Lately it seems my luck has made a turn for the worse for me. Over the last three digs that I have attended I really have nothing of great interest to show for my efforts.

As you could tell in the Last Post with Bill Newman, Adam and Bailey, We had come away from that island with a couple toy cars, a few pennies, a button, an English 50P piece, and a garbage bag full of trash.

On my next hunt with Ryan Pugh, we spent three hours hunting at a local park, both Ryan and I brought brand new detectors with us, Ryan had the Garrett at Max pro, and I brought my new Simplex Ultra from Nokta.

Before I met up with Ryan I had taken out my new simplex to a local nearby park to give it a test, I found two loonies 1/4 Anna Nicol and a couple items of trash in the wood chipped playground. I was super excited that I had found coins with the new machine. So when I met up with Ryan I was excited to show him that my new machine was going to get me the gold. Ryan’s new machine the Garrett at Max pro performed very well in the conditions we were in.

At a local park with lots of trash, a Pebble Beach, a rocky beach, and two shallow swimming areas, Ryan’s machine worked well, my machine on the other hand, I just  couldn’t seem to get it to do what I wanted it to, I played around with the settings, tried discrimination, played with the tone breaks, and I still couldn’t get the machine to decipher between two different targets to give me 2 different sounds. If got frustrating quickly.

I gave it a good effort using the simplex but decided to give up on it after about an hour and a half and went back to my legend. After changing out machines I went into the water to try my luck with some water detecting. Almost immediately my machine hit mid to high 40s on the VDI screen with a high tone and I dug out my first decent target of the hunt. A small blue and silver body glove heart-shaped pendant. Really it was nothing to write home about but I was excited it was not a nail or a piece of foil like I had been getting with the simplex on the sandy beach.

Ryan was also getting frustrated he hadn’t had a decent target in hours either. All he seemed to get we’re Gerber baby food bottle caps, pull tabs, and beer caps. To be honest with you that hunt was a bust we really got nothing out of it I think another detectorist must have been there recently.

Ryan and I put away our gear sat down at a picnic table and chatted for 2 & a 1/2 hours detecting just didn’t seem worth it.

 

MY NEXT HUNT

So the next one didn’t go any better than the last two hunts. My wife, son, and I had some family members visiting from Ottawa for the weekend. On Saturday July 8th We had decided to go to a local beach for a picnic. When we got to the park it was so overcrowded with people it was hard to pick a piece of grass to set up for our picnic. All I could think about was how many people were losing so many things and I should really have brought my detector with me. Of course I know I can’t do that being it was a family outing and all, However the thought did cross my mind.

 

On Sunday afternoon after our visitors had departed and it was time for my son to go to bed, I asked my wife if she would mind if I headed back to that park where all those people were for a couple of hours of detecting? She said she did not mind but she would be in bed before I got back. Very excited to hit this beach where I knew all please people had been all weekend. I drove 40 minutes from home to my location to start my hunt at 10:00 PM in the dark.

When I had left home I was so excited I had forgotten I was going to hunt at night and starting around witching hour when all the mosquitoes come out to play, I also forgot my GoPro camera, and to top it all off my pin pointer was seriously acting up I couldn’t even shut it off. I wonder if I got water in it from one of my previous hunts? Well that’s a good thing I had a spare with me.

 

I started my hunt on the beach and immediately got swarmed by mosquitoes, I tried not to let that bother me as I was concentrating UN listening to the sounds of my machine as I swung over the sand. About 40 minutes into my hunt I had not found a single item other than a few bits of aluminum trash. The mosquitoes were unbearable even just taking a breath of air every now and again I might even swallow one. Still I was so desperate to find something half decent since my last couple of trips had been a bust that I took off my shoes and headed into the water covering my legs with the lake so that I wouldn’t get bit by the mosquitoes at least for half of my body.

 

I was only in the water for a few minutes when I got my first good tone on the machine, my machine showed three arrows down which indicates about 6 inches, and as I stuck my sand scoop into the sand I felt a bit of resistance, so I stepped on the shovel harder and began to pry out what was beneath the surface. Just then I heard a snap, the handle to my sand scoop had broken, my arms and face were covered in mosquitoes, and now I had no digging tool, I was a 45 minute drive from home, and I had a broken pinpointer. I couldn’t let this be the third outing and not finding anything of significant interest.

So I got out of the lake put my shoes back on wiped off the mosquitoes off my face neck arms and legs I got back to detecting. In total I stayed about three hours that night. And I walked away with $2.51 in modern Canadian clad. And a horse tack buckle. Again not much to show from my efforts and this hunt was also a bust.

I am determined not to stop this book here on a bad dig lol. I know you can’t find something amazing on every dig but I think I’m due for a decent hunt soon lol.