Last Hunt At The Big Pond

[schoolofhardNox]

So, this is my final pond hunt before they refill the huge pond. It’s just too soggy to continue hunting, plus the bad targets far outweigh the good targets. The reeds and other bushy brush have completely taken over with just some sporadic areas left available to hunt. I did a 9-hour hunt and the GPX battery died on me. I don’t blame it. 😄 No gold this time, but a silver Washington quarter and 2 other possible silver items – a small ring and an ID bracelet. Lots of fishing and hunting finds as usual, plus the normal trash. This time around I had to leave a bunch of targets as my pouches were full, with no more room for anything else.  It was fun while it lasted and certainly a missed opportunity, as the first ones out there would have been easily able to use discrimination to focus on coins, and gold if you don’t mind digging. Next week it’s off to some beach to get back to the sights and sounds of the beach. I did have one nice moment yesterday, when I looked up and saw an American Bald Eagle cruising around. He even made a final pass right over me. What a beautiful bird. 🦅 That made the hunt right there!

[CPT_GhostLight]

Wow, another incredible hunt, sohn! The bullet catagory alone is staggering and looks like there are some older ones in there. Good job, now get some rest, man!

[GB_Amateur]

You do a better job sorting and displaying (for us) your trash finds than I do with my few good recoveries.

Do you know how long that site was used?  It seems like some of the hunting items go back a ways (but I'm far from an expert on those).  With all your non-coin finds it does make one wonder how much the cherry pickers who came ahead of you got....

[Rick N. MI]

Great hunt. I like the toy truck in pieces. I like all the bullets and fishing stuff. And lastly the silver.

That's a lot of stuff. Wow.

[schoolofhardNox]

3 hours ago, CPT_GhostLight said:

Wow, another incredible hunt, sohn! The bullet catagory alone is staggering and looks like there are some older ones in there. Good job, now get some rest, man!

Thanks. The lesson learned is don't mess with people that live around a lake 😯 The shear number of different ammo lends me to believe that many people there have weapons and probably know how to use them. Some of the casings had FA 18 on them. I believe those are military rounds from one of the arsenals. I believe these are from the Frankford Arsenal and since it's not prior to WWI, the 18 should designate the year. Prior to WWI the head stamp had the numerical month-year headstamp on it. So 1918 is my guess.

2 hours ago, GB_Amateur said:

You do a better job sorting and displaying (for us) your trash finds than I do with my few good recoveries.

Do you know how long that site was used?  It seems like some of the hunting items go back a ways (but I'm far from an expert on those).  With all your non-coin finds it does make one wonder how much the cherry pickers who came ahead of you got....

There must be a little OCD in me, since it was therapeutic to wash and display them that way. Maybe it's my way of releasing all the memory of digging them all 😄. The pond is old, probably around 250 years old. The round ball and the colonial shoe buckle show some usage there. This pond is drained every 10-20 years or so, to check on the damn and other structures. This time around the knew they needed to do some extensive repairs, so the worked it for about 2 years. Covid, along with inclement weather made it a much longer project than they anticipated. So this place has been hit a lot during many generations. But this time around there was way better technology and from what I heard, a lot of good coins and rings came from the other side I could not get to.

[schoolofhardNox]

2 minutes ago, Rick N. MI said:

Great hunt. I like the toy truck in pieces. I like all the bullets and fishing stuff. And lastly the silver.

That's a lot of stuff. Wow.

Not much survives well in this environment. The truck took a beating, but looks older at least the 50's or 60's. I passed on a lot of targets yesterday that were mostly 22's. But even doing that, the different depths make it hard to pass on them, so I ended up digging a lot of them again. A more challenging hunt than I anticipated, since the same target sound different if they're located in the beach sand, vs the fine particle hard mud, vs the loose swampy reed areas. Not what I was expecting. It would take a while to understand this and be confident that you are passing on a 22 shell casing and not a small gold ring.

[F350Platinum]

Another huge hunt. I know I wouldn't ever find that much stuff anywhere in one day! 👍

The truck is probably a Tootsietoy, the wheels look familiar. Company dates back to the 1890s.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/TootsieToy

[kac]

You look on any of the old topos to see if there were some summer cottages that are gone now? I found some around most the lakes and ponds here. Many where in the 40's and earlier. They don't typically have cellars or typical foundations.

Think your almost better off cherry picking with the 3030 or Nox for that instead of a PI. Used my SH a few times at local puddles here and tend beat myself up digging stupid stuff at stupid depths but never really did any better than the ib machines. Amazes me how many bobby pins there are in the world....

[geof_junk]

Schoolofhardnoxs I enjoy your pain as for as junk goes, great photos. By the way junk nearly drove me mad, (some say it did) but the amount that you have illustrated I have very deep concern for your mental health.   😉   

[rvpopeye]

I've got to ask , how many hunts before you wear out the digger ?

Ya got my vote for the most holes on a single hunt , no contest.

The silvers made it worth doing though. 😉

Too bad you didn't get a shot at the other shore !!!