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Farm Field Hunting In June?!?

AirmetTango

Forum Supporter
Joined
Apr 14, 2017
Messages
3,110
Location
NW Ohio
If someone had told me in January that I would still be detecting one or two of my farm field permissions in June, I wouldn’t have believed it. Well, here I am in June...and I can still hunt not just one or two, but every single one of my field permissions. Here in NW Ohio, conditions have been so wet, almost no fields have been planted. As bad as it is here for farmers, I know other areas like Iowa are even harder hit. I suppose as a detectorist I should be elated at the extension of the field hunting season, but as a living creature than needs to eat in order to live, I recognize the reality of the effects down the road, not to mention the hardship on the farmers. On Tuesday I went to visit a local farmer who’s given me standing permission to hunt several of his fields as well as his home site - I just wanted to check in with him and see how he was and confirm that it was still ok to be in the fields this late. I ended up talking with him for a couple hours and there’s no doubt - the hardship and anxiety is real, widespread, and overwhelming. This particular farmer likely won’t get his crops in the ground at all - and this year may push him over the edge to call it quits. :shock:

Despite the bleak conversation, he was still in surprisingly decent spirits and said it was certainly fine to detect at my leisure, and then he rode off to clear debris out of some catch basins. I spent a little bit of time detecting around his front yard, which I’ve hunted before with my previous machine, and I was able to get over a couple of new targets with the EQ800. First was a cool lady’s lapel/brooch pin maybe from the 1930s or 40s which rung up as a solid 14. It seems like it was probably gilt at some point as I can see some vague remnants of the gold wash in spots, and I thought it was neat that the pin backing still swings freely! Also got excited by what seemed like a “no-doubt” deep quarter signal. It stayed pretty solid at 31-32, but occasionally hiccuped up or down enough to worry me. Digging down about 8 inches revealed a nice round disc, but not shiny - and I could see a couple spots of corrosion...not a coin, but I could definitely see numbers and letters. Clean up at home revealed by far my oldest dog tag yet - from 1919! I couldn’t help but feel like my old boy, who I lost a few weeks ago, had been on the hunt with me:

He will also let you know he is around as he will visit from time to time. A good dog never stops loving his pack.

You sure got that right, DbblTap!

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The dog tag find actually prompted me to visit our county auditor (who handles dog licensing) with all of the old tags I’ve found to see how far back they kept records and maybe tie some personal information to the tags. While they were amazed to see the old tags, their records only go back about 15-20 years. Oh well - it was a long-shot, and you never know unless you ask!

Anyway, after spending a short time in the farmer’s yard, I moved to my real area of interest, which was one of his fields about a mile away that showed a structure on an 1886 map. I scouted around for a bit and just used my eyes to try and find some surface evidence of something once being there and at first I wasn’t seeing anything. But when I moved a few corn stubble rows north, I started finding a few chips of glass and old painted ceramics - not as much as I hoped to see, but definite evidence something used to be there. And then I spotted a really cool, huge clay “shooter” marble! It’s got a pretty neat bullseye pattern on opposite sides, a faint greenish line that runs around the circumference in between the two bullseyes, and roughly 1” in diameter:

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The clay shooter marble already made the visit worth it, and I quickly went back to the car and grabbed my detector. Since the field had been corn last year, I strapped the 6” coil on to help maneuver more easily between the stubble. But even with the tiny coil, I was surprised how difficult it still was to systematically swing and get effective coverage. I hunted for a little over an hour total and got very few diggable signals, until about the 40 minute mark when I got over pretty solid 15-16 tones. Fully expecting a shotshell headstamp or other shard of brass, I was momentarily surprised to see a coin roll out of the plug! An 1863 fatty Indian!! I always forget about how they ring up until one pops out of the ground, so they’re always a fun reward for digging the mid-tones. It turns out to be in better condition than any of the other fatties I’ve dug, doubly surprising for coming out of a farm field where fertilizers/chems usually do a number on coins!

After another 20 minutes, I was getting too annoyed with the corn stubble, and that annoyance was compounded by the lack of real signals, so I decided to move on and maybe save this site until it turns to beans. The farmer says he found evidence for an old oil well deeper in the field when he originally bought the land, but I couldn’t scout it out - the entire middle section of the field was a lake/swamp. Hopefully that changes soon, too - for both of us.
 

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Love the four leaf clover brooch. I have found many proper marble marbles (not glass) on old soilmen's tips (dumps). They were put inside bottles and jars to a agitate the contents when settled.
 
Four really good finds and great narrative.

I don't know how our farmers make it. If it isn't drought it is flooding.

I have noticed many fields around here also are not yet planted. It has been very wet.
 
