METAL DETECTING

I’ll use the term “metal detecting”, since it’s the most commonly used term for treasure hunting with electronic devices that seek metallic targets.  Of course, not all treasure is metallic, and I’ve found a fair amount of treasure with nothing but those two most valuable pieces of standard equipment we’re all born with; the human brain and the eyeballs.  But since I am primarily a coinshooter (see below), I use a metal detector for most hunts, and I like to call myself a “detectorist”.  Some call themselves “metal detectives”, and others prefer the more general “treasure hunter” or “TH-er”.

There are a number of subspecialties in metal detecting.  Some folks  pursue many or all of them, while others stick to just one or two and hone their skills.  The ones you choose largely depend on what sort of treasure excites you the most.

Coinshooting is a common specialty, and my preferred mode of hunting.  I believe the term was coined by H. Glenn Carson, the author of the book by that name, sometime in the 1960s.  Carson’s Coinshooting is a true classic- I picked up my first copy of it in 1978.  It’s since been reprinted many times, and his advice on how and where to hunt for coins is timeless.  The coinshooter is a seeker of old and valuable coins.  He or she frequents the sort of places where old coins were likely to have been lost.  Some also hunt for buried caches and hoards of coins, but this requires much research and usually takes place on private property, sometimes within buildings in places like cellars and attics.  Many like me just pursue single lost coins rather than deliberately hidden caches.  Coinshooters frequent parks, schools, churches, sidewalk areas, old picnic groves or fairgrounds, and a number of public places.  Some particularly sweet coinshooting can be done in private yards surrounding older houses, too, if permission can be had from the owners.  Coinshooters usually rely on machines with discrimination and/or target ID meters, to tune out frequently-encountered trash items like pulltabs, bottle caps, and nails. 

Relic Hunting is quite popular in areas that have a long history, particularly in regions like the Southeast and Mid-Atlantic states that saw Civil War activity, or in places in the Northeast that were occupied during the colonial and Revolutionary War periods, or in ghost towns of the old West.  Relic hunters are often in search of military and battlefield relics, but many hunt places like old, long-vanished homesites or stagecoach stops, too.  Relics like buttons, military belt plates and acoutrements, musketballs, and any number of other artifacts of the distant past are sought, and sometimes nonmetallic relics like arrowheads, pottery, and clay pipes turn up in the course of one’s digging for metallic targets.  Though primarily a coinshooter, I learned to love relic hunting when I realized that those rugged relic hunters out in the bush were finding the truly sweet old coins, which were quite often nicer than what we coinshooters  were getting from the urban parks and sidewalks!  The relic hunters don’t find as many coins, usually, but the ones they do find are often older and more desirable.  And the wide array of historical artifacts relic hunters find goes way beyond coins, to include just about any sort of artifact used in bygone centuries.  Relic hunters generally do not care as much about discrimination or target ID meters like coinshooters do, since they dig most signals they encounter and often are not as plagued by modern trash on their sites.  Many relic hunting machines are quite simple in appearance, with no meters and fewer knobs or buttons, but they are often equipped with larger searchcoils to detect more deeply.

Beachcombing or Beach Hunting is another common detecting pursuit.  In fact, the perception most of the general public has about detectorists is formed by seeing folks walking down the beach with a detector.  Most people who hear I’m a detectorist will immediately ask if I search the beaches.  In my case, the answer is no, not too much, though I did give it a go a few times and had fun, and found a couple of nice rings.  I prefer the older stuff, personally, and I have not yet found any of that on our beaches.  However, the folks on the Atlantic coast of Florida (and in some Gulf beaches in places like Texas or Louisiana) who hunt the beaches after a storm often find lovely Spanish shipwreck treasure, and those who know what they’re doing often do find older things.  Beach hunting is pleasant because beaches are pleasant places.  In the sand, the digging is usually a lot easier, too.  Beaches do offer a considerable amount of lost loot.  Beach hunters usually find the nicest jewelry, in particular.  If you want gold and silver and don’t particularly care if it’s old or new, beachcombing might be a fun pastime for you.  It offers the higher potential for monetary gain, since generally speaking, high-value jewelry is probably more frequently encountered than high-value coins, as the latter tend to be quite rare.  After all, gold jewelry is still commonly worn today, though gold coins vanished from circulation generations ago.  Some of the beach hunters I know have found class rings with initials in them and tracked down the original owners, often years after the rings were lost.  Beachcombing is not only for us coastal folk, either- there are freshwater beaches and swimming holes in many inland areas that might offer tantalizing possibilities for lost jewelry and coins, and without the challenges presented by the mineralized salt sand encountered near the ocean.  Some detectors come equipped with special settings for dealing with salt sand, which can cause erratic or false signals.

Surf Hunting and Underwater Hunting are somewhat related to beachcombing since they’re done in or near the water.  Most modern all-purpose detectors have submersible searchcoils, but surf hunters and divers use detectors with fully submersible control housings.  Those who wade out into the surf with waterproof detectors and long-handled scoops often have wider access to lost items churned up by the water’s activity.  Obviously, most divers who hunt sunken sites like shipwrecks use fully-submersible machines.  I once owned such a machine, not because I intended to do any diving, but because I thought it would be good for beach hunting, and it was.  It was a simple, non-metered design and also proved to be a good relic hunting machine- I later found my earliest coin with it on a dry land site.  

Electronic Prospecting is using a detector to seek out gold in its natural nugget form, or other precious metals from Mother Nature.  Folks who pursue this specialty often use highly sensitive detectors with no target discrimination- they dig every signal.  I’ve never tried this but I’m sure it’s fun.  I’m also sure it’s not easy.  A friend of mine in Western North Carolina did this, and showed me a few of his finds after a hunt near a riverbed.  Most of his recoveries were tiny: an eyelet from a tennis shoe and some small, BB-sized shotgun pellets, for example.  I think he got a fishing sinker or two.  The thought of turning over slippery rocks and grubbing through the mud in a stream to find such small, elusive targets did not appeal to me at all.  But when he also showed me a pretty little gold nugget, I began to see why he went through all the trouble.

Meteorite Hunting is another specialty I would consider a form of electronic prospecting.  I’ve never tried that, either, but I understand some of those meteorites are worth more than their weight in gold!  It’s also kind of interesting to think of them as a sort of extraterrestrial treasure that didn’t even originate on this planet.  Most of the meteorite hunting I’ve seen folks doing on TV seemed to be out in the Southwestern desert areas, but I suppose it’s possible in a number of places.    I live in a rural area where the stars are bright at night, and I’ve seen plenty of “shooting stars” here.  They’re probably out in space, but I once saw a burst of fire in the sky when one entered the atmosphere.  I wouldn’t have any clue how to find where they land.  Maybe this is why the desert environment is a prime area for this sort of hunting, with its wide open spaces, sparse vegetation, and sandy soil.  Once, when I lived in the North Carolina mountains, one came down so close to me that I could see it burning, and I could almost swear I heard it make a sputtering, sizzling sound as it flew! It actually made me duck!  Though it looked like it was about to take the roof off my house, it was probably still a hundred or more feet in the air.  It flew over the ridge line and disappeared, and I didn’t hear any impact, so maybe it was higher than I thought.  Perhaps it’s still out there in the woods somewhere.  It looked about softball-sized to me at the time, though that could’ve just been because of the fireball.  The actual meteorite might have only been the size of a pebble, who knows?  I am not sure what kind of detectors meteorite hunters prefer, but I suspect they are similar to what nugget hunters use.  I think most detectors could probably find a meteorite- I imagine the larger challenge is finding areas to hunt for them.