Ohio Dirtfishin'

Ohio Dirtfishin'

You might recall from my last blog in which I talked about visiting an old abandoned amusement park not too far from the town where I live. And that it had closed in 1978 and had been enclosed by a fence and locked gate and deserted since that time. And that recently a development company had bought the old park, opened it up to the wrecking ball and bulldozer and was in the process of landscaping the grounds to hold new hotels, restaurants and other “improvements”.

The new owners of the property have been allowing visitors to walk the old grounds of the park on weekends and quite a number of folks have taken advantage of this opportunity to see what was left of the old Chippewa Lake Park. As I stated in the previous blog, there isn't much left there except a couple of the old rides (ferris wheel, roller coaster), some collapsed and/or burnt structures and a lot of bulldozed ground. The walk around the park was interesting and poignant, like visiting the grave of a distant loved one whom you remember from a long time ago.

While I was there I began to wonder about something. And that something was, “would I be able to use my metal detector in this park?” I found out soon enough that the answer to this query was “no”, but that I would be able to use it in in the old parking lot outside the park's gates.

Let me tell you a bit about my hobby of metal detecting or treasure hunting.

Or, as I heard it called on a video online, dirtfishin'.

I got into the treasure hunting hobby many years ago and have been the proud owner of a half-dozen metal detectors, give or take, over the years. I've found scads of items while detecting from class rings and old coins to junk by the pound. I'd like to have a penny for all the pull tabs and screw caps I've pulled out of the ground over the years. But for every couple dozen pieces of junk I'd dug there also came the occasional ring, coin, key, token and other interesting and/or valuable item.

It's been a fun hobby.

In recent years I'd let the pastime slide as other interests attracted my attention. My latest detector, probably a decade or more old, sadly hanging on it's hook in the basement, had seen many miles of work over the years and was an antique compared to the new ones available today. It was also suffering from some poor engineering in the battery compartment where a number of the spring clips that hold the batteries there were broken or missing. I'd jury-rigged some aluminum foil to take up some of the slack, but the detector was on his last legs.

So I had just toured the old amusement park and had eyeballed the now accessible dirt parking lot. And the old itch to start looking around for new treasures had started growing in me again.

So I pulled the old detector off its hook in the basement and tried getting it to work. I spent a few hours and realized that it was a losing battle. It was almost impossible to make the batteries “tight” enough to power the machine.

I was discouraged.

But then I remembered I had set some “extra” money aside for “this and that” and I thought, “maybe I could get a new detector with part of it?” I talked it over with the wife and she was OK with the idea.

So two weeks ago I drove to my nearest metal detector dealer and spent a fascinating hour with him looking at his selection of metal detectors. He had specimens from White's, Fisher, Bounty Hunter, Garret's, MineLab and other manufacturers. He went over the features of each one and gave me a basis to make a decision. Finally I picked one out . It was a White's Prizm 6T. This was a brand-new detector put out by White's that wasn't even in the catalogs yet.

It looked perfect for what I was interested in.

Modern hobby metal detectors are very interesting machines. First off they are very light, unlike the old ones where weight was a definite drawback for long hunts. This one was about 3 pounds. The electronics part was in a small box with an LCD display that sat on top an “s” rod with the search coil at one end and the battery box on the other. You held a padded grip in the center of the “s” rod and a padded forearm rest sat naturally under your forearm. The battery pack counterbalanced the coil on the other end. It was comfortable to swing and felt much like an extension of your own arm. The display showed a lot of information as you swung the machine and went over a metal target. It showed probable target (iron, nickels, pull tabs, screw caps, zinc penny, copper penny, dime, quarter, half and silver plus the range for jewelry), a value from – 80 to + 90 and the probable depth of a coin-sized target. It also generated an audible tone to coincide with the coil passing over the target. The tone would be higher in pitch for the better targets. You also had a pinpoint (all metal) mode where you could narrow the area where the target was as you slowly swung the coil. You could also “notch out” certain targets so they wouldn't tone alert or show on the LCD – stuff like iron and aluminum junk. You could also increase the detector's sensitivity and, if necessary, set it for salt conditions if you were detecting on the beach or in a desert area.

It was a beautiful machine and I was the happy new owner of it.

Last Saturday I took this new tool up to the defunct Chippewa Lake Park parking lot and gave it a tryout.

Let me describe the current condition of the parking lot up there. It's now a field of approximately 9 acres. It's been logged and the trees removed, but the stumps are still there. Some of the area has been bulldozed to knock down the scrub and brush. It's a rough area to work – the ground's uneven and full of ruts, roots and thousands of stumps from 1 inch wide to maybe 10-12 inches. And many other treasure hunters have been working this field. Everywhere you walked you could see evidence of holes having been dug and “something” removed – trash or treasure could not be determined.

I started around noon. I worked for about 10 minutes and received a decent target signal. When I dug down I recovered a General Motors car key. I thought that was an OK target and kept on detecting. I was getting lots of bent-over pull tabs that were ringing in as coin targets. Lots of them. With the occasional flattened aluminum screw cap thrown in that rang in as a good target also. The discriminator in the machine wasn't perfect and some of these targets looked quite similar to nickels or rings, at least to its electronic senses. At the end of 3 hours I was without a single coin and getting discouraged. A car key and a large lead fishing sinker were my “good” finds. I took a short break and drank a cola in my car. Another hunter was getting ready to go out and I talked to her for a few minutes. She stated she had been there the previous week and had found a silver dime and a number of modern coins. I had also talked to a couple hunters the previous Friday and they'd stated that there'd been numbers of old silver coins recovered from that field over the past number of weeks. So I knew there had been good targets found which boded well for further recoveries. After finishing my drink and resting a bit I started out again. I kept telling myself that this was a 9 acre field and that amount of ground had over 56 million square inches, any of which could hide a coin.

Lots of places still left to search.

I soon found my first interesting find, which was a flattened penny with the Lord's Prayer engraved on it, probably from a souvenir machine in the park in the old days. Then I hit a few modern coins. Then a wheat penny dated 1914. Things were looking up a bit. I was getting weary and told myself just another half-hour and I'd have to quit. Soon I got a very interesting signal. I'd learned over the years what a good signal sounds like in my headphones and this one was definitely a goodie. High number, indication of quarter or better, a repeatable signal from different directions and a smooth, smooth sound. It's hard to describe, but when you've dug some nice finds you remember what they sound like in the headphones. This was one of them.

I commenced to dig carefully in the root-filled ground. At about seven inches down the glint of the reeded edge of a silver coin rewarded my diligence and acknowledged that my guesses as to the quality of the target were correct. It was a 1951-D Washington Quarter. It came out of the ground in the same condition it went in probably 50 years earlier – shiny and clean-looking. Unless the ground is very acid, most silver coins come out of the ground looking untarnished.

I was happy with the find and content to call it a day. I'm out of condition to be swinging a detector and digging holes for hour after hour and my muscles were reminding me of that. I had also neglected my sunblock and hat leading to some quite noticeable sunburn. But...

I'd got my first silver for the year and for the new detector! I was satisfied.

Oh yes. I'm going back this coming weekend, too.

Gotta be some more in there. Sitting quietly in their snug little dirt beds, waiting for my coil to pass over them so they can sing their song of silver to my ears.

I can't wait!