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.

  

First Old Coin...1946 S Wheat Penny!

Had an afternoon to venture some property just a mile outside of an old mining town of Neihart, MT. In its heyday, Neihart was a town that was built up from a boom in mining huge silver and lead ore deposits. I ventured around some and came upon a major dump site (lots of old cans) and picked up a couple 22 caliber bullets still intact. Other than a few other random pieces of metal and a screw cap to some type of heating units (rated at 150,000 BTU from a company called MTI in Perrysville, OH) there wasn't much I was getting of any interest.

 

As I made my way back to the cabin, I swung my detector just off the roadway. Just a mere two feet from the road's edge, right across from the cabin driveway, I got a solid beep that definitely sounded "coin." It was only a 1/2 inch in the soil and I picked it up and saw Lincoln's head. "Oh, just a penny" I thought as I turned it around - that's when I saw the wheat penny reverse side. Oh man, was I excited. On top of that, I brought it in and cleaned it soap and water and discovered it was a 1946 - with an S mint mark! - WooHoo! My first old coin and it was a San Francisco minted wheat penny. This is certainly a first that I will remember for a long time. Looking forward to other great finds in the future in that ol' mining town that dates back to the 1870s.