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Nox Continues To Sniff Out Oldies From Heavily Hunted Parks


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Mh,

   That brings up another good question/dilemma we all face, depending on how strict the "Authorities" are in different locales! How much depth/time/potential damage, are you willing to go to, to remove a target??

   We have two Counties that ban "digging" anything in "County" owned parks!! That's how they manage to  "dance" around an all out detecting ban! I've often wanted to challenge this, but look at the risk/reward factor, and have left it alone for now!!👍👍

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1 hour ago, Joe D. said:

  Great post Raphis,

 And follow-ups by all! You definitely have the Nox, and your skills, dialed in to your intended targets! Keep them poppin' out of that trashy ground!!🍀

   I do have some sorta unrelated questions, since you have so many hours on the Nox/11" combo! Any issues with coil tabs breaking?, and in line with that, do you keep your coil loose, and able to swing, or reasonably tight, in a fixed position? And what kind of life are you getting out of the coil washers? Also, wireless ML, or aftermarket, or wired aftermarket headphones? Thanks!!👍👍

Thanks for the reply Joe.  When I bought my Nox, I also bought a Detect-ED carbon shaft (upper and lower), and a package of their rubber coil saver (washers) inserts.  These washers (when the proper sizes are used) slightly protrude above the plastic cavity where they reside in the lower shaft.  That will keep the coil ears from bending inward when you tighten down the nut.  So, No coil tab breakage for me.  I don’t lock down my coil nut...it’s just tight enough so I can easily rotate it up or down with minimal pressure, but it won’t flop downward on its own when I raise it off the ground.

I started out using the Bluetooth headphones that came with my Nox, but after 6 months of use, I wanted to go back to a wired headphone.  I think the wired headphone is better for hearing the true deepies (those real faintly discernible targets).

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1 hour ago, mh9162013 said:

But I take this approach to avoid major digging in parks.

But I also take this approach b/c most of my parks are fairly new and I don't expect them to have much silver. Additionally, there are so many clad coins, I can't bear to skip over them out of principle.

Thanks for your reply!  It is interesting to see someone else’s perspective/views on turf hunting. Obviously, you have to conduct your turf detecting within the parameters of the city/county you live, in addition to your own vigilance/precautions about digging deep in your parks.  Thank God where I live I don’t have a “can’t dig deeper than 4” rule imposed on me.  If that was the case, I’d probably be beach detecting 100% of the time.  There are over 500 parks within a 50 mile radius I’ve hunted in the past 15 years that have old coins below 6”.  There are only a few parks in certain cities where I live, along with a couple of counties that don’t allow digging in their parks.  I have used a lesche hand digger (or equivalent hand trowel) since I owned my very first detector almost 4 decades ago.  I have a few buddies that started using the long handled (waist/thigh high) diggers, but I refuse to use one.  Those long handled shovels are very conspicuous (they attract many looky-loos).  I’m more than comfortable digging on one knee with my lesche hand digger.  I have dug thousands upon thousands of 6” and deeper U-shaped plugs over the years.  I tell people I’m a surgeon when it comes to digging in the turf, since I have dug so many and perfected my technique over the years.  I place my dirt on a square piece of rubber inner tubing, and replace nearly all the dirt back in the hole.  Sometimes I discard 1% of the removed dirt from the plug in order to let the top of the plug sit flush with the top of the ground (when the dirt is on the dry side) after I stomp down on the plug with my foot.  The city Lawnmowers we have over here can pull the plug out of its hole if it is sticking up too high above its original height. 

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46 minutes ago, Raphis said:

Obviously, you have to conduct your turf detecting within the parameters of the city/county you live, in addition to your own vigilance/precautions about digging deep in your parks.

 

  

1 hour ago, Joe D. said:

Mh,

   That brings up another good question/dilemma we all face, depending on how strict the "Authorities" are in different locales! How much depth/time/potential damage, are you willing to go to, to remove a target??

   We have two Counties that ban "digging" anything in "County" owned parks!! That's how they manage to  "dance" around an all out detecting ban! I've often wanted to challenge this, but look at the risk/reward factor, and have left it alone for now!!👍👍

 

 

On my current list of parks to hunt, I have three; 2 are just down the street and 1 is a short drive away.

One of the three has an explicit no-metal-detecting rule, but the rule only applies to the ballfields. The walking trails, disc golf, tot lots, etc. areas are fair game. And park staff have seen me several times hunting and haven't said anything.

