Wayfarer
Jr. Member
- Joined
- Dec 7, 2005
- Messages
- 64
- Reaction score
- 18
- Golden Thread
- 0
- Location
- Western Idaho
- Detector(s) used
- White's: V3i, MXT, XL Pro
(In the past: White's: VX3, DFX, XLT, 6000 Di Pro SL, Coinmaster 2DB --- Minelab CTX 3030, Equinox 800)
- Primary Interest:
- All Treasure Hunting
I am new to this forum and would like to introduce myself. I am 35 years old and have been detecting since I was 8 years old. I was an avid detectorist for about 5 years back in the late 70's-early 80's but just picked the hobby back up here the last year to introduce my son to MD'ing. Perhaps it's the over 20 years that I didn't detect, but it seems like finding good stuff has become a LOT harder.
Back in the late 70's, I used a White's 2db TR detector and found silver coins almost every time I went out, many times I'd come home with 10-15 silver coins after just a few hours of detecting a local park or school. One of my favorite places to hunt was my own elementary school, which dated to the 1920's, and which I hunted many times. I distinctly remember finding a coin every few minutes at most sites I hunted. I found hundreds of silver coins at between 1" and 4" (which is about all my detector could do) at local parks, schools, churches, all the usual places. A site was "hunted out" when I'd come home with less than $10 worth of coins...usually always I'd come home at least with my pockets buldging with clad coins and a few silver coins too.
Once I hit my teenage years in the early 80's I put down the detector totally for the next 20 years. Then this last year I bought a White's XLT so I could introduce my own son to a hobby I so fondly remember when I was his age. Logic told me it might be a little harder to find good stuff than it was for me 20-25 years ago, but I really wasn't prepared for how MUCH harder. I have hit all the usual types of places, schools, churches, parks, etc., again but have come away from them with less than $1 in clad coins even after a half-day of steady hunting. My technique is much better than when I was a child too: I slow way down, dig all the questionable targets (I never used to dig anything but an obvious strong coin signal), weak targets, head to the less obvious areas of the site, and tried all the tricks I've learned. I usually come home now with a pocketful of pull tabs and bottle caps frequently dug at over 6". My equipment is also much better than before. As confirmed by my clad coin finds, my test bed, and the one mercury dime I found this last year (my only silver coin in dozens of hours of searchintg this last year), my detector (and my operating ability) is fully capable of easily reaching coin-sized targets at 8"-10". I've taken many hours and carefully mastered the various settings on my XLT, which is a great detector, by the way.
So my question is: have almost all the easy to hunt locations been hunted to the point that a good find is now rare? and does this mean that the heyday of recreational MD'ing is now basically over? Just like the placer deposits of the 1800's were easy pickin's for the first miners, with nuggets literally laying all over the ground in places, and now it takes lots of hard work to find just a little fine gold, the early days of the metal detecting "gold rush" are forever gone with metal detecting now becoming a relatively low profit activity for just purists or specialists?
My second related question is: what can I do to make detectoring fun and interesting for my son?
The obvious answer is that the modern detectorists must research more to find the virgin hunting grounds. Sounds more like gold mining to me: "You just have to look harder for the places and gold the others have missed." Yes, agreed no location will ever be totally hunted out, just like no placer stream will ever be totally cleaned out of gold. But eventually doesn't it get so difficult to find anything of value anymore that it just isn't fun or worth the time anymore? No, I'm not talking about MD'ing being profitable, just finding enough good stuff to make it fun and keep someone's interest. My son is losing interest because 99% of what we find is pure junk.
Perhaps the only sites that are worth hunting anymore are on private property and so may not have been hunted before, which brings me to another point: I find private property owners to be generally hostile towards detectorists. 25 years ago, I was almost always cheerfully granted permission by a home owner to search their yard, now I am usually denied permission and the ones that do give me permission say that others have already asked permission and have hunted the property already (in which cases my finds are a little better than the local park). In some of the old neighborhoods in Dallas where I now live, homeowners have told me that every couple of years a detectorist goes door-to-door in the neighborhood seeking permission to hunt, so it looks like other detectorists have already "turned over" virtually all the "stones" in search of virgin territory.
Over the last 10 years or so, MD publications have been advising how to hunt "hunted out" areas: go slow, dig the iffy signals, go deep, do more research, etc.. These strategies may have kept the hobby alive for another 10-15 years but even those strategies don't work very well now that they've been employed by many people for some time. I've tried hard to get back into the hobby but after I spend a whole day of my precious free time to find $0.40 of corroded clad coins and a hundred pull tabs, scraps of foil, bottlecaps, and unidentifiable rusty peices of scrap metal, I just don't want to go out and do it all over again. Maybe I just need a fresh way to look at metal detecting, a new philosophy, that doesn't depend on actually finding much cool stuff to keep my and my son's interest. The metal detecting catalogs all still try to sell the idea that you will go out and find all kinds of valuable things, even when we know such finds are now becoming VERY hard to come by. Is this creating unrealistic expectations and setting up new detectorists for a big dissappointment?
