Detecting at an old church
January 9, 2009
Well it has really been cold the last few days here in Texas and I decided to take in a little detecting. I really love detecting when it is cold. No bugs or snakes and the fire ants are even slow too. They can really make it tough on you if you are not careful when digging. I have even had to abandon a signal or two before because of them. They don't take too kindly to you digging in their bed!
I had got called out to work for a few hours on Saturday morning. I was on my way home and passed by an old church that is close to where I live and I noticed that the preacher was there. I pulled in and chatted with him for a while and got permission to hunt the church grounds.
He was working cleaning the church and I told him I would try to find something special for him too for letting me hunt there. He just chuckled. He said the church had been at that spot for 125 years. The original building had burned and this was the second building.
I thought in my mind that this place is going to really have the possibilty of some silver and maybe other goodies. I rushed home and grabbed a detector. I have a new
Garret Ace 250 that I got for Christmas and have been itching to use it some more so I grabbed it and left my Fisher behind. I have used this little detector a few times and have really got to where I like it.
When I got back to the church, I started hunting and the third coin I found was a silver 1946 Rosie. This coin was near a gravel driveway and was really tough to dig out of the gravel, but it was a strong signal so I kept digging and I am glad I did! It was about 7-8 inches deep and in gravel too! This Garrett Ace 250 amazes me. It even makes me stop and think how my old faithful Fisher would have perceived this target. Well, I'm not going to doubt my 1265X ever. I'm sure it would have hit it just fine. It turned out to be the only silver for the day. I did find 3 old wheaties though - teens through twenties. This is a good sign and I know that there are old coins there. The rest of the coins I found were clads. I also found a gold plated medallion pin with the word usher on it. It was in nice shape too. I knew this would be the special thing for the kind preacher who had allowed me to hunt there.
Finds for the day were:
Clad:
2 - Quarters
1 - Dime
14 - Memorial pennies
3 - Wheaties
Silver:
1 - 1946 Roosevelt dime
Other:
1 - Gold plated Usher pin
1 - 22 shell casing
1 - 45 brass shell casing
and the usual pull tabs and other junk
After several hours I had had enough of the cold and was chilled to the bone it felt like. I decided to call it quits. The sun was starting to dip pretty low too. I went in to the church and showed my finds to the preacher and then I handed him the usher pin I had found and told him that this is for you. He said his wife had a display case of historical items from the church and it would be very special to her. She would definitely put this in her display. He thanked me for the kind act and my thoughtfulness. He told me that I had permission to hunt there any time I wanted and if anybody asked, to tell them to call him.
I will definitely be stopping here again and will take more time and really cover this one good. There were a lot of iffy signals I need to dig also. All in all it was a pleasurable hunt on a cold winter's afternoon.
:B
