This has been one of the best weeks of detecting I have ever had. I went back to an old site that once had a Church on it. This site is so loaded with iron it is almost impossible to hunt in anything but Two Tone Ferrous.
Large areas give virtually nothing but iron signals. I had tried hunting this before when I first started detecting, I used an entry level detector that is pretty nice but it was no match for the iron. I came back when I got my E-TRAC and I tried again but to be honest I was still learning it and even tried Two-Tone Ferrous but really didn’t understand it. After a training session with my friend Terry Barnhart, known as Goes4ever on the forums, I started to understand it better.
So this week I decided to give it another shot since I had a whole season of field hunting and felt more confident in knowing what I was doing. I slowed down and listened for high tones between all the iron grunts, I got a jumpy 18-35 to 18-37 signal that was a bit scratchy but I dug the target and was rewarded with my very first Fatty Indian! It is a very sharp 1862! I finished the day with some relics.
I came back the next day and my first good signal was a 20-13 jumping around to a 17-12. The target turned out to be a very nice 1937 Buffalo nickel.
Just a few feet over I got a squeaky 18-42 one way and a 20-42 another way the target was in an extremely small area I could barely move the coil or I would lose it, but it sounded good. I cut my plug and at about 4 inches I saw a silver rim, carefully removing it I could see the “One Dime” on the back with my hopes high I turned it over and could see the Seated Liberty on the coin! It was a very nice 1890, I checked the hole again and I heard a beep from the pinpointer, carefully removing more dirt I could see a second silver rim, could it be my first silver coin spill, and I tentatively removed the coin… another Seated Liberty Dime! This one is an 1862 which is a low mintage date.
I went home tired from the heat. Came back next day and all I could find is a ring with a large stone in it. The weather cooled off so the next day my wife came with me, in the first minute I got an18-35 signal and it turned out to be a beautiful 1887 Indian.
After about an hour with no finds other than a pocket knife and a heel plate I heard Diane call out and when I looked at her and her big smile I knew she had something good. And it was, her first Seated Liberty Dime! It is a beautiful 1875, she said her numbers were jumpy with a 23-46 the best she got, and when she tried to find it in the hole with her pinpointer, all the massive iron kept misleading her.
So if you have a spot to hunt with a lot of iron get an E-TRAC…..Iron….the E-TRAC laughs at iron!
Tony - OH, USA
