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Lots of clad and 65-coin spill!
Got out yesterday for about 4 hours and hit a close local park hoping for some jewelry but ended up having a fun day digging clad coins. This is a fairly "young" park, although I do dig an occasional pull-tab (most are stay-tabs), I still think there is a silver dime or two waiting to be dug.
The park has two large fields used for lacrosse practice, flag football and the like. There are several movable bleacher stands which are always getting moved around and some trees which evidently attract a lot of activity! I started off searching around bleacher stands and the first one didn't produce much. I moved across the field to another location and ended up on a spot about 2' x 2' that was littered with good signals. I dug a couple coins with the detector and then set it down and just started scanning with my pinpointer. I probably dug about $2.50 in about 20 coins in this small area just using the pinpointer. When I was done I rescanned with the coil and picked up a few more that were below the reach of the PP.
After that section things just got better! I moved to some trees between the fields that I had not searched before and just started searching out from the tree trunks. I started picking up lots of coins on each pass - most of them were multiples. I found several places where the PP was easier to use than the detector again. I spent some time under one tree in particular that seemed to hold more coins than the others.
After the trees it was getting close to time to leave and I decided to battle EMI and experiment under the power lines along the road. I loaded 15Khz mode and dropped the sensitivity and still put up with a little interference but I was able to hunt it. The parking lot (asphalt) is along the road and under the powerlines and I know the ground along there has some targets so I will be working that area on a future visit.
I worked the edge of an asphalt path back to my truck and dug a few more coins and an old pull-tab style beer can. The next target was my last hole and it gave a low-70's from one direction but choppy and trashy signal from a other directions and it read deep at about 8 inches (the deepest targets are around 4-5 inches.) I contemplated this signal for a while before digging it. There was some surface trash over it which I dug and rescanned, still getting a choppy low 70's. I dug down about 8 inches and PP the hole to find a big target which I assumed was going to be junk but then I saw a coin at the bottom. I started pulling handfuls of dirt out of the hole and signals were everywhere in the dirt and the hole - bottom and sides!
Again, PP was the tool of choice, however, as things are bound to happen, the battery in my PP starts to die! I had to keep turning it off after getting the "low battery alarm", removing dirt, locate whatever coins I could by eye and then turn the PP on again to quickly scan for additional coins and repeat so I wouldn't kill the battery before I had all the coins. The hole was silent before I left but I marked the location so I can come back again.
In all, my last hole of the day produced 65 coins! The shallowest coin was about 7-8 inches and the deepest was about 10 in a concentrated area. They were all Memorial Cents but it was FUN!
Total clad for the hunt was $5.72 / 142 coins!