I still think metal detecting is a great hobby, a great way to get outdoors, get a little exercise, learn about history, meet interesting people, see hidden and remote historical sites, and just satisfy my need to dig through the dirt. So perhaps I and others will soldier on as a diehards undeterred by the difficulty of making good finds. At least I can be thankful that I participated in the "glory days" of metal detecting and have wonderful rosy memories.
Back in the late 70's, I used a White's 2db TR detector and found silver coins almost every time I went out, many times I'd come home with 10-15 silver coins after just a few hours of detecting a local park or school. One of my favorite places to hunt was my own elementary school, which dated to the 1920's, and which I hunted many times. I distinctly remember finding a coin every few minutes at most sites I hunted. I found hundreds of silver coins at between 1" and 4" (which is about all my detector could do) at local parks, schools, churches, all the usual places. A site was "hunted out" when I'd come home with less than $10 worth of coins...usually always I'd come home at least with my pockets buldging with clad coins and a few silver coins too.
Once I hit my teenage years in the early 80's I put down the detector totally for the next 20 years. Then this last year I bought a White's XLT so I could introduce my own son to a hobby I so fondly remember when I was his age. Logic told me it might be a little harder to find good stuff than it was for me 20-25 years ago, but I really wasn't prepared for how MUCH harder. I have hit all the usual types of places, schools, churches, parks, etc., again but have come away from them with less than $1 in clad coins even after a half-day of steady hunting. My technique is much better than when I was a child too: I slow way down, dig all the questionable targets (I never used to dig anything but an obvious strong coin signal), weak targets, head to the less obvious areas of the site, and tried all the tricks I've learned. I usually come home now with a pocketful of pull tabs and bottle caps frequently dug at over 6". My equipment is also much better than before. As confirmed by my clad coin finds, my test bed, and the one mercury dime I found this last year (my only silver coin in dozens of hours of searchintg this last year), my detector (and my operating ability) is fully capable of easily reaching coin-sized targets at 8"-10". I've taken many hours and carefully mastered the various settings on my XLT, which is a great detector, by the way.
So my question is: have almost all the easy to hunt locations been hunted to the point that a good find is now rare? and does this mean that the heyday of recreational MD'ing is now basically over? Just like the placer deposits of the 1800's were easy pickin's for the first miners, with nuggets literally laying all over the ground in places, and now it takes lots of hard work to find just a little fine gold, the early days of the metal detecting "gold rush" are forever gone with metal detecting now becoming a relatively low profit activity for just purists or specialists?
My second related question is: what can I do to make detectoring fun and interesting for my son?
The obvious answer is that the modern detectorists must research more to find the virgin hunting grounds. Sounds more like gold mining to me: "You just have to look harder for the places and gold the others have missed." Yes, agreed no location will ever be totally hunted out, just like no placer stream will ever be totally cleaned out of gold. But eventually doesn't it get so difficult to find anything of value anymore that it just isn't fun or worth the time anymore? No, I'm not talking about MD'ing being profitable, just finding enough good stuff to make it fun and keep someone's interest. My son is losing interest because 99% of what we find is pure junk.
Perhaps the only sites that are worth hunting anymore are on private property and so may not have been hunted before, which brings me to another point: I find private property owners to be generally hostile towards detectorists. 25 years ago, I was almost always cheerfully granted permission by a home owner to search their yard, now I am usually denied permission and the ones that do give me permission say that others have already asked permission and have hunted the property already (in which cases my finds are a little better than the local park). In some of the old neighborhoods in Dallas where I now live, homeowners have told me that every couple of years a detectorist goes door-to-door in the neighborhood seeking permission to hunt, so it looks like other detectorists have already "turned over" virtually all the "stones" in search of virgin territory.
Over the last 10 years or so, MD publications have been advising how to hunt "hunted out" areas: go slow, dig the iffy signals, go deep, do more research, etc.. These strategies may have kept the hobby alive for another 10-15 years but even those strategies don't work very well now that they've been employed by many people for some time. I've tried hard to get back into the hobby but after I spend a whole day of my precious free time to find $0.40 of corroded clad coins and a hundred pull tabs, scraps of foil, bottlecaps, and unidentifiable rusty peices of scrap metal, I just don't want to go out and do it all over again. Maybe I just need a fresh way to look at metal detecting, a new philosophy, that doesn't depend on actually finding much cool stuff to keep my and my son's interest. The metal detecting catalogs all still try to sell the idea that you will go out and find all kinds of valuable things, even when we know such finds are now becoming VERY hard to come by. Is this creating unrealistic expectations and setting up new detectorists for a big dissappointment?
I still think metal detecting is a great hobby, a great way to get outdoors, get a little exercise, learn about history, meet interesting people, see hidden and remote historical sites, and just satisfy my need to dig through the dirt. So perhaps I and others will soldier on as a diehards undeterred by the difficulty of making good finds. At least I can be thankful that I participated in the "glory days" of metal detecting and have wonderful rosy memories.
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