Sites that shoulda produced but didnt.

[incajoe]

Sites that shoulda produced but didn't.

A couple years ago I had done some research in my hometown and found out where there was a horsetrack/fairgrounds in the late 1800's which is now a hayfield today. I contacted the property owner and got his OK to hunt. Needless to say I was very excited to check this field out. Well, I spent about three days there and only found one coin, an indian head penny. This place should have been loaded with stuff and I know that there is no way it has been hunted out.

Then last year I found an almost identical situation in a nearby town. Another racetrack which is now just woods. Permission was secured and this spring my father and I dove in after waiting all year in anticipation. The end result was that I came home with a couple brass horse buckles and neither of us found a coin. It wasn't a case of being in the wrong area in either location. The track could still be seen in both places so we knew we were in the right spot.

I just don't get it why these locations weren't loaded with good stuff? All the signs pointed to them being great. I suppose most of you have similar stories?

 

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[radarwill]

Re: Sites that shoulda produced but didn't.

Myabe someone with a Sovereign visited the site before you?

 

[Tom_in_CA]

Re: Sites that shoulda produced but didn't.

Incajoe, you say: "I know that there is no way it has been hunted out." How long have you been hunting? I have to agree with radarwill on this: It's probably been hunted before. I've been into this for over 30 years. I've seen this phenomenom play out all the time: Someone in the last 10 or 15 yrs. gets into the hobby, reads the SAME history books we researched 2 or 30 yrs. ago, and reads about the same the "for sure" sites that we already sluethed out and hunted hard years ago. Then they come to me with an excited look in their eyes, saying "I found out about this such & such abandoned picnic site, or stage stop, or whatever" I have to burst their bubble and tell them we already hunted the snot out of it

But what wierd is, that many times, they come to me CONVINCED it must be virgin. Why? Because the landowner, or whomever they talked to, told them so. But there are many reasons why their contact just doesn't know any better: 1) They may just be the PRESENT landowner or manager or whatever, and they don't know what went on there 20+ yrs. ago, 2) Maybe it's been in their family that long, but it simply was someone else (wife, son, a different foreman, etc...), 20+ yrs, ago, who answered the door, and said "sure, help yourself" For example, I once got permission from a guy who had nothing but "hunting rights" to a property. Ie.: "Joe probably won't mind, just be sure to shut the gate". Now 20 yrs. later, whoever "Joe" is, will insist it's never been md'd. Get the pix? 3) People simply hiked in on their own ... uh ... "discreetly". This can be true no matter how much the current owner insists it's never been hunted. He may simply not know.

If there is any caliber of hardcore hunters in your area, believe me, no "fairgrounds", will have gone "un-hunted". Unless you have only timid sandbox hunters in your area, that have no balls and do no research, my hunch is, sites like you describe, have usually been sleuthed out.

 

[erikk]

Re: Sites that shoulda produced but didn't.

A couple years ago I had done some research in my hometown and found out where there was a horsetrack/fairgrounds in the late 1800's which is now a hayfield today. I contacted the property owner and got his OK to hunt. Needless to say I was very excited to check this field out. Well, I spent about three days there and only found one coin, an indian head penny. This place should have been loaded with stuff and I know that there is no way it has been hunted out.

Then last year I found an almost identical situation in a nearby town. Another racetrack which is now just woods. Permission was secured and this spring my father and I dove in after waiting all year in anticipation. The end result was that I came home with a couple brass horse buckles and neither of us found a coin. It wasn't a case of being in the wrong area in either location. The track could still be seen in both places so we knew we were in the right spot.

I just don't get it why these locations weren't loaded with good stuff? All the signs pointed to them being great. I suppose most of you have similar stories?

I don't know about your specific area in the NE but I was researching race tracks and fairs grounds back in the 60's in NE and hunting them hard. So were a lot of other people

 

[deepskyal]

Re: Sites that shoulda produced but didn't.

I can't say it much better than anyone else.

I started this hobby back in the 80's. Even back then, some of those really great sites I discovered were already detected.

The fields I used to play in and one that when i was just a toddler, we would watch, with a few hunderd others, fireworks on picnic blankets. That was in the very early 60's. No clad back in them days!
I went there with my new Whites 6000Di Pro, only to meet up with a fellow on my way into the gates that told me him and a couple other fellows hit the living daylights out of the field for several weekends and came out with "bags" of silver, a few years earlier and that he continued to hunt it up to recent.
Talk about being punched in the stomach.

