main past times. for the last 40 years. has anyone ever tried to clean out any area like this. i'm talking pull tabs foil can slaw iron i want to dig everything. how would you do it. do it in layers? or is it crazy to try.

 

[Marxman]

My suggestions are:

If you hunt right after a event turn the sensitivity down and pick the surface finds first.

Use a small coil and go sloooooow. Detect between trash and find the better items.

Don't make the search a one day affair. Go back to this spot many times. This way you pick some trash and some good finds. A one day affair can burn you out on a trashy spot.

Use the spot to learn how to probe and coin pop. When you get good at probing you can tell the difference between aluminum and a coin.

My 2 cents

Mark

 

[burried gold]

I am just as curious as to what is under the trash as what is mixed in with it. there were several homes at this location on a 1910 topo map but the oldest coin I have found is a 1909 wheat cent. this area gets hit every year by a few locals. when I went there last week with the mxt and 4x6 coil there were some areas that had 10-15 targets per sweep mainly pulltabs I am new with the mxt (etrac=no tones) but as far as i understand you have to dig those to get the gold too. anything that was dropped before 1965 is under this layer of pull tabs. that is why I want to pull it all out. get the gold and get under the tabs/junk

 

[burried gold]

did not mean to say etrac I meant tracker e series

 

[ksdigger]

I've used a grid pattern and was very successful. Grid off an area with string and dig one section at a time. This causes you to dig slowly and methodically. It is very hard work but end results are well worth it.

 

[digginLa]

I second using a small coil, I have the 5.75 concentric on my Cibola and it makes a huge difference in being able to pick out the good targets from the bad in those really trashy areas.

 

[JohninNC]

I agree with ksdigger. I would grid the area. Digging everything is the only way to get all the good stuff. When I have an area like this, I use it as a fill in between other spots I hunt. By that I mean that when I have spare time or no other great places to hunt, I hunt that area. It may take all summer or even longer, but it is usually worth it. Also when I plan to grid and area and dig everything, I use a larger coil to speed things up. HH
John

 

[IDXit]

Yep, as the others have suggested.....Grid search the area and dig it all...... I found a small half acre park last fall that is filled with pennies..... I bet there are at least 2000+ pennies in this small park and after doing a cherry picking search of the area, I decided to start at one end and grid search the entire area...I have searched about ten percent of the little park in two days....before the ice, snow and the cold hit the area.....and both of those days were Century coin days (100 coins+)....I also found four rings in the first twenty feet of my grid search...and three of those rings were silver.... I have just started to work this little park...I have renamed. "Penny Park"....and I know there's a gold ring or two out there somewhere and I'm going to find them... I am grid searching and extracting everything....and I'm taking my trash targets with me.... I wish you well.....stay warm and happy hunting..

 

[burried gold]

thanks guys. after 3 hours No silver or gold yet but lots of pull tabs, can slaw and foil so far. I made it about 20 yards in a straight line. I think i dug around 100 tagets. I am going to keep track of the pull tabs I pull from this location for fun.

 

[mike5853]

I had a similar situation and what I did was set my discriminator to only accept pennies and silver, used my standard coil on the MXT and did great! Once I had all or most of the coins,
I went back through and although I did have trash, I also found a gold ring and a small gold bracelet.

Good hunting
Mike

 

[Monte]

ok here is the deal. i have a park that is totally infested with trash and pulltabs. i have made some good find there in the past. it is a huge park but the area i am interested in is only about one acre. i have been thinking about trying to clear the place out of all targets..

Okay, so you have a huge park, want to narrow your search to about 1 acre, and try to clear it out and discover what might be under the layers of trash and pull tabs (is there a difference? ). You say you have hunted it in the past and have made some good finds, so now you have to figure out the following:

1.. How close is it to you and can you hunt it frequently for several days?

2.. Is this a nice manicured section of the park where care must be taken when recovering targets, or is this in a less cared for section that has a lot of bare dirt?

3.. Have you determined the most likely part of the park you want to concentrate on, seriously?

It's best to have a site that you're familiar with and can return, frequently, to a very familiar spot and determine exactly where you left off and have worked before.

If recoveries are going to be from a nice lawn where you're likely to be in frequent view of the public AND park caretakers, you need to try and make most target recoveries very cleanly, such as using just a rounded-off screwdriver. Plugging should be kept to a minimum is a heavily-worked location just to avoid an invitation to leave.

My idea of a very thorough search of an older site means getting serious. By that I mean I grid the area in a very controllable size, then patiently work it with ample over-lapping of the search coil in short and deliberate sweeps of 3' to 4'. When finished, I make one more quick re-work of that grid before moving over to the next grid. I also plan such work when I have a full day, or several days, really, to start early, take a lunch with me, and stay all day. So, for mid-February, I'd hope for a decent Spring arrival and plan to start in about a month-and-a-half.

there has to be some good stuff in there. anaul event draws 10 to 20 thousand people to this area of the park durring the hottest part of the summer sunset to sundown over a three day event with drinking being one the main past times. for the last 40 years..

