New Hunter In St Louis!

[hns11550]

I am a new hunter here in St Louis and I am looking for a couple of people that are interested in finding new places to hunt. I have just started my new hobby this weekend and didn't find much but I am not discouraged. I have a few decent places I am going to hit here in the next few weeks around my house, and have found a couple of really good sites on a scouting trip down south. I am open to parks and most public areas, but I am looking to mainly hit old houses, ghost towns, old farmhouses etc. If anyone is around me, let me know.


Mike

 

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[warsawdaddy]

Here's alink for you.Just type in 'Missouri' if you don't want to list your name.It will list a bunch of detectorists in MO.

http://www.losttreasure.com/treasurebuddies/

 

[hns11550]

Thanks for the link, I appreciate the help.

Mike

 

[Cladius Maximus]

Mike,

I live in Crestwood. I've been MDing for about a year. Lets get together sometime. I've hit several old parks, Forest Park, around the Meramec River , a few other places. Also, I travel a good bit "out state" and have found some interesting places to try. Where do you live?

John

 

[hns11550]

John, I live in Arnold, and I have a couple of areas I would like to check also...I'd enjoy having someone to hunt with rather than trying to go out alone...it's just more fun. Let me know when you are ready to go, I 'd be happy to join you. Thanks

Mike

 

[Boilermaker27]

I live in Dittmer and have been detecting for 35 years. Most of my silver is gone, I think the kids got that years ago. I have been all over the State of Missouri. Most places and parks that you will find have been found before and hunted before. I hunt a lot of Civil war sites and recently found an 1861 half dime and an 1861 dime in almost mint condition, absolutely perfect, if you can find where soldiers camped you will find old money. Other places of interest are old fords and the old roads of Missouri. I have the Missouri topographical program from National Geographic and use a GPS to find various sites. I can find a spring or coordinate on a map and go right there with the gps, it is a super handy tool to use when detecting. Also comes in handy because I can make a waypoint of a site and then transfer it to my topo. program on my computer. It also tracks where I have been so I know exactly where I have been when searching large fields. There is a site called "geographic names information system" and you can click on Missouri and download all sorts of locations and ghost towns, fords, placenames, etc. and it also has the coordinates so you can add that to your gps and it will take you to the spot. This site has so much information that I started to print out the Missouri portion and had to stop it immediately because it was going to print out well over 1000 pages of nothing but names of places that are lost in Missouri. Secret to finding good stuff is having a good metal detector. You cannot go wrong with a White or Minelab detector. I think the Minelab are far better than anything out there, and I have used all of them. For Civil war hunting I have been using a Tesoro Tejon. This is a super detector and has a great price of just over $500 if you buy it from the right person. It does not have a meter but does have two separate discriminators and that is what I found the coins with. However, I know there are more seated coins in this field, just a tad deeper and the Minelab will go down and get those, to date probably over 50 seated coins from the area. If you go down to the bootheel of Missouri there are old house sites everywhere. Today they are all open fields, but years ago there were houses everywhere. Many people walk the fields and collect marbles, many people have thousands of marbles from the old house sites. You can drive along the roads in the early morning around New Madrid and within about 20 miles of there and see the glass twinkling in the morning sunlight, those are the old house sites and they are everywhere, even in the middle of fields. Lots of places to go in Missouri, go to the website that I mentioned and find something that interests you and try to find the area, that is the key.

 

[nascarmom0308]

Does any one know any where good just south of kansas city. I've heard of the cass county millions thats where i live but dont know where it is? If any one could help? Thanks.

 

[landlord]

WHERE DO YOU LIVE ?

 

[landlord]

I just got a bounty hunter is it junk? i live in sappington mo you guys are close lets go. i only been out 1 time ever im new at it.

 

[canyoudigit]

I have the Missouri topographical program from National Geographic and use a GPS to find various sites. I can find a spring or coordinate on a map and go right there with the gps, it is a super handy tool to use when detecting.

I'm going to have to listen to you. You seem to have a lot of experience and fantastic ideas. I've only JUST begun to do become interested in this. My mother-in-law loaned me a Bounty Hunter Prospector DX that she really hasn't put to any use so I thought I'd try it out. I've always been interested in History and the outdoors so metal detecting seemed a natural extension of two interests I already had so I thought, "Why not give it a try?"

I had already considered using the two tools you mention above (the software and the GPS unit) to assist my detecting. Especially the GPS unit. Used correctly, they're powerful devices.

