Tweaking this and that I walked over ground that I have hunted to death and pulled many and sundry pieces of metal from said ground. One maddening thought kept crossing my mind and that was silent masking.

Silent masking is when your detector fails to see any of the targets under the ground and simply runs silent as you run the coil over them. There is a technical explanation as to why this happens but I won’t cover that here.

I simply want to bring it to your attention. It is crazy stuff though.

I will leave you with this scenario: At my deep silver park, a municipal swimming pool opened in the 1920′s. Each summer until it closed (for a decade or so), the swimming pool saw upwards of 15,000 people (data from counts reported in the local newspaper every summer). If only 1000 of those people dropped a silver dime that’s 10,000 silver dimes dropped at that park during that decade. Too high of an estimate you think? If 500 people dropped a dime each summer that’s still 5000 dimes dropped in a decade. I’ve only found about 60 silver dimes at that park since I began hunting it last year. And by the way, I am not counting any of the people who went to the park for reasons other than swimming at the pool.

So, I tell people that there are thousands of silver coins at this park waiting to be excavated. 99% of them, silently masked.

Thank you for looking!

From my neighborhood park, a silver St. Christopher, a little larger than a U.S. quarter, that got in a fight with a lawnmower and lost:

From a private property that I hunted with Stevouke and another hunter from the Wheat State Treasure Hunters came a cool 1913 Buffalo nickel and a 1908 Indian Head cent:

From my deep silver park, a 1936 Buffalo nickel and an old sterling silver ring that I broke during extraction:

No silver coins although I get the feeling many silver coins will forthcoming soon! Why?…

MAURICE HAS A NEW BRAIN!!!!

Yep, the software on the Deus has been upgraded to version 3. I took it out for a quick spin this afternoon and quickly got targets out of a spot in the park that had long since dried up, even with the Deus! Version 3 has a number of improvements and additions one of which may become my hunting standard. Right away I can go deeper. There is a noticeable increase on the strength of the small, deep beeps. Also, the Deus is noticeably better on the iron. Instead of getting my usual iron wrap-around, many of the iron signals actually came in with the VDI of 00. The other thing that just blew my mind is how much faster the thing is! All of that plus a bucket full of new features is sure to increase my silver count.

Thank you for looking!

I was working an old creek bank when I got the signal; deep with no VDI but with that unmistakable sweet audio signal. I went down to dig it and run into my old friend dried clay. That’s a BIG problem in this park. As we are in the third day of 100+ temps, the ground is quickly drying up and at this park that means hard as heck clay. So inevitably I scratched the coin in the hole. When I pulled it out my heart sank. I was looking at the reverse of a very worn old silver Mercury dime with what looked to me to be a D for the mint mark:

The date on the obverse of the coin looked like a 1916 to me. Oh man! Although the nick was very small it was still noticeable. I was bummed. I texted my friend Stevouke and he asked that I send him a picture of the reverse. When I took the picture, I enlarged it on my phone and I could see that the mint mark was in fact an S not a D.

Upon further inspection, I now could see that the date was more like a 1918 or 1919. It’s a keeper alright, just not The One (as Stevo called it). Which makes me feel better. When I do pull that sweet 1916D from the ground, I want it in as pristine condition as I can get it!

Oh, and let me get this off my chest: I shared my settings on my Deus with a guy I’ve never met at one of the forums. I gave him the very same settings that have been getting me all this loot. Well, he tried them and couldn’t find anything but tin cans. So he posted about how I gave him these settings that got him nothing but trash and would someone else please help him set up his Deus properly so he doesn’t waste anymore time digging trash. Ha! the ungrateful rat bastard! It’s alright. I’ve shared my settings with two people; one is a local guy who is pretty cool and then this ***hole. There, it’s off my chest now.

***UPDATE*** The guy has since said that he didn’t mean to insult. After he re-read his own post, he said he could see how I would read it that way***

Thank you for looking (and letting me rant)!

I can’t make the date on it.

Besides this Buff, I have found a number of wheats here and there and a few relics with some degree of coolness to them.

Yesterday, I forgot my Deus (gasp!) but I was lucky to have my Compadre with me. I used it to clean up some pull tabs from a favorite spot of mine and at about the 16th pull tab I found what I thought was gold. Alas! it was not to be solid gold but some gold plated lead-like metal.

At any rate, the XP Deus version 3 update is looming large and it promises to improve an already magnificent machine. World domination is at my fingertips.

Thank you for looking!

Knowing that the high tones were all but gone, I decided to do something I’ve threatened to do for a long time and that is I decided to hunt the iron grunts. Yes, you heard me right. I went after the signal practically every other hunter works hard to avoid.

Right off I want to tell you that hunting iron grunts is not something you should do often. It will drive you mad. Nonetheless, there I was, digging the old rusted iron.

My protocol was simple: dig any grunt with a shape, that is, any grunt that repeated from all angles:

Not pictured here are about 12 pieces of amorphous rusted iron that included many pieces of iron foil. From left to right you are looking at a spatula handle that was about a foot deep, two open pocket knives, a complete harmonica reed and a few nails. I was surprised that I didn’t dig any more nails.

