Nice little point you found, and I can commiserate with you on the no till situation.
Probing for stone artifacts is an interesting subject to me. I have found a few that way, but I suspect it would not be a worthwhile venture in most parts of the country. I surface hunt on the Delmarva peninsula, where the topography is generally flat, and many of the sites are located on low, and relatively sandy knolls. It is believed that most of these sandy knolls date to the Younger Dryas period, and are the result of climatic loss of vegetation that thus allowed wind blown silts and sands to accumulate into slightly elevated knolls. These sandy knolls became preferred spots for the pre historic peoples to congregate and leave their stone artifacts. The cool thing about it is that on some of these knolls there are not many stones larger than marbles that were put there by geologic forces, just stones left by man. Most of these sites are multi component, and severely "deflated" by often hundreds of years of farm tilling. This often leaves a sandy layer about a foot thick that contains artifacts, below which is a denser, and artifact sterile, subsoil.
The flipping stick I carry is just a length of 1/4" diameter steel rod. I often push this rod a few inches into the soil as I walk through some of the sandiest areas, on the best sites, and can easily feel if the rod contacts a stone below the surface. It only takes a few seconds to scoop away the soil with my fingers to see what the stone might be. Usually it is just a chip, flake or fire cracked rock, but on a few occasions have been rewarded with a nice point or tool.
On my home farm with a sandy knoll site, I have been picking up all the stone material for the last 10 years or so, severely depleting the amount of stone material now remaining in the sandy artifact producing layer of top soil. The odds of probing a point out of a field with a 1/4" diameter rod is pretty slim so a few years ago I re-purposed an old camp fire, multi hot dog cooker, that was starting to rust away in my garage. It has eight 1/8" diameter hot dog skewers in a circular pattern on the end, and on occasion I take it out into my field to use as my flipping stick and artifact probe. I am able to locate a lot more stones under the surface with these multiple probes, but to be honest I don't think I have found any points with it, just flakes and fire cracked stones. I am embarrassed enough to be seen walking in my own field with a hot dog cooker, and have not taken it to any other sites yet.
In general, I would think that most sites around the country would have way too many naturally occurring rocks to make probing worth while? HH.
