I met a new hunter at a sidewalk tear-out yesterday after work.
He said something that got me thinking. As I was talking to him about the park I’ve been hunting lately and the coins I found there, he gave me an incredulous look and said “I’ve hunted that park and I found nothing”. As we moved on in our conversation, that phrase stayed with me and when I went to bed, I thought about the big lesson that was to be learned here.
The Lesson
When I began metal detecting, I read about slowing down your swing. I also read about overlapping your swing. And yet, every time I went out, I bounced around the site like an over-eager puppy swinging my coil like I was bushwhacking. And so, I too, “hunted those parks and found nothing”.
Now let me just say that I know I am being unfair to someone I just met. The guy seemed really nice; he was very likable and polite and for all I know, he can detect circles around me with his eyes closed. But the idea that you can hunt a park and deem it hunted is not a useful one.
You see, I hunted the bad park for weeks before I found my first silver coin. What magic occurred to change a non-productive park into a park that has given up 3 silver dimes and a silver piece of jewelry in 5 consecutive hunts? THE SLOW, OVERLAPPING SWING .
The effectiveness of the slow, overlapping swing was demonstrated recently to me by a fellow hunter. We hunted a huge park in Peabody, Kansas and while no one else in our group found anything of note, he found an 1877 Seated Liberty dime and an Indian Head penny from the 1800’s. The rest of us, went on Exploration mode and ran around the park in random patterns while this guy picked an area and covered it slowly and methodically with overlapping swings. Yes, I know that even then, one can be skunked BUT, if there are any coins in that dirt, working it the way he worked it will get those coins to your pocket. And that’s the secret. Once I saw him do this and saw the results I understood. I understood in MY SOUL! And so I took that lesson and applied it to the bad park and as soon as I did, BAM! silver coins began to appear.
Just something to think about. Thank you for looking.
The Dirt Is Good To Me 
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