mudpuppy said:
Meaning, how do you chose the ones to hunt with the gold? Out of the twenty BB courts within a few miles of all of our houses,...Does the neighborhood matter or not? Do you choose the ones with night lighting for the night games over ones without it? Do you take a quick look in the trash can to see what kind of people frequent this place? Or, do you fire up and know fairly fast based upon what you immediately find or observe as to the "theres gotta be a pony in here somewhere" assessment? You find waaay too much for just blind luck to have a high percent of involvement, therefore, I figure you have some really cool mental sequence you go through...share if you want.
Mud
I tell ya mud it is mostly just logic with some common sense, a little luck and a lot of patience and work thrown in the mix.
Not all of these are great sites.
I have tons of parks all around my area and lots of them have these courts running from large to small in them and in the last year or so I have concentrated on hunting between one and 2 dozen of these courts.
It started last August when I found 3 gold rings at one such site on 2 successive hunts and when that kind of thing happens it imprints on my brain and gets right down into my DNA so that site type moves to the top of the list as a favorite.
It is now at the point when I go to a new park that I haven't hunted before and see a basketball court I start to drool a little just dreaming of what I might find.
When I find a large court in an older park like this one I am thinking I should keep a box of Depends in the car because often other things happen besides the drooling stuff.
I also go back to sites over and over because to do this right on just one trip you can't possibly hit or attempt to scan every square inch you can to find these kind of great targets.
I have several real close to me that I have been to over and over but as the picking as gotten slim I am now increasing my range and going out further when I get the chance to find fresh sites.
This site and another park near it where I found a 14k white gold bracelet is about 20 miles away from home, a little further out of my usual range but well worth spending the gas money to get there when you can have hunts like these.
Luckily, even if these courts don't have a lot of good jewelry around them they all usually have plenty of clad which helps with the gas prices being what they are.
You want an insight to my thinking process so I will tell you what I know.
I read a post from Tabdog awhile ago where he stated that when he turned into a jewelry hunter he targeted tot lots in all kinds of neighborhoods but especially the poorer ones that seemed to have a higher percentage of better bling which stuck in my mind.
I have also read a few other post from other hunters that mentioned this, also.
I know that you can find jewelry anywhere, and some of these courts where I have found gold have been in pretty good neighborhoods, but when I began hunting some in some older areas that were poorer or at least more blue collar, my better finds increased in volume so there might be something to this.
Next, I usually use the F2 at most new sites I hunt because as much as I love hunting with my Tesoros I really want to get a good idea on what kind of trash is predominate at these sites and those numbers on the screen do help a little in this area.
This site had a ton of large screw on large mouth beer caps which come in at around the 67-68 numbers on the F2, for instance.
I have dug a few silver rings in the past at that 68 number, too, and I eventually will dig all the solid hits on return trips to these sites but when I get tired near the end of some long hunts I will start skipping some of these knowing I will be back to dig them on future hunts and I have a little more confidence I am not passing up something great and the "what ifs" won't bother me as much..
Also I like to know what the tab numbers are at these sites for the same reason because I have found they actually do come in at slightly different numbers at different parks for some reason.
Again, I will return to dig all these signals eventually but I will start skipping some of these when I get tired.
Eventually I will clear out lots of these trash signals with the F2 and return with my Vaq or the Compadre when the site is a lot cleaner and easier to deal with.
The next thing I look for is how much trash is around these courts.
The more trash the better I like it for a couple of reasons.
Tons of trash in sites like these is an indication of an old site and/or a popular well used site or both.
So many hunters will avoid sites where you have trash signals every few inches because they don't feel like doing all the work...but I have been a dig it all hunter for awhile and I don't mind doing it at all.
This is a volume business as far as I am concerned, the more you dig, good and bad signals, the better treasure you will find and this is just the right way in my mind to do this hobby...for me.
When hunting these trashy sites it is of utmost importance to use the smaller sniper coils and is another reason I love these super trashy sites because even if some hunters have attempted to hit these in the past most of them in my area don't seem to think about using them.
I learned my lesson about masking and it really hit home when I finally mounted my 4" sniper on my F2 and went back to some of my previous sites and found so many more good targets I missed with the larger coils I was shocked.
