I just got permission to hunt a large field/wooded area where do I start?

[acevillav]

Hello all and thank you for your help/advice. i just received permission to hunt a 250 acres pasture/woodland. It has been in this persons family for a long time. How do you narrow down your search for such a large plot of land Are there any key areas or land features to look for
I'll post pics of the loot. Thanks again

Acevillav

 

[Born2Dtect]

I usually start by charging my batterires the night before. The load everything up the next day and go.

No just kidding!

Try to get a map of the location the older the better. Or just try google earth. Look for an opening a water source or trail. When you get there do a good look around. Look for large trees , paths or odd things. Try an X pattern on the whole field, do a corner search and any place that my have been a path.

While hunting look for signs, red brick, depressions, pottery, etc. If you do find anything worthwhile. stop and hunt that spot well.

Ed D.

 

[Schrecky]

Are you located in one of the states where the on-line historical topo maps are available (http://historical.maptech.com/index.cfm) If so are there any old home sites shown on the maps that would help you?

 

[Sandman]

On reading the previous posts I expected to see someone suggest suggest to start in the middle.

If there are any large trees grouped together like they were around a house, check out the area. Any flowering trees can help mark the boundry of a garden.

Over lap your sweeps so to cover all the ground at depth.

Good Luck.

 

[BuckleBoy]

If you look back over any of my posts, you will find that the Iron Brigade and I typically hunt large areas of fields or woods like what you have described--but we Always do it in order to find a site of some sort--be it a house, church, picnic grove, campsite, or something.  With that many acres, there was Something there (somewhere!) in the past--but to be honest (even though you have a possibility of finding a farmer-dropped coin anywhere there) you will only want to hunt several acres of that land in all likelihood.  If you hunted it all, you might get a few more keepers, but you'd burn lots of batteries and months of hunting.  The best way to narrow it down is to ask the farmer if there are any places where there were old structures--or if there are any places where they plow up brick, pottery, or glass each spring.  Start in those spots.  Look for an iron patch.  Don't worry about overlapping your sweeps until you find the iron! Otherwise it's quite difficult hunting that size of area by yourself. Just get to the iron patch. Where the iron is, the relics and coins are too.


Regards,


Buckleboy

 

[al-nm]

Like some said hard to answer that one. Depends where you live. If its out east probably anywere if your out here in the west you would need to find old house foundations or something. We dont have the relics and coins like out east. We do but what was lost here was brought from out east. Trees are always nice to start since that was the only air conditioning back then. Around ponds is good.

 

[acevillav]

Thank you all for your responses . I knew the good folks at Tnet would help.

Acevillav

 

[Tom_in_CA]

just having lots of acres, doesn't mean anything to metal detecting. There has to have been some sort of activity, habitation, etc... there. So unless you know where old homesteads, and preferably, something where commerical or recreational activity took place, it won't do any good. By "commercial or recreational", I mean things like stage stops, saloons, camps, stores, grange or school site, etc... Sure, now and then someone looses a coin in the middle of nowhere, for no reason, but odds are, go to where human interaction and commerce took place (money handles, changed hands, people camping, playing, or whatever)

 

[khouse]

I recently located 8 old home sites in the woods. They were built in the late 1800's. Some foundations were easy to see. But one of the best signs was looking for flowers. I would see some nice grouping of colorful flowers. Then sure enough under the leaves were bricks and stones close by. I even found an old garden plot. It had some small onions coming up!

 

[Ray S ECenFL]

You have been given some good advice on how to search the property but it would have been better if we knew what part of the country you were talking about. Reason for my saying that is the possibility of Civil War activities on the property. That should be taken into consideration when you do your research for possible homesteads, out buildings, recreational areas etc...

Good luck and keep us posted on your progress.

Ray S

 

[xdanthemanx]

I agree with k house, on the few homesite i found in the middle of no where there were tulips and dafodils on both sites white imeediately keyed me in that i was close, im not saying that all to look for but its a pretty easy bet when you see a big patch of any type of plants that probably didnt randomly end up there,
big groupings of large pine trees or any trees that appear to be in rows are also a good giveaway, differetn kinds of fruit trees in a close area tell a story also. I might be pretty new at this hobby but logical stuff this is coming at me real fast as i have found many good sites in only a few short weeks so far

DanTheMan

 

[MD Dog]

Not all past active areas show clues on the surface, especially when the ground may have been farmed on and off over the course of time. I would use a large 12" coil and move fast covering lots of ground. Use an overhead photo of the location to map and grid the area. then catalog the types of finds and their locations on that picture. You'll see a clearer picture of where the activity took place the most come into view as time goes on. The more pin points the more activity. In an area the size of 250 acres I would expect to find at least five such areas of activity, but that is on the east coast.