Metal Detecting with horses.. A lot of horses..

[GKman]

And then they surrounded us....
video: http://youtu.be/j87ZHYlaQoY

CTTodd and I didn't end up finding what we were looking for in the field but we did make a lot of new friends. They were sniffing my headphones as I was walking and trying to help me pinpoint the few targets I dug up.. Our destination was a religious society that had a house of worship in the area during the 18th century. All of my research indicated that we should have came up with something but nada.. Now I will have to hit the books harder to see what went wrong.
Todd and I both found that the electrical fences surrounding the farm interfered with the CTX for hundreds of feet. So far I have not found a way to eliminate it since the signal from the fence causes blips to appear on the screen with an audible output too and they are ALL over the screen so it isn't like you can just knock them out with discrimination.

[Lodge Scent]

What a beautiful place to detect!

[GKman]

It is Lodge.. The only thing that would have made it better would have been finding what I expected to out there....

[Trooper Bri]

Maybe your horsie selfie buddy was hoping you'd take his blinders off (or whatever that is).

[aloldstuff]

Hope your research can redirect you to the right spot. Horses are nice but for me they are way to big and unpredictable.

[MangoAve]

It was told to me too, the research doesn't always pay off. Sometimes I wish there was a way to even see how the land looked before. As in a picture, not just a simple hand drawn map. It would make it easier to predict where the people would have passed. Would that take the sport out of it, tho? Did you find any old maps for the place? I wonder why the electric fence was giving an issue, when regular power lines with higher power aren't all that bad. They sure don't affect the machine for 100ft like the fence was doing to yours. I was even under HV lines once at place where an old school was but I was finding stuff and I wasn't falsing . I am not contesting you.. just so you know.... but like your situation one time I was at a park where I swear I was picking up those door sensors from over 800ft away across the road at strip mall (or maybe the car sensors at the light as the park was at a street corner.)

Horses are nice but for me they are way to big and unpredictable.

Lol. Maybe, but I think they are more docile. As long as they weren't whipped for training. Would you prefer the cows? They tend to run away in herds. Sometimes the roosters will try to peck at ya...

[GKman]

Maybe your horsie selfie buddy was hoping you'd take his blinders off (or whatever that is).

Ha, She was a happy horse.

Hope your research can redirect you to the right spot. Horses are nice but for me they are way to big and unpredictable.

I am working on it. Even my follow up research still says we were just about spot on where we should have been finding evidence...

It was told to me too, the research doesn't always pay off. Sometimes I wish there was a way to even see how the land looked before. As in a picture, not just a simple hand drawn map. It would make it easier to predict where the people would have passed. Would that take the sport out of it, tho? Did you find any old maps for the place? I wonder why the electric fence was giving an issue, when regular power lines with higher power aren't all that bad. They sure don't affect the machine for 100ft like the fence was doing to yours. I was even under HV lines once at place where an old school was but I was finding stuff and I wasn't falsing . I am not contesting you.. just so you know.... but like your situation one time I was at a park where I swear I was picking up those door sensors from over 800ft away across the road at strip mall (or maybe the car sensors at the light as the park was at a street corner.)

Lol. Maybe, but I think they are more docile. As long as they weren't whipped for training. Would you prefer the cows? They tend to run away in herds. Sometimes the roosters will try to peck at ya...

Hi Mango
I have lots of old maps of the area dating back to more than 150 years and that map is usually pretty darn reliable. Even my other maps and written accounts all point to the same location. Having pictures would be something else... Imagine in a couple hundred years from now when there will be Google maps and satellite photography going back to now available in seconds.. Then, things will be easy (if there is any sites left to detect).


I have had the same problem with electric fences at another farm. It is amazing that the interference runs as far as it does. With that other farm I was there before and after it was installed and the difference was night and day.

I hunt quite a few parks that have powerlines running nearby, and they don't give me the problem. I guess we would need an electrical engineer to tell us why there is such a difference between the two.

[MangoAve]

Lol. I thought hit the books to find out what went wrong meant that the literature was the main focus to find the location. I almost never use literature, only the old maps I got a hold of. The only issue is that every once in a while a road was moved from its original carriage road so it's not exact when you try to line it up. It happens like that quite often. But I do notice when u use Google maps and u see the darker Grey for property lines, they are closer to the original shape of the road. And sometimes the property line for the road is just shifted a slight bit versus the actual road. I think it has to to with the precise survey equipment today and sky view versus a guess measured in rods.

