Hi all,
For several hunts now, I've been hitting a large field where I had got permission to hunt. I had done some research and was pretty sure there had been one or more houses there.
There was a lot of ground to cover. Huge field, really. I thought I knew, from the old map, where the houses should have been. Yeah, right. There was no trace now. Just 'falfa.
So, I went and did some detecting. A lot of detecting. First I found nothing but junk. Aluminum, and oh yeah, a Hot Wheels Trans Am, out in the middle of the field. It wasn't even in good shape.
I found wire, I found pulltabs, I found useless whatsits of recent manufacture. I got one really sweet signal, and it was a wire connector
The field was along a creek, and the place had flooded badly many times. I could not decide... had the house remnants been completely scraped down to the hardpan, taking everything away, then replaced with topsoil? Or had the remains sunken down like 3 feet? Three hunts, several hours each, and nothing. Not even square nails!
So anyway, I said no way, man, this is not going to end like this, where the map showed houses and there is not a trace. Unacceptable! There has to be SOMETHING there, said I. So after dilly-dallying around for far too long (chores) this mornin', I went out detecting... to that field again. And I wandered. Turned up a memorial cent. So I wandered some more.
Then I found something. A Dandy button without the shank. I dropped my coat and started hitting the area thoroughly. I had already been through this spot like 2 or 3 times before, but somehow I hadn't quite gotten in just the right section of field. Up turned another flat button, and another perhaps later button, and a piece of pewter. Aha!
By now it was starting to get dark. I was in this huge field, a long distance away from my vehicle, and the neighbor's dog was yapping its head off. A quarter mile away, and this little beast was trying to project its voice clean across the valley. It struggled to make me hear it. You could hear a frantic tone in the barking of this little dog! It was kind of silly, and weird at the same time.
Anyway, I was getting tired, but you know how there's always that "one more dig" before you go to the car. "Just one more, really, this time, then I'll quit for the day". Yep.
I got a screamer of a signal. In fact, I thought it was a beer can (again). But something was really nice about it. Just very clean sounding. I dug, and dug, and I was beginning to get discouraged. Then, in the half-dark, I checked the pile, and sure enough, I recognized that size and color.
1836. Not bad. There was no iron, not an "iron patch", nothing. No good iron relics, but I'll settle for a copper.
Big coppers are not that easy to find, even when you hit the books. This really made my day, actually sort of made my week, because of what it took to find this.
Anyway, thanks for looking.
HH,
R.I.
