Home Metal Detecting

My first (very brief) outing since the England trip in November of 2013

lordmarcovanlordmarcovan Posts: 43,530 ✭✭✭✭✭
Went out Tuesday morning on the way home from work. It was never intended to be anything but a quickie run, as I didn't have on my dig overalls and didn't want to mess up my work clothes.

They tore out some old tennis courts in a park, exposing bare sand beneath. The park is not on the south end of town ("Old Town") so it's not in one of the Victorian or older neighborhoods. Still, the neighborhood may date back to the 1920s (old enough for some possible silver, anyway). In recent decades, the neighborhood has become a little sketchy and a drug dealer was murdered in this park a few years back, so it's not the sort of place one would go after dark. Safe enough early in the morning, though.

I figured I'd just dig three or four targets as a recon mission. Ever since I got an inexpensive "temporary" machine (a used Garrett GTA-350), it has been far too hot and humid to hunt comfortably here. But a quickie on the way home from work was doable, so I did. Had to try out the "new" machine, right?

The bare sand area exposed beneath the old tennis courts was pretty clean, signal-wise. It was a good eight inches to a foot deeper than the surrounding ground level, so I was hoping it would be a "time capsule' of sorts. Indeed, there were few tabs and things like that, so the tennis courts may have been there fifty years; who knows?

What I found in my three-target dig:

(1) .22 caliber slug (fairly old)
(1) foil candy/snack wrapper (probably not that old)
(1) .38 caliber shell casing
(675) hungry mosquitoes
(2,768) even bloodthirstier gnats who were craving human ears to fly into

None of the ordinance was likely to relate to the drug murder, and was probably much older than that.

Needless to say, I found it necessary to flee before becoming entirely exsanguinated by insects.

Summer in South Georgia definitely ain't the most fun time to go detecting. But at least I got out... briefly.


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Comments

  • rickoricko Posts: 98,724 ✭✭✭✭✭
    It is a start LordM.... cooler weather will be coming in a couple of months... so get in shape for that... Cheers, RickO
  • pcgs69pcgs69 Posts: 4,324 ✭✭✭✭
    Heat in the south is far worse than here in the north. The humidity is killer. Went to south Carolina a few years ago in September and boy, I tell you, I didn't want to go outside. instant wall of wet.

    Congrats on getting out, even if it was just for a few minutes. Looking forward to hearing about your other finds this year
  • guitarwesguitarwes Posts: 9,266 ✭✭✭
    Invest in a bottle of NoNatz. You'll wonder how you ever lived without it. I can't hardly go fishing down at the coast anymore without it.

    Most folks on these boards don't know what gnats are, much less sandgnats. Well let me tell you they are very small, almost invisible, brownish-red demons with teeth that love to gnaw on human flesh, especially the flesh around your head. They will drive a sane man crazy faster than a politician will dodge a question.
    @ Elite CNC Routing & Woodworks on Facebook. Check out my work.
    Too many positive BST transactions with too many members to list.
  • ashelandasheland Posts: 23,189 ✭✭✭✭✭
    Interesting place to check. A time capsule for sure...
    Very cool! image
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