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"New" park is performing better than expected
I have started hunting a park in town that I have never detected. It used to have a school on the land which was torn down sometime in the early 90's and then turned into a green space for the neighborhood. I have now hunted this park 7 times since mid-November for about 2 hours each time.
I started hunting this park one day to kill some time while I was in the area. I chose one line and detected from one end to the other. I was surprised when I ended up with 5 wheats and two old nickels. Not only that, the nickels were both pushing 8 inches and the wheats were easy signals. I figured it hadn't been hunted hard and deserved closer attention from my detector (White's DFX300). I had put on the 12 inch coil just to cover ground and was surprised at the low concentration of trash at this site so I put this coil to work - low and slow.
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At this point this park was all I could think about. I went back feeling really good about the next coin to be found here. I know that half of this hobby is mentality about the hunt and this was a good day. I started with a block of ground where I had found the most coins on the last hunt and started digging the deep iffy signals. Again, a short, cut, high-tone pinpointing deep gave up a nice 1936 Mercury dime. This coin was every bit as deep as my pinpointer in the side of the plug and I was happy to have found it. Later on I dug another deep high-tone which turned out to be a war nickel. An interesting thing so far about this site is that all of the nickels have given a high tone and been at 7 inches or deeper. All three so far (1 war and 2 regular nickels) had me thinking I was digging a deep quarter. I rechecked each hole and they were the only targets. Strange. Also strange I dug only one wheatie this time.
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The next hunt went back to the side of the wheatie. I dug several of them and they were all pretty easy signals. Obvious to me now this site has been cherry picked (as to be expected) but there are good, deep targets that were not paid attention to. I was slowly expanding my search area in the spot where most of the coins are coming from and I eventually got a tone hitting at about 6 inches and slightly higher than a wheatie. I flipped the plug and the tone got better - in the plug I found a sharp silver rim; a Rosie. This hunt yielded 8 wheats and a Rosie.
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The next hunt was slower. I wasn't able to focus for whatever reason (bad mentality day!) and I was too distracted by shallower trash targets instead of focusing on deeper targets. I was also expanding into an area with more trash which compounded the problem. I will probably save this area and go back with a different coil to try and sniff out some deep coins between the trash but there is still plenty of good low-trash area to cover. 2 wheats and some charms.
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The next two hunts were much better! I feel like I have gotten to "know" this park faster than any other site I have hunted. All of the old coins are deeper than 5-6 inches. So far I have not dug any obsolete coin shallower than 5 inches and most have been deeper in the 7-9 inch range. The next hunt started off with a war nickel and wheat. I was also diggin some deep nails which actually had me very focused because all of the deep coins sound like nail points. Sure enough, I flipped a plug on a deep iffy and another Merc showed up! This was another short, 2-silver hunt Merc-War Nickel combo.
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My most recent hunt was this past Tuesday Nov 28th. My first plug was a dateless Buffalo Nickel nearly pinpointer deep. I also found an old fob and a broken and bent junker ring, both over 7 inches.
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This park has me setting goals: I want a deep quarter and a Barber coin out of it. The age is there - the oldest wheat is in the mid-teens. I am really starting to understand the DFX after about 2 years of very average usage time-wise. I want to prove to myself I can get those old deep silver coins that others overlook. I am very proud of that first Merc here as it is the deepest silver coin I have dug at nearly 9 inches.
Thanks for looking!
