Mayo South Elgin
Sr. Member
So Tim and I got a chance to venture out of the clad zone we've been stuck in for the last few hunts. We had big dreams (pipe dreams?) of finding the elusive barbers, seateds, Indians, buffalo - hey anything other than mem cents would be exciting at this point right?
We get to this forest preserve that's just huge - no way you could hunt every possible place in your entire lifetime, and the history of it goes back to indicate oldies are there - in the right places. And a couple other people have found some nice coins there recently.
It all started out innocently enough. A nice paved trail in. Then an easy to travel deer path or people path. Then we start swingin coils and the next thing you know, we ran through the briars and we ran through the brambles. We ran through the bushes where a rabbit wouldn't go. Oh wait... that was just the song that kept going through my head each time I got snagged by thorns and couldn't move forward and had to instead move backwards or sideways.
I had to put the headphones back on my head at least a dozen times because they got snatched off me by the wild rose bushes or poison dart thorns or whatever they were. My shoelaces literally got untied 37 times. My left shin and my right thigh both got skewered at different times just to break up the monotony of the very light drizzle that was causing my 4 layers of hoodie sweatshirt jackets to create a nice sauna effect.
Every so often Tim tried setting down on a log to rest and patch up his wounds but I didn't give him more than about 3 minutes (just enough time for another band aid and a tourniquet) before I'd start swingin the coil again in hopes of finding one of the many lost and overgrown homesites that we knew had to be in these woods.
The woods were amazingly clean and free of almost any sign of civilization. We must have covered miles of ground in an amazingly complex manner of weaving in and out of various thickets. I kept wondering if GPS units work on cloudy overcast and rainy days and how much it would cost to get one but I probably wouldn't want to stop swinging the coil to look at one anyways - unless it was dark out and I was hopelessly lost.
I did find a couple shotgun brass, two pieces of aluminum from food containers, a relatively recent hobo camp which included an old propane coleman lantern (which I left), plastic forks and the polyester remains of a jacket - the zipper sounded like a half dollar, the remains of a ladies compact, a D-ring from who knows what, and at the end of the hunt, a 1942 quarter that I managed to scrape up pretty well since by that time I was delirious with thorn poisoning. The quarter has a strange black tone to it almost as if it was in a fire. None of the dirt around it indicated that although I did find it on the edge of a clearing.
Don't take the tone of this as if I'm complaining... I'm not at all! In this case, sarcasm = humor.
I actually had a blast on this hunt! Even if it seemed like we were lost for 6 hours.
I hope you enjoyed the story - here's the meager photos...
We get to this forest preserve that's just huge - no way you could hunt every possible place in your entire lifetime, and the history of it goes back to indicate oldies are there - in the right places. And a couple other people have found some nice coins there recently.
It all started out innocently enough. A nice paved trail in. Then an easy to travel deer path or people path. Then we start swingin coils and the next thing you know, we ran through the briars and we ran through the brambles. We ran through the bushes where a rabbit wouldn't go. Oh wait... that was just the song that kept going through my head each time I got snagged by thorns and couldn't move forward and had to instead move backwards or sideways.
I had to put the headphones back on my head at least a dozen times because they got snatched off me by the wild rose bushes or poison dart thorns or whatever they were. My shoelaces literally got untied 37 times. My left shin and my right thigh both got skewered at different times just to break up the monotony of the very light drizzle that was causing my 4 layers of hoodie sweatshirt jackets to create a nice sauna effect.
Every so often Tim tried setting down on a log to rest and patch up his wounds but I didn't give him more than about 3 minutes (just enough time for another band aid and a tourniquet) before I'd start swingin the coil again in hopes of finding one of the many lost and overgrown homesites that we knew had to be in these woods.
The woods were amazingly clean and free of almost any sign of civilization. We must have covered miles of ground in an amazingly complex manner of weaving in and out of various thickets. I kept wondering if GPS units work on cloudy overcast and rainy days and how much it would cost to get one but I probably wouldn't want to stop swinging the coil to look at one anyways - unless it was dark out and I was hopelessly lost.
I did find a couple shotgun brass, two pieces of aluminum from food containers, a relatively recent hobo camp which included an old propane coleman lantern (which I left), plastic forks and the polyester remains of a jacket - the zipper sounded like a half dollar, the remains of a ladies compact, a D-ring from who knows what, and at the end of the hunt, a 1942 quarter that I managed to scrape up pretty well since by that time I was delirious with thorn poisoning. The quarter has a strange black tone to it almost as if it was in a fire. None of the dirt around it indicated that although I did find it on the edge of a clearing.
Don't take the tone of this as if I'm complaining... I'm not at all! In this case, sarcasm = humor.
I actually had a blast on this hunt! Even if it seemed like we were lost for 6 hours.
I hope you enjoyed the story - here's the meager photos...
We traipsed (one of Kimsdad's mom's favorite terms) all around there too, the day after you did. No signals for the longest time - and then all of a sudden you'd find an intact ketchup bottle. 
There were several times when I thought my detector wasn't working. Not to mention times when I thought I had a signal but the branches had flipped the switch on my Sunray over to probe mode. No Barbers that day, and only one coin - a wheat - in at least two miles! Three hours after I got home, I was walking in the kitchen and felt a sharp pain in the bottom of my foot. Turns out it was a verrry tiny thorn that had taken all that time to work its way down my sock and get in just the right position to jab my foot. ![:-\](https://www.treasurenet.com/smilies/undecided.gif "Undecided :-\")