I only found some recent clad which was a let-down considering I knew the history of the park and thought I would hit the jackpot.
I can only assume others had randomly hit the park too over the years.

Maybe this fall, after swim season is over, I'll hit it with my White's DFX. I hit a couple hunted parks with it and pulled up older silver dimes, mid 40's. I was beginning to think the machine was a dime magnet because i sure find my share of them. I guess the signal was probably passed over by other detectorists, maybe too faint for the older machines.

And you gotta figure,too, that a hay field gets tilled every year. Things go deep with some of those plows, 12-16 inches. You may want to try it repeatedly over tillings or look for a bigger coil for your machine.

If your machine is decent, you just have to be diligent in listening to your signals. I also subscribe to the theory that a place is never hunted out.
Al

 

[Ricardo_NY1]

Re: Sites that shoulda produced but didn't.

This post is really good reading...........I myself am one of those newcomers who at times struggles to understand certain whys in this hobby. As said in one of the threads, I definately subscribe to the never hunted out theory. Depleted, dried, etc. yes, but I believe every place that once had good coins, etc will hold something for persistence.

 

[flyinguy]

Re: Sites that shoulda produced but didn't.

i know alot of areas are filled. some i thought would be great were garbage. some i thought were garbage were great. just gotta check it out!

 

[Born2Dtect]

Re: Sites that shoulda produced but didn't.

A site that is visible and not off the beaten path probably has been detected before. Before I started detecting again I new no one who did personally. Now I know of at least 50 people in six states who detect. TNetters not included. If it was hunted a few times by 2 to 3 people it will be hard to find anything good. A detector with better depth and discrimination may help.

What causes a place to be a low producer? Not much foot traffic over the years. The financial status of the families living there, more finds on a plantation property than a share croppers. Are the remains visible. Was it hunted before and how hard and how much. Was the area regraded or filled in. A small area gets hunted more thoroughly than a large one.

Show me someone who makes great finds everytime out and I'll show you a person who needs to call me about being hunting partners.

Ed D.

 

[incajoe]

Re: Sites that shoulda produced but didn't.

Incajoe, you say: "I know that there is no way it has been hunted out." How long have you been hunting? I have to agree with radarwill on this: It's probably been hunted before. I've been into this for over 30 years. I've seen this phenomenom play out all the time: Someone in the last 10 or 15 yrs. gets into the hobby, reads the SAME history books we researched 2 or 30 yrs. ago, and reads about the same the "for sure" sites that we already sluethed out and hunted hard years ago. Then they come to me with an excited look in their eyes, saying "I found out about this such & such abandoned picnic site, or stage stop, or whatever" I have to burst their bubble and tell them we already hunted the snot out of it

But what wierd is, that many times, they come to me CONVINCED it must be virgin. Why? Because the landowner, or whomever they talked to, told them so. But there are many reasons why their contact just doesn't know any better: 1) They may just be the PRESENT landowner or manager or whatever, and they don't know what went on there 20+ yrs. ago, 2) Maybe it's been in their family that long, but it simply was someone else (wife, son, a different foreman, etc...), 20+ yrs, ago, who answered the door, and said "sure, help yourself" For example, I once got permission from a guy who had nothing but "hunting rights" to a property. Ie.: "Joe probably won't mind, just be sure to shut the gate". Now 20 yrs. later, whoever "Joe" is, will insist it's never been md'd. Get the pix? 3) People simply hiked in on their own ... uh ... "discreetly". This can be true no matter how much the current owner insists it's never been hunted. He may simply not know.

If there is any caliber of hardcore hunters in your area, believe me, no "fairgrounds", will have gone "un-hunted". Unless you have only timid sandbox hunters in your area, that have no balls and do no research, my hunch is, sites like you describe, have usually been sleuthed out.

Oh no, I'm not fooling myself into thinking that neither of these places have been hunted before. I just can't understand why a huge area such as both of these sites are don't produce any coins at all. It's just not possible for these places to have been hunted out...completely. One of the sites is in the woods with trees and underbrush and you just can't thoroughly hunt an area like that especially when it covers 20 acres of land. This place was crawling with people for decades and they certainly lost stuff, but where did it all go? Maybe it's possible that everything has sunk beyond the range of today's detectors?

