Equinox - The Eagle Has Landed!

[Cal_Cobra]

1 hour ago, Chase Goldman said:

Cal - absolutely hit that site hard, especially with the Equinox.  With that many buttons and other evidence of a prolonged CW era military presence, there are bound to be plates and other goodies lurking, you are just going to have to continue to be persistent.  They are there, believe me.  Over here, CW period coins at encampment sites are really hard to come by.  I have found a grand total of...2, an IHP 1864 fatty and the Seated.  In the big digs back here, Seateds are found but rare, more often it is IHPs, Flying Eagle cents and trimes.  Though the occasional cache of gold coins is found that someone forgot about or was unable to return to claim because they became a casualty of war.  I'm reminded of the quote by Col. Bat Guano when being asked for 55 cents by Group Captain Mandrake so that he can call the President about General Jack Ripper's nuclear strike on the Soviets (in the movie "Dr. Strangelove...") - "Well you don't think I would go into combat with loose change in my pocket, do ya?" 

That's funny (but likely true).  I need to watch that movie one of these days.

It's a fun place to detect.  I really enjoy digging buttons.  When my hunt buddy and I go there, that's kind of how we gauge who was the most successful that hunt, by who has the most eagle buttons - lol     The seated half I dug was an 1859-S, and Tom got a 1864-S (might be off on his date).  Oh we do seem to find clad on each hunt

I've amassed a nice assortment of buttons (no southern ones of course), a complete Hardy hat pin, dozens of colt pistol drops, scores of three ringers (almost get tired of digging those, almost), and other related relics.  There has to be a belt plate or breast plate there I would think (heck even a bit boss).   There's a guy that digs a union army camp up in Oregon, he's published a few articles in the W&E, and he finds and digs out their old trash pits (sifts them), and that's how he's found a few plates, as well as some bottles and other great civil war era relics.  I keep telling my buddy we need to get a bottle probe and see if we couldn't also do that, I'd imagine some of the 1860's bottles, would likely be from San Francisco, and could be good ones, but I'm not that knowledgeable about bottles.

 

[stumpr]

Yep! A nice plate and great write up! Wondering how the Nox will do in the sweet ground in Southern Maryland!

[Chase Goldman]

On 4/15/2018 at 1:27 PM, Cal_Cobra said:

That's funny (but likely true).  I need to watch that movie one of these days.

It's a fun place to detect.  I really enjoy digging buttons.  When my hunt buddy and I go there, that's kind of how we gauge who was the most successful that hunt, by who has the most eagle buttons - lol     The seated half I dug was an 1859-S, and Tom got a 1864-S (might be off on his date).  Oh we do seem to find clad on each hunt

I've amassed a nice assortment of buttons (no southern ones of course), a complete Hardy hat pin, dozens of colt pistol drops, scores of three ringers (almost get tired of digging those, almost), and other related relics.  There has to be a belt plate or breast plate there I would think (heck even a bit boss).   There's a guy that digs a union army camp up in Oregon, he's published a few articles in the W&E, and he finds and digs out their old trash pits (sifts them), and that's how he's found a few plates, as well as some bottles and other great civil war era relics.  I keep telling my buddy we need to get a bottle probe and see if we couldn't also do that, I'd imagine some of the 1860's bottles, would likely be from San Francisco, and could be good ones, but I'm not that knowledgeable about bottles.

 

About three ringers.  Digging (typically fired) three ringers is what I do to get my relic mojo back when I am striking out on a multi day hunt at a particular site.  The multi day hunts here are usually at winter encampments where the troops were dug in with huts, had multi-month stays, had significant trash and fire pits, and firing ranges (what better way to pass the hours than shooting up the local landscape).  At sites that have been frequented, these firing range areas are known and it is easter egg hunt time.  At one site I even found the fired area and the "drop" area (the area where the soldier's were dropping the bullets because that is where they were being fired from) and plotted the GPS coordinates down on a hybrid topo/sat map of the area.  I can almost dig those full time, almost.  But it is a great way to get back in tune with your detector.

