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Quick Treasure Hunting Tips

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Weighty Matters
If you're in a bind for a weighted coil for water detecting, try this: Take a large medicine or plastic bottle, fill it with wet sand and tape it to the bottom of your stem. Now you have enough weight to keep your coil down. When you're finished, detach and empty the bottle. Now you're ready to go land detecting.
-- geteven3@juno.com, via e-mail

Cover Your Butts
One of the most unappealing things anyone will run across on the shoreline of a lake is washed-up cigarette butts. If you're a smoker who hunts the shallows, here's a way to get your nicotine fix while knee-deep in the water without incurring the wrath of others. After you've finished your smoke, douse the butt in the water. Pinch off and discard the remaining paper and tobacco, which will disperse harmessly and unnoticed, and stick the filter butt in your back pocket. When you reach the shore after you're done hunting, toss your soggy butts into the nearest trash can along with the pull tabs and other assorted metal trash you've dug up.

Hunting Drive-Ins
The old drive-ins were hit hard but there can be plenty left (lazy hunters) because of the trash problem. Take a garden hoe and rake off a few inches of dirt in a circle (1' to 2' diameter) around the speaker poles (if it isn't paved). This takes away a lot of the surface trash and if it's an old drive in then it should be "silver city." It takes a little work but the rewards have been good for me. My best pole produced 23 coins (9 silvers).
-- Al (al@discountdetectors.com), from the Fisher user's forum

I have tried a couple of the old drive ins and one thing for sure is that they are loaded with trash. Seems like the open window was the trash bin. I had some luck by cranking up the discrimination to search for coins only and did find some clad and a couple silver coins as well. The cleanest area that did produce some targets was directly under and in front of the screen.
-- Mike (ncmacs@webtv.net), from the Fisher user's forum

Lots Better
When hunting those kiddie play areas for rings and coins, the best ones are those on school playgrounds, rather than public parks. This is because kiddie lots next to schools see a much higher amount of traffic week in and week out, and therefore hold a lot more lost items than those at public parks. And remember, always hunt these bark chip or sand areas with only enough discrimination to reject nails, and dig every signal. You'll run across tons of pull tabs and tin foil, but too much discrimination will have you walking right over a lot of kiddie jewelry, which tends to be very small and thin.

Skeeters Be Gone I
If you are troubled by skeeters, sand fleas, etc, while metal detecting try this: Peel a few oranges, and put the skins in a few inches of water. Bring to boil, let boil for 5-6 minutes. Turn off the heat and let the concoction stew overnight. Next morning, remove the skins, and pour the liquid into a bottle
(plastic) to take with you detecting. Bugs HATE orange oil and the scent!!! It really works, is non-toxic, can be used even on small kids. And the best: Pour this over the dogs for a great flea repellent!! It really works and smells great!
-- Susan (DIABLOCODY@aol.com), via e-mail

Skeeters (And Stink) Be Gone II
Tie a sheet of Bounce through a belt loop when outdoors during mosquito season. To deodorize shoes or sneakers, place a sheet of Bounce in your shoes or sneakers overnight so they'll smell great in the morning.
-- Pdetector@aol.com, via e-mail

Mastering Discrimination
We hear it and read it all the time. Keep your discrimination as low as tolerable and your sensitivity has high as possible w/o chatter and recover all positive or suspect signals. Naturally, we will all have times and be at certain locations where we don't care to dig "everything that beeps!" so we use some discrimination. Here you must know what will happen and use some discretion as well.

Remember that:

1) As you increase the discriminate level you will lose some depth and sensitivity to those conductivities you approach.

2) Ground mineral and moisture content, and the type of detector used (it's filtering qualities) will have an effect on the apparent performance. Sometimes, as those with target ID have learned, a coin might ID higher than it should or less than it should, as compared to a pure air test. Thus, a coin that maybe should have been rejected isn't, or one that you thought should just be accepted is now rejected.

3) There are two ways to look at discrimination adjustment. One is to set it so that you get a signal on what you want, and the other is to set it so you just reject what you don't want.

This now brings us to the use of discrimination. Many people I have met through the years who use a goodly amount of discrimination will set it high, just to the point that might almost reject a certain coin, let's say a "good" copper penny, and then they back it off a little. This is a wonderful way to eliminate a lot of trash.

