Most VA relic hunters have gone to the beach at this point as the clay is hard, the heat is unbearable, and the fields are planted. Also, the ticks and mosquitos are crazy (suggest treating your digging clothes with permethrin to repel the ticks who are thick as thieves now and dangerous). Bring rain gear and plenty of water.
If you are field relic hunting, especially farm land, you need more than a T- Handled Lesch Sampson. That?s fine for parks and lawns, but you really need something with a little more mass behind it and a bigger serrated blade that can move some dirt and that can cut through roots, pasture grass, concrete hard Virginia clay, and rocks. Unless you are in somebody?s yard, you are going to dig some big deep plugs and the field conditions will be like concrete this time of year. Suggest something more along the lines of the Grave Digger brand relic shovels on the Kellyco site. Also, I personally prefer a D Handle as you can get more leverage on the shovel. You can also get away with a hefty all-metal shovel, and let the mass of the whole shovel help you do the work. But the purpose-built, larger serrated blade relic shovels are your best bet.
Relic hunting - follow the nails?put your Equinox in no disc horseshoe mode (aka ?all metal?, though ?all metal? in this context is technically a misnomer- no matter). Look for concentrations of square nails and other signs of established CW or Colonial human presence (oyster shells, bone, charcoal, broken glass, misc brass pieces) or more obvious CW finds such as melted minie ball lead fragments (known as ?camp lead?), grommets, bone, brass or ceramic buttons, knapsack hooks, minie balls, coins and then grid the hell out of that area.
Suggest using Field 2 at the default settings unless you find 50 tones overwhelming than switch to 5 tones. Use iron bias F2 at the default setting of 6 (Equinox 800) to cut down on ferrous falsing. Don?t be afraid to push it higher if nails are still falsing, no real down side becsuse you will still hear the target in horseshoe mode and can make a dig decision. Learn to turn on a suspected iffy target to swing across it from different angles and to try to wiggle your coil into the target sweet spot such that you are getting a repeatable non-ferrous dig me signal. Frankly, as Smokey said, just dig any non-ferrous signal above 7 - that covers gold coins, brass, lead, copper, silver, and large non-ferrous such as plates. Typically brass buttons come in in the low to mid teens, minie balls at 16 to 19, and larger brass, copper and silver in the 20?s to 30?s.
If you are thinking of acquiring or already gave the larger 12x15 coil, that is good for open field swing coverage, unless you are also venturing into the woods or the site you are detecting is high in mineralization, in which case it is counterproductive because it will be overwhelmed by ground noise (unlikely to be high mineralization if you are detecting in the Tidewater/Norfolk/Williamsburg area). Otherwise, you should be just fine with the stock 11? coil which is appears to be to coil around which the performance of the Equinox is optimized.
Good luck.
PS Know your boundaries. Stay on the private property for which you have permission. Any public land hunting for relics is a no no. The high concentration of protected historic sites in the area means the local state and federal authorities are constantly on the lookout for violators and the penalties are stiff and usually felonies if the Feds are involved.
I am familiar with relic hunting and the CW history throughout VA so feel free to PM me for questions or advice. You don?t need to reveal information about your site to me for me to help you or let you know the historical context in the general area you are looking to detect, not looking to jump a permission, just want you to be able to make the most of the brief time you are in VA.