I also dug up any wrap-around iron signal I came across with surprising results:

The “pin” is something I’ve dug elsewhere in Wichita and I don’t know what it is. It has a logo but as in the past, I can’t quite make it out.  The small button-like round objects are all lead.

So there you have it. Even though it is not something I recommend you do often, I do recommend you do it at least once but only at a very old site so that at least you can end up with some interesting junk.

Thank you for looking!

I decided to concentrate on a relatively small area. After I found a couple of wheat cents, I knew that I had selected the right place. Soon I got a deep signal with no VDI but with a sweet tone. I dug a 7 inch hole and the target was still in the hole but barely under the bottom. One more scoopful brought up the coin ball:

Have I mentioned that I just LOVE seeing that silver edge poking out of the dirt?

After I released the coin from its dirt jail, I saw that it was a 1928 D Merc in bad shape. It it heavily scratched and worn but I’ll take it.

The last target that was not trash, was a Kansas 2 Mil tax token. It was a fun hunt and I hope to take more keepers from there.

Thank you for looking!

After digging a number of deep, rusted nails, I got a chirp that repeated really nicely from every direction. I knew I had a coin but I didn’t know what kind yet. After I dug up my customary 7 inch hole, I got a dim hit with the pinpointer, indicating that the target was still in the dirt. I dug up one more inch of dirt and the target was in the scoopful. I located the clump with the coin:

I got very excited because the area I was hunting is nothing but deep iron signals and I thought that surely I had a Seated in my hand! It was not a Seated coin in fact but a 1941 D Mercury dime.

I’ll take it! For now, my first Seated coin is still somewhere in this park.

Thank you for looking!

However, when we arrived at the bbq, I was pleasantly surprised to find a home from the 40′s and a large yard with nary a blade of grass to be seen!

I thus asked my friend if I could detect the back yard while the other guests arrived. He said I was welcomed to the whole thing!

It took nearly an hour but I eventually found a 1953 Roosevelt dime along with a couple of wheats. I barely covered the back yard. Later, I spent a few minutes in the front yard but I found no more coins.

Thank you for looking!

I took Maurice, my XP Deus metal detector, to a city park that opened in 1925. Other hunters in my group have found silver there but I hadn’t yet. Until today that is.

When I got there at lunch time, the mowing crews were out so I picked a part of the park that I thought they would mow last and began my quest. 20 minutes into the hunt I got an ugly signal with a sweet high tone component to it. It was relatively deep so I went for it. At around the seven inch mark and on the side of the hole, I pulled this 1916, no mint mark Mercury dime:

It is my second 1916 Mercury dime ever. The first one I found with the AT Pro at a different city park. Neither one of them had the D on the reverse and both of them were in very worn condition.

Still, I am happy I pulled silver from this park. It is my life-long goal to pull silver from all pre-1950 parks within the city limits. We’ll see how I do.

Thank you for looking!

What do you consider trash when metal detecting? Pull tabs? Foil? Zinc Lincoln cents?

The reason why I want to split hairs here is that I have read many, many posts out on the Web, whereas some wizened detectorist tells noobies that if the VDI jumps all over the place and the audio is a mix of mid tones, high tones, and iron grunts, that the target is likely to be trash.

Not too long ago, I would have accepted that assertion as gospel but now that I have put away childish things, I am looking at that kind of signal in a different way.

Let me repeat something someone smarter than me said: “There is no such thing as an iffy signal, only iffy analysis”. So when you run into a signal as the one described above, you could be leaving a keeper in the ground if you don’t spend some time looking at it with a critical eye.

Just yesterday, I ran into one such signal. What got my attention was the fact that the depth kept changing with each VDI shown in the screen. The audio changed accordingly. I asked myself, “Am I looking at an amorphous piece of aluminum can, or am I looking at several targets in close proximity here?” I walked around the target and tightened my swing to try to separate each sound. Eventually I could isolate the high tone and it came in somewhere below where a copper penny would be at 12KHz. If I moved the coil just a tad bit more, the mid tones and iron grunts would pipe in, at different depths.

It was then time to dig it to see if I was right. I was right. In the hole, there were: One piece of aluminum can (can slaw), a piece of rusted iron, and a 1996 clad dime. Sure, it was just a clad dime but it could have been anything in the coin range, even silver. The VDI was a bit off because of the other objects near the dime.

I am not suggesting you dig every signal of this nature. I am only suggesting that you spend a little more time evaluating them. It may pay off for you to do so.

And by the way, I no longer consider pull tabs and bottle caps trash. Their signals are so unique and consistent that I think of them as relics. Another thing I don’t consider trash is rusted iron, especially nails. In fact, square nails now are kind of sweet to me, especially if they are whole. In my hate list there are only two things (in order of hate)

1) Empty holes, or holes to nowhere as I like to call them.

2) Foil.

Unfortunately, given the way I run my detector and the nature of the signals I hunt, I dig more holes to nowhere than I should. And foil, well, foil may eventually grow on me and move over to the category of relic as well.

Thank you for looking!