Beach Hunt 2023 Has Started

[schoolofhardNox]

11 hours ago, F350Platinum said:

Aww man, shame you missed the gold rush! 😵 I'd have missed the whole thing myself, can't take temps below 30 at all. Reynaud's is a curse. 😠

Still you managed to come away with stuff I find on relic hunts which is awesome. 😎

Fantastic hunt regardless. 👍

Yeah, the cold definitely changes how or if you can hunt. For me, I can layer up and get away with it. It never got above 27 degrees, but if the sun is out, it's bearable for me. Only the toes and fingertips can get a bit chilled. That is one reason to dig fast and generate some heat 😄

This beach is older and the relics were deep, but with a lot of sand moved around, they are  starting to surface.

[schoolofhardNox]

            Beach hunt #18 was a marathon. I decided I wanted to get back to the previous beach after getting a Shield and V nickel out of there. That beach is old, and I was sure there had to be some deep silver or gold left there. But first, the traditional bathroom stop at another beach is in order. Once there I had to get a look at that beach as well. It looked like it had some damage from the last storm and the sand repairs had already started. So, if I wanted to try this beach, it would have to be today or wait for the next storm. I agreed to do one half of the hunt here and then go to the planned beach. So, I got ready, fired up the GPX and got absolutely no sound from the machine. It didn’t even turn on. Did I finally kill my GPX from all those beach hunts?  😲 Well, I tried another cable, same results. Luckily I took a spare battery, which I sometimes do not do. Moment of truth…. Battery problem or GPX problem. Either one is going to cost me. 🙄 2nd battery worked fine, and the hunt was on. I’ve included a picture of the location I was hunting. You can’t tell the purple color as well as you can in person.

            Targets were far and few between and it took me about 30 minutes before I dug a coin. I tried an area that has that purple/black sand mix, which even gives the GPX issues. Once I located a terrible sounding target, I dug it and got my first green penny. I spent the next 15 minutes trying to locate another target and going through a lot of settings to see if I could clear up the signal. I finally found a way to detect this area. I knew it had the potential for good targets that may not appear to be so good (or even at all) on other people’s machines. Once I figured out how to hunt there, I even went over what I did, and targets started to appear. The further I went into that area, the more frequent targets appeared. Needless to say, I never made it to the other beach. I spent 6 hours prying rocks to expose a ton of coins. In the greatest concentration of coins, I rarely dug any iron, aluminum, or other nonferrous items. It was almost exclusively coins. But prying some big rocks took its toll on my trusty spade and it cracked the fiberglass shaft enough for me to retire it. RIP old friend.  😥 I don’t know when I will get a chance to get back there, but I will probably do that same area and see if there are other areas that are similar. One of my best coin days with a total of 119 coins. 11 of them were silver. The surprises were the Franklin half, a Barber dime and my first Seated dime from this beach. Also, one lone Buffalo nickel. No gold, but that’s fine by me. R&R today, maybe I can sneak in another hunt soon.

[F350Platinum]

Ok man, now you're just showing off 🤣

That is awesome. 119 coins? That's like a day or two at a campground without the old stuff. That storm must have dug deep! I hope it didn't send the gold even lower... 🤔

Fantastic job!

[rvpopeye]

Nice pile of keeper coins !

Always fun picking up live ammo too.😵

  

[schoolofhardNox]

On 1/25/2024 at 6:04 PM, F350Platinum said:

Ok man, now you're just showing off 🤣

That is awesome. 119 coins? That's like a day or two at a campground without the old stuff. That storm must have dug deep! I hope it didn't send the gold even lower... 🤔

Fantastic job!

It's not me showing off....it's the beach flexing it's silver muscle 😍 It's hard for me to imagine silver still at this beach, but it's here. I'm not sure where the gold is, but it's not going much lower. The depth ranged from 4" to 8", but I don't think a VLF would have heard them through that sand. I went back (coming soon 😮), and I redid my area plus some and it produced more at greater depths. But 12ish" is the maximum depth as I was hitting clay. So I'm not sure where the gold is. Either it's gone or my GPX just can't separate it from the sand. This is the toughest type of sand I have hunted at my beaches.

16 hours ago, rvpopeye said:

Nice pile of keeper coins !

Always fun picking up live ammo too.😵

  

Thanks. I will use that round in the gun that I don't have 🙄.  It was fun digging coin after coin and not really moving too far to do it.

[Joe Beechnut OBN]

Thanks for taking us along and sharing! I would check with my friends on that AQ knob, maybe a anderson excalibur knob would fit?

[schoolofhardNox]

14 minutes ago, Joe Beechnut OBN said:

Thanks for taking us along and sharing! I would check with my friends on that AQ knob, maybe a anderson excalibur knob would fit?

Thanks Joe, I was just going to post that I found it after the snow melted on my driveway. It made it almost home before it fell off. 😄. I just need to get a set screw for it and I'll be all set. I will check the other knobs to make sure they are tight.

[Joe D.]

On 1/25/2024 at 1:09 PM, schoolofhardNox said:

I agreed to do one half of the hunt here and then go to the planned beach. 

   That's one of the late signs of obsessive detecting! Telling yourself what your doing, than agreeing with yourself that your gonna do it!😆

   Nice job again, and impressive haul! Love the big Franklin especially! Seem rare as hens teeth, as most have been hoovered up!🍀👍👍

[schoolofhardNox]

20 minutes ago, Joe D. said:

   That's one of the late signs of obsessive detecting! Telling yourself what your doing, than agreeing with yourself that your gonna do it!😆

   Nice job again, and impressive haul! Love the big Franklin especially! Seem rare as hens teeth, as most have been hoovered up!🍀👍👍

I've been obsessive detecting since I was 7 😅 It's easier to find Walking Liberty halves than those Franklins for some reason.

[schoolofhardNox]

Beach hunt # 19 was back to the same beach. I was ready to go over the same area slower this time, hoping I would pick up some more silver. The first thing I noticed is that the beach roughed up this area a bit more with more rocks exposed making it a little harder to run the coil smoothly. The second thing I noticed is that I did a terrible job the first time.  😂 This time I slowed way down and concentrated on the tiny signals, not like the solid ones I dug the other day. To my surprise, there were some deeper coins than I found the first time there. Also, there were some very iffy sounds that cleaned up much better and ended up being deep coins. Another odd thing was 4 pair of sunglasses sitting on the surface (not in one spot). I didn’t think much of them, and I always take them off the beach. When I got home, 3 of them were corroded and scratched as usual. The 4th pair however was a nice pair of Ray Ban. They were slightly scratched but not corroded. And they fit perfectly. 😊 That was a nice surprise. I also extended the search area to adjacent sections, and those areas produced some coins and a bit of silver as well. They were not packed with coins as in the previous area, but still worth the effort. All in all, another good silver hunt. I’m going to keep going back until conditions change and the fun dries up. 🥺 I didn’t think this beach was going to do much, so I avoided it for a couple weeks. I’m glad I decided to hit it when I did. Another plus was that I found my AQ knob in my driveway after the snow melted. I just need a set screw for it, and it’s all set again. Life is good.