ShintoSunrise

I've heard of gold in Virginia and I know a bit of the history, but my understanding is that it is mostly in flake form and nuggets are extremely rare. Not sure if my 600 is up to the task! I'm mostly looking for relics and jewelry, though if course won't say no to interesting coins

Hey all, I'm currently hunting in Ashburn, so maybe what, an hour or so from Culpeper?

Hey all, Eric here; Los Angeles native but long-time transplant to the DC metro area. Got back into detecting recently with an equinox 600 after a 20 year hiatus from the hobby. I have an upcoming move to the Seattle/Bellevue area in spring; anyone on this forum know how the hunting is over there? In the interim, any old hands out here in NoVa? I know an interesting spot I've been digging, but it is a challenging iron and trash infested environment that I would love to see a pro take a crack at. Cheers!

Article you linked mentioned (without a source) a single application; in 1967, by unspecified parties, supposedly in Vietnam. That was the same time the CIA was experimenting with LSD and remote mind control...since we lost that war I'm going to guess this little experiment was a dud as well.

I never bothered to remove the snakes honestly, so this will always be a mystery to me.

Well my advice then would be to become a second son to this guy and then tell him to call up Chevron so he can show them his moves, because he's about to become the richest person on Earth...

Imagine the multimillion dollar a month salary this dude would be making from the petrochemical and mineral industry if this was even remotely possible. These stories are quaint and cute as they tell tales of old traditions, but anyone who thinks they describe an actual phenomenon is getting sold up snake oil river.

Great analysis and I agree 100%. Very difficult here to explain why the equinox would detect a snake as a matter of course without introducing metal detecting concepts that don't jive with either physics or our daily experience; I'm going to stick to my tagging hypothesis unless someone else jumps in with another explanation. I saw in another post someone stating their equinox was detecting crabs at the beach; I can only guess that is explainable by unseen tagging or the void hypothesis. At least if I had a snake handy I could settle this right now but unfortunately I am fresh out!

Seems this thread has diverged; @Valens Legacy implies that the equinox should detect magnesium containing bones such as teeth or walrus tusks, while @Steve Herschbach points out that non-conductive items will generally be invisible to the EM search of a detector unless they coincide with a void that alters the ground signal. At the very minimum I can report that the equinox does not in fact detect my cat in any obvious way, even at the highest sensitivity. I think a third possibility exists; perhaps snakes are not generally detectable, which is what you would expect, but these snakes were tagged somehow, perhaps for research and tracking purposes.

Makes sense to me, but begs the question of why metal detectors aren't known for detecting living creatures more generally. If we assume a sliding scale of conductivity, makes me wonder what the difference is between a snake and say, my cat, which doesn't seem to trigger a response.

Damn, I have to admit I was really looking forward to being told this was just a wild coincidence; the third snake was cut right in half with my shovel and I felt absolutely terrible for days. Rather than find more and post videos, I am tempted to never dig another pulltab signal in loamy soil ever again...

Ok folks, someone please tell me this is just a bizarre series of coincidences. On three separate occasions now I've come across a good signal out in the forest here in Virginia, usually in the pulltab range, and dig only to find a hibernating snake. How in the world is that possible? Is the metal detector actually detecting the snake or are they just over a target? I can't figure this out. Any old hands wanna chime in here?