The park that's a short drive away has no explicit rule against metal detecting (based on my research). And they also have park staff that have seen me hunting, but have left me alone. 

But I don't hunt carrying a shovel; just a small digger and coin probe. But I wonder if I'll need my Sampson shovel to get to the silver, which may be 6-8 inches deep.

This thread has actually motivated me to focus on some hunting at my park that's a short drive away to look for silver. I will leave early tomorrow morning and bring my Sampson shovel, but will keep it in the car. I'll see if I can dig deep (enough for potential silver) with reasonable effort, but only using my digging tool. We'll see how that goes before I pull out the Sampson.

I'm willing to risk drawing the ire of a member of the park staff. But I have the attitude that once I do, there's a chance I can't go back. So I'm increasing my "boldness" incrementally. That's another reason why I'm starting out at these parks very conservatively, with only shallow digging with my digger and coin probe: let's get the easy clad that's just below the surface before catching the eye of park staff or a "Karen." Once the clad has been largely found, I'll need to dig deeper. Only then, should I try to "risk it" by digging deeper.

Bottom line: I am firmly of the belief I am breaking no rule, law or regulation. But there's the law and there's what people try to enforce. So I try to tread (and dig) carefully.

 

 

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51 minutes ago, mh9162013 said:

Bottom line: I am firmly of the belief I am breaking no rule, law or regulation. But there's the law and there's what people try to enforce. So I try to tread (and dig) carefully.

I respect that viewpoint!  You can’t please everyone!  There’s Debbie Downers in every city who don’t want you to enjoy what you’re doing.  They try their best to ruin your day! I had a guy who called the cops on me one day for detecting in “his” park 🤣. About 15 min later, a cop shows up and walked toward me and my buddy detecting.  We walked toward him too.  He pulls out a notebook, ruffles thru a few pages, and said he saw no laws/ordinances in the city preventing us from detecting.  He asked us if we found anything valuable....we showed him a few silver coins, and he was very impressed!  He said he would be interested in buying a detector for himself and asked us to give him some recommendations.  He was one of the “good guys”!! By the way, that guy who called the cops on us was watching us interact with the cop from a distance.  When the cop left and we continued to hunt, he tried to walk away from us, but my friend got closer to him and spoke to him that we were not doing anything wrong....he said he lived across the street and his kids play sports in the park, and he didn’t want his kid breaking an ankle on one of our holes.  I had to laugh at that one because I’m very meticulous about how I make my plugs and about leaving open holes in a park...that would be considered vandalism!  The guy was clueless!!

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1 hour ago, Raphis said:

The guy was clueless!!

One thing I do to try and avoid these clueless people is put an effort into cleaning up the trash I see. Sometimes I'll try to make it a bit obvious. For example, I've been hunting for a bit and have some trash collected in my trash pouch. If I see a park employee or "civilian," I'll not only make an effort to pick up trash around me (which I do even if I think I'm not being watched), but I'll empty my trash pouch in a nearby trash can so other people can see it. At the very least, if someone is going to call the cops on me or kick me out of the park, they can do so knowing that they're kicking out one of their trash-picker-uppers.

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3 minutes ago, mh9162013 said:

Sometimes I'll try to make it a bit obvious. For example, I've been hunting for a bit and have some trash collected in my trash pouch. If I see a park employee or "civilian," I'll not only make an effort to pick up trash around me (which I do even if I think I'm not being watched), but I'll empty my trash pouch in a nearby trash can so other people can see it.

I do the exact same thing.  I also don’t start digging a plug when someone is staring at me.  They stare at you like you’re from another planet! 😅. I know many park groundskeepers in my area.  One particular groundskeeper always asks me if I found any of his old, buried gopher traps. Another worker, after speaking with him, went to the same high school as I did, while another one always stops whatever he’s working on to come over and say hi!  I gave him a silver half dollar one day, and he always lets me know when they’re going to be doing any trenching/digging for future upgrades to the park.

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9 minutes ago, Raphis said:

 I gave him a silver half dollar one day, and he always lets me know when they’re going to be doing any trenching/digging for future upgrades to the park.

Now that's money well spent!

Who knew that part of metal detecting included not just learning our machines and researching places to hunt, but also "winning the hearts and minds" of those around us?

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