I have been metal detecting since I was a kid in the 70's and my father ran a home business selling metal detectors (still does) so I grew up with it and one of these sites is in our hometown. So my father has a good handle on what sites have been hunted and what sites may not have been.

It just seems like I should have found something........................

 

[erikk]

Re: Sites that shoulda produced but didn't.

Upgrading your detectors certainly would help

 

[Tom_in_CA]

Re: Sites that shoulda produced but didn't.

incajoe, without seeing the site, and sampling it for myself, I can't comment exactly. I mean, perhaps you are doing something wrong with your machine, and not getting depth? Perhaps the soil lends itself (soft moist, or whatever) to stuff being too deep? The only way to know would be for another person to sample it as well.

But back to the original idea of others simply already having pounded it, I can give you this example: There is a country picnic site near me, that was heavily used from the 1890s to the 1920s. It is on private property. Just chapparel country type cattle land now. Some guys I knew, back in the late 1970s, stumbled onto the site, by talking to oldtimers who had picnicked there as kids. So they hopped the fence and gave it a try. Started getting silver with their old VLF/TRs. Every single oak tree had handfuls of coins around them So they started making return trips. Eventually, some passing rancher booted them. So they merely came back at more ... uh ... "discreet" times, and kept getting more. The place is at least a dozen acres in size. Word soon spread through the detecting community about this site, so others too were soon finding their way in there. By the end of the 1980s, it's safe to say that literally hundreds of silver coins, and perhaps well over 1k to 2k overall (when you add in pennies and nickels) had been found. Today, if you were to go there, you'd have to knock yourself silly to find 1 more per outing. I still go there, now and then, just for sport. And since I was amongst those "early guys", I sometimes stop to think about how easy it was early on. I can dintinctly remember getting multiple coins in zones, that now are sterile. That is, I can see the "before and after" with a clear sense of the evolution. Since it was strictly for picnics (as opposed to a home site or something) iron masking was never an issue. And since it's dry chapparel country, depth was never an issue. So it lent itself to an easy "working out"

Therefore, to answer your question, in a case like the one I give above, I believe it truly is possible to "work out" an area, even up to 20 acres. Or at least leave it so cotton-picking slim, to the point that those who show up 20 to 30 yrs. later, would probably give up in disgust and leave. And if you were to ask the farmer at this example site today "has anyone ever detected there?" he may say "nope". Even he knew of a few who'd been there, he may say "yeah, once or twice, but we ran them off and no one ever came back!"

 

[madmacabre]

Re: Sites that shoulda produced but didn't.

This will be a unpopular comment but as the baby boomers retire over the next few years , the only options for us youngins are the beach and private homes.

 

[incajoe]

Re: Sites that shoulda produced but didn't.

incajoe, without seeing the site, and sampling it for myself, I can't comment exactly. I mean, perhaps you are doing something wrong with your machine, and not getting depth? Perhaps the soil lends itself (soft moist, or whatever) to stuff being too deep? The only way to know would be for another person to sample it as well.

But back to the original idea of others simply already having pounded it, I can give you this example: There is a country picnic site near me, that was heavily used from the 1890s to the 1920s. It is on private property. Just chapparel country type cattle land now. Some guys I knew, back in the late 1970s, stumbled onto the site, by talking to oldtimers who had picnicked there as kids. So they hopped the fence and gave it a try. Started getting silver with their old VLF/TRs. Every single oak tree had handfuls of coins around them So they started making return trips. Eventually, some passing rancher booted them. So they merely came back at more ... uh ... "discreet" times, and kept getting more. The place is at least a dozen acres in size. Word soon spread through the detecting community about this site, so others too were soon finding their way in there. By the end of the 1980s, it's safe to say that literally hundreds of silver coins, and perhaps well over 1k to 2k overall (when you add in pennies and nickels) had been found. Today, if you were to go there, you'd have to knock yourself silly to find 1 more per outing. I still go there, now and then, just for sport. And since I was amongst those "early guys", I sometimes stop to think about how easy it was early on. I can dintinctly remember getting multiple coins in zones, that now are sterile. That is, I can see the "before and after" with a clear sense of the evolution. Since it was strictly for picnics (as opposed to a home site or something) iron masking was never an issue. And since it's dry chapparel country, depth was never an issue. So it lent itself to an easy "working out"

Therefore, to answer your question, in a case like the one I give above, I believe it truly is possible to "work out" an area, even up to 20 acres. Or at least leave it so cotton-picking slim, to the point that those who show up 20 to 30 yrs. later, would probably give up in disgust and leave. And if you were to ask the farmer at this example site today "has anyone ever detected there?" he may say "nope". Even he knew of a few who'd been there, he may say "yeah, once or twice, but we ran them off and no one ever came back!"