Masking is a huge problem when you have so much trash so close together and because I tend to gravitate towards these type of sites the smaller coils have become my favorites and I use them over 90% of the time nowadays.
That park where I found those 3 gold rings last August I know for sure were hunted by others but not with snipers and they missed those 3 gold rings every time.
The snipers enable me to single out pretty much each and every signal no matter how close to trash each one is, and that is something you need when you hunt and dig like I do.
Digging the trash.
This is where that patience and hard work I mentioned above comes in.
Ya just gotta dig it all and here is why.
As I mentioned masking is a big problem.
Many gold rings I have found in the past were in the same hole as some foil or a tab or a pop top and I have been surprised when something else was found in that hole besides the trash...mostly golden targets.
The biggest reason to dig the trash, however is because most of my greatest finds were actually 100% trash signals and just about every one was a great and wonderful surprise when I bent down to dig some trash and came up with something else much better, instead.
I find lots of chains all over the place but especially around these courts and chains are weird and never come up as what you expect them to be...silver or gold.
I have dug really thin chains, (or clasps on these chains), at iron, some bigger ones at foil, still bigger at nickel and tabs and even a large thick silver bracelet at zinc.
When we are talking about gold rings I have dug 16 of those so far and every one was usually a died-in-the-wool trash signal like the white gold one I found on this recent hunt.
This was a ketchup packet foil signal every way but Sunday...except that it really wasn't.
The greatest find of my career was a white gold wedding ring with 9 diamonds found next to one court that was a 32 on the F2...exactly the same as several sta-tabs I had dug that day in this park.
Maybe if I had something like an E-Trac those extra conductive numbers might help in these situations but even so I have been surprised enough times that I have learned not to trust anything I see on a screen.
If it is a solid target I am going to dig it and as you can see the volume of my good finds that just works out great for me.
I also do this hobby for the exercise as much as the treasure so digging all that trash has other benefits besides besides the very nice surprises I get from time to time.
Finally you have to go back to these sites, go very slow to acquire every target you can, overlap heavily to find every target humanly possible and then do it all again from different angles.
Many times I will hit these court sites the first time running around the perimeters digging every solid signal I come across but when I return and change directions 90 degrees going straight out away from the court instead I have found a bunch more coins and targets I missed even though I tried to be as thorough as possible that first time through.
Again, I have been shocked at how much more you can find by simply changing your angle of attack at most sites.
That pic you see below I just put together of some of the best targets I have found around basketball courts has a good example of this.
That large Eisenhower dollar you see was near a court and I scanned that area with a larger 10" coil on the F2 and sniper coil another time and missed it both times which might be due to the fact that it was standing straight up on edge in the soil.
When I returned a third time and went over the same area from a different angle then the first two, this thing rang out loud and clear and I was amazed that I missed it and that others did too.
North, south, east, west and at least two different directions diagonally is the correct way to eventually do sites like this, or any site for that matter.
Sure it's work, and so is digging all that trash, but even though I don't think it is humanly possible to hit every square inch of any site and there are absolutely no sites on this planet that can be truly be called "hunted out", you sure can give it the old college try and try to do it to the best of your ability as possible.
Those are my secrets, and you can apply them to another favorite site I like to hunt which would be areas around picnic pavilions.
These are another areas where I love to see tons of trash and where I have found more than my share of coins, chains and silver and gold rings using these techniques.
Like I said, all kind of common sense to me, and I do all of these things this way because I have read of so many other successful hunters that have posted this is what they do.
You are always learning in this hobby, as in life, and when somebody does something that works I tend to listen.
Hope this all helps.
HH
Very great write up and photos showing the situation of the finds..Perfect for anybody that swings even a modest coil to go find gold if they can learn to work the trash, and pay attention to locations..Awesome work Revier!
I know one of these days instead of a mutter "blank it REVIER" it will be a big cheer for you! 
Anyway, I need a smaller coil, for as you say, a big one gets entirely too much feedback in the trash, and even a different angle of attack can make a good signal appear...you did a great job on your explanation of how and what you use and the thought process behind finding gold that will be very helpful to everyone who reads it...thanks again for generously sharing your success and inspiration with us!