are flood pains of creeks that flood often worth hunting

maxxkatt · Oct 26, 2019

I have been hunting along a river and several creek in an intense and very major CW battle area and have never found any relics in the flood plains. (no it is not in any protected federal or state park).

these rivers and creeks have a flood about every two years. so calculating back from 1864 then that is a lot of silt.

I am about to give up on these flood pain areas except maybe in the creek beds. I don't think lead bullets or other CW relics get washed up in the flood plain, and those up there from 1864 will most likely be 3-4 feet deep in the sand and silt.

any experience, comments or ideas are appreciated. I don't want to be wasting my time in an area where it is impossible to find CW relics. I mostly find old beer cans or new rifle bullets.

update: the creeks I am hunting never dry out. At least since 1967. They have high banks 8-12 feet and overflow almost every 2 years big time. And each time they bring up even more silt and sand. So I am convinced that any good silver coins or CW relics are under many feet of silt and sand.

Tom_in_CA · Oct 26, 2019

Here's my experience, at least in my area : I'm in a chaparral terrain area. Thus our creeks and rivers are "boom and bust". Go from raging currents, to sometimes bone -dry in drought times. Thus any swimming beach you might look at NOW, is NOT the same beach that was there even 5 to 10 yrs. ago. So they are about useless, if your objective is old coins.

But this may just be for my area. Perhaps other parts of the USA (where the water table remains fairly constant) is a different story.

TripWire · Oct 27, 2019

To give you an idea about how much a moving body of water (river) can alter course, take a look at these 2 links.

https://www.thevintagenews.com/2016...r-132-years-discovered-45-feet-under-a-field/

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sultana_(steamboat)

maxxkatt · Oct 27, 2019

TripWire said:
To give you an idea about how much a moving body of water (river) can alter course, take a look at these 2 links.

https://www.thevintagenews.com/2016...r-132-years-discovered-45-feet-under-a-field/

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sultana_(steamboat)

Very good articles.

I remember many years ago when learning about hunting gold in north GA one key location to look for is stream beds no longer above ground since over hundreds of thousands of years stream beds always move to new stream bed locations due to erosion or silting. But for those years the streams were active in the gold areas they were collecting gold due to erosion and the breaking up of tumbling rocks that releases the gold. that process never stops until the stream is covered up and has no more water.

so when digging and finding a stretch of rounded river rocks, that is likely a pre-historic stream and if in the gold areas of a state it is likely never been mined. Digging out one of those locations is a lot of work and no real guarantee there is gold there even in gold areas. natural gold does not like to surrender easily.

DaviDs · Oct 29, 2019

maxxkatt said:
I have been hunting along a river and several creek in an intense and very major CW battle area and have never found any relics in the flood plains. (no it is not in any protected federal or state park)

Here are a couple of scenarios to consider.

Pic 1 - this river flows through rock or mostly rock. Probably had the same path since the dawn of time. Relics are heavy an not likely to move much, unless they are sitting on a smooth, flat surface. They'll probably get wedged between rocks and stay there. The silt might cover and uncover, so you'd find them with enough erosion.

Pic 2 - this river has a rocky and wooden side and a flat land side. The rocky side may catch and trap objects and is likely very similar to its shape from a 100 years ago. Targets would be found in the same manner as Pic 1. Whereas the opposite side on flat land may have a shape that drastically changed with the ebb and flow. An object might have traveled up, down, sideways, etc.... Water make bring it to the surface and bury it deep. So no targets one day and then after a water event, targets are everywhere the next.

Pic 3 - this river flows through soft soils. In fact, you can see an erosion event starting that may form a new path, or perhaps it is uncovering a previously buried route. Total roll of the dice to hunt here. If you have nothing better to do, why not, but unless I was 90% confident a battle actually took place in that spot, I'd probably move on.

Other thoughts -- As you mentioned, probably a LOT of silt has deeply covered targets. You also inferred there isn't a lot of targets which I assume means trash too. These are the ideal conditions for using a PI machine. Consider that most detectors are only effective to about 12", but a PI can punch significantly deeper, especially with increased coil size. So you might want to invest in a big coil PI machine.

SoOregonMd · Oct 29, 2019

DaviDs said:
Here are a couple of scenarios to consider.

Pic 1 - this river flows through rock or mostly rock. Probably had the same path since the dawn of time. Relics are heavy an not likely to move much, unless they are sitting on a smooth, flat surface. They'll probably get wedged between rocks and stay there. The silt might cover and uncover, so you'd find them with enough erosion.

Pic 2 - this river has a rocky and wooden side and a flat land side. The rocky side may catch and trap objects and is likely very similar to its shape from a 100 years ago. Targets would be found in the same manner as Pic 1. Whereas the opposite side on flat land may have a shape that drastically changed with the ebb and flow. An object might have traveled up, down, sideways, etc.... Water make bring it to the surface and bury it deep. So no targets one day and then after a water event, targets are everywhere the next.

Pic 3 - this river flows through soft soils. In fact, you can see an erosion event starting that may form a new path, or perhaps it is uncovering a previously buried route. Total roll of the dice to hunt here. If you have nothing better to do, why not, but unless I was 90% confident a battle actually took place in that spot, I'd probably move on.

Other thoughts -- As you mentioned, probably a LOT of silt has deeply covered targets. You also inferred there isn't a lot of targets which I assume means trash too. These are the ideal conditions for using a PI machine. Consider that most detectors are only effective to about 12", but a PI can punch significantly deeper, especially with increased coil size. So you might want to invest in a big coil PI machine.

AWESOME Analysis !!

DaviDs · Oct 30, 2019

SoOregonMd said:
AWESOME Analysis !!

Thx!

are flood pains of creeks that flood often worth hunting

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