Weekend early morning hunts

In an attempt to beat the heat as of late here in town, I decided to wake up just before morning so I could venture out on a hunt in the cooler temperatures. Ended up going back to the area where I had previously found an old belt buckle. Had to adjust the sensitivity a few times to stop all the chatter. Got mostly pull-tabs and bottlecaps. My good find of the day ended up being a 1953 S Wheat penny. Kind of disappointed that I nicked the edge with my Lesche tool, but I will take a wheat penny any day.

The next morning I ventured out to the local soccer field park again and swung for a limited time in the grass. The dew was really heavy and I did not want to damage my coil as the 10x5 elliptical is only water resistant. Besides  cents in clad, the interesting find of the day was a metal plate (stainless steel?) that cleaned up really.  The plate is slightly curved and labeled with "1097 SALT LAKE CITY DRIVER 1950" There does not appear to be any other features on the back of it. My best guess is that this is an ID badge of some kind. A competition of some sort? What kind of drivers were these for? More questions than answers at this point.

 

Local park....worldly find

So I braved the elements the past weekend and decided to detect in a park used as a local soccer field in the  midst of mid-90 degree heat (not quite so bad as Montana has low humidity - it's a dry hot, like a dry sauna). In a hour and a half, I was able to snag 85 cents in clad along with some pulltabs (you don't know if they aren't gold rings until you dig them) and some random pieces of metal. After coming home, I noticed one "coin" I had gathered had started to leach out its metal inner core pretty bad. The outer portion of the coin was practically unrecognizable so I decided to bathe it in a bit of household vinegar (I know what some of you are thinking, putting a chemical cleaner on an unknown coin. If I was decipher anything out of that mess of a find, I had to chance it and clean it off for better identification).

After cleaning I was surprised to see the following marks. After some research, I discovered I had unearthed  a 1971 German 2 Pfennig coin. Here is a pic of the coin along with what it probably looked like during its better days.

Between the old and the new

Had an opportunity to check out a new location to possibly hunt in town. It located between a historic building and a part of a city park. What made this stick out in my mind was that it was an unmaintained portion of the park. The size of the hill it contained almost suggested to me that the area was once flat but was built up as a spot to put dirt from projects nearby. These projects were likely done long ago given how much vegetation had come up.

In the 20 short minutes that I detected, I found some modern pennies, a nickel, and a belt buckle that I am not sure on the age of - so I am planning on getting help from my metal detecting forum friends so it can be identified.

Prospecting anyone?

Well, it has been awhile since I have posted something and this time I ventured back into the hills of the Little Belt mountains just outside the old mining town of Neihart. In its heyday, Neihart had booming silver and silver operations that was carried by rail freight into Great Falls to the Anaconda smelter for refining. Gold was a secondary product of their work. When I say secondary I mean the ore was treated with cyanide to extract the precious metal.

Anyway, I tried my hand for the first time to use my XTerra in prospecting mode (audio only - no target ID to help me out). I believe I still have to get used to the sensitivity and threshold settings but during the two hour venture on the mountain side I got a better ear for targets. Some more DEET spray would have been handy, as I was sweating pretty good in the humidity. I recovered some .22 caliber bullets and some old wire. Not bad - I will try my hand around the old mine shafts later and check out some areas where some placer gold is said to be around. Ah yes, it is true what they say. Gold is where you find it. And today I did not find it.