Family owned Acerage

[precise26]

I have just recently got in to the idea of MDing, and I am a new member. I have spent a fair while reading the forum. Now for my very first post. If I could get any advise on whether this land would be good or not, and where I might start, that would be great. I have my ideas of course, but maybe I missed something. Maybe this is a crappy spot not even worth doing, but none the less, I will detect it.

P.S The land is in total aprox. 250 acres.

RED = Property Line
Blue = Road
Yellow = Power Lines

I will post some more info about the site and its history shortly.

 

Amazon Forum Fav 👍

Family Maps of Hinds County, Mississippi, Deluxe Edition - Grab it through Amazon!

[rmptr]

Of course it would be a good place to metal detect!

Old buildings... recreational boaters... You bet!

Even better if there is historic activity in the location.

hh
rmptr

 

[aa battery]

1st of all Welcome and 2nd the area looks very interesting. I would try each spot and you never know what you might find...aa

 

[Bridge End Farm]

yes yes yes hunt hunt hunt!!!!!!!!!!!!!

need some help give me a call lol

 

[precise26]

Now seeing that I am in the market for my very first detector, what detector would ya'll suggest for this terrain? I am currently eying a
"Fisher ID Excel" used for $325 CAD.
"Tesoro Vaquero" used for $400
"Garrett GTAx 550" new for $399

I am perfectly sure I will be sticking with this hobby so I want to get the best bang for my buck at this price range. Cant pass $400 though. I will most likely get a better one when I can afford it, but I need one to do me well for a long while. I am a little concerned about the used products, mainly because I dont know what the life expectency of these or detectors in general is like. Any advice would be helpful.

 

[Bridge End Farm]

lol this will be good

I like whites myself, trust me someone will say minelab, fisher, etc. I bought mine used and it has had no problems at all. Find one well taken care of and just take care of it too.

 

[WV Hillbilly]

Read through the thousand or so similar posts . A lot depends on your soil conditions .
Easy Money's posts will tell you a lot about which detector works best in any given type
of soil . HH

 

[Old Dog]

Just from personal experience...
Tesoro is good, But so is White's.

My partner and I use both.

a Tesoro Bandido II for the shallow stuff
and a White's TM 808 for the deep stuff.

And if there is a possibility of a cave or a tunnel
the 808 will do the job probably better than most others.

Just my opinion.

Thom
Old Dog

 

[Farmercal]

Now seeing that I am in the market for my very first detector, what detector would ya'll suggest for this terrain? I am currently eying a
"Fisher ID Excel" used for $325 CAD.
"Tesoro Vaquero" used for $400
"Garrett GTAx 550" new for $399

I am perfectly sure I will be sticking with this hobby so I want to get the best bang for my buck at this price range. Cant pass $400 though. I will most likely get a better one when I can afford it, but I need one to do me well for a long while. I am a little concerned about the used products, mainly because I dont know what the life expectency of these or detectors in general is like. Any advice would be helpful.

All three of my current detectors were previously owned. The Xterra 70 was 2 weeks old, the Excalibur was a month old, I have no idea about the Explorer II's age but I use more than the other two. All detectors operate like new. My point is a used detector doesn't mean it is messed up. A lot of people try them out and decide that detector or the hobby just isn't for them and sell at a bargain. I also only buy detectors from a treasure hunting classified forum. I only want to purchase from another detectorist that cares for their machine. I also don't buy until I am fairly sure about the buyer through feedback, other peoples recommendation and correspondence via email or telephone or both. Good Luck.

 

[precise26]

First of all let me say, thank you all for your speedy responses! Now with that said, let me fill you's in on some info about the location:

Historic:
This area (not specific to the property) has a lot of native indian history.
The area(not specific to the property) is said to have played a fairly big role in the war of 1812.
This area had a nickel rush in I believe in the late 1800's, early 1900's.