It is a sad circumstance surrounding the farmers and these wet conditions. Hope there will be a rainbow for them all. Congrats Ben on the Indian, the Clay Shooter the Brooch and all the rest. Trapper
 
A four-leaf clover brooch for good luck the remaining time of the year. I like the design on the clay marble the first time I seen one like that.
Yes it is a shock being in the fields in June. But hold onto your wallet cuz everything will go Sky High.
I also hope the best for your farmer friend.
 
Nice finds. Congrats. Sad what the farmers are going through in the midwest.

HD
 
My "go-to" farm field was just planted yesterday, June 8th!
Poor farmers are way behind this year.

I love your old relics and that fatty too:shock:
Congratulations on you new oldest dog license.
I bet that clover is a girl scout pin:yes:
 
Ben nice hunt and write up. congrats on the fatty and the 4 leaf clover brooch is awesome. The marble is icing on the cake. HH Mark
 
My "go-to" farm field was just planted yesterday, June 8th!

My biggest farm permission has one field left unplanted for me to have one more go tomorrow...things have been wet all over the Midwest it seems...

On another note Matt...I was in Wisconsin this weekend (Black River Falls) for an outdoor wedding. Beautiful day on Saturday and a really pretty farm to hold the wedding... but of course, while others were socializing the kid and I were out in the corn field picking up rocks and getting our nice shoes dusty. Really nice reddish quartzite over there....anyway, the black flies were miserable. And when we stopped in Fort Douglas on the way home to look at the rock formations they were so bad we ran back to the car! Around here, you gotta get wayyy up north for black flies that bad... this normal for you over there??? If so, don’t know how you even get out and hunt in the summer....
 
Thanks for the real news update on the farmers and some nice finds too. God bless em.
 
Excellent write up.

The 1" marble is called a boulder. A month or so ago one of our old local parks had a bunch of old dirt scraped and put into a bunch of piles. They were making new walkways. I drove over on my lunch break to see if I could eyeball anything. I found a 1 inch clay marble sticking halfway out of a pile of dirt. The next day I returned and I eyeballed a smaller clay marble.
 
Love the four leaf clover brooch. I have found many proper marble marbles (not glass) on old soilmen's tips (dumps). They were put inside bottles and jars to a agitate the contents when settled.

Thanks bodkin - I like the brooch too, and was surprised to see such a clear signal in an area that I'm sure I covered previously - it was right next to one of the walkways, an area I would have covered with at least two passes as a prime drop area! Interesting info on the "agitators" - good to know!

Four really good finds and great narrative.

I don't know how our farmers make it. If it isn't drought it is flooding.

I have noticed many fields around here also are not yet planted. It has been very wet.

Thanks waltr! I don't know how they do it either. Hard work, and always at the mercy of the weather.

It is a sad circumstance surrounding the farmers and these wet conditions. Hope there will be a rainbow for them all. Congrats Ben on the Indian, the Clay Shooter the Brooch and all the rest. Trapper

Thanks Trapper! And yes, hopefully the farmers start having one or two things start to go their way this year.
 
A four-leaf clover brooch for good luck the remaining time of the year. I like the design on the clay marble the first time I seen one like that.
Yes it is a shock being in the fields in June. But hold onto your wallet cuz everything will go Sky High.
I also hope the best for your farmer friend.

I need all the luck I can get - maybe I'll start wearing the brooch on my hunts :D

Yep, the bullseye patterns plus the faint greenish stripe are pretty interesting - I'm guessing sometimes the shooters where made a little more elaborate?

And you're right - with the corn crop essentially getting skipped, prices are going to start climbing for sure. Corn's in everything...food, feed, fuel, pharmaceuticals, you name it.
 
My "go-to" farm field was just planted yesterday, June 8th!
Poor farmers are way behind this year.

I love your old relics and that fatty too:shock:
Congratulations on you new oldest dog license.
I bet that clover is a girl scout pin:yes:

Thanks matmit - I was definitely surprised by the fatty! I was assuming a shotshell headstamp, at best for sure! The dog license is super cool for me, too. My previous oldest was 1953, so this one was a huge jump earlier. I imagine it'll probably stand as my oldest for quite awhile - I doubt our county required a dog license much earlier than that, and even fewer people probably bothered to comply back then, especially outside the main town.

Yep, I noticed one of my go-to fields was finally getting planted on June 10, just a couple days after the original post - glad they are going to at least get something out of the season.

Good idea on the girl scout suggestion - I researched it a bit, but it looks like the girl scout emblems all depict more of a 3 leaf design:

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Awesome finds Airmet! That dog tag is pretty cool

Thanks Jeff! Despite their often rough condition, relics like that dog tag really are the most interesting finds for me - I love stuff that I can research, learn about, or just plain hold a piece of unique history!
 
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