Fun afternoon hunt with Mirage-some silver to boot.

[Danimal]

Last Saturday Bob and I met in the early afternoon (Nate had a track meet in the AM) and hunted a few different athletic fields near some older inner city schools. The first area we hunted has produced quite a bit of silver in the past year and sure enough, I popped a deep Merc out after a while. I also found a Canadian pocket spill with an older nickle and a handful of Canadian cents. (not TOO old though). I also pulled out an old Iodine linament tin.

I continue to experiment with using my DFX much like I did the ACE250 by hunting primarily in pinpoint (DC-non-motion) mode and then going to discrim. ONLY after locating a target and centering the coil over it.
This does several things:

One, it lets me run the DFX REAL hot...so hot that using it in a "normal" fashion is totally annoying because of the amount of chatter. If an ant sneezes the thing will warble. Recently Nate (who also uses a DFX) tried my machine (albeit hunting "normally") and said it was "too noisy" and didn't feel stable. The things is though...if you use pinpoint to aquire and center over a target, all you are listening to is the threshold shift...and you are getting MUCH more depth than in AC. Then, when you switch off pinpoint, you are listening to the machine interpret the TARGET...not soil mineralization...EMI interferrence, etc. This also lets you pick apart trashy spots, even using the stock 9.5" coil. Just approach from different directions when you detune and can tell there's more than one target close together.
Two..and this has worked well lately. When in pinpoint the DFX's threshold tone can easily determine if a target is small...and if it's deep (ignoring the depth indication on the screen). Lately in areas like this I have almost been ignoring shallow targets that SCREAM in pinpoint (honestly...I still switch off and listen to the ID tone as it COULD be larger silver that didn't sink deep regardless of the coin's density because of something blocking it's progress deeper).

Well..back to the hunt...While trying to hear the REAL subtle tone shift in pinpoint...I got one...deep and small.
Switched back to discrim...decent high tone and a VDI around 80-82...but broken and slight wrap around on the VDI scale into ferrous..but the high tone was smooth so I dug. The initial plug was the depth of the Lesche (around 7") and the target was still in the hole. I carefully chunked out more dirt with the Lesche and it was STILL in the hole. (easily 9" now) and the tone and VDI now were shouting "silver dime" to me.
The Vibraprobe picked it up and when I pried that chunk up I saw the dime-sized round silver edge and part of a VERY clean bust and now I was thinking Barber. It ended up being a very nice silver Jesus pendant, perfectly round, cut-relived around Jesus' head.
To me, a more unique find than another silver dime (though a Barber would have been great too)

Then we went to a new location for us and proceded to pull a bunch of wheaties...all deep. Bob also yanked out a 1969 40% Kennedy half! That sucker looked just minted. No more silver showed up there but we are convinced it's not been hunted and there HAS to be some silver there...so we'll be back.

Here's a few pics

First few wheats and the Iodex tin

Bob and my finds dumped out

closeup of the silvers (also shown is a 1909 wheatie-no VDB)


HH all!

 

[doozis]

Great finds Dan , and many thanks for posting. When it comes
to metal detecting you are a true expert who has the ability to think outside the box and then convey your findings in a very clear manor to the novice. Just want you to know a lot of us really appreciate it I have learned a lot from your posts ....keep em coming !

Doozis

 

[mosemeister]

Very informative info, Dan. Thank you. Great finds, too

 

[diggitdoggie]

Very nice Dan.