Top left is the location of our cottage and what once was a boat house now a second small cootage for visitors. The main cottage was built aprox in the late 60's, early 70's. The second cottage was built in the early 90's. Right behind was originally an old shack. This I have never seen because it wasnt around in my time. This shack (old shack 1) would be 100+ years old. The only evidence that remains of it, is a large pile of old rusted out cans. Supposedly a hermit like guy lived here and owned the land at least 80 years old was the man. My gradnfather had bought it aprox late 60's. It was also said that many hunters passed by through out the years.This area was heavily wooded, but my grandfather leveled a large section to build the cottage. Going up the road is a pond, or shall I say beaver damn. This and surrounding area on this side is hostile woods. Very hard to get at. Further up is a stream. I havnt seen it, but in the last 2 years we found out it was there because we could hear the water flowing. The old shack 1 was called the old shack when I was a kid in the 80's. It was where my grandfater an his friends would go an hunt before the cottage was built. It has a lot of history to it, but prying the info out of my grandfather is hard as he has a very bad memmory. The gravel pit road is not maintained so it is getting harder an harder to see. The pit was excavated in the early 80's illegally. A fair amount was taken but there is still a very large amount. The area was never prospected or tested for anything. The pit road ends at pit 2. The property gate was installed in the last few years, replacing an old unsecure fence. Not sure how long the old fence was there. Also after speaking to my grandfather, it seems that more land is owned above the pic aswell, mostly forestry.

Now for another question. Even though I know it will take forever, after I check the "suspect spots", would it be worth checking any of the woods? Maybe something was here post 1800? I wouldnt want to waste too much time if there is a very unlikely chance Id find anything.

And
I have narrowed my MD choices to the models in my previous post soley because that is what is being sold in my area, and I am not interested in buying online. So my questions about MD's are based on those models.


P.S I am buying from a local store.

 

[Tom_in_CA]

Precise26, allow me to comment.

First of all, I don't know about your area of the United States, but pre-columbian indians in the USA had no refined metals. An exception would be crude copper (?) in some upper midwest states I hear. But even that would only be curious slag items, or spear points at best. Here is CA though, we don't bother with indian sites, no matter how colorful and prolific their history is, because they had no metals before the Europeans arrived.

Next you say: "The area(not specific to the property) is said to have played a fairly big role in the war of 1812" When you say "not specific to the property", that makes me think you have fallen prey to the history citations given to larger areas. For example, here in CA, original ranchos might have been THOUSANDS of acres. Fast forward to 2007, and someone is fullfilling an EIR for building purposes, and has to include a little tidbit on archaeological impacts, heritage concerns, etc... So they fish around, see that their little 10 acre spot is within the boundries of a Spanish land grant, so they plug in a paragraph about how it was granted to so & so in such and such year, deeded to so and so after that, blah blah. So all of the sudden, the person reading that now, thinks their property might hold some metal detecting potential. Afterall, it's right there in print, right? But of course, any human influence (habitations, etc...) connected to the earlier history, could be miles away. But the place-names of the original carving up of the lands stick with subsequent history citations anyhow, no matter how removed from your actual current day piece may be. In other words, you would need to know if anything from the war of 1812 specifically occured within your land (camps, battles, etc....) Not just a section of your county, or the place name that eventually passed on to your burrough, etc....

But the visible homes, foundations, etc... sound good. And as far as boat docks and such, if there was ample recreation going on there (is it, or was it, open to the public in the past?) will mean beach losses perhaps.

 

[precise26]

Tom_in_CA
That is some good advice. I have no info on anything happening specific to the actual spot. I only recently found history info on the area since I got the MD bug. Got all my historic info online. I also should mention that I am from Canada. The Nickel rush happened a town 150km away from this location. I will prob stick to the easy targets for the first while, and then I may look for other places of interest in the surrounding area. O yes I should mention. The area on the map at the bottom left just so happens to be a summer camp. Its about 15 years old. Im sure I can find a way to get something outta that. As far as I know there has been no MDing done in this spot.

 

[rmptr]

THERE'S a wildcard in the suggestions!

and a very good one at that!

White's TM-808

That's a 2 box used searching for deep caches!

Might you suspect there is something like THAT on the property?

HH
rmptr

 

[rmptr]

That Vaquero you mentioned would be excellent to get you started on the right path.
rmptr

 

[precise26]

I do have hopes of burried stash's, it is possible, maybe even likely seeing that the shacks were around for WW2 and maybe even WW1. I took a picture of a bottle found on the surface by eye close to Shack 1. Can anyone help identify this? It has a picture of a fisherman carrying a large fish. My thought is fish oil. Cant say how old it actually is though.