There is a site called "geographic names information system" and you can click on Missouri and download all sorts of locations and ghost towns, fords, placenames, etc. and it also has the coordinates so you can add that to your gps and it will take you to the spot. This site has so much information that I started to print out the Missouri portion and had to stop it immediately because it was going to print out well over 1000 pages of nothing but names of places that are lost in Missouri.

I really appreciated this tip. Great information. I had no idea it existed. I downloaded the material pertinent to Missouri as well and started to take a look at it. You're right. It's over 50,000 lines and around a 6Mb file in size. Way too large to print even the stuff specific to Missouri. The information in that file just begs for an efficient search method so I downloaded the latest version of the MySQL database server onto a Windows XP desktop. I installed the database server and created a database to house the data in the file. I had to massage the data in the file a little to get it to load but it wasn't that difficult. I can now pick out only the lines specific to a particular county that I'm interested in and print them out very quickly. If anyone is interested, I'll be happy to post the details but I realise that this isn't an IT forum (I'm a UNIX junkie employeed by a large company).

Secret to finding good stuff is having a good metal detector. You cannot go wrong with a White or Minelab detector. I think the Minelab are far better than anything out there, and I have used all of them.

Makes sense to me. What about the Bounty Hunter Prospector DX? Is it worth anything? How would you rate it on a scale from 1 to 10 with 10 being an outstanding detector and 1 the equivalent of a dowsing rod? Remember, I know nothing about detectors and the DX was loaned to me by my mother-in-law.

If you go down to the bootheel of Missouri there are old house sites everywhere. Today they are all open fields, but years ago there were houses everywhere. Many people walk the fields and collect marbles, many people have thousands of marbles from the old house sites. You can drive along the roads in the early morning around New Madrid and within about 20 miles of there and see the glass twinkling in the morning sunlight, those are the old house sites and they are everywhere, even in the middle of fields. Lots of places to go in Missouri, go to the website that I mentioned and find something that interests you and try to find the area, that is the key.

Which brings me to another question if I may ... How in the HECK do you know whether or not you are allow to detect on a given piece of land? There's the obvious: State and Federal Parks and all private property are off limits unless you are given specific permission by someone in authority to grant it but how do you tell if some of these more remote areas are private property? Let me give you a specific example. I mentioned I do quite a bit of hiking all over the state of Missouri. I purchased a book that gives some directions to some of the more remote areas of the state. In this book, the directions instruct you to follow stream beds that flow through areas where there's private property on either side. I have to assume that since the author suggests walking through stream beds that the stream beds themselves are public property?

Another example ... There are some old county roads that end in the Mark Twain National Forest that aren't connected to any property. I assume these areas are OK too? I realize you may not know but I thought I'd ask because I'm curious how you knew which areas in the bootheel were OK to detect? Any other users care to give me some advice?

Another question ... I took the detector out to the park for two hours yesterday and found a really corroded belt buckle and four pull tabs. I need some help pin pointing. I don't want to buy a pin-pointing detector yet until I'm sure that this is something that I want to get into so can someone share some of their techniques/methods? Thanks.

 

[canyoudigit]

Looking around on the internet, I did find too that the information that's kept in the GIS system mentioned by user "jhettel" is also located on a somewhat searchable web site as well: www.placenames.com. At least the custom queries that I can do now on my own desktop provide a little more searching flexibility.

 

[Boilermaker27]

glad you guys caught on the to Missouri data base. I would love to place all of the great sites on my topographic program but there are so many that it would take an extremely long time to put just the good ones on my map program.

The database, a good handheld gps, and the topographic program can find you many great sites that have never been detected. When I go out I just go and start detecting. If I have to ask then I do so, if I am in the boondocks then I just go and do it. Most people are pretty willing to talk to you and are usually quite nice whether they let you on the property or not. I had a guy yell at me one time down by the Big River Bridge in Jefferson County and I just yelled right back at him. Pretty soon we just started talkiing, but I never went back, found better spots.

Good thing about the gps is that if I find a good hotspot I can mark it as a waypoint and then return right to the exact area. When I download it sometimes lays the trails that I have traveled which lets me see which portions of the field or area I have hunted. Can also load the latitude and longtitude into my gps for any spot on the database and go directly to that spot.

I will have to try and set the database up as you did so I can hunt it easier. It is so mixed up that it would take forever to find all the spots in all the counties that I hunt.

Good luck