Research, walk through, dig!!!!
I am relic Rick and I have done a bit of blind hunting myself and hopefully these tips will make your search more productive, my last dig was a plantation layed down in 1794, no map, no info, no nothing. We started at the well and worked our way to the trash pits, outhouses, slave quarters and the plantation house itself. Anyway, a good place to start would be a walk through on the property. Make notes of places that don't quite go with the lay of the property, that is anything that looks altered. Look along the creek for places that are beaten down maybe eroded, like someone had crossed the creek in one place, over and over again. Crossing a creek by horseback is a good way to lose things from pockets, off tack equipment, buttons, ect. Secondly keep your eyes open for slight depressions in otherwise smooth ground. Buildings like outhouses, barns, cabins, trash pits, will leave a footprint. In these places a good 4 or 5 foot probe comes in handy (a probe is a steel rod with some type of fashioned point to aid in penetration of the ground, and a strong T handle to grasp while inserting the probe). By using the probe, you can determine if the ground has been disturbed in the past as disturbed ground will be less packed and often has remains of dishes, bottles, household trash. Even temporary camps will have trash dumps where worn out equipment , used up food tins and bottles, anything that had reached the end of usefulness. Another thing to keep an eye out for is ashes or any charcoal of any type. Most of the time you will find this in trash dumps and cook fires (if it was a temporary camp). Another thing to keep an eye out for is any symmetrical shapes, usually mother nature does not use squares and straight lines. If you see several rectangles lined up together(slight depressions in the ground) there is a good chance that you have found a winter camp and you are looking at the shelters built by the soldiers. These are great places to dig, the variety of relics you can find is amazing, you would be surprised what a bored soldier can come up with to while away the time during winter, not to mention lose. If this is a location that is used often or is permanate a super place to find and dig are the outhouses, everything went down the "johnny hole" back in those days, especially things that people didn't want found, like gold coins, guns, liquor bottles, laudanum bottles, things like that.. Wells are a good place to dig also, with wells some caution needs to be used as cave-ins are a real concern (I know this from experience, I was trapped in a cave-in while digging where I should not have been, lesson learned, luckily I can pass this on, that day I came home with the best relic I have,,,,,me.). All of these things to look for and note are just the start. Before any of this, before even stepping on the property a trip to the county records office for any records on the property showing ownership, dates, maps, ect would be extreamly helpful. There is a very special item you can get with a little effort. The best tool for hunting a virgin property is something called SANBORN FIRE INSURANCE MAPS. The maps (if available, for the property you are about to hunt)are maps of properties which had structures or anything of value to banks or insurance company's. Even pastures and lakes had certain value to the banks back in the civil war era. These maps, some dating back to the beginning of the 19th century(I am not certain when they started making Sanborn maps) list every structure on the property, where on the property it was and for how long it is or was there. And I mean these maps were accurate, they had everything down to where the outhouse was and how deep it was, even if it was a one or two seater!!! I use these maps to locate things like outhouses to dig for bottles(one of the best places to dig for bottles is an outhouse, unless it is a stone lined privy) If you can get a Sanborn map for the property your about to hunt, you will have a much better chance in finding relic's, coins, buttons, and things that you want to find, a Sanborn map can let you visualize how the property looked back when it was occupied. You are sooooooo lucky, man there aren't many virgin places to hunt anymore, oh the're out there but so hard to find and when you do, usually for one reason or another you get denied access (uuuggggghhhhhhh, to have to walk away from a place you know will produce quality relics. Usually when someone finds a virgin prop. it's by shear luck. Just to think of all those relics hiding just inches, sometimes feet under the ground you're standing on gives me goosebumps!!!! Often at a place like that you find unexpected things that really brings home the reason we dig. While hunting some private property next to the Bentonville Battlefield, (this site had also never been hunted, and I was hunting it alone) I got a very weak broken signal, when at a battlefield, I dig EVERYTHING which gives you lots of practice digging and little finding. When I dug this signal, one of the last ones of the day, about 4 inched down, my pin-pointer located a small round piece of metal. Thinking it was a rusted out bottle cap or a button that had seen better days, I almost tossed it back in the hole. But thinking back to other times I almost threw the baby out with the bathwater, I broke open the dirt clot, in my hand was a simple circle of metal, turning it over in my hand, I realized what it was.................It was the slightly dinged wedding band of some unfourtuneate soldier, who had lost the symbol of love for a wife who waited at home not knowing when or if her soldier husband would be coming home. Things like that always remind me that the relics that we dig were once the common items of everyday life, and some not so common of people just like us, trying to survive a war where brother fought brother. So, let's see...............
.1.)County records on property
2.)Sanborn fire insurance maps
3.)Neighbors (I didn't mention this, talk to neighbors about the property
4.)Walk through looking for signs of heavy use in past
5.) Probing depressions
6.)Search the public library for info on history of area
A couple of tips once you start digging(and I am not talking hits from the metal detectors) I am talking about digging things like trash dumps, privy's, shelters, cellars, caves,wells, Use screens to sift through the soil taken out of your dig. You would be amazed how much you can miss if you do not screen your overburden(dirt taken out of a dig). When we dug the well of the plantation I talked about, we would have missed almost half of the relics that came out. Screening makes sure all clots are broken down, you get EVERYTHING, and I mean everything. Better to have to much than not enough. One last thing, always take a friend, not only is it more fun to share you hobby with a friend, if something happens (something bad) you will have someone there to help, or maybe to save your life!! If I had not taken a friend that day so many years ago, we would not be having this conversation. Any time you dig deeper than your height, always have a second there to spot for you (keep an eye on you).Keep an eye open for creepie, crawlies that can bite, sting, or claw, spring is a perfect time for no shoulders (Jake, the snake). These are all the little tricks of the trade I can think of right now, if you should find yourself with more questions, or want to trade stories contact me at
Relicrick@aol.com. I would REALLY like to hear how your project goes. I am very interested in uncovering places like this, just to see what it was and what happened there. I would love to work on a project like that, I you would like some help I would be more that happy to lend a hand or two, and I would not expect anything in return(not even anything found) I just love to dig (my nickname among my digging buddies is MoleMan). I do this kind of thing for the experience and for the hunt! Please let me know how your project goes, I am truly interested in what you find, buildings, trash pits, outhouses, structures, etc., especially if it has been used by troops during the Civil War. I hope some of these tips helps.
Keep on diggin!!!!!.........Rick
