Advice Needed On "new" Site; Sooo Much Trash!

[gordy5m]

Hey all,

New to the forum, and the hobby, and need some advice. I've "discovered" an old farmstead near my house here in East TX that was on some of our oldest maps (since 1916!), and was occupied through the 1960's before it was bulldozed in the '70's and the land purchased by one of our school districts. The area of the house and barn are now an open field behind a school. I have secured permission to detect there, and as far as I can tell it has not been touched since it was leveled. It certainly hasn't been detected, as I've already found one coin spill that was mostly older clad ('60s-'70s), but did find one 1945 P War nickel that makes me hopeful there's older stuff there. Anyway, I've been preferring (for my sanity) to work the open areas away from the old house foundation due to the overwhelming amount of trash. There is literally both ferrous and non-ferrous trash carpeting the area. My Nokta Legend (I'm running the stock 11", but just ordered the 6" coil) has actually been doing an amazing job of discriminating (I use a custom 6-tone program based on my reading and youtubing), and I've been able to find clad pennies and nickels deep amongst aluminum slaw and rusted iron galore. But, if I get too close to the old house there are just too many signals to deal with and it's overwhelming. I could literally spend hours in a 100 sq ft area investigating every potentially good signal (soooo many old Budweiser cans and TV trays, lol) and scraping slaw out of the top 1" of the ground. So, my question to y'all is, how do you approach a site like this? Would you "clean it up"? Or do you think that is not worth the time and effort, and I should just stick to the areas I can sanely cover the most ground in the few hours I have available on the weekends? Are there any areas around an old house you would focus on if you had time? What would your approach be? I realize this is a good problem to have, and I am looking forward to hearing your advice!

[Geologyhound]

Entrances and exits, wooden porches or decks, alongside driveways where people get in and out of cars, and back fence lines.  If you find a suspect out house, check around it and in a line to the back of the house.  Old tree stumps present the possibility of rope and tire swings, or shade for picnics.

I realize old maps won’t necessarily give all this information. But if you know the layout of the road in relation to the house, you can get an idea of front versus back (outhouses in back), and where a side driveway might have been.  Also, older houses didn’t have air-conditioning so front porches (and decks) were a high traffic area for keeping cool and talking to neighbors. Probably a lot of nails but also the odd coin which slipped through the boards.

Do you have a recovery speed control on your detector?  I also like to have a cow magnet in my trowel handle for quickly locating the odd nail.

Depending on your capacity for tedium, you may want to take small bites out of the trash areas and then go relax in other areas.  Of course, if you find a couple good targets buried in the trash, that can ratchet up your tolerance for the racket.

Good luck, and post some finds here!

[JCR]

It sounds like you have a good site to learn on. The Legend will do well for you with just stock settings to begin with. The 6" LG 15 coil will be a big help.  I will suggest working the edges of the busy areas until you gain some confidence. Dig any solid signal that is not obviously large. You can gage this by lifting the coil up & sweep above it. Large items will still respond well past what a coin size object will.

The main thing is to have fun while you learn. It won't take too long before it all starts making sense. There will be some good finds there, the best will be within yourself.  Keep us posted.

[Valens Legacy]

What ever detector that you may use know what the ID numbers are of the coins that you would normally find.

I always do a test with the coil that I am going to use and place coins in my garden that I expect to find where I plan to hunt.

That way you can cherry pick which targets to dig. I found that when I am digging in an area that is newer it is always with a lot of trash from who knows where. I will concentrate on the silver first and then go to the other items on my list and have much better luck.

Everyone has given you the best advice and I hope that we have helped in some sort of way.

[ysabxe]

VDI don't work in that areas with many small iron in the ground... Finds will be mostly near surface, 6" coil is helpful (slow speed swinging)

[jim tn]

That's one of those spots that simply is what it is trash wise and to hunt it is a challenge and learning process. 

The better hunting area's have already been mentioned, along drive ways, etc, so I would hunt those area's with the 6" coil and do so at a snails pace just cover small area's and be somewhat selective tone and tid wise starting out. Get the easier targets first, if possible. Once one gets some good quality hunting time in with their detector, target I d's do have some meaning, bottle caps do sound a tad different, most of them, and have a bigger feel to them then do most coins. The same with big iron , cans, and so on. I don't use discrimination nor notching ever, so can't suggest anything pertaining, too.

As you describe it, there has to be a few older goodies hiding among all that trash. Keep in mind, though, farmers were a fairly poor lot back in those era's. Good luck, sounds like a fun challenge. HH jim tn

[geof_junk]

22 hours ago, Valens Legacy said:

What ever detector that you may use know what the ID numbers are of the coins that you would normally find.

I always do a test with the coil that I am going to use and place coins in my garden that I expect to find where I plan to hunt.

That way you can cherry pick which targets to dig. I found that when I am digging in an area that is newer it is always with a lot of trash from who knows where. I will concentrate on the silver first and then go to the other items on my list and have much better luck.

Everyone has given you the best advice and I hope that we have helped in some sort of way.

In general if you start on the highest target ID that you are chasing, it will let you know if the location has not been hit hard and allows you to cover a lot of the spot with out being bogged down digging junk. If you get some good targets, Then you lower your ID and get more good targets it lets you know whether to go more aggressive and dig every target. 

Also you can lower your sensitivity if the targets  are shallow to make the ID less influence by the ground minerals and very small bits of junk.

[palzynski]

On 10/2/2023 at 11:06 PM, gordy5m said:

But, if I get too close to the old house there are just too many signals to deal with and it's overwhelming.

For nails beds I would suggest to use a very fast detector like an XP deus1 or 2 , a Teknetics G2 ( Fisher F19 ) , Tesoro Lobo supertraq etc . These machine have been designed for high iron trashed areas , they are easy to use and they will do the right job there ..

[RickUK]

In situations like that here in the UK i tend to use a very small coil ie 5''-6'' with a fast recovery speed,in my case the T2 with the 5'' coil is my preferred weapon of choice,but in ultra extreme cases i have even used a Tesoro machine with a 4'' coil on it......swing very slowly and methodically.

[Tom_in_CA]

If you ask me, I'd find better place to hunt.   That's just too junky for my blood.   The sites that are much more fun, are the sites where a stage stop (or fort, or picnic site, or whatever) closed down/vacated by 1900, and no human has set foot there since.    Yeah Yeah, I'm spoiled rotten.  Doh !

 

But if I were hunting that , seeing as how it only date to the 1910s, I'd crank the discrimination and cherry pick for only high conductors.  Yup, kiss nickels and gold rings goodbye.   But .... that's just me.