a water hunting story
I just moved from NYS where I had no problems metal detecting in parks and school fields.
But here in North Carolina I can't find anything. I have been to a dozen schools and soccer fields and I found a grand total of $8! Today I went to 2 schools and found 13 cents! What is going on here? In New York I could easily find $5 in one field. Here, there doesn't seem to be anything in the ground.
I don't know if my AT Pro just doesn't like the dirt here or if everything here has all been hunted out or if my detector somehow got damaged in the move. This is really bad. I would love to talk to anyone else living near Apex, NC, about this area!
JC
I have wondered the same thing sometimes, except I'm in Wisconsin. I had an Ace 350 last year, and now I have an AT Pro. I go to the beaches and all I seem to find is fishing gear and bottlecaps. The only really "good finds" I've found have been in the water. At the playgrounds, all I find is clad and kiddy jewelry. The only "not junk" ring I've ever found was copper, and it was in the middle of a grass field.
I've come to the conclusion that a lot of the places I hunt have been picked over. If it's not there, the best detector in the world isn't going to find it. I know for a fact I'm not the only detectorist in town, in fact I've met a couple of them. One time I was hunting a beach and a lady walking by remarked, "I saw a guy with one of those here yesterday" and I was like
.
I think one of the reasons I haven't found a lot of "really good" finds is that a) the places I've hunted aren't overly historical, and b) I know they have been picked over before.
I guess the secret is finding places that have a LOT of traffic or places that other detectorists are less likely to have hunted (private property, in the water). For some reason, it seems like a lot of detectorists don't like to go in the water?
Maybe they don't have the right machine for it. You have an advantage over them right there with the AT Pro. Plus, the current/tide of the water/people swimming is constantly stirring up new stuff and bringing it to the surface.
To give you an example of water vs. land, I'll tell you about a place I was at near my grandparents' house. At a public park that is well trafficked, there used to be a swimming area, but the parks people dumped a bunch of concrete chunks in there many years ago because they don't want people swimming there I guess? It worked somewhat but people still swim there occasionally, and there is still a small "beach" along the shoreline (this is along the Wisconsin River). Well, last summer I hunted that beach with my Ace 350 and didn't find a thing but bottlecaps, nails, trash, and some modern clad (less than a dollar's worth). Obviously discouraged, I decided to try the water, where I had found some wheat pennies in the past. BAM! A good signal less than a foot off the shoreline. It was an authentic Chinese coin like people often wear as jewelry, found out later it's from around the 1850s. Kept hunting, there were some "ghost" signals and trash and then another "good" signal. I must have been digging forever (this was before my sand scoop, sieve, or Pro Pointer which means I had to keep going over the hole to see if the object was still there). The water was about waist deep so my hole kept collapsing in on itself, and the water was too cloudy to see from all the dirt I was stirring up. Finally I found my quarry. It was a nice, arrowhead-shaped pendant with a stone in the center! Not gold or silver, but still really cool. Well I was floating on clouds after those finds, so I was disappointed when my next find was a penny... until I rinsed it off. An 1868 Indian Head penny! Not in good shape but a piece of history in my hands nevertheless. Hunted until dark that day without finding anything else really nice but it just goes to show you how the water often holds more secrets than the sand. It just takes a little more effort to find them.
In conclusion, I think that it isn't the machine, but the location. Find a couple of "gold mine" virgin or seldom-hunted sites and you'll be finding the good stuff in no time.