I guess to us on the west coast (beach hunting), that would be like finding a rolex. I did try some of this hunting about a year ago. Took my Spectrum xlt back to Fredricksburg, VA where my relatives live. Their property has a small stream bed running behind them that goes to a pond about 1/4 mile away. I figured if I was a soldier, I would want to stay low in this stream bed to travel. I noticed at least two square holes in the creek bed and figured that someone had dug them to dump something.
They had tree roots and leaves all over them as it was the mid winter. The dirt didn't seem dug in them at all. I scanned them with my white's, but judging by what I hear, if I visit back there again, I will be using a shovel to dig down about 3-4 feet before I detect again. I ended up traveling down the creek for a while and found my first civil war bullet. It was pointed with three lines on it. What a rush that was to think that some soldier in the civil war had held that bullet at one time! I also ended up finding a 50 cal musket ball. I then wandered on down past the pond and across a highway and into another forest. I hunted around and believe I found the remnants of an old blacksmith shop. Not much here except some old nails and a horseshoe or two plus some misc pieces of metal. The one day I went out it was about 20-30 degrees, then during the night there were some high winds and the next day it was literally about 80 degrees (no kidding!). I thought this was really really weird. We never have weather fluctuate like this in Southern CA.
The next day it was cold an drizzly. My father in law called and asked if I wanted to go to the other side of town to detect where they had lived when my wife was growing up. He said the whole area was full of CW sites. We went there and found some old camps near the railroad. Unfortunately, as I am sure you all know, the whole area was posted no tresspassing. Everywhere we went - "No Tresspassing". Life sucks sometimes. I guess it was all railroad property. We parked the car on the old dirt frontage road and climbed down the steep sides of the mountain to the railroad, then up the other steep side across another frontage road and into a small forest that was all open. When we figured out there was also a road on this side we went back and moved the car to the other side. This side was not posted, so we felt better about leaving our car on the road. We hunted and found the same square holes, except this time they were dug out deep. That's when I put two and two together about the other holes in my brother in laws back yard. I ended up finding an old piece of an ox bow rusted and relic like. We hunted about 2 hrs and it ended up starting to drizzle and then snow. We decided do get the car out of there before it got stuck. Needless to say, I will be back to my brother in law's house sometime in the future to dig out those two square holes and run over them with my detector.
![SANY0288 [640x480].webp](/data/attachments/586/586112-7fa25d4f4e5b157d0524860b5f96a3b5.jpg?hash=nnoCfH_4MO)
![DSC01449 [640x480].webp](/data/attachments/631/631652-cb9b78b5c61fb750d4daf3b3b39e00e4.jpg?hash=duK7YjLGKB)
![001[1] [640x480].webp](/data/attachments/567/567340-c048e62b76a0d3fc54756be8ee9106ea.jpg?hash=MP40Qk43wZ)