The other method, and the one to which I subscribe, is to use just enough discrimination to barely reject the unwanted target. As we look at discrimination and trash conductivities, we can see that most screwcaps seem to fall in a range below the penny/dime and similar to the screwcap. Ten years ago or so I would say the vast majority did, but in more recent years we are finding more and more higher-conductive screwcaps. Still, if you reject the zinc penny you will most likely get rid of about 50 to 75 percent of the screwcaps as well. Maybe more, depending on the area you are in and are working.
-- Monte Von (montevon@aol.com), excerpted from a post on the Tesoro user's forum

Pointing The Way With Plants
Look at the most frequently planted trees, bushes, flowers of the area for each season -- and when they are in bloom. For instance, now in the Midwest you will see forsythia (yellow spring large bush) in bloom. Also, the familiar lilac is a spring bloom.

But, what about an area in hot July when the vegetation has become beat down and burned up? Still notice the blue-green sword like leaves of old iris beds and the grass green oversized leaves of day lily.

A much more subtle indicator, especially of old pathways and trails, is path rush. Pathrush is a tough, thin, crappy, grassy looking weed that takes over old paths because it is much tougher than yard grass. Go out to grassy fields where kids still play and have "beat a trail" through the grass. You will see that (in summer) that a low, dark green pathrush has taken over that path. Well, worth knowing as a diagnostic character of possible treasure tracking potential.
-- bondedcourier@hotmail.com, from a post to the alt.treasure.hunting Usenet forum

Construction In The News
Some of the tastiest finds, especially when it comes to old coins, are made when sidewalks in commercial districts are torn up and replaced, or some drug store chain starts clearing land to build a store on a parcel of land where there’s been a fair amount of foot traffic or history to the surrounding neighborhood. Often, you can find out about these projects by dialing up the Web sites of nearby newspapers. Happily, many newspapers have searchable online archives within their sites of past stories. If the site does, try keywords like "construction," "sidewalk," "renovation" and "renewal." News of these proposed projects are commonly included as small line items within other stories, so read the entire content of whatever stories come up as a result of your keyword searches.

You Get A Line And I’ll Get Some Clads
For coinshooters, fishing holes can be a bonanza. They’re trashy and tough, but they can be a bonanza nonetheless. If you find an inland lake that has seen its share of anglers, swing the coil in an area extending between the bank and six feet away. Among your finds will be fish hooks, lures, lead sinkers, coins and toys (especially Matchbox-type toy cars) left behind by kids dragged along by well-meaning dads and grandfathers. Look for well-worn areas (permanently-flattened grass or bare dirt sports) that have seen the most traffic.

 

No Time For Research?
We all know the value of research to make our hunting outings more productive. But sometimes, research isn’t possible – especially if you have an hour or two to kill in a town in which you’ve never been and happen to have your detector in the back seat. One of the first places you should seek out -- particularly if you’re in an older town -- is the main park. Almost without exception, you’ll find some sort of park somewhere in or very near to the central downtown area, on or very near the main street running through the heart of town.

Cobblestone Streets
If you run across a cobblestone street (the kind made of those dark red paving bricks laid between the turn of the century and the 1940s), give it a swing -- especially near the curbs. You'll probably come away with a variety of car junk (little iron washers and sheet metal screws) but you may just find some coins wedged between the cracks of the bricks. Make sure you bring along a thin-bladed screwdriver to lift them out.

The only drawback is in most cases, you'll be working near parked cars, and you'll pick up signals from them. Also, people don't take too kindly to strangers doing stuff around their cars, either. You probably won't find a whole lot if the street's not in a storefront area, but it's worth a shot because as we all know, you never know what you're going to find where. That is, if you can put up with some really strange looks from passing pedestrians and motorists.

Last helpful hint on doing this kind of site: Wear Walkman-type headphones. You're playing in traffic, after all.

Lawn Extinguisher
I have been known to carry a water jug when digging in very dry weather. To decrease the stress on the plugged area I add a ¼ dose of Rapid Grow to this water which treats the plug like a transplant situation (which it actually is, if you think about it). The plant food lessens the shock to the disturbed roots and gives them the added nutrients to bounce back quickly. The only caution I must add is not to use too much as it could burn the roots rather than strengthen them in very dry conditions. Super dilute.
-- Cyberjungf@aol.com

Finding Farmhouse Caches
Hunting the old farmhouses is almost reading a mystery novel. You have to study the clues, reason them out, then go. But don't forget to look for false birdboards, behind the potato bin in the kitchen around doorways, and if the house is built off the ground, on top of the beams under the house. We once found several hundred silver dollars stacked up in stacks of then each this way. If there were flowerbeds or a "house garden" (as apposed to a large regular garden), check there. The last really big find we made in this manner was over eighty pounds of silver halfs and dollars and it was only buried in the early 1970s.
--Shado11743@aol.com

Did anyone mention chicken coops where the farmers used to hide their cache? They didn't have to lay awake at night guarding their money -- when the chickens raised a fuss it was shotgun time.
--VonTrapp01@aol.com