I suppose that maybe you're right and those sites have been hunted out. It just seems so unlikely that someone could be that thorough. I tend to bank on people leaving stuff behind but in some maybe they don't.

I know I don't have the greatest detector out there but I have become quite good with it and for an inexpensive machine it performs amazingly well. Like I posted earlier I have been using metal detectors all my life and my father is quite an expert and has taught me a lot of the years about how to properly use different machines so it's not really an issue of lack of technique. I don't like to toot my own horn but I'm pretty good at this metal detecting thing now and the Bounty Hunter 3300 will surprise you with what it's capable of. For example, the other day I went to a colonial home site that I've hit pretty hard in the past. I didn't find anything worthwhile but I did pull half of a square nail at 13 inches! Yes, 13 inches....I measured it because I was so amazed at the depth I got on that signal. With that being said I will probably upgrade soon to a Tesoro Cortes. I'm sure that I can get a little more depth out of the Tesoro and hopefully relieve the falsing problems that seem to plague the Bounty Hunters.

 

[incajoe]

Re: Sites that shoulda produced but didn't.

This will be a unpopular comment but as the baby boomers retire over the next few years , the only options for us youngins are the beach and private homes.

I agree that private land is the last frontier for metal detecting. Anywhere you go that is public land you will have a hard time finding old coins unless there is digging being done for construction or renovation. Beaches of course are always being renewed since people drop jewelry every day.

 

[DCMatt]

Re: Sites that shoulda produced but didn't.

I'll add my two cents and echo what others have already said.

I got into this hobby just a couple years ago. I did my research and found what should have been a great area (small CW battlefield). Got permission from the owner who said she only knew of one hunt on the site a few years earlier. Me and my buddy got almost nothing from the field (except poison ivy). I mentioned it at the local club meeting and discovered the lady had only owned the property for a few years and it had been pounded during the 70's & 80's.

Similar situation at my parent's church in PA. The old church was built in 1849 next to where the older church had stood since the 1740's (burned down). The groundskeeper gave us total access. Said there should be good stuff in the ground. Again, almost nothing - a few wheaties and two colonial era buttons. Found out later that the site had been hunted many times before...

So, as others have said, you just don't know till you hunt it. I don't get my hopes up too much anymore. I usually go on the premise that if I can find a good spot doing research, lots of guys could've found the same spot over the last 40+ years...

It's still fun, though...

DCMatt

 

[Tom_in_CA]

Re: Sites that shoulda produced but didn't.

DC Matt, you're right, it happens all the time. And each time, the person you're talking to is CERTAIN it's never been hit.

One time, I went to a school yard here, that's been hit heavily, even as far back as the 1960s. As I began to detect one day, a teacher came over and told me I'd have to come back later d/t an after-school function was about to start. As I said "ok" and began to leave, she turned back to me and said "and you should do good here, because no one's ever detected it" Doh! You see? To the non-md'r (since they never give the hobby any thought), they just think because they've never seen a detector at a certain place, that apparently, no one ever detects there.

A friend of mine went back east one time to visit relatives in a small town. He took his detector along, because his relative there told him about a park that no one's ever detected before. When he go back to CA, he was mystified that he found nothing at all of any interest. He wondered why, since "it had never been detected before". When I asked him "how do you know it's never been detected before?", he says "because my brother in law has lived there all his life, and tells me he's never seen a detector there".

I guess it's kind of like any hobby: Unless you're INTO it, you just don't notice others doing it. Like: I've never seen birdwatchers, as far as I know. But I bet that if that became my passion, I would start to notice other birdwatchers when I'm out driving around. Same for us md'rs: we can spot a fellow detectorist from a mile away. But when I'm driving with my wife, she's oblvious to seeing someone detecting, unless they were right in front of her (she just doesn't notice or care). So it's probably the same psychology for those non-mdrs who say a place has never been detected. It (the thought of something having been detected), has probably never crossed there mind, so now when you ask them, they don't register having seen anyone. It's merely because they have never prior given it thought to notice.