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Intro - First Time Newbie in Texas

Time Finder

Junior Member
Joined
Oct 22, 2018
Messages
50
Location
Burleson, Texas
Hi all!

Just went out for a real first hunt last weekend and can't get over how fully enjoyable metal detecting is. And the detectorist community seems to be top of the line!

Here's a bit of a story from my first hunt on open land:


Today we are time travelers and the morning greets us with the first brushes of sunlight seen in eight days. My friend Lyle and I set out to sweep the land with our new entry-level metal detectors--Bounty Hunter Tracker IV, two of them. We dawn our jackets, strap our drop bags to our waist, our small shovels, and slide our headphones over our ears. The sun struggles to squeeze between the two dark morning masses in the sky. The wind persists. The water stopped falling the night before. But it gushes up through the ground. We unlatch the gate and walk into the field. We put our coils to the soil and search for history.

The past week we poured over maps. We looked at shifts in satellite images, unnatural lines for anthropomorphic evidence, and topographical hints of favored spots to settling down. The land is my father-in-law’s, Dale. But before Dale by some 140 years, it was claimed by J. H. Singleton according to scanned copy of a sepia tinted Texas General Land Office map listing the paid plots of land. The Singleton name still lives on in the area as a road. And Dale was just as excited to learn the history of this land as we were.

We head north to a pasture that gets minimal attention; I think it's our best chance at stepping back farther than a few decades. We start sweeping the earth. In the city, you can't step without a beep of something, and you can't go far without finding an aluminum soda tab. Out here in the slight sun, the wet grass, and the soggy clay, we walk without much distraction. There are few tones of metal detected and our minds are free from pervasive thoughts. Time slips by as we dig up forgotten stories.

I swing my detector left and right and step slowly, investigating a small hill. Beep. Iron. Strong signal. Pinpoint. Dig target. I push my hand shovel into the sticky clay, cut grass roots, and pull up a plug of sod and soil. I fish around and wave clumps of earth by the detecting coil to narrow my search. Beep. I pull the clay apart to find a long nail, a square nail. I step back into the 1800's. Square nails stopped being made at the turn of the century. Why is it here? Who was here? What were they doing? A nail means something was fastened together. A cabin maybe? I rush over to Lyle to show him the nail; this is the first time I have ever been excited about a nail, and it's a dirty old nail I had to dig out of the ground.

I put the nail in its new temporary home on my hip and sweep on. Time became more abstract with each sweep and each step. I look to the ground and the grass and try and imagine all that has changed in this spot over the past two-hundred years, the colonies of white settlers, some with their black slaves. The buildings, the movement, the Comanche territory border nearby. The small creek fifty yards downhill; a nice spot. How much has the earth changed? I remember my soils class. It's a two-to-one clay, expanding and contracting with the rains and lack thereof. And if the weather acts like it has this season, consider all the erosion of the field. Where would the items remain? How would they move? We found the first piece of an unknown puzzle.

Beep. Iron? I thumb the toggle over to "Tone" to eliminate ferrous signals. Beep. Low this time. I can't quite remember what it means, but it means I should dig it up and it's not iron. Probably aluminum. I follow my new routine with the small shovel. Jab. Push. Cut. Remove plug. There is it. Bullet casing. Or... wait? That's a weird bullet casing. What are those lines? And the low tone doesn't mean brass. Gold? No. It can't be.

nOQhE7TkOAQiMgtwlmQILC3sATYGxTvpZtk3Hr8-sJ-UZ3isGgM5QSnb9bemNaB9cpjdvwVrPcdZunXboNcl=w1725-h835-rw
 
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Welcome from Central MA! Just dig it! Don't worry about what it is, dig any repeatable tones, high or low, just to get to know your machine. Then it will slowly start to make sense what your machine is trying to tell you. Good luck and happy hunting!
 
Welcome from Kansas and Antiques Detectors. Good Luck and Happy Hunting!
DIG EVERYTHING UNTIL YOU LEARN YOUR MACHINE !!!
 
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