Sophomore season yields first silver!

So as a follow up to my set of hunts I made that resulted in the discovery of the old button. That same park that gave me my first gold along with other interesting finds ended up giving me my first "deep" signal. I can understand now what the veterans speak of when they refer to "deep" signal. Some people refer to deep targets as giving a "narrow" signal - I guess this is one way to describe it. The signal is narrow in that it barely exceeds the threshold limit set by your machine and its detection area is rather "narrow" or "smaller" than compared to a target that is shallower. (Not sure if any of this made sense, as I have been frustrated myself with trying to understand what others have used to describe how deep targets are picked up). If anything, the only way someone can understand how a deep target is picked up by their machine is purely a matter of experience with detector and knowing what it is trying to tell you.

Anyway, back to the point here - my XTerra gave a consistent 38-40 signal and I immediately thought "here's another dime." After I extracted it from about 6-7inches down, I was surprised on how clean it looked fresh out of the ground. Well, to my surprise I read a "1947" on my very first silver coin. It certainly highlighted the hunt and just like finding my first gold, it made me want to find more of these awesome coins.

Glad to have another first checked off my list of finds - not a bad start to my sophomore season of detecting. Hopefully a sign of things to come.

2012 Finds Total

As the year of 2012 comes to a close, with all its ups and downs, I decided to take my treasure finds and total them up for the year. Here is a compilation of all clad, gold, and silver finds along with their approximate value.

Clad:
Coin           Quantity         Value 
Dollar             1                $1.00
Quarter       125              $31.25
Dime           108             $10.80
Nickel           83               $4.15
Penny          395               $3.95

Clad Total:                    $51.15

Precious Metals:
Gold: 1 Ring at 10K puirty: Amount: 8.175g - Spot price on 12/31/2012 was $1663.57/toz

Silver: 1 Lizard pendant at 92.5% purity (sterling): Amount: 7.260g - Spot price on 12/31/2012 was $30.14/toz

Precious Metal Total: $188.84

Grand Total value of 2012 Finds: $239.99

Not bad for my rookie year! Can't wait to get back out there. In fact, if the temperature just a little over freezing, I WILL be back out there. Until then, have a great new year!

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.