How would you detect this?

[deepskyal]

I came across an awesome place to detect. Lots of history dating back to the mid to late 1700's, thru the 1800's and ending in the early 1900's. Now a ghost town I guess. Nothing remains of the people or houses or anything.

Just thick, massive dense weeds of all sorts with thick stalks and a few relics sticking up to let me know I'm where I want to be.

Weedwacking seems out of the question. The stalks on some of these weeds are massive and they are so densly packed, I think the weedwacker would just choke. Plus...I want to get it close to the ground so my coil is within an inch or so....

Its not like high grass where i could lay plywood down to pack it and waiting til the fall...well...those weeds arent going to just fall over and lay flat on the ground.

Maybe some of you relic hunters have an answer to how you cut through this stuff. I'm thinking major brush fire at this point.

Short of buying a brush hog.....and I dont know how I'd transport it anyhow.

So...how'd you detect something like this..?..and not detecting it isn't an option.

Al

Hard to believe there were 140 people that lived here....plus a saw mill, a distillary, an indian village, an oil refinery, a railroad, coal mine, ...and it all uped and disappeared at the turn of the 20th century. The whole area looks like the pic.

 

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[texan connection]

I have some places like that I just hit them when i can using a small coil, the vegetaion will change every month or so.

 

[desertfox]

Like you said " Major Fire " but then you take the risk of destroying good targets and the fire getting out of control! Good luck and happy hunting

Desertfox

 

[Tin Nugget]

I would wait till fall and rent one of those heavy duty weed whackers with the saw blade on it. In the mean time I would be hunting it with a small coil and maybe taking some notes as you try to get a feel for the layout of the place and hit the more promising areas whith the whacker when it's time. Looks like a great spot, good luck.

 

[X-Terra70_TreasureHunter]

1st thing id do is to clean off all that stuff from the brick walkway
w/ a weedeater so you could see the edges of them bricks so
you don't ruin the coil by banggin into them, and you don't get
hung up on stuff.

Dave

 

[Kiko68]

Chainsaw 8)

HH, Kiko

 

[Narthoniel]

I would suggest a hedge trimmer, followed by a good raking.

 

[lumbercamp]

Hope for a heavy snowfall this winter and it will pack all of the weeds down. You can dream about detecting it on those cold windy blustery winter nights and hit it first thing next spring. I've been in that situation before.

 

[Shortstack]

I would wait till fall and rent one of those heavy duty weed whackers with the saw blade on it. In the mean time I would be hunting it with a small coil and maybe taking some notes as you try to get a feel for the layout of the place and hit the more promising areas whith the whacker when it's time. Looks like a great spot, good luck.

These are some very good suggestions to begin with and I'd like to add my own ideas to them.
---plan on a longtime hunt. That area could take a good couple of years to cover thouroughly.
---wait for cold weather to run the snakes to dens unless you have some good snake guards.
---take that weedeater with the circular saw blade and clear out some pathways around the thicker stuff. It's been my observation that wherever a house has stood for years and THEN removed by oneway or another; grasses, brush, and trees take root and grow fast and THICK on the spot the house stood on. So if you can spot the layout of the old buildings by plotting those types of spots, cut your paths around those growths. You don't necessarily want the spot the house COVERED, but you want the areas AROUND them. This is for hunting yard finds, outhouse finds, home trash pits, and the TOWN'S trash dump.
If this area is a good distance from the road, take plenty of gas-mixture for the weed wacker. And, above all, make sure it is OK to operate your gas engine equipment there.
Take a good compass and plot out a map of the area for future reference.
For quick satisfaction of some finds, concentrate on probing the thinner areas with a steel rod to find trash pits for recovering bottles, old toys, etc. Finding the trash locations will help locate the building spots, too. Keep all relics you find--even if you can't ID some right away. You'll find that some of the dangest things found in old townsites are ridiculously valuable.
Good luck.

 

[deepskyal]

I would suggest a hedge trimmer, followed by a good raking.

That's what I was thinking...or the suggestions of the weedeater with the saw blade. Gotta go to the big box store and see what will serve me.

I agree...this is going to be a long term project. The area is a lot bigger than I initially thought.

Thanks all,
Al

 

[NGE]

AGENT ORANGE! Just kidding, you can get brush and weed killer to handle most of it, but you will still have to cut the stalks down..........NGE

 

[Ramapirate]

That old brick road out in the middle of nowhere gives me a rush! That has got to be some kinda cool site to hunt...

HH,
Ramapirate

 

[BeerBelly]

Get a billygoat!

(Surprised no one sugested it yet.)