Hello All,
Now that the summer heat is taking its toll, I have had some time to reflect--and I want to share an idea I had...
I have always made notes in my record-keeping about the "man hours" I spent at each site--because let's face it, five good finds dug during a half-hour hunt is very different from five good finds dug in four hours of hunting.
Now, I'm a pretty gung-ho hunter when it comes to snakes, ticks, chiggers, wee hours of the morning, hunting at night to avoid the heat (with the owner's permission), temperatures in the 20s as well as temps in the 90s... but there have been times when I have hunted a site in high temps and found very little, then come back and hit the same area when it was cooler and found a good many keepers in the same amount of time. In retrospect, I do not think this was the result of chance, luck, or just "getting my coil over the right pieces of ground." You see, much of our hobby is psychological--from meeting owners and getting permission to metal detect, to the way we interact with our environments and our detectors.
That said, I imagine that the only way to spend a true "hour" at a site is if the weather is bearable and the ground is either a yard or a closely cut soybean field. That is an hour spent as efficiently as possible. BUT, if the hunting is around corn stubble (which makes swinging difficult), then that "hour" may indeed only equal 45 minutes of hunting time. In the woods, it can be even less, due to brush, briars, and trees--which all reduce the amount of area a coil can effectively sweep. Woods also avoid systematic gridding, and there are other distractions such as insects, snakes, and other wildlife. So this means that the hunting time spent is in fact dramatically reduced by the obstacles to swinging the detector in an efficient way.
If you add to any situation deep cold or sweltering heat, then the detectorist further reduces the effectiveness of their "hour" spent due to psychological reasons. I have found myself in the middle of a field burning in the heat, and mindlessly swinging before, while not even caring to a certain extent whether or not I even found anything good.
I have also gone to sites before that required shimmying down rock cliffs, hoisting myself up crevasses, and wading across creeks and streams or hiking through the woods for miles. In such cases, it can be hard to do any effective hunting once you find the site, because the level of physical exhaustion has had a psychological effect.
So when I take on metal detecting "projects" at this point, I carefully take all of these factors into consideration before the hunt. If the site is in the woods, an awful long way in, in the middle of summer--I will likely wait until fall so that at least the draining effect of the heat is less. If the site is in corn stubble, and I have hunted it with success--and found many good keepers, I will Always re-hunt it the following year when it is soybean or hay. And in my experience, there will always be more to find.
In short, I have always been the type that couldn't wait to dig, and damn the odds...but I think that a little restraint can go a long way. As detectorists, we are never guaranteed a return permission--so we have to make the first one count. And I want that first crack at a new site to be as productive as it can possibly be.
Best Wishes,
Buckles
Now that the summer heat is taking its toll, I have had some time to reflect--and I want to share an idea I had...
I have always made notes in my record-keeping about the "man hours" I spent at each site--because let's face it, five good finds dug during a half-hour hunt is very different from five good finds dug in four hours of hunting.
Now, I'm a pretty gung-ho hunter when it comes to snakes, ticks, chiggers, wee hours of the morning, hunting at night to avoid the heat (with the owner's permission), temperatures in the 20s as well as temps in the 90s... but there have been times when I have hunted a site in high temps and found very little, then come back and hit the same area when it was cooler and found a good many keepers in the same amount of time. In retrospect, I do not think this was the result of chance, luck, or just "getting my coil over the right pieces of ground." You see, much of our hobby is psychological--from meeting owners and getting permission to metal detect, to the way we interact with our environments and our detectors.
That said, I imagine that the only way to spend a true "hour" at a site is if the weather is bearable and the ground is either a yard or a closely cut soybean field. That is an hour spent as efficiently as possible. BUT, if the hunting is around corn stubble (which makes swinging difficult), then that "hour" may indeed only equal 45 minutes of hunting time. In the woods, it can be even less, due to brush, briars, and trees--which all reduce the amount of area a coil can effectively sweep. Woods also avoid systematic gridding, and there are other distractions such as insects, snakes, and other wildlife. So this means that the hunting time spent is in fact dramatically reduced by the obstacles to swinging the detector in an efficient way.
If you add to any situation deep cold or sweltering heat, then the detectorist further reduces the effectiveness of their "hour" spent due to psychological reasons. I have found myself in the middle of a field burning in the heat, and mindlessly swinging before, while not even caring to a certain extent whether or not I even found anything good.
I have also gone to sites before that required shimmying down rock cliffs, hoisting myself up crevasses, and wading across creeks and streams or hiking through the woods for miles. In such cases, it can be hard to do any effective hunting once you find the site, because the level of physical exhaustion has had a psychological effect. So when I take on metal detecting "projects" at this point, I carefully take all of these factors into consideration before the hunt. If the site is in the woods, an awful long way in, in the middle of summer--I will likely wait until fall so that at least the draining effect of the heat is less. If the site is in corn stubble, and I have hunted it with success--and found many good keepers, I will Always re-hunt it the following year when it is soybean or hay. And in my experience, there will always be more to find.
In short, I have always been the type that couldn't wait to dig, and damn the odds...but I think that a little restraint can go a long way. As detectorists, we are never guaranteed a return permission--so we have to make the first one count. And I want that first crack at a new site to be as productive as it can possibly be.
Best Wishes,
Buckles
Upvote
0
