AirmetTango
Forum Supporter
I've been spending the last few weeks slowly getting aquainted with my new detector and relentlessly researching potential detecting sites in my local area while patiently waiting for the precious little time to become available to actually go out and hunt. I even got a chance to knock on a couple doors, and was pleasantly surprised to go 100% on permission requests so far! Easy to bat 1000 when you only have 2 at-bats Anyways, one of those permissions I was pretty jazzed up about - a former 1890s homesite where nothing remains of the house/barn/etc other than the foundations. The current landowners have the same last name as the original homeowner (found on a 1901 county map) and they provided a lot of history about the site. To their knowledge at least, it was never detected before. Excitement slowly morphed into disappointment once I had a chance to get to the site though - after almost 3 hours on the site, all I had in my bag was a zillion old pull tabs, a couple crushed cans, nails, miscellaneous pieces of scrap/foil, a length of copper wire, and a .22 casing (I dug almost everything - the exceptions being in a couple areas where it was ridiculously trashy).
Don't get me wrong, I had fun - especially when I hit my first "spill". I dug 4" down to find no less than 6 pull tabs in the same small plug near a shady tree! I had to chuckle while envisioning someone sitting in that spot and hammering down a full six pack sometime in the past - he apparently was still able to carry the cans when he staggered away
Anyway, I was genuinely surprised not to find anything at all interesting - although I suppose I could argue that the 22 casing is interesting. The amount of trash I found implies that the site really hadn't been searched before - but maybe as a noob, I'm way off base on that assumption?
So I'm curious: how often does a veteran detectorist come away from a high-expectation site empty-handed?
Don't get me wrong, I had fun - especially when I hit my first "spill". I dug 4" down to find no less than 6 pull tabs in the same small plug near a shady tree! I had to chuckle while envisioning someone sitting in that spot and hammering down a full six pack sometime in the past - he apparently was still able to carry the cans when he staggered away
Anyway, I was genuinely surprised not to find anything at all interesting - although I suppose I could argue that the 22 casing is interesting. The amount of trash I found implies that the site really hadn't been searched before - but maybe as a noob, I'm way off base on that assumption?
So I'm curious: how often does a veteran detectorist come away from a high-expectation site empty-handed?