The annual 10-K to 20-K attendance during the heat of summer means you need to start working the most potential areas soon, before the crowds start to build. If most of this activity has occurred over the past 40years, then problems are that this would have started about 1971, and that means they started circulating clad coins for the 7th year. Not good old silver. It also is during an era when we seem to see far more carefree littering of higher-conductive modern trash. The result? As we know, any remaining good stuff has been getting masked more and more.

has anyone ever tried to clean out any area like this. i'm talking pull tabs foil can slaw iron i want to dig everything. how would you do it. do it in layers? or is it crazy to try..

Yes, I have done this a lot personally, and I've involved groups in these types of gridded-site searches. Generally with success, if everyone is patient and works their grid thoroughly.

Is it crazy? Well, it can be, especially if the site is a modern-use locations with heavy human activity. target masking can be a real pain, but you do have one thing in your favor. A lot of junk in an area means many hobbyists have been there and left in disgust, or some have been there but only cherry-picked the site for easy-to-get goodies.

I am just as curious as to what is under the trash as what is mixed in with it. there were several homes at this location on a 1910 topo map but the oldest coin I have found is a 1909 wheat cent. this area gets hit every year by a few locals. when I went there last week with the mxt and 4x6 coil there were some areas that had 10-15 targets per sweep mainly pulltabs I am new with the mxt (etrac=no tones) but as far as i understand you have to dig those to get the gold too..

Just remember, too, that many 'locals' or passers-by have hunted that park for 40 or more years. Long ago they might have pulled a lot of coins, older and newer, because there was less trash. Through the past four decades detectors have been worked there, some good targets have been found, and while some junk has been recovered, many us our modern detectors with visual Target ID and often ignore potential trash. Therefore, more junk is present to add to the target masking of what you really want to find.

You said you're new to the MXT and said (etrac=no tones), then followed with you understand you need to dig those, too. The FBS models to provide some Tone ID, so I didn't catch your ( ) comment. Also, you say you have the MXT, but do you have the MXT Pro? If so, it has the same 7-Tone ID as the M6. I like to use the M6, and plan to get an MXT Pro, but I also limit my use of 'Multi-Tone ID' to casual hunting, cruising for shallower coins and jewelry and in low-target sites. I do NOT like to use Tone ID when I am hunting high-target sites, or when I want to get good responses on deeper targets, such as 4" or deeper.

anything that was dropped before 1965 is under this layer of pull tabs. that is why I want to pull it all out. get the gold and get under the tabs/junk.

I am all for that dedicated desire. Now, how to tackle such a task? How about three little stories to give you some suggestions that I have done, demonstrated, or pointed out as an educational inspiration.

#1.. Older detectorist, old park, old detector, great success!

About 1997 or '98 I was out detecting one day with a friend of mine who, like me, was using a White's XLT he had purchased fr his own Christmas present. He was relying on using the factory default programs, mainly Jewelry & Beach or Coin & Jewelry, and the stock 950 search coil. He had been doing okay, but that was because he put in a lot of time detecting and working older park and school locations to find older coins. He hunted rather fast, partly because the XLT is basically a fast-sweep detector, and because he was using a larger coil, a standard program setting, and viewed the large park as quite a big area to cover.

I was using the 6

 

[burried gold]

thanks monte, the park is close only about 5 minutes and I just measured the park on google earth. It is 4 miles long!! and ranges from 1/4 mile wide at the widest part to about 500 feet at the narrowest part. I have a 1917 topo map and there are 22 home sites on this map in the park area. Some of the old foundations have be re-purposed for basketball courts BBQ flats or picnic tables Most have been removed. but the small area I have concentrated on is an area where they hold the gatherings and borders a major river and a couple of the older homes once stood but the foundations are long gone so exact location is ?? I am going to hit this area hard this year and work through as much as possible. It is in the main area of the park but the grass is more of a mowed field grass than a lawn some areas better than others some parts are 90% crabgrass and others are sage brush and tumble weeds. I not had a problem with seeing my holes when I done. I use a small drop cloth for dirt and have talked to a couple of park workers that have stopped me while detecting in this area but they have been nice (so far) and tried to direct me to areas that they think might be good for coins. The E-trac part was supposed to say E-series MXT. and thanks for the works of encouragement.

 

[Monte]

Any old park, that gets a lot of regular use and annual gatherings, and is about 4 miles long and is between [size=small]1/10[/size] to [size=small]1/4[/size] mile wide, needs plenty of time to clean out. Matter of fact, if it had several older homes, and ample activity through long periods of use, I believe an individual detectorist could hunt this site, thoroughly, for maybe their lifetime of detecting and still not get it all. Just a huge site!

It appears to be a site where you have easy target recovery, a lot of different opportunities awaiting you, and ought have a good time trying to isolate any potential key area and thin it out. I wish you the best of success in doing so, and I'm certain you're going to make several old coin finds there, and maybe some large quantities from the annual gatherings which ought to also include good jewelry.

All the best of success to you!

Monte