Don't forget the cache near the dog house, for the same reason.
-- Shado11743@aol.com

Solid Picnic Benches
While hunting in a picnic grove at a fishing lake, one thing occurred to me as I surveyed the landscape and saw a bazillion picnic benches just crying out to be searched for clad coins which have fallen out of pockets over the past year(s):

During the spring (especially if you live up North where the snow flies), pass these by in favor of any picnic benches which are permanently anchored or cemented into the ground. In my neck of the woods, the forest preserve guys collect all the picnic benches for winter storage every October or November. When spring rolls around, they load them up on trucks and drop them wherever they please. So the end result about this time of year is this: Just because a picnic bench is sitting there now doesn't mean a picnic bench has always been sitting in that same spot last year or the year before.

Permanently anchored benches are another story. They've been there for some time and will turn up at least one or two clads somewhere within a five-foot radius at least 90 percent of the time, especially if the site doesn't get much TH'ing pressure.

However, that's not to say it isn't possible to find spots where picnic benches have been. Look for areas where the ground is bare. People sitting at these benches will wear down the grass to nothing where their feet go under the bench. The areas just behind the bench seats also get a lot of wear and tear.

The exception to the moveable bench rule is, obviously, just after major holidays between Memorial Day and Labor Day, when the area has drawn enough people - and dropped coins.

Lonesome Trees
When hunting forested areas, be on the lookout for large, isolated trees -- especially if they're sitting out in the middle of nowhere. There will definitely be a few surprises just waiting to be found.

Think about this: If you're a love-struck guy intent on some private time with your date, what kind of a shaded place are you going to find most appealing to spread out your blanket: One in the middle of a rowdy, kid-screaming crowd, or one off in the middle of some field where nobody's going to be bugging you?

And next time you're dreaming of finding some long-forgotten buried treasure, ask yourself which would be a better place to remember where you buried your stash: At the base of one tree stuck in the middle of a mess of others, or a lonesome old tree sitting out in the middle of nowhere?

Remember to look up, too. If there's a hole in the tree within arm's reach, give it a few passes with your coil. If there's one within comfortable climbing distance further up, take a look inside. Just make sure there isn't any wildlife in those holes before sticking your hand or face inside.

Walls And Basements
Just few thoughts for those who may have to opportunity to look for some lost cache coins or jewelry which might be hiding in walls or little spaces of older homes with real plaster walls.

Always find out how old the house is, if you can. Sometime during the 1930s or 1940s, home builders went from wood lathe and plaster to diamond mesh and plaster when building walls and ceilings. Diamond mesh is a diamond-shaped steel mesh anywhere between 1/8- and 1/4-inch thick which served as the underlayment sheet for plaster work. (Imagine someone trying to invent chicken wire able to withstand nuclear attack and you pretty much have diamond mesh.) They just nailed sheets of this stuff onto the wall 2-by-4s and slopped the plaster over it. Searching walls and ceiling crawl spaces in a mode recognizing all metals in a house with this stuff would be darn near impossible, since the entire wall and ceiling would give you a signal. We have a 1940s Cape Cod filled with diamond mesh, which makes us think long and hard about doing any interior improvements that call for tearing down walls or moving doorways since you have to saw through this demonic stuff first.

For those of you who might get the opportunity to hunt basement floors (either dirt or concrete), keep this in mind: Before the house was built, it was a vacant lot. The guys building the houses on either side commonly used these empty lots as a temporary dumping ground for all the construction offal from the house they were building at the time. They would clean the site as best they could by hand, but when it came to build a house on the site, a lot of this little metallic flotsam and jetsam made its way into the ground. This means some of it probably got ground underfoot into the holes dug for foundations. This could result in toning onto a good bit of trash in an all-metal mode if you're searching a dirt floor basement.

Concrete foundations are probably cleaner for an all-metal hunt (discounting what might've migrated into the soil beneath the foundation during the foundation hole-digging process), but remember one thing: Kids love to toss pennies and slugs into newly-poured cement.

Construction Hats
Get one of those yellow hard hats and wear it when you're hunting (or carry it if there are construction guys around). Not only will you be showing the utmost consideration for safety, but if nobody's around, someone just might think you're a city guy just looking for buried pipelines or something.

Hard hats can be purchased for a few dollars at most industrial supply stores.



 




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TIPS & TRICKS

16 things

AirTests

Beach Hunting

 Coin Cleaning

Cleaning bronze and Romana

Cleaning Copper

Conserving

GPS

Going Slow

Good Beginner?

Nothing To Hunt

Restoring Coins

Quick Tips

Water Hunting with the Explorer

Why don't I find Hammered?

 

 

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