Regarding probing for glass, that is one of the most exhausting things I have ever done.  Poking the ground looking for soft spots and listening for either glass or rocks/bricks (indicative of a firebox hearth) and then pulling up the probe looking for changes in the dirt color.  Even then, if the probe is promising, you still have to dig a test hole at least and may likely still come up dry.  Easier than just digging random test holes, but still hit or miss.  I literally crashed out on a field surrounded by active pits after two or three hours of probing and digging did not pan out while some other folks were grabbing some incredible glass.

[Chase Goldman]

1 hour ago, stumpr said:

Yep! A nice plate and great write up! Wondering how the Nox will do in the sweet ground in Southern Maryland!

The Equinox will kill it under most soil conditions from what I can tell.  The two essentials for MD success: obtain access to a viable site and get your coil over the target.

[Guest calabash digger]

OH YEAH! That's the one I have been looking for... congrats on a find of a lifetime! 

[GB_Amateur]

Beauties!  Well deserved.  With that lottery winner it seems the lonely copper coin is getting lost in the confetti.  Any chance on identifying that one?

Thanks to your reports and those of a few others, I'm finally getting it into my thick skull that there is a richness in the sound that gives a lot of extra clues, more than just looking at the digital readout after getting a 'promising' tone.  I got back into MD'ing only recently (less than 3 years ago) when it was already well into the digital age.  Just seemed to me everything I needed to know/look at was right there on the display.  Wrongo....

[Chase Goldman]

1 hour ago, GB_Amateur said:

Any chance on identifying that one?

Thanks.  The copper was my first keeper find of the day and that plus the minies and J-hook alone would have made it a worthwhile hunt.  I did not forget about her...  I can’t pull a date, but she is definitely a Draped Bust Large Cent (another first for me) that puts her somewhere between 1800 and 1809 by obverse design.  “RICA” can just barely be made out on the reverse.

[Chase Goldman]

2 hours ago, GB_Amateur said:

Thanks to your reports and those of a few others, I'm finally getting it into my thick skull that there is a richness in the sound that gives a lot of extra clues, more than just looking at the digital readout after getting a 'promising' tone.  I got back into MD'ing only recently (less than 3 years ago) when it was already well into the digital age.

You nailed it.  The digital machine enables scores of newbies and inexperienced folks to hit the beaches, parks, home sites, and farms immediately and score some easy keepers.  But it takes multiple hours of swing time over a variety of both trash and keeper targets to learn the nuances of the audio tones and what they mean (digging trash is just as important as digging keepers in this regard).  It doesn’t click until you’ve hunted in different types of soil/sand and different ferrous and non-ferrous trash densities to see how the machine reacts and sounds in those environments.  I learned this with the Deus and the GPX and the process is the same with Equinox.  You can always get lucky, and even experienced detectorists get both lucky and unlucky.  But really knowing your machine keeps you from saying “I’m done with digging beer cans and slag” and leaving that plate in the ground for me to ultimately snag.  That plate was 20 feet off the driveway and that smallish 50 acre site has some 200 - 300 man-hours of detecting put into about 15 -20 acres of hot spots including where I hunted that day.  Over the preceding months, a Silver coin cache (mason jar) was pulled about 25 yards away and a US Belt Plate and CS Tongue and Wreath were pulled basically across the driveway from my plate.  It had to have been walked over but was on the edge of the slag debris field.  

Basically, around 75 hours of Equinox swinging the past month just clicked for me one sunny Saturday morning in April and Lady Luck and a great permission helped.

BTW, I am a late comer that only got serious about the hobby about 3 years ago after (1) obtaining a Deus (primarily because I’m lazy and wanted a light, travel machine for beach vacations) and finding a lot more than just the beer cans I had previously found in my yard and (2) attending my first serious relic hunt and snagging a CW button, broken glass, and fired lead.  That changed everything for me as before that I was content for years to casually hunt clad on the beach with my BH during infrequent family beach vacations.  Shh, don’t let anyone know I’m basically a newbie.  The world’s worst kept secret.