2 Hour Notch Experiment Park Hunt. 5 Rings.

[Digalicious]

When I want jewelry, I hunt in the water. In my water sites, targets are few and far between, but just about every target is some type of jewelry. Problem is, my water sites are very limited, so when I want jewelry, I often have to resort to dirt hunting.

At the end of my last hunting season, I swore that I would give up on dirt hunting for jewelry in sites like parks. I found it to be both mentally and physically exhausting to dig up all that aluminum trash, with only a very rare chance of finding jewelry. So yesterday, I decided to try a notching experiment in one of my local parks.

The experiment notched out the ID numbers that are far more likely to be aluminum trash or pennies / dimes. On my Legend for example, I notched out 11-22 (small to mid sized foil), 28/29 (50% of pull tabs), and 46/47 (pennies/dimes). If I were to dig those numbers, then 99.9% of what I dig up, would be aluminum trash, pennies/dimes, and large aluminum bottle caps. I understand that some like to dig clad coins, but I do not. Pretty much my only hunting goal is jewelry.

Anyway, I only hunted for two hours and got 5 rings. 3 are junkers, 1 is silver, and I don’t know what that other one is. The picture doesn’t do it justice, but the outer part is silver colored, and the band going through the middle of it is gold colored. The only markings on the ring are two initials along with a date. It seems to be a large wedding ring, and I’ll probably try to find the owner of it.

This was only 1 experiment so take it as you will. What I can say though, is that by notching the way I did, the finds were much better than “digging it all” for jewelry in park like sites. By digging it all, I likely wouldn’t have found any rings in that time frame. The notching turned my park hunting from trash digging work, to an enjoyable hunt.

[strick]

Thats one way to do it for sure. How many times have you hunted this particular park? I've noticed that when I hunt parks I will find most of my rings in the first several hunts and then it goes down hill from there...sometimes I'll notch out the small foil but it's hard to think that I could be missing a nice gold chain in the process...so I usually will hunt by sound and id stability when searching for jewelry and dig or pass based on those traits..nice hunt

strick 

[Digalicious]

6 hours ago, strick said:

Thats one way to do it for sure. How many times have you hunted this particular park? I've noticed that when I hunt parks I will find most of my rings in the first several hunts and then it goes down hill from there...sometimes I'll notch out the small foil but it's hard to think that I could be missing a nice gold chain in the process...so I usually will hunt by sound and id stability when searching for jewelry and dig or pass based on those traits..nice hunt

strick 

Hi Strick.

That was the second time I hunted that park. The first time was "dig all" looking for jewelry. I mainly got clad and aluminum trash. I did that in a few parks and sports fields before deciding to give up on that hunting style.

I'm fairly new to water hunting, but the jewelry rewards are infinitely better than dirt hunting. Right now, I'm looking for all the ways to increase the odds of finding jewelry when hunting in the dirt.

I'm thinking that due to the ring shape of rings lol, that most of them are shallow due to being caught up in the grass roots. If so, I might be able avoid even more targets that I don't, by only digging the shallower targets.



 

[UT Dave]

I do find rings quite deep, quite often.

- Dave

[Digalicious]

1 hour ago, UT Dave said:

I do find rings quite deep, quite often.

- Dave

Hi Dave.

Is that on grassy sites?

I do find deep rings in the muddy lake bottom, in which there is nothing inhibiting the ring from going deep. Especially with people stomping on them further into the mud.

I'd say the deepest of those rings in the picture was about 6" in the grassy site, with the others being just below the surface in the grass roots.

I don't know if my "rings caught in grass roots" theory is correct, but I'm guessing it has some merit. I just don't know if that merit is enough to justify ignoring the deep targets 🙂

[UT Dave]

Yes, talking specifically of park turf type sites.  Some of my deepest keeper finds in parks have been honker silver or gold rings.  I find them on or near the surface, too.  But they can and do sink in my dirt.  And probably just because a big ring gives a strong signal, like I said, some of my deepest keepers in parks are rings.  They tend to be oriented vertically too.  My guess is because most are quite a bit heavier on the top side.

- Dave

[strick]

I think depth is more dependent on how soft the soil is water content of the soil, traffic (lawn mowers etc) and the weight of the object...I was out for a little hunt Sunday evening and I'm amazed at how deep some pull tabs are that I find...way below the roots of the grass and I always wonder how they do not just get caught up in the roots and just stay at that depth..

Notching out may be a good strategy in a real trashy park to begin with but after the easy targets disappear then its time to see what everyone else has walked over and left..my CTX was a great notcher 🙂 

strick 

[Digalicious]

Good point about the deep pulltabs Strick.

I'll still stick with the notching method though, because I don't have the physical or mental desire to dig any more aluminum trash than what I did with the notching 🙂

 

[JCR]

Parks also get re-sodded & other “improvements”.

[Mike_Hillis]

I like it.   

Focused hunting has always rewarded me.   I would say you are on the right path.

HH

Mike