And I am the EE. It's probably a PW (pulse width) frequency on the stepped up voltage on the lines that interferes with the machine. It's gotta be a close enough harmonic to the detector frequency that it's within the filter frequency. And the long length of wire just acts like an antenna for that frequency. Cuz the hv lines have a much larger magnetic flux around the wires as there's 1000' s of amps worth or current flowing thru them whilst the fence has maybe an amp or a few hundred milliamps. As in higher magnetic field around the hv wires (which is 60 hz plus viltage spikes and any white noise) compared to the fence. Your cell can talk with a tower a few miles away with only a few milliwatts or power.

Hope u find the right spot tho.

[BTV Digger]

Thanks for posting Gary, and agree the site's in a beautiful location. You never know why things don't go right though. I've hunted sites on several occasions where maps say there's something there but I don't get a single signal. Then I start thinking that the land must have changed somehow and that the targets are really, really deep and undetectable. Those Beers and Walling maps were really good as you mention so something else must have been going on. I'm presently involved in a historical research project with the University of Vermont related to my work and in cross-referencing those maps with current GIS data it shows there are only noise-level differences between the geo-rectified data and the original maps.

John

[GKman]

Lol. I thought hit the books to find out what went wrong meant that the literature was the main focus to find the location. I almost never use literature, only the old maps I got a hold of. The only issue is that every once in a while a road was moved from its original carriage road so it's not exact when you try to line it up. It happens like that quite often. But I do notice when u use Google maps and u see the darker Grey for property lines, they are closer to the original shape of the road. And sometimes the property line for the road is just shifted a slight bit versus the actual road. I think it has to to with the precise survey equipment today and sky view versus a guess measured in rods.

And I am the EE. It's probably a PW (pulse width) frequency on the stepped up voltage on the lines that interferes with the machine. It's gotta be a close enough harmonic to the detector frequency that it's within the filter frequency. And the long length of wire just acts like an antenna for that frequency. Cuz the hv lines have a much larger magnetic flux around the wires as there's 1000' s of amps worth or current flowing thru them whilst the fence has maybe an amp or a few hundred milliamps. As in higher magnetic field around the hv wires (which is 60 hz plus viltage spikes and any white noise) compared to the fence. Your cell can talk with a tower a few miles away with only a few milliwatts or power.

Hope u find the right spot tho.

Hi Mango
In this case the maps tell me where it is and the written accounts say something like ( The party left Jeremiah Smiths house (which I know exactly where it is) and walked southeast across the field to the site). So, maybe the ground was moved around a lot and it is out of reach now...

Yes roads move for sure! Most of them have long ago lost their meander as construction equipment came along and straightened the way. Sometimes you can see the stone walls veering off into the woods where the old roads used to go.

Thanks for the interesting information on the electric fence. I have had my novice Ham license since I was about eleven years old, but never use it. If I had gone through some of the other tests I would understand a lot more...

Thanks for posting Gary, and agree the site's in a beautiful location. You never know why things don't go right though. I've hunted sites on several occasions where maps say there's something there but I don't get a single signal. Then I start thinking that the land must have changed somehow and that the targets are really, really deep and undetectable. Those Beers and Walling maps were really good as you mention so something else must have been going on. I'm presently involved in a historical research project with the University of Vermont related to my work and in cross-referencing those maps with current GIS data it shows there are only noise-level differences between the geo-rectified data and the original maps.

John

Hi BTV. Those are the types of maps I am working with. For the most part they are all digitized versions. But I work in the IT department of a large library with a huge local history collection right above my office, so sometimes I have to go up there and crack open a couple old books or an atlas which is harder to find online.

[Skamaniac]

Beautiful place to detect, even if you didn't find anything. Good luck on the research.

[whammy]

Very cool place to detect. That first picture, the horse is wearing a fly mask. In the warmer weather, it keeps the flies out of the horses eyes. They like the moisture secreted by the eyes. Ever notice a bunch of horses standing nose to tail. The horses tails keep the flies off the other horses face. I have the same problem here with the electric fence. I just can't find the right combo with my Whites Vision to stop the noise, plus my horses like to take my pin pointer and digging tool, when I put them down, and run like crazy with them.