Searching house yards....

[Nighthunter]

I was wondering if anybody has found that coins in houseyards are very deep.

I'm in west central ohio and have tried hunting house yards but have been finding memorial pennies at 5"!!!!!

No having any luck.

[Wyatt Earp]

Hi Nighthunter

I have been doing nothing but private yards (for the most part) since mid July. The old houses whose yards have been maintained well all along seem to have harder packed soil. In those cases I have found silver as shallow as 1 inch....and in one case a 46 roosevelt dime was still only tangled in the roots of the grass. The deepest coins in these areas have tended to be around 5 inches. I have mentioned that I don't think my detector is up to snuff, so I am probably missing deeper ones that I used to dig. When the snow starts, I'll send the unit in for servicing and calibration, and in the spring I'll revisit places I've hunted and only removed the easy silver from...or at least I'll find out if I've left deeper targets. I do think that when you get into yards that have really loose and loamy soil....that the older coins have gone pretty deep by now, and you're going to need a higher caliber machine that my old whites 6000....something with exceptional depth capabilities.

The best advice I can give about hunting private yards....is forget the obviously old looking places which have obviously had wealthy inhabitants (who never lost ANYTHING), and concentrate on the yards of homes that are less than magnificent. The obvious looking places have been hunted hard in this area. It's the yards of lesser looking, more unassuming homes that have been giving up silver to my pouch.

There are exceptions to every rule, but anymore I get less excited about a fine victorian brick "mansion", than I do about a 2 story frame house ca 1900. There's one very obvious looking place here that I do still intend to search if I can get permission, because I know the old man who used to own it denied anybody permission to detect. He's passed on and his kids may be of a little different mindset....we'll see.

Another tip....nice, uniformly green and new looking grass frequently means that the place has been tilled and landscaped and I've never done well in these kinds of areas. I look for "old" grass....worn and of mixed variety....clover, crabgrass, plantain all together, with some dandelions thrown into the mix. These lawns have been messed with little, if at all....and have yielded the most silver for me.

I am detecting in a "downtown" area of a suburban town where there was lots of traffic too. Rural yards are more "hit and miss" as you have to rely on finding things lost only by the inhabitants....rather than by a whole town full of people walking home from school, to the stores, theatres...and even trick or treat...and all of the mischief that used to be associated with that night which provided lots of opportunities to lose stuff as you ran your hind end off in the dark in unfamiliar territory.

Those are some of my thoughts...and observations. Your actual mileage may vary.

Wyatt

[Nighthunter]

Originally Posted by Wyatt Earp

Hi Nighthunter

I have been doing nothing but private yards (for the most part) since mid July. The old houses whose yards have been maintained well all along seem to have harder packed soil. In those cases I have found silver as shallow as 1 inch....and in one case a 46 roosevelt dime was still only tangled in the roots of the grass. The deepest coins in these areas have tended to be around 5 inches. I have mentioned that I don't think my detector is up to snuff, so I am probably missing deeper ones that I used to dig. When the snow starts, I'll send the unit in for servicing and calibration, and in the spring I'll revisit places I've hunted and only removed the easy silver from...or at least I'll find out if I've left deeper targets. I do think that when you get into yards that have really loose and loamy soil....that the older coins have gone pretty deep by now, and you're going to need a higher caliber machine that my old whites 6000....something with exceptional depth capabilities.

The best advice I can give about hunting private yards....is forget the obviously old looking places which have obviously had wealthy inhabitants (who never lost ANYTHING), and concentrate on the yards of homes that are less than magnificent. The obvious looking places have been hunted hard in this area. It's the yards of lesser looking, more unassuming homes that have been giving up silver to my pouch.

There are exceptions to every rule, but anymore I get less excited about a fine victorian brick "mansion", than I do about a 2 story frame house ca 1900. There's one very obvious looking place here that I do still intend to search if I can get permission, because I know the old man who used to own it denied anybody permission to detect. He's passed on and his kids may be of a little different mindset....we'll see.

Another tip....nice, uniformly green and new looking grass frequently means that the place has been tilled and landscaped and I've never done well in these kinds of areas. I look for "old" grass....worn and of mixed variety....clover, crabgrass, plantain all together, with some dandelions thrown into the mix. These lawns have been messed with little, if at all....and have yielded the most silver for me.

I am detecting in a "downtown" area of a suburban town where there was lots of traffic too. Rural yards are more "hit and miss" as you have to rely on finding things lost only by the inhabitants....rather than by a whole town full of people walking home from school, to the stores, theatres...and even trick or treat...and all of the mischief that used to be associated with that night which provided lots of opportunities to lose stuff as you ran your hind end off in the dark in unfamiliar territory.

Those are some of my thoughts...and observations. Your actual mileage may vary.

Wyatt

I've only hunted old farm yards. I use an XLT, so I am using a good machine and know how to use it. I imagine there aren't as many targets in the country yards.

[Wyatt Earp]

...another useful thing to know....is that in the country, usually more coins will be found in the front yard where fuctions were normally held, and where kids played, whereas in the more populous areas, functions tended to be held in the back yard, and kids played there because it was away from the road.

You just haven't found the right rural yard yet.

Wyatt

[Toadie]

I have found quite a few wheaties and indians in several country house yards along with some silver. I remember about ten years ago I had almost given up on finding anything in these locations when my father recommended I search among the old flowers growing here and there. They usually are almost all gone but here and there some of the hardier plants still thrive. We looked for irises, norcisis and daffidills. Sometimes we come across wild rosebushes, mint and collards. Then we'd start making cirlces around the the flowers, going wider and wider. Kinda like you would track a wounded deer from the blood trail, except from the flower. He is almost 73 now and said his grandmother used to have evening luncheons in the flower garden where the ladies would all come admire my g. grandmothers flowers. Also, his first gold came from a overgrown rural flower bed back in the sixties.

When I was younger I remember my grandmother said all the kids would play away from the womenfolk but normally within earshot. The men were usually off near the barn or out hunting. The kids stayed close enough to hear their names called, or "risk getting their hides tanned" and all, so within 100-150 feet or so of the flowers may be the play spots. This tecnique seems to work for us here in Texas and may work there as well. After listening to his logic on the garden parties and all, I can see why he used to get all the good finds back when he was more active.

[Kenneth Huddleston]

For the most part in lawns of older houses built before 1940s I have dug Quarters at about 6" . I dug a Franklin One dollar silver at about 7" to 8" in a house yard that had VERY LOOSE soil with my Spectrum XLT !! It was a real bugger to dig without making a creater in the mans yard !Dont forget to detect under BIG trees and in OLD garden areas! I have found that if there is OLD trees I detect under them first !!! I have found alot of old silver coins under them !!!! HAPPY HUNTING !!! KENNETH

[willisjj]

Back when I lived in Colorado Springs, a detecting buddy and I would go to the older side of town and look for houses that were resodding their lawn. 9 times out of 10 we would get permission to hunt usually sharing the finds with the owner. With the grass torn up, that usually removed the top 3-6 inches of soil along with most of the trash and it was simple easy hunting. Loose soil and in alot of cases we eyeballed old coins and rings just laying in the loose dirt. That was some of the easiest, most enjoyable, and most rewarding city hunting I have ever done.